Love's Rescue (Keys Of Promise Book 1) (Historical Romance)

by Christine Johnson

  He started for the shade and then, seeing she did not follow, came back and offered his arm. “Pardon, miss. I should have waited.”

  She gave him an encouraging smile. “The fault is mine. I was lost in thought.”

  They walked across the street and into the shade of gumbo-limbo and mahogany trees.

  “You’re thinking of the captain, aren’t you?” he asked softly.

  How could she deny it? Yet her throat constricted at the thought.

  “He’s safe,” Tom said. “You can be sure of that.”

  Elizabeth let out the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Do you have information? Have you learned something?”

  Like her brother, Tom insisted Rourke would have been brought back by now if he’d been caught.

  The thought of capture made her dizzy.

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  She shook her head to clear it. “I’m simply anxious.”

  “Don’t be. The captain had a solid beam reach and clear sailing. I reckon he made the crossing in record time.”

  She knew he was trying to ease her fears, but when one died down, another popped to life. “What if Captain Poppinclerk went after him?”

  Tom laughed. “He didn’t go anywhere, thanks to a sharp cutlass.”

  She gasped. “You killed him?”

  “Naw, he got so scared he ran off like a rat in floodwaters and tripped over his own feet. He’s been nursing a broken nose well out of sight of the ladies.”

  Under other circumstances, the description would have amused her, but she must be certain that he had not pursued Rourke. “Then he is still indisposed?”

  “Very much so.”

  That quieted another fear but not all of them. Until she saw Rourke with her own eyes, she could never find peace. That meant making the crossing to Harbour Island.

  “I wonder,” she began softly, “if I might ask a favor.”

  “Anything, Miss Benjamin.”

  She squared her shoulders. Charlie was right. Everything was settled here. She was ready to step into the future she had long wanted. “I’m looking for passage to Harbour Island.”

  He stared at her. “You what?”

  “Passage.” This time her voice squeaked. “To Harbour Island in the Bahamas. Within the week if possible.” Surely Father wouldn’t return by then.

  “Why are you asking me?”

  This was the moment of truth. “Because I need someone I trust to escort me there.”

  “Me?” He looked flabbergasted. “Now, miss, that’s kind of you, but there’s one big problem with that idea.”

  She couldn’t let him dismiss the request. “Please understand that I don’t intend to return. No one here will know you are my escort. I promise.”

  “That’s not the problem.” He looked toward the harbor. “You see, there’s not a single ship heading that way. Not this week and not the next.”

  Just like that, her plan deflated.

  Days turned into weeks without word of a ship heading to Harbour Island. Neither did her father write or return. To Elizabeth, it felt as if the two men in her life had vanished. Yet only one would return, and not the one she wanted to see. When Father returned, all hope of reaching Rourke would disappear. Each day brought that inevitability closer.

  By late November, she went through the motions each day, content to let Aunt Virginia run the household. Sometimes she played chess with Charlie, always losing, until he claimed she wasn’t even trying. Every day she walked to the harbor and checked the name of each ship. Then she spoke to the shipping agents. When the sun dipped low, she returned home disappointed.

  Nothing could salve the ache in her heart.

  “You must occupy yourself,” Aunt Virginia insisted. “Embroider, sew, do charity work, help your friend with the temperance league.”

  Aunt meant well, but Elizabeth could muster no enthusiasm for any of the ordinary pursuits. She attended a temperance meeting with Caroline, but her mind drifted far away to Bahamian shores and she heard none of the speech. Sewing met a similar fate with just four uneven stitches by the afternoon’s end.

  “Then practice piano,” Aunt insisted. “This lovely instrument hasn’t seen a moment’s use. Practice will perfect your playing.”

  Elizabeth could not bear to touch the keyboard, lest her awkward attempts ruin the memory of Rourke’s beautiful playing. That night in the chapel, he had touched her soul. When the organist played “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” at Sunday worship, tears had rolled down her cheeks. The tune still echoed in her mind.

  “Well,” her aunt grumbled, “you can’t go on like this. A young woman your age has her entire life ahead of her. You must look to the future.”

  “My future is with Rourke O’Malley.”

  Aunt’s sharp look told Elizabeth that she had voiced that thought aloud. She bowed her head and waited for the inevitable reproach.

  None came.

  Instead, Elizabeth heard only the clicking of Aunt’s knitting needles. She dared a peek. The woman was frowning. At Elizabeth’s glance, she stopped knitting.

  “Do you think Captain O’Malley would want you to pine after him to such an extent that you waste your days?”

  Deep inside she knew her aunt was right. Rourke would not want her to mourn. Love not only meant doing what was right, but it also meant hoping against all odds. She had tried, truly she had, but she could not find the strength.

  She stood. “Please excuse me. I wish to lie down.”

  Elizabeth did not wait for her aunt’s response. When she reached the hall, she saw Florie heading upstairs to clean. Cook was working in the dining room. Charlie’s tutor was drilling him in mathematics. That left nowhere for her to retreat except Father’s study. She hesitated but a moment. It was better than Aunt Virginia’s constant advice.

  The study door was unlocked. She slipped into the cool darkness. The smells of pipe tobacco and musty books hung in the close air. She opened the windows and pushed open the louvered shutters. After drawing a deep breath, she looked around the scene of their last argument. The chairs were in order. No blood marked the spot where her head had struck. The desktop was empty except for blotter, pen, and inkwell—and one small volume. Inching closer, she recognized her mother’s diary lying open in the center of the blotter.

  Her hands fisted. How could Charlie give it to him? Mother’s words were sacred, private. She would have accepted her children reading them, but not Father. Never Father. After all he had done to Mother, to know that he’d read her anguish punched the air from Elizabeth’s lungs.

  She started to close the diary when she noticed that he had written in it. How could he? She dipped the pen in the inkwell, intending to scratch out the sacrilege he had scrawled beneath Mother’s words of forgiveness.

  I am not worthy.

  The words burned like an iron against flesh. Did he truly think that four little words could erase all the pain he had caused? It was not enough. It would never be enough. She scratched the pen along the paper, but the nib was dry. There was no ink in the well.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?”

  She looked up to see Charlie propped in the doorway. “I thought you were working with your tutor.”

  “We’re done. I wondered how long it would take you to come in here.”

  “You knew about this?” She shook the diary. “You knew he wrote in Mother’s diary and didn’t blot it out?”

  “Words can never really be erased. We will always know.”

  He was right. She sank into the desk chair. Above the fireplace, the portrait of her gentle mother looked down upon them. How much she had endured at Father’s hands. How much they all had. “It doesn’t get rid of his guilt. He hurt her. He hurt us. Nothing can change that.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Charlie said slowly, “but if there aren’t any second chances, then we’re all doomed. We all make mistakes. We all hurt each other.”

  She knew he was righ
t, but she couldn’t admit it, for that meant revisiting her own guilt.

  “Mother forgave him,” Charlie whispered.

  Elizabeth rose and gave the diary to her brother. “It took time.”

  “What if we don’t have time?” he asked as she whisked past him.

  As a girl, Elizabeth would run to the south shore of the island whenever something upset her. There she had talked to God and listened for His whispers in her heart.

  Today she made her way to that same shore. Like in her dream, the turquoise seas stretched out endlessly before her. The breeze tugged at her skirt. Waves lapped the shore. Unlike that dream, white sails and the black smoke of steamships punctuated the horizon. Gleaming white coral sand rimmed the shore.

  Holy ground.

  Just like the verse from Exodus. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

  Such things happened thousands of years ago, but here? Today? On Key West? To a woman who had turned her back on God, blaming Him when the blame lay squarely on her shoulders? God might have whispered to her as a child, but no more.

  Yet the verse would not leave her. The sand shone like the sun, pure and white.

  In her dream she had walked barefoot. What would it hurt to do so now? She sat on the grass and removed her shoes. Only then did she step onto the sand. It burned against the soles of her feet. The physical pain felt better than what she had endured of late. Father’s betrayal. Anabelle’s secret. Rourke’s departure, his fingers slipping from her hand. She touched his ring where it rested against her throat. What good was a pledge that could never be fulfilled?

  “Why?” she cried to the sky and the screeching gulls. “Why must I be separated forever from the man I love? Why would my own father do such horrible things? What can take away this pain?”

  Heat. It purified. Laundry must boil. Drinking water must boil. This heat burning her feet would scorch away the guilt and the anger and the despair. She stood until the heat brought tears to her eyes, but no peace came.

  Everyone insisted she must forgive in order to continue. Mother forgave Father. Rourke forgave her. So did Charlie. That was what he had been trying to tell her.

  Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

  She had repeated the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday yet never grasped the significance—and difficulty—of those words. To be forgiven, we must forgive.

  To receive forgiveness, she must forgive. Not some things. Not just those who treated her well. Everyone. Even Father.

  Her limbs trembled at the enormity of the task. She sank to her knees and looked up into the endless blue sky. “I am not able.”

  I am not worthy, Father had written.

  Neither was she. Charlie, Rourke, and even Anabelle had forgiven her when she did not deserve it. All had suffered for her actions.

  “I am not worthy,” she choked out. It hurt, yet it also healed.

  Those first words led to more and more. There, on sacred ground, she poured out her heart to her one true Father. Her hurts and resentments, her transgressions, her selfish desires. All of it.

  He listened. He did not turn His face. He did not run from her the way she had run from Him. She prayed until there was nothing left inside but silence. Even then she continued to kneel. The wind whispered. Gulls called out. As the warmth soaked through her skirts and into her knees, she knew what she must do. The answer came not with the whisper of a breeze but with the roar of a gale.

  She took a deep, rattling breath. “Papa, I forgive you.” The words tasted bitter as salt water.

  She tried again. “I forgive you, Papa.”

  How many times must she say this until it didn’t hurt? The Bible said seven times seventy. Four hundred and ninety. She would perish first.

  Nevertheless, she said it again. “Father, I forgive you.” Over and over until the words blurred and her throat dried. Only then, deep, deep inside, did something resembling peace take root. She couldn’t explain it, but the anger was gone.

  She dropped to the ground, exhausted, and lay there looking up at the wide blue sky. Like a frigate bird, Rourke had soared beyond her grasp. Maybe one day he would return, silent on the breeze.

  She drew a breath and sat up. It was time to go home. She began putting on her shoes when a schooner caught her attention as it sailed toward the harbor. It must have approached from her left, yet she had not seen it until now. The ship’s sails were filled, and she maintained a swift speed, faster even than the Windsprite. Her rakish lines reminded Elizabeth of the ships built in the Bahamas.

  The Bahamas! Perhaps it would return there. Perhaps she could go to Rourke after all.

  She tugged on her shoes and hurried toward town. A gust of wind blew the straw hat from her head. She reached for it, but it flew off into the ocean. By the time she passed the lighthouse, her hair had fallen from its pins. She didn’t stop to fix it. At the ship’s rate of speed, it would reach the harbor well before she did. She must speak to the captain before he left the ship. She must get passage to Harbour Island.

  Little did she care that her hair flowed loose and her hem gathered dust. Her prayers had been answered. She would go to Rourke.

  She reached the edge of the harbor at the very moment the new schooner came about to head alongside a wharf. Some crew members lowered sail while others readied the mooring lines. Two men stood at the helm. One wore an uncharacteristic gentleman’s dark suit and top hat. The other, tall and dark and barefoot, looked very much like . . .

  Impossible!

  She danced along the docks, trying to get a better look. Could it be? He sported a dark blue coat that she’d never seen before. He even wore a black cocked hat like a naval officer. No, it couldn’t be. She must be mistaken.

  Still, she waited, breath bated, hoping against hope that her eyes were not deceiving her.

  At last the ship turned enough so she could see him.

  Rourke! He had returned.

  He spotted her, and a smile stretched across his face. Then the man in the suit turned to face her.

  Father.

  Her spirits plummeted. The only reason Father would be with Rourke on a new ship was to bring him to justice.

  “No!” The cry wrenched from her. She clung to a dock post, shaking.

  Then her father lifted his hat in a salute. He clapped Rourke on the back and swept his arms in an encompassing circle.

  What on earth? Rourke did not act like a man condemned. No, he smiled and appeared completely at ease talking to her father. To all appearances, they had reconciled, though how that had been accomplished and why they were on a strange new vessel mystified her. Nothing in her father’s prior actions would ever lead her to believe such a thing possible. Nothing except those scrawled words: I am not worthy.

  Could a man change that much in a matter of weeks? Elizabeth struggled against doubt.

  The schooner slipped into its berth. The crew moored the ship with expertise. Several of the men looked familiar from the Windsprite. None of this made sense.

  The crew extended the gangway, and only one man disembarked. Father. He walked straight toward her.

  She stepped back, fearing what he would say yet knowing she could not avoid it. That was part of forgiveness.

  He stopped before her. “Dear Elizabeth.” He cleared his throat and looked at the ship, as if drawing courage from someone aboard.

  She followed his gaze and saw Rourke directing the opening of the hatches from his perch on the quarterdeck. He looked her way and nodded.

  “Elizabeth.” Her father mopped his brow. “I did you great harm. Unforgivable.” His shoulders shook. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t ask it. I thought I was preserving your future, giving you safety and comfort. I forgot what was most important.”

  She could not find words to meet this uncharacteristic and painful admission.

  He managed a weak smile. “I can never repair all the damage, but I will do what I can. Your mother
—God bless her soul—deserved better. There are no excuses for my behavior. She showed compassion, but I was too proud to admit I needed it.”

  Elizabeth recalled his scrawled words, but this time they were tempered by the whispers of her heart. “None of us is worthy.”

  He looked up, startled.

  “I failed people too. Mother. Charlie. Captain O’Malley. Even you.” That was hardest to admit.

  “No, child. Not once did you fail me. You were open and honest and caring.” He swiped at his eyes. “You put your brother and Anabelle before yourself.”

  Her fingertips tingled with a new fear. “Where is she?”

  Father pointed to the mouth of the harbor. “With her husband.”

  The Windsprite was slipping into the harbor.

  “No, Father, you cannot force her to return. You promised you’d give her to me. Well, I want her to be free. Promise you’ll emancipate her.”

  “Hush, hush. It’s already done.”

  “It is?”

  He nodded. “Her husband is captain of the Windsprite now, and they have decided to settle here in Key West.”

  “But if he’s captain of the Windsprite, what is Rour—Captain O’Malley to do?”

  Sometime during the conversation, Rourke had joined them. “Command this schooner when I’m not ashore.”

  She looked from the schooner to the Windsprite to her father and at last to Rourke. “But how? How did you get another ship, and why is my father with you?”

  “That’s why I went to Harbour Island, to make a business proposition,” Father said.

  “Charlie said you left on business, but I still don’t understand.”

  Rourke took over. “I’ve wanted to leave wrecking for some time now. I had saved a good sum, and the award from the Victory added to it, but I still needed a bit more to build a warehouse and set up a shipping operation. That’s where your father stepped in.”

  Her jaw dropped. “You’re partners?”

  Father shook his head. “I’m only an investor. My share of the settlement for the Victory provided just the amount Captain O’Malley needed to purchase this schooner and build a warehouse.”