A Light For My Love

A
Light For

In Memory of

Katherine Kirkland Brown

1951-2007

May you find your way back
to your home port . . .
 

Astoria, Oregon

October 1880

China Sullivan ran down the street in the
fog-shrouded dawn. Her heart pounded against her breastbone. Hurry,
she told herself, every second counted.

Headed for the wharf, she clutched a letter
in her hand. It was a poorly spelled, masculine scrawl of words
that would profoundly affect at least three lives if she could not
reach its writer in time. What she would say she wasn’t sure, but
she had to try. She tightened her cloak against the chill mist,
fear and fury impelling her forward toward the waterfront.

Something had awakened her with a start just
a half hour earlier. She realized now it had been the sound of the
front door closing. On the pillow next to her she’d found this
accursed letter from her older brother, Quinn. At the bottom of the
page she’d also found Jake Chastaine’s scribbled signature. A
rough, brawling fisherman’s son from down the hill, he was Quinn’s
best friend, but China detested him. She was mildly surprised that
Jake could even write, considering that he’d skipped more days of
school than he’d attended.

The letter contained Quinn’s good-bye to her,
saying that he and Jake would be leaving on this morning’s tide,
shipping out on the Pacific Star, a full-rigger bound for Canton.
The journey would take more than a year.

She had scrambled into her clothes and run
downstairs and out the door.

Now she dashed past the tidy, gracious homes
in her neighborhood, past maple and walnut trees, shed of their
leaves. A hollow reverberation sounded beneath her shoes on the
sidewalk, and her breath came in harsh gasps, creating vaporous
clouds. Dodging a puddle in the muddy street, she agonized over
this turn of events.

Quinn was really, truly going. How could he
simply leave? she wondered. Didn’t he realize that without him in
their tiny, parentless family, she’d have to raise their younger
brother, Ryan, practically by herself? Aunt Gert was a dear soul
but so giddy-brained, with her collection of people’s calling
cards. China had long ago assumed responsibility for running the
house and directing the help. She had tried every argument on
Quinn. Some of their encounters ended in disgracefully raised
voices and slamming doors. But in the end he could only give her a
bored look and keep repeating the same answer. He had to go—if he
didn’t, he was going to bust. He was almost twenty and he hated the
soft life they had in this big house, he said. He wanted adventure,
he wanted to see the world with Jake.

Jake, she thought venomously. It was at his
feet that China laid the blame for Quinn’s ideas. He had far too
much influence on her brother. In fact, many people fell prey to
his indefinable magnetism—even Aunt Gert adored him. But China
wasn’t so gullible.

Even his name irritated her. John Jacob
Chastaine. Trust that a swaggerer like him would be named after the
town’s famous and affluent founder, John Jacob Astor.

She paused on the corner, breathless, holding
her side, to let Mr. Gerding’s milk wagon pass. The driver gave her
a startled look, as if wondering why a well-bred young woman was
out at this hour of the morning. She had Jake to thank for that
too. She lifted her hem and hurried across the street, which was
slick with fallen leaves.

When it had occurred to her that Jake might
be the only one who could talk sense into her brother, in
desperation she’d sought him out. And she was desperate. Nothing
short of this calamity could have made her want to spend more than
two minutes with Jake. He was not the kind of boy her mother had
raised her children to associate with. And where had the meeting
with him gotten her? China’s face burned when she thought of that
discussion in the parlor alcove yesterday afternoon.

“Jake, the family needs Quinn. There are just
the four of us, counting Aunt Gert. The Captain is never home.
You’re the one person who can make him see that he has to stay in
Astoria.”

Jake Chastaine stood at one of the long
windows with his shoulder slouching against the frame. China turned
a displeased eye on his dungarees and work shirt. The gentlemen in
her circle wouldn’t dream of appearing in a lady’s parlor dressed
like that. But Jake was no gentleman.

At twenty-one years old, he was tall,
muscular, and long-legged, having skipped altogether the awkward,
lanky phase other boys went through. Although he was certainly not
the type of man who appealed to China, even she had to admit that
he was good-looking, in a rough, earthy way. Quinn had mentioned
once or twice that Jake turned female heads wherever he went. Well,
Althea Lambert could probably vouch for that.

There was an offhand self-assurance about
Jake that had always annoyed China. A boy who had grown up on the
docs had no reason to exhibit such insolent confidence. Was she the
only one who saw through the veneer of his lazy charm to his barely
suppressed, reckless danger? That Quinn had brought him home all
those years ago—well, there was just no accounting for it.

Jake pushed aside the lace curtain and looked
out at the masts lined up at the wharf in the Columbia River as
though he hadn’t heard a word she’d said about Quinn. He thrust a
hand through his sandy hair, finally directing his gaze at the
well-furnished parlor.

“The Captain gave you a nice house, China,”
he said, gesturing at the room. “I grew up poor, in the row houses
on Tenth Street.” He gave a wry chuckle and turning back to her,
fixed with a stare. “But you know that. I don’t want to spend the
next fifty years working on a fishing boat like my pop.” He looked
absently at the scars left on his hands by fish hooks and heavy
nets. “There has to be something better and I’m going to get
it.”

China raised on brow and gave him a skeptical
look. She wondered if that was what he was telling Althea as well.
China knew a lady shouldn’t even acknowledge such tawdry gossip,
but the whispers were flying around town about the ship chandler’s
daughter. Althea was saying that Jake Chastaine had gotten her in
trouble, then refused to marry her. That scandal alone had given
China more than adequate reason to bar him from the house. But Aunt
Gert had reported that Jake swore Althea’s claim was nothing but a
jealous lie, and Gert sided with him.

He narrowed his eyes briefly as he glared at
her full in the face. Then, as if seeing her thoughts, he said,
“I’m not the one who got Althea Lambert pregnant.”

China blinked at the blunt term—no one of her
acquaintance ever said that word. Expecting, or in the family way,
or enceinte, those were words they used.

“If she really is pregnant,” he added as a
cynical afterthought.

Caught in his unwavering gaze, for an instant
China almost believed him. Then she pushed away the thought. Of
course he denied responsibility—China wouldn’t have expected more
from him.

“The reason I’m going is because I want a
better life than I grew up with,” he continued. “If Quinn wants to
come along, I can’t stop him. He’s old enough to make his own
decisions.”

China couldn’t fault him for wanting to
improve his lot. But Quinn had a decent life right here and now.
Her brow wrinkled as she grew impatient. “My father is never home
in this nice house he gave us, Jake. I’m eighteen and I can count
on my ten fingers the number of times I’ve seen him. I hardly know
him, and Ryan—he’s only ten. He thinks the Captain is an exciting
stranger who comes to visit.” China was grateful that Zachary
Stowe, her most ardent suitor had not interest in a career at sea.
Being a sailor’s daughter had been hard enough. To be a sailor’s
wife was unthinkable. “We’re all the family we have, the four of
us. If my mother were still alive . . .” Her voice
trailed off, then she repeated, “Quinn will listen to you. If he’s
really your friend, tell him to stay home.”

He shook his head with finality. “He made
this choice himself. I have my own plans. I need to prove—” He
shrugged his shoulders and jammed his hands into the pockets of his
dungarees. “Look, it’s his decision.”

Jake was every bit as stubborn and
unreasonable as Quinn. China cast about in her mind, trying to
think of a way to move him from his resolution. Then an idea struck
her. It was disagreeable at best, but she didn’t know what else to
do. “Maybe if you stayed in town, Quinn would too.”

He looked at her and carefully search her
face. For the briefest moment, she saw something in his clear green
eyes that was so intense, so painful to look upon, that she could
only stare, unable to identify it. Then it vanished and his
expression became, well, suggestive was the only way she could
describe it. Even if Althea Lambert was lying about Jake—and in
China’s mind, that was unlikely—she hadn’t created his reputation.
He’d done that himself, and it was firmly established. Suddenly
China hoped that Aunt Gert was still close by in the back parlor
down the hall and not in some far-off corner upstairs.

He gave her a slow smile. “And maybe there’s
another reason you want me to stay. One that has nothing to do with
Quinn.”

China felt a blush heat her cheeks and ears.
“If you’re implying that you interest me in some way—” she began
indignantly, putting special distaste on “you.”

It seemed to do the trick. The smiled faded
and he flinched as though she had rapped his knuckles with a ruler.
When he spoke, his words were hostile, but at least he returned to
the subject at hand. “Damn it, China, I’m not Quinn’s father. He’s
going to do what he wants. And maybe he should.”

“Then there’s no point in continuing this
conversation, is there?” she said, anxious to end the meeting. “But
know this, Jake: if you take Quinn with you, you will never again
be welcome in this house as long as I live in it.”

Jake glanced out the window once more, as
though there were something fascinating to see beyond the glass.
Suddenly he turned to face her and walked to the dark brocade
settee where she sat. For a horrible moment she thought he was
going to sit beside her, and she gathered her full pink muslin
skirts to rise in retreat.

Instead he stunned her by dropping to one
knee in front of her. He reached out and rubbed one of her black
curls between his fingers. She sucked in her breath and pulled
back. She’d never been this close to him; he certainly had never
touched her. His eyelashes were uncommonly long, she thought,
irrelevantly, and he smelled of the ocean.

He gave her a another long, searching look.
“I’ll never be welcome?”

She shook her head, wary of his
closeness.

In a low, intimate voice he said, “Then
here’s something to remember me by,” and he covered her mouth with
a hot, voluptuous kiss. His mouth on hers was evocative and
demanding, as though he was trying to bend her to his will. His
touch made her insides feel shivery in a way she’d never known.
China was so completely shocked, she couldn’t speak. Then he jumped
to his feet and strode from the alcove. An instant later, she heard
the front door slam.

All through the night she’d been tortured by
the though that her first kiss, an important event in a young
woman’s life, had come from that impudent son of a fisherman. And
what was even worse, for an instant she’d almost liked it.

Now, in the cold dawn, China hurried down the
wharf, her feet pounding on the weathered boards. She had to step
carefully to avoid the gaps left by missing planks, through which
she could see the oily river water eddying far below. Held in place
by the thinning fog, the pungent odors of creosote, rotting sawdust
from the sawmills, and refuse from the slaughterhouse and seventeen
fish canneries slapped her in the face.

The docks were alive, swarming with horses
and wagons and shouting, swearing longshoremen rolling barrels,
filling cargo nets. China hung back for a moment. This was no place
for an unescorted woman. But then she thought of her mission again
and hurried on.