by Susan Wiggs
“No, quite the opposite. They’re enjoying Europe immensely.” She fumbled in her reticule and took out a handkerchief. “It’s about Granger.” She drew in a deep breath. “But I don’t know you anymore, Jesse. I shouldn’t have come—”
“I was your brother long before Granger ever laid eyes on you. Damn it, Annabelle, what is going on?”
A bittersweet smile curved her mouth. “I’ve always known I could trust you. Each time I had a problem, you were there to help me. You never snitched when I misbehaved. You always took the blame for my pranks. No wonder I’m here. I can trust you with anything. You’d never betray me.”
My wife had your husband’s baby.
He studied his sister. How different she was. Grown-up, when he’d always pictured her as a coltish twelve-year-old with skinned knees and burrs in her hair.
Now she was a lady, slim and elegant, draped in velvet and lace. She stared down at her kid-gloved hands. Her fingers trembled; then she clasped them together tightly. “I understand that you abandoned your interest in the company, but I didn’t know who else to turn to.”
“About what?”
“About a matter I recently discovered.” She swallowed audibly. “I was in Granger’s study, looking for a pen, when I came across a ledger book. I didn’t think anything of it—he always said I had no head for business. But a devilish urge made me look.”
“No head for business?” Jesse snorted. “You? Even when you were six years old, you used to charge me interest when I borrowed from your pin money. At finishing school, you devised a plan to fund an expedition to the Sandwich Islands.”
“Granger didn’t know about any of that.”
Jesse wondered how a husband could be so unaware of his wife’s true nature. “What did you see in the ledger book?”
“I only had to glance at the figures to realize what they were.” There was a catch in her throat. “Granger’s been stealing company funds for years.”
Jesse tried to feel angry. He had helped to build the company, to turn it into the major shipping concern. But it all seemed so remote now. So pointless.
“So confront him,” he said simply. “Or I’ll do it for you, if you like. Tell him to make amends, make things square with the board of directors.”
She bit her lip. “I don’t think I’m ready to do that yet.”
“What’s he done with the money?”
“He’s converted it into paper bills. I found a coffer in the attic. He’s just...hoarding it, Jesse. I have no idea why.”
To steal another woman’s child? To start a new life?
“We’ll have to have it out with him,” Jesse said grimly.
She turned away, ducking her head. “He’s gone. Disappeared. And the money is gone.” Her hands got busy again, fingers twining into the tasseled strap of her reticule. “At first, I thought I could go on for quite a while like that. Alone. Telling people he was away on business.” Her voice took on an eerie, lilting quality. “But then the duns started coming. The bill collectors.”
She leaned on the back of a chair, looking for a moment like an old woman. “All his debts are coming due, and there’s nothing to pay them with. I’ve sold most of my jewelry. Let go of the servants. But still the collectors come.” She sighed heavily. “Still they come.”
“Where is he? Do you have any idea?”
She shook her head. “San Francisco, probably, but I’ve no idea where. I do know one thing. He led a double life.”
“What?” Jesse braced himself.
“He kept women and had friends I didn’t know about and—oh, God!” Pressing her knuckles to her mouth, she began to sob raggedly.
He felt a squeezing sensation in his chest. The past had caught up with him. He understood now that he couldn’t live apart, as if the rest of the world didn’t matter.
Annabelle raised her drenched eyes to him. “I used to feel sorry for you, living here all alone. But now you have Mary and a son of your own, and you have infinitely more than I do.”
“Anna,” he said, using his childhood name for her. “Can it be as bad as all that?”
She laughed bitterly. “I, with my friends and connections, my lovely home and my gowns. Where are my friends now? They deserted me when I could no longer hide my circumstances.” She shook with grief. “I came here expecting to find you paralyzed with loneliness and regrets. Instead you have a lovely wife. A perfect son. How blessed you are, Jesse. How very, very blessed.”
* * *
Mary watched nervously from the parlor window of Hestia’s house as Annabelle and Jesse came up the walk. Even from a distance, one could see the family resemblance. They were both tall and incredibly well-favored, with strong features and tender mouths and glacial eyes.
Mary noted a few subtle differences. Annabelle was fair-haired, while Jesse’s hair was a rich brown. Her bearing, too, was unlike her brother’s. Jesse moved like a man comfortable inside himself. He had an innate grace honed by the practice drills he did as a sea rescuer.
There was a strange quality about Annabelle. For all her beauty and regal bearing, there was something furtive about her. It was elusive, like the gardenia fragrance Annabelle wore. Perhaps Mary’s mind was playing tricks on her, but she didn’t trust the flatness of Annabelle’s gaze or the slight dip her shoulder made when Jesse turned toward her to reach for the front gate.
Had he told her? Had he told his sister about the baby’s father?
Her throat closed in panic. But when she opened the door with a smile fixed on her face, she felt a measure of relief. He gave a tiny shake of his head.
Not yet.
She noted the tension in Jesse, too, and it alarmed her. That distance. That coldness.
“Such a pleasure to meet you at last,” Hestia said, wreathed in smiles, coming up behind her. Socially, this was a coup for her, and she was clearly reveling in the chance to play hostess to the famous Mrs. Clapp of Portland. “I’ve read so much about you in the society pages. All your good works in the city. You’re a very great lady.”
“Thank you,” Annabelle said.
“This all must seem terribly provincial to you—ah!” Hestia’s face lit up. “Here’s Livvie with some tea.”
Livvie Haglund smiled and greeted Annabelle. Shy as always, she blushed, then removed herself after setting down the tray.
“Your servant—”
“She’s not a servant,” Hestia said. “She lives here. We have quite a unique situation at Swann House.”
“What happened to the poor woman’s eye?”
Hestia flushed and looked away. “An old injury. She had some trouble with her hus—” She caught herself and flushed deeper.
“She can no longer see out of that eye,” Mary said quickly. “But she manages quite well.”
Annabelle had the most extraordinary reaction. She went pale as marble, still as a statue. Aye, that’s what she was, a marble statue, cold and emotionless. And then incredulous. “Her husband beat her? Injured her?”
“We don’t usually talk about it to strangers,” Hestia said. “But you’re a most special guest, Mrs. Clapp. Some women come to Swann House to escape their brutal husbands.”
“Is she...safe here?” Annabelle asked.
“Yes, indeed. We are quite proud of Swann House. Would you care to take a tour? Perhaps you’ll think about becoming a patron...”
As the two ladies stepped out of the parlor, Mary released a long breath she didn’t know she had been holding. She turned to Jesse, but her mind was on Davy, who was in the kitchen being spoiled by Mrs. Clune. “Tell me,” she said. “What did she say about Granger?”
“There’s trouble. Her husband has stolen a great deal of money and disappeared.”
Mary took a moment to digest this. Turbulent emotions stormed through he
r. Fear. Apprehension. Disbelief. Relief. And perversely, a tiny twinge of regret. She had loved Granger once. For all the wrong reasons, she had loved and clung to him.
“Does this mean he’s gone? For good?” she asked cautiously. “Surely it does. Only a fool would stay near at hand once his thieving has been found out. He’s probably far away by now.”
“You can never go far enough,” Jesse said.
His words sent a gust of wind through her heart. “What do you mean? What—”
“My sister is coming to the lighthouse to stay for a while,” he said.
“We have to tell her, don’t we?” Mary asked. “We have to tell her about the baby.”
* * *
Hestia wouldn’t hear of Annabelle going to the lighthouse station. Not when the keeper’s house had such limited accommodations and her own home had a lovely guest room, all made up and just waiting for company.
Jesse had to admit she was right, and Annabelle looked relieved to be staying in town. They said goodbye in the front garden of Swann House. It was late afternoon, and a chill had crept in along with a roll of clouds from the west.
Jesse stepped back and watched his sister and his wife, the baby in Annabelle’s arms. They looked lovely together, Mary’s red hair and high coloring a vivid contrast to Annabelle’s fashionable pallor. In another life, in another world, they might have been friends.
Annabelle lifted Davy high over her head and laughed when the baby gurgled and smiled. Yet through her laughter, she was weeping, her voice broken as she gave the infant back to Mary. “He is so perfect,” she said. “I can’t have children of my own.”
Mary didn’t try to commiserate or deny it. She hugged Annabelle and let her hold the baby a few moments longer. Then, on the way home, she told Jesse what she was thinking.
“I had the baby your sister should have had.”
* * *
That night, she came to him in the lighthouse. “I took the baby to stay at Palina’s,” she said softly. “He’s such a good sleeper now. He won’t wake until morning.”
Jesse nodded. Did Mary know he often stood looking down into Davy’s cradle, watching him sleep?
That afternoon, the world had turned on Jesse, darkening his heart to hope. He knew why. He had forgotten that he was responsible for Emily’s death. He had forgotten that he was meant to finish out his life sentence alone. He never should have thought he could have what his soul ached for, a family to love.
Mary stood looking at him with her heart in her eyes. She was wearing her nightgown and robe. Her hair hung loose, cascading in a ruby red fall over her shoulders.
“We’re going to tell her,” she said.
“Yes. We’re already agreed on that.”
And then what?
She crossed the tiny room and took his face in both her hands, gazing down at him. “You’re pulling away from me. I can feel it.”
“I can’t be what you want me to be,” he said, trying to ignore the coolness of her hands, the scent of her—flowers and milk and springtime. Ripeness. Fullness. Vibrancy. Life.
“Ah, you’re so much more, if only you’d see it. Let yourself look at me. See yourself in my eyes. You have more honor and caring in you than a thousand men, and you don’t even know it.”
Before he could respond, she put one leg on either side of him and sat in his lap, straddling him. The old swivel chair groaned under the added weight—or was it he who groaned?
He was surrounded by her, the softness of her hips on his knees, the softness of her hair brushing his face as she bent her head to his, the softness of her lips brushing his mouth lightly, tentatively, then insistently. No one but Mary had ever touched him like this. No one but Mary knew the tortured doubts in his soul and offered an answer.
He flared to life beneath her, erect and hotly uncomfortable, his mouth hungry. With a harsh growl, he braided his fingers into her hair and crushed her lips to his. Their mouths mated, sharing the moist warmth of passion, and heat blazed from the very center of him, from the place that had known only blackness for so long. She was his beacon in the darkness, yet he knew his shadows were surrounding her, swallowing her. Didn’t she sense that? Wasn’t she afraid?
She moved her hips a little—but it only took a little. His questing hands slipped downward, parting the robe and the nightgown, cupping her round, heavy breasts. He couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t stop the burning need to bend his head, to taste her there, just there, and when he did, bolts of light illuminated his heart. Mary sighed and dropped her head back, making a little noise in her throat as she gave herself up to sensation. She was so honest in that way, never trying to hold in her own passion.
His hand skimmed over her belly; it was taut and flat again, as if the baby had never been. His fingers touched her lightly until her sighs escalated to small, urgent gasps. There was a craving in him that raged beyond simple lovemaking. The constant rhythm of the beacon and the boom of the sea echoed the swish of blood in his ears. He cupped her against him and lifted her, then pressed her back on the worktable, parting her gown all the way so that she was exposed, naked, vulnerable.
“Jesse?” she whispered, her voice trembling in fascination.
“Hush. Just let me...” He bent over her, kissing her long and softly while his hands and fingers cherished her, found the shape and texture of her...there...he trailed his mouth down, parted her, tasted her. The sea and the musk of womanhood filled his senses. He loved the sounds of shock and passion she made, loved the way she writhed and strained toward him. He went on and on, even when she begged him to stop. On and on, until his body was shaking with the demand for release. He stripped off his jeans and she opened his shirt, then he kissed her mouth, sharing the taste of her, the dark sweetness of passion. At the same moment, he joined himself with her and she cried out, clasping her legs around him and whispering his name urgently.
He wanted to take his time with her, but she was insistent, rising to meet him and moving until he took up her rhythm and was lost. He felt himself being pulled into a void where there was nothing but pure sensation. No thought. No emotion. Nothing to complicate the glory of the moment. It was shattering, completely overwhelming. He collapsed on her, his skin covered in sweat, his breathing ragged. The sensations subsided, leaving him drained.
After what seemed like a long time, Mary stirred beneath him. “Jesse?”
“Mmm.”
“I love you, Jess—”
“Not now. Don’t say it now.”
“But I have to. For heaven’s sake, if I can’t say it now, then when can I?”
“When I can say it back.”
She turned her head away, and he removed himself from her.
Slowly. Gently. Reluctantly. His body wanted to stay, to love her. His heart and his conscience held him back. He put on his jeans but not his shirt while Mary sat up on the table, looping the tie of her robe around her. He took one look at the tears on her cheeks and sat in the chair, planting his elbows on his knees and burying his hands in his hair.
It was futile. Futile to try to love this woman, to try to fill her heart with all the things she needed. He lifted his gaze to hers, forced himself to see the tears she shed. “All I can ever do for you,” he said, “is hurt you.”
“That’s not true. You’ve made me happier than I ever thought it possible to be. But you just don’t trust things to go well. You expect disaster around every corner.”
He thought of Annabelle. Did Granger know she was here? “And I’m right,” he said. “I’ll do my best to protect you and Davy. But God knows if that’s enough.”
“Don’t be so cynical. Of course you’ll protect us.”
“I’m only a man. Not a hero.”
She nibbled her lip. Brushed a tear from her cheek. “Davy’s mine. I’ll never give him up. Not to anyo
ne. Annabelle has no claim on him. None.”
“She doesn’t.” Jesse took a deep breath. “But she has a claim on me. She’s my sister. The baby’s very existence is a slap in the face to her, because she can never have children.”
“Are you saying you have to choose between loyalty to Annabelle and loyalty to Davy and me?”
“Are you saying you’ll ask me to make that choice?”
“She’s an intelligent woman, Jesse. When we tell her the whole story, she’ll understand.”
“You don’t know my sister.”
“Nor do you. You’ve been apart for years.”
He said no more, and Mary realized it was futile to argue. As she walked to the Jonssons’ house to get the baby, she realized that with Jesse, nothing would ever be simple. Or painless. He was infuriating in that way. Didn’t he understand how desperately they needed each other? Not just her, not just Jesse or Davy, but all three of them.
But he was right this time—there would be no easy solution.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Troubled, Mary held Davy in one arm and pushed open the door with the other. The moment she stepped inside the house, she frowned, cocking her head. She smelled flowers. Gardenias.
“Annabelle?” She hurried across the room to the settle, where Jesse’s sister waited. “What a lovely surprise,” Mary said, flushing bright crimson. How disheveled she must look, with her hair mussed by the wind. And by Jesse’s loving. “I’m so delighted you’ve come to visit.”
Deep in the shadows of her velvet bonnet, Annabelle smiled. A small, tight smile. “The house is charming,” she said. “Where is my brother?”
“He was on watch at the lighthouse.” Untimely remembrances of the previous night came back to Mary. The things he had done with his hands and mouth, the things he had made her feel, were so powerful she grew weak thinking about it. “Sometimes he does a few chores before coming back here.”
Annabelle’s long-lashed gaze swept Mary from head to toe and lingered on the baby. “Chores. I see.”