by Susan Wiggs
* * *
Dr. MacEwan reveled in being a source of constant controversy. A proponent of radical medical ideas garnered from a fancy eastern college, the physician was aggressive, compassionate, outspoken and undeniably skilled.
Still, many in the close-knit community of Ilwaco regarded Dr. Fiona MacEwan with deep suspicion. Perhaps that was why Jesse felt a vaguely pleasant kinship with her.
He waited in his kitchen while Fiona examined the stranger from the sea. Despite a trying morning in town, Jesse let himself relax a little. By threatening the harbormaster with a large fist, he’d finally managed to get his point across. He told Judson to check his records for a ship that was due in the area. Before long, they would know the identity of the woman.
And now the doctor was here. In just a short time, Dr. MacEwan would take the stranger off his hands and his life would return to normal.
To normal. To its normal hellish loneliness.
Jesse gritted his teeth against feeling, because feeling had been his downfall. This lonely life, his exile, was his fate.
He looked out the broad front window of the house. The days were growing reasonably long, so he didn’t have to worry about getting the light burning for several more hours.
Then the solitary vigil of night would begin.
Hearing a step behind him, he turned to see Dr. MacEwan coming out of the birth-and-death room. Fiona had a broad face and hands that were as sturdy and work-worn as any farm wife’s. She wore her thick, graying hair in a haphazard bun held in place by a pencil or a knitting needle or whatever happened to be at hand. Today it looked as if the object of choice was a crochet hook.
“Well?” Jesse asked.
“She’s semiconscious.”
“What does that mean?”
“Drifting in and out of sleep.” Fiona removed her stethoscope, placing it in its black velvet pouch. “Did you notice she’s wearing no wedding ring?”
“Not everyone wears one.”
“It opens some interesting possibilities,” she said. “She could be a widow—”
“Or a fallen woman.” It was easier to think the worst of her.
“Why is it always the woman who falls?” Fiona mused. “And not the man?”
“For all we know, he’s fallen into the sea, so she’s better off than he is.”
“True.” Fiona lifted her immaculate white pinafore over her head and took her time folding it. “I got her to drink some water and use the necessary. But she’s endured a terrible trauma and is still in danger.”
“Is she...hurt in any way?” Jesse told himself he was asking because he wanted her well and out of his life. The sooner the better.
“I think her collarbone is bruised, so you’ll have to be careful with that.”
“I’ll have to be careful?” A familiar dread crept like a spider across Jesse’s chest.
“Yes. It seems tender there.” Without asking permission, Fiona went to the larder and helped herself to a finger of brandy from his bottle on the shelf. “The right side.”
“Seems to me you should be talking to the people she’ll be staying with.” Even as he spoke, Jesse felt a thump of suspicion in his gut.
Fiona tossed back the brandy, closing her eyes while a look of pleasure suffused her strong, handsome face. Then she opened her eyes. “She’s staying right here. With you. Jesse, you saved her. She’s your responsibility.”
“No.” He strode to the kitchen, slapped his hands on the table and leaned across it, glaring at the doctor. “Damn it, Fiona, I won’t have—”
“You won’t have,” she mocked. “It’s always about you, isn’t it, Jesse Morgan? You see everything in terms of yourself.”
“How else am I supposed to see it?”
“In terms of that poor creature in there, you great thickheaded lout!” Fiona sloshed more brandy into her glass. “I said she has no visible injuries other than minor bruises and abrasions. But that doesn’t mean we can drag her from pillar to post, man. She’s in a bad way, and don’t fool yourself that she’s not.”
“You have to take her away.” His voice was a low rasp in his throat.
“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”
“She can’t stay.”
“You kept that Mexican sailor for six weeks last year.”
“That was different.” Jesse had rescued the sailor from a lifeboat in the surf. “He slept in the barn, and he was able to send a telegraph for help.”
“And he didn’t speak English,” Fiona said as if it were Jesse’s fault. “So he didn’t intrude on your solitude.”
“Since when has it been a crime to want solitude?”
“It’s a crime when you put someone in danger because you’re afraid of having her under your roof.”
The accusation chilled Jesse’s blood. “That was a goddamned low blow, Fiona.”
She sipped her brandy. “I know. I learned to fight dirty back in medical college. And I’ve never been beaten. Certainly not by such a creature as a man.”
Jesse shoved himself back from the table. “What about her reputation? She’s probably a decent, God-fearing person. Mrs. Swann’s probably spreading lies about her all over town. It’s not right for a woman to live under the same roof as a man she’s not married to.”
“Once I explain to everyone the condition she’s in, only the smallest of minds will dare to think there’s anything improper going on.”
“You have enormous faith in your fellow man,” Jesse said. “They’ll flay her alive with their gossip.”
“Since when does Jesse Morgan care about gossip?” Fiona asked, finishing her brandy and fastening the clasp on her large brown leather bag. “I’ll stop in to see how she’s doing. If she tries to talk, find out where her family is, how we can contact them.”
Jesse followed her to the door. “Don’t do this, Fiona. Don’t leave her with me.”
He could almost hear the snap as her patience broke. She glared at him, her eyes bright with outrage. “You’ll keep this woman safe, Jesse Morgan, and you’ll help her get well, I swear you will. She’s pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed.”
“Pregnancy is always a risky proposition, even for a woman who hasn’t suffered a major trauma. If she lost her family in the shipwreck, then the baby will be all she has left. It’s only right that we do everything we can to make sure she carries the infant to term, which, unless I miss my guess will be four months from now.”
After she was gone, Jesse stood for a long time listening to the wag-on-the-wall clock ticking away the moments. And in the room off the kitchen, the beautiful stranger slept on.
CHAPTER THREE
Darkness. The rasp of her own breathing. Images and flashes of things that had come before. The face of a stranger. The feel of strong arms around her.
The ball of shame in her belly that she couldn’t help loving.
It was the thought of the baby that brought her to full wakefulness. Beneath her, the bed was surprisingly soft, a welcome luxury after the cramped discomfort of the ship.
What’ve we here, then? A stowaway? I’ll have to report this bit of baggage to the skipper.
Shuddering from the memory, she blinked slowly until she could make out vague, dark shapes in the room. The small square of a window with the shutters drawn. A washstand and sea chest. A tall piece of furniture, a cupboard of some sort.
A strong but pleasant smell hung in the air. Lye soap, perhaps. And coffee, though it had not been
made recently.
Safe. She felt safe here. She had no idea where “here” was, but she sensed something vital in the atmosphere that protected and insulated her. Safe at last. Anywhere felt safe compared to the place she had fled.
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she ducked from it. She wasn’t ready to think about that yet. She must not. Perhaps there was a way for her never to think about the past again.
Her hand curled over the gentle swell of her belly. No. There was no chance of forgetting.
“Hello?” she whispered into the darkness.
No answer. Just a low, constant growl of sound in the distance.
Gingerly she lifted the covers, wincing at a pain in her shoulder. She was wearing a gown of some fine stuff—thick cotton flannel such as she would have welcomed as a girl, shivering in her loft above the family cottage and wishing the peat fire gave off better heat.
Feeling the way with her hands, she moved along the wall toward the door, which was slightly ajar. A splinter of rough wood pierced her hand, but she barely flinched. After all she had been through, a splinter was hardly cause for notice.
In contrast to the door, the floor was worn smooth as if by years of pacing. She paused in the doorway, trying to get her bearings.
It was the sea she heard, the throaty basso call of waves on the shore. She had lived by the sea all of her life, and it was a good, strong sound to her ears. Even the shipwreck had not soured that pleasure for her, the sense that, no matter what happened, the sea never ceased, the sound never died.
Faint heat emanated from a huge iron stove that dominated the kitchen. The room gave access to a larger area, a keeping room or parlor. She creaked open the door of the stove so the embers would give her some light. A warm orange glow painted the sturdy furnishings and a narrow stairway. She went up the flight of stairs and looked through an open door. Within the shadow shrouds, she could make out a large tester bed, its four posters stark and bony in the dimness.
The bed was empty.
What sort of place was this?
Though each movement caused a wave of dizziness, she felt the need to press on, to answer the questions swirling in her mind. Unsteady on her feet, she descended the stairs, stepped outside and found herself standing on a veranda with a railing around the front.
The waves boomed as loud and rhythmic as a heartbeat. High clouds glowed in the distance, and a strange light silvered their underbellies so that they resembled fat salmon swimming through the sky.
That light. She shook her head and grasped the porch rail, feeling nauseous. Her injured shoulder throbbed. She spied a small outhouse fronted by lilac bushes. The necessary room? Yes. She was glad to have found that. As she stumbled across the lawn, the ground felt chill and damp beneath her bare feet. When she finished and made her way back, she noticed that the grass had been cropped or scythed.
Again the silvery light drew her. Slowly, she made her way up a slope covered by spongy grass to the top of the yard. Beyond a thick stand of towering trees, a stately silhouette stood out against the night sky. That was it, then. A lighthouse.
A memory drifted back to her. The sickening lurch of the ship’s hull on the shoal. The groan and crash of boards breaking apart. A seaman shouting raw-throated at her, tossing her a rope. The solidity of a mast or yardarm bobbing free of the wreck, floating. She had used the rope to secure herself. She recalled looking up, scanning the horizon.
As the sea swallowed the four-master—Blind Chance, it was called—like a hungry serpent, making a great slurping sound, she had spied the light. She’d known it wasn’t a star, for it lay too low on the horizon. She had followed the light, kicking toward it for hours, it seemed. The water, though cold, was bearable. With a rhythm as faithful as music, the rotating beacon had drawn her closer and closer: a long, thoughtful blink followed by a second or two of darkness.
When dawn tinged the sky, exhaustion had overcome her. The last image in her conscious mind had been that light. She remembered thinking that it was rather lovely for one’s last vision on earth.
Now she stood amazed that she had survived.
But what of her rescuer?
She wondered if she should go and find him. She stood in the shadow of a huge tree, feeling the moist springy earth beneath her feet and trying to decide.
It was then that she saw him.
Her first impulse was to run and hide, but surely that wasn’t necessary. Surely he couldn’t see her.
He stood on the skeletal iron catwalk and faced out to sea. She could tell that his hair was long, for when the light rotated to the left it illuminated a dark, windblown tangle. There was something about the way he stood that caught at her. He kept his hands crammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as if it were cold.
But it wasn’t cold. Cool, perhaps, but a lovely night.
There was a stillness about him. As if he were carved in stone, as immovable as the tower upon which he stood. It was eerie the way the light passed over him as it swung in one direction, then the other.
The light moved, but he didn’t.
She watched for what seemed like a long time. But she, not the stranger, was the first to move. Fatigued, she returned slowly to the house and crawled back into bed. She barely made it; she was weaker than she thought.
In moments, she was falling asleep again. Falling asleep and, for the first time in too long, unafraid.
* * *
It was time to bid the night farewell.
Jesse always savored the endless moments between dark and dawn. The smells of damp earth and evergreen mingled in the air. The cormorants, nesting in the cliffs, released their distant, plaintive calls. It was a gray, nothing period of time when all the world fell still. Night was gone and a new day was coming. But for now he was alone.
That was what he treasured. The silence. The peace.
The new day held no promise. Just the sameness of the day that had gone before and the dull awareness that tomorrow would be no different, either.
This awareness was never more acute to Jesse than in these moments, when the horizon lightened like water spilled in a pool of black ink, and then colors of aching intensity tinged the sky from the east.
Yet today there was a difference, he thought, wrenching open the front door of the house, stepping inside, hurrying to the room off the kitchen. Because of her.
She had shifted position. He could see that immediately as he looked into the room where she slept.
In the gathering light, he observed the way she lay across the bed in comfortable abandonment, relaxed as a child, her sleep untroubled. One of the quilts had fallen in a heap on the floor.
His gaze darted around the room. The bowl and ewer on the washstand had not been disturbed. But the way the covers were twisted up looked suspicious. He bent forward for a closer study.
A small bare foot, so dainty it almost didn’t look real, stuck out from beneath the sheets. A few damp pine needles clung to the sole of her foot.
Jesse straightened so quickly he smacked his head on a low ceiling beam. He clenched his jaw, but a muttered curse escaped, anyway. It was damned eerie to think of this stranger walking around the house. His house. Seeing the things that made up his life. Invading the world he’d carved out for himself.
Looking at him. Judging him.
He tried to brush off the thought. The woman was ill. Why would she have any interest in him? She had probably stumbled around in a daze, perhaps seeking the husband she had lost in the shipwreck.
Yes, that was it. She’d have no interest in a lightkeeper, no reason to pry into his life. As soon as she recovered, she’d leave, rejoin her family.
As well she should.
Jesse lingered a few moments longer. The room lightened with the dawn. He told himself he should leave her be, but still he
waited, caught up in a sort of horrified fascination.
Fiona had been so matter-of-fact about the whole situation. Couldn’t she see how extraordinary this was? Couldn’t she see that he had to stop this from happening, stop himself from knowing this woman?
The delicate beauty of the stranger was a blatant taunt. A test. To see if he was strong enough to resist an angel’s face and a body as ripe as the sweetest fruit of the vine.
“Damn,” he whispered to the empty air, “why couldn’t you have the face of a lingcod?”
The odd thing was, he knew it wouldn’t matter. If she’d come wearing a bridle or had three arms, he would feel no different. He would still be held in the thrall of her mystery. Her loveliness only added that extra twist of irony.
Daylight glowed brighter through the slats in the shutters. She sighed in her sleep and turned, her knees coming up and her arm sliding down to make a protective cradle for her belly.
She was five months along, or thereabouts, Fiona had pronounced. The baby had started showing. The mother would be able to feel its movements. Fiona had smiled as she told him this, as if he was supposed to welcome the news.
A long hank of hair fell over the stranger’s face, and she sniffed as it tickled her nose. Jesse stared at the lock of hair. A shaft of newborn sunlight through the window touched it, turning the deep red to a blood-ruby hue. It was the color of dark fire. As the thought crossed his mind, he leaned down and gently lifted the lock away from her face. Its softness, the silky texture of it, were so acute and so unexpected that he almost yelped in surprise.
He stepped back quickly, horrified at himself. He had touched her. She was a stranger. Another man’s wife. Or a widow. It didn’t matter. Jesse Morgan had no right to touch her.
He left the room, closing the door to the merest crack, so he could hear her if she got up again. Then he made his way to his own room, kicked off his boots and collapsed with a rumbling sigh on the bed.
But he didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. Because he felt her presence in his house, the warm, alluring song of a siren’s call. The taunt of a treasure he could not have.