The Lightkeeper

It was then that she saw him.

Her first impulse was to run and hide, but surely that wasn’t necessary. Surely he couldn’t see her.

He stood on the skeletal iron catwalk and faced out to sea. She could tell that his hair was long, for when the light rotated to the left it illuminated a dark, windblown tangle. There was something about the way he stood that caught at her. He kept his hands crammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as if it were cold.

But it wasn’t cold. Cool, perhaps, but a lovely night.

There was a stillness about him. As if he were carved in stone, as immovable as the tower upon which he stood. It was eerie the way the light passed over him as it swung in one direction, then the other.

The light moved, but he didn’t.

She watched for what seemed like a long time. But she, not the stranger, was the first to move. Fatigued, she returned slowly to the house and crawled back into bed. She barely made it; she was weaker than she thought.

In moments, she was falling asleep again. Falling asleep and, for the first time in too long, unafraid.

It was time to bid the night farewell.

Jesse always savored the endless moments between dark and dawn. The smells of damp earth and evergreen mingled in the air. The cormorants, nesting in the cliffs, released their distant, plaintive calls. It was a gray, nothing period of time when all the world fell still. Night was gone and a new day was coming. But for now he was alone.

That was what he treasured. The silence. The peace.

The new day held no promise. Just the sameness of the day that had gone before and the dull awareness that tomorrow would be no different, either.

This awareness was never more acute to Jesse than in these moments, when the horizon lightened like water spilled in a pool of black ink, and then colors of aching intensity tinged the sky from the east.

Yet today there was a difference, he thought, wrenching open the front door of the house, stepping inside, hurrying to the room off the kitchen. Because of her.

She had shifted position. He could see that immediately as he looked into the room where she slept.

In the gathering light, he observed the way she lay across the bed in comfortable abandonment, relaxed as a child, her sleep untroubled. One of the quilts had fallen in a heap on the floor.

His gaze darted around the room. The bowl and ewer on the washstand had not been disturbed. But the way the covers were twisted up looked suspicious. He bent forward for a closer study.

A small bare foot, so dainty it almost didn’t look real, stuck out from beneath the sheets. A few damp pine needles clung to the sole of her foot.

Jesse straightened so quickly he smacked his head on a low ceiling beam. He clenched his jaw, but a muttered curse escaped, anyway. It was damned eerie to think of this stranger walking around the house. His house. Seeing the things that made up his life. Invading the world he’d carved out for himself.

Looking at him. Judging him.

He tried to brush off the thought. The woman was ill. Why would she have any interest in him? She had probably stumbled around in a daze, perhaps seeking the husband she had lost in the shipwreck.

Yes, that was it. She’d have no interest in a lightkeeper, no reason to pry into his life. As soon as she recovered, she’d leave, rejoin her family.

As well she should.

Jesse lingered a few moments longer. The room lightened with the dawn. He told himself he should leave her be, but still he waited, caught up in a sort of horrified fascination.

Fiona had been so matter-of-fact about the whole situation. Couldn’t she see how extraordinary this was? Couldn’t she see that he had to stop this from happening, stop himself from knowing this woman?

The delicate beauty of the stranger was a blatant taunt. A test. To see if he was strong enough to resist an angel’s face and a body as ripe as the sweetest fruit of the vine.

“Damn,” he whispered to the empty air, “why couldn’t you have the face of a lingcod?”

The odd thing was, he knew it wouldn’t matter. If she’d come wearing a bridle or had three arms, he would feel no different. He would still be held in the thrall of her mystery. Her loveliness only added that extra twist of irony.

Daylight glowed brighter through the slats in the shutters. She sighed in her sleep and turned, her knees coming up and her arm sliding down to make a protective cradle for her belly.

She was five months along, or thereabouts, Fiona had pronounced. The baby had started showing. The mother would be able to feel its movements. Fiona had smiled as she told him this, as if he was supposed to welcome the news.

A long hank of hair fell over the stranger’s face, and she sniffed as it tickled her nose. Jesse stared at the lock of hair. A shaft of newborn sunlight through the window touched it, turning the deep red to a blood-ruby hue. It was the color of dark fire. As the thought crossed his mind, he leaned down and gently lifted the lock away from her face. Its softness, the silky texture of it, were so acute and so unexpected that he almost yelped in surprise.

He stepped back quickly, horrified at himself. He had touched her. She was a stranger. Another man’s wife. Or a widow. It didn’t matter. Jesse Morgan had no right to touch her.

He left the room, closing the door to the merest crack, so he could hear her if she got up again. Then he made his way to his own room, kicked off his boots and collapsed with a rumbling sigh on the bed.

But he didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. Because he felt her presence in his house, the warm, alluring song of a siren’s call. The taunt of a treasure he could not have.

“Good to see you, Mr. Jones,” said the doorman with an obsequious smile.

Granger nodded a curt greeting. The shiny-faced doorman knew full well that Jones was an assumed name, and the man delighted in saying it with a wink and a nudge.

This was not a good day for winking and nudging. It was not a good day at all. He had arrived Monday morning at his San Francisco office only to learn that one of the company ships had failed to arrive in Portland. By Tuesday, company officials were preparing to call in the insurers, for it was likely the four-master had gone down. Wrecked at the Columbia bar. Wrecked like so many others.

He wondered what had happened. The skipper was one of the best, a longtime employee. Had fog hidden the shoals, even from that old salt? Had the lightkeeper been remiss in his duties? Granger certainly knew what a calamity that could cause. He had caused it himself years ago, exacting lethal revenge from his worst enemy—Jesse Kane Morgan. His best friend, his business partner, his rival, the man who had stolen everything from him.

Even now, all these years later, Granger still felt the sting of rejection as the woman he loved had turned him down, turned to Jesse, married Jesse. Emily and Jesse, the golden couple, the toast of Portland and San Francisco alike. The fact that Granger had destroyed it all didn’t dull the sting. Perhaps he hadn’t gone far enough. Perhaps there was still more to do.

He brushed past the doorman and strode across the tiled foyer of the Esperson Building. It was the best residence in San Francisco, and it was costing “Mr. Jones” a fortune.

Ah, but the rewards were sweet. As he climbed the brass-railed staircase, a bouquet of fresh flowers in his hand, he buried his nose in them and inhaled, thinking about the gentle stroke of her hand on his brow, the uncritical way she had of looking at him. She was his shelter from the storm, the place he came to when everyone else was against him. His nagging parents, his disappointing wife, his raging creditors—he left them all behind when he came here.

He’d be giving the place up soon, though. Now that he had what he wanted from the girl, he could move her into more modest digs. When he’d first met her—destitute, close to starving, yet maddeningly attractive all the same—he had needed to woo her. To feed her appetite for feeling safe and protected. He’d set her up in a luxurious apartment at the hallowed Esperson, visiting her whenever he found the time.

He found time often. And soon he would get his reward. A few months ago, she’d announced that she was pregnant. She’d looked at him with such hope in her eyes. “Now we must marry, so the wee babe has its papa’s name,” she’d said.

He shouldn’t have laughed at her, but he couldn’t help it. He did want her to have his baby—that was the whole point. The child would indeed bear his name, as soon as it was born and she surrendered it to him. But it had been a grave misjudgment on his part to tell her the plan. He should have kept it a secret until the very end. He’d underestimated her maternal instinct.

She’d been appalled, terrified, grabbing a hand mirror and preparing to hurl it at him. He’d tried to calm her down, crooning to her as he approached. “Don’t be afraid. I don’t want to have to hurt you…”

And in the weeks that followed, she did calm down, so much so that he began to hope she was coming to accept his point of view. She’d want her child to have all the advantages he could give the heir to his fortune—the best schools, the best doctors, the best society of San Francisco and Portland.

The flowers would please her, perhaps even coax a smile from her. He stood outside the door for a moment to catch his breath from climbing the stairs. The thought of the child seized him without warning, and he felt a yearning so powerful he nearly cried his need aloud. A son, an heir. Someone to bring along in the world, someone who’d watch him, worship him, learn at his knee. Someone to love as he himself had never, ever been loved.

With a twist of the crystal doorknob, he let himself in. His foot always managed to find the one floorboard that creaked, and now it squawked loudly in the silent apartment. “It’s me,” he called. “I’ve brought you something.”

Silence. Perhaps she was sleeping. He’d heard women in her condition slept a lot. But the bed was empty. Made up as neatly as always.

A cold feeling of foreboding slithered over him, though he managed to keep control. Methodically, he went through every inch of the elegant apartment. Not a single thing was missing—not a silver fork nor a painted lamp chimney nor any of the clothes and jewels he’d given her. The only thing missing was the only thing that mattered: the woman.