If I Wait For You (6 page)

Mr. Mason and second mate, Mr.
Billings, did not appear pleased with the announcement of his
marriage, and he did not blame them. West had always made it clear
he would never bring a wife on board, and to do so now seemed a
betrayal of sorts. He was only thankful these rough men did not
read the social sections of New Bedford’s newspapers and did not
know of his courtship or engagement to another woman
entirely.

His mates were used to cussing and bad
table manners, of whoring without compunction when they berthed in
the tropics. He knew they feared all would change. Though Sara
Dawes was not his wife, for all the world he would have to act as
if she was, at least by insisting the men curb their tongues if
only a bit. West, like most whaling captains, allowed island women
aboard ship rather than risk men deserting by letting the crew go
ashore to spend their lusts. That, he decided, would not change. He
would not risk mutiny nor desertion simply to save the
sensibilities of a woman he had no care for—even if she was
supposed to be his wife.

“
Little will change,
gentlemen,” he said, ignoring the frown on his third mate’s face.
“I realize this is unexpected. Damned unexpected,” he said, rubbing
his chin with one hand. “But we’ll make the best of things, shall
we?”

Mr. Mason raised his bushy eyebrows in
mute question, and West realized he’d let too much of his own
feelings show. Damned if he wasn’t in the strangest predicament
he’d ever heard a man being in. He found himself in the position of
pretending indifference to Sara in her company and yet acting the
happy groom in the presence of his men. It was untenable, he
decided. He disliked dishonesty in his men and was uncomfortable
standing before his most trusted men and lying. He reminded himself
he did so to save the woman but it made little difference in the
end. A lie was a lie.

“
I am not fully convinced a
whaler is the best place for a woman,” he said, giving Zachary a
look that told him he would not be contradicted on this point. “And
if not for the fact that Miss—that is, my, well, Mrs. Mitchell—has
no family at home, she would not be here.” There, now he sounded
almost the reluctant groom, and if the crew noted a certain lack of
warmth between husband and wife it would be no surprise.

“
You should know that Mr.
Dawes is my wife’s brother.” The two senior officers stared at the
third mate with open hostility, as if he had somehow brought this
about. Or perhaps they thought he’d been made mate simply because
of his connection to Sara, West thought.

“
For the record, gentlemen,
I made Mr. Dawes mate before I met his sister.” The men’s
expressions cleared.

“
Won’t be so bad,” Oliver
grumbled. “I was aboard the
Julia
with your brother and his wife and it were all
right. She made pies and such.” He shifted in his chair as if he’d
just gushed about the woman.

West thought of Abigail and wondered
suddenly how she got on with the men. She had been such a quiet
little thing, pious and serene, such a contrast to his boisterous
brother. West realized he knew nothing of his “wife” other than her
name. No, he corrected himself, that was not true. He knew Sara’s
eyes hid nothing of what she felt, and so he knew he frightened
her, and that her guileless laugh made him smile.

West forced himself to
think of other matters. “What sort of crew have you scrounged up,
Mr. Mason?” he asked, launching the officers into a lengthy
discussion of just how green the hands on this trip would be. A
fair amount of training would have to be done before the
Julia
could even think
of dropping the whaleboats and bringing in one of those great
beasts. With the pay so poor, it was only the most starry-eyed lad
who stepped aboard a whaling boat willingly. Too many times, the
crews were made up of men trying to escape something, most often
the law. West didn’t care. Once they were at sea, the men were his.
He was a demanding captain, but fair, and it was his reputation and
that of his brother that allowed him to recruit better hands than
other whalers.

“
Well, gentlemen, it
appears we are ready for our journey,” West said as the sun touched
the western horizon. He tried to ignore the jolt of despair he felt
at speaking those words. Already, before the ship even left the
wharf, he was thinking of the day the
Julia
would spy Block Island or
Cuttyhunk rising above the Atlantic waters and know he was
home.

Chapter THREE

Sara lifted her head from the small
wooden bucket that was her constant companion and stared blearily
out the bank of windows behind her at the choppy Atlantic, dark
gray against a gray sky. Three days. Three days of constant
sickness, of a stomach clenching painfully, of retching little more
than bitter bile into her bucket. She needn’t have worried about
what she would do all day. It was all she could do to leave the
bunk and make her way to the captain’s tiny water closet. Head, she
amended to herself. In the rare moments when she was not retching,
she tried to sew, knowing she must have a dress and underclothes
before she could leave the cabin. Feeling better, she made a feeble
attempt to make up the beds, to clean the cabin, but the sickening
lurching made her efforts futile. Never in her life had she felt so
completely useless, so unwanted. She hadn’t thought how difficult
it would be to do nothing, be nothing for weeks and months on
end.

West entered the cabin and came up
short, as if he’d forgotten she was there, and she felt a stab of
remorse. He had not been cruel. In fact, he had not been anything.
They did not speak to one another; it was almost as if she were a
bit of furniture and one that kept getting in the way.

He eyed the bucket that was never far
from her with a grimace. “It will be better when you can go atop,”
he said gruffly. He looked about the cabin and frowned. “What are
you doing?”

“
I was straightening up. I
thought I could help.”

“
Do not,” he said. “It is
my steward’s job, not yours. I’ve come to check you
bandages.”

Sara nodded, feeling miserable. Her
entire life, Sara had thought of others, and she could not stop
doing so now. Every deed, nearly every thought she’d had as long as
she could remember was about how she could make life better for
those around her. She’d gone to the market and bought her father’s
favorite foods. She’d pressed her mother’s dresses, put pretty
flowers on her dresser just to see her mother’s pleased smile. To
be in the position of being so completely unwanted and unneeded was
as foreign to her as being aboard this ship.

Her face burning and turned away from
him, she made her way through the aftercabin’s connecting door and
silently lay upon the stateroom’s bed exposing the bandage, praying
the captain would not see the tears burning in her eyes. She felt
the tug of the bandage as it stuck slightly to the cut, felt his
fingers brush lightly near the wound, felt her tears spill
over.

“
Am I hurting
you?”

Sara swallowed.
“No.”
Don’t ask
,
she pleaded silently.
Don’t ask why I am
crying, because I don’t know, I truly don’t
.

West worked with quiet efficiency, all
the time painfully aware of the tears running down her face and
wetting his pillow. She kept her head turned away from him, too
proud to let him see her weeping. He finished dressing her wound
and let his eyes move over her face, her jaw, her slim neck, and
down to where her breasts lay, full and round, beneath the white
cotton. He had the terrible urge to hold her. He did not know why
she was crying but he figured this beautiful young girl had more
than enough reasons to feel sad.

“
Your stitches were
fine.”

“
Thank you.”

West straightened, his gaze pinned to
her profile. My God, he thought, she is so beautiful. She was not
like those delicate creatures he’d known, with pert noses and
rosebud lips. Not like Elizabeth, his traitorous mind thought. She
was far more striking than that, and yet he had the distinct
feeling she didn’t know just how extraordinarily pretty she was. He
forced himself to look away from her, reminding himself of all his
promises. If he stared at her every night this way, he’d not last
out the week without touching her, never mind years. When he felt
his loins thickening, he clenched his jaw, but he did not look away
from her. Slowly, she turned her head around to face him and he
allowed himself to look down at her. Thankfully, her tears were
gone, for he knew had she still been crying, it would have taken
perhaps more strength than he had not to draw her into his
arms.

“
I’m sorry.”

Of all the things he thought she would
say, an apology was not one of them. “Why are you
apologizing?”

“
I know you do not want me
here. I know I am a burden.” There was no self-pity in her tone. He
could not deny her words, and decided then that he must agree with
her. He mustn’t allow himself to feel sorry for her, to feel
anything for her.

“
You are that, Miss Dawes.
But I have made my promise to your brother to protect you and I
will hold to it.”

She accepted his words calmly, as if
that is what she expected him to say. And it was that acceptance of
something he found slightly dishonest that was most disturbing. He
could not say he did not want her here in his cabin, in his bed. He
could not. Even as he recognized the subtle torture of keeping her,
he knew he would not be able to set her from this ship, and told
himself it was his honor keeping her there, keeping her
safe.

The captain’s prediction came true. As
soon as she stepped out of the companionway and onto the main deck,
Sara felt better. A cool blast of wind buffeted her face, and she
smiled. She hadn’t realized how stuffy the cabin was until filling
her lungs with the sweet ocean air and was glad she’d forgone a bit
of modesty to take some air. With the captain’s borrowed coat
around her, no one could notice that she still wore her brother’s
shirt above her newly sewn brown wool skirt.

The companionway opened up near the
helm, and as she stepped up onto the deck, she faced the ship’s
stern and the helmsman. The man’s eyes widened at the sight of her.
She gave him a tentative smile, feeling conspicuous but so happy to
be breathing the sharply cold air. She’d never been on a ship at
sea, and looked about her at that ropes and sails, finally making
sense of the sounds she’d been hearing from below these past days.
Her hair flew about her wildly, and Sara wished she’d thought to
tie it back. Clutching it with one hand, she looked about the ship
with fascination.

Hearing a shout above her, she looked
up at the mast nearest her and gasped when she saw several men
standing on a yardarm hauling in a sail, their movements strong and
sure. Higher still, the captain called out instructions to the men,
urging them on. Fear made the back of her head tingle. He was so
high, so vulnerable, with nothing between him and the hard deck.
She heard him call out harshly to one of the men, right before one
of them fell from the yardarm. She let out a scream until she
realized the sailor’s foot had thankfully been caught on a rope.
The man, little more than a boy, really, continued to
scream.

Without hesitation, West climbed the
down the mast and out onto the yardarm with the agility of a man
who’d lived most of his life at sea. Above the poor dangling soul,
West gazed down, a smile on his face, and Sara relaxed. Surely if
the boy were in real danger, West would not smile. With the
gracefulness of a man confident of his own strength, West reached
down and effortlessly pulled the screaming boy up and untangled his
foot from the line. In that moment, something happened to Sara, her
entire being became aware of West in a way that made her feel
almost light-headed. It was the effortlessness of his movements,
the sheer strength and gracefulness—the beauty of a man hauling a
helpless boy up to safety, muscles bunching, face intent. Sara
blinked rapidly, trying to rid herself of this odd feeling that was
as frightening as it was wonderful. She had no name for it, she
only knew she was entirely aware of him in a way she had not been
just a few moments before.

Now red-faced, the young man clutched
the yardarm as West said something to the sailor for his ears only.
The captain, Sara saw, was no longer smiling, but apparently giving
the lad a stern lecture. Then he roughly ruffled the boy’s hair and
the small group of men on the yardarm began hauling in the sail
again.

“
Saw a man’s head crack
like melon one time,” a voice said next to her.

Sara felt a shiver run down her spine
and the hairs on the back of her head sprang up.

“
Happens near every trip,
Mrs. Mitchell.”

Sara turned, seeing a large bearded
man standing there, an evil glint in his eye. Then she realized
that glint wasn’t purely evil, but held a small degree of humor.
Behind that meanness, Sara thought she saw something far less
menacing. This man, she thought, is just like my father. All bark
and no bite. She pushed her hair from her eyes and smiled slightly
at him and saw his surprise that she hadn’t fainted at his gruesome
words. How many times had her father regaled his little family with
grisly tales? She’d always known her father was simply trying to
anger her mother with such vivid yarns, but Sara had enjoyed
hearing about them even though she pretended to be horrified. It
was entirely unladylike, but the more gruesome the story, the more
vivid her father’s description, the better she liked it.