by Susan Wiggs
She broke off as he wrenched open a door and stepped into a large, high-ceilinged room where a small man worked at a desk littered with papers. He looked up, frowned, then smiled politely.
“Jesse Morgan,” Jesse said curtly. “I’m the lightkeeper at Cape Disappointment.”
“Yes, I know of you. How do you do?”
“This is Mary Dare.” Jesse barely turned to her, saying, “Judge Hiram Palmer.”
She blinked in utter confusion, but managed to dip a slight curtsy.
“What’s the fee for marrying folks?” Jesse asked.
“Why, eighty cents for the filing fee, but—”
“Fine.” Jesse dug in his pocket, then slapped two silver dollars on the desk. He added a double eagle to the others. “And that’s for doing it now.”
“Now?” the judge asked.
“Now.”
“What?” Mary demanded, her mind starting to go numb with shock.
The judge scurried to a side door and murmured to someone. A clerk came in, bobbing his head in greeting. He retrieved a form and started filling it out in spidery script.
Mary heard the roar and swish of blood in her ears, felt Jesse push an ink pen into her hand, watched herself write her name where he indicated, then watched Jesse sign.
Trying to gather her wits, she clutched at his arm. “What in the name of all that’s holy are you doing?”
“Marrying you.”
“Why?”
“It’s what you want, isn’t it? For the baby to have a legitimate father, so no other will have a claim on it.”
She stared at him, this hard, embattled man who wanted only to be left alone, and terror and gratitude welled up inside her. “Yes, but—”
“Then hush up and marry me.”
* * *
The next day at dawn, Jesse stood alone at the lighthouse. He had been married for nearly twenty-four hours, but he didn’t feel like a bridegroom.
He wasn’t even certain what he was supposed to feel. The day seemed like all the others he had trudged through during his time at the station. After his turn at the watch, he stood on the promontory and looked out to sea, studying the sky, reading the weather. He glared at the iron-colored swells and saw in them the enemy he would spend his life battling, the enemy he could never vanquish.
Yesterday he had found new depths to the meaning of awkwardness. His impulsive decision to marry the woman he had pulled from the sea had been so enormous that he had a headache all the way home.
There had been no speaking of it on the long ride, because Abner Cobb and his wife, as well as Dr. Fiona MacEwan, had begged a lift from them. Mrs. Cobb and Mary had chatted like old cronies. Fiona had plenty to say, as well, taking delight in reading aloud to Mary every single word and clause in the ornate printed broadsheet of the marriage certificate. Abner had dozed and Jesse had driven in silence.
Upon arriving home, Jesse had spent a long time putting up the team and buggy; then it was time to start watch at the lighthouse. He had passed the lonely hours of the night thinking about her.
Mary. His wife.
Sweet Jesus, he had a wife.
The rays of early-morning sunlight were hard in their intensity as he entered the main yard of the house. The changes Mary had made slapped him in the face. Daisies and petunias rioting along the verges. Geraniums and larkspur exploding from hanging baskets around the porch.
And everywhere, the roses. For years they had lain dormant, refusing to die, refusing to go away. With a little attention, she had coaxed them into lush fruition. Everything, he thought grumpily, everything seemed to come to life beneath her touch.
Feeling weary and out of sorts, he trudged up the steps and went inside. The house smelled of freshly brewed coffee. He thought how welcome that was, and for a moment he was grateful. To come home to warmth. To something as simple and as comforting as a pot of fresh coffee.
Yet his gratitude was fleeting. Taking pleasure in the things Mary offered had never been part of his plan. He must not grow to expect these things, to crave them. He’d married her only to ease her mind about the safety and legitimacy of her child.
Liar, whispered a voice in his mind. Liar, liar, liar.
“Good morning,” she said from the kitchen. Wearing a soft, tentative smile that seared his heart with its brilliance, she poured coffee into a cup and sweetened it—a single spoonful, on the scant side. Exactly how he liked it. She must have been watching him, memorizing his habits and his preferences. It astonished him that anyone would care how Jesse Morgan preferred his coffee.
“Thank you.” His voice sounded gravelly, ungracious. Well, what did she expect? A total transformation brought about by a few dollars and a large sheet of paper?
They sat at the kitchen table, nibbling on soda bread and drinking their coffee. He forced himself not to look at her, for each time he did, his body grew hot and restless with desire. She was ripe and lush. Forbidden fruit.
She cupped her chin in the palm of her hand. “You married me.” She sounded slightly dazed.
“Yes.”
“I can’t believe you married me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“Is there something else I should say?”
“I suppose...not right now.” She paused. “I’ve been up for hours,” she said, still regarding him with wonder in her eyes. “Thinking and thinking and thinking. Sure a body could never sleep with all that’s happened.”
He, too, had been up for hours. He, too, had been thinking. But he said nothing.
“I have a confession to make,” she said. “Quite soon after I got here, I made a vow. I vowed that I would stay no matter what. Even if it meant deceiving you. Even if it meant getting Erik to fell a tree across the road to town. I would’ve done anything to stay. This is where I feel safe. This is where I want to bring my child into the world.”
He sipped his coffee. The ruse with the tree didn’t surprise him in the least.
“The fact of the matter is,” she said, “that I was wrong. Not about wanting to stay here, but about my reasons for wanting that. For you see, if I had simply wanted to stay, then marrying you yesterday assured that. But I made a discovery. Living here was only part of what I truly want.”
He had the distinct feeling he wasn’t going to like what she was leading up to. He said nothing, but drank his coffee and waited, trying not to notice how full and moist her lips were, how clean her hair smelled.
“What I really want,” she said in a soft, lilting voice, “is for you to love me.”
“Christ.” He slammed his mug down and shot up from the table, stalking to the window to glare out at the dawning day.
“I knew you’d be cross,” she said. “But I have trouble hiding my feelings from you, and so I thought it best to simply tell you.”
“You expect the impossible,” he said.
“How can you say that? We’ve never even tried—”
“And we never will.” He spun around to face her. “I married you so you wouldn’t have to worry about Jones or whoever the hell he is coming after you. That’s all.”
“You refuse to let yourself have feelings.” Her voice was quiet yet firm. “I’ve watched you, I know there’s something left inside you—a tenderness, a need. But you keep your true heart walled off.” She looked him square in the eyes. “Resurrection is what the living need to do. Not the dead.”
Her words tore him open, left him exposed. At the same time, they challenged him. Challenged him to fall in love again. But he couldn’t do that. Love was fleeting; the pain of loss lasted forever.
Fury roared through him. He stood frozen, reeling inwardly with the temptation to believe her, to take her into his arms and accept her invitation. Finally he found his voi
ce. “I don’t need you to tell me what is inside me.”
“I shouldn’t have told you that. Shouldn’t have admitted that I wanted your love.” Her voice turned thin with regret. “But you see, I’ve grown used to telling you everything that’s in my heart. And you know me, I can’t stifle myself.” She turned and started clearing the breakfast dishes. “I’m your wife now. You made it so. I have to try to discover what that means.”
Jesse would never know what spurred him to cross the room so quickly, to take her in his arms. Perhaps it was the way a shaft of light streamed in through the kitchen window and struck dazzling threads of gold into her hair. Perhaps it was the way she moved about the kitchen, unhurried yet efficient, as if she had always been there. Or perhaps it was the sweet-sad yearning that haunted her face.
Not pausing to answer his own questions, he found himself holding her, furrowing his fingers through her hair and hearing the ping as her hairpins came loose and sprinkled the floor. He brought his mouth down onto hers, hard and swiftly, devouring those moist, mobile lips, struck anew by the softness of her.
He wanted her badly enough to ignore all the reasons he couldn’t have her. He started making love to her right then and there, standing up and pressing her against the counter, his hands and mouth questing, feeling and tasting her skin and her curves and pulling at her clothes. He understood that this would change everything, but he no longer cared, for his soul was lit by the dark fire of need.
He took her by the hand and led her up the stairs to the bed he had shared only with his own shattered dreams.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mary was uncharacteristically quiet as she untied the yellow curtain at the window and let it drape over the panes. The light in the room turned to liquid gold, richer by far than ordinary daylight and not in the least concealing. She turned away from the window and faced him, a tentative half smile on her face. “I suppose,” she said, “we’ll have to adjust to a lightkeeper’s schedule.”
He stood with his hands loose at his sides, his heart knocking in his chest and the passion inside him climbing higher by the minute.
“Look,” he said to Mary, giving her one last chance to back out. “You don’t have to—”
“Hush,” she interrupted. “I want to.”
With her gaze fastened to his, she stepped out of her pantaloons, reached around behind her and loosened her sash, then unbuttoned her dress and let it drop to the floor. The shift she wore beneath was made of translucent white fabric, and with the window glowing behind her, she might have been a church icon, so clean and pure were the lines of her shoulders, her face and neck. Then his gaze traveled downward to the frank swell of her belly and he corrected himself. No church icon this, but a pagan goddess, ripe and full.
Up until this moment, he hadn’t been certain how he would feel upon seeing the evidence of another man’s touch. He expected to feel resentment, jealousy. Regret, perhaps, and curiosity. But he never would have guessed he would feel desire. The sight of her, looking so splendid and glowing, torched his blood.
She took hold of the ribbon that tied the top of the shift and gave it a long, slow pull. The shift gaped open. She wore nothing beneath. She’d grown bigger, more lushly beautiful than the day he had stumbled upon her in her bath.
A sound came out of his throat. It resembled the noise an animal in a trap might make—low and tortured. He took her in his arms, forgetting to breathe, forgetting everything except his need to touch her. They kissed briefly, fiercely; then Mary stepped back.
He removed his shirt and boots. As Mary shrugged out of her shift, he peeled off his Kentucky jeans and yanked back the covers on the bed. They lay together facing one another, and his hands and mouth wanted to be everywhere at once. He explored the silkiness of her hair with his fingers while his tongue traced the shape of her lips. His hand curved along her shoulder to her breast, cradling its fullness while he brought his lips down over it. In that instant, he knew a yearning so sharp that it pierced through twelve long years of self-denial.
He slipped his palm along her side to find the small of her back and the rise of her hip. A light sigh escaped from her, and she whispered, “Jesse, love, it’s so good to have you touch me.”
The feel of her breath in his ear nearly made him explode. He explored her inner thighs, and she moved rhythmically against his hand. Then her fingers closed around him, and he nearly leaped out of his skin, loosing a ragged cry.
“Easy, there,” he growled. “Twelve years without a woman is hell on a man’s self-discipline.”
“Fie on discipline,” she whispered, her small tongue swirling across his bare chest. “I want to feel you inside me, Jesse. I want it now.”
Of all the things she had ever asked of him, this last captured his soul. He parted her legs with his own and slid into her, struck by the sheer ecstasy that closed around him, welled inside him and turned his passion to a white-hot, impossible heat.
“God—” He broke off to take a ragged breath. “Don’t move,” he ground out between his teeth. “Mary—”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She undulated her hips and he responded with a roar of sensation that rolled out along his limbs, culminating in a cry of half protest, half exultation. The surge of his climax seemed to go on forever, lifting him, winging him away, until nothing beyond the moment and the woman in his arms existed. There was only Mary and the moment she had given him, and her quiet, contented murmurings in his ear.
His temples were damp with sweat when at last he moved off her slowly, gently. Immediately she curled against him, pressing her hands to his chest and propping her chin on them to gaze at his face.
He saw everything in her eyes—his own reflection and the depths of all she felt. She was a remarkable creature. She had changed his life. He didn’t want that, but she was like the tides. Inevitable. Making her way slowly, deliberately, into the very center of him.
“I was...too quick,” he heard himself grumble. “Damn, it’s been too—”
“Hush. Stop your growling.” She placed a finger on his lips, then traced the shape of them. “I’ll not hear a word against what we did. Not ever.”
“But—”
“I said not ever. Why can’t you just take joy when it comes to you? Why do you have to find a reason that it shouldn’t be good?”
He didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. For her hand had trailed down his chest and lower, having a remarkable effect on him. Within moments, he was ready again. She smiled softly and moved atop him.
His fevered imaginings in all the long, lonely nights on watch had conjured up such a scenario. Only this was better. This was real. When she joined with him, he was filled with such a sense of wonder that it was as close to happiness as he had come in years, perhaps ever.
There was a forbidden eroticism in having her atop him like this, her breasts swaying enticingly, inviting the caress of his hands and his mouth, the yellow light gilding her and surrounding her with a blurry softness that made her seem as illusory and as fleeting as a dream.
But unlike a dream, she was something he could touch and hold. Something he could believe in. Something that could destroy him with a single stroke of fate.
* * *
Mary awoke in the late afternoon. At first she felt disoriented, for she didn’t recognize the sloping ceiling and the four slender bedposts that surrounded her. Then she smiled as a quiet joy radiated through her.
She lay abed with Jesse. Her husband.
The marriage had happened so swiftly, she still could scarcely believe it. Of course, she’d had her doubts when they had returned to the station and he’d disappeared for the night. She’d suffered through all sorts of awful imaginings—he was regretting his mistake. He would never come to her. He would never put away the past and let himself love her.
But this morning had changed
all that. This morning, he had made love to her. She curled against him and let warm shivers of remembrance ripple over her. He had been fierce, not gentle, but that had only added to her excitement. He’d said little, but he always said little.
She lifted her head to gaze at his sleeping face—strong lines softened by a day’s growth of beard and by the filtered light from the window—and admitted to herself that he was a long way from loving her. But he was a lot closer now than he had been a few weeks ago.
She supposed she shouldn’t have admitted that she wanted his love, not just his acceptance. He was such a contrary man that he was bound to resist anything she openly wanted.
But it was true. She felt as if his love would answer all the secret needs and aches inside her. She felt as if his love was the reward that waited at the end of a long journey.
“Ah, Jesse.” She bent her head and pressed her lips to his bare chest. “Don’t be afraid to love again.”
“Mmm?” He stretched and scooped his arm around her, burying his face in her hair. “Did you say something?”
She reveled in the sensation of their flesh sliding together, creating a delicious friction. “I always have something to say.”
When he opened his eyes, she saw the darkness there, the doubt. She refused to let it cast its shadow on her. Not now. Not when the bed was so soft and warm and the room glowed with the filtered light of the afternoon sun. Not when her body craved his touch more than food.
“Halloo!” A faint call sounded from the yard.
“Shit.” Jesse glared at the ceiling. “It’s Fiona.”
Grabbing her shift and dragging it on as quickly as she could, Mary hurried to the window. She lifted the corner of the curtain to look out. “Well, yes,” she said over her shoulder. “Fiona...and a few others.”
“Shit,” he said again.
By the time they had dressed and hastily combed their hair, a large, boisterous party was coming up the walk. Dr. Fiona MacEwan and Mrs. Hestia Swann led a contingent of people from town along with the Jonssons.