by Carolan Ivey
“Taylor!”
She blinked and the battlefield melted away. In its place a blond, Norse-looking giant of a man stood in front if her, hand on her shoulder, face wet with tears as he tried to tell her something she couldn’t quite understand. Only one word could she make out…Ethan. Grief stabbed her in the heart and she closed her eyes and wailed.
Suddenly the ground moved, and she opened her eyes to find herself on the pitching deck of a ship caught in the claws of a nor’easter, the crash of panicked horses echoing from the hold below her feet. A split second later she plunged head first into icy water, and grabbed the tail of a dark horse as it struck out in the towering waves toward what she hoped was the shore.
She knew what was coming next. Oh, God, she had to wake up…wake up now! But she didn’t know how to stop the visions this time. None of her old tricks worked anymore. Her only hope was to let go the horse’s tail and reach blindly for the help she could only pray would be there. Choking with fear, screaming Jared’s name, she did just that.
A blue-clad, gauntleted hand came out of nowhere and she lunged for it. It pulled her out of the icy sea, through the black night and out through a tunnel of steadily brightening light.
“Taylor!” She moved toward the familiar, beloved voice, and gradually her surroundings came into focus. Someone held her in his lap, cradled like a small child, holding her so hard her shoulder ached where it crushed against his bare, warm chest. Someone—could that be Jared?—muttered a string of oaths that in one breath promised God the moon, then in the next promised dire consequences if He didn’t do as this mere man demanded—to bring her back to him alive and whole.
She opened her eyes, intending to smile up at him. She started in surprise to find his face contorted and tear-streaked, tried and failed to muster the strength to tell him she was all right. She managed only two words.
“I’m sorry.”
She heard him calling her name again, dimly, as a deep, dreamless sleep swallowed her whole.
*
She needed the rest, but she sure hadn’t needed to get it this way—by letting him nearly drain the life out of her. For several anxious moments Jared waited, then sagged in relief when he finally heard her faint breathing.
Nothing disturbed her, not even his fumbling attempts to arrange her into a comfortable position as he slipped out of bed and covered her. He pulled on his borrowed clothes, went outside to take care of the horses, then took himself to the wooden deck, in the ocean-scented dark, letting a light, misting rain cool his face. And he waited.
Down below, in the shelter of the house where he’d moved them, the horses made a few settling-down noises, familiar and comforting to his ears. Jared stared at the spot in the dark where the Bodie Island Lighthouse flashed its silent beacon, and he cocked his head toward the muted sounds of the ocean. The tide was shifting, in response to the pull of the moon. He felt it in the tightening in his chest, a relentless force pulling at him, reminding him that he should be moving south, toward Cape Hatteras. Always, since his death, it had been thus. His endless journey had moved in concert with the undeniable forces of the moon and tides.
He braced his hands on the second-story railing and ducked his head against a sudden gust of wind.
What now? What in the blessed hell was he supposed to do now?
Up to now, the path had been clear. Simply live through the re-enactment of the battle where he’d lost his limbs and his life, and come through it whole and with his honor intact. He had assumed Taylor had been sent by some higher power to help him, if only by keeping her wits about her when all those around her had lost theirs.
But now… Half of him resisted the pull toward Cape Hatteras and the end—or the continuation—of his life, depending upon what he happened to believe at any given moment. The other half was held tight by a green-eyed woman in a Confederate infantry uniform, who lay emptied of strength and spirit, in great part because of him. He renewed his grip on the deck railing and again bent his head against the blowing rain. He should have cut his own traitorous heart out to keep from hurting her. But he hadn’t, and now his heart was in danger of being torn in two.
God only knew what she had seen, uncovered in all the dark corners and pits of his memory. And the letter she had shown him, the one written to his mother. Who could have done it? He couldn’t think of anyone in Harris’s unit who had conscience enough to bring even that small amount of comfort to his family. Not one.
But something…something…
He pushed away from the deck railing and re-entered the house, his damp feet leaving a wet trail on the floor. He reached for the letter, still resting half crumpled on the corner of the table where he had dropped it in his haste to keep Taylor from hurting herself and smashing her beloved brother’s pipe.
He sat down, spread the letter flat on the table and stared at it. He shoved his fingers through his hair and leaned his head on his palm, massaging slightly as if to work loose whatever it was that nagged him about that piece of paper.
Slowly, as he read the letter over and over again, he focused less on the words and more on the hand that had written them.
Suddenly his hand went to his chest, right where the breast pocket of his uniform coat should be. Where was it? Sending the chair skidding across the floor, Jared headed for the laundry room, praying Taylor hadn’t accidentally sent his birth record through that big white machine along with his coat. He hadn’t figured out how an exact replica of his own birth record had ended up in this borrowed body’s uniform coat. His legend must have spread far and wide, he mused.
He sighed in relief when he found the wrinkled paper lying on top of one of the large, white boxes, one of which now hummed and emitted heat and muffled thumps.
Returning to the kitchen, he flattened the smaller paper beside the letter and examined them, wondering what had brought on this urge to view them side by side. The handwriting contrasted too sharply; the birth record was rendered with a fine and careful hand, the letter scrawled in haste by someone with a little less coordination, like a left-handed person forced to write right-handed.
Ethan had been that way as a boy, he mused. Hunched at his desk and developing terrific headaches while the schoolmaster hovered over him, ready to rap Ethan’s knuckles should he try to switch to his left hand to form his letters.
Jared’s heart thumped slowly as he stared at the letter. He didn’t know what prompted him to turn the birth record over, but he watched his left hand do it without a conscious order. Yes, this birth record was what Taylor had called a “photocopy” of the original, right down to the note Ethan had scrawled on the back.
Put this in your pocket. Figure I’ll need it to recognize you once the lice get through with you.
—E.
Disbelief exploded in Jared’s chest as he looked from the note, dated 1861, to the letter, dated 1868.
The handwriting matched.
Chapter Eleven
John finally thought it safe to leave his seat, which for the last hour had been Troy. Sitting on him had been the only way to keep him from bringing all his deadly skills to bear on one Jared Beaudry, plainly visible in dark silhouette, leaning heavily against the deck railing. Granted, his own skills were not nearly as honed as Troy’s, but the horseman had the element of surprise and the solid steel hilt of a sword. He hadn’t managed to knock Troy out, but he’d been stunned long enough.
“Damn it, why did you do that?” Troy growled as he climbed to his feet and tried to rub his numb arm muscles back to life.
“Because if you killed him, you’d kill me, too.”
“But if he was doing what I think he was doing with my sister…”
“You can’t be sure unless you were there, right? Unless you were, uh, peeking?”
“No! We weren’t that close, for God’s sake.”
“Look at it from my point of view, then. If indeed that’s what they were doing, he’s having all the fun using my body. If you beat him up for it, I
’ll be the one in the hospital with a busted head while he goes happily off to heaven with a great memory.”
“That ain’t where I’m sending him,” Troy muttered. He took a menacing step toward the house and the man who bowed his head against the wind, as if he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Before you go charging in there, Troy, think of this—he may have just saved her life.”
Troy did an about face. “How in hell do you figure that?”
“Chances are she couldn’t move right now if her life depended on it. What else would have kept her in one place for the next twenty-four hours? Do you think anything else but sheer exhaustion would keep her from Jared’s side during his last ordeal? I don’t know her, Troy, but I’m getting to know you and your damnable sense of honor pretty well.”
Troy muttered something under his breath.
“Now think about this. Did her words keep you from re-enlisting and going where you thought you were needed?”
Troy’s face fell, the confessions he’d made to the horseman coming back to haunt him. “I think you know the answer to that.”
The horseman took him by the shoulders and turned him away from the house. “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t have any luck convincing her either.”
That drew Troy up short. “What did you do to her?”
“Oh, nothing much. She was having a nice dream about a dance. I cut in and tried to scare the snot out of her. Didn’t work.”
“Damn, you’re doing to have to teach me to do that.”
“It’s not that hard. Dreams are nothing but energy bouncing around the brain. And that’s basically what we are, isn’t it? And it’s what she senses? Energy?”
Troy scrubbed ruefully at his hair. “You have no idea how much that makes sense to me. Now.” He muttered a curse at his own thick skull. “But you? Dancing? Now there’s a scary thought.”
“Shut up, Brannon. See that?” John gestured toward the lighthouse, nearly invisible in the fog except for the intermittent stab of light from its Fresnel lens.
Troy angled his head to one side and sniffed. Smoke. Alarm bells went off in his brain.
“We’ve got less than twenty-four hours to come up with a plan to get us all out of this alive.”
Flames.
Taylor rolled her head back and forth, trying to turn her face away from the heat and glare of flames. Dreaming again. Yet she knew she was awake. She had to be. The softness of the pillow cradled the back of her head, the hotel-grade sheets rubbed against her bare skin. Balanced on the edge of consciousness, she groaned softly and again tried to turn away from the flames, tried to relish instead the strange new feelings that coursed through her body with every beat of her heart. New and pleasant aches begged to be savored and contemplated, old ones nagged for attention.
Her skin felt like it shimmered, a delicious sensation she had never known before. But still the stubborn flames flicked at the corners of her vision. Gradually her eyes fluttered open, her first thought she must have slept until dawn.
But this dawn pulsated in changing shades of yellow and orange, writhing just outside the window.
Gasping, she tumbled out of bed and to the window in one swift motion, conscious of a vague shakiness in her knees as she raised the blinds.
What she saw made her whirl away from the window so fast she had to stop and clutch her head to keep it from falling off and rolling under the bed. She had forgotten that the second day after an injury was usually the worst. A few hours sleep had done nothing but worsen the throbbing head bump and slicing shoulder pain.
Maybe all that physical exertion with Jared hadn’t been such a wise idea. The memory heated her belly even as she closed her eyes to make the room stand still.
“Jared.” Her lips formed the name, but as if still locked in the dream, no sound came out. “Fire,” she tried again, daring to open and move her eyes just enough to search the bed.
Jared wasn’t there.
Stumbling toward the door on wobbly legs, she stubbed her toe and found enough voice to yelp. She located and pulled on some clothes, gritting her teeth against the hot poker of pain in her shoulder. Covered at last, she aimed her aching body down the hall, bumping along the wall to keep going in a straight line. A light led her toward the kitchen.
He stood up from his seat at the table, his fingertips trailing on two sheets of paper lying before him. She leaned on the door frame and thrust out a hand toward him, trembling.
“Jared,” she croaked, finding her voice at last. “The lighthouse is on fire.”
His face, already strained with some unnamed emotion, went pale. In three steps he was through the sliding door and disappeared for a moment out onto the deck.
As she watched him go, she dealt with another stab of pain. A new one around her heart. She closed her eyes and diagnosed the problem. An acute case of love, brought on by the ghost of a man who would soon pass out of her world.
He re-entered the house, the glass in the sliding door shuddering as he thrust it aside. He paused halfway through it to pin her with a hollow stare.
“Harris has caught up with us. It’s time for me to go.”
Controlling the sudden catch in her throat, she nodded.
“Apparently you aren’t the only ghost who doesn’t sleep,” she said, wondering whose unsteady voice that was coming out of her mouth.
Gathering her strength, she turned away to go collect their things. Before she had taken a step she looked up and found Jared beside her. He reached for her, then hesitated, the jaw under his dark beard set. Taylor took the decision into her own hands, slipped her arms around his waist, and pressed her cheek against his chest. She no longer feared touching him. The demons within his soul and hers had done their worst, and she had survived. There was nothing left to fear within either of them.
Without, though, there was plenty to fear. Less than a half mile away, the Bodie Island Lighthouse burned, perhaps to the ground, just like in the legend. Sirens screamed in the distance, growing louder, pummeling the house from all sides. Bloody Zachariah Harris had indeed caught up, intent upon sending Jared back to the oblivion from which she had vowed to help him escape.
He grasped her tight to him, and she felt emotion roaring just under the surface of his skin. Not panic. Not anger. The emotion she sensed had little to do with Harris or the burning lighthouse, even with her and what they had so recently shared.
She drew back and looked up into his shadowed eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
He drove his fingers into her hair, a quick, desperate gesture, and made a couple abortive attempts to speak as he stared hard into her eyes. Finally, he shook his head.
“There’s no time. I’ll explain later, when we’re safely away from here.” He paused and searched her face, his hands dropping to her forearms. She fought to still the faint trembling of her muscles, but she could hide nothing from him now. His mouth flattened. “You’re not up to this. I’m going on alone.”
She turned her hands over and grabbed his wrists, sweat breaking out on her forehead. “Are you nuts? You need me, remember? I think you said so yourself.” Adrenaline lent strength to her voice. Her muscles bunched with the urge to take flight, to get him away from the fire. Away from Harris.
“I need you alive, now and…” He hesitated, this gaze flicking toward the table and the scraps of paper it bore. “After. If you stay here, I’ll be assured you are safe.”
“What do you mean, ‘after’?” Quickly she held up her hands and stepped away. “No, wait. Don’t say anything. You can tell me once we’re on our way.”
“Miss Taylor.” His tone was dense with warning.
“Sergeant Beaudry,” she mimicked his tone as she walked firmly away from him toward the laundry room. His growing irritation prickled her back. Moving faster, she half-ran into the tiny cubicle, threw open the dryer and plunged her arms inside, hauling out a wad of blue and grey wool. Her shoulder protested, her vision
blurred, but she ignored the warning signals.
He stood a few feet behind her, his arms stiff at his sides, as if not quite knowing what to do with a woman who wouldn’t obey his orders.
“You’re staying here,” he growled. “I can’t risk… After last night…”
“Exactly.” Her voice cracked as she turned and shoved his blue uniform into his chest. She drew herself up to her full height and looked him square in the eye. “Last night. I may not be up on the normal morning-after routine, but I know damn well it doesn’t include watching the man I’ve just made love to ride off into the sunrise to meet his death. Alone.”
Damn, those tears again. So close to the surface. She felt stripped inside, with no barriers left strong enough to hold them back. In one explosive night, the ghost of Jared Beaudry had turned all her carefully constructed defenses to rubble.
He clutched his uniform under one arm and stopped her forward progress with the other.
She slipped past him, beyond having the energy to argue.
“You’re wounded,” he insisted, following. “You’re too weak to ride. And what we…I did to you last night drained you even more.”
She halted and wasted more strength on a laugh. “What you did to me?”
“You don’t understand,” he clipped out, balanced precariously on the knife edge between the need to flee and the desire to stand and fight. “I need you to do something for me. Only you can do it, and you have to be alive.”
The sirens screamed louder. Her feet shifted and she glanced over her shoulder at him.
“Jared, if we don’t leave now, we’re going to have to slip past Harris plus every cop from here to New Bern. We’re going to be conspicuous as it is, fleeing the scene wearing Civil War uniforms, on two very distinctively marked horses. Now let’s go!”
