A Light For My Love (22 page)

Whatever he had thought of China Sullivan in
the last fourteen years—beautiful, spoiled, snooty—he'd never once
thought of her as a coward. He knew she had courage. Lacking her
brothers and her parents, she couldn't have managed all this time
without it. He shifted on the hard leather, a twinge of guilt
prodding him again.

Suddenly an idea came to him. There was one
thing he could do that would ease his conscience, if not her
resentment.

He pulled himself to his feet and went to get
his coat. If he remembered correctly, his destination, the Western
Union office, was on Third Street.

*~*~*

Jake was right, as far as it went.
Gritty-eyed and cross from lack of sleep, China did decide to come
out of her room later that morning, but not without some
reluctance. After last night, she didn't want to speak to Jake, or
see him, or have to sit at the same table with him.

With her taffeta costume put away in the
closet, everyday life resumed and she dressed once more in a
dun-colored skirt and plain blouse. It made her think of the fairy
tale of Cinderella. Unfortunately, there was no handsome prince
doggedly searching throughout the land for China, the one woman he
wanted to share his life with. There was only Jake Chastaine, who
plagued her thoughts and dreams, and who, aside from his rough
handsomeness, was about as far from being a prince as a man could
get.

She went to the mirror to braid her dark,
curling hair, and raised tired brows at her reflection. There was a
pale lavender smudge under each eye. Her life had been in turmoil
since Jake had gotten here. He wouldn't trick her again with soft
kisses, she promised herself, or those familiar, yearning looks he
sometimes gave her that reached almost to her soul.

She wouldn't have to worry about it for long,
anyway. After all, he would be leaving again in a few weeks. At
that thought her hands, busy with the braid, fell still. Of course,
that's why they'd had the dinner last night. That's what they were
working toward Jake's departure. Why, then, did she get a squeezing
catch in her heart when she thought about it?

Shaking off the feeling, she tied the end of
the plait with a narrow ribbon. Then she walked to her door and
unlocked it, took a breath and turned the knob. Opening the door a
crack, she peered into the hallway. From here, she could see that
Jake's door was open. If he thought she would continue to provide
maid service to him after last night—

She crept across the hall, quiet as a cat,
her back flat against the wall. Poking her nose around his
doorjamb, she looked into his room.

He wasn't there, and to her surprise, his bed
was already made. Well—um, good, that was
good
, she told
herself. She wouldn't have to look at the depression his blond head
left in his pillows or touch the sheets that had laid against him
all through the night. She would keep her distance from him as much
as she could, without disrupting the family, and she wouldn't speak
to him if she could avoid it.

If she could make herself avoid it.

*~*~*

That evening after dinner, the members of the
Sullivan household, including Jake, drifted into the back parlor,
as usual. The meal had been a dismal affair; a pervasive gloom hung
over everything, even restraining Captain Meredith's salty
volubility. China had pointedly ignored Jake and done her best to
avoid the brief but intense looks he shot her from time to time.
But she'd felt him sitting there, radiating an icy heat.

Aunt Gert had prattled on for a while about
Mrs. Baker's lumbago, but eventually she gave up, as the
near-silence at the table overtook her. In contrast, the normally
reserved Susan Price roused herself from her passiveness. To tempt
Jake's obviously thin appetite, she passed him every serving dish
on the table until they all sat in a semicircle around his plate.
The light from the chandelier created a soft halo on her fair hair,
and her pale cheeks were suffused with color. In her muted voice,
she coaxed him to eat. Watching this from beneath lowered lashes,
China felt an unreasonable urge to tell Susan to shut up.

Now China loitered in the dining room, on the
pretense of reorganizing the table linen drawers. She couldn't go
to the back parlor with Jake sitting in there, long-legged and
relaxed, the firelight emphasizing his eyes and full mouth, his
fingers absently raking through his hair while he sat across the
chess board from Cap.

China dragged her mind away from the mental
picture and impatiently slammed the drawer she'd been sifting
through. Annoyed that she, not Jake, was the exiled party, she left
the dining room with the intention of going upstairs to her
room.

In the evening quiet, Cap's voice boomed
through the hall.

"Aye, sounds like you were in for a rough
time of it, lad."

"It was the worst storm I ever sailed. It
came up just like that." She heard the snap of fingers. "We lost
three men that night. They disappeared so fast I never even saw
their heads bobbing among the breakers. They were just—gone."

Jake's response made China stop in her
tracks, and she edged toward the doorway to the back parlor. That
voice, she thought, leaning against the wall, out of view. If she
could just forget the sound of his voice. It drew her, tempted her.
She had to fight the desire to go to him and rest her head on his
knee while he told his story. To spend a thousand nights, ten
thousand, in his arms, warm and safe, the worries of her life as
light as thistledown . . . 

As this mental image took detailed form, she
pulled herself out of the daydream. Where in the world was her mind
to consider such a thing? She pulled away and moved silently to the
staircase. Climbing the steps to the second floor, she paused in
the bathroom to look out the window at the carriage house. She did
this several times each evening; if Dalton brought someone for her
to tend, he would light the oil lamp and put it in the window.

She went to the glass and pushed the curtain
aside. Beyond the black, winter-bare limbs of the trees, a single
glowing flame illuminated the dark carriage house window.

China sighed and let the curtain drop. It
would be another long night.

*~*~*

A woman was calling Jake back from the
comfortable void into which he'd slipped sometime just east of
midnight, and he resisted. Though it only whispered to him, it was
a familiar voice, one that meant a lot to him. But right now he
couldn't remember why. He put his arms around her and held her
close, hoping that would soothe her, but she persisted.

"Jake! Jake, please."

He came awake then with a start and lurched
up on his elbow to find China standing next to his bed. She held a
candle, its feeble light illuminating a narrow circle around
her.

China watched as Jake blinked at her
owlishly, obviously trying to comprehend her presence. She'd almost
regretted disturbing him as he lay asleep on his side, his arms
wrapped around his pillow, hugging it to his chest with his cheek
tucked against it. She'd stood there for a moment, just gazing at
him. His face was smooth and relaxed, his breathing slow and deep.
It was difficult to remember the promise she'd made to herself that
morning, to ignore him and the dangerously soft feelings that were
taking root in her heart.

Now she tried hard to disregard the
distraction of his broad, muscled chest in front of her, and the
way his biceps bulged, so she looked at his hair. But that was no
better. His long golden hair was tousled, and once again she had to
restrain herself to keep from putting a hand out to smooth it. He
smelled warmly of sleep and linen sheets. Worst of all, she just
knew he didn't have a stitch on under those blankets. A gentleman
would wear a nightshirt. Of course, she recalled for the dozenth
time, Jake was not a gentleman. But somehow that was becoming less
of a liability.

"Whatsa matter?" he asked, disoriented. "What
time is it?"

"It's just after two o'clock," she
whispered.

He peered at her, and her dun-colored dress
and white apron. "God, don't you ever sleep? Why are you prowling
around at this hour?" he asked in a gravelly voice. He flopped over
on his back and rubbed his eyes, then gave her an assessing,
provocative look. "What are you doing in my room?"

Did he have to be so captivating, with his
hair messed up and his face creased from the folds in the
pillowcase? "I didn't want to wake you, but I need your help.
Please, Jake."

Some of her nervous urgency reached him.
Something had happened, he decided, something serious enough to
make her put aside their most recent dispute and seek him out. He
turned his head to look at her again. "It must be bad if you've
decided to start talking to me again. What's wrong?"

"Dalton brought a— a guest earlier tonight,
just after dinner."

Jake recalled that China had disappeared
after that tense half-hour in the dining room. He hadn't thought
anything of it at the time. Clearly, when he wasn't paying
attention, China could slip in and out with amazing deftness, which
made it pretty hard to protect her. And since she'd been giving him
the silent treatment, he couldn't begin to guess what she was
doing. The Sailors Protective League, he reflected dourly, had been
quiet lately. Now he realized where she'd gone and why, and
irritation brought him to full wakefulness. No matter how many
times he told himself to mind his own business and let her do as
she pleased, it never worked. He came back up on his elbow.

"Damn it, China, why are you the one who has
to help with this crusade? Haven't you figured out yet how much
trouble Williams could land on your head?"

She scowled at him and automatically looked
back over her shoulder. "Shhh! Keep your voice down! Can we argue
about this later? There's a boy out in the carriage house,
delirious and burning up with fever. He's young, but he's big, and
I can't control him by myself. I need your help."

Jake stared at her a moment. "Oh, all right,"
he replied. He sat up and started to push the covers off. The dark
blond hair on his chest continued down the front of his long torso
to—

China gaped at him, wide-eyed, and jumped
back. "Wait a minute!" she scolded. "Y-you don't have any clothes
on."

He grinned at her suddenly. "No, I don't, and
unless you want to see the whole picture, you'd better get out of
here so I can put my pants on. I'll meet you in the hall in a
minute."

She whirled and fled, her candle flame
guttering in the resulting breeze, her face blazing hot. She waited
a few feet down the hall and heard the clank of his belt buckle
and, shortly, the sound of his boots crossing the floor. He came
out of the room with both arms in his sweater sleeves and the rest
of it bunched up across his shoulders. She tried not to stare at
the line and contour of his lean frame before he slipped the
fisherman's knit over his head and pulled it down. For a man who'd
been roused from a deep slumber just a moment ago, he appeared
amazingly alert. She supposed he was used to being awakened for
emergencies at sea.

He took her elbow and they slipped quietly to
the back stairs. "What happened to this man?" he whispered when
they were away from the other bedrooms.

"Jake, he's not a man, he's just a boy. If
he's older than thirteen or fourteen, I'd be surprised. Maybe he's
just a runaway."

Jake snorted. “If he’s older than ten, he’s
no boy. I’ve commanded cabin boys who were eleven and twelve, and
life at sea makes them grow up fast.” With muffled steps, they
hurried down the staircase to the brightly lit kitchen. "Why is he
in the carriage house?" he asked.

China turned to grab a stack of towels from
the table. "Willie—that's his name, Willie Graham—he told Dalton he
was in the New Corner Saloon afternoon before last. Alex Grant owns
that one, you know." The Grant family, including the matriarch,
Bridget, were notorious shanghaiers, with boardinghouses and
saloons in Astoria and Portland. "He thought knockout drops were
put in his beer but he managed to get away and hide in an alley
before they took effect. He's pretty big—maybe that's why the drug
took longer to work and he was able to escape." She whisked a small
soup kettle off the stove, and Jake took it by the handle for her.
"In case he gets hungry," she added.

"But eventually he passed out in that alley.
He was there all night, with the rain pouring down on him. Dalton
found him yesterday—at first he thought Willie was dead. He wasn't,
but then the fever started and Dalton brought him here last
night."

"If he's as young as you think, he shouldn't
have been drinking in a saloon anyway. But I guess I'm in no
position to judge," Jake remarked with faint amusement. Then he saw
the fear and compassion in her eyes when she looked up at him, as
though this young man's life had been especially entrusted to her
keeping. His smile dwindled.

"Why did Williams leave you alone to handle a
job like this?" he asked tightly. "He gets the glory and
you—
we
get the work."

"No, that isn't true," she said, her
expression earnest. "It's not like that. Dalton asked me if I
wanted him to stay. I sent him home because I thought I could
manage. Willie wasn't delirious then."

Jake gave her a skeptical look.

She hugged the towels in a tight grip. "I
can't let him die, Jake. I just can't." Her voice was barely more
than a whisper.

He studied her strained white face, her dark
hair dragging loose from its braid, and the faint circles under her
eyes. Her clothes were rumpled and the apron she wore was splotched
with wet spots. What drove her like this? he wondered. Was it a
need to prove something to Williams, to win or maintain his favor?
Jake clenched his jaw at the thought. Whatever it was, she was
determined. He supposed he didn't have any choice but to help her.
She had no one else to turn to.