If I Wait For You (14 page)

They stood by the railing in
comfortable companionship when Sara blurted out in a whisper: “What
makes a man want a woman?”

Zachary looked at his sister aghast,
then let out a angry puff of air. “Has he tried
something?”

“
What?”

“
The captain, Sara. I
feared something like this would happen.”

“
Something like what? What
are you talking about, Zack?”

He gave her an exasperated look.
“Captain Mitchell. He’s made advances toward you.”

Sara thought of the charity kiss but
didn’t believe that could possibly qualify as an advance. “He
hasn’t,” she said, and Zachary’s look intensified at the
unintentional but obvious disappointment in her tone.

“
Thank God. I knew he was a
man of honor. But even the best of men can be tempted.” Zachary
gave her a strange look. “What are you asking, Sara?”

Sara worked her lips between her
teeth, giving her the appearance of a child unwilling to impart a
secret. “It’s only something Mr. Mitchell said when his brother
arrived. He said that his brother would not believe that he, that
we, well, had not shared a bed.” This last was said on the merest
of whispers. “And I suppose I was just wondering why?”

“
Why what?” Zachary said
with some hesitation.

“
I suppose, why he hasn’t
made even the suggestion of…sharing. A bed.” Sara looked to the
sky, glad the wind was icy so it could cool her burning
cheeks.

“
Just be glad he hasn’t,”
Zachary said gruffly.

“
I should be glad,
shouldn’t I?” Sara said doubtfully.

“
Hells fire, Sara, of
course you should be glad.”

Sara grew silent. A brother was
clearly not the person she needed to talk to about such things.
She’d never had girlfriends to gossip with, having little free time
from running the house. And she’d never been close to a boy her age
to even consider such things as sharing a bed.

Her thoughts were instantly disrupted
by a shout from high in the mast. “There she blows. To the
southeast. Three, no four, Captain.”

Suddenly, the ship exploded with
activity. West drew out his spyglass and trained them to the
southeast, nodding his head when he spied the whales.

“
All right, lads. You know
what to do.”

And they did. All the training they’d
done during the voyage was paying off, for each man seemed to know
precisely what to do. Sara moved to the bow of the ship, getting
away from the activity as much as to see if she could spot the
whales. Oh, there they were, great beasts moving in the water ahead
of them.

“
Look at ‘em, Mrs.
Mitchell. Ain’t they beautiful?” It was one of the younger
crewmembers, who no doubt felt badly to be left behind on
ship.

“
They’re huge,” she said
with pure awe. Indeed, they were giants, lumbering through the
waves with immense power. Not even the storms had frightened her as
these whales did. Her silly stories of whales dashing against
ships, of swallowing men whole, suddenly took on new meaning. Men
were hurt whaling.

Men died.

A series of splashes told her some of
the whaleboats filled with men had been lowered to the sea. She
leaned over the railing and looked at the whaleboats that suddenly
seemed terribly fragile, at the men who had seemed so hale and
hearty but now seemed too young and too inexperienced to battle
such behemoths. Mr. Mason had told her the whaleboats were built
not for strength, but for speed, to slice silently through the
water so the whales would not become frightened and dive into the
sea’s depths. Tales of shattered boats, of whales’ huge flukes
crashing down upon the helpless men, filled her head. Again, she
found herself searching for West. Something was going to happen.
She knew it.

Men died.

All at once it seemed the most
important thing in the world was to say good-bye to him. To tell
him to be careful. To somehow let him know that she, that
she…

And then she was standing before him,
just as he was about to step aboard the last whaleboat. Clearly his
mind was on the whales, not on Sara, not on how she knew in her
heart that something awful was about to happen.

Men died.

He was turned away from her,
inspecting his crew, making certain in one quick look that all was
prepared. She lay a hand on one arm, bunched and tensed muscle hard
beneath her palm. He turned, at first irritated with the
interruption, but his gaze instantly softened when he saw her. For
a long moment, Sara stood there, wind whipping her dress, buffeting
her face, making her eyes tear. Certainly it was the wind. She
swallowed. Her mouth opened, her lips moved, but nothing came out,
at least not the thing her heart cried for her to say.

“
Be careful,” she finally
whispered, something sharp pricking her heart.

He smiled, a sudden and heart-stopping
change of expression. And then he bent his head and kissed her.
Long and hard and devastatingly possessive. She curled her hands
and gripped his coat to keep from dissolving onto the
deck.

With one quick movement, he was on the
boat, crying “Lower away.”

Sara staggered to the rail, her hand
grasping it painfully, and watched the boat make its jerky way to
the choppy sea below. He didn’t look back at her, his mind already
on the hunt.

The four boats moved away from the
ship, an officer at each stern, calling out to the men, urging them
on. The long oars moved in unison, cutting almost silently into the
sea, bending from the force of the men’s strokes. For Sara, the
excitement of the hunt had evaporated, replaced by unfathomable
dread that seemed to grow like a blossoming black cloud inside her.
She wanted to call him back. She even stepped to the railing,
opened her mouth, to call him back. She knew she was being foolish,
knew that West had done what he was doing now a hundred times
without mishap. She clenched her jaw tightly, refusing to shame
herself—and him—with her fear.

It simply was that now that he was in
that boat, on that unforgiving sea, he seemed so much more human,
so much more fragile.

If anything should happen to him, she
thought frantically, if anything should happen.

She raised her fists to her mouth and
whispered harshly against them a fervent prayer, forgetting
everything her brother had just told her. “Please God, watch over
him. I love him so.”

With the officers all on the
whaleboats and most of the crew as well, the ship was left in the
hands of the cooper, blacksmith, carpenter, cook, and a handful of
others—men Sara new only by their professions. Most of the sails
had been reefed so the ship would not sail too far from the men
hunting whale. By the time the sun went down, Sara could barely
make out the whaleboats as they continued to chase the whale. Mr.
Mason had told her there were times when the hunt was called off,
when no whale was brought back to the ship despite hours of
backbreaking rowing. To make things more maddening, whales would
often dive beneath the surface and remain there for long minutes,
only to reappear frustratingly far away—but not so far as to make
another chase out of the question.

Sara’s fear seemed to ebb and swell as
the hours passed. There were moments when she convinced herself
that instead of the corpse of a whale, they would bring back the
corpse of the captain. She could almost visualize the scene, the
men solemnly bringing his limp form aboard, could hear her scream
of denial. And then sanity would return and she could convince
herself that it was only her wild imaginings and not some dark
premonition at work. Sara frantically reminded herself she had done
the very same thing when Zachary left on his first whaling voyage.
She had become so convinced he had died, she cried herself to sleep
for a week.

Darkness, cold and the awful wait
finally forced Sara to retreat to the stateroom. Placing her lamp
on the wall hook, she was overcome by the desire to sleep in his
bed, to snuggle beneath the same blankets that had warmed West not
a few hours before. Her fingertips touched her lips and she closed
her eyes, remembering that fierce kiss, so different than the one
he’d given her before. She let herself think about it as she lay in
his bed trying to get some sense of him. Turning her head into the
pillow, she smelled nothing but bedding, and sighed. She hadn’t
been near enough to him often enough to recognize whether he had a
unique scent. To her, he always smelled freshly of the sea, of salt
air and sun. The bed smelled only like a bed. It swung gently from
gimbals attached to the ceiling, rocking her gently, its movement
somniferous. Just before she dozed off, she told herself if was
only fair that she get to share this bed. It was so very nice, so
soft, even the creaking of the rope was hypnotic…

The door opened and Sara was instantly
awake.

“
Miss Dawes.” He was
standing before her empty bunk, an oil lamp in his hand.

“
I’m here.” Her eyes
widened. Blood covered him. He stank of it and of something worse.
“My God, what happened to you?”

He gave her an odd look, then blinked,
and looked down at himself. “Oh. The whale. We got a
whale.”

Sara’s hands flew to her face as
relief swept through her. Despite her theatrics as he was leaving
the ship, she found she did not want him to know just how glad she
was that he was unharmed. She recovered quickly, bringing her hands
down to find him staring at her.

“
What are you doing in my
bed?” His voice was hoarse, likely from yelling to his men all
night.

A flush crept up from the
neckline of her nightdress and spread with alarming heat to her
cheeks. “Because I…,”
wanted to be near
you.
She shrugged. “I wanted to be
comfortable.” She couldn’t help it, she wrinkled her nose. The
smell was awful, even if the sight of him unharmed was
wonderful.

“
I stink, I know.” He gave
her a rakish smile that completely disarmed her. “You’ll have to
get used to it.”

Sara smiled. He was talking as if they
would be together for a long time. She would have to get used to
the smell, to seeing blood on him. To being afraid for
him.

“
The hunt went
well?”

“
Got one whale, lost one
boat.” At Sara’s concerned look, he quickly added, “No men were
lost, just a lot of hayseeds scared enough to cry for their
mothers. Just got one to tend to. Got cut on the head by the one of
the lances that went flying.”

Sara looked at him, puzzled by his
almost jovial attitude. He was covered with blood, stank to high
heaven, lost a boat and had a man injured, and he was acting like a
little boy who’d just gotten a shiny new red wagon. She’d never
seen this side of him—he was almost acting as if he were happy. At
that moment, something in Sara’s heart turned. That was it—she was
seeing West Mitchell happy. Clearly it was not something he often
felt, at least not in her presence.

Sara moved to the edge of the bed and
kneeled, sitting on her calves, her night dressed bunched around
her knees. “A big whale?” she asked, hoping that he’d start gushing
again.

“
I figure we’ll get more
than one hundred barrels out of her,” West said, suddenly sounding
distracted. His next question told her why. “Is that what you
always wear to bed?”

Sara, even though she knew what she
had on, looked down at herself, her simple white gown made of cheap
material looked golden in the soft light of the lamp West still
held in his hand. She was suddenly aware in a way she had never
been before that she was a woman alone in a room with a man and she
was hardly clothed. “Yes,” she said, nervously plucking at the thin
cotton.

West nearly groaned. “You
should wear something…warmer, perhaps.”
Something thick and made of wool, something that won’t haunt
me when I’m trying to sleep
.

“
I’m not cold,” she said,
and West wanted to contradict her, wanted to point out that her
nipples were clearly visible through the thin fabric. He swallowed.
He stank, he was covered with blood, and he wanted at this moment
nothing more than to climb on that bed and run his hands over her
body. My God, she was glorious. He actually began to shake,
something he noticed when the light from his lamp started to make
the shadows in the room dance. He put the lamp on a nearby hook,
forcing himself to turn away from her.

He had kissed her. He’d weakened
earlier that day, unable to, in the excitement of the moment,
resist pressing his lips against her impossibly soft ones. He told
himself that kiss was for his men’s sake—for wouldn’t they expect a
husband to kiss his new bride good-bye right before heading off to
chase whale? In reality, that kiss had only been for him. He wanted
to kiss her, he wanted to hold her against him and feel her arms
wrap around his waist each time he left her. And so he had kissed
her, putting all his frustration and need in that hard meeting of
lips. It was not what he wanted. He wanted to tease her lips
slowly, to nip and suck them, to graze them with his tongue. To
open her mouth and taste her.