Love and Dreams: The Coltrane Saga, Book 6

by Patricia Hagan

  But there was not time, for the broth departed violently from her angry stomach, and she burrowed her face in a towel she clutched for such an emergency.

  The fever returned, and this time it seemed worse. Colt awoke sometime during the night to hear her moaning incoherently beside him, felt the heat of her flesh as her temperature soared. He rang for a steward to bring quinine, but was not surprised when no one responded, for the ship was steadily rising and falling in the boiling sea. No doubt everyone was staying in his cabin.

  He got up and went to the porthole and stared out at a black void. To go on deck now, grope in the darkness in this storm, was suicide. He’d have to wait till the first gray light so he could see the way. Meanwhile, he could only pile blankets on top of Jade when she began to have the chills that accompanied the fever.

  The night wore on, and finally, Jade seemed to relax. Her moans ceased; she fell silent. The fever seemed to abate. Even the struggle of ship against sea grew less violent. Colt dared to sleep.

  A loud rapping on the door to the inner corridor brought him out of an exhausted stupor. He groped in the semidarkness, glancing at Jade in the misty light that filtered through the porthole to see that she still slept peacefully.

  He opened the door to find Lorena Vordane standing there looking very frightened. In an emotional voice, she begged, “Mr. Coltrane, you must come with me.”

  Colt shook his head, attempting to clear it. Was he still asleep?

  “Please,” she repeated, hysteria threatening to take over. “You must come with me. My mother is furious and—”

  She stumbled as the ship bounced up, then down, and she fell against him. He caught her, tried to swing her inside, but she struggled, jerked back, slammed against the opposite wall, cried out as her back painfully struck the thin wooden railing. Clutching at it to steady herself, she began to beg, tears streaming down her face. “Please, Mr. Coltrane. You’ve got to come with me. You don’t know how she is. She goes crazy when she thinks I’ve been with a man. She woke up while we were out, and she started screaming at me the minute I walked in, accusing me of all kinds of terrible things. When I tried to tell her I was with you, she went berserk. She’s been nagging at me for hours because she thinks we were…” Her voice trailed off and she glanced away, embarrassed. Then she stared up at him once more with watery, imploring eyes. “You’ve got to come with me, tell her where we were, that we weren’t alone.”

  “What are you talking about?” Colt hissed impatiently, still groggy, unable to grasp such a ridiculous story. Then he saw the big reddening welt on the side of her cheek, the imprint of finger marks in her flesh. He reached for her again. “Come inside, please. Get out of the hallway.”

  “No, no, no!” She swung her head wildly from side to side, blonde hair flying recklessly about her face. “You’ve got to come with me. If you don’t, she’s going to beat me. She’s waiting now, with a strap in her hand, and if I don’t bring you back with me to swear we weren’t alone tonight, that we weren’t doing anything wrong, she says she’s going to beat me till I can’t walk. She’ll do it, too. You just don’t know her…”

  Colt could see the girl was close to being hysterical. God, her mother was a maniac, he fumed, glancing about to make sure Jade still slept soundly. “All right,” he told her finally, disgusted and angry. “Let’s go and get it over with, and fast.”

  He stepped into the narrow hallway and closed the door behind him.

  The ship gave a sharp pitch upward, then rolled to the side, spanking the water as it fought to right itself. A chair that had been fastened against one wall came loose and slid loudly to the other end of the cabin.

  Jade awoke and dizzily sat up to glance about in the terror that comes when a person is awakened abruptly. Where was Colt? And what time was it? How long had she slept? Struggling to stand on wobbly legs, she cautiously fought to keep from falling as she made her way to the porthole. Barely visible was the thick grayish roll of the ocean, spitting white as waves cracked, split, to spew skyward in protest of a reluctant dawn.

  Someone screamed when the ship suddenly seemed to catapult upward, bobbing from side to side as the wind and waves beat and pounded. There was no bottom to the world, only a thrashing in an abyss, and time seemed to stand still.

  The heart-wrenching impact of the storm’s fury came as the sky exploded in jagged fingers of lightning, unleashing the boiling rage of the tempest beyond. Furniture came unfastened, crashed, bounced off walls; glass broke and shattered. There were more screams in the distance, above the storm, as passengers became terrified by nature gone wild.

  Jade fell to the floor, roughly tumbling head over heels as the ship seemed to turn on its side. She attempted to right herself just as the ship pitched in the opposite direction, sending her spinning backward. She had to get out, get to the deck, to a lifeboat, lest she be trapped here when the ship went under, as she knew it would!

  She groped in the grayness to the door leading to the outside of the cabin. The ship lurched in that direction aiding her by slamming her against the wall. Her head struck hard; she was dazed, but rational enough to still feel the burning, shrieking command within her soul to get out…get out or be trapped forever at the bottom of the ocean.

  On her knees, she wrapped both hands about-the door handle with all, her might. The door flew open just as the ship careened in the opposite direction, a giant wave dancing over the railing to wash her backward like a rag carelessly sloshed from a bucket of dirty rinse water. Again her head cracked against the wall. The ship bounced up, then down, and she was catapulted once more, this time out the door and onto the deck. Smacking against the railing, she grabbed it and held on with both hands, the sounds of her terrified screams for help lost in the cacophonous shrieks of the storm.

  From the cabin came the sound of Colt’s shouts as he entered from the other side, calling her name. He fell, fought to stand up, and, in terror, realized the door leading to the promenade deck was open and banging…and Jade was not in her bed. “God, no, Jade…” He fought with all his strength against the bucking and bobbing to get to that doorway.

  Jade’s grip was weakening. Suddenly, just as she heard Colt, the ship was caught in a grinding, twisting whirlwind that sent it careening straight upward. Just as abruptly the ship fell with a resounding thud that tore loose a crate of stored deck chairs. It shot like a cannon straight down the deck—toward the railing where Jade clung for her life.

  Colt reached the doorway, clutching it with both hands as he fought to stand, but he slipped, fell. Jade watched in horror as the crate smashed into his head, and she had one heart-stopping glimpse of blood spurting before the crate continued on its way and hit the railing right beside her, wood splintering as the railing gave way.

  The crate flew into the wind and waves, and the gray fingers of the sea reached out to grasp it and pull it ever onward.

  The railing to which Jade clung was subsequently torn loose, and she followed the tumbling, tossing crate to whatever fate awaited.

  When Jade fell from the ship, her mouth was open in a soul-wrenching scream, causing her to swallow water as she hit and sank beneath the churning, foaming surface. She felt herself slipping away, being sucked into a dark, cold abyss that was taking her down, down, down. It was so easy to just relax, to allow herself to be carried away, the water twisting and turning her body in frolic, like happy children playing.

  It would be easy, her mind told her through the panic, to let the sea have its way…and her life.

  But she did not want to die.

  The salt water was burning her throat, her nostrils, and she felt herself suffocating. With the lithe and muscular legs that had taken her to ballet stardom, Jade began to kick and thrash. Her head ached. Her chest felt as though it were going to explode. She strained, stretched, flippered her toes as never before…and began to thrust, to project herself upward.

  Her head reached the surface, and she coughed, spit out the salty water, gulped
fresh air, then was slapped in the face by yet another wave, once more knocked below. The sea had not given up its fight.

  She continued to struggle as she was tossed easily in the rise and fall of the taunting waves and breakers. She caught a glimpse of the ship, bobbing up and down in the distance like a toy in the wake of a child’s gleeful bathtub splashing. It was slipping farther and farther away. She dared to scream for help, the sound, as she’d feared, lost in the wind and the crashing of the water. How long could she stay afloat? And for what reason did she want to? Eventually, she was going to drown. No one on the ship was going to see her or come after her. She was lost. Why not simply give up and end the misery, let the sea have its way?

  Something struck her shoulder, and she cried out in pain, then saw a large wooden object just as she was dragged below again. When she bobbed to the surface, she saw deck chairs dancing in the water, angrily realized that the thing that had hit her was the very crate that had washed her overboard…and killed Colt.

  It was being carried away in the rough currents, and she screamed out in protest, began to swim toward it. For each stroke she took, she was knocked sideways several feet. Up. Down. Under. Above. The sea enjoyed its fiendish game of torture. Each time she came close enough to the bobbing crate, another wave would explode to send it still farther from her reach, while she was dragged into the cold, swirling depths for another glimpse of waiting death.

  Then, as though by a giant unseen hand, Jade felt herself being propelled upward as the biggest wave yet swelled from within the very bowels of the ocean. The crate was also caught in the tidal surge, along with the deck chairs that had fallen out. Jade felt as though terror alone would smother and crush the life from her fearfully pounding heart.

  Then, so gradually Jade did not realize at first it was happening, the wave’s fury relented. She was allowed to breathe, was finally released from its paralyzing grip.

  At last she was able to reach the bobbing crate. Hysteria took over as she began to beat at it with her fists, screaming, “Damn you, damn you, damn you…!”

  The sight of her own blood oozing from her splintered flesh brought her out of her frenzy. Sobbing, weary, she mustered what strength remained to pull herself up and onto the crate.

  A gray mist rose from the swirling waters to take her into blessed oblivion and, for a time, away from the hellish nightmare of her life.

  Back on the deck, Colt’s body slid about as lifelessly as a fish washed ashore, in a mixture of sea water and his own blood.

  Behind him and beyond, Lorena struggled to make her way inside the cabin from the inner corridor, but she could hardly stand amidst the tumbling debris about her and the tossing of the ship. She saw Colt and screamed. A crewman coming down the hall heard and responded. Looking through the open door, he saw the reason for her horror. Pushing her toward the bed, he commanded her to grab something and hang on, lest she be washed overboard.

  He made his way to Colt, slipping and falling several times, but was finally able to drag him inside the cabin and close the door against the storm.

  He bent over him in a hasty examination.

  Lorena watched, biting her lip until she tasted blood, clenching her fists until her nails cut flesh, her stomach heaving with terror as she waited.

  Finally, the crewman looked up at her, eyes grim. “Sorry, ma’am…but it looks like your husband’s dead.”

  Chapter Nine

  A golden sun broke free upon the horizon. The sky was cloaked in brilliant cerulean, not a cloud in sight. Warm breezes whirled from within the Gulf Stream. A beautiful day, the kind poets envision heaven enjoys constantly.

  Bryan Stevens stood above the pointed bow of his yacht, the Marnia. It was a large vessel, ninety-four feet overall with a 26.5-foot beam, and had a draft of only five feet two inches with the centerboard up. It was one of the finest crafts afloat, furnished with great luxury, and certainly what was expected to be owned and sailed by a member of the prestigious Stevens family, after whom the Stevens Institute of Technology was named, however distant the bloodline. As far back as the early 1800s, John C. and brother Edwin A. Stevens were the first prominent yachtsmen in the New York area.

  The Marnia was equipped with a new internal-combustion engine, still experimental, but Bryan never worried about sailing from New York to his private island near Bermuda. After all, he was no amateur yachtsman, had taken part in a transatlantic race from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to England with three American schooners in ’86, seven years before, when he was only twenty-eight.

  Bryan’s father, Lawrence Stevens, had been a powerful real estate tycoon in New York, and owned valuable land in the city as well as prime sections along the banks of the Hudson River. With investments in gold, silver, railroads, cattle, and, of course, shipping interests, the elder Stevens had left his only son an impressively rich man. Trusted, qualified underlings oversaw the family fortune, leaving Bryan with little to do in life except enjoy it, by pursuing his love of ships and the sea…and the red-haired, green-eyed angel for whom his yacht was named—Marnia.

  Bryan had met Marnia when she began work as a servant for his family. She was the daughter of Irish immigrants; her father was caretaker for the Stevens’ estate. Marnia was beautiful, captivating Bryan from the very first time he laid eyes on her—the summer he was nineteen and she a mere lassie of only fifteen. His parents, particularly his mother, had frowned upon his infatuation with a common servant girl, but Bryan turned a deaf ear to their disapproval. They eloped a year after they met, never knew an unhappy moment or exchanged an unkind word. Their marriage, observed by all who knew them, was surely what God had in mind when He created the hallowed bond between man and woman.

  They were ecstatic, deliriously in love, could not imagine a more perfect life—till the day Bryan Patrick Stevens was born, with thick golden hair like his father and the promise of his mother’s Irish eyes. From then on, Bryan asked himself each morning if such a happy life was only a dream, then gave thanks each night that it was all quite real.

  But now he stared out on that late summer day, not seeing the ocean, nor the sky; not feeling the sun, nor the wind. The luster of joy was gone from his eyes. They were flat, as though unseeing, unfeeling; as dead as his heart.

  Marnia had exclaimed to anyone who would listen that she thought Bryan Stevens was the handsomest man who ever lived. He was tall, slender, broad-shouldered. He had thick, curling blond hair, and robins’ eggs were no bluer than his eyes. He had a firm jawline, a smooth complexion, a dimple in his cheek, and a beautiful Roman nose that gave him a deliciously sensuous appeal to women.

  This day, however, at this hour, Bryan Stevens was a broken man, void of spirit and the will to live.

  He lowered his eyes to the blue-green water, choppy and rough as the ocean always seemed to be, and thought how it might be best to just topple forward and sink to the bottom. Perhaps there he could find peace from the horror his world had become. But not yet. The time was not right.

  At ship’s aft, two of the crew of four stood coiling ropes as they watched their skipper. One of the men was Walt Gibbons, a grizzled old sailor who’d sailed with Bryan’s father and had known Bryan since birth. Worriedly, he told his companion, “He’s gonna do somethin’. I just feel it in my bones. He hasn’t spoke a word, not a word, mind you, since we left New York day ’fore yesterday. Just stands there starin’ all day, then goes below to drink and cry.”

  Monroe Burton was enjoying a mouthful of tobacco, and he paused to spit over the railing, then echoed incredulously, “Cry? You mean he really cries? Like a woman?”

  Walt nodded solemnly. “Yep, and I don’t reckon it’s anything to be ashamed of. Bryan Stevens ain’t a man no more—just a shadow of what was.”

  Monroe shook his head, feeling pity, but also a little disgust. “Well, I know it was tragic and all that, but I hope I never love no woman so much that if she dies she takes part o’ me with her.”

  Walt sighed. “Doubtless you n
ever knew a woman as fine as Marnia. Even Bryan’s parents came to love her before they died, and they was violently opposed to him marryin’ a mere servant girl when the cream of society’s debutantes was shamelessly chasin’ after him. If they was alive today, they’d be grievin’ right along with him. And remember, he lost his boy, too. Terrible thing for a man to have to face, losin’ both wife and only child at the same time.”

  Monroe bluntly declared, “Well, like I said, it was a bad thing, but I don’t think makin’ this run to his island is gonna do him a bit o’ good. He ain’t gonna do nothin’ but sit around and drink, and it’s gonna be a waste of his time—and ours.”

  Walt bristled at such cold logic. “Listen, mister, you’re gettin’ paid for your time, and that gives the skipper the right to his, and it don’t make a damn whether you think it’s wasted or not. It ain’t even been two months since he buried his whole world, and it’s gonna take a long time for him to think about wantin’ to get on with his life. At least this is a start in the right direction. At least he’s tryin’, or he wouldn’t have planned this trip to his island. He’s wantin’ to get away to get his grievin’ over with, and then he’ll do what Marnia would want him to do—get on with his life.”

  Monroe gave him a dark look, lapsed into a brooding silence.

  But what Bryan Stevens’ faithful employee Walt Gibbons did not know was that Bryan had not planned this trip to think about getting on with his life. He’d planned it to end the misery of his existence. The island was a perfect place. It was where he and his beloved Marnia had spent their honeymoon, where they had vacationed at every opportunity, and where, according to Marnia’s calculations, Patrick had been conceived on a warm, summer night about ten years ago, when they’d given up hope of ever being able to have a baby.

  Bryan knew exactly how he was going to end his life. The island was only about two miles square. The pretty house he’d built sat on a tiny knoll in the middle, surrounded by ever-swaying palm trees. There were perfect, smooth, white sand beaches surrounding the house where Marnia had delighted in finding all kinds of colorful shells that high tides washed ashore. There was also a little private cove where they’d found romantic isolation when the tide was out. He would end his misery there, would drink himself to a stupor during ebb tide, then let the ocean take him to peace.