You Belong to My Heart (16 page)

But John Thomas Preble was unreachable.

O
N THE ROLLING DECKS
of the southbound navy screw sloop
Water Witch,
a tall, solitary figure stood on the bow in the late night darkness. Dressed for the frigid temperatures of the open sea in winter, the lean officer wore dark woolen trousers, a high-necked pullover sweater, a heavy woolen seaman’s jacket, and a black watch cap.

The winds ruffled locks of the blue-black hair escaping his watch cap and pressed his dark trousers against his hard thighs and long legs. His feet were braced apart in the stance adapted by seamen who often stand on the pitching decks of a moving ship.

His balance perfect despite the rough seas, he withdrew a thin brown cigar and match from his inside breast pocket. He put the cheroot between his lips, struck the match with his thumbnail, then cupped his hands around the tiny flame while he puffed the smoke to life.

Captain Clay Knight drew deeply on his cigar. Orange sparks blew around his head and dissipated quickly in the strong north winds.

This cold dark night was, Captain Knight reflected, but one of hundreds like it that he had spent on the heaving deck of a moving ship. He had been at sea when winter storms had struck with full, dangerous fury. He remembered ropes and halyards sheathed with ice and the crew suffering from frostbite and bitter debilitating cold. He recalled winds so strong that he had to shout to be heard above the roar of the waves, and the motion of the ship was so great it seemed as if she were racing when she was only rising and lowering with the giant waves, making no forward progress.

He remembered the hauling of ropes that bit into his raw hands and the chopping of ice and fighting the elements and the heavy darkness that came far too early on those short, leaden days. He remembered so many cold, lonely nights he had spent on the deck of a ship far, far from shore.

Yet never, it seemed, far enough.

Since his graduation from Annapolis a dozen years ago, Captain Knight had been at sea for months at a stretch and had dropped anchor in many a foreign port. From the beginning he had volunteered for any campaign he heard of that would take him a great distance from America’s shores, as if the more miles he put between himself and Memphis, Tennessee, the less he would think of Mary Ellen Preble Lawton.

In September of 1852, just three months after graduation, he’d been one of a handful of stripers who’d graduated to the fleet to be sent with a hundred marines on the gunship
Jamestown
down to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to protect Americans living there.

In June of 1853 he’d been sent out on an expedition aboard the
Brinkley
to chart the Pacific islands from the Aleutians to Japan. Called back to shore duty in San Francisco after nine months, he was immediately shipped out as third mate aboard the
Bryson
to Shanghai in April of 1854.

He was with a landing party of ninety men under Commander John Kelly of the frigate
Wichita,
which joined a British naval detachment to drive out the Chinese forces threatening the foreign concessions at Shanghai.

In 1855 it was consular duty in Hong Kong, then later that same year the Fiji islands. In 1856 he led a small landing party from the sloop
Decatur,
who helped the settlers of Seattle, Washington, repel an attack by a thousand hostile Indians.

He spent the majority of 1857 in the States, lecturing at Annapolis, and near the end of the year was promoted to the rank of full Lieutenant.

In 1858 he was down in Paraguay as second officer aboard the gunship
Freedom
and at the mouth of the Congo in 1859.

Now, in early January of 1861, newly commissioned Captain Clay Knight was ten days out of the Norfolk navy yard, where the
Water Witch
had had a complete refit. Bound for his Western Station—the port of San Francisco—the voyage would take him down around the Cape.

It was a long journey, and they would make at least four stops along the way, the first and longest at the tropical seaside city of Rio de Janeiro. The crew was already looking forward to liberty in the warm Brazilian port.

Smoking alone in the darkness on that cold January night, Captain Clay Knight continued to reflect on all the years he’d spent at sea and all the places he’d seen and all the women he’d had. He shook his dark head, and his full lips slowly turned up into a self-mocking grin.

Through all the years and all the places and all the women, he had never managed to totally forget Mary. There had been times, brief and far apart, when his vision of her had dimmed. Times when he had trouble remembering exactly what she looked like, what her voice sounded like, what it felt like to have her arms around him.

Then, like a bolt of the blue, some long forgotten memory would rise up to torture him. And there she’d be before him, her image so vivid, so real, his fingers ached to touch her. He could almost taste the sweetness of her kisses, could almost feel the warmth of her slender body moving against his own.

Captain Clay Knight finally threw back his dark head and laughed at himself as he stood alone on the bow of the
Water Witch.
Serious trouble was looming on America’s horizon. His nation was on the brink of a civil war. A war that would cost untold lives, maybe his own. Yet here he was thinking about Mary Ellen Preble Lawton.

Thank God no one—especially Mary—knew what a sentimental fool he was.

His laughter soon stopped and his firm jaw tightened. His gray eyes narrowed as he flicked his smoked-down cigar into the sea.

If his love had never fully died, neither had his hatred. It was the only thing that had saved him. Anytime he wistfully remembered Mary as being an honest, sweet, loving girl, he quickly reminded himself that she had proven to be none of those things.

She was, in fact, a deceitful, cruel, incredibly cold woman who hadn’t thought twice about stepping on his heart. He was glad he would never see the beautiful bitch again.

I
T WAS NEARING SUNSET
when the glittering jewel of Brazil’s long Atlantic coast came up on the starboard bow of the
Water Witch.
Spectacular Rio de Janeiro seemed to have washed in with the tide. It was a stunning sight: the sandy beaches and graceful valleys and hillsides of tropical mountains.

To the sea-weary sailors of the
Water Witch,
Rio looked like a breathtakingly beautiful woman with arms outstretched, seductively beckoning them to come to her.

The
Witch
steamed into Guanabara Bay as the lights of the magical city twinkled on along the sugary white beaches and purple hills above. With a sure hand and a keen eye, the pilot guided the
Witch
cautiously toward its berth in the harbor where dozens of other ships, great and small, were moored.

She slid slowly in between a tacky brown tug and an impressive white-hulled clipper. When the yawl line was tossed to the wharf and the anchor lowered, the
Witch
was berthed at approximately the same site where the first Portuguese sailors had landed more than three hundred fifty years before.

There had been no one to welcome those Portuguese sailors of old, but down on the docks on this warm February evening, a swarm of smiling, waving
Cariocas
—mostly female—were eager to show the American sailors their beloved city. A city that throbbed with excitement and sensuality twenty-four hours a day.

The crew of the
Witch,
freshly shaven and neatly uniformed, shouted and waved madly to the pretty women below, so anxious to step onto Brazilian soil they could hardly contain themselves. Their blood up, they felt as if they couldn’t wait another minute to get off the ship and explore the many delights of the seaside tropical paradise.

One of their number would have to wait.

Captain Clay Knight was almost as eager as the others to enjoy the pleasures of Rio. Too long without a woman, he fully intended—before the evening ended—to lose himself for a few hours in the arms of a warm and willing Brazilian beauty.

But first he had a duty to perform.

He was to be one of the honored guests at a welcoming party given by retired naval Captain John D. Willingham, an old-timer who had served under Clay’s grandfather in the War of 1812. The aging Captain Willingham had married a wealthy Rio heiress and made Rio de Janeiro his home after leaving the service.

Clay was due at the Willinghams in an hour.

Presently he stood apart from the boisterous crew, a pair of field glasses swinging from his neck. His eyes and his interest were on the gleaming white clipper moored next to the
Water Witch.
Clay knew that the impressive white ship was not a naval vessel.

It was, he supposed, the private oceangoing craft of some incredibly rich Brazilian. A lover of beautiful ships, Clay was fascinated with the tall white clipper. He studied the magnificent vessel from stem to stern, raised his field glasses, and searched its teak deck for passengers. He saw no one. He smiled when he read the ship’s name painted boldly in big blue script letters on the pristine white bow:
Açúcar.

Açúcar,
Clay knew, meant sugar in Portuguese. He made a face. What kind of man would name his ship Sugar?

Starting to grin, he lowered the glasses but continued to examine the craft until the sun had totally disappeared behind Rio’s towering hills and he had to get dressed and go.

It was summertime in Rio de Janeiro, so Captain Clay Knight was in immaculate crisp summer whites and ceremonial sword when he stepped onto the ancient wharf. He walked wharfside beneath the bowsprits of giant ships lining the harbor, their bare spars towering into the rapidly darkening sky.

The long wooden levee was crowded on this warm early evening. Portuguese longshoremen were grouped together at various spots along the wharf, kneeling around dice games, waiting to be called to work.

Shifty-eyed men lounged against brick-fronted warehouses, eyeing passersby, procuring for the side street bagnios that catered to deep-water seamen.

Clay shook his head almost imperceptibly when they made a move to approach him. They backed away.

He soon left the wharf behind, crossed busy Avenida Presidente Vargas, and hailed a taxi. When he was settled comfortably on the worn leather seat, the open taxi began its ascent up the steep, winding hillside roads of Rio.

His long arm resting along the seat top, his dark head turning this way, then that, Clay admired the stunning combination of topography that was Rio: dark blue seas studded with rocky islands and tumbling wooded mountains and expanses of stark gray rock that surrounded the city.

Rio on a summer’s night such as this was powerfully seductive. The sights and sounds and smells stirred the senses, and Clay was anxious to leave Captain Willingham’s even before he arrived.

It was straight up eight when the smartly uniformed Captain Clay Knight, his billed cap tucked under his arm, rang the bell at a hilltop house with incredible vistas of the lighted city and harbor below.

The heavy carved door swung open, and a breathtakingly beautiful young girl with white-blond hair and huge dark eyes stood before him.

“Don’t tell me,” she said, smiling brightly. “You’re Captain Clay Knight.” She put out her hand. “I’m Jo Anna Willingham, John D. Willingham’s granddaughter. I’m here visiting from New Orleans, and I insist you sit by me at dinner!”

“I’d be honored,” Clay said when he was able to speak. His gray eyes darkened to a deep, warm charcoal.

“I told them you would be,” said the slender blond charmer. After taking his arm, she led him into the noisy drawing room, where guests stood about talking and sipping chilled wine.

The affair was an informal gathering of thirty people, of whom the majority of the gentlemen were either naval officers of the line or retired old salts. Clay was one of four bachelors present. An equal number of unattached young ladies were there to make sure the bachelors felt welcome.

The outgoing Jo Anna Willingham took her responsibility seriously. She meant to personally see to it that the darkly handsome Captain Clay Knight felt right at home.

In a roomful of military men the conversation turned naturally to the storm brewing back in the states. The aging Captain Willingham said, “If South Carolina seceded from the Union back on December twentieth, then other Southern states would have likely followed by now. Or they soon will. I see no way around it. The South will be fighting the North before summer, mark my words.”

At these words, Willingham’s wife of forty years spoke up and said, “Now, Captain, you promised you’d not get off on the subject of war until at least after dinner.”

“So I did, my dear.” He smiled sheepishly at her, then said, “We’ll continue this talk later, gentlemen.”

When the leisurely meal was finally finished, the silver-haired host suggested the ladies retire to the parlor while the gentlemen join him in his library for fine Havana cigars and Napoleon brandy and further discussion of the imminent war between the states.

His dauntless granddaughter said, “Sorry, Grandfather, but I promised Captain Knight I’d show him your famous flower gardens.” She cut her dark eyes at Clay flirtatiously and gave him a saucy smile.

“Why, child, it’s nighttime,” said John D. Willingham. “The Captain can’t appreciate my prize blooms in the darkness.”

“There’s a full moon,” Jo Anna reminded him. She took Clay’s arm and guided him from the dining room while the remaining three single ladies cast looks of envy after them.

Clay would have preferred not to go out into the moonlight with this irrepressible young beauty who so reminded him of the woman it had taken him a dozen years to get over. Her hair was the same white-blond shade, and she wore it loose and long as Mary had when she was a young girl. Her eyes were large and dark and expressive. Her nubile body was tall and slender, with gentle, tempting curves.

Just like Mary’s.

Clay wanted her instantly.

He wanted this beautiful replica of the young Mary as he’d not wanted a woman in years. He could hardly keep from drawing her into his arms and quieting her charming girlish chatter with his lips.