Wherever You Are

by Sharon Cullen

  “Please, Juliana. I…” He cleared his throat. “I had to ride to Dover as soon as you left the other day. This is the earliest I was able to come back. I don’t like how things ended. I’m… I’m sorry.”

  She moved to the window seat and sat. She looked as if she hadn’t been eating or sleeping properly yet her shoulders were back, her chin held high. Pride was the only thing keeping her going. She’d had a lot of time to think about the things he’d said and he regretted that. He should have never left without speaking to her first.

  “I should have told you who I was.”

  “Yes, you should have.”

  “I’m sorry.” They were the only words he could speak. Everything else was locked up inside him.

  “When did you know?” she asked softly. “When did you know it was me?”

  “I suspected when I saw your clothes. Zippers haven’t been invented yet.” He smiled, but it faded when she didn’t smile back. “In your fever, you talked about Zach, which made me wonder.” Wonder? Hell, it’d terrified him. “But it was when you opened your eyes that I knew.”

  He saw the condemnation in her expression but he was determined to come clean. To tell her the truth from here on out. He swallowed, knowing he had to say the rest. “I’m ashamed of what I’ve become. I’m different now. I’m not Zach and I feared you’d think I was the same boy who wanted to become a police officer. I didn’t want…” He looked away, unable to look at her. “I didn’t want to see your disappointment.”

  “Give me some credit, Morgan. We’re both different. I’m not the same person I was fifteen years ago either.”

  “I see that.” But her inner core was the same. Maybe she was a little tougher but inside she was still the Juliana he’d loved as a young man.

  “And I don’t believe you’re different, either.”

  “Juliana.” She frustrated him. How could he make her see? How could he make her believe that Zach was no longer?

  She stood but didn’t come closer. There was a wariness about her. He’d ruined the closeness they shared that night in the tender and now regretted it. “The person you describe to me. The person you claim to be is not the same person who tended my wounds and nursed me back from a fever. It’s not the same person who rescued me from Barun’s ship and was there for me those days after when I was trying to deal with everything that happened. I’ve watched you with your men. I’ve watched you with Isabelle and Reed. You’re a decent man, Morgan. The only one who doesn’t believe that is you.”

  His throat closed up and tears pushed against the back of his eyes. It’d been a long time since he’d cried. “I’ve done some horrible things.”

  “You did what you had to in order to survive.”

  He ground his teeth together. She was using his own words against him but damn if she wasn’t right.

  “You don’t know how much I wish things had been different. That I hadn’t gone through the mirror. That I’d stayed and we had lived our lives together.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve learned you can’t look back. Regrets are useless. It’s what you do with the present that matters.”

  Maybe it was easier for someone like her who didn’t have to live with her regrets.

  “When I’m finished with Barun I can look for the mirror again. Maybe it’s resurfaced since I last stopped asking about it.”

  She looked at him, her blue eyes penetrating, thoughtful. “And then what?”

  He cleared his throat and looked away. “You can go back.” His gaze slid to hers but there was no expression there. She was learning to hide her thoughts from him and he wasn’t sure he liked that.

  “I guess it’s better than being sold to a stranger in marriage.”

  He winced but didn’t say anything. What could he say? She was right.

  “And if you don’t find the mirror?” she asked. “Will you stick with the plan and marry me off?”

  The thought made him sick. Since his trip to Dover he’d been fighting the inevitable. No, since Juliana appeared on his burning ship he’d been fighting the inevitable. The trip to Dover confirmed it. He’d been fooling himself thinking he would be happy knowing Juliana was in a safe marriage. He realized now it only would have been safe because she would be beyond his reach.

  “Maybe. What if I found a great match? What if… What if it were me you were to marry?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Something passed across her face. A fleeting look of regret mixed with anger and sorrow. “I don’t think so, Morgan.”

  He’d expected the rejection and prepared for it but it didn’t make it hurt any less. “Just listen to me, please. I have money. You’d never want for anything.”

  “Don’t insult me. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

  “It wasn’t an insult, Juliana. It’s a fact. You need money to survive. I can give you that as well as my protection from Barun.”

  “I don’t get this,” she said. “Four days ago you wanted to marry me off to the first person who’d take your money. What changed?”

  “Me. I changed. Or maybe I realized I was being an ass.”

  She snorted but he ignored her.

  “I was riding to Dover, chasing Barun, but all I could think about was our conversation and how hurt you were. And when I tried to think of someone who would take care of you. Who would keep you safe, no one came to mind. There is no one I trusted with your safety. And the thought of handing you off to someone nearly made me sick. When we got to Dover and Barun wasn’t there all I could think was that you were in danger. I was convinced he knew I was out of London and you weren’t safe and I knew the only way I would be assured of your safety was if I were the one keeping you safe. I did some horrible things to you on the Adam. Things I will forever regret. I know what it’s like to be in a foreign land, in a foreign time. I realize it might be too late to make amends, but I can help you learn how to live in this time.”

  “So I’m a responsibility. An obligation.”

  “No!” The woman had a way of turning his words around to suit her purposes.

  “If not an obligation, what is it?”

  “Protection. Security. Safety.”

  She crossed her arms again. “Seems to me I get in more trouble when you’re around.”

  She was right. If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have found herself in Barun’s clutches. Yet he shuddered to think what would have happened if someone but him had found her. “We’re two misplaced people, Juliana, with only each other. You’re the only one who can know about me and I’m the only one who knows where you come from. If that’s not a connection, I don’t know what is.”

  She seemed to be waiting for something else. Something more from him yet he was damned if he could figure out what.

  After a while she lowered her arms. “I’m sorry, Morgan, but I can’t marry you.”

  For once Juliana didn’t mind the constant drizzle because today it matched her mood. She sat on a stone bench in the Parkers’ garden, protected by a large tree. In her hands was a shredded leaf.

  “May I join you?” Isabelle appeared in front of her, wearing her breeches, a white shirt and a jacket.

  Juliana shifted to make room and Isabelle sat next to her. Together they listened to the softly falling rain and Juliana continued to shred leaves she’d pulled from the tree.

  “If you stay out here much longer, you’ll turn into a prune and my tree will have no leaves,” Isabelle said.

  “I’m sorry.” She brushed the torn leaves off her skirt.

  “No need to be sorry. You tear leaves when you’re angry, I attack ships.”

  Juliana smiled and Isabelle chuckled. “Reed keeps telling me to stay out of it, but I can’t. You’re miserable, Juliana, and I know it’s Morgan’s fault.”

  Juliana sighed, as torn apart as the poor leaves she slaughtered. A few hours after Morgan left, when Juliana’s anger finally abandoned her, she realized her mistake. Yet days later, she still hadn’t found the courage to c
orrect it. Morgan was right. She needed money and protection and she couldn’t rely on the Parkers’ goodwill forever. She’d been a fool to turn him down and foolish still to want to hold out for a marriage based on love and trust.

  Her trust in him had been shattered. And the love? Well, he hadn’t said the words and ultimately that was the reason she turned him down. Damn it, was it too much to want love in a marriage? Was it impossible in this time?

  It was becoming hard to see the rain through the tears gathering in her eyes. “I love him,” she whispered. “But right now I don’t like him very much.”

  “Ah.” Isabelle smiled. “I find myself in the same predicament with Reed most of the time. They do make us angry, don’t they?”

  Juliana tried to smile but her heart hurt too much. Isabelle pulled a few leaves off the tree and started shredding them. She shrugged and smiled sheepishly when she caught Juliana watching her. “No ships to attack at the moment.”

  “Tell me about him,” Juliana said.

  Pieces of leaves fell to the ground as Isabelle looked into the distance. “Morgan and I sailed together for many years. He always had a fearsome reputation but in reality has a hidden spot inside him. I’ve never seen him hurt women or children.” She paused and glanced at Juliana. “Well, except for the time he had you flogged, but in his defense he thought you were a boy.”

  The rain began to ease up and in the distance Juliana heard a few birds start to sing.

  “After Reed and I married,” Isabelle said, “Morgan went out on his own. It’s not uncommon for sailors to be gone a few years. But after three I began to worry. Rumor reached us that he’d been captured. I wanted to find him but Reed and I had the business.” She brushed leaf debris off her hands and skirts, the look in her eyes far away. “When he returned he wasn’t the same man anymore.”

  “He told me about being a slave.”

  Isabelle looked at her in surprise. “He told you? He’s never spoken of it to me. I deduced some of it on my own. The brand on his arm is Sanskrit for slave.”

  Juliana shuddered and crossed her arms over her stomach. She didn’t blame Morgan for trying to forget his past. In this time it was all about surviving.

  “He asked me to marry him,” she said.

  Isabelle turned to her with a bright smile. “Good for him! It’s time he was happy and settled.”

  “I told him no.”

  “Juliana?”

  Juliana looked up from the book she’d been trying to read. She was on the same page she’d been on an hour ago and was about ready to give up. “Yes?”

  Isabelle stepped into her bedchamber and closed the door behind her, her expression guarded. Juliana closed the book and put it down. “What is it?”

  “You have a caller.”

  “Caller?” For a moment she thought someone was on the telephone. Until she remembered there were no telephones here and caller meant visitor.

  Her stomach clenched and her first thought was Barun, but she just as quickly dismissed the thought. Isabelle wouldn’t calmly stand in her bedchamber if Barun were in the house.

  “Morgan,” Isabelle clarified.

  Juliana stood on suddenly shaking legs and smoothed down her skirts with trembling hands. “He’s here?”

  “In the library. He’s being civilized this time. He’s freshly bathed and waiting patiently. However, I wouldn’t test his patience. I think you should see him.”

  Juliana nodded. Her heart was in her throat as she made her way down the stairs. What was she going to say to him? By the way, the marriage proposal I turned down? Is it still on the table?

  He was standing at the window with his hands behind his back. His hair was combed and pulled into what they called a queue but what she considered a ponytail for men. His expression was serious, his eyes probing as if weighing her mood. He bowed and in that moment he was very much the eighteenth-century man. “How are you?” he asked when he rose.

  “Fine.”

  “I brought you a present.” He indicated a wrapped package on a side table.

  “A present? What for?”

  “Have you forgotten, Juliana? Today is your birthday.”

  She’d completely forgotten. In fact, she hadn’t been keeping track of the days at all. There seemed to be no reason when there wasn’t anywhere she needed to be.

  Morgan placed the package in her hand and stepped back, putting his hands behind him again. “Open it.”

  There hadn’t been many presents in her life. More often than not her parents forgot her birthday and Christmas was always hit or miss in her house depending on her mother’s mood. Daniel told her to buy whatever she wanted for her birthday and the one Christmas they spent together, they decided to forego gifts and work in a soup kitchen.

  Morgan’s gift wasn’t wrapped prettily. The paper was coarse and brown, the whole thing held together by twine. She blinked her tears away because it was perfect.

  Slowly she pulled the twine and pushed the paper away. Inside lay a book bound in red leather, her initials in gold leaf very discreet in the bottom right corner. When she opened it the pages were blank. She looked up at Morgan in question.

  He shrugged as if he were uncomfortable. “You kept pestering my crew for paper and pen. I thought you might like your own journal. To write.”

  The tears she’d been holding back leaked out of her eyes and down her cheeks. She hugged the book to her chest and cried.

  Morgan’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean to make you cry, Juliana. Please don’t cry.”

  “It’s p-perfect.” She sniffed. “Thank you.” She cried harder, not for the journal, but for everything that happened. Everything she lost. Everything she found. It was suddenly too much and she couldn’t seem to stop the tears. Morgan eased the book from her grasp, pulled her into his arms and rocked her while she cried on his shoulder.

  When she was finished, she took one final sniff and stepped away, mopping her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “If I’d known it would make you cry, I wouldn’t have bought it.” But he smiled anyway.

  She shook her head and took a deep breath. Best to get it over with. “I need to know if your offer of marriage is still open.”

  He went still and for a terror-filled moment she wasn’t sure if the offer actually was still open.

  “Do you mean it?” he asked.

  “Did you mean it when you said you wanted to marry me?”

  “Of course. What changed your mind?”

  She reached over to the side table and opened and shut her new journal. “You were right. I have nothing and I need protection. Money at the least.” She cringed at the awkwardness of admitting she was marrying him for nothing more than his money. This wasn’t the way she dreamt of finding Zach.

  “There’s nothing shameful about it. It’s done all the time.”

  She slammed the book closed. “Not where I come from. Not where we come from. I know it’s foolish to want more and that’s my cross to bear. I’m not asking for something you can’t give.”

  She took a few steps away to give herself distance and to gather her quickly unraveling nerves. This was the decision she’d made and she would live with it.

  “Is that what you think, Juliana? That I can’t give you more?”

  He looked hurt and she had to swallow her apology. There was nothing to apologize for. “You’re giving me everything you can and I’m grateful. Please don’t think otherwise.”

  “What is it you want from me, Juliana?”

  When she wouldn’t look at him, he stepped closer and lifted her chin with his hand. “Tell me what you want.”

  Once again she was going to cry. Damn it, she never used to cry like this, but lately it seemed her emotions were oozing out of her faster than she could plug the holes.

  “Tell me, Juliana. What do you want from me?”

  Her breathing came fast. His touch was warm but the look in his eyes hard. “I want your love,” she whispe
red.

  For a moment they stood frozen and slowly the hardness in his eyes gave way to something softer. “Don’t you know you’ve had that all along? Through all the centuries between us I’ve never stopped loving you.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “He’s like a damn ghost, slipping in and out of the city. No one sees him unless he wants to be seen. His ship mysteriously appears and disappears.” Morgan tilted his head back and blew cigar smoke into the air, watching as it formed a circle, danced away, then vanished.

  Barun was like the bloody smoke ring. Vanishing as soon as you got near him. Morgan’s frustration reached new levels and his concern for Juliana grew by the hour. Tomorrow she would become his wife, his sole responsibility. How the hell was he going to protect her from a specter like Barun? He ground the cigar out, smashing it until there was almost nothing left. They’d received one piece of good news. Barun sent his brother back to India so that was one less person to worry about.

  Reed was sprawled in a comfortable leather chair across from him, a glass of brandy dangling from his hand. They were in the Parkers’ study and the women were off somewhere planning the wedding ceremony. “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  Morgan shrugged. “I don’t know what to do. I hate the idea of waiting for him to make the next move.”

  “Any ideas where he could be?”

  “None. The trip to Dover was a waste of time. It’s almost as if he wants to send me on these wild-goose chases.” Barun was playing with him, just as he had when Morgan was his slave. The man loved his mind games and this was the biggest game of all. With the highest stakes. “I’ll have to flush him out,” Morgan said, staring at the fire in the grate.

  “How are you going to do that?” Reed took the last swallow of his brandy and set the glass on the floor by his feet.

  “Leave London. Set sail with a crew, wait for Barun to follow, then ambush him.”

  “Juliana’s not going to like that.”

  No. She wasn’t. But he was out of ideas and he refused to spend the rest of their lives together looking over his shoulder. He surged off the chair and began to pace. “This needs to end. If I leave London, Barun will follow.”