"I think I love her, Ariah." He met her gaze with an apologetic shrug that ended in a grimace of pain.
"You . . . you fell in love with a girl in town?" she said in a daze.
Pritchard nodded. "She thinks she's in a family way, Ariah. I promised I'd ask for an annulment. Remember the night I came to your room and ended up kissing you? It felt so good; I guess it sort of threw me off kilter. Ever since, I haven't been sure who I wanted, but realizing that I might have died yesterday put things more in perspective. Nettie and I are a good match." He tilted his head and peered at her questioningly. "The way you and Uncle Bart are a good match."
Ariah blushed and looked down at her hands.
"Don't feel guilty, Ariah. I understand and it's okay. Really."
"How did you know?"
"The pain gave me a lot of time last night to think. I got to remembering looks I'd seen pass between you, a yearning in Uncle Bart's eyes when he'd watch you. I had told myself it was envy, because things weren't as good between him and Aunt Hester as they should have been. Last night I realized it was a whole lot more, and that you felt it, too."
Ariah lifted her hands and let them fall. "I never meant to hurt you, Pritchard."
"You didn't hurt me." His face glowed with enthusiasm. "This is perfect, don't you see? We can get the annulment. I can marry Nettie and give my son a name. And you can marry Uncle Bart."
She rose and walked to the window to stare out into the fog. "Except that I don't know where he is or if he'd want me as his wife."
Pritchard grinned, self-confidently. "He'll want you. Believe me, we men know these things. Now, fix us something to eat. I'm hungry as a whale."
As she hurried into the kitchen, Ariah thought with wonder that her young husband no longer seemed so young. He'd grown up overnight, and all it had taken to bring it about was a bullet and the threat of death.
Chapter Thirty
Precious hours were wasted when the rescue party had to make a long, arduous detour because the road was washed out. They rode miles out of their way to find a place to ford the swollen stream that had caused the damage. A horse went lame when the creek bottom shifted beneath him, injuring his leg. Bartholomew remained unnaturally quiet as they searched for a homestead where they could trade the animal for a healthy one. As morning approached, his hopes rose. Even if the storm lingered, they would be able to travel faster by daylight.
But he hadn't counted on the fog.
They straggled into Netarts hungry, wet, half-frozen and so weary Cal was certain they could all sleep standing up, if Bartholomew would let them stop long enough. Old Doc took the matter into his own hands.
"Son," he said to Bartholomew, "I know you're fretting over the folks at the lighthouse, but without food in our stomachs and dry clothes on our backs, we're going to be in too bad shape to help anyone by the time we get there. Now Portugee Joe lives no more than a quarter mile up the bay and I know he'll feed us. You do what you think you must, but I for one am heading for Joe's."
As Dr. Wills trotted away on his old swaybacked horse, Cal heard Bartholomew mutter something under his breath about the good it might do Wills to lose a couple of the chins he had bobbing under his big mouth. Yet when Portugee Joe handed out tender sticks of dried elk meat a bit later, Bartholomew ate as greedily as the others did.
After changing into the dry clothes they had brought in waterproof bundles, the party once more got under way, this time heading north along the coast road. Fog forced them to maintain a snail's pace where the road edged along the cliffs and there was danger of walking off into the ocean below. A mile beyond Netarts they found a tree lying across the road. While Cal searched out a saw big enough to handle the four-foot-thick log, Bartholomew shouted the vilest expletives he could come up with and kicked impotently at the hapless spruce.
Shortly after noon the wind rose up and swept away the fog. The air smelled of rain, and the temperature fell ten degrees.
♥ ♥ ♥
Standing at the top of the light-tower, looking out the windows at the white-capped sea, Ariah listened to the wind whistle and sough and moan eerily beneath the domed metal roof. The sound set her hair on end and caused her to shudder. She told herself there was no such thing as ghosts and certainly no reason for one to haunt a lighthouse little more than a year old.
Unless it was Hester.
The Greek people would say that Hester had not died at peace, that she was a vampire now, wandering. Ariah gave a faint laugh and shrugged off the image of Hester floating through the air sporting long, jagged teeth. If anyone could come back to earth and haunt those left behind, it would be Hester, but Ariah was not about to accept what her educated mind told her was only a fantasy for frightening children on stormy nights.
The enormous lantern was nearly out of fuel. As she entered the storage shed where the extra oil was kept, a spider scurried out of sight from directly in front of her face. Ariah couldn't stop the frightened yelp that escaped her mouth. She clasped a hand to her suddenly pounding heart and scolded herself for being scared of a tiny spider after all she'd endured the past two days.
Maneuvering one of the heavy five-gallon cans of kerosene to use in straining the oil so it wouldn't clog up the lantern was difficult and exhausting work. To get it down the stairs to the tower, she had to lower it a step at a time until she reached bottom, and reverse the procedure to get it up to the lantern. Her shoulders and arms ached from the strain. Dirt, spider webs and oil stains covered her dress. Exhausted, she returned to the house.
By evening Ariah knew she had a full-scale sou'wester on her hands, even more violent than the one the night before. The wind howled about the eaves, more like a hundred maddened wraiths than merely one. It rattled the windowpanes and whipped the hemlocks and spruces about as though they were thin saplings.
Pritchard was feverish and cranky. Seamus awoke finally, for which Ariah said a silent prayer of gratitude. His head ached fiercely, though his mind seemed clear. A dose of hot broth containing laudanum sent him back into a deep, healing sleep.
As she hurried back to the lighthouse along the walkway, tightly gripping the guide rope, Ariah feared that the thunderous roar of the waves crashing against the bluff and the wind screeching in her ears would deafen her.
But her danger was far greater than that.
The wind whirled beneath her skirts, filling them like a bellows and lifting her off her feet. Xenos's last moments were vividly brought back to life in her mind. The bluff here was less than forty feet across, and while Xenos had been much closer to the edge when he was carried over, she knew her chances of suffering the same fate if she let go of the rope were very high.
Inch by inch Ariah forced herself to keep moving toward the light, crawling now on hands and knees. Her skirt became shredded from the wooden planks of the walkway. Her left hand was scraped raw on the rough hemp of the guide rope, her right riddled with splinters. Maintaining her hold on the lantern was not only difficult, but dangerous. She needed both hands to hang on for dear life, so she left it behind.
At times the gale became so fierce she could move neither forward nor back for fear of being torn from the rope and sailed right off the bald bluff.
A silent litany ran through her head, while she fought off the terror and panic. Bartholomew. Bartholomew. Bartholomew.
With one arm wrapped about a sturdy post, Ariah did the one thing open to her; she clawed at the buttons of her dress. When they resisted her efforts to free them, she literally ripped the skirts threatening her life from her body, leaving only her bodice, chemise and drawers to cover her. Tattered bits of her garments swirled and snapped and tumbled across the bluff, until finally they vanished into the void.
The rain began. It pelted her naked flesh, poured down her back and between her breasts beneath her chemise. The pins had long been ripped from her hair. Now the long wet strands slapped against her like a thousand stinging whips. They filled her mouth and covered her eyes. They tangled
in the guide rope and tore free at the roots.
Stumbling, half-walking, half-crawling, clinging to the rope with all her might, her knees skinned from being scraped by the boardwalk, Ariah inched toward the lighthouse. When she at last arrived, she descended the stairs on her bottom, one step at a time, and crept to the door of the tower.
Inside at last, she slammed the door shut and laid on the cold floor, her breasts heaving as she gasped for breath. When she recovered enough to move, she fumbled with half-frozen hands for the spare lantern and matches. After several tries, she set the wick aglow. Cloaked in the blanket she had left there that morning, she thawed her hands in the lantern's meager warmth.
The immense lens would need cleaning and polishing to keep it from being pitted by the salt spray, but Ariah was too weary to care. Knowing she should at least check to make sure everything was all right, she forced herself up the stairs. No sooner had she stepped onto the platform that surrounded the slowly rotating lens than the strong beam swept over her. She flung her hands over her eyes to shield them from the blinding glare, unaware that a rock, tossed by the tremendous strength of the towering waves, was at that very moment hurling toward her.
♥ ♥ ♥
Bartholomew had blessed the wind that swept the fog away and allowed them to work more quickly at clearing the road of the deadfall. Since he was the only one among them with lumbering experience, it took most of the day to saw the log through, cut a stout pole to use as a lever, pry, kick, shove and threaten the cursed spruce over the side into the brink.
Before they were done the wind had become a full-blown gale and the clean clothing they had changed into that morning was no longer dry.
Discouraged and disgruntled, the men pressed onward.
♥ ♥ ♥
The rock crashed through the glass wall in a shower of shattered glass. Ariah screamed and tried to throw herself clear, receiving a glancing blow on her hip that knocked her to the floor. The rock bounced off the platform, nicked one of the lower prisms of the lens, and rolled harmlessly to her feet.
Ariah groaned in despair. Her hip would be bruised and her chemise, as well as her drawers, was torn, but she was more concerned about the broken pane. Extras were kept in the oil sheds for such mishaps, but she had no idea how to install them.
Thank God the precious lens itself had not been damaged. The light would continue to operate.
Downstairs Ariah searched for something to cover the broken pane until it could be repaired. All she found was a pile of old newspapers she had no way of fastening over the hole. Unable to come up with anything better, she wadded them up and stuffed them into the gap as tightly as she could. When she was finished, her hands were crosshatched with scratches from the broken glass.
Overhead, wind rattled the fitted metal gores of the pitched roof as though bent on snatching them away. The sea boiled like an old crone's cauldron, foam-capped swells as far out as Ariah could see in the brilliant beam of the giant lantern. During the long night, other rocks thudded into the tower as the horrendous waves plucked them from the ragged cliff and flung them furiously through the air, but none struck the glass and for that she was grateful.
At midnight, she knew she had no choice but to fetch kerosene from the storage sheds again. Burning the lantern night and day used up the fuel much more rapidly than on a normal day when the candles could be extinguished during daylight. The trip would be cold and wet and perilous. She considered tying the blanket around her neck and waist, and decided she would need a dry blanket more after her trek than the meager protection it would give her during it.
An eternity later, she dragged the oil can inside and sank to the floor. Aware that she must get dry and warm at once, she rested only a few seconds before seeking the comfort of the blanket left behind. All night she worried about her patients, alone at the house, but the keening wind and her near-nudity reminded her that attempting the trip again would be entirely too hazardous until the storm diminished.
In the wee hours of the morning she awoke from a fitful nap to realize that the lens had stopped turning. "Please," she cried, exhausted and cold and discouraged. "No more problems."
No one was listening. She reset the clockworks. Nothing happened. The lens remained immobile. When several minutes of work brought no results, she accepted the unpleasant fact that there was only one way the great lens could be kept rotating—she had to turn it by hand.
Dawn brought only a faint lightening of the sky and no relief from her lengthy hours of labor. The storm had eased but not enough to allow her to extinguish the light.
Like the muscles of her overworked arms, her bruised hip was stiff and sore. Splinters from the boardwalk, rope burns, and scratches from broken glass swelled her hands until she could barely use them. Sleeplessness and worry over Pritchard and Seamus puffed her eyes. The lids felt as though sand had become trapped beneath them. Still she cranked and cranked and cranked, keeping the lantern turning.
When the discomfort of a full bladder became too great, she let the lens slow to a halt while she limped downstairs to the chamber pot. She slaked her thirst with fresh water piped down from the same spring that supplied the houses, and dragged her weary body back up the stairs.
Rain tinkled steadily on the metal roof and streaked the windows, but the gale had nearly blown itself out and the surf was calmer now. Ariah was debating whether or not she dared to let the light go out when she heard a distant sound. Hester's ghost howling again, she told herself. The sound moved closer, grew louder. A voice, deep and masculine, not high and piercing as Hester's had been.
Someone was calling her name.
And barking. She heard barking. Turning from the lens, she peered toward the houses through the gloom. There, coming down the walkway, were two men, followed by Apollo.
Both the men were familiar, yet neither was Pritchard nor Seamus. One was stocky, the other tall and . . .
Tears pricked her eyes the same moment her heart gave a flutter of joy and a name clogged her throat. Nose and palms pressed childlike to the misty glass, she cried out soundlessly.
Bartholomew! Bartholomew!
Chapter Thirty-One
Ariah forgot her state of near-nakedness at the sight of Bartholomew hurrying toward the lighthouse. She forgot her duties as lighthouse tender, forgot the painful throbbing of her bruised hip, her scraped knees, her lacerated hands. Oblivious to everything except her desperate need for him, she raced down the stairs and flung open the door. Feeling neither the chill wind nor the icy rain, she tore up the wooden steps to the top of the bluff.
He saw her and waved.
"Good hell," Bartholomew muttered as he stared at the disheveled woman racing toward him. What little she wore was tattered and filthy. Her hair was a riot of snarls flying out around her bare arms, tangled about her waist. One hip, where her chemise was torn, bore a reddish brown stain Bartholomew thought looked suspiciously like blood. “It looks as though she's fallen down the damn cliff and crawled back up it."
"Go to her," said the man beside him.
Bartholomew hesitated. "But you—"
"Right now, she sees only you. Go on, I'll wait here. I believe she's had more than enough shocks to deal with lately. We'll take this one slow and easy."
Ariah was running toward him, holding out her arms as she cried his name. Without another word of argument, Bartholomew ran to meet her. Apollo followed.
Ariah laughed out loud at the sight. Even muddy and unkempt, he looked so beautiful she wanted to cry. So big and brawny and alive. He hadn't deserted her. He was here, bringing solace and safety and joy.
Seconds later she threw herself into his strong, capable arms.
"Bartholomew. Oh, sweet heaven, it's really you."
"Aye, little nymph, it's me."
He hugged her tightly, his eyes closed as he let his body and soul absorb the warmth of her, assuring himself she was truly alive and well. Her arms were entwined about his waist, their fierce grip telling
him her feelings for him had not changed. After a long moment, he gently disentangled himself and held her away so he could study her face. Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks, but her smile was radiant. Apollo leaped up again and again, trying to lick her face, then Bartholomew’s. Ariah laughed.
Her smile faded. "Uncle Xenos came. We thought he was the new keeper. He shot Pritchard."
"I know, I know."
He hugged her again. Her chemise was soaked clear through. He could see her nipples pressed against the thin fabric and felt himself harden. Impatient with his body's inappropriate timing, he took off his heavy coat and wrapped it around her.
"We brought Dr. Wills with us. He and Cal are tending to Pritchard and Seamus now. Come on, let's get up to the house before you catch your death of cold."
He took hold of her hand. Ariah winced and jerked away. Tenderly, he forced her to let him examine her palms.
"Damn! Ah, Ariah, what in God's name have I done to you, leaving you here at the mercy of that bastard? That blasted husband of yours is as helpful in a fight as a—"
"He's not going to be my husband much longer." She put a silencing finger to his lips. "And he was wonderful, defending me against Uncle Xenos as best he could."
Bartholomew's heart stood still. "What did you say?"
Her smile broadened and he had a sudden impulse to kiss the impudent mole perched on her upper lip.
Though cognizant of what he wanted to hear, she couldn't resist teasing him as she slid her arms into the sleeves of the coat he'd put around her and inhaled his scent. "I said he defended me—"
"No, the other."
"You mean, that he won't be my husband much longer?" Cool as seawater, she laughed and bobbed up onto her toes to kiss him. "He's in love with someone else, Bartholomew. A girl in town. Her name is—"
"Nettie," he finished.
Ariah's smile faltered. "You knew?"
"How else could I have ignored the vows you exchanged with him and make love to you that day in the woods?"
Forever Mine Page 38
