The Lightkeeper

She took a deep, shuddering breath that startled Jesse. He hated being startled. He hoped to God that word of her would get out quickly. Bert Palais had promised to circulate the photograph and description as far as his newspaper contacts would reach.

Hurry, Jesse thought, turning down the lamp and walking quietly out of the room. Hurry and get her away from here.

He thought of a time years before when he’d been out yachting with friends. That had been in the early years, the oblivious years, before the darkness and the fear. By accident, a belaying pin had stabbed through the fleshy part of his hand. He’d stood frozen for a moment, staring at the vicious steel shaft protruding from his hand. Then he’d grabbed a bottle of whiskey and sucked it dry. And he’d told his friends on the yacht the same thing.

Hurry. Hurry and take it out of me. Before I feel the pain.

The sooner he found her, the better.

He stood in a parlor that reeked of furniture polish and expensive tobacco and wealth and privilege. Outside, the traffic of Portland creaked and rumbled past with a familiar and welcome cacophony. On the desk in front of him lay the morning journals.

The item that had seized his attention was on the bottom of the back page, tucked amid advertisements for Hiram’s Glory Water and Do-Right Farm Tools. A grainy photograph and a small block of text:

Ilwaco, W.T.—The head lightkeeper at Cape Disappointment rescued a single shipwreck survivor on Sunday last. Captain Jesse Kane Morgan, formerly of Portland, pulled from the surf a young lady of unknown family and origin.

According to Harbormaster Judson Espy, the only commercial vessel known to be missing at this time is the oysterman Blind Chance, of the Shoalwater Bay Company.

Anyone knowing the identity of the young lady is advised to address himself to the lighthouse station….

A strong hand, the fingernails manicured and buffed to a sheen, reached for the newspaper and snatched it up, crushing the page in a fist gone suddenly hard with fury.

Could it be…? He must find out. He would have to be discreet, of course. But he had to find out. He had to learn something else as well—what a man’s rights were to a child he’d fathered.

It was insult enough that the wench had gotten away. That an illiterate Irishwoman with dirt beneath her nails had outsmarted him. But—irony of ironies—she had been rescued by Jesse Morgan.

“Granger?” A feminine voice, tentative and respectful and cultured the way he liked, called from the doorway.

“Yes, Annabelle?”

“I…I was just going out. To call on the Gibsons.”

He eyed her across the room. His perfect wife. Every gilded curl in place. The folds and tucks of her morning gown precisely aligned. The parasol and reticule made to match. Ah, she was a credit to him.

He smiled and crossed the room toward her. She didn’t flinch as he bent and kissed her cheek gently, tenderly. Lovingly. “Have a fine day, Annabelle, dear.”

“I shall, Granger.” She took one step back toward the door, then another. What a vision she was, arrayed to take Portland by storm with her beauty and her charm. Yes, he was the envy of his peers.

Standing at the window, he watched her go. Only after a footman helped her into the drop-front phaeton outside did he look down at what he held in his hand. The crushed newspaper. He hurled the ball of paper into a small bin in the kneehole of the desk. When he looked up again, the phaeton was rounding the corner of Lassiter Way. Pedestrians craned their necks to peer at the beautiful Mrs. Annabelle Clapp.

His perfect wife. In all ways but one.

She was barren.

Five

She awoke to sunlight and pain and the disconcerting notion that she had been dreaming of the baby. Formless and vague, the wraithlike images followed her into wakefulness. Light had pervaded the dream. And the rainbow colors of hope and joy shot through the light.

She lay still, listening, wondering about the dull ache in her shoulder. How had she hurt herself? Something to do with the shipwreck. She had a blurry recollection of holding a rail, feeling the wood twist and hearing the snap of timbers being wrenched apart. The screams of the seamen and the roar of the ocean echoed in her ears.

The memory of violence and black night and churning waters should have plunged her into a panic. Yet instead, she thought of the lighthouse. The beacon, flashing a message of hope to her as she washed ashore.

Pressing her good arm behind her, she sat up, unable to move again until a wave of dizziness passed. Mother of God, but she was ill. A squeak of alarm came from her throat, and she laid a hand on her stomach.

“Are you still there, baby? Have you survived all this with me?” she whispered. She felt the small, hard knot and breathed easier. Still there. Still a part of her. She’d failed at every last, blessed thing she’d ever attempted, and she didn’t want to fail at motherhood.

For a while, she held herself motionless, waiting. Finally, the baby moved. She’d first felt it a week earlier—the fluttering of fairy wings. A small, precious miracle grew inside her.

Grasping the sturdy bed frame, she got up. She went outside to the necessary, seeing no one along the way, hearing only the morning birds of early summer and the whispery sighs of the wind through the trees.

On the way back, she stopped in the yard. The trees were the grandest, tallest things she had ever seen, and they looked enchanted, all clad in lichen and draped in long, green beards of moss. Their tops swayed in the breeze as if dancing to music only they could hear. Surely the majestic forest could speak if only she knew how to listen. It could tell her what sort of place this was, what she could expect here, if she was safe with that moody, dark stranger.

Her gaze traveled down the broad lawn to a meadow where horses grazed. She saw a barn and, in a sunny corner, a vegetable garden fenced off from rabbits and deer. The entire place had an impersonal air of order, as if no one actually lived here.

But someone did, of course.

A very puzzling someone.

High on the distant bluff to the west was the lighthouse. The stony sentinel, painted white with three bands of red, stood proud and impervious to the wind and the sun. The flashing beacon had been her guiding star after the wreck. She could hardly look at it without feeling the harsh sting of thankful tears in her throat.

Weakness plagued her. Dizzy, she made her way back to the house. A railed veranda faced west. Green shutters and lime-washed siding, the chimney made of smooth, round stones. At one time, flower beds must have graced the front, for along the gravel walkway, she spied some bald rose hips struggling up through wild fern and weed. Hidden close to the ground were runners of alyssum and larkspur, defiantly blooming in anticipation of the coming summer.

A pity about the flowers, she thought. Blooming flowers would liven up the place considerably.

Stepping inside, she held the back of a chair and let her eyes adjust to the dimness. Books everywhere, stacked on tables and shelves. The interior of the house was excruciatingly neat, from the bin of wood beside the stove, to the supplies precisely aligned, like little tin soldiers, on the shelves in the kitchen pantry.

Mum would have liked that, she thought, letting in a warm wave of fond memories. Mum liked a tidy kitchen.

The memories departed like the tide before an onrush of impulse far stronger and more urgent. She was starving. At the sideboard, she found a pitcher of fresh milk with the cream still on top. Drinking straight from the pitcher, she sated her thirst. Her weakened hands held the pitcher clumsily, spilling a little down her front and onto the floor. Like Goldilocks in the nursery story, she helped herself to what food she could find—hard-tack biscuits from a tin, and a jar of spiced apples so delicious they made her teeth ache.

“Is that better, baby?” She stroked her stomach and, for the first time since she had washed up on shore, she smiled. Ah, there. It felt so fine to smile.

Brushing the crumbs from the splendid gown she wore, she made her way back to the snug little bedroom adjacent to the kitchen. Sunlight streamed in through the square panes of the window and played across the floor, flowing like a river of gold. Surely it wasn’t just the trees that were enchanted. This whole place, this house, this strange and wild jut of land—all of it lay under a soft green enchantment.

And to think she had almost stopped believing in magic.

How foolish. Mum always said that magic happens when a body needs it the most. And so it had. She had needed a miracle in the most desperate of ways, and here she was in a distant place, feeling unaccountably protected. Though she had barely survived, bringing nothing with her save the babe in her belly, she felt a surge of hope.

She picked up one of the quilts on the bed. Lovely, it was, with a mermaid and a sapphire sea. Now that she felt better, she wanted to explore. She wanted to make certain she and her baby were really and truly safe at last. But she couldn’t very well go about in a flannel nightgown. Perhaps there was a dress or robe somewhere.

In the tall cupboard, she found a few bits of linen and gingham and cotton muslin. Some pieces had been cut but not stitched, as if the dressmaker had gotten interrupted long ago. Beneath the dry goods, she found a pile of inexpressibles—as Mum would call them—creased sharply along folds that clearly had been undisturbed for years. She selected a pair of sheer bloomers. Swiss dimity, they were, more dear than a season’s catch of herring.

She burrowed deeper into the cupboard, and way at the back, she found a dress hanging on a hook. She let out a long, heartfelt sigh. How fine it was, a sprigged muslin of rich green and gold, with leg-of-mutton sleeves puffed at the shoulder and tapered down the arms. A beautiful, wide sash was looped around the waist. Behind the dress hung a long white shift. More Swiss dimity.

Was he married? Whose clothes were these?

The garments weren’t new, and judging by what she’d seen in San Francisco, the gown was quite out of fashion, too full in the skirts for current style. But the fabric smelled of lavender sachets, and she felt better having real clothing on. It hurt her shoulder to reach for the buttons in the back, so she simply tied the sash. She didn’t have much in the way of a waistline these days, but the dress, cut to accommodate an outmoded crinoline, fit reasonably around her middle.

Putting a hand to her hair, she scowled at the feel of the tangled mess and went in search of a brush. This she found in another part of the house, the gentleman’s tiny dressing room adjacent to his chamber on the upper story. The smell of shaving soap spiced the air. She peeked into the bedroom at the massive bedstead. Though the headboard was intricately carved, only a single meager-looking pillow was visible. A blanket of rough olive-colored wool, frayed at the edges, draped the mattress. There was no coverlet.