A Light For My Love (6 page)

Well, he'd better step lively, she told
herself. If he thought she was joking about locking him out at
ten-thirty, he was in for a surprise. She would lock him out and
not feel a moment's remorse. At least she told herself she
wouldn't.

As she pondered this, she heard footsteps on
the back stairs up to the attic and knew her threat wouldn't be
tested tonight.

A whisper of relief brushed her. Not because
she cared what happened to him, she told herself. Certainly not.
Jake Chastaine could sleep in the gutter for all she cared. Forcing
herself back to the task at hand, she removed the lamp chimney and
struck a match on the matchbox.

"For all men gone to sea, living and lost,"
she intoned, touching the match to the wick. "May you find the way
back to your home port." She replaced the chimney and light filled
the end of the hall. Continuing the tradition her mother had begun
as a seafarer's bride, China said this blessing every evening.

For all men gone to sea ...

For her father, for her brothers. But never
for Jake Chastaine. He was the only one who had found his way back,
she reflected again, and still her mind could barely comprehend it.
She'd seen him, infuriatingly handsome, taller than ever, vaguely
threatening. She'd talked to him and heard his voice, full and
mature.

As she headed back downstairs to lock the
doors, she knew that though she had to let him sleep in her house,
she would never forgive him for what he'd done.

*~*~*

"Captain Olin Meredith, this is Jake
Chastaine. He'll be staying with us while his ship is in dry dock"
China introduced the two men, nearly shouting at the old sailor,
whose hearing had faded.

She made an effort to ignore the way Jake
looked this dark, rainy morning as he stood at the mantel in the
dining room, his back to the fire. The various shades of blond in
his hair shone under the gaslight of the chandelier. He wore an
oatmeal-colored wool sweater that revealed the stretch of his
shoulders. The sleeves were pushed up on his forearms, which were
dusted with sun-bleached hair. His dark blue wool pants fit close
against his flat belly and long legs. When China lifted her eyes to
his face, she realized he'd caught her staring, and heat rose to
her cheeks. He gave her a long, steady look before turning his
attention to the captain. She quickly turned her gaze to the
tablecloth.

Captain Meredith appraised Jake from under
bushy white brows. The captain's face was florid and leathery, his
hands as gnarled as driftwood. The ever present meerschaum pipe
damped between his teeth was unlit, in compliance with China's ban
on smoking in the house.

"What're you sailing, lad? Not one of those
goddamn steamships, I hope." Captain Meredith couldn't hear himself
any better than he could hear others, so his voice boomed across
the room.

"No, sir. She's a barkentine, built in Maine,
home port in San Francisco," Jake answered in a voice trained to
carry.

"You her master? There's a good lad. By God,
I'm glad to have a man to talk to. These women just don't
appreciate an exciting story. I remember when I was about your age,
let's see, I was sailing on the
Black Pearl
out of
Portsmouth. Or maybe it was the
James Wright
out of Boston.
Aye, those were the days. We were on the west coast of Africa,
working our way toward Good Hope. No, come to think of it, it might
have been the east coast. Anyway, a squall came up out of nowhere,
howling like the devil's own whore from hell—"

China winced at the language, but left the
dining room with a malicious smile when she saw the look on Jake's
face, that of a man who realizes he's trapped and is helpless to do
anything about it.

She crossed the hall to the kitchen to help
Aunt Gert serve. There she found Susan Price, their other boarder,
slicing bread at the table.

"Susan, you know we love your help, but
really, you don't have to work," China said.

Susan was just a few years older than China
and her complete opposite. Hardly bigger than a child, she was
plain-faced, fragile, and fair-haired, with a temperament to match.
Her husband had been killed at sea two years earlier, when he fell
from a yardarm into the churning ocean. Months had passed before
the news of his death reached her, and when she came to live at
China's house, she was hollow-eyed, detached, and of severely
limited means. She had a talent for millinery fashion and earned
extra money making hats for Aunt Gert's friends.

"Oh, but I don't mind," she said in her small
voice. "Edwin loves my cooking. He always wants seconds." Edwin
Price was Susan's late husband.

Aunt Gert looked up at her from the other
side of the table, then exchanged glances with China. This had
happened a couple of times now—Susan referring to Edwin as though
he were still alive.

"Well, we're glad for the extra hands. Come
and hold the platter while I spoon up these eggs," China urged from
the stove. The woman complied and watched China slide her cooking
spoon under the fried eggs as Aunt Gert scooped mush into a
tureen.

"I wish we had some bacon to go with this.
What will Jake think of plain old oatmeal and eggs for breakfast?"
By way of explanation, Gert turned to Susan and added, "We have
another guest staying with us, Susan. An old friend of the
family."

"Jake isn't going to starve, Aunt Gert,"
China said. "We've gotten along all right on this food. It
certainly is good enough for him."

"I still think bacon or sausage would have
been nice," Gert complained. She paused and gazed at the floor a
moment, as though trying to harness a memory. "I was just thinking
about the first time Jake came to the house. Let's see, I guess he
was around fourteen years old." She let out a wry chuckle as she
resumed scraping the sides of the mush pot with a wooden spoon. "He
brought Quinn home after giving him a prize-winning shiner. Those
two boys, both of them were proud and brash. Quinn was a roughneck,
but Jake, he was just as tough, growing up on the docks the way he
did, and big for his age. I never knew who started the fight—one of
them said something the other didn't like and the fists started
flying. But for all that he was a bad boy, Jake had a kind heart in
him. I knew it right off." Gert laughed again. "Jake tried to
pretend that he was just delivering a troublesome smart aleck, but
I could see he was really worried about Quinn. And Quinn was so mad
that he had gotten beat! Remember, China?"

China rapped the big spoon on the edge of the
pan. "Oh, I suppose."

Did she remember? How could she forget that
dear summer morning? She and Gert had been right here in this
kitchen, helping Edna, their cook, bake cakes for the parish
bazaar. A tall, dangerous-looking boy with dirty blond hair had
come through the back door, pushing her brother ahead of him.
They'd both been a horrifying mess—filthy, scraped, and
bloodied—and still as wary of each other as two gamecocks. Jake
might have won the fight, but Quinn had given nearly as good as he
got. Jake sported a purpling bruise over his cheekbone, and his
right hand was a shambles of raw, bleeding flesh, torn across the
knuckles. He looked down at it and pulled out his shirttail to wrap
it up. One of his sleeves flapped at the shoulder where it had been
ripped away, and both boys had obviously rolled around in the
dust.

Aunt Gert laughed about it now, but at the
time she'd been so agitated she was nearly useless. China, often
the one to take charge despite her youth, had found a piece of
beefsteak for Quinn's eye while he slouched in a chair at the
table, scowling at Jake.

China hadn't meant to stare at Jake. But she
had never been that close to a boy from "down the hill," as she and
her friends had referred to the people living near the docks. He
was so different from anyone she knew, so fascinating and scary.
His clothes were old and worn and poorly mended. And she didn't
like him. Not because he was poor. She knew her own father had had
modest beginnings. No, she disliked Jake because he was tough and
dirty and looked like nothing but trouble. Still, she'd supposed
she should see to him.

But when she approached him and tried to look
at his hand, which by that time had blood-soaked his shirttail, he
backed away, nearly snarling at her.

"Don't touch me," he snapped. "I don't need
your help."

"Fine, then," she replied, surprised by his
raging hostility. "Your mother can take care of it." His face went
oddly blank at her remark. Later she learned that his mother was
dead.

Jake wouldn't come into the kitchen but
lingered by the back door, his sea green eyes flashing. His stance
was rigid, hostile, and too cocky by half to suit China. Yet when
he'd looked at her again, for just an instant she thought she saw
something else in those eyes. Something that stopped her in her
tracks and made her feel pity for him, although she couldn't
imagine why. He was the one who'd hit her brother.

He shifted his glare to Quinn. "I don't want
to have to whip you again, and you know I can do it. So don't come
down to Tenth Street looking for trouble."

Then, bleeding and scraped as he was, he
turned and was gone.

But in the way of boys and youth, the
argument was forgotten, and China had seen Jake back at the house a
week later. And he and Quinn had begun a friendship that would take
them around the world together.

Even at fifteen or sixteen, Jake had
sometimes been known to get roaring drunk on a Saturday night,
after having spent the week working on his father's fishing boat.
On those occasions he would participate in spectacular fights.
China had never understood why he bothered to attend mass the next
morning. She'd see him sitting in a back pew, fidgeting
uncomfortably in the ill-fitting, old-fashioned dress clothes he
wore, his thick hair combed flat to his head with water. She was
certain she felt his eyes drilling into the back of her head. It
was a scandal, the way he looked, his face bruised and puffy. She
had never shared Aunt Gert's view that it was repentance and Jake's
basically good heart that brought him to Father Gibney. Jake had
never been repentant a minute in his life, for anything. She'd seen
it in his swagger, in the way she caught him looking at her when
she suddenly turned in his direction.

China dragged herself to the present. Now
that he was grown, he'd given her no reason to change her mind
about him. Oh, true, some of that cockiness he'd had seemed to be
gone—now he was commanding in a way that gave her the impression he
expected to be obeyed.

Gert, China, and Susan crossed the hall to
the dining room, bearing the breakfast dishes. China could hear
Captain Meredith still taking advantage of the audience he'd found
in Jake.

"In ribbons was her tops'il and I thought
Davy Jones would have us sure, that blackest of black nights—"

"If you two will take your places, we'll eat
breakfast," Aunt Gert said. She put the mush on the table, then
pointed to a chair directly across from Susan's. "Jake, you can sit
there."

Grateful for the reprieve, Jake stood behind
his chair, waiting for the others. The old captain told a good
story, but there was no stopping him.

Jake flexed his shoulders, trying to work the
ache out of his back. Sleeping on the lumpy, sagging bed in that
cold room had told on him. He'd already had a knot on his head
before he hit it on the ceiling again this morning. During the long
night he'd been wakened by the clatter of rain pelting the roof
just a couple of feet over him. The sound usually had a sedating
effect on him, but this had been so dose it made a noise like
gravel hitting the shingles.

His gaze was pulled to China as she moved
around the table, pouring coffee from a flowered porcelain pot. She
was tidier than when he'd seen her yesterday. Now a fringe of inky
curls framed her face while the rest of her hair was pulled into a
soft knot on the crown of her head, revealing her long, creamy
neck. Her small sapphire earrings matched her eyes. She'd abandoned
the silly, frilly gowns he remembered for a high-necked white lawn
blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a skirt of deep burgundy.
When she got to his cup, he caught the subtle fragrance of her
perfume, of dark spice and wood, unlike the lavender and rosewater
other women wore. Their eyes met for an instant before she moved to
the next cup. She stood so close, he could see her black, silky
lashes.

Overall, she looked softer and more
approachable than she had yesterday. He was glad, since he planned
to ask for a room on the second floor. Maybe she would be easier to
deal with now—

"Well, sit down, Jake," she ordered, moving
away.

He briefly gripped the back of his chair with
tight hands. Then he stepped forward and held Aunt Gert's
chair.

"Thank you, Jake," Aunt Gert replied, clearly
approving.

Jake was introduced to Susan, who stared at
him across the table with haunted, searching eyes, as though trying
to place him.

To escape the uncomfortable scrutiny, he let
his own gaze wander. The dining room was as he remembered, with
pale yellow walls and a fire blazing on the hearth. The first time
he'd eaten in this room was when Quinn had invited him to dinner.
He was afraid to sit on the fine brocade chair in his dirty
dungarees and old work shirt, but Aunt Gert had welcomed him and
set a place for him with the rest of the family. For the first time
in his life, he felt it most keenly that he was just a kid from the
waterfront, especially with Quinn's snooty little sister staring at
him from the other end of the table. He was terrified he'd spill
something or break something or make a mistake. To hide his
nervousness, he kept his eyes on his plate, looking up only now and
then at a painting