by Susan Wiggs
“All the clouds chased off and the fog burned away by the breath of Aegir,” Magnus added.
Jesse nodded a greeting. He had grown used to their constant references to the legends of the sea. And who was he to discount them? Many of the ancient tales they recounted held an almost eerie ring of truth.
“That’s not all the morning brought,” he said, motioning them up the steps to the porch. He pushed open the door and held it as they moved inside. They followed him through the keeping room and past the kitchen, into the birth-and-death room.
When the Jonssons spied the woman on the bed, they froze, clutching each other’s hands.
“Hamingjan góoa,” Magnus said under his breath. “And what is this?”
“She washed up on the beach from a shipwreck.” Feeling inexplicably awkward, Jesse was reminded of a moment in his boyhood, when he’d gotten a gift he hadn’t wanted. What did one say?
Thank you.
But he wasn’t thankful, not in that way.
“She’s still alive,” he said clumsily.
Palina was already bending toward the woman, clucking like a hen over a chick. Jesse moved closer. “Isn’t she?” he asked.
“Yes, yes. Alive but nearly frozen, litla greyid, little one. Build up the fire in the stove, Magnus,” she said over her shoulder. “Ah, you’ve got the wet dress off her.” There was no censure in her tone; she was as familiar as he with warming chilled victims.
“She needs dry clothes, quickly.” Palina took one of the woman’s hands and gently cradled it between her own. “Ah, blessed, blessed day. Never have I known the gods of the sea to give a man such a gift.”
A gift?
Foolishness. Superstition.
Now, where the hell was he to get clean, dry clothing for a woman? He possessed only two sets of clothes-winter and summer. Kentucky jeans, several shirts and standard-issue lightkeeper’s livery. Those he wasn’t wearing on his back were currently in the laundry kettle, ready to be boiled on the stove. Just this morning he had put his only nightshirt in to wash.
“You must have something at your house for her to wear, Palina,” he said.
“Ah, no. She’s half-frozen already. Just find something—anything!”
“There is noth—” Jesse cut himself off. Against his will, he glanced at the foot of the bed, where an old sea chest sat.
“There’s nothing,” he lied hoarsely, his throat raw. “Look, I can get to your house and back in ten min—”
“I need the dry clothing now.” Palina fixed him with a gaze that dared him to defy her. “She needs them now.”
Jesse clenched his fists. No. He recoiled at the idea of plundering his past. But then, with the reluctant movements of a condemned man, he did something he’d sworn he would never do.
He lifted the lid of the sea chest and removed the sectioned tray from the top.
A scent too rich and evocative to be borne wafted from the contents, and he almost reeled back. Emily. He plunged his hand into the stacks of folded clothes, found the thick, smooth texture of cotton flannel, yanked it out and flung it at Palina. I’m sorry, Emily. “Here,” he said gruffly. “I’ll help Magnus with the fire.”
Feeling the burn of Palina’s intense curiosity, he stalked out of the house and down to the side yard, grabbing his ax from the toolshed.
He upended a huge log and lifted the ax high in both hands, bringing it down to split the timber with a single blow. The heart of the wood appeared torn and shredded, a fresh kill. Jesse split it again and again with the grim, rhythmic violence that coursed through his body.
But mere expended energy couldn’t keep the demons out. He had known that even before he’d opened the sea chest—a Pandora’s box he had been trying to keep shut for most of his adult life.
Though he had barely looked at the flannel nightgown he’d handed Palina, he could see the fabric in its minutest detail—the little green leaves and blue flowers, the bits of white trim circling the neckline and wrists. Worst of all, the scent still clung to the garment.
His wife’s scent. It was as haunting as a melody, bringing back wave after wave of unwanted memories. He could see her, could hear the sound of her laughter and smell the soaps and powders she stroked across her skin.
Even after all these years, he still bled inside when he thought of her. Of them. Of the hopes and dreams he had so thoughtlessly shattered.
He brought the ax down relentlessly, over and over, trying to purge himself of all feeling. His shoulders ached and sweat ran down his face, into his eyes and over his neck and chest. By the time Magnus came out, a huge supply of freshly cut wood lay massacred around Jesse.
Magnus stared at the wood. “You had best come in now,” he said.
The house was warm, almost oppressively so. The woman’s blue dress had been added to the laundry vat on the stove. Jesse hated the thought of the stranger’s garment mingling with his own in the kettle.
Palina was bent over the bed, plumping pillows behind the woman and clucking, always clucking.
“You’re a meddlesome old biddy, Palina,” Jesse said. He was surprised. He sounded almost...normal.
“And proud of it,” she retorted.
If Jesse had been the sort of man who smiled, he would have just then. He harbored genuine liking for Magnus and Palina, who knew when to keep their distance and when to lend a hand. At the moment, he needed their help.
“Well?” Palina prodded him. “Aren’t you going to ask if your little visitor is all right?”
“Is she?”
Palina nodded, smoothing her hands down the front of her white apron. “With plenty of attention and care, she and the little one will be just fine.”
He almost flinched at the mention of the baby, but he forced himself to remain stoic, emotionless. “We can use the flatbed cart to get her to your place,” he said.
“No,” said Palina.
“Then I’ll carry her—”
“Not so fast, my friend.” Magnus held up his good hand. “The woman is not coming with us.”
“Of course she is. Where else—”
“Here,” Palina said with brisk finality. “Right here, where she can heal and grow strong in the care of the man who found her. The man for whom the gift was intended.”
“We must be practical,” Magnus added. “You have plenty of space here. We have but two cramped rooms and a loft for Erik.”
Jesse forced out a dry bark of laughter. “That’s impossible. I don’t even keep a dog, for chrissakes. I can’t keep a—a—”
“Woman,” Palina said. “A woman who is with child. Can you not even say it? Can you not even speak the truth when it is right here before you?”
Panic flickered to life inside Jesse. The Jonssons were serious. They actually expected him to keep this stranger. Not just keep her, but tend to her every need, nurture and heal her.
“She’s not staying.” He tried to keep the edge out of his voice. “If you won’t tend her, I’ll take her to town.”
Magnus spoke in Icelandic to his wife, who nodded sagely and touched her neat kerchief. “Moving her would be a terrible risk after the shock she has suffered.”
“But—” Jesse clamped his mouth shut until his jaw ached. He pinched the bridge of his nose hard as if trying to squeeze out a simple solution. If Palina was right, and something terrible befell the woman as a result of moving her, he would feel responsible.
Again. Always.
�
��It is the law of the sea,” Magnus said, running his weathered right hand through his bushy hair. “God has given her to you.”
They stood together on the tiled hearth in front of the massive black stove, Palina absently tugging at a thread on Magnus’s empty white sleeve. Yet her gaze never left Jesse’s, and he saw again a spark of faith, ancient and obstinate, in the depths of her eyes.
Faith.
“I don’t believe in the old sea legends,” he said. “Never have.”
“It does not matter what you believe. It is still true,” Magnus said.
Palina set her hands on her hips. “There are things that come to us from beyond eternity, things we have no right to question. This is one of them.”
Every aching fiber that made up Jesse Morgan leaped and tensed in painful denial. He would not, could not, accept this stranger into his house, into his world.
“She can’t stay.” Fear turned his voice to a whiplash of anger. “I can’t give her anything. Can’t give her help or hope or healing. There’s nothing here for her, don’t you understand that? She’d stand a better chance in hell.”
The words were out before he realized what he was saying. They came from the poisoned darkness inside him, and they rang with undeniable truth.
Magnus and Palina exchanged a glance and some low words. Then Palina tilted her head to one side. “You will do what you must for the sake of this woman. This child.” Her eyes sharpened with insight. “Twelve years ago, the sea took from you everything you held dear.” Her words dropped heavily into the silence. “Now, perhaps, it has given something back.”
The couple left the house. Jesse had no doubt that Palina was aware of what she had just done. She had breached the bounds of their association. In twelve years, no one—no one—had dared to speak to him of what had happened. That was the way he had coped—by not speaking of something that lived with him through each breath he took.
He stalked out to the porch. “Get back here, goddammit!” he yelled across the yard. He had never yelled at these people, never sworn at them. But their stubborn refusal to help him set off his temper. “Get the hell back here and help me with this—this—”
Palina turned to him as she reached the bend in the path. “Woman is the word you want, Jesse. A woman who is with child.”
* * *
“Can you believe this, D’Artagnan?” Jesse asked in annoyance. He dismounted and tethered his horse to the hitch rail in front of the Ilwaco Mercantile. “The Jonssons think I have to keep that infernal woman because of some legend of the sea. I never heard of such a damned cockamamy thing. It’s about as crazy as—”
“As talking to your horse?” asked someone on the boardwalk behind Jesse.
He turned, already feeling a scowl settle between his brows. “D’Artagnan gets skittish in town, Judson.”
Judson Espy, the harbormaster, folded his arms across his chest, rocked back on his heels and nodded solemnly. “I’d be skittish, too, if you named me after some Frenchy.”
“D’Artagnan is the hero of The Three Musketeers.”
Judson looked blank.
“It’s a novel.”
“Uh-huh. Well, if the poor nag is so damned nervous, you ought to let me take him off your hands.”
“You’ve been trying to buy this horse for ten years.”
“And you’ve been saying no for ten years.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t caught on yet.” Jesse skimmed his hand across the gelding’s muscular neck. D’Artagnan had come into his life at a low point, when he had just about decided to give up...on everything. A Chinook trader had sold him the half-wild yearling, and Jesse had raised it to be the best horse the territory had ever seen. Over the years, he’d added three more to the herd at the lighthouse station—Athos, Porthos and Aramis completed the cast of the Musketeers.
He joined Judson on the walkway. Their boots clumped as the two men passed the mercantile. As stately as a river barge, the widow Hestia Swann came out of the shop. Touching a bonnet that was more flower arrangement than hat, she lifted a gloved hand with a tiny wisp of handkerchief pinched between her thumb and forefinger.
“Hello, Mr. Espy. And Mr. Morgan. This is a surprise.” She hung back, keeping a polite distance.
Jesse didn’t take offense. He was a stranger to most of these people, even after twelve years. He didn’t blame them for being wary of him.
“Mrs. Swann,” he said, lifting his oiled-canvas hat.
A smile forced its way across her lips. Famous for her social pretensions, Mrs. Swann was unfailingly cordial to him—because of his family in Portland.
As if that mattered anymore.
“How do, ma’am?” Judson said. Jesse started to edge away.
She waved the handkerchief limply at her face. “Not so well, Mr. Espy, but bless you for asking. Ever since Sherman was lost at sea, I’ve been suffering from melancholia. It’s been two years, but it feels like an eternity.”
“Sorry to hear that, ma’am. You take care, now.” Judson turned to Jesse as they started walking again. “What’s this about you keeping a woman at your house?”
He’d raised his voice deliberately; Jesse was sure of it. Hestia Swann, who had been heading for her Studebaker buggy in the road, stopped and stiffened as if someone had rammed a broomstick up the back of her dress. With a loud creaking of whalebone corsets, she turned and bore down on them.
“What?” she demanded. “Mr. Morgan’s got a woman at the lightkeeper’s house?”
Judson nodded. Mischief gleamed in his eye. “Ay-uh. That’s what he said. I just heard him telling his horse.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Why would he be talking to his horse?”
“Because he’s Jesse Morgan.”
“And he’s not deaf,” Jesse said in irritation.
“You hush up,” snapped Mrs. Swann. “This is serious business, keeping a woman—”
“I’m not keeping her—”
“Ah! So there is a woman!” Mrs. Swann exclaimed.
“What’s that?” Abner Cobb came out of the mercantile, his apron clanking with its load of penny nails and brass tacks.
Jesse fought an urge to jump on D’Artagnan and head for the hills to the south of town.
“Jesse Morgan is keeping a woman at his house,” Hestia Swann announced in her most tattle-sharp voice.
Grinning, Abner thumped Jesse on the back. “’Bout time, I’d say. You haven’t had female company since we’ve known you.”
“She’s not company,” Jesse said, but no one heard him. A babble of voices rose as others came out to the boardwalk to hear about this extraordinary development at the lighthouse station. Abner’s wife joined them, closely followed by Bert Palais, editor of the Ilwaco Journal.
“Where’d she come from?” Bert asked, scribbling notes on a sheet of foolscap.
“I found her on—”
“Oh, I imagine the big city,” Mrs. Swann proclaimed, her prominent bosom rising and falling with self-importance. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Morgan?”
“Actually, she—”
“Perhaps she was someone he knew in Portland,” the widow decided, then nodded in agreement with her own deduction while a few more people joined the group. “Yes, that’s it. Jesse is one of the Morgans of Portland.” She leaned over Bert’s shoulder. “His family owns the Shoalwater Bay Company. They have connections well down into San Francisco, did you know that?”
“Of
course I know that,” the newspaper editor said. Not to be outdone, he added, “Mr. and Mrs. Horatio Morgan left in April for a grand tour of Europe.”
“I remember reading about that big society wedding a few years back,” Mrs. Cobb remarked. “Annabelle Morgan and Granger Clapp, was it?”
Hestia’s chin bobbed like a wattle as she vigorously agreed. “Jesse’s sister. It was the wedding of the decade, to hear people talk. Now, I wonder, is this woman a friend of Ann—”
Jesse didn’t stay to hear more. He walked away, feeling like a carcass being picked clean by buzzards. Ordinarily, he did his business in town in a perfunctory fashion and got out, attracting as little attention as possible. No one except Judson, who hurried to catch up with him, seemed to notice that he had broken from the crowd.
“Much obliged,” Jesse said through his teeth. He turned down an alleyway off Main Street.
“Where’re you going?” Judson asked.
“To get Doc MacEwan.”
“The woman needs a doctor?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, she sick or something?”
“Or something.”
Judson scowled in frustration. “Well, what the hell is it, then?”
“She’s pregnant.”
Judson struck himself on the forehead and stumbled back. “Well, I’ll be. You devil, you, Jesse—”
“And if you breathe a goddamned word of this,” Jesse warned him, “I’ll—”
He was too late. Judson was already running back around the corner. “Hey, everybody!” he bellowed to the crowd on the boardwalk. “Guess what?”
Jesse took hold of the brass handle on the door to the doctor’s surgery. He stood for a moment, wondering what had happened to his quiet, isolated existence. Then he thumped his brow against the door once, twice, three times.
It didn’t help.
