Abandoned Memories (40 page)

James studied his friend. He would have remembered a man like Hayden. “You must be mistaken.”

“Nope. I snuck in the back of your church in Knoxville on a cold night in February. I didn’t stay long. I needed to find some meaning to my life. I’d grown tired of swindling people, of searching for my father.”

A burst of dread formed in James’s gut, even as hope dared to spark. What had he preached that night? Had his words been a comfort to Hayden?

“You preached on how God was a father to the fatherless, a husband to widows. How He adopts us into His family so we are never alone. Your words really spoke to me that night, Doc. You have a gift. I left that church wanting to change my life and give God a chance.”

James would have allowed his heart to lift at the great testimony except for the look of despair resident in Hayden’s eyes. And the frown tugging at his lips.

“Until I saw you in a tavern later that night slobbering over some woman.”

Night birds and insects buzzed from the jungle, making James hope that he’d heard the man wrong, but when all eyes snapped toward him, he knew he hadn’t. A brick landed in his stomach. Closing his eyes, he prayed for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. Anything to avoid the looks of shock and disgust on the faces of those whom he’d come to love and admire. He shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. He had so wanted to start anew, to be a good preacher and spiritual guide for the colony. But how could he do that when his friends knew the truth?

As if things weren’t bad enough, Hayden continued. “I know you’re not that man now, but when I saw your hypocrisy, I gave up on God, moved to Norfolk, and ended up achieving my greatest swindle…the one which caused the murder of Angeline’s father.”

Could things get any worse? Now James had indirectly caused Angeline’s father’s death! His heart became an anchor in his chest. He dared a glance her way, but she stared at the fire, a tear sliding down her cheek.

Behind him, angry waves tumbled ashore, thundering and frothing like his insides—like his mind. Here he’d thought he had no real connection with his friends, and it turned out he’d had the worst connection of all.

“I knew you, as well, before our trip.” Angeline’s honeyed voice brought James’s gaze up to her. No, impossible. James couldn’t take any more bad news. His body felt numb, his mind dazed. He merely stared at her, feeling as if it would be best if he just floated into the night sky alongside the sparks from the fire.

Her freckles tightened like they always did when she grew angry. “You were drunk, stumbling through the streets of Knoxville, blood splattered on your shirt, muttering something about your father.”

The night his father had died
. James lowered his chin, feeling the pain even now.

“I brought you to my room, cleaned you up, and took care of you.”

James stared at her in shock. This woman—this trollop—had been the angel who had changed his life that horrid night over a year ago? The night he’d wanted to kill himself. If not for her, he might have succeeded. Vague memories like shadowy figures slipped in and out of his foggy mind. When he’d found his father shot in a tavern and James couldn’t save him, his anger had gotten the best of him, and he’d drawn his sword on the man responsible—Tabitha’s husband. They’d fought. James stared at the fire and rubbed the scar angling alongside his mouth where the man had sliced him, where the man had bested him and could have run him through, but he’d granted James mercy and ran off. Laden with guilt, and wishing the man had ended his life, James drank and drank and drank until he couldn’t feel anything. But an angel had come to his rescue. Or at least he’d thought it was an angel. When he’d woken the next day, he was in a room above a tavern, the night’s rent and a hot meal paid for. And his memories full of an auburn-haired woman ministering to him in the night, holding his head while he tossed his accounts, wiping his forehead, singing gently.

“You tended my wound. You knew all along where this scar came from.”

“No. I only knew when it happened, not why or how.”

And James wouldn’t tell her now. Or any of them. He’d already brought more than enough shame on himself. Yet further memories of that night invaded as he stared at her in shock. “You spoke scripture to me.”

She nodded. “I remembered a psalm from my childhood. My father’s favorite, Psalm 23. It was the only thing I could think to do. You seemed so distraught…so…”—pain misted her eyes—“so hopeless.”

“That scripture, your kindness that night, it changed my life.” James fought back the burning behind his eyes. “I made a decision to be a better man. To leave my home and start anew.”

She blinked, her eyes shifting between his.

The fire crackled and spit like his conscience was doing. Though he’d bedded women without benefit of marriage, he’d thought her profession made her a worse sinner than he. He’d looked down on her, thought of her as too stained to become his wife. Yet, all along, she possessed the heart of an angel, while his was as black as coal.

Blake struggled to rise. “This is incredible. Unbelievable! Before we ever met, each of us affected the others. Our paths crossed in ways we could never have imagined, and the encounters changed each of our lives dramatically.”

“For the worse,” Hayden spat.

“No, you’re looking at it all wrong,” Blake continued. “Yes, our associations caused bad things to happen. But, don’t you see? None of us would be here in Brazil at this time and place if we hadn’t met before.” The colonel scanned them, determination firing from his eyes. “If my brother hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have started this expedition. I would be home with Jerry. Angeline, if your father hadn’t been murdered, you would have never ended up an orphan on the streets. You would have never met James. You wouldn’t have joined this venture.”

Angeline nodded. “Indeed. I’d be with my father.”

“Magnolia.” Blake spun to face her. “If Hayden’s father hadn’t stolen your family’s money, you and your parents would still be on your plantation in Georgia, or at the very least, still in Roswell, living a good life. If you hadn’t introduced Eliza to Stanton, she would have never run off with him and been disowned by her parents. She would have never become a nurse. She would have never been ostracized by the South and in need of a new start.” He shifted his gaze to Hayden. “If you hadn’t been disillusioned by James’s hypocrisy—sorry James”—he added over his shoulder—“you wouldn’t have swindled the man who caused Angeline’s father’s death. Then not only would she have never come to Brazil, but she would have never saved James that night, changed his outlook, his purpose to want a moral society, which eventually brought him here as well. All these chance meetings and events have led us to this exact moment. To this exact place.”

Thoughts and memories spun a web in James’s mind of impossible encounters, of strings of time and place and plans and devices that when looped together formed a perfect lattice of will and purpose. “Not known but known,” he repeated the words from the book, his heart hammering. “That’s us! Called from afar. A destiny from above. Six is the number of man. It makes sense now. God gave dominion of earth to man. Man handed earth’s keys to Satan when Adam rebelled against God. God chooses to work through man to defeat evil on earth.”

“I don’t understand,” Magnolia said.

“Never mind.” James shoved a hand through his hair and took up a pace. “God knew this would happen. He knew the beasts would one day be released. Before we were even born, He chose us for this task, adjusted the course of each of our lives to bring us here to this place at this time for this purpose. Don’t you see?” He glanced at his friends, their expressions frozen in shock and amazement.

“We are the six. God brought us here to defeat the evil beasts.”

HAPTER
35

T
rying to settle her restless thoughts, Angeline made her way to the shelter she shared with the colony’s women. She must remember to thank Hayden for not mentioning their other connection. Though it would bolster James’s theory of the
six
’s prior associations—or not so much a theory anymore as incredible fact—it would do more harm than good to disclose that she was a murderer. After all, how much of her sordid past could her friends tolerate? They might even lock her up if they thought her capable of killing someone. She wouldn’t blame them in the least. Of course they’d find out soon enough if Dodd followed through with his threat. She had resigned herself to that. And then she would leave this beautiful land, along with her only friends in the world. No, not her only friends. God loved her. He would always be with her. Even if she had to stand trial for murder.

Skirting around sleeping colonists, she was nearly at the entrance to the hut when footsteps sounded and a touch on her arm wheeled her around. She raised her hand, ready to strike.

“Whoa, whoa, it’s only me,” James whispered as he grabbed her wrist and lowered it. “Why so skittish?”

“Force of habit, I suppose,” she breathed out then tried to see his expression in the darkness. Could he fathom what her life had been like working for Miss Lucia? The disgust and shame she faced each day, the constant fear, the customers who’d enjoyed beating her as much as they had using her body? It was why she’d always carried a pistol, until she lost it in the flood.

A cloud shifted, and moonlight revealed a spark of understanding in his eyes. Followed by sorrow—overwhelming sorrow. “Will you walk with me?” he asked.

A breeze showered her with his musky scent and tossed his hair in every direction, just like his touch and the kindness in his voice were doing to her thoughts. Jumbled and anxious, they churned with ideas of destiny, purpose, battles against evil, and now with her feelings for this man before her, who had the power to destroy her. Should she go with him? Allow him a doorway back into her heart?

Yet in the end, she knew she could not deny him. She nodded. They hadn’t gone far before he spoke. “I am a buffoon.” He stopped before the waves that spun arcs of silver filigree on the dark sand. Angeline’s heart ceased beating.

“The hugest buffoon ever to live,” he continued.

She shook her head, afraid to hear any more. Afraid her heart could not ride the wave of yet another crest of hope, only to be plunged to the depths of despair.

“I have misjudged you, Angeline.”

Angeline’s lungs beat against her chest. She sought his eyes in the darkness, but he lowered his gaze.

“I believed it was an angel who tended me that night.” He took her hands in his, caressing her fingers. She withdrew, not ready to receive his touch, not ready to erase the hurt he’d caused her.

“I was right. It
was
an angel. It was you, Angeline, my angel.” He released a heavy sigh. “I’m so sorry. Can you ever forgive me for the cruel things I said, for forcing my kiss on you? I behaved like a monster. A complete cad.”

Yes, he had. And he had broken every piece of her heart. But at the moment, she found the memory fading beneath the soothing baritone of his voice, the brief look of love in his eyes afforded her by the shifting moonlight. Dare she hope?

“But I cannot erase my past,” she said. “I was—”

“You
are
a proper lady.” He leaned to gaze in her eyes. “With a good heart and a kind spirit and an honor and decency that I’ve come to realize far exceeds mine.”

He shamed her with his praise, and she looked out to sea where the moon flung diamonds atop ebony waters. “You go too far.”

“Not far enough. For years I’ve blamed my troubles, my sins on others, only to discover it was my own weakness, my own lack of faith, which caused my pain.”

She smiled. “I have discovered the same.”

He cupped her face and brushed fingers over her cheek. Warmth trickled in pleasurable eddies down to her toes.

He leaned to whisper in her ear. “Let us start fresh, you and I. Please, Angeline.”

She closed her eyes, cherishing the feel of his breath on her neck. “Start afresh? We may not even survive tomorrow.”

“Which is why I cannot wait another minute without begging your forgiveness.” He raised her hands to his lips. “And without telling you that I’m absolutely mad about you. I love you, Angeline.”

She tried to cling to the words spinning in her mind, but her anger kept them out of reach. “You hurt me, James.” She tugged from his grip. “You hurt me badly.”

“I know.” His voice caught. “I’m so sorry. I never meant to.”

“How can I trust you? How do I know my past won’t cause you to hate me in the future?”

“Because God has shown me what a hypocrite I’ve been. My past is far worse than yours, my heart far darker.” He took her hands again, holding on tight. “If there is to be any loathing of pasts, it will be me loathing mine.”

Minutes passed in silence as his calloused fingers caressed hers. “I don’t deserve your forgiveness or your love, Angeline. But I want you to know that you are the angel I’ve been seeking my entire life.”

Could a heart leap beyond a body and soar into the skies? For that’s what it felt her heart was doing at the moment. She was hardly an angel, but the way he was looking at her right then made her believe she
could
become one.

“I love you too, James. Perhaps from the very first time you pulled me from the sea.”

He smiled. “May I erase my last foolish kiss with a new one?”

Tossing propriety to the salty breeze, Angeline flung her arms around his neck and drew him close. This time, his lips pressed tenderly on hers, caressing, exploring, delicate yet hungry. Waves crashed over their feet, soaking her hem and tickling her legs, but she didn’t care. She felt like she was a thousand miles away, floating on a blissful cloud.

The bristle on his jaw scratched her cheek, delighting her even more. He ran fingers through her hair, gripping the strands hungrily as if he couldn’t get enough of her.

“Ah, how touching.” Dodd’s voice etched an icy trail down Angeline. She shoved from James, her heart racing, her mind reeling.

His breath coming equally hard, James shielded her with his body and faced the intruder. “Have you no manners, Dodd?”