Praise for the novels of
SUSAN WIGGS

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN

“With its lively prose, well-developed conflict and passionate characters, this enjoyable, poignant tale is certain to enchant.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

THE FIREBRAND

“With this final installment of Wiggs’s Chicago Fire trilogy, she has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound….”

—Publishers Weekly

THE MISTRESS

“Susan Wiggs delves deeply into her characters’ hearts and motivations to touch our own.”

—Romantic Times

THE HOSTAGE

“Once more, Ms. Wiggs demonstrates her ability to bring readers a story to savor that has them impatiently awaiting each new novel.”

—Romantic Times

THE CHARM SCHOOL

“The Charm School draws readers in with delightful characters, engaging dialogue, humor, emotion and sizzling sensuality.”

—Costa Mesa Sunday Times

THE DRIFTER

“A smart, unorthodox coupling to which Wiggs adds humor, brains and a certain cultivation that will leave readers anticipating her next romance.”

—Publishers Weekly

Susan Wiggs
The Lightkeeper

For Jay—again and always

You’re with me wherever I go.

Special thanks to

Barbara Dawson Smith, Betty Gyenes, Christina Dodd and Joyce Bell for performing feats of impossible electronic mail contortions in order to read and critique the manuscript.

Also, thanks to Kristin for having brainstorms when all I had was a weak drizzle, Debbie for the neurotic lunches, Suzanne for the most excellent advice and Palina Magnusdottir for the Icelandic translations.

Finally, thank you to

Robert Gottlieb and Helen Breitwieser, and to Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson of MIRA Books.

And the sea gave up the dead…

—Revelation 20:13

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Afterword

One

Washington Territory

1876

On Sunday, something washed up on shore.

The morning had dawned like all the others—a chill haze with the feeble sun behind it, iron-colored swells gathering muscle far offshore, then hurling themselves against the huddled sharp rocks of Cape Disappointment. The rising sun looked like a wound trying to break through the clouds.

All this Jesse Morgan saw from the catwalk high on the lighthouse, where he had gone to extinguish the sperm-oil lamp and start the daily chore of trimming wicks and cleaning lenses.

But it caught him, the sight down on the strand.

He wasn’t certain what made him pause, turn, stare. He supposed he had always looked but rarely paid attention. If he gazed too long at the gray-bearded waves slapping the fine brown sand or exploding against the rocks, there was a danger that he would remember what the sea had taken from him.

Most days, he didn’t look. Didn’t think. Didn’t feel.

Today he felt a disturbance in the air, like the breath of an invisible stranger on the back of his neck. One moment he was getting out his linseed oil and polishing cloths; the next he was standing in the bitter wind. Watching.

He experienced a sensation so subtle he would never quite understand what made him go to the iron rail, hold tight with one hand and lean out over the edge to look past the jut of land, beyond the square-jawed cliffs, down onto the storm-swept beach.

A mass of seaweed. Strands of golden-brown kelp shrouding an elongated shape. For all he knew it could be no more than a tangle of weeds or perhaps a dead seal, an old one whose whiskers had whitened and whose teeth had dulled.

Animals, unlike people, knew better than to live too long.

As Jesse stood staring at the shape on the beach, he felt…something. A dull knife-twist of…what? Not pain. Nor interest.

Inevitability. Destiny.

Even as the foolish thought passed through his mind, his booted feet clattered down the iron spiral of stairs. He left the lighthouse and plunged along the flinty walkway.

He didn’t have to watch his step as he followed the winding, rocky path to the desolate strand. He had made the short trek a thousand times and more.

What surprised him was that he was running.

Jesse Morgan had not been in a hurry for years.

Yet his body had never forgotten the feeling of pumping thighs and of lungs filling until the sharpness hovered between pain and pleasure. But once he reached the object on the strand, he halted. Stock-still and afraid.

Jesse Morgan had been afraid for a very long time, though no one ever would have guessed it.

To the people of Ilwaco, to the two thousand souls who lived there year-round and the extra thousand or so who migrated to the shore for the summer, Jesse Morgan was as solid and rugged and uncompromising as the sea cliffs over which he brooded in his lighthouse.

People thought him strong, fearless. He had fooled them, though. Fooled them all.

He was only thirty-four, but he felt ancient.

Now he stood alone, and the fear scorched him. He did not understand why. Until he saw something familiar within the heap of seaweed in front of him.

Oh, God. Oh, sweet Jesus. He plunged to his knees, the chill of the sodden sand seeping through his trousers, his hands trying to decide, without consulting his head, where to start. He hesitated, awkward as a bridegroom on his wedding night, about to part the final veil that draped the sweet mystery of his bride.

The strands of kelp were spongy and cold to the touch. Clinging thick and stubborn to—

To what?

He encountered a piece of fine-grained wood. Smoothed, planed, varnished. Part of a ship. A section of mast or bowsprit with rope lashed to it, the tarred ends trailing.

Stop, he told himself, already anticipating what he would find. The old horror, still raw after all these years, reared up inside him.

Stop now. He could stand and turn his back this moment, could climb the path, wend his way through the woods and rouse Palina and Magnus. Send the assistant lightkeepers to investigate.

But his hands, still the eager, persistent hands of a bridegroom, kept digging and pulling at the slimy shroud, digging and pulling, finding more and more of the mast, the broken-off end, the—

A foot. Bare. Cold as ice. The toenails like tiny seashells.

He drew a harsh breath. His hands kept working, the movement frantic, a rhythm pumped by his own pounding heart.

A slim calf. No, skinny. Skinny and dotted with freckles, stark against the lifeless ivory skin.

Jesse was swearing through gritted teeth. Fluent phrases spat past a clenched jaw. He used to talk to God. Now he swore to no one in particular.

Each passing second stood apart in time, crystallized by the knowledge he had been fleeing for years. He had come to the very ends of the earth to escape the past.

He could not escape it. Couldn’t help thinking of it. Of what the sea had stolen from him.

And of what the sea had brought him today. A woman, of course. That put the final twist of cruel irony on it.

He quickly moved upward, uncovered the face. And almost wished he hadn’t, for when he saw her, he knew why he had felt so compelled to run.

An angel had died on his beach this morning. Never mind that her halo was fashioned of kelp and endless tangled strands of dark red hair. Never mind the constellation of freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose.

This face, this pale face with its lavender bow of lips, was the one sculpted by every artist who had ever tried to turn marble to poetry. The face envisioned by hopeful dreamers who believed in miracles.

But she was dead, back in the realm of angels where she belonged, where she never should have left in the first place.

Jesse didn’t want to touch her, but his hands did. His idiot bridegroom’s hands. They took her by the shoulder and tugged gently, at the same time rolling the mast to which she was still tied. He saw her fully now, head to toe.

She was pregnant.

Rage charged like a thunderbolt through him. It was not enough that a beautiful young woman had been taken. But the sweet, round swell of her stomach, that dark mystery, that whispered promise, had been claimed, too. Two lives had been snuffed out by the merciless breath of the wind, by the wall-size waves, by the uncaring sea.

This was the start, Jesse thought as he unbound the ropes and gathered her in his arms, of a journey he had no desire to undertake.

The corpse flopped forward like a rag doll. A cold hand clutched at Jesse’s arm. He reared back, leaving her on the seeping brown sand.

She moaned and coughed out seawater.

Jesse Morgan, who rarely smiled, suddenly grinned from ear to ear. “I’ll be damned,” he said, ripping off his mackintosh. “You’re alive.”

He settled the plaid wool coat around her shoulders and picked her up in his arms.

“I’m…alive,” she echoed in the faintest of whispers. “I suppose,” she added, her head drooping forward, “that’s something.”

She spoke no more, but began to shiver violently, uncontrollably. She felt like a large fish in its death throes, and it was all Jesse could do to keep from dropping her.

Yet even as he bore his burden up the impossibly steep slope, running faster than he’d ever run in his life, he knew with stone-cold dread that this day had brought something new, something extraordinary, something endlessly fascinating and frightening, into his world.

Two

Panic rushed over him in huge, nauseating waves. Why him? Why now? He held her very life in his hands, yet saving a stranger and her unborn child was the last thing he was prepared to do.

At the same time, he knew he must rescue her. Twelve years ago, he had dedicated his life to watching over the shoals and keeping the light burning. He had taken an oath as head lightkeeper. He had no choice. No choice.

He ran swiftly, mounting the sinuous path toward the station, then racing down the other side of the promontory and into the woods where the lightkeeper’s house was located. The dead weight of her dragged at him. He took the steps two at a time, pounded across the porch, shoved the door open with his shoulder.

Plunging into the dimness of the quiet house, he brought the woman to a room off the kitchen and deposited her on the bed. The mattress was musty with disuse, the ticking worn and yellowed. He plundered a tall cabinet, finding a few old quilts and a tattersall blanket that had seen better days.

He covered the woman. She didn’t stir. He tried to get her to drink something—water, whiskey—but the liquid merely trickled over the sides of her mouth and down her neck. She was out cold.

He rushed to the porch to ring the big brass bell, summoning Magnus Jonsson and his wife Palina from their bungalow a quarter mile down the woodland path. He stirred the banked coals in the kitchen stove and filled a kettle with water, setting it on to boil. Then, bracing himself for the task ahead, he returned to the woman.

He had to get the wet dress off her. Had to touch her. Gingerly, he lifted the layers of blankets. His hand shook a little as he brushed aside a sodden strand of hair and found the top button of her dress.

The act of disrobing a woman felt alien to Jesse. Yet at the same time, it seemed unbearably familiar, as if he were that bridegroom once again.

He set his jaw and undid the row of buttons. She lay unconscious, oblivious to his clumsy manipulations as he peeled off one sleeve, then the other, rolling the flimsy wool garment over her arms and legs, dropping it on the floor.

Beneath it she wore a simple shift that had once been white. Her breasts and belly stood out in pale relief against the thin fabric. With his teeth tightly clenched, he forced himself to honor her modesty and cover her, working the shift off by touch alone. Yet he didn’t need his eyes to detect her graceful curves, the smooth texture of her skin.

Her skin was dangerously cool.

In his blind haste, he tore the shift as he finished dragging it down the length of her. He added it to the pile on the floor, tucked the blankets more securely around her and stood up.

He was shaking from head to foot.

Back in the kitchen, he filled canteens and bottles with hot water and placed them around her, insulated by the blankets. That done, he leaned against the rough-timbered wall of the room and closed his eyes briefly. Finished. That phase, at least, was over. The difficult part lay ahead.

The lightkeeper’s house was less a home than a refuge. The one-and-a-half-story dwelling, embraced by a towering forest, had been enough for Jesse, who needed little except to survive from one moment to the next. Yet now, with the light spilling through an east-facing window and slanting across the unmoving form on the bed, the house felt small, cramped. Dingy, even.

The birth-and-death room off the kitchen was designed with the idea that a patient lying abed should be close at hand, where the heart of the house beat the strongest. In all the years Jesse had lived here, no one had occupied this room, this bed.

Until now.

She lay unmoving beneath the blankets and quilts. Her face was pale and serene. Her dark red hair fanned out in untidy hanks, stiffened by salt. She held one perfect hand tucked beneath her chin. Her delicate eyelids were webbed with faint blue lines.

I’m alive. I suppose that’s something.

The words she had uttered so quietly on the beach whispered through his mind. He had thought he detected an accent of sorts, a lilting inflection that was hard to place. She hadn’t opened her eyes.

He caught himself wondering what color they were.

“Who are you?” he whispered, his voice harsh. “Who the hell are you?”

She was Sleeping Beauty from the fairy tale. Her bed should be a sunlit arbor entwined with roses, not a crude bedstead with a sagging mattress. She should awaken to Prince Charming, not to Jesse Kane Morgan.

He forced himself to turn away. It hurt to look at her, the way it hurt to look directly into the sun on a summer day. Better for all concerned if she were simply whisked away, still unconscious, never knowing who had pulled her from the sea.

Yet he had an urge to sink to his knees beside the woman, to grab her by the shoulders and plead with her to live, live.

He began to pace, wondering what was keeping the Jonssons. Trying to shove aside a jolt of urgency, Jesse observed his house through new eyes, trying to see it as a stranger would. Sturdy pine furniture, hand-hewn. A plain wag-on-the-wall clock, its long pendulum measuring the moments with unrelenting reliability. The shutters were open to the morning. Palina had offered to make curtains, but Jesse had no use for frills.

The longest wall in the keeping room was lined with books. Novels by Dumas, Flaubert, Dickens. Essays and stories by Emerson, Thoreau. When Jesse left the world behind, the only possessions he’d brought along were his books. He read constantly, voraciously, escaping into worlds of make-believe. In the early years, after the tragedy had first happened, he had clung to the books like a lifeline. The babbling voices of fictional characters had blocked out the howl of emptiness that screamed through his mind. The books kept him from going insane.

Lined up neatly on shelves in the kitchen, jars and cans and crocks were stacked by height so he always knew where his supplies were. The Acme Royal stove had been well maintained, blacked over and over again throughout the years he had been here.

The years he tried his best not to count.

Impatience drove him out to the porch to ring the bell again. He gave the rope pull a quick jerk, but he needn’t have. He could hear Magnus and Palina coming.

Their voices took on a hushed quality in the strange green wilderness that surrounded the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse Station. The forest floor was paved with layers of brown needles, cushioning their footfalls. They spoke in their native Icelandic, animatedly, like old friends who had just met again after a long separation.

It never ceased to amaze Jesse, the way they found constant interest and delight in one another, even after some thirty years of marriage. They had a grown son, Erik, who was simple but beloved of his parents. Strong as a young bullock, Erik spent his days working in contented silence around the station.

The Jonssons appeared around a bend in the forest path. The morning sun, filtered through lofty boughs of the soaring cedar and Sitka spruce trees, was kind to their aging faces, giving them a soft glow as they smiled, lifted their hands in greeting and hurried toward him.

Magnus Jonsson had a fisherman’s deep chest and broad shoulders, the result of decades spent hauling nets and cranking winches. He had retired after an injury had taken his left hand. When most men would have lain down in defeat and died, Magnus had willed himself to heal.

Beside her adored and adoring husband, Palina looked dainty, though she was as sturdy as any pioneer in the prime of life. She had bright eyes and prominent teeth, and in her face there was an unexpected depth that hinted at a keen, quiet intelligence and a vivid imagination.

“Good day, Jesse,” she said, a light singsong in her voice. “And look at the fine morning Odin has given us.” She encompassed the small clearing with a sweep of her arm, showing off her bright orange shawl. On the slope below, the horse pasture shone in the radiance of the sun.

“All the clouds chased off and the fog burned away by the breath of Aegir,” Magnus added.

Jesse nodded a greeting. He had grown used to their constant references to the legends of the sea. And who was he to discount them? Many of the ancient tales they recounted held an almost eerie ring of truth.

“That’s not all the morning brought,” he said, motioning them up the steps to the porch. He pushed open the door and held it as they moved inside. They followed him through the keeping room and past the kitchen, into the birth-and-death room.

When the Jonssons spied the woman on the bed, they froze, clutching each other’s hands.

“Hamingjan góoa,” Magnus said under his breath. “And what is this?”

“She washed up on the beach from a shipwreck.” Feeling inexplicably awkward, Jesse was reminded of a moment in his boyhood, when he’d gotten a gift he hadn’t wanted. What did one say?

Thank you.

But he wasn’t thankful, not in that way.

“She’s still alive,” he said clumsily.

Palina was already bending toward the woman, clucking like a hen over a chick. Jesse moved closer. “Isn’t she?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. Alive but nearly frozen, litla greyid, little one. Build up the fire in the stove, Magnus,” she said over her shoulder. “Ah, you’ve got the wet dress off her.” There was no censure in her tone; she was as familiar as he with warming chilled victims.

“She needs dry clothes, quickly.” Palina took one of the woman’s hands and gently cradled it between her own. “Ah, blessed, blessed day. Never have I known the gods of the sea to give a man such a gift.”

A gift?

Foolishness. Superstition.

Now, where the hell was he to get clean, dry clothing for a woman? He possessed only two sets of clothes—winter and summer. Kentucky jeans, several shirts and standard-issue lightkeeper’s livery. Those he wasn’t wearing on his back were currently in the laundry kettle, ready to be boiled on the stove. Just this morning he had put his only nightshirt in to wash.

“You must have something at your house for her to wear, Palina,” he said.

“Ah, no. She’s half-frozen already. Just find something—anything!”

“There is noth—” Jesse cut himself off. Against his will, he glanced at the foot of the bed, where an old sea chest sat.

“There’s nothing,” he lied hoarsely, his throat raw. “Look, I can get to your house and back in ten min—”

“I need the dry clothing now.” Palina fixed him with a gaze that dared him to defy her. “She needs them now.”

Jesse clenched his fists. No. He recoiled at the idea of plundering his past. But then, with the reluctant movements of a condemned man, he did something he’d sworn he would never do.

He lifted the lid of the sea chest and removed the sectioned tray from the top.

A scent too rich and evocative to be borne wafted from the contents, and he almost reeled back. Emily. He plunged his hand into the stacks of folded clothes, found the thick, smooth texture of cotton flannel, yanked it out and flung it at Palina. I’m sorry, Emily. “Here,” he said gruffly. “I’ll help Magnus with the fire.”

Feeling the burn of Palina’s intense curiosity, he stalked out of the house and down to the side yard, grabbing his ax from the toolshed.

He upended a huge log and lifted the ax high in both hands, bringing it down to split the timber with a single blow. The heart of the wood appeared torn and shredded, a fresh kill. Jesse split it again and again with the grim, rhythmic violence that coursed through his body.

But mere expended energy couldn’t keep the demons out. He had known that even before he’d opened the sea chest—a Pandora’s box he had been trying to keep shut for most of his adult life.

Though he had barely looked at the flannel nightgown he’d handed Palina, he could see the fabric in its minutest detail—the little green leaves and blue flowers, the bits of white trim circling the neckline and wrists. Worst of all, the scent still clung to the garment.

His wife’s scent. It was as haunting as a melody, bringing back wave after wave of unwanted memories. He could see her, could hear the sound of her laughter and smell the soaps and powders she stroked across her skin.

Even after all these years, he still bled inside when he thought of her. Of them. Of the hopes and dreams he had so thoughtlessly shattered.

He brought the ax down relentlessly, over and over, trying to purge himself of all feeling. His shoulders ached and sweat ran down his face, into his eyes and over his neck and chest. By the time Magnus came out, a huge supply of freshly cut wood lay massacred around Jesse.

Magnus stared at the wood. “You had best come in now,” he said.

The house was warm, almost oppressively so. The woman’s blue dress had been added to the laundry vat on the stove. Jesse hated the thought of the stranger’s garment mingling with his own in the kettle.

Palina was bent over the bed, plumping pillows behind the woman and clucking, always clucking.

“You’re a meddlesome old biddy, Palina,” Jesse said. He was surprised. He sounded almost…normal.

“And proud of it,” she retorted.

If Jesse had been the sort of man who smiled, he would have just then. He harbored genuine liking for Magnus and Palina, who knew when to keep their distance and when to lend a hand. At the moment, he needed their help.

“Well?” Palina prodded him. “Aren’t you going to ask if your little visitor is all right?”

“Is she?”

Palina nodded, smoothing her hands down the front of her white apron. “With plenty of attention and care, she and the little one will be just fine.”

He almost flinched at the mention of the baby, but he forced himself to remain stoic, emotionless. “We can use the flatbed cart to get her to your place,” he said.

“No,” said Palina.

“Then I’ll carry her—”

“Not so fast, my friend.” Magnus held up his good hand. “The woman is not coming with us.”

“Of course she is. Where else—”

“Here,” Palina said with brisk finality. “Right here, where she can heal and grow strong in the care of the man who found her. The man for whom the gift was intended.”

“We must be practical,” Magnus added. “You have plenty of space here. We have but two cramped rooms and a loft for Erik.”

Jesse forced out a dry bark of laughter. “That’s impossible. I don’t even keep a dog, for chrissakes. I can’t keep a—a—”

“Woman,” Palina said. “A woman who is with child. Can you not even say it? Can you not even speak the truth when it is right here before you?”

Panic flickered to life inside Jesse. The Jonssons were serious. They actually expected him to keep this stranger. Not just keep her, but tend to her every need, nurture and heal her.

“She’s not staying.” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice. “If you won’t tend her, I’ll take her to town.”

Magnus spoke in Icelandic to his wife, who nodded sagely and touched her neat kerchief. “Moving her would be a terrible risk after the shock she has suffered.”

“But—” Jesse clamped his mouth shut until his jaw ached. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard as if trying to squeeze out a simple solution. If Palina was right, and something terrible befell the woman as a result of moving her, he would feel responsible.

Again. Always.

“It is the law of the sea,” Magnus said, running his weathered right hand through his bushy hair. “God has given her to you.”

They stood together on the tiled hearth in front of the massive black stove, Palina absently tugging at a thread on Magnus’s empty white sleeve. Yet her gaze never left Jesse’s, and he saw again a spark of faith, ancient and obstinate, in the depths of her eyes.

Faith.

“I don’t believe in the old sea legends,” he said. “Never have.”

“It does not matter what you believe. It is still true,” Magnus said.

Palina set her hands on her hips. “There are things that come to us from beyond eternity, things we have no right to question. This is one of them.”

Every aching fiber that made up Jesse Morgan leaped and tensed in painful denial. He would not, could not, accept this stranger into his house, into his world.

“She can’t stay.” Fear turned his voice to a whiplash of anger. “I can’t give her anything. Can’t give her help or hope or healing. There’s nothing here for her, don’t you understand that? She’d stand a better chance in hell.”

The words were out before he realized what he was saying. They came from the poisoned darkness inside him, and they rang with undeniable truth.

Magnus and Palina exchanged a glance and some low words. Then Palina tilted her head to one side. “You will do what you must for the sake of this woman. This child.” Her eyes sharpened with insight. “Twelve years ago, the sea took from you everything you held dear.” Her words dropped heavily into the silence. “Now, perhaps, it has given something back.”

The couple left the house. Jesse had no doubt that Palina was aware of what she had just done. She had breached the bounds of their association. In twelve years, no one—no one—had dared to speak to him of what had happened. That was the way he had coped—by not speaking of something that lived with him through each breath he took.

He stalked out to the porch. “Get back here, goddammit!” he yelled across the yard. He had never yelled at these people, never sworn at them. But their stubborn refusal to help him set off his temper. “Get the hell back here and help me with this—this—”

Palina turned to him as she reached the bend in the path. “Woman is the word you want, Jesse. A woman who is with child.”

“Can you believe this, D’Artagnan?” Jesse asked in annoyance. He dismounted and tethered his horse to the hitch rail in front of the Ilwaco Mercantile. “The Jonssons think I have to keep that infernal woman because of some legend of the sea. I never heard of such a damned cockamamy thing. It’s about as crazy as—”

“As talking to your horse?” asked someone on the boardwalk behind Jesse.

He turned, already feeling a scowl settle between his brows. “D’Artagnan gets skittish in town, Judson.”

Judson Espy, the harbormaster, folded his arms across his chest, rocked back on his heels and nodded solemnly. “I’d be skittish, too, if you named me after some Frenchy.”

“D’Artagnan is the hero of The Three Musketeers.”

Judson looked blank.

“It’s a novel.”

“Uh-huh. Well, if the poor nag is so damned nervous, you ought to let me take him off your hands.”

“You’ve been trying to buy this horse for ten years.”

“And you’ve been saying no for ten years.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t caught on yet.” Jesse skimmed his hand across the gelding’s muscular neck. D’Artagnan had come into his life at a low point, when he had just about decided to give up…on everything. A Chinook trader had sold him the half-wild yearling, and Jesse had raised it to be the best horse the territory had ever seen. Over the years, he’d added three more to the herd at the lighthouse station—Athos, Porthos and Aramis completed the cast of the Musketeers.

He joined Judson on the walkway. Their boots clumped as the two men passed the mercantile. As stately as a river barge, the widow Hestia Swann came out of the shop. Touching a bonnet that was more flower arrangement than hat, she lifted a gloved hand with a tiny wisp of handkerchief pinched between her thumb and forefinger.

“Hello, Mr. Espy. And Mr. Morgan. This is a surprise.” She hung back, keeping a polite distance.

Jesse didn’t take offense. He was a stranger to most of these people, even after twelve years. He didn’t blame them for being wary of him.

“Mrs. Swann,” he said, lifting his oiled-canvas hat.

A smile forced its way across her lips. Famous for her social pretensions, Mrs. Swann was unfailingly cordial to him—because of his family in Portland.

As if that mattered anymore.

“How do, ma’am?” Judson said. Jesse started to edge away.

She waved the handkerchief limply at her face. “Not so well, Mr. Espy, but bless you for asking. Ever since Sherman was lost at sea, I’ve been suffering from melancholia. It’s been two years, but it feels like an eternity.”

“Sorry to hear that, ma’am. You take care, now.” Judson turned to Jesse as they started walking again. “What’s this about you keeping a woman at your house?”

He’d raised his voice deliberately; Jesse was sure of it. Hestia Swann, who had been heading for her Studebaker buggy in the road, stopped and stiffened as if someone had rammed a broomstick up the back of her dress. With a loud creaking of whalebone corsets, she turned and bore down on them.

“What?” she demanded. “Mr. Morgan’s got a woman at the lightkeeper’s house?”

Judson nodded. Mischief gleamed in his eye. “Ay-uh. That’s what he said. I just heard him telling his horse.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Why would he be talking to his horse?”

“Because he’s Jesse Morgan.”

“And he’s not deaf,” Jesse said in irritation.

“You hush up,” snapped Mrs. Swann. “This is serious business, keeping a woman—”

“I’m not keeping her—”

“Ah! So there is a woman!” Mrs. Swann exclaimed.

“What’s that?” Abner Cobb came out of the mercantile, his apron clanking with its load of penny nails and brass tacks.

Jesse fought an urge to jump on D’Artagnan and head for the hills to the south of town.

“Jesse Morgan is keeping a woman at his house,” Hestia Swann announced in her most tattle-sharp voice.

Grinning, Abner thumped Jesse on the back. “’Bout time, I’d say. You haven’t had female company since we’ve known you.”

“She’s not company,” Jesse said, but no one heard him. A babble of voices rose as others came out to the boardwalk to hear about this extraordinary development at the lighthouse station. Abner’s wife joined them, closely followed by Bert Palais, editor of the Ilwaco Journal.

“Where’d she come from?” Bert asked, scribbling notes on a sheet of foolscap.

“I found her on—”

“Oh, I imagine the big city,” Mrs. Swann proclaimed, her prominent bosom rising and falling with self-importance. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Morgan?”

“Actually, she—”

“Perhaps she was someone he knew in Portland,” the widow decided, then nodded in agreement with her own deduction while a few more people joined the group. “Yes, that’s it. Jesse is one of the Morgans of Portland.” She leaned over Bert’s shoulder. “His family owns the Shoalwater Bay Company. They have connections well down into San Francisco, did you know that?”

“Of course I know that,” the newspaper editor said. Not to be outdone, he added, “Mr. and Mrs. Horatio Morgan left in April for a grand tour of Europe.”

“I remember reading about that big society wedding a few years back,” Mrs. Cobb remarked. “Annabelle Morgan and Granger Clapp, was it?”

Hestia’s chin bobbed like a wattle as she vigorously agreed. “Jesse’s sister. It was the wedding of the decade, to hear people talk. Now, I wonder, is this woman a friend of Ann—”

Jesse didn’t stay to hear more. He walked away, feeling like a carcass being picked clean by buzzards. Ordinarily, he did his business in town in a perfunctory fashion and got out, attracting as little attention as possible. No one except Judson, who hurried to catch up with him, seemed to notice that he had broken from the crowd.

“Much obliged,” Jesse said through his teeth. He turned down an alleyway off Main Street.

“Where’re you going?” Judson asked.

“To get Doc MacEwan.”

“The woman needs a doctor?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, she sick or something?”

“Or something.”

Judson scowled in frustration. “Well, what the hell is it, then?”

“She’s pregnant.”

Judson struck himself on the forehead and stumbled back. “Well, I’ll be. You devil, you, Jesse—”

“And if you breathe a goddamned word of this,” Jesse warned him, “I’ll—”

He was too late. Judson was already running back around the corner. “Hey, everybody!” he bellowed to the crowd on the boardwalk. “Guess what?”

Jesse took hold of the brass handle on the door to the doctor’s surgery. He stood for a moment, wondering what had happened to his quiet, isolated existence. Then he thumped his brow against the door once, twice, three times.

It didn’t help.

Dr. MacEwan reveled in being a source of constant controversy. A proponent of radical medical ideas garnered from a fancy eastern college, the physician was aggressive, compassionate, outspoken and undeniably skilled.

Still, many in the close-knit community of Ilwaco regarded Dr. Fiona MacEwan with deep suspicion. Perhaps that was why Jesse felt a vaguely pleasant kinship with her.

He waited in his kitchen while Fiona examined the stranger from the sea. Despite a trying morning in town, Jesse let himself relax a little. By threatening the harbormaster with a large fist, he’d finally managed to get his point across. He told Judson to check his records for a ship that was due in the area. Before long, they would know the identity of the woman.

And now the doctor was here. In just a short time, Dr. MacEwan would take the stranger off his hands and his life would return to normal.

To normal. To its normal hellish loneliness.

Jesse gritted his teeth against feeling, because feeling had been his downfall. This lonely life, his exile, was his fate.

He looked out the broad front window of the house. The days were growing reasonably long, so he didn’t have to worry about getting the light burning for several more hours.

Then the solitary vigil of night would begin.

Hearing a step behind him, he turned to see Dr. MacEwan coming out of the birth-and-death room. Fiona had a broad face and hands that were as sturdy and work-worn as any farm wife’s. She wore her thick, graying hair in a haphazard bun held in place by a pencil or a knitting needle or whatever happened to be at hand. Today it looked as if the object of choice was a crochet hook.

“Well?” Jesse asked.

“She’s semiconscious.”

“What does that mean?”

“Drifting in and out of sleep.” Fiona removed her stethoscope, placing it in its black velvet pouch. “Did you notice she’s wearing no wedding ring?”

“Not everyone wears one.”

“It opens some interesting possibilities,” she said. “She could be a widow—”

“Or a fallen woman.” It was easier to think the worst of her.

“Why is it always the woman who falls?” Fiona mused. “And not the man?”

“For all we know, he’s fallen into the sea, so she’s better off than he is.”

“True.” Fiona lifted her immaculate white pinafore over her head and took her time folding it. “I got her to drink some water and use the necessary. But she’s endured a terrible trauma and is still in danger.”

“Is she…hurt in any way?” Jesse told himself he was asking because he wanted her well and out of his life. The sooner the better.

“I think her collarbone is bruised, so you’ll have to be careful with that.”

“I’ll have to be careful?” A familiar dread crept like a spider across Jesse’s chest.

“Yes. It seems tender there.” Without asking permission, Fiona went to the larder and helped herself to a finger of brandy from his bottle on the shelf. “The right side.”

“Seems to me you should be talking to the people she’ll be staying with.” Even as he spoke, Jesse felt a thump of suspicion in his gut.

Fiona tossed back the brandy, closing her eyes while a look of pleasure suffused her strong, handsome face. Then she opened her eyes. “She’s staying right here. With you. Jesse, you saved her. She’s your responsibility.”

“No.” He strode to the kitchen, slapped his hands on the table and leaned across it, glaring at the doctor. “Damn it, Fiona, I won’t have—”

“You won’t have,” she mocked. “It’s always about you, isn’t it, Jesse Morgan? You see everything in terms of yourself.”

“How else am I supposed to see it?”

“In terms of that poor creature in there, you great thickheaded lout!” Fiona sloshed more brandy into her glass. “I said she has no visible injuries other than minor bruises and abrasions. But that doesn’t mean we can drag her from pillar to post, man. She’s in a bad way, and don’t fool yourself that she’s not.”

“You have to take her away.” His voice was a low rasp in his throat.

“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”

“She can’t stay.”

“You kept that Mexican sailor for six weeks last year.”

“That was different.” Jesse had rescued the sailor from a lifeboat in the surf. “He slept in the barn, and he was able to send a telegraph for help.”

“And he didn’t speak English,” Fiona said as if it were Jesse’s fault. “So he didn’t intrude on your solitude.”

“Since when has it been a crime to want solitude?”

“It’s a crime when you put someone in danger because you’re afraid of having her under your roof.”

The accusation chilled Jesse’s blood. “That was a goddamned low blow, Fiona.”

She sipped her brandy. “I know. I learned to fight dirty back in medical college. And I’ve never been beaten. Certainly not by such a creature as a man.”

Jesse shoved himself back from the table. “What about her reputation? She’s probably a decent, God-fearing person. Mrs. Swann’s probably spreading lies about her all over town. It’s not right for a woman to live under the same roof as a man she’s not married to.”

“Once I explain to everyone the condition she’s in, only the smallest of minds will dare to think there’s anything improper going on.”

“You have enormous faith in your fellow man,” Jesse said. “They’ll flay her alive with their gossip.”

“Since when does Jesse Morgan care about gossip?” Fiona asked, finishing her brandy and fastening the clasp on her large brown leather bag. “I’ll stop in to see how she’s doing. If she tries to talk, find out where her family is, how we can contact them.”

Jesse followed her to the door. “Don’t do this, Fiona. Don’t leave her with me.”

He could almost hear the snap as her patience broke. She glared at him, her eyes bright with outrage. “You’ll keep this woman safe, Jesse Morgan, and you’ll help her get well, I swear you will. She’s pregnant, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I noticed.”

“Pregnancy is always a risky proposition, even for a woman who hasn’t suffered a major trauma. If she lost her family in the shipwreck, then the baby will be all she has left. It’s only right that we do everything we can to make sure she carries the infant to term, which, unless I miss my guess will be four months from now.”

After she was gone, Jesse stood for a long time listening to the wag-on-the-wall clock ticking away the moments. And in the room off the kitchen, the beautiful stranger slept on.

Three

Darkness. The rasp of her own breathing. Images and flashes of things that had come before. The face of a stranger. The feel of strong arms around her.

The ball of shame in her belly that she couldn’t help loving.

It was the thought of the baby that brought her to full wakefulness. Beneath her, the bed was surprisingly soft, a welcome luxury after the cramped discomfort of the ship.

What’ve we here, then? A stowaway? I’ll have to report this bit of baggage to the skipper.

Shuddering from the memory, she blinked slowly until she could make out vague, dark shapes in the room. The small square of a window with the shutters drawn. A washstand and sea chest. A tall piece of furniture, a cupboard of some sort.

A strong but pleasant smell hung in the air. Lye soap, perhaps. And coffee, though it had not been made recently.

Safe. She felt safe here. She had no idea where “here” was, but she sensed something vital in the atmosphere that protected and insulated her. Safe at last. Anywhere felt safe compared to the place she had fled.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she ducked from it. She wasn’t ready to think about that yet. She must not. Perhaps there was a way for her never to think about the past again.

Her hand curled over the gentle swell of her belly. No. There was no chance of forgetting.

“Hello?” she whispered into the darkness.

No answer. Just a low, constant growl of sound in the distance.

Gingerly she lifted the covers, wincing at a pain in her shoulder. She was wearing a gown of some fine stuff—thick cotton flannel such as she would have welcomed as a girl, shivering in her loft above the family cottage and wishing the peat fire gave off better heat.

Feeling the way with her hands, she moved along the wall toward the door, which was slightly ajar. A splinter of rough wood pierced her hand, but she barely flinched. After all she had been through, a splinter was hardly cause for notice.

In contrast to the door, the floor was worn smooth as if by years of pacing. She paused in the doorway, trying to get her bearings.

It was the sea she heard, the throaty basso call of waves on the shore. She had lived by the sea all of her life, and it was a good, strong sound to her ears. Even the shipwreck had not soured that pleasure for her, the sense that, no matter what happened, the sea never ceased, the sound never died.

Faint heat emanated from a huge iron stove that dominated the kitchen. The room gave access to a larger area, a keeping room or parlor. She creaked open the door of the stove so the embers would give her some light. A warm orange glow painted the sturdy furnishings and a narrow stairway. She went up the flight of stairs and looked through an open door. Within the shadow shrouds, she could make out a large tester bed, its four posters stark and bony in the dimness.

The bed was empty.

What sort of place was this?

Though each movement caused a wave of dizziness, she felt the need to press on, to answer the questions swirling in her mind. Unsteady on her feet, she descended the stairs, stepped outside and found herself standing on a veranda with a railing around the front.

The waves boomed as loud and rhythmic as a heartbeat. High clouds glowed in the distance, and a strange light silvered their underbellies so that they resembled fat salmon swimming through the sky.

That light. She shook her head and grasped the porch rail, feeling nauseous. Her injured shoulder throbbed. She spied a small outhouse fronted by lilac bushes. The necessary room? Yes. She was glad to have found that. As she stumbled across the lawn, the ground felt chill and damp beneath her bare feet. When she finished and made her way back, she noticed that the grass had been cropped or scythed.

Again the silvery light drew her. Slowly, she made her way up a slope covered by spongy grass to the top of the yard. Beyond a thick stand of towering trees, a stately silhouette stood out against the night sky. That was it, then. A lighthouse.

A memory drifted back to her. The sickening lurch of the ship’s hull on the shoal. The groan and crash of boards breaking apart. A seaman shouting raw-throated at her, tossing her a rope. The solidity of a mast or yardarm bobbing free of the wreck, floating. She had used the rope to secure herself. She recalled looking up, scanning the horizon.

As the sea swallowed the four-master—Blind Chance, it was called—like a hungry serpent, making a great slurping sound, she had spied the light. She’d known it wasn’t a star, for it lay too low on the horizon. She had followed the light, kicking toward it for hours, it seemed. The water, though cold, was bearable. With a rhythm as faithful as music, the rotating beacon had drawn her closer and closer: a long, thoughtful blink followed by a second or two of darkness.

When dawn tinged the sky, exhaustion had overcome her. The last image in her conscious mind had been that light. She remembered thinking that it was rather lovely for one’s last vision on earth.

Now she stood amazed that she had survived.

But what of her rescuer?

She wondered if she should go and find him. She stood in the shadow of a huge tree, feeling the moist springy earth beneath her feet and trying to decide.

It was then that she saw him.

Her first impulse was to run and hide, but surely that wasn’t necessary. Surely he couldn’t see her.

He stood on the skeletal iron catwalk and faced out to sea. She could tell that his hair was long, for when the light rotated to the left it illuminated a dark, windblown tangle. There was something about the way he stood that caught at her. He kept his hands crammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as if it were cold.

But it wasn’t cold. Cool, perhaps, but a lovely night.

There was a stillness about him. As if he were carved in stone, as immovable as the tower upon which he stood. It was eerie the way the light passed over him as it swung in one direction, then the other.

The light moved, but he didn’t.

She watched for what seemed like a long time. But she, not the stranger, was the first to move. Fatigued, she returned slowly to the house and crawled back into bed. She barely made it; she was weaker than she thought.

In moments, she was falling asleep again. Falling asleep and, for the first time in too long, unafraid.

It was time to bid the night farewell.

Jesse always savored the endless moments between dark and dawn. The smells of damp earth and evergreen mingled in the air. The cormorants, nesting in the cliffs, released their distant, plaintive calls. It was a gray, nothing period of time when all the world fell still. Night was gone and a new day was coming. But for now he was alone.

That was what he treasured. The silence. The peace.

The new day held no promise. Just the sameness of the day that had gone before and the dull awareness that tomorrow would be no different, either.

This awareness was never more acute to Jesse than in these moments, when the horizon lightened like water spilled in a pool of black ink, and then colors of aching intensity tinged the sky from the east.

Yet today there was a difference, he thought, wrenching open the front door of the house, stepping inside, hurrying to the room off the kitchen. Because of her.

She had shifted position. He could see that immediately as he looked into the room where she slept.

In the gathering light, he observed the way she lay across the bed in comfortable abandonment, relaxed as a child, her sleep untroubled. One of the quilts had fallen in a heap on the floor.

His gaze darted around the room. The bowl and ewer on the washstand had not been disturbed. But the way the covers were twisted up looked suspicious. He bent forward for a closer study.

A small bare foot, so dainty it almost didn’t look real, stuck out from beneath the sheets. A few damp pine needles clung to the sole of her foot.

Jesse straightened so quickly he smacked his head on a low ceiling beam. He clenched his jaw, but a muttered curse escaped, anyway. It was damned eerie to think of this stranger walking around the house. His house. Seeing the things that made up his life. Invading the world he’d carved out for himself.

Looking at him. Judging him.

He tried to brush off the thought. The woman was ill. Why would she have any interest in him? She had probably stumbled around in a daze, perhaps seeking the husband she had lost in the shipwreck.

Yes, that was it. She’d have no interest in a lightkeeper, no reason to pry into his life. As soon as she recovered, she’d leave, rejoin her family.

As well she should.

Jesse lingered a few moments longer. The room lightened with the dawn. He told himself he should leave her be, but still he waited, caught up in a sort of horrified fascination.

Fiona had been so matter-of-fact about the whole situation. Couldn’t she see how extraordinary this was? Couldn’t she see that he had to stop this from happening, stop himself from knowing this woman?

The delicate beauty of the stranger was a blatant taunt. A test. To see if he was strong enough to resist an angel’s face and a body as ripe as the sweetest fruit of the vine.

“Damn,” he whispered to the empty air, “why couldn’t you have the face of a lingcod?”

The odd thing was, he knew it wouldn’t matter. If she’d come wearing a bridle or had three arms, he would feel no different. He would still be held in the thrall of her mystery. Her loveliness only added that extra twist of irony.

Daylight glowed brighter through the slats in the shutters. She sighed in her sleep and turned, her knees coming up and her arm sliding down to make a protective cradle for her belly.

She was five months along, or thereabouts, Fiona had pronounced. The baby had started showing. The mother would be able to feel its movements. Fiona had smiled as she told him this, as if he was supposed to welcome the news.

A long hank of hair fell over the stranger’s face, and she sniffed as it tickled her nose. Jesse stared at the lock of hair. A shaft of newborn sunlight through the window touched it, turning the deep red to a blood-ruby hue. It was the color of dark fire. As the thought crossed his mind, he leaned down and gently lifted the lock away from her face. Its softness, the silky texture of it, were so acute and so unexpected that he almost yelped in surprise.

He stepped back quickly, horrified at himself. He had touched her. She was a stranger. Another man’s wife. Or a widow. It didn’t matter. Jesse Morgan had no right to touch her.

He left the room, closing the door to the merest crack, so he could hear her if she got up again. Then he made his way to his own room, kicked off his boots and collapsed with a rumbling sigh on the bed.

But he didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. Because he felt her presence in his house, the warm, alluring song of a siren’s call. The taunt of a treasure he could not have.

“Good to see you, Mr. Jones,” said the doorman with an obsequious smile.

Granger nodded a curt greeting. The shiny-faced doorman knew full well that Jones was an assumed name, and the man delighted in saying it with a wink and a nudge.

This was not a good day for winking and nudging. It was not a good day at all. He had arrived Monday morning at his San Francisco office only to learn that one of the company ships had failed to arrive in Portland. By Tuesday, company officials were preparing to call in the insurers, for it was likely the four-master had gone down. Wrecked at the Columbia bar. Wrecked like so many others.

He wondered what had happened. The skipper was one of the best, a longtime employee. Had fog hidden the shoals, even from that old salt? Had the lightkeeper been remiss in his duties? Granger certainly knew what a calamity that could cause. He had caused it himself years ago, exacting lethal revenge from his worst enemy—Jesse Kane Morgan. His best friend, his business partner, his rival, the man who had stolen everything from him.

Even now, all these years later, Granger still felt the sting of rejection as the woman he loved had turned him down, turned to Jesse, married Jesse. Emily and Jesse, the golden couple, the toast of Portland and San Francisco alike. The fact that Granger had destroyed it all didn’t dull the sting. Perhaps he hadn’t gone far enough. Perhaps there was still more to do.

He brushed past the doorman and strode across the tiled foyer of the Esperson Building. It was the best residence in San Francisco, and it was costing “Mr. Jones” a fortune.

Ah, but the rewards were sweet. As he climbed the brass-railed staircase, a bouquet of fresh flowers in his hand, he buried his nose in them and inhaled, thinking about the gentle stroke of her hand on his brow, the uncritical way she had of looking at him. She was his shelter from the storm, the place he came to when everyone else was against him. His nagging parents, his disappointing wife, his raging creditors—he left them all behind when he came here.

He’d be giving the place up soon, though. Now that he had what he wanted from the girl, he could move her into more modest digs. When he’d first met her—destitute, close to starving, yet maddeningly attractive all the same—he had needed to woo her. To feed her appetite for feeling safe and protected. He’d set her up in a luxurious apartment at the hallowed Esperson, visiting her whenever he found the time.

He found time often. And soon he would get his reward. A few months ago, she’d announced that she was pregnant. She’d looked at him with such hope in her eyes. “Now we must marry, so the wee babe has its papa’s name,” she’d said.

He shouldn’t have laughed at her, but he couldn’t help it. He did want her to have his baby—that was the whole point. The child would indeed bear his name, as soon as it was born and she surrendered it to him. But it had been a grave misjudgment on his part to tell her the plan. He should have kept it a secret until the very end. He’d underestimated her maternal instinct.

She’d been appalled, terrified, grabbing a hand mirror and preparing to hurl it at him. He’d tried to calm her down, crooning to her as he approached. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t want to have to hurt you…”

And in the weeks that followed, she did calm down, so much so that he began to hope she was coming to accept his point of view. She’d want her child to have all the advantages he could give the heir to his fortune—the best schools, the best doctors, the best society of San Francisco and Portland.

The flowers would please her, perhaps even coax a smile from her. He stood outside the door for a moment to catch his breath from climbing the stairs. The thought of the child seized him without warning, and he felt a yearning so powerful he nearly cried his need aloud. A son, an heir. Someone to bring along in the world, someone who’d watch him, worship him, learn at his knee. Someone to love as he himself had never, ever been loved.

With a twist of the crystal doorknob, he let himself in. His foot always managed to find the one floorboard that creaked, and now it squawked loudly in the silent apartment. “It’s me,” he called. “I’ve brought you something.”

Silence. Perhaps she was sleeping. He’d heard women in her condition slept a lot. But the bed was empty. Made up as neatly as always.

A cold feeling of foreboding slithered over him, though he managed to keep control. Methodically, he went through every inch of the elegant apartment. Not a single thing was missing—not a silver fork nor a painted lamp chimney nor any of the clothes and jewels he’d given her. The only thing missing was the only thing that mattered: the woman.

He told himself to be calm, to wait. She’d gone out shopping or for a breath of air. Yes, that was it. But later, after questioning the doorman and learning that she’d left the week before and hadn’t been seen since, he was forced to admit that she was gone.

With some surprise, he looked down at the bouquet of flowers he’d brought her. He hadn’t even remembered he was carrying it. He’d mangled them beyond recognition, breaking and bruising every flower in the bunch.

Jesse stared at the rough-hewn ceiling beams, listening to the wag of the clock pendulum. Then, after a long time, he pulled his boots back on and went to tend the horses.

On his way to the barn, he encountered Erik Magnusson. Towering at least six and a half feet in height, the youth moved with a giant’s ambling gait, unhurried and untroubled by the press of the world. The wind blew his straight, straw-colored hair across his brow.

“Morning, Captain,” Erik called. Erik always called him by the head lightkeeper’s title. “Did the lady from the sea wake up?”

“No.”

“Father said we’re going to tar the bottoms of the surf runners today.” Erik’s mind always flitted from one subject to the next like a hummingbird going from blossom to blossom. Jesse liked the big lad, but he never quite knew what to say to him.

“That’s fine, Erik,” he said. “It’s good to keep the boats in proper order.”

“You never take the boats out,” Erik said, planting his hands on his hips. “Why do you never take the boats out?”

Because I’m a coward, Jesse thought.

“Why is that, Captain?” Erik persisted.

“The boats are for rescue and should never go past the surf,” Jesse said, then started walking away. “I’m off to the barn.”

He turned the four geldings out to the sloping pasture. Palina’s rooster crowed, the sound insulated by distance and by the light, fine mist that hung in the morning air.

He ambled down the long, switchback trail to the beach. Twenty-four hours ago he had been on this same path, and in his arms he had held an extraordinary and unwanted burden. For years he had been successful in getting people to leave him alone, but the red-haired woman was different. He couldn’t make her go away.

Why was he so reluctant to help her? He had come here to do just that—save victims from the sea, help boats navigate the perilous shoals at the mouth of the Columbia. It was the life he’d carved out for himself. It was his penance.

He negotiated the twisting path and walked across the damp, densely packed sand. His gaze automatically scanned the area, seeking more wreckage from the ship that had brought him the woman. But he saw only the endless expanse of the strand, littered here and there by seaweed or a chunk of driftwood. The morning breeze rustled through the dunes, rattling the reeds like dried bones.

A harsh barking sound came from Sand Island in the middle of the huge estuary. Sea lions. Sometimes they came to the cape, but Jesse shooed them off. Fishermen often shot the seals to keep them from preying on the salmon and steelhead.

As he walked, Jesse filled his lungs with heavy salt air and tried to empty his mind. But he couldn’t stop thinking about her, the fairy-featured woman who had invaded his house, his life. Companionship was the last thing he wanted. No one seemed to understand that. The people of Ilwaco regarded her presence as a great adventure. Palina termed her a gift. Fiona called her a challenge.

He tried to tell himself she was no different from other women. He’d trained his mind well, punished himself effectively through sheer force of will. Women left no impression on him, sparked no desire, awakened no yearning.

Yet the stranger in his house was different in a way he couldn’t explain. Though he didn’t even know her name, some deeply suspicious part of himself knew she posed a threat to the life he was now living.

He turned his back on the sea and looked at his world, a lonely king surveying an empty realm. The lighthouse station was the quietest, most remote place on earth. Jesse had run here, thinking it was where he belonged, at the edge of the world.

But, as it turned out, he hadn’t run far enough.

Jesse’s movements were slow and deliberate as he got out a low stool and placed it squarely beneath the trapdoor to the attic crawlspace. It had been ages since he had needed anything from the storehouse above the ceiling.

But he needed something now. He hoped his equipment was in working order. Standing on the stool, he reached into the hole and groped around through cobwebs and sawdust. Eventually his questing hands found a bulky, oblong box and the three lengths of wood that went with it.

He set the box on the scrubbed kitchen table and stared at it for a long time. He had not used the camera in years, not since…not in a very long time. He wasn’t even sure it still worked.

He flipped up the dual latches and lifted the lid. The odd device, with its mouth of brass, its glass plates and black silk shrouds, lay where he had flung them so long ago. The vials of chemicals had corroded at the caps. Red spots mottled the albumen papers.

Photography was a vexing business of washing the plate, coating it with gun cotton dissolved in alcohol, dipping it in silver nitrate. The exposure had to be enhanced by a flash in a pan, then the plate developed with acid and more chemicals. It was easy to make a mistake. He had found that out when—

He cut off the thought, cursing the memories that kept pounding at the edges of his awareness, wanting to be let in. He had come to the bluff in order to forget, and now the presence of that woman was making him remember another time, another life. Gritting his teeth, he assembled everything he needed; the chemicals and the plates, the tripod and the black silk shroud. Moving quietly, he went into the birth-and-death room.

She lay sleeping, her limbs loose, her breathing peaceful and even. Her hair streamed in a ruby and gold tangle across the pillow. Her body curved in on itself, protecting, always protecting the belly.

Jesse tried not to stare. Tried not to think. He made himself concentrate on the task at hand. He wanted her out of here. The best way to do that was to find her next of kin. He needed to take a photograph and circulate it, have it published.

Yes, that was the answer. Maybe the grateful family would come for her before she woke. Before he learned one blessed thing about her.

He positioned the tripod at the foot of the bed. Then he placed the camera box on top of it, aiming the eye at the woman.

And suddenly, the memories he had kept dammed up inside him broke through, and the past stormed across his mind. He felt it like a physical blow, heard the laughter of a woman long dead and saw himself, a much younger Jesse, laughing with her….

“Hold still, darling, I’ll just be a minute.”

“Oh, Jesse, you take forever.” A dainty hand in a lacy glove smoothed across his brow, pushing aside a persistent lock of hair from his eyes. Pink-tinged lips smiled up at him. “Just make the picture and let’s eat.” The lacy hand gestured at the lavish picnic spread out upon a fringed blanket in the middle of a flower-studded meadow. “Aren’t you starved?”

He had abandoned the camera then, reaching her in three long strides, sweeping her into his arms. The picnic and the photograph had been forgotten until much, much later, when cool shadows slipped across the field.

“There won’t be enough light left for a picture, Jesse.”

He ran his hand through the tousled silk of her hair. “We have all the time in the world, sweetheart.”

Stifling a ragged growl, he rid himself of the memory almost violently, like a wounded man yanking out the knife that had stabbed him.

Damn. It had started already. The stranger, with her serene face and air of mystery, was making him think, making him remember, making him feel.

The sooner he got rid of her, the better.

With grim determination he finished setting up the equipment. Then he looked at his subject. She lay like a rag doll, her hair covering part of her face and her arms and legs slack. No one would recognize her in this state.

He had to touch her. There was no other way. He stepped forward and took her by the shoulders, careful not to jar her injured collarbone. She made a sound, half sigh, half moan, and he froze. God, if she woke up now, he’d scare her out of her wits.

Almost as much as she scared him.

Her head flopped to one side, and she settled deeper into sleep. He still held her by the shoulders.

It was then that he noticed it. Her warmth. It seeped into him like rays of direct sunlight. The living radiance passed through his fingers and burrowed deep inside him. He was achingly aware of the soft, yielding flesh and the fragile bone structure beneath. The sensation of holding another human being was so overwhelming that he didn’t quite know what to do.

She smelled of sea and wind and womanhood, and he closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get his bearings while his senses listed crazily.

The ordeal took endless minutes. He propped her against the pillow, centering her head just so. Then, not knowing what to do with her loose arms, he crossed them atop the quilt. But as soon as he got her hands in place, her head sagged to the side. He bolstered the pillow, making a trench. Then her hands sprang free as she stretched luxuriously.

Jesse swore quietly between his teeth. How did undertakers do this, anyway? At length he succeeded in arranging her so that her head was centered, the hair pushed away from her face, her hands demurely crossed.

“Stay,” he whispered. “Just stay there a minute. I only need another minute.”

He crept back to the tripod, treading lightly as if she were a house of cards that could collapse any moment. He put the silk over his head and bent to the camera. His other hand held the flash powder in a pan.

“One,” he whispered through his teeth, “two, three…”

All at once, he exposed the plate. A boom and a flash of magnesium powder exploded in the room.

The woman sat forward like a ghost disturbed from eternal sleep. He expected her to scream, but instead, she grabbed the pitcher beside the bed and hurled it at him. At the same time, she spoke. “Jesus Christ on a flaming crutch!”

Four

She crouched against the headboard of the bed, the long nightgown bunched in a tangle, her hand reaching for the oil lamp on the table.

As soon as he realized her intent, Jesse blazed back to life. The damn-fool woman. She could hurt herself. Worse than that, she’d burn the house down.

“Don’t touch it,” he said between clenched teeth, striding across the room. His boots crunched on shards from the broken pitcher. Snatching the lamp, he placed it out of reach on a wall shelf and glared at her through the snaking yellow-gray smoke from the flash.

Color touched her cheeks, and her warm, hazel eyes shone—not with gratitude, but with anger. He was startled to realize that her fury matched his own. “You’ve done enough damage already,” he grumbled.

“And what would a body expect, I ask you?” she demanded. “I wake up to find myself in the middle of a pitched battle and you think I’ll simply surrender? You shoot at me, boyo, and I’ll fire back, make no mistake.”

Boyo? Jesse was reasonably certain no one had ever called him boyo. “I wasn’t shooting at you,” he said.

“There was an explosion. And I smell gunpowder.” She squinted through the smoke and wrinkled her nose, a perfect little nose sprinkled with freckles.

Jesse had no idea why he would make note of freckles. “You’re Irish,” he said stupidly, because it was the first thing that sprang to mind.

“And you’ve got some explaining to do.” She leaned sideways to look past him. “What the devil sort of gun is that?”

“It’s not a gun. It’s a camera.”

Her eyes widened. She pushed a hand through her tangled red hair. “A camera, is it?”

“Yes.”

The color leaped up in her cheeks again, making stark crimson spots on her pallor. “And what in the name of Peter and Paul are you doing shooting off a camera in here?”

Jesse’s already strained patience snapped. “Taking your picture, woman. What do you think?”

She made the sign of the cross and pressed back against the headboard, holding the covers to her chin. “Pervert!”

He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists at his sides to keep from doing something they’d both regret later. This was exactly why he lived here at the lighthouse, alone. He had no patience for other people, especially for mouthy Irishwomen who showed no gratitude for being rescued.

“Madam,” he said, “it occurs to me that your mishap has addled your brain. You’ve been unconscious. I thought it best to find your next of kin, so I took your picture. I had intended to circulate it to the newspaper and telegraph offices so your friends and family would learn of your survival.”

He strode to the door, the camera in one hand and tripod in the other. He paused and said, “I expect someone will be grateful that you’re alive.”

She moved quickly but clumsily, lurching from the bed. When Jesse saw her bare feet heading for the broken pieces of pottery, he had no choice. He dropped the tripod and scooped her up in his arms.

She gave a little squeak of surprise and paddled her feet in the air. “Don’t you do it, boyo.”

He glared at her. The top of her head was even with his chin. He could feel the heat emanating from her body. The sensation was so unfamiliar that he almost dropped her. Instead, he set her on the bed and stepped back quickly, as if he’d approached a hot stove.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“Granted.” She gave a little bob of her head.

“I mean, I didn’t follow you, madam. Are you asking me not to leave the room?”

“Aye, that I am.”

“May I ask why?”

“Because I don’t want pictures of me put in any newspapers.”

Ah. So she was superstitious, then. Many immigrants brought their old-country beliefs with them; Palina and Magnus were proof of that. Quite a number thought it unlucky or even sacrilegious to produce graven images of themselves.

“Of course, now that you’re awake, there’s no need. You can simply tell me your name and destination. I’ll report that to—” he broke off, frowning down at her “Miss—er, Madam? Is there something wrong?”

She had begun to sway back and forth, her eyes glazing over. “I…feel strange all of a sudden. Higher than Gilderoy’s kite,” she said, her voice low and harsh. “Could you—that is, I need…”

Her words trailed off and she slumped to one side. Jesse dropped the camera, wincing as the lens cracked. Without breaking the flow of his movement, he dashed over to the bed, catching her by the shoulders and supporting her.

“Ma’am?” he asked. “Are you…all right?”

She made no response. She’d fallen unconscious again.

Jesse heaved a sigh of frustration. After settling her upon the pillows, he hesitated. Against his will, something inside him seemed to be bending toward her, reaching for her. He could not believe the impact of feeling her warm body curled against his, the tickle of her hair brushing his face and the scent of her, evocative and forbidden.

“Damn,” he swore between his teeth. She was everything he was trying to avoid.

As he tucked the quilts around the unconscious woman, his movements were slow, his hands gentle. He’d had no idea there was any tenderness left inside him.

The sooner he was rid of her, the better. He would send for Dr. MacEwan today to make certain this relapse wasn’t serious.

Amazingly, the one photographic plate he had taken remained intact. After developing the image, he would have a picture of the stranger. The amber tones would fail to capture the vivid richness of her red hair and her cream-and-roses coloring, not to mention the freckles, yet it would be a decent likeness.

Sleeping Beauty, he thought.

The hell with her superstitions. If she wouldn’t stay awake and tell him who she was, then he would publish her photograph and get the investigation started.

His boots crunched on earthenware shards from the shattered pitcher. In all the years Jesse had lived here, there had never been such a mess.

And she’d only been awake five minutes.

“Brass,” Palina said, hurling the word like an invective. “It is the bane of my existence.”

Jesse levered himself to the top of the ladder leading to the pinnacle of the lighthouse. In the lamp room, Palina and Magnus were well into the day’s chores. Palina was polishing the brass of the central compressor and cursing it, as usual.

“Why do they have to make everything out of brass, anyway?” she muttered, her wadded cloth making tight, neat circles in the fittings behind the reflector.

Magnus, who had his good arm deep inside the mouth of one of the eagle-headed water spouts under the eaves, winked at her. “So you can see your beautiful face in it everywhere you turn.”

“Humph,” Palina said, but the brass she was polishing reflected a blush and a smile. She worked a few moments longer, pausing to wave at Erik, who strode across the bluff toward the horse pasture.

Life at the lighthouse station suited Palina and Magnus perfectly, because they enjoyed each other’s company above all others. Erik fit easily into their world. They accepted their son’s affliction with a God-given, abiding patience Jesse would never understand. And the boy—seventeen last year—seemed happy enough.

“’Morning,” Jesse said to Palina and Magnus.

“’Morning, Jesse,” said Palina. “How is our little guest today, eh?”

Jesse picked up a can of oil and held it to the light, checking the purity. The lampwicks consumed nearly two hundred gallons a month, and each ounce had to be pure. “Now that,” he said, “depends.”

“Is she awake?”

“She woke up,” he said.

Both Magnus and Palina stopped what they were doing.

“And?” Magnus prompted.

“Well, she cursed at me and then she threw a pitcher at my head.”

Palina looked away quickly. “She must be confused, poor lamb.”

“The woman’s a menace.”

“Well, what did she tell you about herself?”

“Hardly a thing. She accused me of shooting at her when all I did was take her photograph to publish in the newspaper.”

“Ach, you frightened the little dear,” Palina said. “Here she is in a strange place, all alone, having lost God-knows-what in the way of family, and she wakes up to picture taking.”

“She didn’t seem so defenseless to me.”

“She was afraid,” Magnus said, reaching into the lantern to trim the wicks. He shook his head, thick gray hair falling across his brow. The crystal facets of the huge Fresnel lens distorted his good arm, making it appear disjointed and huge. “She probably lost her husband in the wreck.”

A knot of guilt formed in Jesse’s throat. He should have been more patient with the woman. “I left word with the harbormaster to find out the name of the ship that went down. We should hear something today.”

He hated this part of his job, hated it with a virulence that made him all the more determined to battle the sea for its victims. The waiting always got to him. He despised the course of events as it unfolded. The harbormaster would check all the schedules and manifests. Which ship was expected in the area? When was it due in port? Was it late? Then would come a list of the crew and passengers. And at each new stage of discovery, new grief would arise.

“She didn’t tell you the name of her ship?” Magnus asked.

“She didn’t even tell me her name.” Jesse set down the bucket of oil and sat on the floor, his feet resting on a rung of the ladder leading down to the mezzanine. “We barely had a chance to exchange words. Then she—I guess she overexerted herself and she sort of got dizzy and had to go back to bed.”

Magnus peered at him through so many layers of glass that it was hard to tell where the real Magnus was. “Overexerted? Now, what do you mean by that?”

The feeling of guilt sharpened. The sea—not a defenseless woman—was the enemy. He should be doing everything he could to help her. Instead, he’d let her presence stir up old, forgotten feelings inside him. None of this was her fault.

“She got upset,” he said.

“And what upset her?” Palina asked.

“The picture flash must have startled her. She has a bad temper.”

“Ah.” The tone of Palina’s voice spoke volumes.

“So you no longer hold the market on tempers,” Magnus added.

“I don’t have a goddamned temper,” Jesse said.

Palina rolled her eyes.

“Palina,” Jesse began.

She laughed. She was one of the few people who dared to laugh at him. “Captain Head Keeper, you would lose your temper if a leaf fell across your path. And this young woman is more than a leaf—”

“That’s it,” he said, getting up. “I’m moving her to your house today. You can take care of her. I clearly lack the proper temperament to minister to our delicate young guest.”

“No,” Magnus said. “You must keep her. When a man saves someone’s life, he is bound to ensure her survival. Whatever she needs, you must give her. Whatever it takes to heal her, you must provide. To disregard this would be terrible for you both—”

“—for you all,” Palina added.

“—in ways you cannot even imagine,” Magnus finished.

“That’s superstitious horseshit, and you know it,” Jesse said.

“It is the law of the sea, and I’ll not be the one to challenge it,” Magnus insisted. “Will you? Will you take that chance, risk losing her? Just so you can have your life back the way you want it?”

“Maybe I will.”

“Maybe you will not,” Palina said, thrusting her chin out stubbornly and dipping her polishing cloth. She attacked the next panel with savage relish. “What if you move her and she dies, eh? Then how will you feel? This woman is a gift, Jesse Morgan. You know why she came. Do not look fate in the face and deny it.”

A cold shaft of foreboding lanced through Jesse. He gazed out at the blue-gray horizon, then at the waves below the lighthouse. Foam creamed the rocks, seething in and out of the blackness.

A whistle sounded, startling him. It was Judson Espy, the harbormaster, riding up on a naggy-looking, dapple gray mare.

“The sea hasn’t given me a goddamned thing,” Jesse snarled. “Except a pain in the ass until we figure out who this woman is.” He clattered down the iron helix of stairs. Perhaps Judson had the answers he sought.

Judson met him halfway across the yard between the lighthouse and the forest. He waved a sheaf of papers. “Interesting irony here.”

“What’s that?” Jesse hung back, wondering what ill tidings he would hear.

“There was a schooner-rigged four-master bound for Shoalwater Bay for a load of oysters. It left San Francisco with some trade cargo and was supposed to call at Portland. Never arrived.”

Jesse crossed his arms, bracing himself for the news. He turned to look out at the sea, endless and infinite in its bounty—and in its power to destroy.

The story was all too common. The hungry maw of the Columbia River swallowed ships with great regularity, spitting out the remains like undigested skeletons along the beaches. “Do you have a list of passengers and crew?”

“Uh-huh.” Judson handed him a list. “Came over the telegraph wire.”

Jesse groped in his shirt pocket for his spectacles. Putting them on, he studied the list. Each time he did this, he was hurled back to the day he had stood on the river dock, frantically scanning a ship’s manifest, hoping against hope that a mistake had been made, then feeling the world explode when he saw his wife’s name.

“You all right?” Judson asked.

Jesse swallowed hard and glared through his spectacles. “All crew. No passengers?”

“Nope. That’s the entire list.”

He scanned the names, seeking something overtly Irish, like O’Malley or Flanagan. “You think she could be a seaman’s wife and they just forgot—”

“They never forget. Look at the name of the ship. At the shipping company.”

His gaze drifted to the bottom of the page. Jesse felt as if a noose were tightening around his throat. The noose of a past he wanted to forget. “It was the Blind Chance.”

“You remember it well, don’t you?”

“The Blind Chance is a ship-of-the-line for the Shoalwater Bay Company.”

“Your own company, Jesse. They never make mistakes on the ship’s manifest.”

“It’s not my company,” he said dully.

“Not anymore, I guess.” Judson took the list from him. “But it hasn’t changed much since you left. That partner of yours keeps everything shipshape. What was his name again? Flapp?”

“Clapp. Granger Clapp.” Jesse hadn’t thought about Clapp in years. But then again, he hadn’t thought about anything in years. Not Granger. Not his sister, who had married Clapp. Not his parents, away on a two-year grand tour of Europe. Not anyone.

Jesse wouldn’t let himself care.

“So,” Judson said, peering inquisitively at Jesse. “What do you think it means?”

“Either the woman was aboard unauthorized—”

“A stowaway!” Judson snapped his fingers. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Or she wasn’t on the Blind Chance, at all.”

“She had to have been.” Judson showed him another page. “Look. The keeper at Cape Meares recorded seeing the ship’s stern lights at one-twenty in the morning on Sunday. She was logged in at Tillamook Light at four-forty. And you found the woman at what time, six? Seven?”

“Thereabouts.”

“She was on that ship. On the Blind Chance. Had to be. As a stowaway.” Judson shifted from one foot to the other. “Damn, this is a hell of a story.”

Jesse put away his eyeglasses. “We ought to let the papers make the most of it, then. I took her picture. Have Bert Palais run it. And send it down on the next packets to Portland and San Francisco.”

Don’t you do it, boyo.

He heard her words in his mind, her voice trembling with superstition. She was out of her head, he told himself. Not rational, or she’d see the sense in publishing her likeness. Her family was probably frantic with worry, waiting for word.

Jesse knew what that was like.

Circulating the photograph was the best way to spread the word about this woman. He fished it out of his breast pocket where it had lain against his heart. His hand shook slightly as he handed it to Judson, but he pretended it was just the wind.

Judson stared at the photograph for a very long time. Then he let out a low whistle. “Damn, she looks like a princess out of that fairy tale. You know, where she pricks her finger—”

“I don’t read fairy tales.”

Judson put the photo plate in his pocket. “This is one amazing catch.”

“You don’t know,” Jesse muttered, walking Judson back to his horse. “You don’t know the half of it.”

All that day, the new information and old memories haunted Jesse. Ordinarily, he kept the past in some dark corner of his heart, where he couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it. But somehow, the arrival of the woman lit a candle in that shadowy place, shedding light on things he had kept hidden for years.

There was an almost eerie serendipity in the idea that the stranger had been borne into his life by the Blind Chance. In his mind’s eye, he could see the schooner-rigged ship as it had been the day they’d christened it fourteen years before. Jesse hadn’t known it at the time, but his future had been defined that day. He closed his eyes, letting the memories in….

The sleek hull of the ship gleamed with fresh paint, the brass fittings were polished to a sheen and the teakwood railings felt silky to the touch. The scent of ocean spray filled the air.

“Blind Chance,” Emily had teased, tugging at his sleeve. “What sort of name is that for a ship?” She looked as fresh and perfect as the ship, in lots of ruffles and lace, a bonnet shading her china-doll face. There was more to Emily than blond-and-pink prettiness, though. She had a streak of mischief in her that delighted, and a breezy charm Jesse knew he’d never tire of.

“Granger’s idea. He insisted on being the one to name it, since I got to name the Trident.”

“Oh, now there’s an original name.” Her laughter made a bright counterpoint to the melody played by the brass band on the afterdeck. Everything about the day glittered with a diamond brilliance. The ship’s rigging was hung with rows of ensign flags, each deck festooned with huge flower arrangements. Tables laden with sweets and hors d’oeuvres lined the pier.

Company officials and the crew and all their families had joined in the festivities. The ship, Jesse reflected, was a microcosm of his world—friends and family and business associates all united in commerce. He surveyed the scene around him with complete satisfaction.

“You’re grinning like the Cheshire cat,” Emily said, tapping her kid-booted foot in time to the music.

“And why shouldn’t I? As the luckiest fellow in all creation, I think I have the right.”

She leaned into him—discreet as always, for Emily was nothing if not a perfect lady—and said, “Do you think everyone will be surprised when we tell them our news?”

“I don’t see how. It’s been pretty obvious that I adore you, Miss Leighton.”

“Oh, Jesse.” A breeze off the bay caught her sigh. “It’s going to be so perfect. We’ll be so happy together.” She gazed down at the midships deck, where ladies were milling about, twirling their fringed parasols. More than one shot a glance toward the rail where Jesse and Emily stood.

“Such a shame, though,” Emily said.

“What’s a shame?”

“After we make our announcement, that deck will be positively littered with broken hearts.”

He grinned at her. “You exaggerate, darling.”

“Oh, heavens, don’t pretend you don’t know. Half my class at Saint Albans sleeps with some token from you under their pillows.”

“And what do you sleep with, Em?”

She winked. “Nothing but dreams, Jesse. Nothing but dreams.”

They watched in companionable silence, waving as Emily’s parents arrived. Gentlemen in seersucker suits joined the ladies, and the dancing began. “It’s men’s hearts that’ll be in pieces, Em,” said Jesse. He spotted Granger in the high bow of the ship. Together, he and Granger would take over the helm, leading the Shoalwater Bay Company into the future.

At the moment, Granger sat on an upended crate with his fair head bent, a thick rope in his hands as he demonstrated sailors’ knots to a rapt group of boys.

“No matter what else you think about Granger, he does love children,” Emily said, noticing where Jesse’s attention had wandered. “I always thought he would be the first of us to marry.”

A few moments later, Granger left the boys practicing their half hitches and went to the deck. Jesse’s younger sister, Annabelle, was there, looking coltish and shy as she clung to her mother’s hand and greeted the guests.

Granger made an elaborate bow before the ten-year-old, then led her into a dance. Even from a distance, Jesse could see her blush with pride and pleasure.

A blast from the ship’s horn interrupted the dancing. Jesse’s father waved to him and Emily, gesturing them down to the pier. Thomas Clapp, Granger’s father, announced through a bullhorn that it was time for the christening. The crowd surged along the dock and gathered there, buzzing with excitement.

Photographers with their cameras mounted on tripods jockeyed for position during the brief speeches from Morgan and Clapp. Granger leaned over and gallantly kissed Emily’s hand, whispering, “I hope you saved me a dance.”

She blushed, but before she could reply, the speeches ended. Both Jesse and Granger were handed bottles of Dom Perignon, tethered by scarlet ribbons to the prow of the ship.

“Lord have mercy,” Granger complained good-naturedly. “What a waste of fine champagne.” He pressed his lips to the bottle in a passionate kiss, and the crowd roared. His grin was slightly hard-edged—chiseled, Jesse knew, by the constant, strident demands of his parents. “Ready, old pal?” Granger asked.

“Not quite.” Jesse’s heart filled with anticipation. What a perfect time, what a perfect day, to share his news. He made a great show of stepping back to hand Emily the bottle. “This is an honor that belongs to Emily Leighton, my bride-to-be.”

For just a heartbeat, there was stunned silence, broken only by the shivering of lines against the masts and the lapping of the water at the hull. In that heartbeat, Jesse took it all in—Emily’s glowing smile, his mother’s wordless gasp followed by a gush of tears, his father’s hand lifting to slap him on the back, Mr. and Mrs. Clapp exchanging a cold glare before pasting on their smiles. But most of all, Jesse saw Granger. More clearly than he’d ever seen him. It only took a moment, but he saw something in Granger’s eyes ignite and then die. Granger, too, had been in love with Emily.

“Congratulations, son,” his father declared, and the hearty applause that followed chased away the frozen moment Jesse had sensed when he’d looked at Granger.

“All the best to you,” Thomas Clapp said expansively. He thumped his own son on the back a bit harder than good nature dictated. “How about that, eh? Your partner beat you out again. Looks like you’d better find yourself a bride and give me some grandkids to spoil.”

Granger went red to the tips of his ears. “All in good time, Father,” he muttered.

Something had changed that day. Though Jesse hadn’t realized it at the time, there was a subtle shift in the dynamics of the three friends, as if the world had tilted on its axis, never to right itself again. Jesse and Granger and Emily. They’d always been the merry trio, together at parties and holidays; going to the opera where Emily sat enraptured while Granger and Jesse drank secretly from a shared flask and tried not to guffaw at the posturing on stage; practicing the newfangled game of baseball while Emily pretended to understand it.

But after that day, a frost hung in the air. Granger became more and more distant. He spent Friday evenings at Madame Fanshaw’s Mansion of Sin rather than in the company of Jesse and Emily. The three of them would never be easy together again.

Emily had recovered first from Thomas Clapp’s insensitive remark. She laughed, cloaking the moment with humor, then said, “If we don’t do this right now, I’m going to uncork this bottle and drink it all myself!”

The last thing Jesse remembered about that day, that glittering day that had changed the course of his life, was the sight of two green bottles swinging through the air, pausing ever so slightly at the top of the arc where the sun shone through the green glass, then shattering against the hull and exploding into a million sun-sparkled bits of emerald.

She was trapped in the dream, and she could not find her way out. It was as if some drug had been fed to her, holding her limbs and head immobile while she was forced to watch and feel things against her will.

The door. An ordinary door of four wood panels and a crystal knob. She sat in a chair opposite the door, watching, waiting.

The door opened. Slowly. She heard the tread of a footstep and the creak of a floorboard, always the same board, always the same tone. Her days had taken on a sameness that was almost comforting in its uneventful boredom.

But today was different. Today she had something to tell him. Something that would make him so happy. He would sweep her up in his arms and whirl her around, and she’d forget all the past slights, all the little unknowing cruelties he’d committed. She would be important to him now. She had something he wanted. Desperately.

A bar of light slanted through the open door. A tall, broad male form came toward her. She waited to see the handsome face, the neatly combed hair held in place with just a little coating of wax, the smile that set her heart to fluttering.

She found herself looking at a stranger. Taller, broader even, than him. And infinitely more frightening.

The light shone from behind, so she only saw his shape, but it was enough to send chills through her. Big shoulders and powerful arms revealed by rolled-up sleeves. Hair that was too long, too wild, flowing like a mane that stirred with the slightest movement.

It was the man who had shot at her earlier. Defying the throbbing pain in the region of her right shoulder, she made the sign of the cross. “Mother Mary and Joseph, help me.”

She heard the rasp of a Lucifer, then an oil lamp on the wall shelf flared to life. Just for a moment, her captor’s face was bathed in radiant gold, and she saw it in fine, exquisite detail, as if she were looking at a painting in church.

A painting of the Dark Angel. There was an icy purity in the blue eyes that made her blood run cold. A high, noble brow and heavy eyebrows. The shape of his mouth was so flawless that she felt the urge to trace it with her finger.

Then the Dark Angel turned and spoke. “Are you awake?”

She burrowed deeper into the covers, holding them to her chin. “And who’s doing the asking?”

He stared at her as if she had sprouted antlers. “Are you afraid of me?”

The words sent her hurtling back in time, back to a place she had risked her life to escape. Don’t be afraid. I don’t want to have to hurt you….

Whimpering, she dived under the blankets and drew her knees up to her chest. It was warm here, and she shouldn’t be shivering, but she couldn’t stop. What a turn she had come to. What an awful, awful turn. She had gotten to a place in her life where she wanted only one thing—to feel safe.

“Ma’am?” The stranger’s voice was low, tentative. Edged with annoyance.

No one had ever called her “ma’am,” as if she were a lady of consequence. The blethering fool, she thought, letting her mind drift like a bit of wood bobbing on the waves. Didn’t he know better?

Feeling like an idiot, Jesse stood with the lamp in one hand, the other hand stretched out toward the shivering mound on the bed. Confound the woman. Couldn’t she make up her mind whether to be awake or asleep?

Tonight, Erik was tending the light. The lad was steady, grinding the gears every four hours as Jesse had trained him to do. But he only allowed Erik to sit watch if the weather held no threat.

Early in the evening, Jesse had gone out to the edge of the promontory and stood for a long time, feeling the wind and tasting the air, watching the rush of clouds across the lowering glow of the sun.

People said his foreknowledge of bad weather was a mystical gift, but he knew it was simply a skill born of long practice. He had learned to read the mood of the sea and the clouds. The first tenet of warfare was to know one’s adversary. He had made a study of it. In the room at the bottom of the lighthouse he had an array of instruments any university scientist would envy—astrolabes and quadrants, barometers and gauges for all manner of measurement.

He was diligent in keeping his log, earning special commendations from the district lighthouse inspector for his attention to detail. Of course, he didn’t do any of this in order to earn commendations.

In the beginning, he’d done it to earn salvation. But after twelve years, he’d given up hoping for that. Now he just did it to survive.

Quietly he replaced the lamp on the wall shelf and stood looking at the hump of quilts and blankets. This was his night to sleep, and here he stood, wakeful and agitated, staring in resentment at the woman from the sea.

Earlier, Palina had brought up a fresh quilt and a jar of strong broth. He had heated some of the broth and set the bowl on the bedside table. “Ma’am?” he said softly. “You should try to eat.”

No response. Setting his jaw, Jesse awkwardly pulled back the blankets to reveal a tangle of hair and a flushed cheek. “Ma’am?” he said again, his voice tighter now, more impatient.

She moaned and shivered again, then turned her head away without opening her eyes. She had slipped back into that state of half sleep.

“Fool woman,” Jesse muttered. “You’re never going to get better if you don’t eat something.” He unfurled the quilt Palina had brought and settled the colorful blanket over the woman.

She stirred, and a small foot emerged from beneath the covers. When Jesse bent to tuck it back in, he was struck by the fine texture of her skin.

In a dark corner of his heart, part of him wondered if she was going to die like everything else he touched.

She released a contented sigh and settled deeper into sleep. The quilt seemed to have a calming effect on her. Ever whimsical, Palina had depicted on the fabric some favored Icelandic myth. This one showed a beautiful mermaid rising out of the sea, borne along on the crest of the boiling surf.

Palina and her myths. She used them to explain everything. She used them instead of simple common sense.

Jesse frowned. Common sense wasn’t working here. In truth, it was all too easy to see the Irishwoman as a creature of myth. She had appeared alone from the sea. She was shrouded in mystery. No one had come searching for her. She wore no wedding ring, yet she was pregnant. The foreign lilt in her voice only added to the mystique that hung around her like the golden glow of a lamp.

She took a deep, shuddering breath that startled Jesse. He hated being startled. He hoped to God that word of her would get out quickly. Bert Palais had promised to circulate the photograph and description as far as his newspaper contacts would reach.

Hurry, Jesse thought, turning down the lamp and walking quietly out of the room. Hurry and get her away from here.

He thought of a time years before when he’d been out yachting with friends. That had been in the early years, the oblivious years, before the darkness and the fear. By accident, a belaying pin had stabbed through the fleshy part of his hand. He’d stood frozen for a moment, staring at the vicious steel shaft protruding from his hand. Then he’d grabbed a bottle of whiskey and sucked it dry. And he’d told his friends on the yacht the same thing.

Hurry. Hurry and take it out of me. Before I feel the pain.

The sooner he found her, the better.

He stood in a parlor that reeked of furniture polish and expensive tobacco and wealth and privilege. Outside, the traffic of Portland creaked and rumbled past with a familiar and welcome cacophony. On the desk in front of him lay the morning journals.

The item that had seized his attention was on the bottom of the back page, tucked amid advertisements for Hiram’s Glory Water and Do-Right Farm Tools. A grainy photograph and a small block of text:

Ilwaco, W.T.—The head lightkeeper at Cape Disappointment rescued a single shipwreck survivor on Sunday last. Captain Jesse Kane Morgan, formerly of Portland, pulled from the surf a young lady of unknown family and origin.

According to Harbormaster Judson Espy, the only commercial vessel known to be missing at this time is the oysterman Blind Chance, of the Shoalwater Bay Company.

Anyone knowing the identity of the young lady is advised to address himself to the lighthouse station….

A strong hand, the fingernails manicured and buffed to a sheen, reached for the newspaper and snatched it up, crushing the page in a fist gone suddenly hard with fury.

Could it be…? He must find out. He would have to be discreet, of course. But he had to find out. He had to learn something else as well—what a man’s rights were to a child he’d fathered.

It was insult enough that the wench had gotten away. That an illiterate Irishwoman with dirt beneath her nails had outsmarted him. But—irony of ironies—she had been rescued by Jesse Morgan.

“Granger?” A feminine voice, tentative and respectful and cultured the way he liked, called from the doorway.

“Yes, Annabelle?”

“I…I was just going out. To call on the Gibsons.”

He eyed her across the room. His perfect wife. Every gilded curl in place. The folds and tucks of her morning gown precisely aligned. The parasol and reticule made to match. Ah, she was a credit to him.

He smiled and crossed the room toward her. She didn’t flinch as he bent and kissed her cheek gently, tenderly. Lovingly. “Have a fine day, Annabelle, dear.”

“I shall, Granger.” She took one step back toward the door, then another. What a vision she was, arrayed to take Portland by storm with her beauty and her charm. Yes, he was the envy of his peers.

Standing at the window, he watched her go. Only after a footman helped her into the drop-front phaeton outside did he look down at what he held in his hand. The crushed newspaper. He hurled the ball of paper into a small bin in the kneehole of the desk. When he looked up again, the phaeton was rounding the corner of Lassiter Way. Pedestrians craned their necks to peer at the beautiful Mrs. Annabelle Clapp.

His perfect wife. In all ways but one.

She was barren.

Five

She awoke to sunlight and pain and the disconcerting notion that she had been dreaming of the baby. Formless and vague, the wraithlike images followed her into wakefulness. Light had pervaded the dream. And the rainbow colors of hope and joy shot through the light.

She lay still, listening, wondering about the dull ache in her shoulder. How had she hurt herself? Something to do with the shipwreck. She had a blurry recollection of holding a rail, feeling the wood twist and hearing the snap of timbers being wrenched apart. The screams of the seamen and the roar of the ocean echoed in her ears.

The memory of violence and black night and churning waters should have plunged her into a panic. Yet instead, she thought of the lighthouse. The beacon, flashing a message of hope to her as she washed ashore.

Pressing her good arm behind her, she sat up, unable to move again until a wave of dizziness passed. Mother of God, but she was ill. A squeak of alarm came from her throat, and she laid a hand on her stomach.

“Are you still there, baby? Have you survived all this with me?” she whispered. She felt the small, hard knot and breathed easier. Still there. Still a part of her. She’d failed at every last, blessed thing she’d ever attempted, and she didn’t want to fail at motherhood.

For a while, she held herself motionless, waiting. Finally, the baby moved. She’d first felt it a week earlier—the fluttering of fairy wings. A small, precious miracle grew inside her.

Grasping the sturdy bed frame, she got up. She went outside to the necessary, seeing no one along the way, hearing only the morning birds of early summer and the whispery sighs of the wind through the trees.

On the way back, she stopped in the yard. The trees were the grandest, tallest things she had ever seen, and they looked enchanted, all clad in lichen and draped in long, green beards of moss. Their tops swayed in the breeze as if dancing to music only they could hear. Surely the majestic forest could speak if only she knew how to listen. It could tell her what sort of place this was, what she could expect here, if she was safe with that moody, dark stranger.

Her gaze traveled down the broad lawn to a meadow where horses grazed. She saw a barn and, in a sunny corner, a vegetable garden fenced off from rabbits and deer. The entire place had an impersonal air of order, as if no one actually lived here.

But someone did, of course.

A very puzzling someone.

High on the distant bluff to the west was the lighthouse. The stony sentinel, painted white with three bands of red, stood proud and impervious to the wind and the sun. The flashing beacon had been her guiding star after the wreck. She could hardly look at it without feeling the harsh sting of thankful tears in her throat.

Weakness plagued her. Dizzy, she made her way back to the house. A railed veranda faced west. Green shutters and lime-washed siding, the chimney made of smooth, round stones. At one time, flower beds must have graced the front, for along the gravel walkway, she spied some bald rose hips struggling up through wild fern and weed. Hidden close to the ground were runners of alyssum and larkspur, defiantly blooming in anticipation of the coming summer.

A pity about the flowers, she thought. Blooming flowers would liven up the place considerably.

Stepping inside, she held the back of a chair and let her eyes adjust to the dimness. Books everywhere, stacked on tables and shelves. The interior of the house was excruciatingly neat, from the bin of wood beside the stove, to the supplies precisely aligned, like little tin soldiers, on the shelves in the kitchen pantry.

Mum would have liked that, she thought, letting in a warm wave of fond memories. Mum liked a tidy kitchen.

The memories departed like the tide before an onrush of impulse far stronger and more urgent. She was starving. At the sideboard, she found a pitcher of fresh milk with the cream still on top. Drinking straight from the pitcher, she sated her thirst. Her weakened hands held the pitcher clumsily, spilling a little down her front and onto the floor. Like Goldilocks in the nursery story, she helped herself to what food she could find—hard-tack biscuits from a tin, and a jar of spiced apples so delicious they made her teeth ache.

“Is that better, baby?” She stroked her stomach and, for the first time since she had washed up on shore, she smiled. Ah, there. It felt so fine to smile.

Brushing the crumbs from the splendid gown she wore, she made her way back to the snug little bedroom adjacent to the kitchen. Sunlight streamed in through the square panes of the window and played across the floor, flowing like a river of gold. Surely it wasn’t just the trees that were enchanted. This whole place, this house, this strange and wild jut of land—all of it lay under a soft green enchantment.

And to think she had almost stopped believing in magic.

How foolish. Mum always said that magic happens when a body needs it the most. And so it had. She had needed a miracle in the most desperate of ways, and here she was in a distant place, feeling unaccountably protected. Though she had barely survived, bringing nothing with her save the babe in her belly, she felt a surge of hope.

She picked up one of the quilts on the bed. Lovely, it was, with a mermaid and a sapphire sea. Now that she felt better, she wanted to explore. She wanted to make certain she and her baby were really and truly safe at last. But she couldn’t very well go about in a flannel nightgown. Perhaps there was a dress or robe somewhere.

In the tall cupboard, she found a few bits of linen and gingham and cotton muslin. Some pieces had been cut but not stitched, as if the dressmaker had gotten interrupted long ago. Beneath the dry goods, she found a pile of inexpressibles—as Mum would call them—creased sharply along folds that clearly had been undisturbed for years. She selected a pair of sheer bloomers. Swiss dimity, they were, more dear than a season’s catch of herring.

She burrowed deeper into the cupboard, and way at the back, she found a dress hanging on a hook. She let out a long, heartfelt sigh. How fine it was, a sprigged muslin of rich green and gold, with leg-of-mutton sleeves puffed at the shoulder and tapered down the arms. A beautiful, wide sash was looped around the waist. Behind the dress hung a long white shift. More Swiss dimity.

Was he married? Whose clothes were these?

The garments weren’t new, and judging by what she’d seen in San Francisco, the gown was quite out of fashion, too full in the skirts for current style. But the fabric smelled of lavender sachets, and she felt better having real clothing on. It hurt her shoulder to reach for the buttons in the back, so she simply tied the sash. She didn’t have much in the way of a waistline these days, but the dress, cut to accommodate an outmoded crinoline, fit reasonably around her middle.

Putting a hand to her hair, she scowled at the feel of the tangled mess and went in search of a brush. This she found in another part of the house, the gentleman’s tiny dressing room adjacent to his chamber on the upper story. The smell of shaving soap spiced the air. She peeked into the bedroom at the massive bedstead. Though the headboard was intricately carved, only a single meager-looking pillow was visible. A blanket of rough olive-colored wool, frayed at the edges, draped the mattress. There was no coverlet.

A little thrill of apprehension chased down her back as she pictured the man with the wintry eyes who had taken her photograph. This was where he lived. Where he slept. Where he dreamed his dreams.

She knew nothing about him except that he had saved her life. That was enough for her to believe she was safe with him.

Except for the photograph.

Her brush strokes became agitated. She must remember to tell him that circulating a photograph was absolutely forbidden. Fear, which had been her constant companion since she’d made her escape, crept like a spider along her spine. She had to decide how much to tell her host, but she would make up her mind about that later. It would probably be wise to lie.

By standing on tiptoe, she could see herself in a small, round shaving mirror affixed to the wall above the washstand. She looked like death eating a soda biscuit, as Mum would say. But she was alive, sweet Jesus, she was alive, and the baby was alive, and she wanted to crow with the sheer wonder of the miracle.

The ecstasy of feeling safe, safe at last.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” demanded a gruff voice.

She whirled too quickly, and for a moment, she saw stars. They swirled like a halo around the head of her dark angel. He stood at the top of the stairway, one huge hand resting on the newel.

When she saw the menace in his face, the fear came roaring back at her, and a thousand times she called herself a fool for thinking she could ever be safe.

“Well?” he said.

Ah, that voice. Like the bellow of a windstorm, it was.

But she had weathered a greater tempest and lived to tell the tale, so she squared her shoulders and blinked until the stars flickered and died. This was the man who had saved her. Why would he harm her now, after giving back her life?

“I was brushing my hair,” she said.

Carefully, deliberately, she set the brush on the shelf where she had found it and stepped out of the cramped dressing room. She walked past him and descended the stairs.

He followed her and stood in the middle of the keeping room, right where an oval rug would have added a perfect touch of warmth. But there was no warmth here.

The man seemed to fill the entire space, so tall and broad was he. He glared at her, his eyes blue flames behind a layer of ice. “Where the hell did you get that dress?”

She touched the gown, lifting the skirt a few inches and admiring the fine print on the green and gold fabric. “Why, you left it in my room, so I supposed it was meant—”

“I didn’t leave it,” he said. “No one left it.”

Though he hadn’t raised his voice, she could feel his rage crackling like a brush of heat lightning in the air. What had sparked his fury? Wasn’t he pleased with her recovery?

In the past weeks, she had grown adept at hiding her fear. She faced him squarely. “I helped myself to a few things from the tall cupboard.”

A red curl fell across her face, and she tucked it out of the way. “You wouldn’t be needing the gown for anything, would you?” Her hand went to her throat as an unsettling thought struck her. “Blessed saints. Would these be belonging to your wife, then?”

The icebound flames in his eyes seemed to burn colder. Every inch of this man radiated a threatening strength. The sheer contempt in his face should have alarmed her, but instead, she looked at him and felt curiosity edging out her fear.

“I don’t have a wife,” he said.

A simple enough statement, but she sensed turbulence beneath the rocklike surface. What would she find deep inside this man, if she dared to peel back the layers?

“Then who do these clothes belong to?” she asked.

“No one,” he replied. “Not anymore.”

The tone of his voice made her wary of pursuing the issue. She simply stood there, showing no response save polite expectancy.

He put both hands to his head and combed them through his long hair. “You’d better sit down.” Ungraciously, he added, “I don’t want you having another fainting spell on me.”

She lowered herself to a wooden settle that faced the small fireplace. The fieldstone hearth had been swept clean. Not a speck of ash touched her bare feet as she swung them against the planks of the floor. “Faith, I don’t plan to swoon again. It was the hunger, I suspect. I helped myself to something to eat.”

“I noticed.”

Guiltily, she glanced through the open doorway to the kitchen. The apple jar was gone. The milk pitcher had been washed and put up, the biscuit crumbs cleared from the table. Hoping to improve his mood, she smiled. “Those were the most delicious apples I ever tasted.”

He sat on a stool across from her. His face might have been carved in marble, so expressionless did he hold himself. “It’s from last year’s harvest. There’re a few apple trees at the station.”

What a strange man he was, calling his home “the station.”

She took a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell—”

“—something I need to ask—” He broke off.

They stared at each other for an awkward moment. She laughed. “We both spoke at once.”

“I need to know your name,” he said, not only unamused but looking baffled by her laughter. “So we can set about contacting your family.”

Mirth died a swift death. She sat very straight upon the settle and forced herself to look him in the eye. “My name is Mary Dare, and I have no family.”

Ah, but it hurt to say it. He would never know how much. No family. It was like admitting one had no heart, no soul.

“Mary Dare.” He leaned forward in a sort of grudging bow. Interesting to note that he had a small, miserly store of manners. “Your real name?” he inquired.

Anger—and guilt—chased off her maudlin feelings. “And you are?” she asked defensively.

“Jesse Kane Morgan. Captain of the lighthouse station.”

“’Tis an honor to meet you, Captain. But I confess, you have the advantage of me. Where, can I ask you, is this ‘station’?”

“Cape Disappointment.”

“Sure and that’s a terrible name for such a lovely place,” she said.

“Blue-water men trying to get their ships over the bar don’t think it’s lovely. We’re at the mouth of the Columbia, in the Washington Territory.”

Washington Territory. Fancy that. She had traveled to a whole new region and hadn’t even known it until now.

“Were you on the Blind Chance?” he asked. “As near as I can figure, it’s the only ship lost in the area on Sunday.”

Sunday. It occurred to Mary that she didn’t even know what day it was. Nor did she know what manner of man he was, this cold stranger, or what the future held.

All the information coming at her began to swirl like a fever through her mind. Sunday…Washington Territory…the Blind Chance… And through it all, the lighthouse beacon had guided her. With a harsh little cry, she launched herself from the settle and landed on her knees before him, clutching his hands. Her pose was that of a supplicant before a savior. “Captain Morgan, I’ve forgotten my manners. You saved my life. Our lives. Mine and the baby’s. That is what I should be telling you. How can I ever thank you?”

He wrenched his hands away and stood. She heard an oath barely hidden in the harshness of his breathing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I don’t like being touched.” Each word sounded measured, as if doled out from a meager supply. He walked away from her.

“Sure and if that isn’t the saddest thing I ever heard.” She followed him to the large front window, where he stood looking out at the distant bluff, his back to her.

“Never mind that,” he said brusquely. “I need to know several things about you, Mrs. Dare.”

“The first thing you should know is that—” she took a deep breath “—it’s not Mrs. Dare.” There. She’d said it. All along, she’d planned to lie to him and pretend she’d been a married lady and then widowed. Yet out popped the truth.

He didn’t move, didn’t react. “Miss Dare, then, is it?”

“Mary. Just Mary.”

“Did you have friends or family on the Blind Chance?”

“No.” The corners of her mouth curved up in an ironic smile. “I didn’t even have a ticket.”

He turned then, eyeing her suspiciously. Lord, but he was fine to look at, and he had no notion at all of his appeal. In fact, he was put together and clothed like a man who didn’t care for his appearance in the least. He just was. She itched to comb his hair for him, to trim it.

“I figured you were a stowaway.”

The thought of the ordeal she had endured sapped her strength. Her bad shoulder began to throb, and she touched it gingerly.

“Dr. MacEwan thinks you’ve hurt your collarbone.”

“A doctor’s been to see me?”

“Yes. You don’t remember?”

“I’m…afraid not.” She tried to stifle a yawn, but wasn’t quick enough. The dizziness spun upward through her. She felt her eyes roll back, her eyelids flutter.

“You should lie down and rest,” he said.

She nodded. His voice had a different quality now. She still heard that undertone of impatience, but the edges sounded smoother, somehow. “Thank you. I think I will.” She reached for his hand, then stopped herself.

I don’t like being touched.

Aye, it was the saddest thing she’d heard.

“Thank you again, Captain Morgan.”

“Jesse.”

“What?”

“Call me Jesse.” He strode across the room toward the door. “Now, go and rest.”

It was all Jesse could do to keep from running when he left the house. And that, perhaps, was what he resented most about this whole impossible situation. That the presence of this strange woman, this Mary Dare—imagine, her bearing the name of a shipwreck—could drive him from his own house, from his refuge against the outside world.

He walked across the clearing, heading for the barn. Whistling sharply, three short blasts, he didn’t even look to see if D’Artagnan obeyed. The horse came when summoned. It was the first lesson Jesse had taught him.

Within minutes, he had saddled up and was headed along the sinuous path to the beach. The horse was always game for a run, and as soon as they reached the flat expanse of brown sand, Jesse gave the gelding his head.

For a while, he felt something akin to exhilaration. The wind streamed through his hair and caught at his shirt, plastering the fabric to his chest and causing the sleeves to billow around his shoulders. The horse’s hooves kicked up wet sand and saltwater. Man and horse were like the skimmer birds, buzzing along the surf, heading nowhere as fast as they could.

From the corner of his eye, Jesse could see Sand Island, then the vast blue nothingness beyond the giant estuary. This was his world, his life. It was where he belonged. Alone. Eternally. He needed to be rid of Mary Dare, and quickly.

Because, somehow, her presence reminded him that his world was unbearably vast and empty.

God. The sight of her in that dress had nearly sent him to his knees. The memory had cut into him like a dagger: as if it were only yesterday, he’d seen Emily twirling beneath the chandelier in the foyer of their Portland mansion, laughing as the skirt belled out across the parquet floor….

“I put it on just for you, Jesse. Just for you.”

“Oh, Em. I’d rather have you take it off for me.”

She giggled and blushed. “That, my love, will come. We have plenty of time for that later.”

Jesse dug in his heels and rode harder.

He brought the horse up short at the boathouse tucked into a protected cove at the foot of Scarborough Hill. The rickety structure housed a pilot boat. Now that tugboats were common, the boat wasn’t used much to guide big ships out to sea, but Jesse kept the craft in perfect condition, varnishing the wood and caulking the seams, keeping oil in the lamps and the sails in good repair.

It was a sickness with him, taking care of this boat. For after Emily’s accident, Jesse had never gone to sea again. He never would. He was too afraid.

Disgusted with himself, he headed back to the lighthouse station. What a majestic sight it was, the lime-washed tower standing proud on the overlook of the cliff. And yet how small it looked, dwarfed by the huge trees beyond and the waves curling over the black rocks almost to its base.

When he reached the top of the trail, he heard a musical “Halloo!”

He smacked D’Artagnan into a trot and went to greet his visitor.

Lifting her navy blue skirts high above practical brogans, Dr. Fiona MacEwan alit from her buggy. “Good day, Jesse. I stopped in to check on our patient.”

He dismounted and led his horse to the crossties in the barn. “She woke up,” he said tonelessly.

“Is that so?” Fiona beamed, reaching to secure one of the wooden knitting needles that held her hair in place. “And is she all right? Did you learn her name?”

He put up the saddle and tack and cleaned the sand from his horse’s hooves and coat. “She says her name is Mary Dare and that she has no family.” He decided to conceal the fact that Mary had been a stowaway. He needed to learn more about the situation before he went trumpeting that about. For all he knew, he had given shelter to a thief or a murderess.

Or a hapless woman on the run from something she would not name.

“It’ll be hard for her, then, to be alone in the world,” Fiona said.

He turned D’Artagnan out to pasture. “Will it?”

“You don’t think so?”

“Come on, Fiona.”

Her gaze skated over him from head to toe. “Some people prefer human companionship. Crave it, even. I suppose you can’t understand that.” Showing nothing in the way of sympathy, Fiona patted him briskly on the cheek. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re the best-looking man in the Territory, Jesse Morgan?”

“No.” He scowled furiously.

Fiona smiled. “That sort of thing matters to some women.”

“But not to you.”

She sent him a mischievous wink. “Hardly.”

That was one of the reasons Jesse tolerated her. There was nothing Fiona wanted from him.

They walked together toward the house. “She claims she has no family. I assume that means no husband?” the doctor asked.

“That’s what she said.”

“Mmm.” Fiona’s voice held no judgmental tone. Jesse liked her for that. “That’ll be harder still, then.”

“Now that she can get around, you’ll be taking her into town. Get her settled and—”

“We mustn’t be hasty.” She preceded him into the house and set her bag on the kitchen table. Together, they went into the little bedroom.

Jesse’s breath caught, air hooking painfully into his chest. Mary Dare slept in the sunlight atop Palina’s quilts. She still wore the green-and-yellow dress.

Later, Jesse. I’ll take it off for you later. We have plenty of time…. His dead wife’s voice whispered in his ear, and he shook his head, forcing himself to look at Mary Dare.

The light caught at her hair and limned the porcelain delicacy of her skin. Beneath her eyes, circles of fatigue bruised the fragile skin. Despite the meal to which she’d helped herself, she looked gaunt and frail.

“She’s weak as a kitten,” Fiona whispered. “I’ll not be dragging her down the bluff to town in this condition.”

Jesse cleared his throat. “But—”

“She’s staying.” Fiona clamped her hands at her hips and jutted her chin up at him. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yes.”

“Then get over it, Jesse. For once in your life, think of someone besides yourself!”

Mary Dare flinched in her sleep.

“Sorry,” Fiona muttered. “You’re a vexing man, Jesse Morgan.”

“I’ll look after her until week’s end,” he said. The words tasted sour on his tongue. “And not a minute longer.”

Stung by Fiona’s triumphant smile, he stalked out of the room.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Jesse asked. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded rusty, like a hinge on an unused gate.

Mary Dare’s smile made the sun seem dim. “Hungry,” she confessed, stepping into the kitchen. The green dress was wrinkled in the back and her hair was sleep-tousled, heavy waves draping her shoulders.

“There’s bacon.” He pointed. “And Palina’s cardamom bread. Coffee?”

“I’ll have a glass of milk, if there is any.”

“There’s always milk. The Jonssons keep a cow.”

“That’s lovely. And when shall I be meeting the Jonssons?”

“Soon. They’re on duty at the lighthouse.”

“What are they doing there? I don’t see a speck of fog.”

“Cleaning the equipment. They’ll be done soon.” He watched her eat and drink. Though not gluttonous, she consumed the bacon and bread with efficiency and relish. Expectant mothers needed plenty of good, fresh food. Fiona had told him so. But, of course, that wasn’t the first time he’d heard that advice.

“Jesse, darling, I have the most marvelous news!” Emily had breezed into his study, a vision of frothy white against the walnut-and-leather backdrop of his library shelves. “I’ve just been to the doctor, and he confirmed it. You’re going to be a papa!”

He shook off the memory and waited patiently for Mary to finish. She looked better today. Better every moment, in fact. Her pallor seemed less alarmingly pasty. Her eyes were bright, almost eager, and the dark circles were fading.

Excellent, he thought. Get her well enough to make the trip to town, and he could be rid of her. Free. Alone. That was all he wanted.

“Can I make you some tea?” he asked. “Dr. MacEwan left an infusion that’s supposed to aid in digestion.”

“I believe my digestion’s fine,” she remarked with a wink.

That smile. It was brutal in its simple, dazzling beauty. It hammered at him like a fist.

When she finished her breakfast, he whisked away the dishes and washed them in the sink. Over his shoulder, he said, “Do you need to go to your room and rest?”

“I’d like to take a walk.”

“You’ll tire yourself.”

“Just a little walk, mind. The fresh air will do me good, don’t you think?”

Jesse seized on the idea. Anything to get her to feeling better. Anything to get her away from him. She had no idea how each moment he spent in her presence drilled at him, disturbed him in ways he didn’t want to be disturbed.

“We’ll go to the strand.” He turned toward her. “There’s a way down that’s not too steep.”

Her smile lanced through him again, warm sunbeams thawing frozen flesh until it ached. “I’d like that, Jesse,” she said.

This was for her, he told himself as he put one of Palina’s knitted shawls around her shoulders, awkwardly tying it in the front. Mary stood like a docile child, watching him. Trusting him.

The fresh air was going to help her feel better, and when she felt better, she could leave. That was why he was doing this.

When they were halfway down the rock-strewn track, she called his name. He stopped and turned. “Is it too much for you?” he asked, feeling a touch of dread. What if he had to carry her again? To hold her close and feel her warmth and the beating of her heart? “Do you need to go back?”

“No. It’s not that. Jesse?”

“What is it?”

“You’ve been more than kind to me, and sure I’m the last person to criticize, but could I just be pointing out one small thing?”

“What?”

“It occurs to me that you’re not accustomed to walking with a companion.”

He snorted. “Of all the—”

“It’s true. You march along like a parade marshal. When two people walk together, they generally go side by side.”

“We’re not together,” he said. “You said you wanted a walk, so we’re walking.”

She blew out an exasperated breath and came toward him, her feet clumsy in the oversize India-rubber boots he’d lent her. “A walk isn’t just walking,” she said with a magnificent lack of logic. “It’s talking and sharing.”

“I don’t do things like that.” He turned and trudged down the hill.

They crossed the grassy dunes and came to a long strand of sandy beach. He turned and watched her, walking backward. “Look, I’m sorry you’re alone. But if you expect companionship from me, you’re bound to be disappointed.”

“It would take a lot more than that to disappoint me,” she said.

Her statement piqued his curiosity, but he thrust it aside. He didn’t want to know what had disappointed her in the past. He didn’t want to know what she dreamed about for the future.

“I live alone by choice,” he said gruffly. “I don’t want a companion.”

Her eyes widened, but she nodded. “You didn’t ask to save me. No doubt if you’d had a choice, you never would have come down on the beach and found me that day.”

Damn it. Was wishing her out of his life the same as wishing he’d never found her? “Mary—”

She held up a hand. “I understand. Now, let us have our walk.” She tossed back her head and let the wind blow through her hair. “It’s cold here.”

“Take my coat.”

She shook her head. “The shawl’s enough. I’ll be rid of these boots, though. I love the feel of the sand beneath my feet.” Before he could protest, she kicked off the boots.

“Put those back on,” Jesse said. “Your feet will freeze, and then I’ll be stuck with you even longer.”

“A fate worse than death, I’m sure.” Her dainty feet barely made an impression on the hard-packed sand as she walked.

And for no reason he cared to examine, Jesse found himself walking beside her. Stubborn female. She should be eager to get away from him. In the past, his growling and snarling had effectively kept other women at a distance. This one had no respect for the iron in his soul.

“This place is truly the edge of the world,” said Mary. With an easy movement, she slipped her arm through his.

The shock of the contact jolted him like a physical blow. His muscles turned to stone. Perhaps she felt some measure of the intensity, for her cheeks flushed with color. “Is something the matter?”

He glared at her hand. “Don’t—”

“I forgot.” She extracted her arm. “You don’t like being touched.” She headed northward on the beach with her face into the sea breeze. The wind sheared down from the towering forested cliffs, causing tears to gather in the corners of her eyes.

He thought of offering her a handkerchief, but stopped himself. She glanced sideways at him, her glorious red hair swirling on the wind. Chagrined that she had caught him studying her, he hunched his shoulders and pulled his hat over his brow.

She stopped when she came to a huge, twisted piece of driftwood. She studied it for a moment, observing the whorls in the grain, the deep gashes and cracks, the holes bored into it by worms. Without saying a word, she wandered on. A few feet from the log lay a scattering of shells, all broken and crushed, some with slimy green weed clinging to them. He saw her shudder, and she quickened her pace.

Jesse wondered what she was thinking. Was she remembering the shipwreck? The father of her baby? He had so many questions to ask her. Yet he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to know the hopes and dreams that filled the head of Mary Dare.

Because the more he knew about her, the more real she became to him. All he wanted to know was how soon he could get her to a better place than his house.

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