Horsman, Jennifer
Page 40
Like a time before, he watched a ship slowly sailing to a distant horizon, taking Christina from him. The closed port bustled about him. Idle sailors clustered in small groups, sitting, standing, watching, waiting for something, anything to do. Crates of cargo stacked neatly in front of too many docked ships. A number of women, preening like cats, peddled their wares to the militamen on guard—the only men with money since the embargo. And everyone there pretended not to notice the handsome young man, so obviously drunk and wasted, perhaps even ruined, standing on the dock calling over and over again the name Christina.
* * * * *
The hot Jamaican sun seemed to stop at the meridian. Rows of tall palm trees completely isolated a mile stretch of white sand beach. At the distant horizon the boundless azure sky melted into the clear blue waters of the ocean. This surrounding tropical beauty, the warm breeze and sand, the restlessness of the ocean water, all transported Christina to another island, another time and place.
She finally found her peace.
Kneeling at the water's edge, she teased and laughed with her son as she taught him the age-old skill of building sand castles.
Justin finally found her there.
Standing at the edge of the trees, he watched silently. He could not for his life move to them. He had set sail immediately and the short trip proved the longest in his life. The entire time he had not a single thought but of Christina. He phrased and rephrased the words he would say to explain a hundred times. He imagined a hundred responses of hers, not one of them pleasant.
The ship had hardly been secured at dock before he had jumped off and started running the three miles to his father's brothers' plantation, running because he could not wait long enough for a mount to be brought. Nor could he bear the social pleasantries required upon seeing his uncle for the first time in two years. He could barely get the words out. "Christina? Where is she?"
Somehow his uncle understood. "She went out for a picnic at the beach."
"What beach?"
"Why Justin, your beach. She's been going there every day since she arrived."
His beach... The beach where he spent the lonely hours of his childhood. Playing in the water and lying in the sun, building sand castles. Wondering. Wondering why no one wanted him at the manor and why he didn't belong at the servants' quarters. Wondering, as he watched the great ships coming from distant places and going to still other distant places. Wondering if he had his own ship, if he could steer her destiny, if it then could take him to a place where he belonged. Take him to someone who wanted him.
Christina was on his beach.
And so, he had run to the beach and now stood watching her. He could not approach. After waiting for this one moment for an eternity, thinking of nothing else for as long, he could not move forward.
She was beautiful. The long gold hair fell unbound from beneath a wide straw sun hat. She wore a plain white summer day dress, the skirts of which were lifted and wrapped around her bare legs like boy's breeches. Stark naked, his son sat across from her with the sand castle between them. The sound of their laughter lifted over the ever present lure of the ocean, dreamlike and enchanting and distant.
He might never have moved forward but Christina suddenly sensed someone watching them. Tipping back her hat she looked to the trees. Their eyes met and for a moment he felt the world stand still. Her expression was unreadable, and before he had dared a breath, she turned away and back to little Justin.
"Look who's here, darling!"
Little Justin looked to where his mother pointed. "Fatter!" He cried out one of the only two decipherable words he had. He stumbled on to his legs and started running. Running as best as those little legs could carry him, stumbling every two steps, picking himself up and running again.
And Justin was running too.
He swept his son high into the air and little Justin laughed and grinned and laughed again. Then he held his son and closed his eyes, holding as though he'd never let him go.
Christina returned to the blanket spread beneath the cool shade of the trees, content to watch the happy reunion from a distance. And a happy reunion it was. Stripped of shirt and boots, Justin chased his boy up the beach and down, wrestled and tickled him in the sand, tossed him in the air and swung him around a hundred times. After nearly an hour of such play and knowing just what would wear the little fellow out long enough for a nap, Justin brought him into the water for a bath.
Not a word had passed between them, and as Justin played with his son in the water, Christina rose and walked a short distance up the beach. She reached a spot where a small fresh water spring ran into the ocean, and sitting there on the warm sand, she began tossing pebbles into the blue ocean water, waiting. When she next looked up, Justin was standing there.
"Chessy? Is he well?"
The concern in her eyes reminded him of who she was. "Yes."
"I'm so glad. I was worried."
Justin forced his gaze from her and looked out to the ocean. A ship sailed in the distance. For a long while he could not speak. Having imagined this scene a hundred times, and as an actor memorizes his part, he knew the exact words he would say. He knew how he would deliver the words. He had rehearsed a million times. But suddenly nothing mattered but a simple question.
"Christina, can you forgive me?"
"Yes," she said without a thought of hesitation. It was all so simple really; the one thing, the only thing she knew with certainty was that— "I love you and I don't want to live without you."
Justin struggled to believe the one response he had not imagined.
Seeing this, she asked the real question. "But I wonder, though, if you can forgive yourself?"
"I don't know." And he didn't. At first, after he had understood what had happened, he had been obsessed with the vision of changing it. Starting when Steffen reported seeing her with the French agents. Instead of fear, stating with absolute certainty— Christina did not do that! Then going straight to Christina to find out what had happened.
He was not a man to live long on an "if only," and after just a few days of this fool's fantasy, he faced what he had done and why.
He had committed a series of abhorrent mistakes, the worst of which was breaking the trust that bound her love to him. All because he was afraid. The unconscionable act of striking her was but a symptom of his fear. The fear that had grown from the lonely hours of his childhood to shadow the whole of his life. The fear that he would never reach that distant shore, that he would never find someone who loved him.
His vulnerability tore swiftly at her heart and she stood up, stepping within an inch of touching him. "I wish you would," she whispered in a voice that felt to him like the soft caresses of a gentle breeze. "I want to go home to Boston. I want to watch the spring turn to summer there and summer to fall. I want to share the joy of watching our son grow. I want to paint. I want to have Sunday tea with Hanna and Jacob. I want to eat Hope's pies and listen to Rosarn and Aggie's silly chatter. Justin," her eyes pleaded with him to do what she knew would be hardest, "I want you to forgive yourself. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.
He reached a hand to tenderly brush her face and she took that hand in her own and brought it to her lips. He could not believe what he was hearing. He could believe the love in the wide gray eyes. "Christina," he whispered in turn, "I don't deserve this."
"But it's yours," she said as tears filled her own eyes. "Yours with the promise that you'll never let me go again."
Justin swept her into his arms, and while he could not yet manage to say it, his arms and his lips, indeed his entire being spoke for him. He would never let her go. Not for anything on earth or in heaven. Not now and not in a distant forever. Never.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHA
PTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14