As fast as he could fly down the dozens and dozens of circular iron stairs, Ayden flew, and when the door to the tower bolted open, he ran to me and gathered me up into his arms. At that moment, it felt like the whole weight of the wretched years had begun to lift off my shoulders and the locked door to the past had finally let me in.
“Is it really you?” he whispered breathlessly into my hair. Ayden clung so tight I could hardly breathe.
“Yes, Ayden, it’s me.”
“I thought I was dreaming. The long, dark, lonely nights cause me to see things that in the light of day I quickly realize aren’t really there.”
“I’m here. You’re not having a dream,” I said through my tears of happiness. Oh, how good it felt to be home and in the arms of someone who knew me for who I was and not what I had become.
Ayden broke away and scanned me with disbelieving eyes. “Oh, Lillian, I’ve waited so many years to see you again. I have truly missed you.”
Ayden resembled nothing of the young boy I knew years and years ago. He was near six feet tall, his hair just as dark but not as unkempt. He had acquired broad shoulders, and muscular arms, and he filled out his distinguished uniform with a man’s physique. He was as handsome as Heath, though boyishly so, instead of austerely sophisticated like his older brother. Ayden’s sapphire eyes shone brightly when he looked at me, and it was at that moment I knew I was home.
In some kind of frenzy to make up for lost time, Ayden hurried me along, getting me reacquainted with the island. “The small house next to the assistant keeper’s house - you know the house I lived in when you were here - is the third keeper’s house,” he explained while we walked through it. “I built the entire house myself. A gentleman will be arriving late fall to fill the position I’m told. The assistant keeper has orders to be here at the end of the summer. Supposedly he comes with a wife . . . and several children.”
Ayden was full of energy and kept a quick pace as he led me to the barn, where I was shocked to see the same cow we‘d had when I was a child. In addition, he had a dozen chickens, a rooster, and several hens. The oil house was repaired, the fog house in excellent shape. We ended the whirlwind tour by climbing the tower to the top of the lighthouse, a place that meant more than just coming home, for it was my Daddy’s lighthouse. Tears instantly came to my eyes and burned to escape as I tried to blink them back. I gazed all around, remembering the simple clockworks, the Fresnel lens that Daddy regularly polished so it sat shiny and clean. It wasn’t hard to see my beautiful young momma standing beside him during the endless, stormy nights as he scrutinized the sea for ships in peril. As a little girl, I saw my Daddy as a hero, the light of my life, as well as the light for all those helpless seamen out on the treacherous waters.
Ayden’s smile faded when he saw my sadness. When he spoke, his voice was compassionate. “Let’s go to the house and talk for a while.” He reached for my hand. The boy who once was one of my best friends had turned into a fine man, a more robust, confident version of the boy I had befriended. And unlike his brother, Ayden knew me - he’d said he missed me, and longed for the day he would see me again. I trusted him as if he were my very own brother and readily followed him out of the tower and into the house I had lived in with Momma and Daddy.
Astonishingly, the house was left just as it had been on the night I was taken without explanation from the lighthouse station. Slowly, I walked through the house in amazement. It was like a museum!. Even my room was the same - the delicate dollhouse still sitting atop the dresser, just where it was left. My books, though covered with layers of dust, remained in their opened boxes, untouched for all these years. And, what humbled me most, bringing a tear to my eye, was seeing my beautiful porcelain doll, the one Daddy had given me for my birthday, the one I’d named Jane. I had unknowingly left it behind the night Daddy took me away. My astounded expression spoke for itself, and it was then that Ayden whisked me downstairs and offered me an explanation.
His eyes were so very tired, his lids weighed down from the long night up in the tower, his face smothered with exhaustion under the shadow of a night’s beard growth. I sat before him thinking to myself how much of a dream it seemed, and how many times I envisioned this day. Here I was, back in my home on my beloved island on the sea, with the remnants of a boy I once knew who cared for me very much.
Ayden made us each a cup of tea and we sipped it and stared at one another with disbelief and relief at the same time. I sensed he had a hundred questions for me, but instead of my asking him what burned in his mind, he told me about the day he learned I was gone.
“I have kept everything in its place, waiting for you to come and wipe the dust off. Time has stood still until you returned, Lillian.” Ayden’s voice was deep and mature, his hands, which he laid on his lap, were those of a hardworking man; they were my Daddy’s hands.
“When I woke up that morning and heard my parents talking, I just couldn’t believe it was true. They said you and your father were gone, just a note left behind with his resignation. I ran here and looked for myself. I called for you. Heath was right behind, stunned and speechless. It was as if you vanished into a thick fog during the night and were never to be seen again.
Father immediately took over as primary keeper; but we continued to live in our quarters. When he retired as lighthouse keeper to take Mother and Elizabeth to the school for the deaf, and Heath went off to university to become a doctor, I fulfilled my dream and took my father’s place. I have been primary keeper for over two years now. I wondered about you every day. I kept the house just as it was, never touched a thing. I only laid my head to rest in your parent’s room. I prayed for a letter, something, anything to know where you were and what happened to you. And as the years passed by, I never gave up hope of receiving that letter. Or better yet, that your vision in the dawn of each new day would become real and not again a product of my foolish imagination.”
Ayden paused, and I immediately recognized the yearning in his eyes. Oh, it was so familiar. I uncomfortably shifted my eyes away.
“Tell me what happened that night? Where did your father take you?”
Should the truth be told, or the version that would save Ayden obvious pain from knowing all the suffering I had endured? Then again, he was there as a shoulder to cry on, a true, unconditional friend. Who was there, if Ayden Dalton hadn’t come running to me, welcoming me right back into his life?
The questions he asked came from the mystery of my sudden disappearance and not a cruel assessment of my failures. That was the way Heath had treated me. However, I saw the despondency in Ayden’s deep blue eyes as my tale came flooding out like an uncontrollable river that ravaged everything in its wake.
Ayden sat across from me and carefully listened to every word, with his fingers intertwined, hands clasped, holding up his rough, square chin. As I began, the tears came so fast and frequent and my throat choked up so often that I was barely able to tell my story.
“The night Daddy took me away, he told me Momma had died and we were going to bury her. I didn’t realize we weren’t going to the asylum, where Momma was taken years before, until we boarded the train. It was then I learned we were traveling to Georgia, the place where Momma was born and rested in peace. It was a long trip, and I was hot and tired and grateful when we finally reached Savannah. From the station, we went straight to the cemetery where I said goodbye to Momma. I believed Daddy was going to take us home then, after our time with her, but there was a woman waiting to take me with her.”
Ayden sat motionless, his fiery eyes locked onto me, waiting on edge for every word to come out between my sobs. Ayden must have sensed what I was about to reveal wasn’t pleasant; I noticed his jaw clench as I described the events that soon unfolded after I arrived at Sutton Hall.
“Daddy left me without reason, no explanation, with a stranger, in a once grandiose mansion whose walls were too afraid to reveal the dark, terrible truth about my own mother’s family. My grandmother’s name
was Eugenia Arrington, only I later learned she was my step-grandmother. She hated Momma and hated me more. She believed I was the spawn of the devil.”
Ayden’s brow lifted in question and he leaned in toward me and asked, “Why on earth did she say such a terrible thing to you?”
I swallowed hard and cradled my head in my hands, muffling my shame-filled cries. Ayden took hold of my hands and made me look at him. “You don’t believe what an obviously sick woman would say, do you?”
“She had every right to say what she did,” I sobbed. “I didn’t know, not for a long time. I was locked away, treated worse than any slave. I was starved, and when I escaped, found and beaten, whipped, and tortured.”
Ayden fell back into his seat and shook his head disbelief. I thought about stopping there, for he had certainly heard enough to make any man’s heart sink, but the flood raged on, and I was unable stop myself from telling him everything.
“Warren Stone was a man whom I had come to trust and fall in love with. I was so young and foolish; I truly didn’t know better. He promised to save me, to take me away and marry me. When I was finally free from the claws of Sutton Hall and moved in with Warren, I began to see there was something there, something in him that frightened me. At first it was I who made the advance.” As I said this to Ayden, my face flushed and I turned my head to face the window. The sun was rising high above the house, casting our solemn shadows, which appeared along the pine strips of the floor. “Then I sensed I had made a terrible mistake, but it was too late.”
I heard Ayden suck in his breath as he learned what Warren had done to me. I left out the embarrassing, ghastly details, but he gathered all too well the shame I carried from the incident. Ayden now knew that I was tainted, and I cringed at the thought.
“Lillian I…” I stopped him from commenting by standing up and drifting over to the fireplace. On the mantel sat one of Daddy’s pipes; it sat there in a timeless fashion, just waiting to be relit. I took hold of it and kept it in my clutches as I continued. “There is more, Ayden”
“I don’t need to know anymore. All that matters now is you are here. Don’t you see…?” Ayden swung me around and forced me to look up at him. “I have been waiting, taking every breath just so I could see you again. The past is behind you now,” he cried as he embraced me. Our heartbeats were fast, both of us consumed with dismay and torment and the seemingly dire need to escape it.
“I never imagined being so lonely. Stay with me, Lillian; live with me here on the island and heal your soul.”
“You don’t understand. Warren - he was my father!” I groaned out of torment, so ashamed. “And Garrett was my uncle, my mother’s older half-brother. Warren raped my mother and Garrett saved her from the wrath of Eugenia Arrington. They fell in love, and they lived as husband and wife, pretending, lying to everyone, including themselves. So you see . . . you see! “
His reaction was like a slap in the face. His cheeks turned red, his eyes blazed with anger. Stunned, he couldn’t speak.
“I ran from Savannah with a man and his wife after Warren was killed in a freak accident. I caused it; I pushed him into an oncoming carriage. He was trampled to death. Richard Parker said he would take me away, save me from a certain death sentence, and then give me the money to return to Jasper Island. He was an illustrator for a magazine. Ever since I agreed to go with him, my life has been an endless trail of mistakes. I was thrown into a burlesque company, hooked on drugs, had a tumultuous affair with Richard, then with Ned Griffin, Richard’s enemy, just to get back at Richard for all his lies and betrayals. I came to find out all too late that there was no law after me. Richard had made it all up! But I finally came to my senses, Ayden; I have left all of that behind me now.”
I collapsed into his arms, weary and spent. Ayden hushed me, rocked me, and whispered repeatedly that he didn’t judge me, that I was just as beautiful and pure as the first day he laid eyes on me. “I was too young to realize it then, but you stole my heart from the time I was a young boy. Thank you for coming home to me. I thought I would die a lonely man in endless, solitary nights. None of what you told me matters, none of it. All I know is we are here together, as it should be.”
Out of pure exhaustion, Ayden carried me up to my room where he laid me on my bed and told me to rest. “I will be sitting here in this chair for as long as you sleep. And when you open your eyes, I will be the first thing you see. Then you will know there is nothing more to fear, that the past is forever gone, and the future is yours and mine alone.”
True to his word, Ayden sat and stayed with me until my sleepy eyes lifted to find him beside me, the slivery glow of the moon shining onto his face through the open window.
“You cried out and I held your hand. I hope you don’t mind?” he asked in just above a whisper. I looked down to see my hand still kept in his. I nodded and sighed with great relief. Of course, it was fine he sat and watched over me, held my hand and protected me from my terrible dreams.
“Come with me to the tower, sit with me tonight. I have waited for you to wake before I lit the lamp. I just couldn’t leave you.” Ayden lifted my hand and pressed it against his warm cheek. “Stay with me, be with me until I’m old and gray,” he murmured.
Slowly I turned onto my side asked him with a heavy heart, “What are you asking, Ayden?”
He knelt down beside the bed and with a choked up voice and trembling hands asked, “Will you do me the honor, Lillian Arrington, and become my partner for life, to be my wife?”
There was no ring, no promises of great success as man and wife, no talk of all the accomplishments we would achieve in our years together. Ayden simply expressed his devotion for me, the girl he fell in love with long ago and the woman whom he now wanted to stand by his side, just the way Momma had for Daddy. I was to be his companion, the love that kept his eternal light shining when he was working the lighthouse and shining the light for all others. Ayden wanted me to be the woman who made him a hero to years of rescues, gave him the courage to go out onto stormy seas and save men who would most surely drown.
Without hesitation, without thinking of Warren, Richard, Ned, or Heath I answered, “Yes Ayden Dalton, I will become your wife. To see you through weary nights, to be by your side until you are old and gray.”
Ayden lifted me and for the first time, placed his lips on mine and we kissed. The kiss didn’t steal my breath or cause my heart to flutter, but gave me comfort and consolation that I had made it safely home and no longer needed to run from anyone or myself.
“Oh Lillian, I will make you proud. You have filled my half empty life, I am now complete,” he said between gentle kisses. Then we laughed, cried, and embraced one another. Two kids who met long ago, playmates, friends, were now becoming man and wife. It was written in the stars, it was meant to be, I told myself. All the suffering I was meant to endure only made me see how perfect Ayden was for me, how he was put on this earth to see me through my days, comfort my nights and give me a purpose. I was to be like Momma; my husband’s better half. I finally had a purpose for living - to finally see the other side and find the joy in a life that had always eluded me.
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
Salvation in the arms of love
That night, Ayden and I stood together under the star filled night, side by side working the light just the way Momma and Daddy once had. Ayden told me stories of brutal storms, dangerous rescues, sinking ships. “I’ve seen my life flash before me more than once, and I swore if I died before seeing you again, my soul would be lost and wandering for all eternity.” He stood next to me as I gazed out at the dark sea, and no doubt both of us thinking of the ghost of Jasper Island - Victor.
“Have you seen him?” I asked, shivering from the thought of remaining a spirit adrift, unable to find the gates of Heaven.
“Not since you left. When you disappeared, so did the ghost.”
“Did Heath ever believe you?”
Ayden snickered bitterly.
“Heath is too intellectual to believe in anything not scientifically proven. I don’t want to talk about him. I want to think only of you and me. We should get married right away,” he said, taking me into his arms and holding me tight. I did not disagree.
“Is tomorrow too soon?” I asked with a big smile. I hadn’t smiled from an inner glow, probably not ever. Not even when other men proclaimed their affections for me. They weren’t sincere, as Ayden’s love was. He kissed me with a passion that came from the deepest part of his soul, and I accepted nothing less.
All night we held hands, two children grown into adults, had miraculously found one another through the endless storms that had kept us apart. When the sun rose to another dawn, just before ten a.m. (the time required to have the light ready for the upcoming evening), Ayden and I crawled into separate beds under one roof. Ayden understood without explanation that I was wounded and would need time to heal. He didn’t pursue me or pressure me into sharing his bed to fulfill his obvious desire for me. I felt him when he pressed against me while we embraced, and I was aware of his yearnings. There was nothing left in me to appease a man’s desire, especially Ayden’s. I wanted to claim back my innocence, and he was the man who respected me enough to give me that gift.
When I lay in my bed, growing peacefully tired, it began to sink in that the next day I was going to be a bride. It was my wedding day. A real marriage, with a man who put me on a pedestal and worshiped everything about me. Not only was it my beauty that stole his heart, I believed, but he cherished the girl with the unpretentious dreams of being forever adored.
Another night manning the light and stealing kisses and warm affection in between the tedious hours of work, we were like two schoolchildren in some kind of love spell. Like what Heath and Clara had for one another. Ayden’s eyes didn’t leave me for one minute; his hands lingered near me and often touched my hand, and brushed against the wispy strands of my long hair. I blushed and smiled back with sheepish eyes, still shy when drawn into such genuine fondness.
Box Set: The ArringtonTrilogy Page 73
