The Lightkeeper. Susan Wiggs
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she felt the need to press on, to answer the questions swirling in her mind. Unsteady on her feet, she descended the stairs, stepped outside and found herself standing on a veranda with a railing around the front.
The waves boomed as loud and rhythmic as a heartbeat. High clouds glowed in the distance, and a strange light silvered their underbellies so that they resembled fat salmon swimming through the sky.
That light. She shook her head and grasped the porch rail, feeling nauseous. Her injured shoulder throbbed. She spied a small outhouse fronted by lilac bushes. The necessary room? Yes. She was glad to have found that. As she stumbled across the lawn, the ground felt chill and damp beneath her bare feet. When she finished and made her way back, she noticed that the grass had been cropped or scythed.
Again the silvery light drew her. Slowly, she made her way up a slope covered by spongy grass to the top of the yard. Beyond a thick stand of towering trees, a stately silhouette stood out against the night sky. That was it, then. A lighthouse.
A memory drifted back to her. The sickening lurch of the ship’s hull on the shoal. The groan and crash of boards breaking apart. A seaman shouting raw-throated at her, tossing her a rope. The solidity of a mast or yardarm bobbing free of the wreck, floating. She had used the rope to secure herself. She recalled looking up, scanning the horizon.
As the sea swallowed the four-master—Blind Chance, it was called—like a hungry serpent, making a great slurping sound, she had spied the light. She’d known it wasn’t a star, for it lay too low on the horizon. She had followed the light, kicking toward it for hours, it seemed. The water, though cold, was bearable. With a rhythm as faithful as music, the rotating beacon had drawn her closer and closer: a long, thoughtful blink followed by a second or two of darkness.
When dawn tinged the sky, exhaustion had overcome her. The last image in her conscious mind had been that light. She remembered thinking that it was rather lovely for one’s last vision on earth.
Now she stood amazed that she had survived.
But what of her rescuer?
She wondered if she should go and find him. She stood in the shadow of a huge tree, feeling the moist springy earth beneath her feet and trying to decide.
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