by Tracy Sumner
A dream, Zach. A dream. The salty burn of tears stung, and he swallowed. Am I going to dream about her dying for the rest of my life?
Another round of knocking shook the door in its frame. “Coming,” he shouted, praying a ship had not gotten beached on Diamond Shoals. He would have to check his list to see whose turn it was to patrol. They had been lucky lately, but luck, Zach well knew, always ran out. His certainly had.
Flinging the thin woolen blanket to the floor, he found his coat hanging on the back of a chair and was just pulling his arms through the sleeves when he reached the door.
“Cap’n Garrett, open up.”
The smell of smoke and whiskey drifted in the open door, attached to Bigby Dixon, Christabel’s manservant, for lack of a better description. The hulking man stood beneath the jail’s narrow lean-to, broad shoulder braced against a timber post, hooked grin riding his face. Zach’s shoulders slumped. Bigby helped him organize the safety drills and scrubbed salt from the breech buoys on occasion, but he did not patrol the beach on a regular basis, and never alone.
“You might better come, Cap’n.” Bigby dabbed his boot in the circle of light cast on the planks. “Miss Christabel sent me for you.”
Captain. Zach had ceased being a captain before Hannah died, but Bigby would hardly know it. “Who is it?” he asked, digging in his pocket for his ring of keys, knowing exactly who it was.
Bigby’s held tilted quizzically. “Ah, you know, Cap’n. Your brother.”
“Of course.” Zach crossed the street at a fast clip, Bigby trailing in his steps. They stopped twice. To look at a frog flattened by a wagon wheel and to count the masts rising above the peaked roofs of the warehouses. Zach reminded himself, gazing into Bigby’s joyful face, that all the excitement and innocence of Rory’s world filled this man’s and always would.
When they arrived at the Nook, he sent Bigby to fetch coffee with a promise to let him sleep in the jail cell one night next week. Sidestepping tables scattered with cigar butts and half-filled glasses, he halted before Christabel’s parlor doors. She settled Caleb on the striped horsehair sofa after he’d gotten particularly rambunctious, separated from the temptation angry words, cheap whiskey, and flirtatious women presented.
He knocked once, hard and furious.
“Zach?”
“Yes.”
One of the doors slid into its pocket, a flood of light spilling across his boots. He strode past her, pulling his sleeve from her grasp.
“Zach, you might....” Her words faded to a whispered sigh.
The uncharacteristic hint of caution in her voice slowed his stride. Zach halted, his gaze drawn to the mammoth desk occupying one corner of the room. “Damn,” he said and raised his hand to his face. “Damn.”
“His spectacles.” She tapped them against his wrist. “Didn’t want him to break them.”
Zach took the wire frames from her. “Lord knows, this isn’t what I expected.”
She tilted her head to the side and twitched her shoulders, a halfhearted shrug. “He’s a man, Zach.”
An inadequate explanation for finding his sensible brother slumped over her desk. Noah’s arms sheltered his face, his hair bright against his rumpled black shirtsleeves.
“What happened?”
Christabel stepped beside him, the opposing scents of whiskey and flowers surrounding her. “Things were pretty quiet, most of the men summoned home by their wives long before Noah got here. He’d been sailing, I think. Had a wild glow in his eyes. Honest, I never thought he looked much like Caleb until then. I reckoned he would bust up one of my tables before the night ended.” She stacked her fingers along the desk and leaned her weight on them. “Anyway, I brought him here right away. With a bottle. I knew, I just, well... oh, I probably shouldn’t say, but good gracious, I want to tell someone.” She knotted her hands together and recounted a story that left Zach feeling like he’d stumbled into a burning building.
“You found them what?”
She raised her hand to her heart and made a swift sign of the cross. “Kissing. And no sweet, decent kiss, either. Singed the air. I swear, plain as day, that’s what I saw.”
“Maybe, maybe—” His thoughtful gray gaze slid her way. “Are you sure?”
“Sure? Honey, they were practically clawing at each other.”
Frowning, he watched Noah’s chest rise and fall in a steady rhythm. “Do you think he loves her?”
She considered a moment, took in Noah’s condition with a sweeping glance. “Whatever he feels, seems to me he don’t want to.”
“What should I do?”
Christabel cocked her head toward the heavy footfalls on the floor above, Bigby’s childish laughter, and the sharp clink of silverware. “Take him home,” she said.
Zach dragged his hand across his mouth. “What about Ellie?”
“What about her?”
“Doggone it, Christa, she’s like a sister to me. I don’t want Noah to hurt her again.”
Christabel trailed her finger over the desk and laughed, a sound full of womanly wisdom. “Honey, how do you know she won’t hurt him?”
* * *
“Christabel told you, I know she did,” Noah said, an exaggerated drawl lengthening each word.
Zach tugged the spread as high as he could while keeping his brother’s feet covered, although they dangled off the end of the bed. He nudged a wooden bucket across the pine floor, banging it against the frame. “If you feel sick, all you have to do is lean over.” A trick he had learned from Rory.
Noah laughed, thin and worn. “I told you, I didn’t... eat dinner. There’s nothing.” He patted his stomach. “Nothing.”
Zach frowned. No dinner. He glanced at his brother’s wrist, angled high on his flat belly. Sun-buffed skin covered muscle but bones protruded where muscle was scarce. “I put a pitcher of water on the table. A glass beside it,” he said, tucking the blanket around Noah’s shoulders, amazed, again, by how much Rory resembled him.
“She did, she told you. Don’t try... to deny. Always a meddler, that one. I remember what she carved in those tree trunks.”
“Yes, she did tell me.” He unbuttoned Noah’s collar and dropped it to the table. The cuffs followed, rasping against skin as Zach tugged them free. Thank goodness, Rory had gone fishing with Jason and his father. He didn’t need to find his beloved uncle like this.
Noah’s fingers fluttered, tangling in his black brace, the bones in his hand dancing. “I’m not sure why I kissed her. It’s fuzzy... the reason.”
“I’m sure everything is fuzzy right now.” Zach grabbed the chair he had shoved from their path when they stumbled into the room. Straddling it, he leaned his arms on the back. Contradictory emotions tugged at him. He wanted Noah to sleep, knew he needed to sleep. Already, morning light colored the end of the bed; birds twittered and darted outside the window.
Another part, the part that had grieved—wondering if he would ever see his little brother again—rejoiced at the chance to talk to him without a wall standing between them. Zach had fought hard to destroy it. Two dinners at Christabel’s. Unplanned visits in the guise of dropping off Rory at Widow Wynne’s. Heck, he had even sailed on the Nellie Dey. The first shad run he’d been on since the year he turned twenty. Observing Noah—feet planted wide, body swaying with the roll and pitch of the ocean, recording figures in a book as thick as his arm, eyes faithfully scanning the horizon—had brought home how much his brother had matured. Drifted away. Become a stranger. A marine biologist who lived in Chicago. A man Zach often wondered if he would ever know again.
“Why do you suppose she does this to me?” The scar on his eyelid showed white against his tanned skin as he blinked. “Makes me all confused and wobbly. Never gotten wobbly before.”
“The whiskey’s making you wobbly.” Zach tapped his palms against the slats of the chair and rocked forward on the front legs.
“Oh, no, she’s more potent than liquor. Too beautiful. More than any woman I’ve eve
r seen. Intelligent. Fascinating.”
Zach smiled. What the heck, he decided, Noah probably wouldn’t remember the conversation anyway. “You’re the scientist. What’s your hypothesis?”
“Lust.”
“Hmm, could be.” He paused a beat. “Or, maybe you love her. Maybe you always have.”
Noah’s eyes opened, watery and bloodshot. He raised an inch off the mattress. “I don’t love her. Impulsive, headstrong woman.” He scowled and sank back.
“Be so bad if you did?”
His hand popped up on his stomach. “Disaster... a disaster. Like everything Elle involves herself in. Schools that don’t make money and leaking roofs. Watch pockets and pocket watches. A nymph’s body. Thanks, but I’ll take a rational... judicious woman if I ever marry. No power over me. Disrupt my well-organized life. A proper wife.”
“Rational and judicious? Proper? Sounds like a judge to me.”
Noah waved this away. “You don’t understand. I have a precise plan.”
“For what?”
“Everything.”
Zach banged the chair legs to the floor. “You have a plan for love?”
Noah nodded. “Since university.”
“Then what are you doing kissing Ellie? Is she part of your plan?”
His smile dimmed, one eye slit open. “Course not. Unexpected bit of, rather... a circumstance I wasn’t expecting. Except, she has lips made for kissing. So, I decided to conduct an experiment, a kissing experiment. Which failed horribly.”
“A kissing experiment? You think you can control falling in love with a women like you can control one of your fish experiments?”
“When I have time to devote to marriage, I’ll find the perfect woman.”
“Perfect?”
“Someone sensible. Someone who doesn’t expect me to lasso the moon. Who doesn’t gaze at me with big green eyes full of emotion.”
“What about not being able to take your eyes off her when she enters a room? What about cherishing the sound of her laughter, the way she whispers your name in her sleep? When you love someone, you’ll want those things, you’ll crave them as much as you crave the air you breathe.”
“When I said I had a plan for love”—Noah jammed his thumb under his brace and jerked it clumsily past his elbow—”I guess I meant she would love me.”
“Elle would love you, if you’d let her.”
Noah’s fingers clenched around the brace. “I don’t want her kind of love.”
“What other kind is there?”
“The kind I’m not tempted to return.”
Zach gripped the chair, Noah’s pain hurting him as badly as his own would. “That’s not love at all, then. Noah, you have to let what happened fade into the past. You can’t live your life watching over your shoulder, afraid to feel something in your heart. Afraid of what love will cost you.”
Noah dropped his arm across his eyes; Zach wondered what he sought to hide. “I loved you, both of you, more than anyone could love his brothers.” He swallowed, his throat doing a long draw. “I never wanted—I never wanted to hurt Cale. I couldn’t think rationally when I left here. And I hated that. I made too many mistakes, following my heart instead of my mind. I lost both of you. I won’t... can’t risk that again. Ever again.”
“You didn’t lose anybody.” Zach lowered the other brace from Noah’s shoulder and slipped the top button loose on his shirt. As usual with this brother, he felt helpless. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. Before the night they stumbled upon their mother’s diary, the only emotion Caleb had ever shown Noah was love. Protective, fierce love. Zach imagined how Caleb’s hostility—and it could be brutal—must have hurt him.
Zach waited until Noah’s brow smoothed and his lashes lay motionless against his skin, then he rose from the chair, stretched.
“Home. I should be home,” Noah murmured.
“You are home.”
Zach turned at the sound of the softly spoken words. Caleb stood in the doorway, shoulder propped against the frame, legs crossed at the ankle. The wretched expression on his face belied his indifferent stance. He watched the bed for a sign of movement, twisting a worn hat in his hands.
Zach held a finger to his lips. “Not here.”
Their boots thumped on the carpeted staircase, echoing off the sun-streaked kitchen walls as the door swung shut behind them. Zach poured coffee into two cups and sat with a fragile facade of composure.
Caleb slumped into a chair and dropped his hat on the floor. “Is he drunk?” he asked, gazing into his cup as he spooned in sugar.
Zach released a short beat of laughter. “You should recognize the signs of that well enough.”
The spoon hit the table with a crack. Coffee splashed over the sides of Caleb’s cup, staining the white tablecloth. “Holy Mother Mary, Zach, give me a chance.”
“Give you a chance to what?” He pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth and counted to ten.
Caleb plunged his fingers into his hair, cradling his skull. His skin looked as filthy as the tangled strands. “You bastard. Do you think guilt doesn’t eat at me every day? How can you do this?”
How could he do it? Caleb had mourned Noah’s disappearance until Zach believed he’d lost both of them. “I’m sorry. I had no right.”
Caleb stared into his coffee. “Don’t apologize for speaking the truth.”
“Let’s cut the self-pity. Past time this family set things straight.”
“Dammit, Zach! I’ve been to that old crone’s back house, or whatever the hell you call it, three times. I talked to the fisherman and got him on the boats. What more do you want me to do? Kidnap him?”
“You don’t have to kidnap him. I’ve done that for you.”
Caleb’s head lifted, his eyes shining like polished silver. “I guess you’ve got more courage than I do, brother.” Pushing from the table, he dropped his cup in the sink and paced to the window. He shoved the curtain aside, his broad shoulders as unyielding as his pride.
Zach looked closely at the curtains for the first time in years. Yellow with little daisy things sewn around the edges. Funny, he remembered Hannah saying she liked them. Must be why they still hung there. “Where have you been?” he finally asked, skimming his cup in a gradual circle.
“The warehouse. A delayed shipment of sails. Fisherman coming down from New England for a boat next week.” Caleb’s gaze sliced toward Zach, a half smile twisting his lips. “Where’d you think?”
Zach shrugged, chagrined to admit he usually thought the worst.
“Obviously, Noah was keeping my space warm at the Nook.” Caleb thumped his knuckle against the windowpane. “At least two of the Garrett men enjoy the entertainment Christa’s has to offer. Remember those lovely creatures, Zachariah old boy? Called women?”
Zach ignored the familiar jibe. “I’m working this afternoon. Will you stay, talk to him after he wakes up? I’m not sure he’s going to remember walking home.”
Caleb stiffened. “How do you know he’ll want to talk to me?”
“I don’t.”
“You’d love it if he blew outta here after telling me to go to hell, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Cale, don’t be ridiculous.” Zach’s hand flexed around his cup. “For once in your life, just think before you charge in like a wild bull. That’s all the advice I can offer.”
“What went on last night? Something happen to upset him?”
“Start with that question. Should get the ball rolling.”
“Not going to make it any easier on me, are you, Constable?”
“Nope.”
“I saw him yesterday, on the boardwalk with Ellie. They were fussing, if I had to make a guess. I considered going on up to them, but the look on her face stopped me. She loved Noah so much. You remember. Heck, the whole town remembers, she made such a goose of herself.” He tugged his hand through his hair, sending it into further disarray. “And you know tough-hide Professor. If he di
d feel anything for her, he never let it show. I always reckoned he just found it irritating, like a nagging rock in his shoe. We were only kids but”—he shrugged—”if the drinking spell has to do with her, I think I’m too much of a coward to ask.”
“Just talk to him, Cale. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Caleb braced his hands on either side of the window frame and propped his brow against the pane, a long sigh his only reply.
* * *
Noah reached for her.
He managed to grasp a lock of hair between his fingers, a cinnamon streak sliding across his skin. Elle laughed and kicked her feet, sailing higher. She smiled, and he felt a catch in his chest that could easily be called an ache.
In a slow backward arch, the wooden swing whizzed by him. He grabbed the rope and jerked it to his side, trailing his fingers along the empty seat.
Empty.
Noah blinked, squinted.
Where was he?
He reared from the mattress and groaned, a headache nearly splitting his head in two. His shoulders quivered as he struggled to sit, cradling his face in his hands. That didn’t halt the crew building a modest structure in his brain.
He’d been dreaming of Elle, he realized, noting the effect the dream had had on his body. The blanket was puffed like a tent. Cursing, he flung the scratchy cover away and swung his feet to the floor. He touched his nose. No spectacles. Not on the table, either. Or in his shirt pocket. He squinted and glanced down. Maybe they had fallen.
Sliding to his knees, he searched the smooth pine. He jerked to a halt, fingering a six-inch gash running as deep as his knuckle.
“Mama, what’s that chip in the floor?” A sugary smell from the cookies she had made earlier in the day scented the fingers she brushed across his cheek.
“A Union soldier thought to chop wood in this room. My mother set him straight after one swing of his ax,” she said and pressed her lips to his brow.
Noah swiped at the gash, an ineffectual erasure of the past. Had he gotten so drunk he had come here? He searched, trying to remember. Elle... the alley... sailing... the Nook... a woman’s hand on his knee... Christabel pulling him into her parlor.
