Windswept (28 page)

“Because I need to tell you more about Belle Isle,” he said. Quite unexpectedly his voice rumbled with a feral wariness that shattered her previous impression of him and left her dazzled with doubt, not bliss. “There are things you need to know, and there are rules. You must follow them exactly or I will take measures to see that you do. You must promise me.”

Rules? Follow them exactly? Take measures?
And just moments ago she had almost likened him to a lover! She had thought he might actually whisper some word of endearment to her.
Fool, Nora
!

She unfolded herself from his embrace and stepped back to face him. She hoped he noticed that the stars he’d caused to shine in her eyes had been snuffed out, because it was the cold, hard steel of his voice that had done it.

“And exactly what rules are you referring to, Jacob?” she asked, her eyes the cold blue of an ice floe.

For the first time since he’d met her, he could picture her with a school marm’s temperament. She wasn’t as harsh as the middle-aged Welsh harridan his mother had hired to tutor him at Braxton, but her posture was suddenly just as rigid and her voice nearly as frosty.

He attempted a smile, but let it fade when it wasn’t reciprocated. “I can see I haven’t fallen into your good graces with the word, ‘rules.’”

Her eyes narrowed threateningly, and he sucked in a whistle of air. “These rules are for your own protection, Nora.”

“Protection from what?” she demanded. “I’m really growing tired of all this secrecy and talk of danger and lack of security. I would appreciate some answers to the hopefully irrational questions that keep building in my mind, Jacob. Otherwise I’m apt to become as paranoid as you are.”

He called to his crew playing cards. “Will, would you take the wheel?”

Once free of responsibility, Jacob took Nora’s arm and led her to a remote area of the ship. They were hidden from the others by Jacob’s cabin walls. Under a cloud-covered sky, the night was pitch black. A light from a lantern in Jacob’s quarters provided the only meager illumination in the passageway.

Jacob drew a deep breath while deciding how much he should tell her. Enough to make her wary but not enough to frighten her. He’d made his decision to take her to Belle Isle, and she’d seemed in agreement. Neither of them could go back on that decision now, but Jacob couldn’t see a reason for making her days on the island fraught with fear and anxiety.

He’d been staring out to sea, aware of her mounting impatience, but now he turned to face her. “Very simply,” he began, “my father is not a pleasant or hospitable man.”

“Then you must be the very picture of the man who sired you,” she said. “I’ve had acquaintance with fathers who are not a picture of amicability all the time,” she added.

“If you’re referring to the judge, let me assure you, he is nothing like Harrison Proctor. Your father may be prejudicial and judgmental, but he is not bitter and mean and bent on the destruction of everyone and everything around him.”

“Oh, Jacob…” She rolled her eyes suggesting his description of his father was somehow a gross exaggeration. He couldn’t let her believe that.

“You asked for answers, Nora, and I’m giving them to you. All I ask in return is that you accept what I’m telling you as truth.”

The skepticism left her eyes and was replaced by a reluctant capitulation. “All right, Jacob. What has made your father this way?”

Choosing his words carefully, Jacob only half explained. “Eighteen years ago, he was the victim of a vicious attack with a dagger. The blade pierced his chest numerous times, severing nerves in his spine and severely damaging his lungs.”

Nora’s hand flew to her mouth to cover a shriek of horror. “My God,” she uttered through her fingers. “Who did this horrible thing?”

The image of his mother’s hands dripping with blood, her clothes covered with the life fluid running from his father’s wounds pierced Jacob’s mind again with a force almost equal to the dagger’s that night. He winced from the very real pain that sliced through his temples.

“We never found out,” he lied. “It happened on Belle Isle, and since there are no authorities on the island, the attacker, whoever it was, escaped without detection.”

The anguish he relived whenever he thought of that night was reflected in Nora’s eyes. He hadn’t intended to cause her such pain, but she accepted it courageously, and put her hand on his arm.

“I’m so sorry for you, Jacob. How old were you when it happened?”

“I was twelve.” It happened all those years ago, and yet he remembered like it was yesterday. He had heard his father’s shouts of fear and then pain and had run to the solarium. But he was too late to prevent the attack. By the time he threw open the doors and stepped into the room, his father was lying in a pool of blood. His mother, unaware of her son’s presence or his screams of terror, dropped to her knees beside her husband’s body and wailed, long, pitiful screeches that reminded Jacob of tales of the banshees.

“Jacob, you didn’t see your father that way…”

“No,” he lied again. “I was only told about the incident after the island healer had been called.”

“Thank God. And your mother? Was she with him? Was she hurt?”

“She wasn’t hurt. But she saw him…the way he was, before the healer came.”

“How awful that must have been for her.”

He remembered her uncontrollable trembling, her wretched cries, the oaths against God. She tried to turn the dagger into her own chest, but Jacob, with all the strength of his twelve year old body had wrenched it from her and thrown it out the window. Her curses turned on him, and she struck out with her fists. He dodged her ineffectual punches, begging her to stop until finally servants arrived and intervened. “Yes, I suppose it was awful for her,” he told Nora. “My mother died soon after it happened.”

She gripped his arm fiercely and made him look into her eyes. “How terrifying, Jacob, and how utterly sad. You were just a child.”

Terrifying, yes. But if you only knew, my childhood was over long before that.
One violent shudder racked his body the way it always did when he shook off the dreadful images. It was his body’s way of purging itself of the poison if only temporarily. But he knew the venom would come back to plague him again because the nightmares were not only a reminder of his past, but a look into his future.

“Jacob? Jacob, do you hear me?”

He locked his gaze with hers and let her soft blue eyes bring him the rest of the way back from the cold black eddy of his memories to surface in the warm lamplight of her presence. For one irrational moment he let himself hope that Nora might be the magnet that could always coax him back…that she would never allow him to be lost in the horror that waited for him. What an absurd notion when it was he who must keep her from being victimized by the poison of the Proctor family.

Nevertheless, being near her, he felt a smile come naturally to his features again, and it calmed him. “Yes, I hear you. I’m sorry I troubled you with this.”

“Jacob, is this why you think of Belle Isle as a place of danger? Do you think the evil person who did this horrible deed could still be there? Or could he return?”

“No, Nora, no, I don’t think that. I believe in my soul that the attacker is dead. I just told you about what happened so you will understand about my father. You will meet him, because you must. But stay away from him as much as you can. He is not a kind man.”

“But I understand…”

“No, you don’t! Not all of it.” Because he insisted too harshly, he gently touched her hand. “Please do as I say. I have affairs to attend to on the island, but I will do my work quickly and we will be on our way back to Key West before too many days have passed. While I’m occupied, stay in your room or the back garden. You will be safe there. But don’t venture out on your own, Nora. Promise me.”

Interminable seconds passed before she answered him. “All right, Jacob. You don’t need to worry about me.”

He wrapped her tightly in his arms marveling at how she merged with the crooks and planes of his body. She was as soft as the grass that carpeted the hillsides of Belle Isle. Her breath against his chest the whisper of leaves in the parrot trees. The comfort he felt with her willowy body melded with his seemed as enduring as the rugged candlebush that blazed golden beside island trails to the sea.

Desire heated in his groin and licked with hot flames to every tingling nerve. He felt himself grow hard against her belly. His arms ached with the longing to scoop her into his embrace and carry her to his cabin. There he would strip her of her flowered garment and shake the pins from her hair. He would feast upon the perfection of her nakedness and write a love song to her body with his hands. Then, when he entered her, and her warmth surrounded him, he knew he would be reborn, and the devils of Belle Isle would be no more because he would be new.

With his index finger, he cupped her chin and lifted her face. “You are very dear, Nora,” he said and pressed his lips on hers for a chaste kiss that satisfied his conscience, but certainly not his soul. Nor his heart.

“Now go,” he said, and shooed her toward Will’s cabin. “Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

Chapter Seventeen

Thurston Seabrook longed for breakfasts the way they used to be before his life was turned upside down. Of course he wished more than anything to have his daughter back home. Her welfare was on his mind every waking hour of every day.

Her disappearance had disrupted nearly every aspect of his life from his physical health to his personal relationships, and especially to his state of mind. The transformation in his breakfast ritual was just a minor example of the upheaval in his routine the last few days, but to Thurston it was a symbol of all that had gone wrong.

It wasn’t Portia’s fault. Even in the gloomy atmosphere that pervaded every nook and crevice of the Seabrook house, she still managed to set a fine table. Heaped on Thurston’s plate this morning was a mound of scrambled eggs seasoned with those little red things that Portia kept shrouded in mystery but which made an ordinary egg a culinary masterpiece. And there were three buttermilk biscuits slathered with honey, six slices of bacon, procured at no small expense, and chunks of golden mango. All of these varied delectable scents mingled with the steam of strong, black, Bahamian coffee. Tantalizing to be sure, but Thurston had barely eaten a bite.

“Oh, Thurston, I just don’t see how I can go on another day,” Sidonia moaned from across the table.

As usual he couldn’t see her face since it was buried in her hands. Truly, he’d seen very little of her features since Nora left. If Sidonia weren’t crying into her palms or a handkerchief, she was covered in cool compresses or resting with a pillow over her head. If it weren’t for her voice intermittently bellowing in grievous despair, Thurston might never have recognized the trembling bundle of silk and lace as his own wife.

“You have to do something, Thurston!” she cried louder.

Fanny patted her cousin’s shoulder. “Now, Sid, do calm yourself,” she said before she, too, burst into tears. “This is all my fault. If only I hadn’t let her go.”

Theo Hadley looked up from his half-eaten meal, swallowed and said, “You know, Miss Cosette, it really is your fault. Nora’s actions were guided by a motivation to trap that scoundrel Proctor. Her goals were commendable though naive. But you should have prevented her from doing something so foolish as to board his ship.”

Tears flowed freely down Fanny’s cheeks, but she still managed to bark out, “Shut up, Theo, you twit! You’re not allowed to agree with me.”

The few bites of egg and bacon that had found their way to Thurston’s stomach began their fiery climb back up his esophagus. He tried to utter words of comfort to ladies he knew were beyond comforting, but they were lost in the rumble of an acid-induced belch. He threw his napkin down on the table and stood up. “Ladies, please! I’m doing everything in my power to find Nora, but I can hardly tolerate these tedious outbursts!”

Sidonia looked up with red, swollen eyes and wailed, “Thurston, don’t yell at me. I’m much too delicate to withstand such brutal attacks.”

Fanny shook a finger at him. “Really, Thurston, can’t you see poor Sid is at her wit’s end?”

He growled. Thurston Seabrook actually growled at another human being. “And where exactly do you think I am in regard to my own wit, Fanny? Somewhere in the middle?”

Further confrontation was avoided when Portia came into the dining room from the front of the house. “Excuse me, Your Honor. I hate to interrupt tender family moments but there’s someone here to see you.”

Thurston frowned at the impertinent maid. She’d become much too comfortable with her employment lately, and he meant to speak to her about it when all this was over. She’d even gone so far as to suggest the day after Nora’s disappearance that if Nora were with Jacob Proctor, she didn’t know what all the fuss was about.

“Well who is it, Portia?” he demanded.

“It’s Mr. Hyde. He says it’s important.”

Fanny bounded from her chair before Thurston could instruct the maid to show Dillard in. Apparently her guilt and despair were momentarily forgotten in favor of more salient emotions. She soon reentered the dining room with her hand draped around Dillard Hyde’s arm.