“And your grandfather began to work on his time theory.”
“Exactly. Although I didn’t really believe in it until I found you four years ago. I knew who you were. I recognized you from the photo, and I remembered what he’d told me. It was you, Helen, but I was the only one who knew it.”
Claire rubbed her forehead. “The photo . . .” She went into the kitchen and found the old album, carrying it back to Gabe open at the photo in the back. “I thought this was Niall.”
Gabe shook his head. “Maurice. They were alike. Must have made it even harder for Maurice to end up working for the man he wished he could be.”
“If he couldn’t have me then Niall couldn’t either,” she whispered.
“I found you down in the reservoir. You were dressed in old fashioned clothing, like something from a costume drama. I got rid of the clothes, pretended I’d found you up in the hills. I didn’t want them poking around the homestead with so much of it exposed, but it started to rain about then anyway. I hoped it would keep raining but it didn’t, and . . .”
“And I decided to find my past,” she said, reaching for his hand. “I wish I’d trusted you, Gabe.”
“I wish I’d trusted you, but you see my difficulty? When you couldn’t remember anything it was a blessing for me, really. But I always knew that eventually your memory would return and then we would have to deal with it. I thought I’d tell you everything then.”
They sat a moment in silence, contemplating the incredible truth.
Gabe smiled. “I meant what I said before. I’ve been in love with you all my life. I feel like I’ve known you all my life.”
Her own smile trembled at the edges. “But who am I, Gabe? Helen or Claire?”
“Who do you want to be?”
“Claire,” she said. “I’ve grown up from Helen, I’m different now. I want to be Claire.”
“Then Claire you shall be. And just in case someone tries to make trouble . . .” He slipped a photo from his pocket and handed it to her. Claire looked down into her own face, held stiff and unsmiling as the old fashioned equipment recorded her image. She held one corner to the candle flame and watched it burn, turning the past and all its bad memories into ash.
She was Claire now and she loved Gabe, and they were going to start an entirely new life together.
This story was previously published in the book The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance, Running Press, edited by Trish Telep, 2009. Copyright Sara Mackenzie.
THE EAST WIND
by
SARA MACKENZIE
At first she thought it was the wind. The rattle of the door, the shaking of the narrow window panes. But the vicious east wind had lulled for a moment into a mournful keening about the streets and rooftops, and the knocking—rhythmic and insistent—continued.
If Oliver had been there he would have gone down and dealt with whoever it was. But Oliver was away on business and she was alone for the night. So she rose, pulling on her shawl, and, lighting the short stub of the candle, made her way from the bedroom, down the narrow staircase to the gloomy hall. The darkness was complete, the candle did little but lighten it a fraction, as she felt her way along the walls to the door and drew back the heavy bolts at top and bottom.
Outside the rain was sweeping the cobbles, driven in great arcs in the night sky. There was no one there. Puzzled, she stepped out into the street and held the candle as high as she dared, shielding it with her palm. Only darkness. Cold darkness that returned the glow of the candle like a black mirror. She did not see the dark shape behind her slip through the open door, but suddenly her blood felt chilled and a great shudder ran through her. Hastily she closed the door again, drawing herself up onto her toes to shoot home the top bolt. Outside the wind set up a long moaning, twisting through the narrow alleyways of the town. The walls of the house were creaking and groaning, for all the world like an old man turning in his sleep. She sighed and moved toward the stairs. And saw the flicker of a shadow, a movement in the darkness, and knew she was no longer alone.
At first she could not move, not an inch, not a single finger. She just stood there, the candle forgotten and wavering in her hand, the other lifted to brush back the hair from her eyes, the shawl slipping from her shoulders.
“Who is it?” she whispered, and her voice trembled like a leaf in the storm outside. The candle dipped; hot wax fell upon her fingers and she all but dropped it. The shadow before her shifted, rising up on the wall like a wave of black seawater, engulfing the fluttering light and snuffing it.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The voice was low and deep, echoing about the walls. He came closer, and she felt his presence as if it were all about her, enfolding her. “I was passing. I wondered if you would still be living here . . .”
A feeling of amazement fused with recognition. She peered forward against the darkness. It seemed to shift and waver. The candle was smoking in her hand. “Tom?” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Tom Harte?” She heard the hope and dismay encompassed in that name, as though she had longed to see him again and yet dreaded it.
“Yes, it’s Tom,” he said after a moment. He laughed, and there was mockery in his voice. “I’ll go if you want me to. It was just so cold outside, and I thought I saw a light. I couldn’t resist. Just for a moment.”
Her hand was shaking, as she searched along the bench by the wall and found the tinder box. Tom Harte, she thought. It’s Tom Harte. The light was slow in coming, but at last the candle flared and held its flame. The light wavered, melting like butter on the low ceiling, running down the dark walls and, finally, spreading its yellow glow over the night visitor. A swarthy face, deeply shadowed. Hair dark and wet from the rain, droplets scattered like diamonds. Shabby, bedraggled clothing upon a tall, lean frame. His shoes had left a paddle on the floor.
It was five years since she had seen him last. Five years. She held the candle higher, and the shadows on his face lightened. She saw how tired he looked, how drawn. Once she had touched that face, kissed that mouth. Once she had loved this man more than she could have believed possible. She took a breath, and realized he was dripping wet and shivering with the cold.
“Come into the parlour,” she said briskly. “I’ll build up the fire and you can dry yourself out. Perhaps the storm will pass soon, and you can be on your way.”
It was not a real welcome, but it was the best she could manage in the circumstances. He could take it or leave it. He took it, following her through the nearest door and watching as she stooped to the coals and worked with hands swift from long practice. The light from the candle stub danced with his shadow, high upon the wall. Outside, the wind keened down the alleyway, pausing to rattle the panes, bringing with it the smell of the boiling sea. The flames rose up under her ministrations, crackling and dancing, lighting up her face—smooth and young for all her thirty years—catching the red lights in the dark mass of her hair.
“Thank you,” he said again. “You’re very kind. Kinder than I deserve.” A picture formed in her mind of the harbour front and the noise and bustle of the ships loading—and the passion in his dark eyes. Forever, he had said. I will love you forever. But he wouldn’t stay, and she had refused to wait. She forced the memory away. That was over, in the past.
Slowly she rose, wrapping her shawl more firmly about her, and gestured for him to come forward to the fire. “Sit here and take off your jacket. Get yourself warm, Tom. ‘Tis indeed a bad night to be out.”
He sat down, stripping off the shabby jacket. There was a tattoo upon his forearm. She did not remember it from before. A sea god with a trident and a long, straggling beard. He bent his own dark head towards the fire, so that the light fell eerily upon his face. Strong handsome features, his skin brown and weathered from the years at sea. That face, how could she ever have forgotten that face?
“Is your father still sailing?” he asked her after a moment. “I often think of him with affection. Does he still make the voya
ge to America?”
She sat down and held her fingers to the blaze. “My father drowned,” she said and the words no longer hurt. “Many were lost with him, so mine wasn’t the only grief. The ship struck a sandbank and was swept out into deeper water. He went down with her.”
He was silent a moment, staring into the flames, and then he sighed and shook his head. “I am sorry for it,” he said. “He was a good man.”
Her father had rarely been at home. The sea was his home. He had been captain of a trading vessel. That had been his life, and perhaps it was fitting he had died in the way he did. But she had learned early that a life on the sea was a lonely one for those left behind. She had seen her mother grow old without her husband by her side. It was that memory which had determined her, at an early age, never to marry a seaman. And then Tom Harte had come along, and she had fallen in love with him, deep in love. And then had come the agony.
“The house is the same,” he said, and she looked up at him warily. He was smiling at her, but there was mockery, too, as if he had read her thoughts.
“My father left the house to me,” she replied. “There was no one else, after all. Now we live here.”
“We?”
There was pleasure in saying it, pleasure in seeing the glint of surprise and hurt shine in his eyes. “Yes, my husband Oliver and I live here now. We’ve been married for three years, Tom. He’s away tonight, on business, but he’ll be back tomorrow. Perhaps you can meet him.”
His mouth twisted in what could have passed for a smile. After a moment he said, softly, “I see. I should have known you’d be wed. You’re too fine a woman not to be wed.”
The candle dipped and wavered in a breeze from the window. She watched the curtains stirring, and wondered why her pleasure in hurting him had faded so quickly. She forced herself to take a breath and say brightly, “What about you, Tom? Are you wed yet?”
He didn’t speak for a moment. “I have thought of taking a wife, but I know now that it’s no life for a woman, to be always waiting for her man, home from the sea. And besides, there’s no woman I want to take to wife. Not now.”
Her heart was thumping, matching the hammering of the wind outside. What was she to make of that? “You said once that the sea was your woman and your wife,” she replied sharply, her voice sounding hard and shrewish.
He looked up at her, and his dark eyes were drowning. “Then if the sea’s a woman, she’s a bitch.”
The words shocked her. He was a different Tom Harte from the man she had loved and lost five years ago. There was bitterness in his mouth and something lonely in his eyes that reached out to her. Then suddenly the impression was gone, and he was smiling at her, his smile seeping like warmed wine into her bones.
“It’s so good to see you,” he told her. “I’ve thought of you often. I’ve told myself that next time I was in port I would come and visit you, and . . .” He shrugged. “A man gets lonely sometimes, and he dreams dreams. If I had thought properly, I would have known you would be wed already.” His voice grew softer. “I was young and foolish. I expected too much.”
She looked at him without smiling. “You wanted me to marry you, Tom, and be my mother all over again. I could not do it. I loved you, but I could not do it.”
“And I would not leave the sea for you,” he added softly.
She looked away. “I can understand, Tom. I have often thought how it would be to be a voyager, leaving everything behind, travelling to new lands.”
He heaved a sigh. “Well, let me do something for you at least. I have been to any foreign land you can name. Pretend I am your ship, and I will sail to wherever you ask.”
He was smiling at her, his dark eyes gleaming. And yet behind the smile was such unhappiness, such weariness, that her heart ached for him. “Tell me about them all!” she demanded of him, giving him his wish.
She watched is face as he drew his thoughts and words together. The firelight danced on his cheekbones and flickered redly in the shadows of his eyes. He touched the tattoo of Neptune on his arm, tracing the lines without looking. And he began to speak. He spoke of rivers and hills and mountains towering above the rolling sea, and strange birds and animals. Things she had only dreamed of. He made it so real, she felt as if he had somehow plucked the pictures from the air and set them before her eyes. The room faded until there was only him and his soft, confiding voice, winding itself about her, tighter and tighter.
When at last she came to herself it was much later, almost dawn, and she was suddenly embarrassed to have kept him talking. “You must stay here now,” she cried, rising hurriedly. “I’ll fetch blankets.”
“No need. I’ll sit by the fire.” He also rose, looking amused. “Thank you for your kindness, but I have to sail on the morning tide.” And he reached out and took her hand firmly in his. His fingers pressed, and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her. “Would you welcome me again, another time?” he murmured.
Would she? His dark eyes looked hard into hers, almost beyond hers, and she was afraid of what they might see. “Of course I would welcome you,” she managed at last, and forced her mouth into a smile. Oliver would be here next time, and she would be safe. Safe? Her mind mocked. Safe from what?
“Then it is settled,” he murmured, and released her hand. And she felt suddenly as if the words were a contract, binding them together. She glanced back as she left the room, but he had already settled again by the fire. He was gazing into the flames. He was still shivering, as though he could not get warm, and his dark hair lay untidy at his nape. She put out her hand to touch him, and then snatched it back in time. Outside in the dark hall her heart was bumping and her breath was sharp and loud, and she cursed herself for ever letting him into her house.
For a long time she lay sleepless in her room. She thought of his darkly handsome face and the touch of his hand. Both had stirred something within her she had long thought dead, but it was his voice that moved her most. His soft, deep voice. How could she have forgotten it? Once that voice had called out her name in love and passion, and she had expected always to hear it. But Tom had been unwilling to give up his life at sea, and she had been unwilling to be a seaman’s wife. The tears were hot on her cheeks, and even as she cried she told herself she was a fool for allowing herself to do so. She was a grown woman, a married woman, a happy woman. Why then did her life suddenly seem so empty?
She was up and dressed early, and made her way down the narrow stairs to the parlour. The fire had died, only ashes were left in place of the warm glow of last night. The chair was still drawn up to the hearth, and his jacket lay across the back of it, where she had put it to dry. But otherwise the room was empty. Tom Harte had gone. And taken the east wind with him, she thought with a smile, for this morning fitful sunshine flooded through the narrow panes onto the faded carpet. She lifted the jacket. It was stiff with salt water and the cuffs were still damp. She felt a stab of loss, which turned into an ache, pervading her senses like the smell of the salt.
Oliver was home by noon, full of his trip and all the business he was expecting from it. She listened to him, nodding and smiling. He kissed her warmly, his arm firm about her shoulders. He was Oliver, she reminded herself. Nothing had changed. Later, when they ate their meal, she mentioned that an old friend had called on her. She shrugged and said he had changed. She was sorry Oliver hadn’t been there to talk with him. And she laughed, shrugging again, as though it had been an inconvenience, a nuisance.
“Next time send him on his way,” Oliver told her, and his brown eyes searched hers for a moment more before he looked away.
“Oh, I doubt he meant it,” she replied. “He’ll be back at sea now. It’s unlikely he’ll put into this port again in a long time. It was the east wind, you see. It blew his ship off course.”
Oliver nodded, but his brown eyes were curious. And she wondered, have I changed in some way? Am I different from the wife he left yesterday? Could Tom Harte have changed me overnight?
/> In the night, after he had held her in his arms and made love to her with more than his usual tenderness, she lay wide-eyed in the darkness and thought, what would it have been like, with Tom? And she knew it would have been different. So different. Oliver was the warm ocean gently lapping her body, but Tom was the storm, raging and turbulent, the waves breaking over her in breathless abandon. Oliver’s hand closed on hers, and she felt him move closer. “This man. Your father spoke of him once. You were more than friends, my dear. Why did you not tell me that? Were you afraid I would be jealous? You know I love you more than that. You know I trust you. We’ve made a life together; the past can’t harm that.”
“Of course not,” she murmured. Her throat felt dry.
“The day we were wed, your father asked me to care for you,” he went on. “He said you had been hurt by one man and could not bear to be hurt by another.”
“I am stronger than I seem,” she managed, her voice harsh in her throat.
“I would never turn my back on you, as this Tom Hart did,” Oliver went on. She wished he would be quiet. “If he comes again, you must send him about his business. How dare he come back, after all this time! What did he expect? What did he want?”
She hardly knew herself. “He was lonely, that was all,” she whispered. “He did not know father was dead. It was nothing more than that.” But she remembered his dark eyes, gazing beyond hers, and the bitterness in his smile. As if he had woken one morning and seen his life as the empty thing it was. And he had come back to her, to . . . What? But it was too late, too late.
“What?” Oliver asked sharply. “What is too late?”
And she realized she had spoken aloud.
***
Summer came. The days were long and warm and gentle. Nothing had changed, and yet everything had changed. Somehow now the days went by more slowly than they used to. The evenings, especially, dragged endlessly into twilight until it seemed there would be no night at all. The things she had once taken pride in no longer mattered. It was as if, with Tom Harte’s visit, she had given up the pretence of her life as Oliver’s wife. It was a shallow game she had played for three years, while deep inside her heart ached and bled with memories of Tom. And now the game was over, and she was finding it increasingly difficult to act her part. Oliver noticed the change, though he said nothing. But sometimes she felt him watching her, his gaze an accusation.
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