Merline Lovelace (22 page)

F
eet planted wide apart, hands fisted at his sides, Sam stood at the window of the bedroom he’d shared with Victoria the past few weeks. The unruffled covers of the four-poster presented mute testimony to the fact that he hadn’t slept since she’d departed Santiago yesterday noon.

He couldn’t remember a more nerve-racking twenty-eight hours. Putting Victoria aboard the
Sea Cloud
with the desperately ill Mary had drilled a hole right through him. Being placed under house arrest hadn’t exactly filled the void.

Now this storm.

Clenching his fists, Sam listened to the wind howl like the dogs of hell. Sheets of rain lashed at the wavy glass windowpanes. Outside, the lemon trees in the courtyard whipped wildly, bowing almost to the ground before the vicious gusts.

The storm had blown in late last night from the
north, which meant it had cut across the straits separating Cuba and Florida. Sam had spent most of the dark hours of the night hoping the
Sea Cloud
had steamed ahead of the gale—and most of today filled with the gnawing worry it had not. The message Max had sent from the governor’s palace earlier in answer to his terse note said the navy was already receiving initial reports of damage to ships at anchor and at sea.

Spinning away from the window, Sam paced the room like a caged tiger. One day under house arrest and already he chafed at the enforced inactivity. He hated having to send a note to Max begging for information, hated being cut off from the cables and reports that flowed through General Wood’s office. Serving on staff had its drawbacks, but at least Sam had kept a finger on what was happening.

He supposed he shouldn’t complain. He wasn’t sitting in a damp, subterranean cell in the former Spanish fort overlooking the harbor. Nor had General Wood laid charges against him. Yet. Wood had other matters to deal with at the moment—like coordinating with General Shafter on the units to remain in Cuba as part of the army of occupation and ensuring the orderly departure of the rest.

The gale now sweeping across the island would wreak havoc with the army’s departure plans, Sam guessed. At best, the storm would delay sailings. At worst—

He balled his fists again. The navy’s initial damage reports indicated the winds and crashing seas had blown the troop transports enroute to Cuba all to hell and back. Several were reported sunk.

Christ! The
Sea Cloud
had to have made safe harbor in Key West!

Not until six o’clock that evening did he receive further news. It came in the form of an order to report to the governor’s palace immediately.

The winds were dying as he strode through the streets, but the rain still sliced down. Once inside the palace, Sam pulled off his poncho, shook himself like a terrier and made his way to the general’s office. Max wasn’t at his desk, but the young lieutenant manning the table jumped up at Sam’s approach.

“General Wood’s expecting you, sir. Go right in.”

Tucking his hat under his elbow, Sam rapped a knuckle on the door frame and entered the ornate salon.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“Yes, I did. Stand easy, Captain.”

Wood pushed away from his desk, his movements slow and heavy. Like Sam, he looked as though he hadn’t slept since yesterday. Fatigue had etched deep grooves at either side of his mouth. His eyes showed more red than white.

“I don’t know any way to tell you this but straight out.”

Sam braced himself. He didn’t know what was coming, but from the look on the general’s face, it was bad. Very bad.

“The hurricane tore down every telephone and telegraph wire in Key West, but the navy managed to repair their underwater cable. We’ve been getting detailed damage reports all afternoon. One of those reports indicates that the merchant steamer
Sea Cloud
went down with all hands.”

Sam didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink. He couldn’t. Ice had formed in his veins, freezing everything inside him.

“Captain Luna told me that was the ship you put Miss Parker and Mrs. Prendergast on.” The general came around the desk and gripped his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

He could hear Wood’s voice. Feel the weight of his hand on his shoulder. But nothing was real. Nothing could pierce his sudden, icy shroud.

“She went down in sight of the harbor. Evidently she was readying to put out to sea to try to escape the storm when her anchor cable snapped. According to eyewitness reports, the waves rolled her over. She sank within mere moments.”

Wood’s fingers dug in deep. Sympathy put a raspy edge in his voice.

“Several bodies have washed ashore, but the seas
are still too rough to mount a salvage or recovery operation. Although no survivors have been found, there’s a chance, a slim chance, some might have made it to shore.”

Sam nodded. Just once. A small, tight inclination of his head. Without a word, he turned and started for the door.

“Sam. Wait! Where are you going?”

He dragged around, fought the shards slicing into his chest, forced out a reply. “Key West. On the first ship out of Santiago.”

“We have some business to take care of first, or have you forgotten that you’re under house arrest?”

His jaw locked. “There aren’t enough marines in Cuba to hold me here, General, unless you order them to shoot me on sight.”

“I’ve reached the same conclusion. As a result, I’ve decided not to lay charges against you. Corporal Peters claims he can’t identify the man who knocked him out while he was performing sentry duty at Siboney. No one saw you with Mrs. Prendergast, so there’s no direct evidence you had anything to do with her removal from the contagion ward. Which leaves only the matter of the pass you wrote for yourself without authorization.”

Flinging up a hand, he cut Sam off before he said a word.

“None of the sentries at the checkpoints you went through could say for any certainty whose
name was on that pass. The damned paper was too wet to read. But you admitted writing it, along with everything else, and I have to take an officer at his word. Rather than subject you to a court-martial, I’m releasing you from active service, Sam. Mustering you out right here and right now. I won’t allow you to desert. Not after your service at Las Guásimas and Kettle Hill.”

Scooping a document off his desk, he shoved it at Sam.

“Here. Take it.” His bony fingers squeezed the captain’s shoulder a final time. “Let me know how you find matters in Key West.”

T
he hurricane had all but destroyed Key West.

From the deck of the two-masted schooner
Pelican,
Sam stared with stony eyes at the ruin of what had, until three days ago, been Florida’s second-largest city. The two-story stone Customs House still stood, but its roof had blown away. Most of the buildings around it had been reduced to rubble. Debris was piled high in the streets, spiked here and there with the trunks of uprooted palms.

Wind and waves had tossed up boats all along the curving shoreline. They lay like beached whales, their rounded bellies exposed to the sun now beating down with a brightness that made the devastation even harder to accept.

It wasn’t bright enough to melt the icy shards inside Sam’s chest, though. Every breath he’d taken since he’d walked out of General Wood’s office
fifteen hours ago had stabbed into him like a stiletto.

He hadn’t returned to the house on Calle San Giorgio. Hadn’t taken the time to send a message to Max or Señora Garcia. He’d made straight for the harbor, boarded the sleek schooner tied up at the quay and promised the captain whatever fee he wanted to set sail immediately for Key West.

After emptying his wallet to pay for Mary’s passage, Sam had only enough funds with him to make good on half the amount the captain demanded. As the skipper cheerfully informed him, however, the Rough Rider uniform he wore guaranteed the rest. Sam didn’t bother to inform the man that he was no longer entitled to wear the khaki pants and blue flannel shirt.

Sticky with sweat, the shirt now clung to his back. He didn’t feel its heat, didn’t notice the rivulets tracing down his cheeks. He didn’t think he’d ever feel anything but cold emptiness again.

A rattle of rigging and the whoosh of the swinging boom warned that the
Pelican
was about to come about.

“The wharf’s all ripped up,” the skipper announced grimly from where he stood at the wheel. “I can’t bring her in any closer. We’ll have to drop anchor here and take the dinghy ashore.”

Picking his way through the debris, Sam not only saw the devastation close at hand, he smelled it.
Flies buzzed in thick clouds around the bloated carcasses of chickens and pigs. Fruit ripped from trees and bushes rotted in the sun. Every breeze added the stink of rust, barnacles and spilled bilge water from the beached boats.

Efforts were already under way to clear the streets. Blue-shirted seamen from the naval base labored side by side with sweating civilians, grunting as they heaved aside shattered timbers and odd pieces of furniture. Sam picked his way over to a sailor with a long row of stripes disappearing into his rolled-up sleeve.

“Where can I find information on the
Sea Cloud?
”

His tattooed muscles straining, the petty officer tossed aside what looked like a wrought-iron headboard. “The
Sea Cloud?
Don’t know her, sir.”

“She’s a merchant flying the United States flag. She arrived in Key West the night of the storm.”

“Can’t help you. You might ask the harbormaster. He’s up at— Oh, wait a minute! Is she the steamer that snapped her anchor cable, went broadside to the swells and capsized?”

Sam’s throat went tight. “Yes.”

“I heard they’ve recovered most of her crew. Check at the Customs House. They’ve set up a temporary morgue in the warehouse.”

A few weeks ago, Sam had thought that helping
to recover the bodies of his brothers in arms and readying them to be sent home for burial would be one of the most wrenching experiences of his life. He’d served with those men, respected them, loved them. But walking into the Customs House was like driving nails into his chest.

“Better cover your mouth and nose with this, sir.”

The customs officer pressed into service as mortician and graves registrar passed Sam a rag dipped in a strong-smelling disinfectant.

“We don’t like to bury the corpses until someone identifies them, but— Well, we won’t be able to keep these much longer.”

The moment he opened the door to the warehouse, the stench of death rolled out and hit Sam in the face. His eyes watered above the rag. Locking his jaw, he walked into the gloom.

“Worst storm I ever saw,” the customs officer muttered as he followed Sam down the narrow aisle between corpses covered by tarps. “And I’ve lived here going on twenty years now. Thirty-four dead that we know of. More, I expect, when they get a final tally on all the souls lost at sea. Here, these are the bodies we think came from the
Sea Cloud.
”

Grabbing the edge of a tarp, he dragged it off to expose a half-dozen bloated corpses. With the rag clamped tight to his face, he glanced sideways, respectfully, hopefully.

“Recognize anyone, sir?”

Sam barely heard him above the drone of the flies and the roar in his head.

“Sir? Do you know any of them?”

“Yes.” He fought for breath behind his mask. “That one on the end. He is…was…the
Sea Cloud
’s third mate. I think his name was Hawkins.”

Satisfaction flickered across the mortuary officer’s face. One more unknown identified and ready for disposal. He gave Sam another moment to check the sightless eyes and pale, swollen faces before flicking the tarp back over the bodies.

“Thanks for your assistance, Captain Garrett. I’ll—”

“There were two women aboard that ship. Hasn’t anyone found a trace of them?”

“We only have one unclaimed female. I don’t think she’s from the
Sea Cloud.
They dug her out from under a pile of rubble.”

“Where is she?”

“Here, sir.”

When the tarp tugged off, relief whipped through Sam, followed instantly by a wild hope. And guilt, razor swift and cutting. He shouldn’t have sent up a swift prayer of thanks that the woman was short and stout and well into her middle years, but he couldn’t help himself.

“She’s not one of the women I’m looking for.”

The mortuary officer sent him an apologetic glance. “Could be their bodies just haven’t washed ashore yet. Or they may be trapped inside the ship. The navy’s going to send divers down once they finish with their own ships.”

Sam’s jaw worked. Nodding, he walked out of the storeroom.

Five days later, he gave up his last shred of hope.

Key West had been rebuilt after a fire in 1886 destroyed most of its buildings. The hurricane of 1898 wreaked considerably more havoc, but, as it had before, the city dragged itself from the ruins. With a civilian population of more than eighteen thousand, an active navy base at the tip of the harbor and bustling sponge and cigar-making industries, the scars healed slowly, but they healed.

Determined teams of citizens and seamen cleared the debris. Temporary plywood structures went up. Divers finished the grim task of retrieving those bodies they could from the sunken ships. The mortuary officer released the unidentified corpses for burial in a mass grave. Business reopened and, incredibly, the mule-drawn trolley resumed operation.

Sam wrote a draft on the local bank to cover the cost of a change of clothes and basic necessities. He spent his five days in Key West checking in at the Customs House, helping with the cleanup where
he could and asking everyone he encountered if they had word of either Victoria or Mary.

He spent his nights on a cot in one of the tents thrown up for the homeless, staring up at the musty canvas. Their faces haunted him. Mary’s, so flushed and fevered when he’d last seen her. Victoria’s, so beautiful and determined. He knew Mary’s loss would throb like an open wound for years to come, but Victoria—

Dear God, Victoria.

Regret sliced into him with every heartbeat. He’d done everything wrong a man could do. Blinded by her youth and innocence, he hadn’t seen the woman emerging from the girl. Worse, he hadn’t known how to handle her when she shed her cocoon and came into her own. He’d blustered, threatened, seduced, demanded. Too late, he’d come to recognize her talent, her tenacity, her courage.

Now, just when he’d come to appreciate the incredible woman who’d given herself to him, he’d lost her.

With an ache that sawed right down to his bones, Sam threw his arm over his eyes and waited for the dawn.

He booked passage from Key West to Tampa the same afternoon telegraph service was restored. With poles and lines blown down all across the island, he hadn’t been able to contact his family. Or
Victoria’s. Now he had no choice. It was time to tell them what happened. Time to go home.

Time to admit she was gone.

His face grim, he walked into the tarpaper-and-plywood shack serving as a temporary cable office. Two operators, one a scarecrow of a man, the other a woman with her hair bundled up in a puffy chignon, sweated behind upturned packing crates that served as both counter and telegraph station.

A long line had formed—somber citizens, sailors anxious to reassure worried relatives, businessmen in bowlers, their starched collars wilting in the heat. Sam waited his turn, his gaze fixed on a glistening teardrop of tar inching its way down the wall. Finally, he reached the female operator.

Her pencil poised to take down his message, she raised her head. “Yes?”

The breath slammed out of Sam. He stood riveted to the floor, every muscle taut.

“Sir? May I help…? Sir!” Her polite inquiry spiraled to a shriek. “What are you doing!”

Ignoring her startled screech, Sam leaned over the packing crate and wrapped his fingers around the pin dangling above her bosom. One vicious tug ripped it away, along with a good portion of her white blouse. His eyes blazing, he closed his fist around the heart-shaped locket.

“Where did you get this?”