If I Wait For You (20 page)

“
Whalers are not the most
gentile of men, present company excepted, of course,” Mr.
Tillinghast said hastily.

“
I do believe the crew of
the
Julia
must be
the exception. I found them extremely well-behaved,” Sara said,
warming to the couple.

“
I made certain of it,”
West said.

“
Mr. Mitchell wields a firm
but fair hand, I understand. Whippings and discipline are vital to
contain some crews.”

“
I haven’t yielded the whip
once this trip,” West said. “It’s a miracle, really.”

Sara quipped, “My husband no doubt set
that particular discipline aside knowing full well that if they had
been planned, I would have made certain they did not
occur.”

West barked out a laugh. “I’m sure my
Sara would have tortured the sailors instead with some of her more
gruesome yarns.”

Sara couldn’t help but flush beneath
the unexpected warmth of West’s gaze. His words echoed in her head:
“My Sara.”

“
You’ll have to share them
with us during your stay here,” Mrs. Tillinghast said, smiling
widely and looking from Sara to West.

The foursome began walking toward the
Tillinghast’s home, a sturdy-looking thatched hut, incongruously
adorned with western fixtures including a pineapple door knocker
and glass windows. Inside was an odd mixture of Yankee and island
furnishings. The whitewashed walls of the main room held pastoral
scenes from their home state of Connecticut, as well as native
masks and carvings. Straw mats covered most of the floor, rustling
softly under foot, but beneath a gleaming mahogany dining table,
was a rich-looking Oriental rug of deep reds and greens. The effect
was charming, and made Sara long for home in a way she hadn’t felt
in weeks.

“
It’s always nice to bring
a bit of home with you wherever you go,” Mrs. Tillinghast said,
sensing Sara’s mood. “Even if it does look a bit odd when you throw
it all together.”

“
No, Mrs. Tillinghast. It’s
lovely. Just lovely.”

“
If you’ll follow me, I’ll
show your room. I want you to feel completely at home here. You’re
not a guest, you’re part of the family while you’re here. West has
been staying with us since he was a young boy. So you see, he’s
already part of the family. We’re so glad he found such a lovely
girl to wed.”

Guilt flooded Sara and her throat
closed on the older woman’s kindness. She wished she could take
this woman in confidence and tell her the truth, but she feared
doing so would hurt their image of West, who they were clearly fond
of.

Mrs. Tillinghast led her down a short
hall that appeared to contain three bedrooms. At the end, she
opened the door and revealed a simple room containing a bed, bureau
and washstand. Sara sat down on the small feather bed and smiled.
“I think I will get used to sleeping in a bed that does not
move.”

“
How long will you be
staying here until you leave for San Francisco?”

“
Less than two weeks,” West
said from the door. “I’ve found a berth for you on the
Bonny Lassie
, a
merchantman sailing for San Francisco on the twentieth.”

“
When did you…” And then
Sara stopped, answering her own question for her. “Ah, yesterday.”
He must certainly be in a hurry to send her on her way, Sara
thought glumly.

“
Yes. A fine ship. A bit
small, but fit from what I could see. The captain seemed a sober
sort. Captain Richard Crowley.”

“
I’m sure it will be fine.”
Sara could not look at him for fear he would see the heartbreak in
her eyes. She must not let him know how much this parting hurt. How
he would pity her if he knew.

West took out his pocket
watch and glanced at it. “Well. I must be going if I’m not to fight
the tide to get back to the
Julia
.”

Sara’s head snapped up in surprise
before she could stop herself. She’d thought they would have a bit
more time together.

“
Then you won’t be staying
for even dinner?” Mrs. Tillinghast asked, clearly
disappointed.

“
No. I have to get back,”
West said, sounding terse. He smiled, to soften his words. “But I
thank you for the invitation, Mrs. Tillinghast, as well as
extending your hospitality to Sara.”

She smiled in return, a knowing smile,
it seemed. “I’ll leave you two to say your good-byes, then. Take
all the time you need.”

Mrs. Tillinghast left and silence
reigned in the small room. Sara stood, holding out her hand, her
eyes steady, her lips pressed closed. West glanced at that extended
hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

“
Good-bye, Captain
Mitchell,” she said calmly, fighting the horrible urge to throw
herself in his arms and beg him not to leave her here. It was so
powerful, this urge, but she remained standing still, a hand
extended, her eyes straight.

He looked away from her.
“Sara.”

“
Good-bye, sir.” Her voice
sounded strong, unemotional and untouched by this farewell. He
looked at her then and she hated the warmth in his eyes, the desire
she saw. The lies.

“
Please, West. Just go.”
She’d lost control of her voice, she realized. Her plea came out
raw and desperate. It barely came out at all. She turned partly
away from him and wrapped her arms about herself, keeping herself
in check, screaming at herself not to be a fool over him. He took a
step toward her and she stiffened. He stood there, so close she
could feel his breath against her neck. She did not see him close
his eyes, clench his fists, breathe deeply to remember her
essence.

“
Good-bye, Sara.” His voice
was low, smooth, by her ear. So close. She need only turn and be in
his embrace. Instead she tightened her arms about herself until he
stepped away, until he left the room and shut the door. Only then
did she allow the tears that had hovered in her eyes to fall. She
began shaking, a terrible tremor that hurt, so she sat on the bed,
collapsed, really. And listened to him walk away.

Chapter ELEVEN

It was the sobbing that brought Mrs.
Tillinghast to the door, to hover undecided, until finally she
thought her heart might break for the poor young bride left alone
by her sea captain husband. She knocked on the door and smiled when
the cries ceased abruptly.

“
May I come in, Mrs.
Mitchell?”

She heard the girl blow her nose and
could picture her hastily wiping her eyes as if she could erase all
signs of her heartbreak in a matter of seconds. “Of course,” came a
muffled voice, clearly tear-clogged.

Mrs. Tillinghast settled on the bed
next to Sara, who sat looking like a young girl, her hands twisting
a soggy handkerchief. “West tells me this will be his last whaling
voyage. You will be together for the rest of your lives, Mrs.
Mitchell, and this will become only an unhappy memory.”

“
Please call me Sara,” she
said, as fresh tears coursed down her cheeks. She looked up at Mrs.
Tillinghast, her eyes red and swollen and filled with such sadness
that the older woman had the awful urge to shed tears of her own.
“I’ll be fine. It’s only that he just left and we…and we…” Sara
swallowed convulsively. “We did not part on the best terms. I don’t
care if he should sail off the end of the earth.” That sentence
lost much of its impact when she dissolved into fresh
tears.

“
I see.”

Sara stared dismally at her lap,
cruelly reminding herself that while she sat here crying her eyes
out, West was likely sighing with relief to have finally gotten rid
of her. She ought to hate him, but each time she tried to summon
such feelings, it only left her feeling more bereft.

“
I’m certain your husband
loves you. Just as you love him.”

Sara buried her face in her hands,
unable to hear such kindness from the older woman, especially since
it was the result of false beliefs. West was not her husband. He
did not love her. And here was this kind woman trying to comfort
her with words that unknowingly cut a deeper wound into her heart.
She felt an arm come around her shoulder and Sara couldn’t resist
leaning into the woman’s softness.

“
Oh, Mrs. Tillinghast, you
don’t understand,” she sobbed. “West is glad to be rid of
me.”

She clucked her tongue. “Don’t be
ridiculous. You should have seen his face when he was leaving. I’ve
never seen a more miserable-looking man in my life.”

Sara leaned back and blinked away her
tears so that she could see whether Mrs. Tillinghast told the
truth. How she wanted to believe that West felt some sadness at
their parting, some sense of loss. “I would like to think he was a
bit miserable,” Sara said, then laughed when she realized how
uncharitable that sounded. Mrs. Tillinghast smiled.

“
You can be certain that he
was.”

Sara’s smile faded quickly. It did not
matter that West had regrets, she was still left alone to face a
harrowing journey back to New Bedford. He had gotten her off his
hands, relinquished his duty toward her, cleansed his conscience by
keeping her safe, and kept his promise to her brother.

The days that followed West’s
departure went by slowly and did nothing to stop the aching in her
heart. The Tillinghasts were everything kind, and let her grieve
alone whenever she was overcome by her loss. Her moods swung
wildly, from anger that he’d left, to intense sadness that he
hadn’t loved her the way she’d so desperately love him, to fear of
her journey, to elation to finally have this tumultuous part of her
life coming to an end. Indeed, there were times when she felt she
might go mad.

She helped Mrs. Tillinghast when the
older woman would allow it, but often found herself wandering down
that sandy path to the sea where she would look out for long
minutes and wonder whether West was in Honolulu and if he ever
thought of her.

After Sara had been in the Tillinghast
home for a week, she began to feel a sense of belonging, a
closeness to the couple. They stopped asking her about West, and
she became better at hiding her sadness from them. She scrubbed and
cleaned beside the older woman, even as she protested that Sara was
a guest.

“
I’ve never been one to be
idle, Mrs. Tillinghast. If you have anything job you’ve been
putting off, I’d be more than happy to take care of it for you. I
need to be busy,” she said.

That’s when Mrs. Tillinghast smiled,
and asked, “How do you feel about spiders?”

And that’s how it came to be that Sara
was assigned the task of killing the spiders that nested in the
thatched roof. She put a kerchief on her head so that the spiders
wouldn’t fall and take up residence in her thick hair and set to
work sweeping them from the ceiling. Mrs. Tillinghast had an
inordinate fear of the creatures, and Sara didn’t mind in the least
removing them from their home. In fact, she pictured each one with
a little head of West as she squashed them beneath her
heel.

She’d just killed her fourth spider,
when she heard Mrs. Tillinghast say, “Sara, you have a
visitor.”

West stood there as if conjured from a
dream, smiling. In quick strides, he was there, pulling her into
his arms. She couldn’t help it, she pressed herself against him,
letting out a pure sound of joy before she could stop herself. He
lifted her up and swung her around, kissing her as they
spun.

“
God, I missed you,” he
said against her mouth.

“
You did?”

West lowered her feet to the floor and
it was only then that Sara realized that Mrs. Tillinghast had left
the kitchen to give them privacy. “Of course I did.”

Hope bloomed in Sara’s heart. He’d
come back to her. He’d missed her. She nearly blurted out then and
there how much she loved him, but something in his expression
stopped her.

He smiled down at her, oblivious of
the fact she’d gone still in his arms. “I couldn’t let you leave
with ill feelings between us, Sara. It was driving me
crazy.”

Disappointment washed over her,
chilling Sara’s blood. He hadn’t changed his mind about taking her
with him, he was simply easing his conscience. Again. She smiled up
at up him making a supreme effort not to let him know what she’d
been thinking when she saw him standing there.

“
There were no ill
feelings, West.”

His eyes, damn them, twinkled down at
her with disbelief. “Is that why you wanted me to sail off the end
of the earth?”

Sara pulled away completely and lifted
her chin. “Mrs. Tillinghast was under the misconception that I was
upset about your leaving. I suppose I led her to believe I was a
grieving bride. Acted a bit too convincingly,” she said
jauntily.

“
Sara,” he said, cupping
the side of her face with one large hand. “I missed
you.”

A pained look flashed across her face.
“West don’t. Don’t say such things.”

West withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He was. So damned sorry about everything—especially the hateful
fact that he would be gone from New Bedford, gone from Sara, for
more than two years. He knew coming back to Hilo was sweet torture
for both of them, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. He’d
gone insane thinking about her, knowing he could have a few more
moments with her if only he returned to Hilo. His ship would do
well under his mates who could supervise any repairs that needed
doing. How easy, he’d told himself, to take a schooner from
Honolulu and see Sara one last time. She drew him like a powerful
whirlpool he was hopeless to fight. The worst of it was, he
couldn’t bring himself to tell her why he couldn’t stay away. He
loved her so damned much, but he knew telling her so would only
make their final parting all the more painful. He told himself it
was better that Sara think him callous and unfeeling. But in the
end, his heart won out and brought him to Hilo, to Sara. His
inadequate, “I miss you” sounded foolish in his ears. That hollow
feeling in the pit of his stomach as he’d walked away from her
nearly a week ago went far beyond mere missing.