by Susan Wiggs
temptation?
He forgot he was King of the sanctified
nation...”
He did a little dance step from side to side as he sang. The baby quieted and stared. His head kept wobbling. Probably not good for an infant to have its head wobbling like that, Jesse reasoned.
Jesse brought the baby into the crook of his arm. But the lad didn’t seem to like lying back and looking up at the ceiling. So Jesse moved him against his chest. To stop the wobbling of the head, he cupped it in his hand and pressed it with hesitant gentleness to him.
How fragile the child felt. Jesse had a flash of memory of himself as a boy, holding a kitten in joy and wonder. The baby seemed that small to him, that delicate.
And blessedly, blessedly quiet.
Jesse sang a sea chanty more softly, then finally let his voice trail off to a tuneless hum. The baby didn’t seem to mind. He stayed quiet but alert, his cheek pressed to Jesse’s chest and his little hands clutching at the fabric of his shirt.
“But I have to wonder,” Jesse said in a ridiculous, singsong voice, “how your mother expects me to go about my duties with my hands full of you.”
Experimentally, he tried putting the baby down on his quilt on the floor. An ominous squawk warned him that abandoning Davy now would be a big mistake.
“All right, all right,” Jesse said through his teeth. “So you don’t want me to put you down.” He recalled seeing Mary moving deftly through the kitchen and garden with Davy in one arm, working with the other. It must be a special skill of women. Yet it was time to tend the oil reservoir, so he took the baby with him.
Still using that light-toned voice that the boy liked, Jesse narrated every action. “You see, I have to check the level of the oil in the reservoir, and then it’s a matter of seeing that the gears are turned...” Though he worked with leaden slowness, he managed to get everything done. “Let’s check the gauges,” he suggested to the boy. “This one measures pressure and that one is an anemometer. Although I can see with my eyes the way the wind’s coming in.” He carefully climbed the slanting ladder to the beacon room.
The baby’s eyes rounded at the sight of the big rotating lens. “Looks like a giant cut diamond, doesn’t it?” Jesse remarked. “If you study it from a certain angle, you can see rainbows in the crystal.”
Jesse shocked himself by wanting, just for a moment, to see the boy grow big enough to see the rainbows in the crystals.
“It happens when the sun goes down, too. When it’s just sitting above the horizon line, the prisms catch the light.” He paused and looked down, studying the baby in the bleached light spilling from the beacon. Davy was as beautiful as his mother, though in a totally different way.
What would he be like as he grew up? Jesse caught himself wondering. Would he be blithe and optimistic like Mary, taking the world’s problems by the tail and forging through life with a song on his lips? Or would something happen to the lad, a disaster that would steal all the life out of him and make him defensive and dark and fearful?
More than anything, Jesse wanted to protect Davy from such a fate. Horatio Morgan had probably wanted the same thing for Jesse. He had probably, one day long ago, cradled a baby boy to his chest and wished the very moon for him.
Jesse thought about his father with unexpected fondness. Perhaps Mary was right in saying he’d left too soon after Emily’s death. He should have stayed, should have faced his grief, shared it with the people who loved him. Instead, he’d turned his back on them, hurt them all by his neglect.
“Come on then,” he said to Davy as if the infant had a choice. “You can help me fill out the log for the night.” He eased himself down the narrow ladder and took a seat at the desk, turning the baby so the lad could see the lamp and the desk. “And no long, dramatic recitations like your mother makes,” Jesse cautioned. “One dramatist in the family is enough.”
The baby made a little buzz of discontent. Hurriedly, Jesse drew a picture of a face with big round eyes and a smiling mouth. The baby stared. Then Jesse drew a fish and a horse. The drawings were crude, but they seemed to distract Davy.
Later, Jesse entered in the log the temperature and the conditions. He sat back, staring at the terse line of words across the page. He stared for a long time. The rhythmic thunk of the rotating beacon harmonized with the incessant low roar of the sea below the promontory.
He felt a difference in the baby. The little head wobbled, then collapsed softly against his chest. At first he was alarmed, but the elfin fists were still clutched into his shirt and he realized the lad had fallen asleep.
Amazement, distrust, then a dawning joy filled him.
There was nothing so triumphant as getting a squalling infant to sleep, he decided, yawning. It was exhausting business, having a little one to worry about every moment.
He gazed at the words in the log until the ink blurred. He felt the gentle rise and fall of the baby’s breathing, felt the child’s warmth like embers from heaven.
And then he knew the reason for his blurry vision. Tears seared his eyes, rained down his face. Deep, silent sobs racked him. His throat felt knotted with desire for all that could never be his.
The breakdown was so complete that he expected to see shattered pieces of himself strewn across the floor. Every wish, every desire, every happiness he had denied himself for twelve years suddenly dangled in his sight. But out of his reach. He just didn’t have the capacity to love Mary the way she needed to be loved. To take her child into his heart and make him his own.
For a long time, he sat weeping in silence, while the baby held against his chest slept on.
“Why can’t you be mine?” he said through gritted teeth. “Goddammit, why the hell can’t you be mine?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mary stood at the bottom of the iron helix of stairs in the lighthouse, her head cocked. She heard the moan of the wind wending through the cliffs. She heard the ceaseless beating of the sea against the shore, and the swift whistle of a breeze up the grillwork steps to the beacon. But no human sounds.
Perhaps Jesse had ended his watch early and gone back to the house. No, that wasn’t like him. Not even taking care of a baby could make him change his ways when it came to his duties at the lighthouse. Unless—Dread clutched at her. Perhaps something had happened with Davy. God, no, please no...denials raced through her mind as she hurried up the stairs. Only with Jesse would she trust the life of her child—because it was the one thing Jesse did best. Protected people. Helpless women, defenseless children. He might not realize that it made him special, but it was true. He could be counted on to protect people.
Or die trying.
By the time she reached the top of the stairs, she was prepared for any disaster. Anything except for the sight that greeted her. She stopped in the doorway, breathing hard, one hand clutching at the frame. She stared at the scene before her as if it were a painting hanging in a gallery.
The rising sun slanted in through the small portals. The lens rotated rhythmically, still lit for the night. The room glowed with the colors of the dawn. On the table, papers lay scattered in un-Jesse-like disarray. Crude drawings of a horse, a seagull and a sailing ship decorated the papers. On another sheet was a life-size face with a garish smile.
At the writing desk, the candle had burned to a stub, guttered, and died. Atop the logbook were a pair of large stockinged feet, crossed at the ankles. Her gaze traveled along the length of Jesse’s legs. The chair leaned against the wall so that he could stretch out full length.
Snuggled against his chest was Davy, sleeping peacefully, his little face pale and perfect in the soft dawn light. How tiny he looked with Jesse’s hands around him. And Jesse...
She dared a step closer. The early light was kind to him, softening the harshness of his bold features, suffusing his face with a restful l
ook. Her dark angel; she had thought of him like that from the start.
Then something caught her eye. A faint mark on his cheek. The salty ghost of a dried tear.
Her breath caught. Something last night had made Jesse Morgan weep. The very idea caused her stomach to knot. She had wanted him to learn to weep, to let go, to let out the things that poisoned him from the inside. But now that it had happened, would he hate her?
“Dear Lord,” she said, looking at her son. “What in heaven’s name have you done to your da?”
Jesse awakened. His first instinctive reaction was to cradle the baby more firmly against him.
“It’s all right,” Mary said quickly. “I’ll just take him, then.” She reached for the baby.
Jesse glanced down at the incline of his chest. “Let the lad sleep. He’s peaceful like this.”
“Are you certain?”
“Uh-huh.” He yawned and blinked at the light. “Is Palina all right?”
“She’ll be fine. It’s a touch of the grippe. Are you sure—”
“I’m sure.” He drew his hand down over his bristled cheeks. “Quit fussing over us like a mother hen. He’ll wake when he wakes, and I’ll bring him down to the house.”
She took a step back, then another, then another. She felt as if she had met a stranger. But this was Jesse. Jesse, who roared at her and kept to himself and ignored the baby.
“I’ll start breakfast, then,” she said at last.
“You do that.”
“I’ll do that.” She turned and walked quietly down the stairs. She wanted to whoop for joy, to grab the center post of the staircase and swing around it, letting her feet fly out from under her. There was no feeling, she thought as she sprinted down the path to the house, quite so sweet as hope.
* * *
“If you could have one thing you wished for,” Granger Clapp asked his wife, “what would it be?”
Startled, Annabelle put aside her petit point. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me off guard. I haven’t an answer for that.” She watched his eyes closely. If a storm was coming, she would see it first in his eyes. She had learned that long ago.
But he merely smiled and leaned back in his wing chair, lifting his after-dinner port to his lips. “Just say the first thing that comes to mind.”
She swallowed. He had been quieter than usual lately, almost amiable. Almost exactly like the dapper man she’d fallen in love with. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing. “What could I possibly wish for? I have everything I want—a fine husband, a lovely home, friends—”
“Ah, and those friends. You don’t see as much of them as you used to.”
“They’re busy with their children, and—”
“And you have no child,” he reminded her.
His voice was light, teasing. It slashed at her like a knife. She snatched up her petit point, stabbed the needle into the fabric.
“I can give you one,” he said. “I can give you a child.”
Tears blurred her eyes. “But we’ve tried for so many years.”
“A baby,” he said. “There’s a baby...he needs a home. I thought—”
“Granger!” She stood up, the needlework falling from her lap. “Do you mean we’ll finally adopt a child?” She had been begging to do so for years, but he had resisted, insisting that raising a child sired by strangers was unnatural.
“Yes, but the circumstances are quite...unusual.” He fixed her with the masterful glare that had governed her behavior since their wedding night. “I shall need your full cooperation.”
“Of course, Granger.” A baby. A baby. Her heart exulted. “What must I do?”
* * *
“I wish I knew what this was about,” Jesse grumbled as he drew the buggy to a halt at the harbormaster’s office in Ilwaco.
“All Judson would say when he came to the station,” Mary repeated, probably for the fourth time, “is that you’re to come immediately. He didn’t know you and Magnus were off hunting, and he said he couldn’t wait.”
Jesse frowned as he hitched the horses. It wasn’t like Judson to be mysterious. But when Jesse went around to help Mary and the baby down, his frown disappeared. A month had passed since the endless night he’d spent with Davy in the lighthouse. In that month, Jesse had learned and grown more than he had ever thought possible.
He bent and placed a soft kiss on Mary’s mouth.
“What’s that for, boyo?”
“Do I need a reason?”
She laughed. “It’s nice to come to town. We haven’t been in an age.”
“I don’t like coming to town.”
“You’ll learn to like it.”
He shook his head, slipping his arm around her. “This could work—the three of us,” he said awkwardly.
“Haven’t I always said so?”
“As long as the world keeps its distance,” he cautioned her.
“You can’t keep the world at a distance.”
“I’ve done so for almost thirteen years.”
“But not any longer. You have a wife and a son.” Her gaze swept the town, with its busy harbor and pastel-painted houses along the quiet streets. “We belong in the world.”
“We belong where we live best. Alone. At the lighthouse station.” He stepped onto the boardwalk and guided her with his hand under her elbow. He couldn’t tell her he feared what might happen if he suddenly became a fixture about town. He couldn’t tell her about the shadow haunting his days, no matter how hard he tried to disregard it. Davy was the son of his sister’s husband.
What a miracle it was, to love Granger’s child.
On the walkway outside the harbormaster’s office, Jesse paused. He wasn’t sure what made him stop and turn to Mary, to stare at her while she stood holding the baby, but he found himself closing the distance between them.
“Jesse?” she asked, looking up at him.
It was the look that touched his heart. It always did. From the first moment she had gazed at him, he had seen his own destiny in her eyes. He brought his hand to her cheek, cupping it while his thumb skimmed the rise of her cheekbone and the fullness of her lower lip. He bent and kissed her brow, then the top of Davy’s head.
Extraordinary things had been happening to him since she had come into his life. But in the past month, since he had made his peace with Davy that night in the lighthouse, everything had moved faster and intensified. And fallen into place.
He had stopped seeing his life as a penance to be served. Mary and Davy showed him it was a banquet of pleasures as well as pain, and the pleasure was savored more acutely because of the pain. Love was difficult; he had always known that, but he was no longer afraid of it. Because with Mary the agony was sweet. And never beyond his endurance.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “You’re looking at me so strangely.”
“Such a lot of things to say,” he mused, noticing everything about her, the scattering of freckles across her nose, the flecks of gold in her eyes, glinting in the cold December sunshine. “And I can’t tell you a one of them. I’m not a man of many words.”
She lifted her hand to cover his, then brought his fingers to her lips. “Let’s go inside and see what it is Judson needs on this fine day.”
They stepped inside the office, a large, rectangular room with navigational charts on the walls and the smell of ink in the air. In all of his wildest imaginings, Jesse never could have guessed who he would find waiting for him in the harbormaster’s office.
He stopped and froze, and felt Mary do the same beside him. His blood ran cold; then heat suffused his face and his chest began to ache. He studied the lone figure by the window.
She managed to look forlorn, somehow, as she gazed out at the shipping lanes and the loading docks closer in. The harsh winter ligh
t outlined a perfect brow and a flawless cheek, an attractive turned-up nose and a fall of yellow curls cascading from a fancy bonnet.
He finally found his voice. “Annabelle?”
She turned, the brim of a velvet bonnet shading her face. “Hello, Jesse.”
“What are you doing here? Where’s Granger?”
“I came alone. I had to see you.”
“You got my wire, then.”
“Yes, thank you, Jesse.”
“Your reply said everything was fine.”
“That’s...what it said.” In the slight pause between her words, she peered inquisitively at Mary.
And Mary, because she was Mary, grinned with delight. “You’re Annabelle, then. Jesse’s told me about you. Showed me your picture.”
Annabelle smiled a little. The sight of that smile nearly knocked the wind out of Jesse, for suddenly she was a little girl again, shy Annabelle, smiling her secret smile, her eyes shining with all the desperate, elaborate dreams of a young girl.
Except there was sadness in her eyes now.
“Then you have me at a disadvantage,” she said.
“I am Mary. Jesse’s wife. And this is Davy, our son.”
Annabelle didn’t know it yet, Jesse realized, but she was looking at her husband’s bastard. She took a step toward Mary. “I’d always hoped you would marry again, Jesse,” she said. “And the baby.” She caught her breath at the sight of Davy, dozing snug in Mary’s arms. “He is beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Jesse saw with shock and dread that she was weeping. Tears poured down her face. Mary seemed to sense the awkwardness of the situation. “I’ll be taking the baby off to see Hestia,” she said briskly. “You know they always love to make a fuss over him.”
Jesse nodded without looking at her. His gaze stayed riveted on Annabelle. “We’ll see you at Swann House,” he said.
He heard the office door open and close. Still he stared at his sister. “Something’s wrong,” he said. Apprehension squeezed his chest. “Have you heard from Mother or Father? Is it bad news?”