The Lost

by J. D. Robb

  No one objected. All finished the last of their drinks and staggered out of the house with a chorus of “Best wishes to the mistress of this house.”

  Esmé stared at Isabelle for almost a minute. “You come back to me with a pure spirit. I will not ask how that can be or doubt my insight. If I had been drinking with my friends, I would not be so certain, but I refrained, intent on discrediting you. Now it appears it was a waste of restraint.”

  “I cannot say that I am sorry I disappointed you,” Isabelle answered, “only relieved that you are so perceptive. And honest.”

  “Few appreciate how expensive honesty can be.”

  “I respect your work, Healer, and will never do anything to undermine your wisdom, unless I know that someone’s life is in danger.” Isabelle paused and when Esmé gave a grudging nod went on. “Yes, I do know how expensive honesty can be.”

  Esmé stood up and poured more tea for herself and a mug for Isabelle. To each she added a dollop of spirits from a clay jug and set both on the table.

  “He hurt your heart,” Esmé stated.

  “Why is he so hard? Why is he so alone? There is immense kindness in him. I have seen it, felt it. Why, if he has a good heart, does he think that lust and drunkenness and drugs are the answer to anything? Why does he stay here when he is so obviously unhappy?”

  “Sip your tea and wrap yourself in a shawl. It is a long story and one that will test your faith in my honesty.”

  Isabelle took the shawl Esmé handed her and, though the evening was not particularly cool, wrapped the gossamer-light piece around her shoulders.

  “Sebastian Dushayne was assigned here as a soldier when the castillo still housed warriors, though they were English soldiers and not the Spaniards who had first built it. Captain Dushayne fell in love with a local girl. Her mother was the village healer. Not me,” Esmé hastened to add. “Despite the mother’s misgivings, which were far more insightful than most people’s, she allowed her daughter, Angelique, to marry Sebastian.”

  Esmé sipped her tea and added more spirits.

  “Sebastian Dushayne wanted Angelique. He said he loved her, but he wanted her beauty, her sweetness, her pure heart. And it was a fine match. Her goodness tempered his carnal wants and his commanding presence made Angelique aware of the value of a forceful personality.”

  Isabelle settled back into the cushions of the sofa to find comfort where she could. This story was not going to have a happy ending.

  “After a great storm swept the region, Angelique told her husband that she must go to help her sister on another island. Sebastian allowed it but insisted that she come back quickly, afraid that separation would be too great a test of his vows. Can you see that his love was mixed with too great a need to control?”

  Isabelle saw that in him still. The way he told people what to do, never asked a question, demanded rather than suggested.

  “Finally, when she had been gone too long, Sebastian Dushayne insisted his wife return. Despite the fact it was the month of the worst storms of the year, Angelique tried to obey him and was lost at sea. Of forty people, only three women survived and one man of God.”

  “Man of God?” Isabelle straightened.

  “Yes.” Esmé nodded. “Father Joubay took a place in the dinghy. If he’d given the spot to Angelique, she would have lived.”

  “Oh, dear God.” Isabelle raised her hand to her mouth.

  “The healer cursed both Joubay and Sebastian Dushayne to an eternity of suffering for causing the death of her beloved child. Joubay was forbidden on the island, the one place he wanted to live more than anyplace else, until he could undo his wrong. Dushayne was given total control of this island, but only this island. He was condemned to live here, unable to leave the island, for as long as it took for him to win the love of another woman as pure of heart as Angelique.”

  “This is true? You swear it?” Even if Esmé swore, Isabelle was not sure she would believe it.

  “Yes, Isabelle, I swear on my skill as a healer. And what I have told you is not even the hardest part to believe.” Esmé pushed her tea away and closed her eyes for a moment.

  “This happened in the fall of 1810. Sebastian has been living here, frozen in age and time, for almost two hundred years.”

  Isabelle stood up, knocking over the mug. “That cannot be.”

  “Yes, it is. I swear it on Angelique’s grave. Sebastian can use the modern version of anything already invented in 1810. He can read any book he chooses and wear any style clothing he prefers, but he cannot use electricity or the telephone or any other modern convenience.”

  “What happens if he tries?”

  “Whatever it is does not work, or bursts into flame, or disintegrates.”

  Isabelle allowed herself to believe it for a moment. The castillo was lit by candles. She had seen no sign of a computer or a telephone. There were no battery-operated radios or even an old-fashioned boom box, and that was odd for a man who loved singing.

  “But worst of all, Isabelle, Sebastian Dushayne cannot leave this island for even a moment. Over the years the strip of land that connects the fort here to the main part of the island has been eroded by storms, so now even the islanders can only leave at low tide.”

  “But people can come here from the big hotel on the main island?”

  “Yes, Sebastian holds his version of a nineteenth-century soiree, which draws tourists to the castillo and they are only too happy to fill his needs. He is a man of broad sexual tastes and greatly interested in experimentation.”

  “Stop!” Isabelle insisted. “I do not want to hear any more. I do not believe you. You’re insane or trying to manipulate me.”

  “Think what you will, innocent,” Esmé said with a shrug. “But you cannot stay pure of heart around someone like the man he has become, and that is what you must be to save him. A conundrum, is it not?”

  Standing up, Esmé ignored the spilled tea and took Isabelle’s arm. “Think about it, dear girl; sleep and pray to your God. Joubay found his answer in you. Who knows? It could be that I am mistaken. If that is so, and I am wrong, we will become enemies. My mission in life, as the healer’s descendant, is to see that Sebastian Dushayne is punished into eternity.”

  Isabelle must have looked as stunned as she felt. “You would murder me?”

  “Murder you?” Esmé’s shock was sincere. “Never. But there are other ways to make you unwelcome here. Please, don’t let it come to that. Avoid him. He deserves his misery.” The healer patted her arm as she showed her to the door. “For two hundred years. This has been going on for two hundred years. You are not the first innocent and you will not be the last.” Esmé pushed her out the door with a gentle shove and clicked it shut.

  Home was five doors down, and even though Isabelle walked very slowly it was not nearly a long enough walk to sift out the truth of the healer’s story.

  Hanging her dress on one of the hooks, she brushed her teeth halfheartedly and climbed into bed. Sleep was impossible, but Isabelle felt safest in her snug bed tucked into the alcove.

  The sheets were soft with many washings and as white as island sun and lemon could make them.

  Relaxing a little, Isabelle began to pray. If she did not actually fall asleep, she did begin to dream. Father Joubay came to her and sat on the edge of her bed, which was, suddenly, aboard a ship being tossed about in an insane sea.

  “We are safe,” he assured her. “He is the one in danger.”

  In the way of dreams she could see a man swimming, struggling against the waves, but swimming away from them and not to them.

  “It really should not be hard to believe that a devil’s curse could hold this man and this curve of land in thrall.” He picked up a wooden cross from the shelf at the head of her bed and held it to his heart. “Isabelle, you believe in the miracles that are in the Bible.”

  She nodded and Father Joubay went on, pressing his advantage. “You have seen miracles in your work. Why is it more difficult to believe i
n the curse of evil?”

  “You called it the devil’s miracle.”

  “Yes. Like the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center. Like the nightmare of slavery in America or the children who destroyed innocence at Columbine High School. Those were calamitous events and millions of people felt their impact.

  “But there are many other curses like the one that Sebastian must endure, curses that do not impact the whole world.” He took her hand. “We could have been spared every one of those events, great and small, if one person had done the right thing.”

  “What right thing?”

  “Only God knows who or what would have led to a different ending to those tragedies, but there is always someone who could have changed what happened.”

  “But no one stopped the Oklahoma City bombing or the Holocaust.”

  “That’s true. But someone changed the heart of the man who would have destroyed the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the men set on destroying the Tokyo water supply. A beautiful sunrise convinced your mother not to abort you.”

  “Yes, I know that story but not the others.”

  “No one knows of those others because they never happened and never will. Goodness in some form changed a heart and drove all thought of hatred from them. And, you, Isabelle, are the one who can change Sebastian Dushayne’s life.”

  “You ask too much of me.”

  Father Joubay stayed silent, and Isabelle knew what he was waiting for.

  “I’ve lived such a sheltered life, at least it was sheltered until I became a nurse. And even since then I have never had a serious boyfriend. How can I help a man as mired in dissipation as Sebastian Dushayne?” Isabelle asked as she pulled her hand from his and folded her arms.

  “Because, despite his lifestyle, you can see the good in him. Because you freed me from the curse. Because your heart has love to spare. When our eyes met in church that day I had never felt so hopeful. It was as though you understood.”

  “It’s absurd and this is just a dream.” She took the cross away from him and put it back on the shelf. “It’s my mind’s way of making sense of this.”

  “Isabelle, do not let the scientist in you reject what the woman of faith believes. Look around you and see that the healer tells the truth.” Father Joubay spoke with a doggedness that belied the gentle way he patted her hand.

  A cock crowed and Isabelle woke up, the image of the man disappearing along with the storm and the furious seas.

  The sky was leaden today as if rain was inevitable. Taking a page from the healer’s book, Isabelle left a note under her door saying that she was taking the day off. Then she walked on to the castillo, allowing the scientist in her to rule the day.

  She visited the kitchen, a massive vault of a room kept cool because it was mostly belowground. A line of windows ringed the ceiling to let in light.

  All the household work was done by hand and even in the morning there were already five people busy preparing the main meal of the day. The staff was welcoming, the chef annoyed by the distraction. The mix of twenty-fi rst-century life with nineteenth-century ways was disconcerting.

  There were contemporary clocks but no timers. Spoons of all kinds, except plastic, but no wire whisks or eggbeat ers. The fireplace had a baking oven to the side but there was no sign of a microwave or a conventional cooking range. Huge porcelain sinks looked contemporary but the hand pump was not.

  Isabelle wandered around the castillo, finally getting a sense of the place as it was before it became one man’s prison. It must have housed hundreds of soldiers once and the construction of the time was impressive.

  The Castillo de Guerreros was hundreds of years old but showed little sign of deterioration.

  Isabelle found the room she had woken up in after the shipwreck. The curtained bed and candles made more sense now.

  The window overlooking the harbor was open and she could hear shouting from the beach.

  A group of men and older boys were playing some kind of game. But it was Sebastian who caught her attention. Stripped down to an odd undergarment, a cross between boxers and briefs, he was a magnificent contrast to the darker, shorter islanders with whom he was playing.

  The game involved running and kicking, some combined version of soccer and kickball, apparently of island origin. Periodically play would stop, they would all drink something from various mugs, laugh and joke and then begin again.

  Sebastian was in such good humor that Isabelle hardly recognized the man who had been so awful to her the night before. She loved watching the way he controlled his body, the ripple of muscles, the flex of his buttocks as he kicked the ball, his agility in avoiding opponents who wanted to stop his progress, the way he bent over, putting his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

  The game grew more heated and one of the younger players broke ranks and took a punch at a boy on the opposing side.

  The game stopped and Sebastian switched roles, from player to coach. With an arm around the young man’s shoulder he took him to a spot in the shade and they talked. Well, it appeared Sebastian mostly listened while the boy talked.

  The others ignored the discussion, drank or found a shady spot to cool down. A few minutes later Sebastian and the boy returned to the team, the boy said something to the guy he’d punched and the game resumed, all ill will gone.

  The competition ended a few minutes later with much cheering and back slapping. Then the men stripped off their clothes and ran into the water. When he was waist deep, Sebastian looked up and waved to her.

  Isabelle raised her hand to him, but ducked out of sight when the others tried to figure out to whom he was waving.

  Those few minutes told her as much about Sebastian Dushayne as she had learned in all their conversations. He was a natural leader, respected by his fellow islanders, capable of being a team player or a peacemaker as needed. He found pleasure in the physical and that meant more than sex. And, oh, yes, he had a fabulous body.

  It was a shame that the man’s talents had been limited to this little world for so long. If there were any chance she could free him, she would. With that thought Isabelle realized she did believe that Sebastian Dushayne and Father Joubay had been cursed. For two hundred years.

  There was no scientific proof. It was the man and the place, the aura that surrounded both. Despite his youth and good health, the way everyone referred to him as “the master” epitomized the feeling that Sebastian Dushayne was not a part of this world.

  But wanting to help him and acting on it without debasing herself were two different things. Isabelle had no idea how she could do it and prayed with all her heart that there was a way.

  There is. The two words came to her in a whisper as quiet as a raindrop.

  She prayed again that Sebastian would believe. No quiet word reassured her that he would.

  Seven

  As days turned into weeks, Isabelle wondered if she might have been wrong about her reason for being on Isla Perdida. Had her fascination with Sebastian Dushayne misled her? His tortured world, his wounded heart, his compelling sexuality haunted her but she had seen no sign of him for almost three weeks.

  Her work with Esmé and the villagers was rewarding. The healer was open to the idea that Isabelle begin a process of inoculation of both children and adults against the most common diseases.

  Isabelle initiated the prototype program used by most world health organizations. Part of the process was a record-k eeping initiative that would identify and track the routine treatment as well as the emergency needs of the village.

  Recording a medical history was its own massive chore, as big as convincing the villagers that inoculations would discourage, not encourage, illness. Isabelle found the villagers unwilling to help her with the written work for a dozen reasons down to the fact that they had never kept records before.

  Esmé was a superb midwife and the neonatal health of the village women was impressive. Most girls were matched with mates by the time they were sixteen and mot
hers within the year.

  The village was run much like a classic commune with little interference from the outside. Meals were shared in a common dining room and those few who did not work for Sebastian Dushayne fished and raised fruits and vegetables for the whole village.

  No one crossed the tidal-submerged strip of land to work at the hotel on a daily basis. Those who did never returned. There was nothing mystical about that. The twenty-fi rst century was too strong a draw.

  While Isabelle’s work with the villagers was rewarding, her contact with the castle was nonexistent. Each evening she went to sing and each evening was turned away by one of the servants who told her that Sebastian was entertaining privately and did not wish to hear her.

  The fourth week into her work, Sebastian came to the village right after breakfast as Isabelle was walking back to her cottage.

  The villagers’ excitement was palpable as the master stopped at the dining area, now empty except for the children dawdling over their fruit and porridge.

  The boys and girls mobbed him as he took a seat on one of the benches just outside the dining room. Isabelle watched Sebastian listen to stories, admire toys and suggest that they meet at the beach later.

  “Yes! Yes!” the children chorused. “Let’s go now!”

  “After school,” he insisted.

  “Oooooh,” they moaned.

  “It could be that if you work hard today, Mistress Teacher will let you out early. I will be waiting, no matter where the sun is, when you are free.”

  As one, the group of children—Isabelle guessed there were fifteen in all—jumped up and raced to the school-room, where the Mistress Teacher waited. She waved at Sebastian, shaking her head as she did, then followed the children inside.

  The street was quiet.

  “I suspect this will be a difficult day for her to hold their attention.” Isabelle came up beside him and, at his start of surprise, she reached out and touched his shoulder.