Cross Currents
Summary
In the gilded twilight of Washington’s drawing rooms, where gasoliers drip crystal and gossip drips blood, Elizabeth Crane—sable-gowned, porcelain-nerved—surrenders her betrothed, Paul Beale, to Flavia, the girl she once lifted from an orphanage ledger. The capital’s chandeliers dim; the Potomac keeps its secrets. Months later, all three—and Silas Randolph’s cocaine-white yacht—slice into the molten Atlantic, where fate uncorks a bonfire amidships. Flames lick satin, steel buckles; silk shoes drift like black swans on black water. Elizabeth and Paul, salt-choked and half-naked, claw onto an uncharted crescent of sand ringed by a jade wall of mangrove. Their rescue is a mirage stitched by heatstroke. Enter Randolph, gold teeth glinting, his tuxedo shredded to pirate ribbons; he arrives astride a waterlogged launch, love-mad, machete in fist. One moonlit grapple later, Elizabeth’s coral-handled dagger finds his aorta; crimson fans across the foam like spilled claret on ermine. Seasons pivot; the pair weave a shack of driftwood and delusion, coupling beneath tropic stars, baptizing their sin as survival. Unknown to them, Flavia—rescued by a rust-freighted steamer—wakes nightly from dreams of Elizabeth standing waist-deep in surf, arms beckoning. She bankrolls a search flotilla. The day the schooner’s prow splits the reef, Elizabeth, gaunt yet incandescent, watches through sea-grape leaves. Paul swears fealty; she swears otherwise. In a final aria of self-erasure, she wades into the opal tide, lets the undertow hymn her name, and dissolves—hair unfurling like spilled ink—so that Flavia may reclaim her husband without the taint of island betrayal.
Synopsis
Washington, D.C. society belle Elizabeth Crane gives up her fiance, young diplomat Paul Beale, when she learns that her foster sister Flavia also loves him. After Flavia and Paul marry, they join Elizabeth on a yacht belonging to millionaire Silas Randolph, who wants to marry Elizabeth. The yacht catches fire and Elizabeth and Paul swim to a desert isle. Randolph arrives later and fights Paul to get to Elizabeth, but she stabs him to death. As the months pass, Paul and Elizabeth, believing Flavia dead, rediscover their love and live as if they were married; but Flavia, who was saved by a freight steamer, sees a vision of Elizabeth and organizes a search party. When Elizabeth sees Flavia's boat approach, she tells Paul, who says he wants to remain with her. After she convinces Paul that his child has a right to him, Elizabeth walks into the sea and drowns herself so that Flavia will not know of the island romance.
