If I Wait For You (30 page)

“
West Mitchell!”

“
Yes, Ma’am.”

A glint of amusement came into her
faded gray eyes as she gave Sara, whose cheeks had turned scarlet,
an assessing look. “See that you marry the girl,” she said, rapping
her cane once before continuing her walk.

“
I plan to, Mrs. Finch.
I’ll tell mother to send you an invitation.”

She waved a hand acknowledging his
remark, then disappeared around the corner.

“
I know Mrs. Finch,” Sara
said, mortified. “Thank God she didn’t recognize me.”

West let out a deep chuckle. “I’m sure
she’ll figure it all out the day of the wedding.” Taking a
fortifying breath. “Let’s go home, shall we?”

With little enthusiasm, Sara agreed,
dreading the coming confrontation with West’s family. She dreaded
something else more. Until her name was publicly cleared of murder,
she would not marry West and bring shame to his family.

Chapter SIXTEEN

“
You can’t be
serious.”

Sara set her jaw stubbornly. “I’m
absolutely serious. And if you take two minutes to think about it,
I’m sure you’ll agree.”

The only thing West could agree upon
was that he wanted to throttle her. Then make love to her. Perhaps
not in that order. When Sara had dragged him to his mother’s small
sitting room the moment they entered the house—managing to sneak
inside without notice—the last thing he expected was for Sara to
put off the wedding. He’d thought, with hope and lust singing
through his veins, that she’d pulled him into that room to express
some of her own desire. He stood, his hands clutching the back of a
wooden rocking chair, and prayed for patience. How could she know
that everything he’d dreamed about for two years stood not ten feet
away from him? It was almost like giving a man lost for days in a
desert a single drop of water before pouring the remaining cool
liquid into the burning sand.

“
I’ve brought enough
trouble to this family,” she said. “I will not bring
more.”

“
What garbage.”

Oh, he could see that really ruffled
her feathers. “It isn’t. It’s the truth. We cannot marry with the
specter of an unsolved murder hanging over my head. How can you not
see that?”

West moved away from the chair,
setting it to rocking madly. “The only thing I see is the woman I
love holding herself from me again. I’ve waited long enough,
Sara.”

“
It is your fault we were
not married years ago,” she said with a triumphant note, and West
found he could not disagree with her. He walked to her, saw her
grow wary, as if suspecting he would try to kiss her into
submission. He gave that idea a long thought before deciding in
favor of an intellectual argument. Kisses might not sway his
stubborn lady, but calm debate just might.

“
Sara, listen to me. We
might never be able to prove your innocence. We’d need one of those
thugs to come forward, and I’d say that is highly
unlikely.”

“
But what about the
investigator you plan to hire? Certainly he will find something
out.”

He put his hands gently on her
shoulders. “He might not. They could have all fled like that Nathan
fellow. What will you have us do? Wait years, possibly in vain, for
an answer? Sara, we may never find out who truly killed that man or
your parents. Are you willing to wait forever? I can tell you now,”
he said, his voice growing hard, “that I am not.”

West saw doubt in her eyes and knew he
was close to convincing her. “I want children, Sara. Your
children.” Her startling blue eyes darted up, her gaze
searching.

“
Perhaps it’s best we never
know who was behind the murders,” she whispered. At his questioning
look, she explained in a halting voice that she suspected her
father was behind the murder of the young man found near their
house.

“
And I was an unwitting
witness, so the thugs involved decided to get rid of everyone who
knew anything. Including my father. So, you see, though I’d like to
know in my heart my father wasn’t involved, I’m terribly afraid he
was. But if there’s a chance he wasn’t, if we can find out what
happened that night, I think we should try.”

West smiled down at her. “Of course we
should try. But I don’t see why that should mean we need to delay
our wedding.” If he expected her to immediately agree, he was
disappointed. Instead, she pulled away from him and walked to the
window, to look outside at a darkening world.

“
Do you really want the
daughter of a murderer for a wife? The daughter of an adulteress?
Perhaps you can overlook these things, but will others?” She turned
to him then, her eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “I haven’t much
to bring to you, I’m afraid. Except shame.”

He was by her side in three strides,
sweeping her into his arms, pulling her to him, silencing her
words, expelling her doubts. “Don’t think that. Don’t you ever
think that, Sara,” he said roughly against her ear. With a gentle
hand on the side of her face, he forced her to look at him. “Do you
know what you bring to me? Happiness, Sara. And love, and a reason
to breathe. I wish you could have seen me when I thought you’d
died, then you’d know without a doubt that I would cut my own life
short to be with you. I even made a bargain with God that he could
take my life if only he would give you yours. Thank goodness he
didn’t take me up on that bargain,” he said with a deep chuckle.
Sara gave him a watery smile.

“
I always felt beneath you.
Socially, I mean,” she said, and she pressed a hand to his mouth
when he made to protest. “I know that’s silly, now. But the truth
is, I lied to your mother and brother. I very well could be the
daughter of a murderer, of a woman who had affairs with young men.
I can’t help but feel tainted by that. Can you
understand?”

“
Hurt by it? Yes. But not
tainted, Sara. You are separate from them. A good, kind, generous
woman, who I love to distraction. And who, I might add, I want to
make love to every night for the rest of my life. Starting
tonight.”

She pursed her lips together in a way
that made West’s blood surge hotly. “No,” she said with a
coquettish smile so unlike her that West nearly laughed.

“
Yes,” he growled, and
kissed her, long and hard, giving her a convincing argument to
begin the rest of their life that instant. He was intoxicated by
her, a single kiss only serving to increase his need for more. And
more. When he put his hand on her breast, she leaned into him, a
sigh escaping her parted lips. When he rubbed his thumb across her
hardened nipple and she moaned, he crushed her to him, giving a
mental holler of triumph.

“
You win,” she gasped, when
he nipped her breast gently through her dress, and he immediately
began working on the tiny buttons down the front of her bodice. Her
hands stilled his near-frantic movement.

“
West!”

He pulled away, just far enough so
that his lust-dazed eyes could focus on her. “Yes,” he asked,
moving his mouth to hers, tasting her soft lips.

“
Oh,” she said. “You make
this so hard.”

He pulled her against him.
“Mmm.”

“
Not that,” she said,
laughing, and pushing away to re-do the buttons he’d undone. “I’m
not going to take the chance on your mother or, God forbid, your
brother coming in an discovering us.”

He gave her another scorching kiss
before reluctantly stepping back. “One week. I want to be married
within one week and I’ll not brook an argument from you. Do you
understand?”

“
I do hate it when you use
that captain’s tone with me,” she said, unsuccessfully hiding a
smile.

“
That is something, I’m
afraid, love, that you’re going to have to get used to.”

On Santa Maria island there stood a
barrel post, where whalers would post letters to home in hopes a
ship homeward bound would get them to their loved ones. Some would
stay in that barrel for as long as a year, all waiting for some
whaling ship to pass by and collect the missives that would give a
bit of joy to those opening them. They were letters to wives and
mothers and sweethearts waiting at home and hungry for some proof
that their loved ones still lived, still thought of them. There
were letters from sweethearts written to sailors long-departed on
whalers, giving them the sad news that they had married. And there
were those that told of deaths, of births, of people left behind
that would not be home when the sailors returned.

One particular letter,
though, held no true greeting. It was written by a young Harvard
man who had been looking for a bit of adventure and signed on upon
the whaling ship
Fortune
. Though from far different
stations, this young man, Herbert Wharton, befriended another
sailor, Nathan Wright. Wharton was running from the threat of a
life of boredom sharing a law practice with his father and
grandfather, Nathan from a charge of murder. And yet, they were
both young, seeking adventure and escape, and instead found the
harsh life on a whaler that was nearly unbearable. They stank of
gurry, that sickening mess of whale blood, guts and oil, no matter
how many cold, salt-water baths they took. And there weren’t many
of those. They were exhausted sometimes, bored most of the time,
and in the midst of men who would murder them as well as pass the
time playing cards with them. They didn’t belong. They had only
each other. Until one of them died.

But before death came, sneaking up
painfully, slowly, Nathan Wright had a chance to redeem himself, to
prove that he was worthy of a friend such as Herbert Wharton. He
was dying and so very afraid he would end up in hell. It ate at
him, this terror of dying, until the only thing he could do was
confess his sins to the only man on board ship who would care.
Wharton helped him word the thing, the whole time shaking as he
painstakingly transcribed his best friend’s words. He was not
shocked by the confession, only saddened that his friend would die
with a murder on his soul. He urged Nathan to pray for forgiveness,
and the two of them, when Nathan had the energy, prayed fervently
for redemption.

“
I, Nathan Wright, do
solemnly swear upon my death bed, that I and three others are
responsible for the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Dawes of New Bedford,
and a young man from Vermont whose name I do not know. We were
hired to kill the Vermont man for consorting with Mrs. Dawes.
Though Sam did the killing, I did not stop him, so I have murder on
my soul. We---Sam Trotter and I---were seen by Sara Dawes. We were
ordered to get rid of all witnesses, and so set fire to the house.
Sam, Jackson Taylor, Manny Perez, and I, were there that night.
Judge Reynolds ordered the killings. I know not why.

May God forgive me. I
cannot forgive myself.

Nathan Wright

Nathan died four days after putting
his mark on the signed confession. Herbert signed it as a witness.
When Nathan died, he left behind a body so wasted that the hardest
of the sailors joked the corpse wouldn’t even tempt a shark.
Herbert kept the letter safe inside his shirt until the time he
could post it. He did so on a cold and blustery day when the ship
made a stop at Santa Maria Island. And there the letter sat for
nearly two years before finally being picked up by another
whaler.

For another eight months,
the letter was tucked among others in a leather pouch in the
captain’s stateroom. The ship made its way to New Bedford, enjoying
fair winds, its crew filled with the job of going home, unaware
that its most important cargo wasn’t the precious oil in the hold,
but a murder confession addressed to Zachary Dawes, of the
whaler
Julia
.

Chapter SEVENTEEN

Sara awoke the day of her wedding
slowly, a delicious curl of happy anticipation making her smile
like a well-contented cat. She stretched, feeling her muscles
quiver, feeling every inch of her body come alive. She nestled
deeper into her covers, a cool breeze filtering through the window,
filling her lungs with sweet spring air. She could not remember
being so happy, so contented, so utterly pleased with
herself.

This would be the last morning she
would wake up alone. She’d spent the last night clinging to a
pillow instead of to the man she’d marry, the last hours as Sara
Dawes. And when she remembered who Sara Dawes was, she pushed that
thought resolutely away. Sara Dawes was the woman marrying West
Mitchell, she was not the daughter of a murderer and a loose woman.
After today, she wouldn’t be Sara Dawes at all.

She pressed the heels of her hands
over her eyes. “Damn,” she said aloud. It didn’t matter how many
times she tried to convince herself her past didn’t matter, it did.
It hung there like a dark specter, a constant reminder of who she
was, and that who she was had no right marrying a
Mitchell.

She’d thought she’d gotten past a
lifetime of being made to feel ashamed of who she was, but realized
she could not. How many times had her mother warned her against
even looking at a man who held a higher station. She knew now her
mother was warning her away from the same life of misery she’d led.
It was, perhaps, the only loving gesture her mother had ever given
her. Now that Sara knew what her mother had gone through, she could
put the events of her life in perspective, she could examine every
nasty thing her mother had said to her and at least try to
understand.