by Jenny Lykins
DISTANT DREAMS
By Jenny Massie Lykins
Previously published 1998 Jenny Lykins by Berkley/Jove
Copyright 2013 Jenny Massie Lykins Smashwords Edition
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For the Father, who has given me everything I’ve
needed, exactly when I needed it, whether I wanted it or not.
And for my family, who has done the same..
CHAPTER ONE
July 29, 1999
Cape Helm, Maine
“How’d you like to get married this afternoon?” The wiry little sailor in dirty, ragged clothes waggled his eyebrows at Shaelyn as she enjoyed the brisk summer breeze in her face. The easterly wind lifted her hair and swirled it over her shoulders as she gave the question a moment’s thought, then shrugged and turned away from the ship’s well-worn rail.
“Sure. Why not.”
Pete, the old seadog who’d been assigned to show her around the antique vessel, clapped his hands together and rubbed them as if trying to start a fire without matches. She just rolled her eyes with a smile and shoved away from the polished wooden rail. The towering masts, more than a century and a half old, swayed above her in a crystal blue sky marred only by a fluffy white streak left in the wake of a jumbo jet.
“So, who am I going to marry?” Shae asked. The dark-eyed sailor strolling up the gangplank wouldn’t break her heart.
Pete shoved his frayed knit cap to the back of his head, rubbed the gold hoop earring in his left ear, and surveyed the men on deck. Dozens of ropes on the three-masted ship snapped in the breeze while wood creaked against wood with every little wave in the water.
“Hmm. Lessee. Well, how ‘bout…nope…he’s already married. His wife might frown on that. Then mebbe…nah, he’s got to take his car to get worked on this afternoon. I dunno. You get dressed and I’ll find somebody.”
Shaelyn shook her head and smiled as she stepped over a thick coil of rope.
“I hope there aren’t going to be pictures, Pete. I’m already living down a multitude of bonehead things. I don’t need physical proof adding one more to the list.”
“No guarantee, missy.” When Pete shook his head with wide-eyed innocence, Shaelyn felt certain she would live to regret this latest spur-of-the-moment decision. But, she had to admit, she’d never let a little regret slow her down. In fact, she’d had an awful lot of fun in exchange for those few moments of remorse.
Especially there in Cape Helm, where the small town had changed little in a hundred and fifty years. The summer vacations she’d spent there had always felt more like home than anywhere else in the world. But even then something never quite felt right. She was used to that though; that feeling of not belonging. That’s probably why she liked her job so much. She never stayed in one place long enough to expect to belong. Then again, she never stayed in one place long enough to meet someone special, either. That part, she missed.
Pete took her arm and pointed toward a door leading down into the ship. “There’s a trunk with some clothes in the cabin next to the Cap’n’s. You go get dolled up and I’ll find you a boy to marry. The tourists’ll start showin’ up in about a half hour. By the way,” he stopped and spit over the rail, “I talked with Delores Hawthorne, the town historian. She said she’d talk to you for your article. Give her a call when you have time. She’s in the book.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Shaelyn gave him a sharp salute. “You’re a sweetheart.”
He snorted and shook his head. “Go get yourself dressed for a wedding,” he tossed over his shoulder as he walked away.
She picked her way over the deck and around hatches of the ship that had carried both passengers and cargo in the first half of the nineteenth century, wondering why she always found herself in these odd situations. Nobody else she knew did crazy things. Well, at least she’d have some interesting stories to tell the grandchildren, if she ever got around to having any kids.
She descended steps so steep they were almost a ladder, then she blinked and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom of the ship’s musty, dank interior. Oil lamps dotted the narrow corridor’s walls, casting a dim, orangey glow. The floodlight that should have lighted her way had a black scorched spot on one side. She’d have to tell Pete that the bulb had burned out.
From her earlier tour she knew that the captain’s cabin lay at the end of the companionway. Squinting, she made her way to the cabin next to it.
Just as she reached the cabin door, the ship lurched in its moorings, banging against the dock and bouncing her off the bulkhead. Her notebook and tape recorder slid from her arms and skidded down the wood floor, ricocheting off walls and coming to rest somewhere in the darker shadows between the feeble light of the oil lamps and the captain’s quarters. As she edged toward her wayward paraphernalia her fingers brushed against a light switch. Flicking it on, a burst of white light bathed the hallway, then that bulb burned out too. And now, to top it off, white spots danced in front of her eyes and she’d lost sight of her recorder.
“Well, crap.”
The recorder and notebook had to be near her feet. She dropped to her denim-clad knees and inched along the floor, feeling around like someone searching for a lost contact. She hated to think what the knees to her favorite jeans would look like after she got through crawling around the ancient bare wood of a two hundred year old ship. Not to mention scuffing the toes of her cowboy boots.
Her fingers curled around the mini-recorder just as her knee landed on the notebook.
“Yes!” she cheered. “Darn!” Her favorite pen was no longer clipped to the inside of the spiral.
Patting her hands along the floor, she flicked away pebbles, splinters of wood and a few other things she wasn’t sure she wanted to put a name to. Just as she was about to go in search of a light, her fingers touched something rounded protruding from a crack in the floor. She dug at it with her fingernails until it popped from its prison between the floorboards. Definitely not her pen. She picked up a ring. Part of somebody’s costume, no doubt.
“Criminy, Sumner, you go out to do a simple story on the last year of the millennium in a sleepy little town, and you end up in the middle of their living history, play-acting a wedding, crawling on your hands and knees in the bowels of a smelly old ship, obsessively chasing after some worthless pen, talking to yourself…”
But she loved her freelance writing job and all the wonderful places it took her.
She sat back on her heels and looked at the ring, half-inclined to toss it back to the floor and continue her search. But with one glimpse of it in the stingy lamplight, she saw the flash of a rich, emerald green stone flanked by what looked like diamonds, set in an intricate, filigreed gold band. It looked and felt real.
Maybe the ring wasn’t costume jewelry after all.
The hatch above opened, spilling in enough light so that Shaelyn saw her pen. She pounced on it.
“You dressed yet, missy?” Pete bellowed down the companionway. “I found you a groom.”
“Give me five minutes, would ya?” she teased. “It’s not every day a girl gets married!”
A wheezy chuckle filtered to her just seconds before the hatch slammed shut.
“Oh, Pete, I found a…”
Too late. Shaelyn shrugged and slipped the ring onto her finger so she’d rememb
er to give it to the man playing the captain. He’d know what to do with it.
Just as the ring slid over her knuckle to settle into a perfect fit on her finger, the ship pitched, then pitched again, slamming her into the rough wooden walls, banging her head and knocking the breath from her, reeling her with a bout of vertigo in the cramped, dark corridor belowdecks. She lost the notebook and recorder again when she bounced off two walls, then she crashed through the door to the sunlit cabin and shot across the room, landing on a hard bunk covered with a lumpy mattress worthy of one of the ship’s original passengers.
“You guys ever hear of a No Wake zone?” she yelled at the anonymous boater who’d no doubt roared through the restricted waters. “They want no wake for a reason!”
She shook her head, amazed at how dizzy a heaving ship could make her. For a brief moment the room spun around and she drunkenly grabbed the edge of the bunk.
The ship’s rocking calmed. When her aching head finally stopped spinning, she looked around the cabin. Had she seen this one on the tour Pete had taken her on this morning? She didn’t remember seeing this one. At least the cabin didn’t smell quite so old and musty as the corridor. In fact, it looked almost lived in.
With a shrug, Shae worked her way to the leather and brass trunks against the wall. Their richness surprised her, considering the living history’s budget. Someone must have donated them. She flipped open the first trunk to reveal what appeared to be mourning clothes. Perhaps appropriate attire for a lot of weddings, but the tourists would want to see something a little more cheerful. She dug through the clothing, finding only layers of black, wondering with a shudder what reenactment those costumes were for. Leaving that chest behind, she heaved open the lid of the second trunk.
Now that was more like it.
A rainbow of silks, satins, and lace shimmered up at her from the velvet-lined trunk. Shaelyn could hardly believe the opulence of the costumes. A far cry from the raggedy outfits of the ship’s crew. Of course, they’d be expected to look like a bunch of ragtag sailors after a long voyage, but she’d never expected the passenger costumes to be so realistic. These gowns had to cost a fortune, or else the town had one heck of a costume seamstress.
She pulled the first intricately-folded gown from the trunk and shook it out. Yards of silk rippled to the floor in a waterfall of seafoam green. A short, matching jacket lay beneath where the gown had been stored.
Shaelyn unsnapped her purse belt, kicked off her boots and socks, then peeled her snug jeans to the floor and stepped out of them. She doubted if the black grime ground into the pale blue denim knees would ever come clean. With a belated glance at the door, she threw the bolt, then pulled the plain white tee shirt over her head.
She hated to rummage through the rest of the lush, meticulously-folded costumes in the trunk, but she had a feeling the other participants in the living history might frown on her showing up for an 1830’s shipboard wedding in cowboy boots.
Disturbing as little as possible, she excavated the contents, finding matching slippers and bonnet, and a few lacy petticoats that looked like they might be needed under the gown. What looked suspiciously like a corset lay tucked neatly among the underthings. If Pete thought she was wearing one of those, he was in for a disappointment.
The sound of increased activity on deck reminded her that the wiry seaman would be bellowing for her again, so she shimmied into the gown, tied on the petticoats, and breathed a sigh of relief that the costume had an inch or so to spare in size. She strapped the small, flat purse pouch around her waist, under the gown, then settled it low over her hip, like a holster for a gun. The purse had her credit cards in it, among other things, and she wasn’t about to leave it laying around unattended. She nearly dislocated her shoulders trying to fasten the bazillion microscopic buttons up her back. Just before a healthy curse managed to find its way past her lips, her gaze fell on the short jacket draped across the lid of the trunk.
“Aha!” She’d managed to get at enough top and bottom buttons that the jacket would cover up what she’d missed.
With her clothing at least outwardly acceptable, she slid her bare feet into a pair of ballet-type slippers that looked and felt remarkably like they’d been made by hand. She hadn’t bothered to pull stockings out of the trunk, but surely no one would notice during the few minutes she’d be on deck.
Finally, in a rush to finish before Pete came to fetch her, she bent forward, gathered her long, curly hair into one hand, gave the whole thick mass a twist, then stuffed the ponytail into the enormous bonnet and tied the ribbons into a big bow at her cheek.
Her reflection in the tiny mirror by the porthole surprised her. She’d never been into ultra-feminine clothes, so the elegant simplicity of the pre-Civil War gown suited her taste, but the pale green bonnet with ruching framing her face was more delicate than anything she’d ever worn in her life. With the green a few shades lighter than her eyes, the gown was a perfect compliment to her coloring.
A shiver of dèjá vu skittered up her spine as she looked at herself in the mirror, as if she’d seen herself in that costume before. She hated the eerie feeling that always caught her unawares, but she experienced it too often to let it bother her. With a practiced shrug, she shoved the feeling out of her thoughts and turned to the door.
“You clean up pretty good, Sumner,” she told herself as she stepped out of the cabin. “And quit talking to yourself.”
No one had been around to fix the light in the passageway. She couldn’t even find the switch now in the dim gloom, not that it would do her any good. She made her way to the stairs with only the feeble light from the oil lamps.
“Well, just great,” she muttered as she felt her way to the steps. Wasn’t anyone worried about a tourist getting down there, falling and breaking a neck, then suing the pants off the historical society?
She stubbed her toe on something and nearly went sprawling against the steep set of steps. “Klutz,” she grumbled, then looked around to see if anyone had witnessed her graceful arrival at the stairs. Fortunately she was alone.
She hiked her dress to her knees with one hand and used the other to pull herself to the upper deck. The door leading outside stuck the first time she tried it, but, of course, it flew open with ease when she shouldered her way through, sending her stumbling onto the deck and into the blinding brilliance of the sun.
Once she managed to stop her forward motion, she squinted into the sunlight until her eyes adjusted, then looked around for Pete and something that might be the stage for the wedding.
“Wow!” she breathed. Everyone had on a costume. She hadn’t realized there’d be so many re-enactors participating in this event. But where were the tourists? Was this to be like a costume party where everyone participated?
Shrugging, she turned in a circle, scanned 360 degrees around her, then went in search of Pete.
*******
July 29, 1830
Cape Helm, Maine
“You’re going to do what?” Griffin Elliott for once lost his usual bored-with-life expression, and Alec Hawthorne smiled at being the cause. Alec took another sip of his brandy and repeated himself.
“I’m going to wed Phillipa Morgan.”
Griffin leapt to his feet, then flicked spilled droplets of brandy from his fingertips.
“But your brother has been betrothed to her since he was ten years of age! I know he has no desire to marry her, but neither do you, and he is her betrothed. Surely your father does not condone…” Griffin’s voice trailed off, then his eyes widened in realization. “You mean to wed her before he finds out! Saints, Alec, is Charles a part of this mad scheme for you to marry his intended?”
Alec settled back in his chair and cocked his head at his closest friend. If he weren’t dreading this marriage so much, he might enjoy Griffin’s uncharacteristic agitation. He just wished Grif lived in Maine instead of Baton Rouge, so he could aggravate him on a regular basis.
“You know Charles is too hono
rable to go along with this. But he is mad for that little Templeton girl, and at least one of us should have a chance for a happy marriage. Besides,” Alec shrugged, “if Father’s intended bride for me had not cocked up her toes with pneumonia last season, I would be firmly wed now anyway, and probably well on my way to becoming a father.” If I had been able to accomplish the deed to create a child, he thought, shuddering at the memory of the horse-faced girl with the sour disposition. His overbearing father seemed to have a penchant for weeding out babies who would become homely women to betroth his young sons to. Lord knew what his little sister would end up with.
Griffin must have read his mind.
“But you said yourself you saw a glimpse of Phillipa on your Grand Tour, and even as a child the chit showed promise of being the most ill-favored woman you’d ever had the misfortune to encounter.”
Alec sighed and tried to act as if her looks held no consequence.
“All I need do is get a child upon her, to quiet Father’s constant harping for an heir. Then she can live her life and I will live mine. It’s quite simple, really.”
“You’re mad, Alec. Even if you manage to find yourself wed, her family and yours will scream for an annulment.”
Griffin paced the length of the library, stopping occasionally to glare at his long time friend.
Alec rose and poured himself another brandy. He would no doubt need a continual supply of the substance before this day was done.
“She has no family left, except an elderly aunt who is traveling with her. When her father died in London, they closed up the house and sent word they were coming to fulfill his last wish. Had he not been sick these last years, she would have been here long before now.”
“But you - ”
“I am going to wed her, Griffin. Stop worrying over me like a mother hen.”
