The Bride's Rescuer

by Charlotte Douglas

  Cameron continued to evade Celia, and she wondered if he had seen her going through his desk and was avoiding her as a way of showing his disapproval.

  While Mrs. Givens’s companionship was pleasant, Celia missed her home and friends. She missed the bustle of customers in her bookstore, the friendly chatter, book discussions and innocuous gossip that had filled her days. She missed her house on the beach and the familiar routine of her life. And always, like a dull persistent pain, she grieved for her parents who had died too young in a car crash. More than anything, she wanted to leave this island and go home.

  The only thing she didn’t miss was Darren Walker.

  She had fallen in love disastrously, she realized now. She’d been too dazed by her parents’ recent deaths, too anxious for someone to lean on to have chosen wisely. That bad decision was all the more reason for her to rein in her attraction to Cameron. And all the more reason for her to leave Solitaire as soon as possible. But when Cameron or Noah wasn’t using the sailboat or skiff, the crafts were chained and padlocked to the docks. She had no means of escape.

  Her days fell into a pattern. She’d rise early, although never early enough again to catch Cameron in his morning swim. He’d always had breakfast and left the house by the time Celia joined Mrs. Givens in the kitchen. After breakfast, Celia sewed until lunchtime. After lunch, she walked the beach, collecting shells and watching countless seabirds. Sometimes, if both Cameron and Noah were away from the island, she would strip off her clothes and swim in the warm, clear waters until she was so tired that she slept afterward in the shade of a dune.

  Once during such a swim, Celia looked back toward the house and thought she saw Cameron watching from the second-floor veranda. She dove beneath the water, and when she surfaced and looked again, he was gone. She wondered then if she’d really seen him or if her own preoccupation with him had created the illusion.

  Nighttime was the hardest, when homesickness and loneliness seared through her. To pass the interminable hours between dinner and sleep, she worked her way through the books in Cameron’s study, sometimes completing a book a night.

  A week after Celia’s unsuccessful escape attempt, a cold front brought a day of drizzling rain. There was nothing to prevent her from walking in the soft downpour, but her spirits flagged at the gray weather, and she stayed indoors, wandering listlessly through the big house. She tried to read but couldn’t concentrate, tried to sleep but couldn’t, and finally joined Mrs. Givens in the kitchen.

  “There you are.” The housekeeper greeted her with a warm smile. “Come have a cup of tea.”

  Mrs. Givens put her sewing aside and began setting out the tea service. “Your blue dress is finished, and tomorrow I can start on the yellow one. It’s a lovely change to sew for such a trim figure.”

  She smoothed her apron over her ample curves and sliced generous wedges from a huge cake.

  Celia reached for the plate Mrs. Givens offered, and, without warning, a bolt of lightning struck the beach not a hundred feet from the kitchen. It blasted the fronds from a cabbage palm and filled the air with the acrid scent of ozone and burning branches. The greenish glow of its fire called up unwanted memories of the horrific storm that had destroyed Celia’s sailboat and tossed her onto Cameron’s beach. Remembering the trauma, she felt her heart begin to hammer, her chest tighten and the room spin.

  “Here, what’s this?” she heard Mrs. Givens say through the gathering blackness.

  The plate of cake dropped from Celia’s hand and shattered on the floor. She lay her head on the table, struggling for air, fighting against the panic attack that threatened to consume her.

  Mrs. Givens’s plump fingers probed at her wrist, assessing her pulse, and her other hand clasped Celia’s forehead. “You have no fever, m’dear, but your pulse is pounding like a drum.”

  Celia was only vaguely aware of Mrs. Givens’s dress rustling as she moved across the kitchen. Over the thundering of blood in her ears, she heard a stopper pulled from a bottle and a splashing of liquid.

  “Here, luv, take a deep sip of this.” Mrs. Givens pulled her upright and held a cup to her lips.

  Celia swallowed a mouthful of the bitter tea.

  “Now, a little more. Drink it all down. That’s my girl.” The housekeeper set the cup aside, pulled a chair next to Celia and sat with her arm around her shoulders, patting her reassuringly all the while.

  The panic attack held Celia firmly in its grip. She was hyperventilating. She pushed back from the table and Mrs. Givens’s grasp and lowered her head between her knees, trying to will the dizziness away.

  Mrs. Givens kept a firm grip on her shoulders. “You’re just having a spell of nerves, and no wonder, after all you’ve been through. Shipwrecked twice and marooned with strangers.”

  Celia tried to assure her that she’d be all right, but she couldn’t gather enough breath to speak.

  “I’ve given you a bit of my herb remedy to calm you,” the housekeeper said. “You’ll feel it working soon, but before it does, we’d better get you up to bed.”

  Celia tried to stand, but her legs gave way.

  “What’s going on?” Cameron’s rich voice rolled through the kitchen, but Celia couldn’t force her eyes open to look at him.

  Suddenly, she found herself once again gathered in his arms, her cheek pressed against his chest, the appealing male scent of him filling her nostrils, the thud of his heartbeat a comforting rhythm in her ears. Her panic eased, but whether from Mrs. Givens’s remedy or Cameron’s reassuring embrace, she couldn’t tell.

  As if she weighed nothing, he carried her upstairs and laid her on her bed. His hands were gentle as he removed her shoes and spread a comforter over her. She was slipping into a drugged sleep when she heard him leave.

  From the room next door floated Mrs. Givens’s voice, raised in anger. “Cameron Alexander, that poor young thing is not only bored but frightened to death.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?” His flat tone betrayed no feeling.

  “Ah!” Frustration sharpened the housekeeper’s voice. “Sometimes I despair of you, I really do!”

  “Calm yourself, Mrs. Givens, and say what you mean.”

  “If you insist on keeping that poor girl here, you must treat her more kindly, or I’ll go for the authorities myself, and then where will you be?”

  Celia struggled to comprehend the curious exchange and listened for Cameron’s answer, but she couldn’t stay awake. She fell into a deep sleep and didn’t know if she dreamed or actually awakened in the night to the dark figure of a man at the foot of her bed, outlined against the moonlight shining through the French doors, watching her until she lost consciousness again.

  CELIA SLEPT THROUGH the night and into the next morning, convinced when she awoke that she had dreamed the figure at the foot of her bed. Cameron, after all, wanted nothing more than his solitude, and the only time she’d seen Noah recently, who had his own little cottage near the garden, in the house was the day he’d carried in the copper tub for her bath.

  Both her depression and her terror from the day before had vanished, and the only remnant of her ordeal was a mouth lined with cotton, a side effect of Mrs. Givens’s “remedy.” She dressed quickly and hurried down to the kitchen for something to wash the woolliness away.

  Mrs. Givens greeted her with all the enthusiasm of a songbird at sunrise. She took a flat iron from the woodstove, tested its heat with a wet finger, and began pressing the hem of Celia’s new blue dress. “Feeling better, are we?”

  “Only terribly thirsty.” Celia poured a glass of water and drank it down.

  “That’s the one bad thing about my cure for anxiety, but you’ll be fine now.” The housekeeper pointed to an open shelf above an antique pie safe. “Those are all my special herbal remedies. Learned them from my grandmother.”

  Celia considered the bottles and jars of strange liquids, dried powders and herbs and was glad she was young and healthy. Those folk remedies were the
closest she’d come to a doctor or pharmacy in the wilderness. “I’ve never had such an attack before and hope never to again.”

  “Time will heal.” Mrs. Givens replaced the flat iron on the stove, shook out the blue dress, and laid it carefully across a chair. “This will be perfect for you to wear tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Mr. Alexander had decided to hold a celebration in honor of your visit here. I’m preparing a special dinner, so there’ll be no sewing time today.”

  Celia left the housekeeper flurrying in the kitchen, seemingly as excited as if the queen were coming to dine. She couldn’t help wondering over the shift in Cameron’s attitude and whether Mrs. Givens’s threats of alerting the authorities or a change of heart had precipitated it.

  Taking Cameron’s copy of Rebecca and feeling like a character in a gothic novel herself, she walked down to the beach. Finding a puddle of shade beneath one of the dunes, she settled down to read, but her mind wandered from the pages to the predicament that trapped her.

  Almost two weeks ago she had washed ashore on Solitaire, and in about ten more weeks Captain Biggins would arrive to take her away. With both Cameron’s boats inaccessible, she had no means of escape until then. She could rail against her situation all she wanted, but her protests would change nothing. Perhaps the time would pass more quickly if she treated her imprisonment as a holiday. The setting was certainly one most vacationers would envy. Both Mrs. Givens and Noah had befriended her and were doing all they could to make her feel at home.

  She drew lazy circles in the sand with the tip of a finger and reluctantly admitted that the greatest attraction on the island was Cameron Alexander, her mysterious host. She recalled his kindness when he had rescued her from the mangrove island and the pressure of his lips against her forehead when he thought her asleep on the voyage home. In spite of his reclusive nature and expressed desire to be left alone, she sensed in him the same needs as her own, the longing for love and companionship. She was still smarting too much from Darren’s deception to consider loving again, but she hoped that during the coming weeks, she and Cameron could at least be friends.

  “Good morning, Miss Stevens.”

  She hadn’t heard Cameron approach in the soft sand and started at the sound of his voice.

  He knelt beside her, his eyes hidden by the broad brim of his hat. “Are you recovered from yesterday?”

  Embarrassed by her panic attack, she nodded her head. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “I’ve been remiss in my duties as a host.” He stared out to sea and broke off a spray of sea oats, shredding the kernels from the stem.

  “You’ve been very hospitable—”

  “Not as I should have been, but I intend to make that up to you now. Mrs. Givens tells me you have a new dress.” He turned to face her, his eyes glowing with a strange heat, his mouth lifted in an irresistible smile. “Will you wear it for me tonight?”

  Her pulse raced at his expression, and she reminded herself of her earlier declaration of friendship and no more. Without success, she tried to read between the lines, to understand why, after ignoring her for so long, he had finally decided to recognize her existence on his island.

  “Join me on the west veranda at sunset for drinks. Then Mrs. Givens will serve us a feast.” He settled back on his heels, pushed the brim of his hat back with one finger, and turned the full radiance of his smile on her.

  She felt the caress of the gulf breeze on her cheek, heard the cry of a curlew above her, and saw kneeling before her the most exciting man she’d ever met. She wanted to imprint the scene on her senses so that in the years ahead, she could call it up and reexperience the perfection of the moment.

  “I’d be delighted,” she said.

  He acknowledged her acceptance with a nod, stood and walked away.

  NOAH CARRIED THE COPPER tub and gallons of hot water up to Celia’s room in the late afternoon, and she soaked happily in the bath before washing her hair with Mrs. Givens’s homemade soap. Her new dress lay across the bed, and she felt a crescendo of excitement, like a teenager preparing for a prom.

  She tried to convince herself that her anticipation was due solely to the prospect of a new experience, something to break the routine of her captivity, but she couldn’t deny the warmth she’d noted in Cameron’s eyes when he’d issued his invitation and the corresponding flutter in her heart.

  She was just donning her underclothes when Mrs. Givens poked her head into the room. “I want to see how your dress looks.”

  Celia slipped the dress over her head. It settled with a perfect fit into an A-line that skimmed her breasts and hips and stopped just above her knees. She pirouetted to give the housekeeper a full view. “It’s a lovely dress, and you’re a wonderful seamstress. Thank you, Mrs. Givens.”

  Mrs. Givens clasped her hands in approval. “You’re absolutely radiant, m’dear. A delight for any man’s eyes.”

  Celia caught the matchmaking gleam in the housekeeper’s expression and wondered about the woman’s motives for attempting to turn the ugly duckling cast-away onto their island into a swan.

  “There’s a full-length mirror in the room across the hall,” Mrs. Givens said. “Have a look at yourself. You’ve come a long way from the day you washed onto our beach.”

  Celia crossed the hall and considered her image in the tall glass. Her scrapes and bruises from the initial shipwreck had healed, the welts from insect bites during her escape attempt had disappeared, and the woman who looked back at her was slender and golden-tan with sun-streaked hair, all an agreeable contrast to the deep blue fabric of her dress. She had only her old sneakers as shoes, but they would have to do, and she hoped her appearance would be pleasing enough to continue the thaw in Cameron’s demeanor.

  She wasn’t disappointed at the impression she made. When she approached him on the western veranda as the sun was sinking toward the horizon, he looked as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Miss Stevens, you look lovely.”

  Not only had Cameron thawed, the look he gave her threatened to melt her where she stood. When he handed her a spray of wild and delicate butterfly orchids, their white petals tinged with purple, she was happy for the loose bodice of her dress, because she was having trouble breathing.

  Cameron had also taken pains with his clothes. He wore a collarless white shirt topped with a leather vest and fitted pants tucked into gleaming riding boots. The clothes accented the broadness of his shoulders, and the power of his thighs, calling back to memory the sight of his naked form diving into the waves.

  Celia was no prude, but the memory—with Cameron in the flesh before her—made her blush. She attempted to steer her thoughts and the conversation to safer ground. “May I ask a favor?”

  Beside Cameron, a small table covered with a linen cloth held a decanter and glasses. He poured a glass of the white wine and handed it to her. “Anything, Miss Stevens.”

  “Would you call me Celia? I’m not used to such formality. It’s not our custom here in the States.”

  “When in Rome…” He raised his glass in a salute. “To Celia, health and happiness.”

  She raised her glass in return and sipped the dry wine, wishing nostalgically for a glass of chilled chardonnay. Only the British, she thought wryly, could survive in a tropical country without ice.

  “Cameron,” he said.

  “What?”

  “If we’re to observe your American custom, you must call me Cameron.”

  “Thank you—Cameron.”

  “Come. It’s almost time. We must watch.”

  “Watch what?”

  He pointed to the setting sun. Such was the easy pace of life on Solitaire that the high point of the day was the spectacle of sunset. They leaned against the balustrade, following the course of the fiery disc as it dropped behind a thin veil of clouds before plunging into the gulf waters turned molten gold by its light.

  As the last sliver disappeared, she felt Cameron tense beside her
.

  “Not this time.” He sighed and tossed back the remainder of his wine.

  She threw him a questioning glance, and he pulled two rustic chairs, fashioned from bamboo with woven seats, up to the railing. She took one chair and Cameron sat beside her and pulled his chair closer.

  “The first month I was on this island,” he said, “I witnessed a strange phenomenon. It had rained that afternoon, and the storm clouds passed over and out into the gulf. At sunset, only a strip of sky was visible between the sea and the underside of the clouds.”

  “That happens all the time.” She couldn’t understand why he seemed so animated over an ordinary sunset.

  “Not what I saw that night. I’ve watched the sunset every evening since then, over two thousand nights, and I have never seen it again. It was amazing.”

  He leaned forward, rolling the wineglass between his palms. His eyes sparkled with an enthusiasm Celia hadn’t seen there before.

  “That evening,” he continued, “the instant the sun disappeared below the horizon, there was a magnificent flash of green, as if the sun had been dropped from a great height into a lake of green light that splashed upward like a fountain.”

  “A Flash of Green—shades of John D. McDonald.” She visualized the classic mystery by that title in its place on the shelf in Sand Castles.

  “McDonald?”

  “One of Florida’s best mystery writers. He wrote a book titled A Flash of Green.”

  “I must order it when Captain Biggins comes again.”

  “I can send it to you from my bookstore when I return,” she offered.

  The look he gave her was unfathomable, making her wonder what the man was thinking. How could she trust his motives when she didn’t even know what they were?

  “I watch every night,” he said, making her uneasy about her eventual release by not commenting on her offer, “hoping to see the light again, but it continues to elude me.”

  “I’ve watched for it, too, but never witnessed it. I’ve read somewhere you have a one in a million chance of seeing it. Maybe you’ll never see it again.”