Forever Mine

by Charlene Raddon

  Never would he admit that what he had truly been watching and praying for, was old man Biggs rowing up to the dock with Ariah and her luggage in tow. Common sense argued that it was a foolish long shot, yet love had never been reasonable and Bartholomew was no longer certain he wanted to be. The truth he had been trying to drown this day at Hennifee's saloon was that he had lost his gamble. She was not coming. To him that was a sort of death; the death of hope, and of dreams.

  Truth was a far bitterer brew than what Max served him. He took the refilled glass and drank deeply. If luck was with him, he'd be drunk enough by bedtime to sleep through the night without dreams haunted by the sight, smell, taste and feel of Ariah.

  A small wiry man stepped off the steamer. Bartholomew studied him as the stranger looked about. A satchel sat at the man's feet. He wore dark, sensible clothing, with a cap set forward on his forehead, a bit jauntily to one side as if daring a man to knock it straight. His dark-tanned skin, crinkled about the squinted eyes and the hard mouth, gave him the look of a seaman.

  For a moment, Bartholomew felt frozen. Cold dread sat on him, like sixty-five tons of killer whale. He shook off the weight of his reluctance and rose to his feet. The time to finally, irrevocably, give up his position as Head Keeper of the Cape Meares Light had come.

  Before he reached the door, the wiry stranger stepped inside. He looked about, and headed for the bar where Max waited. Bartholomew hovered nearby while the man ordered a mug of locally brewed ale.

  "The Cape Meares Lighthouse, where it is from here?" the man asked Max in a heavy accent.

  Hennifee glanced at Bartholomew over the man's shoulder. "West as far as ye can go, then south couple o' miles."

  "There is a road goes there?"

  "Naw, gotta get Ol' Charlie to run ye 'cross the bay on the Henrietta to Barnagat. 'Tis trail from there on, up over the mountain to the light."

  The man quaffed his ale in one long gulp and clanked the mug back on the bar. He fished inside his shirt for his monkey bag, came up with a handful of change and carefully counted out the correct amount. A sailor from a foreign port, Bartholomew decided. One who knows that local brews are cheaper, if not better tasting. One who'd been in the country long enough to understand its money system and not lose the flavor of his native tongue.

  "Thank you, my friend. Tell me, can you now, where to locate this Old Charlie?"

  Again Max Hennifee's gaze met Bartholomew's. Bartholomew stepped up to the bar next to the stranger.

  "Right outside where you got off the steamer." He held out his hand. "I'm Bartholomew Noon, the keeper you're replacing at the light. Welcome to Tillamook."

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  As if his spoon were a shovel Seamus scooped hot mush into his mouth, smacking his lips between bites. "Eat up, lass." He pointed with his chin to her untouched bowl while he soaked up the last of his breakfast with a chunk of bread.

  "I'm not hungry."

  Seamus grunted disapprovingly. He'd not seen her eat more than a few bites since Bartholomew left. Indigo half-moons underlined her eyes and her cheeks had begun to appear hollow. "Go on an' fill yer gullet, lass. Ye may need yer strength 'fore the night's o'er."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Bad storm a-comin'."

  Ariah no longer smiled indulgently at the old sailor's predictions. The man had an uncanny knack for reading weather signs.

  Later, that afternoon, when she went out onto the front porch to shake the rug from the vestibule, she saw Seamus standing on the boardwalk, flanked by his goats, all of them staring out to sea. Silhouetted like that against a dull, cloudy sky and the gray sea, nary a line between to mark the horizon, he created an image that made Ariah's fingers itch for paints and canvas, though she had never painted in her life. The bent old man in his baggy, short-waisted trousers and bright red galluses with sleeves rolled high to expose tan, wiry arms gave Ariah a sense of pensiveness and longing.

  He had sailed the Pacific Ocean half his life, and before that, other more exotic waters. He had witnessed strange lands and strange peoples, savored foreign flavors and wondrously exotic scents. Though he had never married, his hands, when young, had no doubt explored dark and forbidden feminine textures. It tantalized her to think of the tales those bewhiskered lips could tell. Yet he was stingy with his words. Perhaps he feared that the treasures buried in the calm harbor of his memory would lose their preciousness once shared. If she could paint the scene before her, Ariah decided she would call it Remembering.

  Ariah went back inside, leaving the old sailor to decipher the cryptic messages of wind and cloud. She was late with Pritchard's supper. His eight hour watch had been extended to twelve hours, ending at eight p.m. when Seamus took over. After preparing a tray, she hurried toward the light, Apollo dogging her heels until he spotted a rabbit and bounded after it.

  Her husband was on the top level polishing prisms when she found him. "Pritchard, your supper is downstairs."

  "Good, I'm famished." He dropped his polishing cloth and greeted her with a kiss, then scampered down the stairs, leaving Ariah alone to stare out the wall of windows at the sea below.

  Row upon row of huge waves rolled in to crash against the bluff. Ariah could hear the thunder of it, even if she couldn’t see it. The waves stretched far out into the sea. As each crested, the wind kicked the frothing water into towering spumes of sea spray. Ariah watched the waves collide wildly with Hat and Sea Lion's Head Rocks and almost felt the cool spray on her face and taste the salt. The sky had grown dark and ominous. Seamus's prediction of a bad storm was proving true.

  Perhaps it explained the restlessness that had come over her the last few days. Knowing it would be foolish, she resisted the urge to race down to the beach where she could more fully experience the storm's fury. The trail was difficult to hike in dry weather; in wet, it was often impossible. More so after dark. Instead, she allowed herself to drift into the dream world of her day on the beach with Bartholomew, and their lovemaking in the woods. So absorbed was she in her thoughts that she was unaware of her husband's return until he encircled her with his arms and drew her back against him.

  "Um, you always smell so good." Pritchard nuzzled her neck. "Are you through yet with . . .?" He halted and tried again. "Tonight . . . can I stay with you? Please? I want you so, Ariah. Surely your woman's time is over by now."

  Ariah's heart sank. She had put him off for a week on the phony excuse. If she allowed him the intimacy he sought, he would soon know she had been lying. Worse, he would also know she wasn't the virgin she had been on their wedding night. Yet she could think of no way to deny him. Nor, other than her own reluctance, did there seem any reason to. The fact that Bartholomew had not answered her letters told her he no longer wanted her. Without him in her life, it seemed unimportant what happened to her.

  Closing her eyes and trying to ignore the hardness of her husband's arousal pressing into her bottom, she said, "Yes, Pritchard. I believe it is time we truly began this marriage."

  Panic fluttered inside her the moment the words were out. She did not love this man. It was wrong for her to stay with him, wrong to fool him into believing their marriage might be a happy one. But, if she left him, where would she go? Who would protect her when Uncle Xenos caught up with her? And what if she was carrying Bartholomew's child? What would she do then? Unmarried and alone in a strange city somewhere with no one to turn to, what would become of her?

  Pritchard was nibbling on her ear with more finesse than she would have thought him capable of. One hand had found her breast and was kneading it rhythmically. Already his breathing had become ragged. She tried to push away from him. "Please, Pritchard, wait until tonight. Someone might see us."

  "Who?" he breathed into her ear. "Seamus will be asleep by now and Uncle Bart is gone. Who else is there to see us?"

  His hands moved to the buttons on her dress. Shocked by the intensity of his ardor after all the weeks when the attention he gave her was sporadic and sometimes more
brotherly than romantic, she jerked herself free and pivoted to face him, but the words she had been about to say died in her mouth. Two men were approaching the light; Seamus and a stranger.

  "Bartholomew's replacement," she murmured.

  "Holly Hector! You're right, who else could it be?"

  Ariah gave a dejected sigh. "He'll want to see his quarters and get settled in. No doubt that's why Seamus brought him down here, to find me."

  Pritchard started down the stairs. "Maybe he's just eager to see the light."

  The two men had reached the top of the stairs to the lower level by the time Ariah and Pritchard emerged from the tower. The stranger was past his prime, yet still well-fit. His steps as he descended the stairs were brisk and sure-footed compared to Old Seamus's slow shuffle. He seemed familiar, yet she was certain she’d never seen the man before.

  Conflicting emotions roiled inside her as she watched him come toward her. She could no longer pretend that Bartholomew might still return. Yet she would be free now to seek him out, if she dared. Would he greet her with welcome or rejection? As the world closed in on her, hope and despair tangled in her mind.

  Why did Bartholomew have to leave? This was his world. It was everything he loved; the sea, the woods, his birds. She was the one who should have left. Except that she, too, had come to love it here. The very thought of leaving was painful, though she would do it in a heartbeat if it would reunite them. Her longing for him was like a living presence that haunted her day and night.

  Now this new keeper had come to make everything irrevocably final. He would live in Bartholomew's house, sleep in Bartholomew's bed. Ariah felt as though she were being forced to look inside a casket, not knowing who she would find there, and terrified it would be her own soul staring open-eyed back at her in Bartholomew's clothes.

  "'Tis a good thing ye arrived when ye did," Seamus was saying as they walked up to the couple waiting outside the lighthouse door. "Sou'wester blowin' in, bad 'un."

  Ariah sensed that the man was paying Seamus no mind. His attention seemed focused entirely on her. At Seamus's introduction, he pulled his cap from his head but did not smile. His blue eyes were cold as an arctic wind. Stiffening her spine, she held out her hand. "Welcome to Cape Meares, sir. I hope you'll be happy here."

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  "Thunderation, Bartholomew!" Max Hennifee muttered. "'Tis beyond my ken that ye'd up an' leave us thisaway."

  "Life is short, old friend, and over too soon," Bartholomew replied, undaunted by Max's dismay over his imminent departure. The steamer ticket he had just purchased rustled in his pocket as he raised his glass to drink. The evening steamer from Astoria had arrived ten minutes before. Unless the foul weather scared the captain into waiting out the storm, Bartholomew would hear the call to board for the return trip any moment now. From Astoria he would take a larger ship to Seattle, and go on to Alaska.

  The saloon was far busier tonight than it had been this morning. Fishermen celebrating the day's catch lined the bar and overflowed onto the tables. Max moved down the bar, refilling glasses and cracking jokes.

  "We might as well see all we can of this world while we're here," Bartholomew said when Max returned, "and enjoy what we can of life."

  Cal, standing next to Bartholomew, placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. "I can't argue that and I doubt Max can either. What we're trying to say—" He slapped that same hand over his own chest "—at least, what I'm trying to say, is that I don't see what the confounded hurry is. Wait a month. A year. What can it possibly hurt?"

  Bartholomew shrugged, unwilling to discuss the reasons he felt impelled to leave as swiftly as possible. Whether Ariah's marriage to Pritchard had been consummated or not, what he had done with her that day in the woods was adultery. If he stayed, he knew he would do it again. To expect him to keep away from her when she was only a boat ride away was like asking him to stop breathing. Outside, it was raining, but the sound was barely audible above the wind and the boisterous voices to be heard in the saloon.

  "Runnin' sceered is what he's doin', Cal," Max accused.

  Cal nodded. "Running from a blue-eyed angel named Ariah. Yeah, I figured that, but I still think he's foolish to go so soon. She's as taken with him as he is with her, if I'm any judge, and I'd bet my whole farm she comes looking for him before the month is out."

  "Leave it alone, Cal." Bartholomew downed the last of his ale and slammed the glass on the bar, irritated by the men's constant needling. Leaving was difficult enough without them making it worse. "I know what I'm doing."

  "Huh! Coulda fooled me."

  "Mr. Noon?"

  Bartholomew and Calvin turned to the boy standing in the doorway. "Which one do you want?" they asked in unison.

  The boy, one of Clyde Tavish's, judging by the carrot hair and beaked nose, studied the smeared ink on the wet telegram he held. "Bartholomew," he announced.

  "Here, son." Bartholomew dug into his pocket for a coin, which he dropped into the boy's grubby hand.

  "What is it, Bartholomew?" Cal watched his brother frown as he scanned the few lines that made up the message.

  "Doesn't make sense," Bartholomew said.

  "What doesn't make sense?"

  "This." He thumped the paper with his fingertips. "It's from the Lighthouse Board, apologizing for the delay in getting my replacement here and assuring me that the man would arrive tomorrow morning."

  "Well, if that ain't the gol-dangedest . . ." Max stared at Bartholomew in bewilderment. "If yer replacement's still on his way, who was the feller you sent up to the light?"

  Bartholomew's eyes glinted like black ice as he frowned. "I don't know. It has to be some kind of mistake."

  An older gentlemen, trim but stocky, who had been standing on the other side of Cal, leaned over the bar and spoke to Bartholomew. "Excuse me."

  The man was vaguely familiar; something about the generous mouth, Bartholomew thought. Yet he was certain he'd never seen him before. Twin streaks of white marked the man's thinning hair at the temples, but his face was virtually unlined, his mustache dark and full.

  "Forgive me, but if I overheard you correctly," the stranger said, "I may have the answer to your question. Once you hear it, perhaps you'll be willing to help me, for I fear that the people at your lighthouse are in grave danger."

  The hair at the back of Bartholomew's neck rose on end. The man's words, coming at the end of a long day filled with the dread that always accompanied his premonitions of disaster, were too timely to be coincidental. Already, adrenalin was pumping into his veins. Fear knotted his muscles. His voice, when he spoke, came out sharp and deadly as a skinning knife.

  "I don't know who you are, mister, but you've got thirty seconds to spit out what's on your mind."

  The stranger did so, quickly and succinctly, in the manner of a man well accustomed to persuading men to his own thinking.

  Two hours later, Bartholomew was galloping through the darkness across the Tillamook plains, a small rescue party behind him. Wind drove the rain into his dark face, obscuring his vision and slowing the pace of the horse Cal had lent him. He jabbed his heels into the chestnut bay for more speed and ground his teeth in frustration. If anything had happened to Ariah, he would never forgive himself for not being there to protect her. Cal was right, his and Ariah's was a love too rare to let slip away. He never should have left her.

  He cursed the bad luck that had flung a sou'wester at them tonight of all nights. Again and again he prayed they wouldn't be too late.

  Though he was not greatly experienced in horsemanship, his natural affinity for dealing with animals forged a bond between him and the mount struggling to carry him to the woman he loved. Man and horse moved as one in graceful, efficient harmony. Between his thighs, he could feel the horse's powerful muscles bunching, stretching, reaching, bunching again. The bay staggered slightly as a fierce gust buffeted them. Bartholomew bent lower over the bay's neck to give the wind less bulk to catch and batter.

 
; If not for the storm, he and his party would have landed at Barnagat by now. Bartholomew cursed Old Charley's faintheartedness in refusing to attempt the boat trip across the bay. Valuable minutes had been wasted in arguing with the man, more in rounding up Doctor Wills, weapons and horses. In this weather, the usual eight-hour trip over the mountain to Netarts and up the coast to the cape would take double the time. Barring complications. But the storm wasn't expected to let up for two or three days. And he couldn't afford to wait.

  The chestnut bay slowed to cross a stream and Bartholomew cursed again. Already the water was rising, which boded ill for the condition of the many streams they had yet to ford. He prayed for the rain to let up and cursed it for existing at all.

  Please, God, keep Ariah safe until I can get there.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  The new keeper held Ariah's hand overlong, caressing it with a gnarled thumb. Uncomfortable at the unwonted intimacy, she tried to free herself, but he held fast.

  "Your mother, she is in your eyes," he said in a heavy accent.

  A chill that had nothing to do with the icy rain skimmed Ariah's flesh. He had grown a beard and was had dressed differently than he usually did, but she knew him. Inside her chest she felt her heart shrivel and wished she could do the same—until there was nothing left of her.

  The one thing she had feared more than any other had happened.

  "A pretty one, Demetria,” Uncle Xenos said. “The hope of us all, until that misbegotten English dog shamed her. Katalavenis?" He spoke in Greek, and repeated the last in English. "Do you understand, child?"

  Forcing her shoulders to straighten so he would not see her fear and despair, she said, "Yes, I understand."

  "Ah!" he exclaimed with pleasure at her use of the Greek language. "At least your whore of a mother did not deny you your native tongue. And you know me, though we have never seen each other before. I am happy. You will restore the family honor, in spite of being a bastard."