The Lightkeeper

by Susan Wiggs

  “I hardly think of him anymore,” she declared.

  “How can that be?” His tone was brusque. “You have a daily reminder.”

  She took in a sharp breath. He saw her knuckles go white as she clutched the railing harder. “You’re cruel, Jesse Morgan. Where did you learn to be so cruel?”

  He caught her chin on the edge of his hand and turned her face up to his, so that she would have to look at him and see for herself that there was nothing here for her to redeem.

  “Haven’t you guessed?” he asked ruthlessly. “I learned it from a woman.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mary worked at the kitchen table, deftly snipping and fitting and hemming a pile of odd cuts of fabric she’d found in the tall blue cupboard. The work took her back, reminding her of more pleasant times in Ireland when she and her mother had worked side by side.

  But the present kept intruding on her remembrances. Try as she might, Mary could not stop reliving the moment Jesse had walked into the house and seen her at her bath.

  Even now, the memory had the power to make her hands tremble and her heart pound. She felt a proper mortification, of course, but there was something else, too. A feeling she was too honest to discount. In that terrible, wonderful, drawn-out moment when he had stared at her while she stood frozen, electricity had passed between them.

  Desire. Recognition. Need. All three, and more. For the first time, Jesse had looked at her and seen a woman, not a nuisance or a duty.

  The acknowledgment had only lasted a second, of course. Long enough to convince Mary that she was not boarding with a dressmaker’s dummy, but with a flesh-and-blood man.

  The idea was both frightening and exhilarating.

  After all she had endured, she should know better than to look at a man with anything other than contempt and distrust, but Jesse Morgan was different. He was a singular man, one who defied all the warnings that rang through her head. One who contradicted everything the past had taught her.

  She was thankful for the solitude of the empty house today, for it gave her time to debate the matter in her mind. Jesse Morgan was a jackass of the first order. He didn’t give a tinker’s damn about what others thought of him. She should be glad that they had reached an accord at last.

  They disliked each other intensely. It was the one thing they didn’t argue about. And that, she realized, was a great pity indeed, for she had made a momentous decision.

  She was going to stay here with him.

  She had to. It was the only place she felt safe. The lighthouse station was remote, protected, hidden. The perfect home for her and her child. She knew what Jesse’s reaction would be: horror and denial. He would order her immediately out of his house, out of his life.

  And then they would quarrel again.

  Mary disliked quarreling, so she decided not to inform him of her plan. Soon enough, he would realize she wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Good morning,” called a voice from the doorway.

  Mary smiled at Palina. “Come in! There’s coffee on the stove.”

  The older lady helped herself to a cup and brought it to the table. “You are making curtains, yes?”

  “I am.” Mary held up a length of pretty yellow gingham she’d found in the cupboard. “This house begs for a touch of color.”

  “More than you know, little mermaid,” Palina said. “More than you know. This house needs color and laughter and many other things in it.”

  “Unfortunately, all I can provide is the color.” Mary stabbed her needle through a pinch of fabric, pleating the curtain. She wondered what Palina would think of her decision to stay here in defiance of Jesse’s wishes. “Now that I’m feeling better,” she said tentatively, “Jesse will make me leave.”

  “You must not let him.”

  Mary smiled. Perhaps the idea was not so far-fetched, after all. Still, she needed reassurance, and so she said, “It’s not proper for me to be here. A woman with child and an unmarried man. The village down the hill won’t tolerate that.”

  “Jesse Morgan is not a man to cling to what is proper and what is not. Nor does he put great store in the opinions of others,” Palina said. “You must stay. It is the law of the sea.”

  Bemused, Mary cocked her head. “I’m not sure what you mean, Palina.”

  “You are here due to the will of a power far greater than us. Jesse found you as he was meant to. If you go away now, the circle will never be complete.”

  A chilly shiver touched the base of her spine. “What do you mean, he was meant to find me?”

  Palina finished her coffee. She picked up a chintz pillow cover Mary had made and fitted it over a drab, musty pillow on the settle. “You must let him tell you himself.”

  “He tells me nothing.” Mary slid a slender wooden stick through the pocket of the curtain she had just fashioned. Together, she and Palina put it up over the front window.

  “He will explain it in his own time. In his own way. I can tell you only that the sea took something very precious from him.” Palina cradled Mary’s chin in her hand. The touch felt so familiar and motherly that Mary thought of her own mum and suddenly wanted to weep. “Now the sea has given you to him. It would be extreme bad luck to dishonor that covenant.”

  Feeling weary, Mary rubbed the small of her back.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” Palina asked. “Is it the baby?”

  Mary smiled tiredly. “I get twinges and sometimes my stomach itches. Is that...normal?”

  “Of course.” Palina hugged her. “I will bring you an ointment for the itch. All will be well, you’ll see.” She stepped back, smiling as she inspected the new curtains. “Simply charming. Thank you for the coffee.”

  After Palina left, Mary was filled with nervous energy. She worked fast and furiously on the house, trimming the windows with curtains, making fresh slips for the pillows on the furniture and runners for the tables. Almost defiantly, she festooned the rooms with jars of wildflowers, setting them on tables, on windowsills, on the mantel, and finally on the shelves of the ornate headboard over Jesse’s bed.

  She lingered in his room, looking around and trying to find some clue to this mysterious past Palina had hinted at. Except for the grand bedstead, it was as spare as a monk’s cell. Above the washstand hung a small oval mirror. A razor strop was laid over the rack on the stand. A comb lay next to a shaving cup and brush. From hooks on the back of the door hung three changes of clothes and a lighthouse-station uniform—blazer and cap with the beacon insignia.

  Mary touched the thick woollen sleeve of the coat, then leaned her cheek against it. The fabric smelled of the sea and of Jesse. She closed her eyes and thought of him, of the dark, moody splendor of his company and the unspoken matters that haunted him.

  “A problem shared is a problem solved, Mum would say,” she murmured. Palina’s talk of a covenant with the sea had underscored Mary’s decision to stay. It was right. It felt like the only choice she had.

  But by the time the sun touched the horizon, sitting there like a great egg yolk before sinking behind the line of the sea, Mary began to have second thoughts. He had never stayed gone so long. Had she pushed him too hard, driven him away?

  Sighing, she went to the porch and sat on a low wooden bench. Along the ridge of the bluff, Magnus plodded to the lighthouse to take the watch for the night. Mary lifted her hand to wave at him, but he was too far away to see.

  She sat humming an old Irish tune, idly rubbing her collarbone. After all the work today, it ached a little. But it was a pleasant pain. She had earned it with hard work well done, and she knew the bruise was healing.

  “Ah, what’s to become of us?” she asked, touching her stomach. “I’ve run until there is no place left to hide, and now I don’t know where to turn.”

  “Then perhaps,” said a vo
ice from the shadows, “you’ll tell me what you’re running from.”

  Mary gasped and jumped up. “Jesse! You startled me.”

  He emerged from a break in the trees at the edge of the yard. At first she could only make out the shape of his blowing hair and broad shoulders. Then he reached the porch, and she saw that he was carrying something in both hands.

  “Where’ve you been?” she asked, feeling wary and embarrassed. She had not meant for him to hear her despair.

  Ignoring her question, he set down his parcel and went around the side of the house. She heard the whine of the pump, then he returned with a bucket and scrubbing brush. He stopped beneath the kitchen window and inhaled. “Good Lord, woman, what have you made tonight?”

  “Roasted salmon and potatoes.”

  “Where did you learn to cook like that?”

  “I’m a fisherman’s daughter,” she said. There was much more she could have told him. She could have told him of Da’s twinkling eyes and the way he used to hide seashells in his pockets for her to find. She could have told him about her boisterous brothers, and her mum’s tidy kitchen, and the cottage in County Kerry, and so many other things. But she’d save all that for another time.

  “Atlantic salmon is not so very different from the Pacific variety.” She eyed the sack at his feet. “What did you find?”

  “This washed up on the beach.” He bent over the burlap sack and took out a mass of slime.

  Mary sat on the porch steps and draped her arms around her drawn-up knees. Using his pocketknife, Jesse worked at the mass. The rope was old and waterlogged, a net of some sort, shrouding a round, hard object.

  He set aside the webbed net and put his find in the bucket, scrubbing with the brush. Mary watched in silence. She liked watching him. There was a strength in his arms and shoulders that gave her a warm feeling of safety.

  “And are you going to tell me what that is?” she asked when she could stand it no more.

  “Yes.” At length he drew it out of the bucket.

  Mary gasped in wonder. It was a perfect orb made of aqua-colored glass. The size of a large head of cabbage, it glowed blue-green in the fading sunlight. Like a church window it was, so rich with color that she was certain it was a priceless jewel.

  “A fishing float,” said Jesse. “They sometimes drift across the ocean from Japan.”

  She smoothed her hand down the curve of the glass globe. Tiny air bubbles dwelt within the glass, frozen in place for eternity. “You spent all day looking for it.”

  He upended the bucket and set the float on it so that she could see the sun winking through the aquamarine glass and casting rainbow sprites of pigment on the wall of the house.

  “It’s for you,” he said.

  He had spoken so quietly that she was certain she’d misheard. “For me? A gift?”

  “I said it was for you.” His voice turned gruff.

  She rose slowly and stood on the bottom step so that she was eye level with Jesse, watching him, wondering what in the world had possessed him to search all day to bring her a gift.

  “It’s only a bit of flotsam,” he said, clearly regretting the gesture already.

  A feeling started inside her. It was like a wave gathering strength miles offshore, rolling outward from the very center of her and taking her completely unawares. She had never thought to feel such a simple, pure joy. The last person she expected to inspire it was Jesse Morgan.

  The wave of happiness unfurled on her face; she could feel it, could feel the smile forming, could feel the sparkle in her eyes as she looked at him. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  One side of his mouth lifted. For a single, breath-held moment, she thought he was going to smile, too. Then he stunned her by touching her, just with one finger, running it along her cheekbone. His face was completely solemn. “Not everything that washes up on the beach is damaged.”

  The exuberance inside her was simply too bright and shining to contain. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him long and hard on the mouth.

  He made a startled sound in his throat. Her assault threw him slightly off balance; she felt him take a stumbling step away. He put his hands on her waist to steady himself. His surprised mouth was softer than it looked, softer than she had ever imagined it to be. He tasted of the salt air.

  It was the sweetest kiss Mary Dare had ever known. And he wasn’t even returning her kiss.

  He recovered with disappointing speed and set her away from him. A dazed look gentled his features, but just for a moment. “Jesus Christ,” he said, and the glacial chill returned to his eyes.

  “I only wanted to thank you,” she whispered.

  He muttered something incoherent and pushed past her into the house, slamming the door behind him.

  “Someday, Jesse Morgan,” she called after him with defiance in her voice, “you’ll kiss me back.”

  She heard him take exactly two steps; then he must have noticed the colorful changes she had made in the house.

  The next thing he said was perfectly coherent, and so foul that Mary flinched just to hear it.

  * * *

  Jesse stood in the middle of the keeping room with his hands on his hips, biting his tongue to keep from saying something even worse. What the hell did the woman think she was doing?

  She had kissed him. Kissed him. Brazen as a Seattle sawdust girl, she had thrown her arms around him and kissed him smack on the mouth. No one kissed Jesse Morgan. It was a thing that did not happen to him.

  Didn’t the fool woman realize that?

  Someday, Jesse Morgan, you’ll kiss me back.

  Not in this lifetime, dear girl.

  The kiss meant nothing. He should simply forget about it just as he’d forgotten the mosquito that had bitten him that morning.

  Ah, but his idiot traitor body remembered every move she had made, every nuance in her face, the taste and smell and sinful softness of her.

  He’d spent the day being haunted by the memory of her in the bath, the steam rising upward in lyrical wisps, the stunning lushness of her body. Everything in him tried to deny the desire he felt. It was ridiculous, lusting after a woman pregnant with another man’s child.

  Someday, Jesse Morgan, you’ll kiss me back.

  The words taunted him, a seductive, persistent whisper. Shaking his head, batting at the invisible demons like a great bear beset by wasps, Jesse willfully banished the kiss from his memory. He forced himself to confront the next issue—what she had done to his house.

  It didn’t even feel like his house anymore.

  His gaze skipped contemptuously from the low fire burning cheerfully in the hearth, to the vats of flowers in colors so bright they hurt the eye, to the abomination of chintz curtains and fringed pillows and lacy table runners everywhere he looked.

  No, it didn’t feel like his house at all. It felt like a home.

  Jesse hated that.

  He whirled around to confront her as she walked in the door. She cradled the float as if it were infinitely precious.

  He snarled in self-contempt. He had combed miles of beach in order to find her something without flaw, just to prove his point. Just to show her she carried no permanent scar from her ordeal. And all the while she’d been here, in his house where she didn’t belong, rearranging his life without even a by-your-leave.

  “I worked all day,” she said softly. The glass ball, held delicately in front of her, glowed with a life of its own. The sunset through the door behind her burnished every hair on her head.

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “No,” he bit out, ignoring the way she seemed to draw in on herself. If his harshness hurt her, that was her problem, not his.

  “I preferred things the way they were.” He strode across the room,
ruthlessly grabbed the frilly valance over the big window and tore the fabric down with a great rending sound. “If I’d wanted lace hanging about my windows, I’d have put it there years ago.”

  She bit her lip. For one horrible moment, he thought she was going to start crying. Lord save him from a weeping woman. But Mary Dare didn’t weep. She set the glass ball carefully on the mantelpiece, stalked over to Jesse and stood with her hands on her hips, glaring up at him.

  His errant gaze was drawn to her mouth. Only moments ago, she had kissed him. No matter how angry he got, he couldn’t stop thinking about that. The floor had seemed to give way beneath him, listing like the deck of a ship in a storm.

  Twelve years. It had been twelve long years since he’d kissed a woman....

  “Kiss me goodbye, Emily. Kiss me now, and we’ll be together again before you know it.”

  “Oh, Jesse, I don’t want to go.”

  “You have to, my love. Your stepmother’s expecting you.” Jesse hooded his eyes from her direct gaze. Did Emily know? Could she look at him and see how he’d betrayed her?

  “Faith, this is a miserable, cold place,” Mary said. “It could do with some cheering up.”

  “I don’t want cheering up.”

  “And that,” she said, stabbing a finger at his chest, “is precisely your problem, Jesse Morgan. You live—no, you exist—like a condemned man. Nothing is real to you except the stories in those books you’re always reading.” She shook her fist at the crammed bookshelves.

  “Those stories happen to be interesting to me.”

  “Because they happen to other people, and you only have to watch,” she retorted. “You wear your solitude like a shield. The moment someone comes along and scratches a little window in that shield, you start storming around and swearing and ripping the draperies and trying to run me off. I won’t stand for it, do you hear me? I won’t.”

  “Fine. Then leave. All I want is my own life back. You can find some other place to start anew.”