The White Gull

by Laura Strickland

  Rab stirred. “Pat must have known. Not that Declan had survived the storm, but that he and Mignon had cooked up this scheme between them. The White Gull was half his, after all. When I saw him in Irish Cove, I could tell he knew something.”

  “How could they all let me think him dead?”

  “Mignon is—was—a cruel creature, always mean and spiteful.”

  “Rab, she didn’t seem to care that he was damaged in his mind.” Abruptly, Lisbeth’s throat closed. “And she was carrying his child.”

  “Was she, so?”

  “I almost think she wanted me to know. She came to me, asking for a new wardrobe, flaunting it. But I never dreamed, not till Frannie began speaking of her own signs and cravings. That’s why Mignon decided to do away with me. She wanted to marry him herself, for the sake of the child—to bring him out of hiding as if he’d miraculously returned.”

  “Perhaps they were both a bit mad.”

  How could Mignon be otherwise? What would it be like to live with the man you adored for a year, lie with him and share every intimacy, and him little more than an empty husk?

  Mignon too had dreams, Lisbeth told herself, now all awash in the sea.

  The wind rattled the door, and Lisbeth started. Kelpie raised his great head and looked at her.

  “Whisht,” Rab said again. “’Tis but the wind, not them.”

  Lisbeth closed her mind to the vision of Declan and Mignon climbing, hand in hand, from the sea, white-faced and dripping.

  Quietly, Rab went on, “As soon as the storm eases I will get you away out of here, back to Lobster Cove. We’ll have Doc Stevens see to your shoulder, and then we’ll begin anew. And you’ll not come back here, ever again.”

  “I’m sorry I came when I promised you I wouldn’t. But, Rabbie, I just had to know. We both needed the truth, if ever we could be together.”

  She began to weep silent, agonized tears. As he had once before, he kissed them away and whispered, “’Twill take some time, I am thinking. There is healing to be done. But I will wait for you as long as it takes, Lisbeth. Forever, if need be.”

  His lips found hers in a kiss of unbearable sweetness, a soft pledge given. His devotion rushed through her, dearer than warmth, stronger than comfort.

  But the words would not stop flowing from her. As soon as his lips left hers, she said, “I think he must have cared for me a little. That’s the reason he came looking for me, though I doubt even he knew why. He’d begun to remember, and that worried Mignon. Do you think he loved me after all?”

  Rab raised his fingers and touched her cheek. “I am sure he did. Who could fail to love you? That much stayed with him, even when he came from the sea.”

  Lisbeth eased against his chest, releasing a small measure of pain. Kelpie, well content, sighed and lowered his head back down upon his paws.

  ****

  The bodies came ashore three days later and were spotted by fishermen en route to their traps—first Declan’s, his oilskins torn and tattered, and soon after Mignon’s, her hair loose and her arms stretched out as if, even in death, she reached for him.

  The news, which Rab heard down the harbor, made an answer to his prayers. He did not rejoice in the death of either of them; neither did he want Lisbeth imagining Declan making yet another return from the sea at any time. No more did he wish her to make of her late husband a martyr who had plunged to his death in a heroic attempt to save her.

  Lisbeth, as he well knew, was shattered. Doc Stevens, who reset her dislocated shoulder, had spoken to him quite seriously afterward.

  “Do not leave her alone. Find someone to stay with her, if you cannot.”

  The “someones” proved to be Frannie and, surprisingly, Emily Cooper. Ed’s mother heroically took on the children during the day and Emily stayed evenings, after school.

  “You will marry her, won’t you?” Emily asked Rab ruefully as she left one morning. “As soon as you’re able.”

  “Aye. I appreciate all you’re doing for her, Miss Cooper.”

  “And I appreciate what you’re doing for Dougie. But I’ve told you to call me ‘Emily.’ It’s only fitting between friends.”

  Now, though, on this bright September afternoon, Rab had to go home and tell Lisbeth she was a widow—again. He stood for a moment above the harbor and watched a white gull take flight over the water. The pieces of the broken trawler had come home long before those of the broken man. And Mignon? She had loved too well and too constantly, like Rab himself.

  He walked slowly up Maple Street to the forge. He would not give Lisbeth any of the details the men had imparted to him so eagerly: how the bodice of Mignon’s gown had been torn open, or the look of terror on her face, the expression of peace on Declan’s, like a child sleeping.

  He hoped Declan had found peace.

  The door to his quarters opened before he reached it, and Lisbeth stepped out into the sunshine. That had been happening a lot lately: she knew even before he arrived that he would come, and half the time guessed what he meant to say.

  She did so now. Even as Kelpie pushed his great head against her side, she looked into Rab’s face and relief flooded her.

  “You’ve found them—ah, God!”

  “Not I, lass, but they’ve been found, both of them. There’ll be a proper burial now, and he’ll haunt you no more.”

  “He’ll haunt neither of us,” she corrected. “Now do you believe, Rab Sinclair, I’m free to love you?”

  “I do that, Lisbeth, lass.”

  “Fine, then.” She tipped up her chin, and he saw the old spirit fill her eyes—those fey, dreamy, beautiful eyes that had long ago claimed his heart. “Just so you know, Rabbie Sinclair, I do not intend to wait a year for a proper marriage proposal.”

  Rab’s world steadied around him, all the pieces falling into place. “Love, I could no’ wait that long if I tried.”

  She tumbled forward into his arms and, at long last, Rab knew he had ended his long journey and made his way home.

  If you enjoyed THE WHITE GULL,

  you’ll want to read the sequel,

  FORGED BY LOVE,

  another Lobster Cove Romance

  from The Wild Rose Press.

  Here’s an excerpt…

  Lobster Cove, Maine, August 1865

  Chapter One

  Douglas Grier flipped the glowing bar of orange-hot metal over on the anvil and struck it a measured blow. Sweat trickled freely down his naked back, prompted by a combination of heat and effort. The door of the forge stood open to the afternoon—bright and sunny after last night’s storm—but nary a breath of breeze stirred.

  He scrutinized the metal, which was destined to become part of a spar on a lobster trawler, and pumped up the fire without conscious thought. When he’d been away fighting in the south, attached to the second Maine regiment, he’d longed for just this—long days of hard work, the skill and labor of coaxing the metal to his will, the comfort of this place that so often seemed the closest he’d ever known to a real home.

  Who’d think that, back at last, he would have such a hard time adjusting?

  War changed a man. He’d heard that over and over again since he returned—sometimes spoken to his face in philosophical tones by men who hadn’t been there, sometimes whispered and accompanied by sidelong glances. He supposed anything repeated that often must be true.

  He grunted and flipped the bar again. He felt rather than saw his boss, Rab Sinclair, shoot him an inquiring look. Rab frequently kept an affectionate eye on him, one of the things Douglas had missed most while he was away. But Rab, standing with his brawny arms crossed and talking to a customer, didn’t pause in his conversation.

  To be sure, the shop seemed uncommonly crowded this afternoon. No fewer than five customers had made their way in, and Rab’s children were underfoot, as well, the two youngest ducking and playing tag as they so often did. Douglas couldn’t count the times their ma had scolded them for that. And the eldest, Dorothea, sat on the top
of a workbench, swinging her feet and talking for all she was worth to Douglas’s former teacher, Mrs. Applegate.

  Douglas stole a look at her and smiled to himself, his mood instantly improving. No one could stay gloomy in Dorothea Sinclair’s company. Douglas would warrant she’d make the Devil himself grin in delight.

  If Douglas had a little sister—he didn’t, he had a younger brother instead, only a year or so older than Dora—he’d want her to be just like Dorothea Sinclair, bright as a brass button and twice as pretty, with black hair like her father’s and her mother’s dreamy eyes.

  He cocked his ear now and picked up her conversation.

  “I’m determined for it, Mrs. Applegate. I’ve been saving all my egg money, and as soon as I have enough I’ll send off to Augusta for that writing course. I mean to be the very next Louisa May Alcott.”

  Her listener smiled. Mrs. Applegate had been called Miss Cooper before she married the new town lawyer and went to having babies. She still mentored Dorothea much as Rab Sinclair had him, Douglas. In fact, it had been Mrs. Applegate who’d talked Rab into apprenticing Douglas fourteen years ago, when he was nothing but a skinny, fatherless tadpole.

  Fatherless, still.

  He straightened and lowered the weighted hammer to look around the familiar, dearly loved place.

  The scene seemed to waver before his eyes and, as it had lately, memory intruded: a far different setting and images much less welcome.

  Blood and mud, an endless sea of both. The screams of wounded horses—a sound Douglas would never forget—the cries of men strapped down beneath the surgeon’s saw. The seemingly endless boom, boom, boom of cannon that rattled his teeth and got inside him, shook his innards till he wanted to throw up.

  He’d been fortunate, though, he told himself firmly. Fortunate. The Union Army had been quick to make use of his skill at the forge, attaching him to an encampment just behind their lines. He didn’t have to wear the blue uniform that strained over his burly shoulders—at least not all the time—nor carry the rifle with its deadly bayonet, which had surely been invented by the Devil himself.

  He had been called upon to use his skills for a variety of causes, from mending caissons on the fly to cauterizing the stumps of severed limbs. There had even been that one time…

  He drew a breath that expanded his broad chest, remembering, and the forge disappeared before his eyes. Instead he saw a dark night and a white moon, sharp and cruel as a sickle, flying before a hot wind. Douglas had been roused from his weary bed by his friend Donner, who worked supply for their outfit and had his fingers in a host of pies.

  “Shh!” Donner cautioned him at once. “Don’t wake anybody up.”

  That had been enough to make Douglas swallow the curse that hovered on his lips. Only half dressed, he rose from the narrow cot and followed Donner out into the gusty darkness.

  “Fetch your pincers, hammer, or whatever else you’ll need to break iron,” Donner whispered. “I got a job for you.”

  The Army had fitted out a mobile forge for Douglas that could move along with their lines. He ducked inside and snatched the required tools without looking. “What—?” he began.

  “Shush,” Donner said again. “Nobody can know.”

  Without further explanation, Donner led him off through a cornfield, half of which had been burned in the wake of the retreating Confederate army. Nearly a year before the end of the war this had been, somewhere in southern Virginia. Douglas remembered the scent of the stalks surrounding him as he struggled to push through them in the wake of the much smaller Donner. On the far side of the field stood a copse of trees, and there, close beneath their shelter, had gathered a group of people—two Union soldiers, neither of whom Douglas recognized, and five Negroes huddled close together as if they shared one heart.

  Startled, he shot a look at Donner. They had strict orders to steer clear of the local populace, brown or white, and not involve themselves in what their corporal called “politics.”

  “You’re here to fight.” Maim, mutilate, and slaughter people. Right, and what had that to do with politics?

  “What—” he began again.

  In a low voice, Donner replied. “They’re on the run. We’re helping them.”

  “Escaping?” Douglas could not tell which appalled him more, the idea that one man might honestly suppose he owned another or being dragged from his cot to become enmeshed in such a situation.

  No one said anything, and Douglas tumbled to the foolishness of his question. What else would they be doing out here behind the northern lines in the middle of the night?

  One of the Union soldiers spoke after a lengthy pause. To his further surprise, Douglas caught the glint of sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve.

  “Their plantation burned, about five miles west of here—house, slave quarters, and all. They made it away in the confusion. Crosby, here, is going to smuggle them back further behind the lines and away.”

  Douglas nodded, realizing not all the stench of burning came from the field.

  “Men after us,” said one of the Negroes, his voice deep as the night. “Don’t have much time.”

  Douglas eyed the group of two men and three women. In the light from the moon their faces had a similarity born of expression, all stoic caution. The man who had spoken had grizzled hair, and the second, who looked younger, might have been his son. One woman, clearly elderly, wore a kerchief knotted around her head and leaned on a stick; the other two appeared much younger.

  “They’re chained up,” Donner explained. “Need you to break them apart.”

  Chained?

  The older man raised fisted hands, and Douglas saw it for truth. Emotion tore through him; he didn’t lose his temper often, but it wasn’t every day he saw people constrained like livestock.

  He gave a hard nod and gestured the fellow forward to a boulder that lay at the edge of the field. “I’ll be glad to.”

  The man moved, and the others came with him. Only then did Douglas see they were not only shackled but chained to one another, as well.

  Grimly, choking back hard on his outrage, he set to work. All dignity, the old fellow bent and laid his hands across the rock; Douglas carefully placed his chisel and raised the hammer to force the hasp. The sharp sound of breaking metal seemed to echo through the night.

  The younger man shouldered the first aside eagerly and set his clenched fists on the rock. Moving quickly now, Douglas transferred his anger into force that made short work of the man’s shackles, which the fellow then kicked aside before he helped one of the younger women to his place.

  When she bent down, Douglas saw she was heavy with child. She, in turn, assisted the old woman; Douglas worked gently on those fetters and moved them away carefully when they came off.

  The last of the women quickly stooped to hunker at his feet. She stretched her hands eagerly across the cold rock, and Douglas glanced up to encounter her face, lit by the moonlight.

  She was beautiful. Young and willowy, with a smooth brow, prominent cheekbones, and a tapered chin, she had hair that crinkled all around her face and great, wide eyes even darker than Douglas’s own. For an instant their gazes connected, and it felt just as if someone punched Douglas in the heart. Surely he could glimpse her soul in those eyes—twice as beautiful as her face.

  “Hurry,” Donner bade.

  She had delicate wrists and slender, clenched fingers that made the shackles seem an even greater abomination. With all his heart, Douglas wanted the cruel, dirty, rusted metal away from her skin. He accomplished the task with a series of sharp blows, and when the chains fell away, she grasped his hands.

  “Thank you. Thank you, sir!”

  And what a voice she had! Deep for a woman’s, and soft as velvet. Douglas stood like a man struck—or stupid—while she scrambled up and, with a lingering look for him, joined her companions.

  Donner laid a hand on Douglas’s shoulder. “Best night’s work you ever did, I’ll bet.”

  Dou
glas nodded, giving it but half his attention and too busy regretting the loss of the young woman’s touch.

  The sergeant gathered his little flock. The other soldier snatched up the broken shackles and chains. A hot wind stirred the branches, and a cloud moved across the moon, sending flickering light into Douglas’s eyes. Yet he saw how she looked back at him still, her gaze once more reaching for his.

  Laughter in the forge brought him back to himself and the scene—one he had already relived a hundred times—disappeared from his mind’s eye.

  He had no regrets about the task he’d performed that night, save one: he should have asked her name. Why had he failed to ask her name so he might hold it in his heart?

  Following are a few brief excerpts from

  other Lobster Cove books and stories

  from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  ONE MORE SECOND CHANCE

  Her mother had been nearly incoherent with distress. Was something going on she wasn’t aware of? She was seventy-one now. Maybe looking after a rambunctious five-year-old was too much for her.

  No. Dr. Campbell was the one who was wrong.

  “I know my mother. She didn’t do this. It was an accident.”

  “We’ll soon find out. Sharon is questioning Ava now.”

  “She’ll be scared, all by herself.”

  “Sharon’s very good at what she does. She has a way of making kids feel comfortable.”

  Julia turned on him, the anger and despair she’d been holding inside spilling out. “And you? Do you enjoy upsetting five-year-olds and turning families’ lives upside down? Does it make you feel powerful to sic the authorities on us?”

  “Look, Mrs. Stewart, I take no pleasure in bringing in the authorities. But I’ve seen child abuse, up close and personal, and I can tell you it’s damn ugly. The things parents and caregivers are capable of doing to defenseless children…”

  He stopped abruptly, his chest heaving. Closing his eyes, he averted his face and took a deep breath. When he turned back to her, his steely control was back in place. “So, yeah, if I have even the smallest suspicion that a child has been abused, I’m going to ask questions. And I’m not going to apologize for it.”