Beyond Sunrise

by Candice Proctor

  Reaching out, he took her face between his palms, his gaze caught fast with hers as he dipped his head and brushed her lips with a kiss. Then he swung back to the helm.

  “Heading up!” he shouted, and veered hard to port.

  They pivoted into the eye of the wind, their sails fluttering, the Sea Hawk briefly losing momentum as her bow swung through. Then her sails billowed out, and they began to pull away from the wind on a starboard tack through a break in the reef.

  This passage through the reef was narrower, shallower. Through the gloriously clear waters Jack could see jagged heads of coral, every color from amethyst to cadmium yellow. Then the colors dimmed and began to blur together, and he had to grit his teeth against a dark wave of dizziness. He was beginning to realize this wasn’t one of his ordinary headaches, that India was right, he was concussed.

  He took in a deep breath that made his cracked ribs ache like the bejesus. Then they were through the passage, and bearing down fast on the long, gently curving string of sandy atolls. “Heading up,” he shouted again, and the Sea Hawk swung sharply to starboard, heeling low as Jack fought to bring the prow around for a run along the inside of the channel.

  But the wind was capricious, the scattering of islets redirecting the breeze so that it eddied and shifted. Suddenly, the freshening wind swung about again until it was coming out of the southeast, and Patu was jumping to let out sail as the wind came over their beam.

  Too late, Jack saw the dark head of coral rearing up off their port bow. He spun the wheel, but the Sea Hawk was lurching out of control, her hull scraping briefly against the jagged rock with a jolting grind before swinging away into clear water.

  Behind them, the Barracuda wasn’t so lucky. Plowing through the break in the reef, she was caught by the veering wind, her sails filling to send her surging straight across the narrows, toward a coconut-studded strip of sun-sparkled sand. She tried to claw off, to turn to windward, but her bow was only beginning to respond sluggishly to her helm and she went end on for shore.

  The corvette gave a violent lurch, her sails shuddering against the blue sky as a grinding screech rent the morning air. She came to an abrupt halt, spars shivering as she heeled sharply offward. They could see the men on her decks jumping to douse the sails and rush to the pumps.

  Fighting now for breath, Jack eased the Sea Hawk to larboard, curving her around the island to head out into open waters. His eyes burned and his bones felt all loose and disjointed, so that it was only by a sheer, jaw-clenching act of determination that he kept himself standing at the wheel, his hands gripping the spokes tight. He told himself that if he could just make it clear of the Gods’ Pathway before he passed out, India and Patu would be all right.

  “Shouldn’t we go back and help?” India said, her gaze caught fast by the stricken ship, her voice echoing strangely, as if it were floating to him from a long ways off.

  Jack grunted. “They’re grounded at low tide on a beautiful, sunny day a few hours’ sail from Takaku. Even an incompetent idiot could get his men to safety in these seas. And Simon is no idiot.”

  He could see the open sea now, stretching out purple and wide before the yacht’s prow. He let the breath ease out of him, felt the darkness stealing over him, taking him. “Can you handle the wheel?” he said.

  India swung her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Can I what?”

  “Can you take the wheel,” Jack said. And then he stumbled, the mastheads whirling against the blue sky, the deck rushing oddly up to meet him as the darkness slid over him.

  This time, it would be days before he awoke.

  He dreamt of craggy island peaks wrapped in misty moonlight, of feathery cocos silhouetted against a soft night sky, of snow-white shores and pale green waters filled with rainbow-hued coral and bright small fishes that glowed from within. The trades were warm against the sun-soaked naked flesh of his body, the air sweet with the scent of gardenia and orange blossom and sandalwood. He heard the crash of the breakers against the offshore reef, and the endless rustling of palm fronds mingling with the hiss of the tide washing in and out over the beach.

  She was so tiny, the length of his arm only. She had her mother’s heavy fall of midnight dark hair and sweetly curving lips, but her eyes were a startling northern blue, her soft, baby-scented skin a pale sun-kissed gold. He saw her, laughing as she clambered into her mother’s lap. Saw her long, dusky lashes flutter, then close as she sighed into sleep. Saw Titana brush the hair from the child’s forehead, and smile.

  Titana. He sucked in a deep breath, and felt a rush of pain, hot, scalding. Moaning, he tried to turn, but his body was oddly unresponsive, the wall beside him hard and unyielding. A cool cloth touched his forehead and a woman murmured something soothing. But the crash of the breakers had turned into the roar of guns, and Titana was running, her eyes wild with terror, her thin arms clutching the squirming child close against her bulging belly. He saw her falter. He thought at first she stumbled, but then he saw her jerk, and jerk again as another bullet, then another slammed into her warm, life-giving body.

  He was running. Always, in these dreams, he was running, screaming out an agony that produced no sound. He ran, but his arms and legs were heavy, his movements oddly slowed in time, while her body jerked again, then fell. Ulani screamed, struggling as her mother curled her dying body around the child in a last, desperate attempt to save her. He was shouting. No. Don’t shoot. You bastards, you bastards. His frantic hands gripped the child. She was covered in blood, but the blood was her mother’s, her cries of terror, not pain. He cradled the child and her mother in his arms, but Titana was already gone, her eyes staring and vacant, the child within her never to be born.

  The rage that filled him was a black-red, violent thing, a tide of dark passion that flooded his being and subsumed his soul and left no room for mourning. That would come, but only later, when he could bear it, because he could not bear it, not now. And so he let the rage take him, let it pump through him, shuddering him, swirling him away on a surging lust to destroy, to kill, to create a semblance of justice in this world without justice, without reason, without God.

  He threw back his head, his agony welling up hot and despairing in his throat. But when he drew breath to scream, all he knew was more pain, and then a deeper, smothering darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  ON THE EVENING of the third day, the fever broke, and his breathing subsided into the slow cadences of a deep but natural sleep.

  Her hands cupping her elbows by her sides, India pressed her back against the steep wooden brace of the companionway, her gaze on his face, quiet now in a dreamless, restful slumber. In the past three days, she had come to understand well the haunted shadows she had previously only glimpsed behind his easygoing smile, the quick laughter and teasing banter. And she understood, too, why he avoided sleep when he could, for his dreams had filled these last days and nights. She had listened to his torn, anxious whispers, watched his features contort in an agony of grief and despair, and she had wondered at the resilience of this man who had suffered so much, and yet still retained the ability to know laughter and joy, to find beauty in the quiet splendor of a tropical sunrise, to touch a woman with tender want.

  His face was quiet now in sleep, and she let her gaze rove his features, the straight dark brows, the flaring cheekbones and strong chin. It seemed strange to her that a face that had been unknown to her just a week before should now be so familiar, and so dear. She watched him sleep, and it seemed to India that her heart swelled painfully within her until she could feel each heavy beat shuddering her body, filling her with a pounding knowledge that took her breath and left her both wondrous and terrified.

  How had she come to this? she wondered. How could what had begun as simple physical fascination and a primitive hunger have slipped, unawares, into this soul-deep, life-wrenching need? She had traveled the world, proud of her independence, relying only on herself, needing only herself. Never had she consider
ed herself lonely, or felt her existence lacking in any way. She’d had some vague notion that if she should ever grow too old and infirm to travel, she would retire to a place near the sea, a simple cottage filled with mementos of her past travels, and her books, and perhaps a half-dozen or so stray cats. Odd that it had never occurred to her before, when she thought of her aged self, sipping tea beside a warm winter’s fire, that she might look back on her solitary life and regret the decisions she had made.

  From overhead came a now familiar rattling as Patu took down the foresail, flattened the main, and backed the jib for another night of heave-to. In a moment, his legs, then the rest of his small, lithe body appeared on the steps of the companionway as he peered anxiously into the lamplit gloom of the yacht’s small cabin, which served as living and sleeping quarters for them all. “How is he?”

  “Better, I think.”

  Patu shifted his gaze to her face. What he saw there seemed to worry him, for he pursed his lips in concern, and said, “Why don’t you get some fresh air while I start supper?”

  She nodded, her tired body clumsy as she climbed to the open deck. The sun was just setting, washing the sea with a dark pink. She could see the low shapes of distant islands, invisible with the haze of day but showing clearly now in that magical moment before darkness. She watched a frigate bird glide in to water level, felt the swells roll gently beneath the boat. She breathed in deep, smelled the tang of the sea heavy on the fresh, bracing air. Then the sky turned to silver, and the islands vanished.

  Two days later, India was on deck, writing in her notebook, when some indefinable stirring of her senses made her look up to find Jack standing at the top of the companionway. He’d pulled on a pair of trousers, but his feet and chest were bare, the bruises on his ribs a yellowish purple splashed against the sun-browned smoothness of his skin. “You shouldn’t be out of bed yet,” she said.

  “I thought the sun and fresh air might do me some good.” A slow smile curled the edges of his lips. “Besides, I was starting to go stir-crazy down there.”

  He lurched slightly, and she went to slip her arm around his waist and help him sit. He propped his shoulders against the gunwale, his eyes closing as he turned his face to the sun with a sigh. He did look better, she decided, watching the breeze lift the tousled dark hair from his forehead. A faint flush left by the fever still rode high on his cheekbones, but the bruises on his face were fading faster than those on his body.

  “How long will it take them to follow us, do you think?” she asked, for the question had been worrying her, all these days.

  He opened his eyes, his neck arching as he stared up at the flapping main. They were running with the wind, the air full of the sound of snapping canvas and the whipping of the halliards and the steady rush through the rigging. In the last twenty-four hours they’d covered over 170 miles. But there had been days, just out of the Gods’ Pathway, when the wind had all but died and they’d struggled to cover even a quarter of that. He shrugged. “Depends on how badly the Barracuda was damaged. A ship like that is designed for speed. Once they get under sail again, they’ll be covering twice our distance in half the time.”

  “Then they could be waiting for us at Rakaia.”

  “Except that I’m not going to Rakaia. Remember?”

  India stared out over the intensely blue, sun-sparkled waves. She wanted to ask him what he would do if Father Paul could tell him nothing of the people of Rakaia, but she couldn’t bring herself to form the words, couldn’t suggest to this man that both his daughter and the old sailor who held the key to his future might be dead. Instead, she said, “Who was it accused you of sinking the Lady Juliana? Was it Granger?”

  Ryder shook his head. “When the ship hit the reef, Gladstone himself had me put in irons. He said he’d see me hang.”

  “But he knew the truth! He knew he’d followed the charts.”

  A hard smile tightened his lips. “You don’t think he’d take the blame for it, do you?”

  India opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it and swallowed instead.

  His smile widened into one of genuine amusement. “It’s a good thing you don’t play poker.”

  That startled her into a soft laugh. “Why?”

  “Because everything you think shows on your face.”

  She lifted her chin, accepting the challenge. “All right, what am I thinking?”

  “You’re thinking that with the Lady Juliana’s charts and log, I could have proven my innocence anytime these past ten years, and you’re wondering how to ask why I didn’t, without making it sound as if you don’t believe a word I’ve told you.”

  India stared at him.

  Reaching out, he took her hand in his, and held it. “Not long after the massacre, a sloop carrying some rich Frenchman’s son on a tour of the South Seas put in to Rakaia. They offered to take me with them, and I went. I figured the people of Rakaia didn’t need any more trouble with the British because of me.”

  “Toby Jenkins didn’t go with you?”

  Jack shook his head. “He said Rakaia was as close to Paradise as he was ever likely to come, and he intended to enjoy it for as long as he could.”

  Beside them, a flying fish leapt from the blue waves, the sun flashing on its wet gray skin before it disappeared again beneath the water. Jack watched it for a moment, then said, “It wasn’t until a few years ago that I heard from a couple of sandalwood traders that Toby had been trying to get a message through to me, that he’d found the Lady Juliana’s logbook and charts washed up on shore something like six months after I’d left.”

  They would have been put in a half cask to keep them safe from the water, India knew. She remembered reading once about how the logbook and charts of a West Indiaman, the Felicity, had been found almost a year after the doomed ship had gone down. “So why didn’t you go back then?” she asked quietly.

  He kept his gaze on the sea, although the flying fish was now long gone, leaving only the swelling of the deep blue waves and the sparkle of the sun and, in the distance, a haze of heat where water met sky. For a moment, she didn’t think he was going to answer her. Then he said, his voice tight, flat, “A man gets used to running. Sometimes, it takes more courage to revisit the past than to just keep running.”

  It might have been part of the reason, but India knew it was still only a part. He stared off across the trackless ocean, far to the east, beyond the sunrise. And India, watching him, found herself wondering if they would be going to look for Toby Jenkins now if the old sailor had still been on Rakaia.

  But no sooner had this occurred to her than she knew the answer. Jack Ryder would never willingly return to Rakaia. Because Jack wasn’t only running from the British navy; he was also running from that dark, beautiful island and all that had happened there so many years ago. He was running from himself.

  With each passing day, Jack grew stronger and his body healed.

  Yet there was a coiled tenseness about him, a restless wariness that had replaced the easygoing, ready humor of the man India had first come to know. He ate little and slept even less. Sometimes, in the long dark hours before dawn, she would awake to the creak of timbers and the soft murmurs of the sea, and glance over to find his bunk empty.

  Once, late at night, after a heavy squall that had lasted for most of the afternoon and set the small yacht to pitching heavily in a high sea, India awoke to find the Sea Hawk riding serenely on a gentle swell. Patu’s easy breathing whispered softly from out of the darkness, but she knew even without looking that Jack wasn’t there.

  Leaving her berth, she slipped into her clothes and moved quietly to climb the steep companionway to the deck above. The night was clear and still, the sky a velvety blue-black scattered with an unfathomable eternity of stars. It was a moment before she saw him, a still shadow standing with one hand resting thoughtfully on the helm.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, for there was something about his posture that told her it was conce
rn for the safety of the Sea Hawk that had driven him, this time, from his berth.

  He shook his head, his fingers running over the smooth polished surface of the wood. “I’m not sure. There’s just . . . something different about the way she’s been handling lately. I felt it especially today, when the sea was running so heavy.”

  After they’d lured the Barracuda to grief in the Gods’ Pathway at the cost of scraping their own side, Patu had put into a quiet cove and spent the better part of the afternoon diving beneath the gentle waves to inspect the Sea Hawk’s hull. “But Patu said she was all right. That she hadn’t sustained any significant damage.”

  Jack shrugged. “Nothing he could see.”

  India stared out into the surrounding darkness. The universe always seemed so much more real at night, she thought. It was easy to forget during the day, when one looked out at swelling blue waves and scattered islets of waving palm trees, easy to forget the existence of everything that was hidden by golden sunlight and distance and the comforting blue arc of the sky. But at night . . . at night, the sun-sparkled waves and peaceful little islands all disappeared, and the surrounding sea turned into a swelling blackness that reflected only the heavens above and made her feel humble and insignificant. And she thought, if the Sea Hawk were simply to disappear beneath the waves, here, hundreds of miles from any known landfall, no one would ever know what had happened to it. No one would ever know what had happened to the three of them.

  The thought made her shiver. “I’ll be glad when we reach Waigeu,” she said, and felt the comforting strength of his arm come around her.

  “So will I,” he said, amusement lightening his voice as he drew her closer to him. She felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek, the brush of his lips against her hair, and knew he was no longer referring to his concerns for the yacht.

  It had been a magical time, these last weeks; a South Seas idyll of brilliant blue skies and endless dancing waves and sun-dazzled white sails snapping in the warm breeze. Of days spent running with the trades, and balmy, sweet-scented evenings when the three of them would gather around a flickering lantern to swap stories and play cards and laugh easily with the growing camaraderie of friends. But always—always, in this small boat, there had been the three of them. Never had she and Jack really been alone. Until now.