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He told himself to be calm, to wait. She’d gone out shopping or for a breath of air. Yes, that was it. But later, after questioning the doorman and learning that she’d left the week before and hadn’t been seen since, he was forced to admit that she was gone.
With some surprise, he looked down at the bouquet of flowers he’d brought her. He hadn’t even remembered he was carrying it. He’d mangled them beyond recognition, breaking and bruising every flower in the bunch.
Jesse stared at the rough-hewn ceiling beams, listening to the wag of the clock pendulum. Then, after a long time, he pulled his boots back on and went to tend the horses.
On his way to the barn, he encountered Erik Magnusson. Towering at least six and a half feet in height, the youth moved with a giant’s ambling gait, unhurried and untroubled by the press of the world. The wind blew his straight, straw-colored hair across his brow.
“Morning, Captain,” Erik called. Erik always called him by the head lightkeeper’s title. “Did the lady from the sea wake up?”
“No.”
“Father said we’re going to tar the bottoms of the surf runners today.” Erik’s mind always flitted from one subject to the next like a hummingbird going from blossom to blossom. Jesse liked the big lad, but he never quite knew what to say to him.
“That’s fine, Erik,” he said. “It’s good to keep the boats in proper order.”
“You never take the boats out,” Erik said, planting his hands on his hips. “Why do you never take the boats out?”
Because I’m a coward, Jesse thought.
“Why is that, Captain?” Erik persisted.
“The boats are for rescue and should never go past the surf,” Jesse said, then started walking away. “I’m off to the barn.”
He turned the four geldings out to the sloping pasture. Palina’s rooster crowed, the sound insulated by distance and by the light, fine mist that hung in the morning air.
He ambled down the long, switchback trail to the beach. Twenty-four hours ago he had been on this same path, and in his arms he had held an extraordinary and unwanted burden. For years he had been successful in getting people to leave him alone, but the red-haired woman was different. He couldn’t make her go away.
Why was he so reluctant to help her? He had come here to do just that—save victims from the sea, help boats navigate the perilous shoals at the mouth of the Columbia. It was the life he’d carved out for himself. It was his penance.
He negotiated the twisting path and walked across the damp, densely packed sand. His gaze automatically scanned the area, seeking more wreckage from the ship that had brought him the woman. But he saw only the endless expanse of the strand, littered here and there by seaweed or a chunk of driftwood. The morning breeze rustled through the dunes, rattling the reeds like dried bones.
A harsh barking sound came from Sand Island in the middle of the huge estuary. Sea lions. Sometimes they came to the cape, but Jesse shooed them off. Fishermen often shot the seals to keep them from preying on the salmon and steelhead.
As he walked, Jesse filled his lungs with heavy salt air and tried to empty his mind. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her, the fairy-featured woman who had invaded his house, his life. Companionship was the last thing he wanted. No one seemed to understand that. The people of Ilwaco regarded her presence as a great adventure. Palina termed her a gift. Fiona called her a challenge.
He tried to tell himself she was no different from other women. He’d trained his mind well, punished himself effectively through sheer force of will. Women left no impression on him, sparked no desire, awakened no yearning.
Yet the stranger in his house was different in a way he couldn’t explain. Though he didn’t even know her name, some deeply suspicious part of himself knew she posed a threat to the life he was now living.
He turned his back on the sea and looked at his world, a lonely king surveying an empty realm. The lighthouse station was the quietest, most remote place on earth. Jesse had run here, thinking it was where he belonged, at the edge of the world.
But, as it turned out, he hadn’t run far enough.
Jesse’s movements were slow and deliberate as he got out a low stool and placed it squarely beneath the trapdoor to the attic crawlspace. It had been ages since he had needed anything from the storehouse above the ceiling.
But he needed something now. He hoped his equipment was in working order. Standing on the stool, he reached into the hole and groped around through cobwebs and sawdust. Eventually his questing hands found a bulky, oblong box and the three lengths of wood that went with it.
He set the box on the scrubbed kitchen table and stared at it for a long time. He had not used the camera in years, not since…not in a very long time. He wasn’t even sure it still worked.
He flipped up the dual latches and lifted the lid. The odd device, with its mouth of brass, its glass plates and black silk shrouds, lay where he had flung them so long ago. The vials of chemicals had corroded at the caps. Red spots mottled the albumen papers.
Photography was a vexing business of washing the plate, coating it with gun cotton dissolved in alcohol, dipping it in silver nitrate. The exposure had to be enhanced by a flash in a pan, then the plate developed with acid and more chemicals. It was easy to make a mistake. He had found that out when—
He cut off the thought, cursing the memories that kept pounding at the edges of his awareness, wanting to be let in. He had come to the bluff in order to forget, and now the presence of that woman was making him remember another time, another life. Gritting his teeth, he assembled everything he needed; the chemicals and the plates, the tripod and the black silk shroud. Moving quietly, he went into the birth-and-death room.
She lay sleeping, her limbs loose, her breathing peaceful and even. Her hair streamed in a ruby and gold tangle across the pillow. Her body curved in on itself, protecting, always protecting the belly.
Jesse tried not to stare. Tried not to think. He made himself concentrate on the task at hand. He wanted her out of here. The best way to do that was to find her next of kin. He needed to take a photograph and circulate it, have it published.
Yes, that was the answer. Maybe the grateful family would come for her before she woke. Before he learned one blessed thing about her.
He positioned the tripod at the foot of the bed. Then he placed the camera box on top of it, aiming the eye at the woman.
And suddenly, the memories he had kept dammed up inside him broke through, and the past stormed across his mind. He felt it like a physical blow, heard the laughter of a woman long dead and saw himself, a much younger Jesse, laughing with her….
“Hold still, darling, I’ll just be a minute.”
“Oh, Jesse, you take forever.” A dainty hand in a lacy glove smoothed across his brow, pushing aside a persistent lock of hair from his eyes. Pink-tinged lips smiled up at him. “Just make the picture and let’s eat.” The lacy hand gestured at the lavish picnic spread out upon a fringed blanket in the middle of a flower-studded meadow. “Aren’t you starved?”
He had abandoned the camera then, reaching her in three long strides, sweeping her into his arms. The picnic and the photograph had been forgotten until much, much later, when cool shadows slipped across the field.
“There won’t be enough light left for a picture, Jesse.”
He ran his hand through the tousled silk of her hair. “We have all the time in the world, sweetheart.”
Stifling a ragged growl, he rid himself of the memory almost violently, like a wounded man yanking out the knife that had stabbed him.
Damn. It had started already. The stranger, with her serene face and air of mystery, was making him think, making him remember, making him feel.
The sooner he got rid of her, the better.
With grim determination he finished setting up the equipment. Then he looked at his subject. She lay like a rag doll, her hair covering part of her face and her arms and legs slack. No one would recognize her in this state.
He had to touch her. There was no other way. He stepped forward and took her by the shoulders, careful not to jar her injured collarbone. She made a sound, half sigh, half moan, and he froze. God, if she woke up now, he’d scare her out of her wits.
Almost as much as she scared him.
Her head flopped to one side, and she settled deeper into sleep. He still held her by the shoulders.
It was then that he noticed it. Her warmth. It seeped into him like rays of direct sunlight. The living radiance passed through his fingers and burrowed deep inside him. He was achingly aware of the soft, yielding flesh and the fragile bone structure beneath. The sensation of holding another human being was so overwhelming that he didn’t quite know what to do.
She smelled of sea and wind and womanhood, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get his bearings while his senses listed crazily.
The ordeal took endless minutes. He propped her against the pillow, centering her head just so. Then, not knowing what to do with her loose arms, he crossed them atop the quilt. But as soon as he got her hands in place, her head sagged to the side. He bolstered the pillow, making a trench. Then her hands sprang free as she stretched luxuriously.
Jesse swore quietly between his teeth. How did undertakers do this, anyway? At length he succeeded in arranging her so that her head was centered, the hair pushed away from her face, her hands demurely crossed.
“Stay,” he whispered. “Just stay there a minute. I only need another minute.”
He crept back to the tripod, treading lightly as if she were a house of cards that could collapse any moment. He put the silk over his head and bent to the camera. His other hand held the flash powder in a pan.
“One,” he whispered through his teeth, “two, three…”
All at once, he exposed the plate. A boom and a flash of magnesium powder exploded in the room.
The woman sat forward like a ghost disturbed from eternal sleep. He expected her to scream, but instead, she grabbed the pitcher beside the bed and hurled it at him. At the same time, she spoke. “Jesus Christ on a flaming crutch!”
Four
She crouched against the headboard of the bed, the long nightgown bunched in a tangle, her hand reaching for the oil lamp on the table.
As soon as he realized her intent, Jesse blazed back to life. The damn-fool woman. She could hurt herself. Worse than that, she’d burn the house down.
“Don’t touch it,” he said between clenched teeth, striding across the room. His boots crunched on shards from the broken pitcher. Snatching the lamp, he placed it out of reach on a wall shelf and glared at her through the snaking yellow-gray smoke from the flash.
Color touched her cheeks, and her warm, hazel eyes shone—not with gratitude, but with anger. He was startled to realize that her fury matched his own. “You’ve done enough damage already,” he grumbled.
“And what would a body expect, I ask you?” she demanded. “I wake up to find myself in the middle of a pitched battle and you think I’ll simply surrender? You shoot at me, boyo, and I’ll fire back, make no mistake.”
Boyo? Jesse was reasonably certain no one had ever called him boyo. “I wasn’t shooting at you,” he said.
“There was an explosion. And I smell gunpowder.” She squinted through the smoke and wrinkled her nose, a perfect little nose sprinkled with freckles.
Jesse had no idea why he would make note of freckles. “You’re Irish,” he said stupidly, because it was the first thing that sprang to mind.
“And you’ve got some explaining to do.” She leaned sideways to look past him. “What the devil sort of gun is that?”
“It’s not a gun. It’s a camera.”
Her eyes widened. She pushed a hand through her tangled red hair. “A camera, is it?”
“Yes.”
The color leaped up in her cheeks again, making stark crimson spots on her pallor. “And what in the name of Peter and Paul are you doing shooting off a camera in here?”
Jesse’s already strained patience snapped. “Taking your picture, woman. What do you think?”
She made the sign of the cross and pressed back against the headboard, holding the covers to her chin. “Pervert!”
He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at his sides to keep from doing something they’d both regret later. This was exactly why he lived here at the lighthouse, alone. He had no patience for other people, especially for mouthy Irishwomen who showed no gratitude for being rescued.
“Madam,” he said, “it occurs to me that your mishap has addled your brain. You’ve been unconscious. I thought it best to find your next of kin, so I took your picture. I had intended to circulate it to the newspaper and telegraph offices so your friends and family would learn of your survival.”
He strode to the door, the camera in one hand and tripod in the other. He paused and said, “I expect someone will be grateful that you’re alive.”
She moved quickly but clumsily, lurching from the bed. When Jesse saw her bare feet heading for the broken pieces of pottery, he had no choice. He dropped the tripod and scooped her up in his arms.
She gave a little squeak of surprise and paddled her feet in the air. “Don’t you do it, boyo.”
He glared at her. The top of her head was even with his chin. He could feel the heat emanating from her body. The sensation was so unfamiliar that he almost dropped her. Instead, he set her on the bed and stepped back quickly, as if he’d approached a hot stove.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked.
“Granted.” She gave a little bob of her head.
“I mean, I didn’t follow you, madam. Are you asking me not to leave the room?”
“Aye, that I am.”
“May I ask why?”
“Because I don’t want pictures of me put in any newspapers.”
Ah. So she was superstitious, then. Many immigrants brought their old-country beliefs with them; Palina and Magnus were proof of that. Quite a number thought it unlucky or even sacrilegious to produce graven images of themselves.
“Of course, now that you’re awake, there’s no need. You can simply tell me your name and destination. I’ll report that to—” he broke off, frowning down at her “Miss—er, Madam? Is there something wrong?”
She had begun to sway back and forth, her eyes glazing over. “I…feel strange all of a sudden. Higher than Gilderoy’s kite,” she said, her voice low and harsh. “Could you—that is, I need…”
Her words trailed off and she slumped to one side. Jesse dropped the camera, wincing as the lens cracked. Without breaking the flow of his movement, he dashed over to the bed, catching her by the shoulders and supporting her.
“Ma’am?” he asked. “Are you…all right?”
She made no response. She’d fallen unconscious again.
Jesse heaved a sigh of frustration. After settling her upon the pillows, he hesitated. Against his will, something inside him seemed to be bending toward her, reaching for her. He could not believe the impact of feeling her warm body curled against his, the tickle of her hair brushing his face and the scent of her, evocative and forbidden.
“Damn,” he swore between his teeth. She was everything he was trying to avoid.
As he tucked the quilts around the unconscious woman, his movements were slow, his hands gentle. He’d had no idea there was any tenderness left inside him.
The sooner he was rid of her, the better. He would send for Dr. MacEwan today to make certain this relapse wasn’t serious.
Amazingly, the one photographic plate he had taken remained intact. After developing the image, he would have a picture of the stranger. The amber tones would fail to capture the vivid richness of her red hair and her cream-and-roses coloring, not to mention the freckles, yet it would be a decent likeness.
Sleeping Beauty, he thought.
The hell with her superstitions. If she wouldn’t stay awake and tell him who she was, then he would publish her photograph and get the investigation started.
His boots crunched on earthenware shards from the shattered pitcher. In all the years Jesse had lived here, there had never been such a mess.
And she’d only been awake five minutes.
“Brass,” Palina said, hurling the word like an invective. “It is the bane of my existence.”
Jesse levered himself to the top of the ladder leading to the pinnacle of the lighthouse. In the lamp room, Palina and Magnus were well into the day’s chores. Palina was polishing the brass of the central compressor and cursing it, as usual.
“Why do they have to make everything out of brass, anyway?” she muttered, her wadded cloth making tight, neat circles in the fittings behind the reflector.
