Love and Dreams: The Coltrane Saga, Book 6 (10 page)

He brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead, felt her clammy, feverish skin. “I’m aching too, princess, because you are. I love you so much, and believe me, if I could trade places, suffer for you, I would.”

She touched his lips with trembling fingertips, smiled wanly. “Oh, Colt, if you only knew how much I love you…”

He kissed the tip of her nose and declared, “If it’s only half as much as I love you, it’ll last me a lifetime.”

She blinked back tears, for she felt so terribly sick, and it was not a mood conducive to good thoughts. “If anything ever happened to you, I wouldn’t want to live.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me. Or you, either. Now just rest,” he warned teasingly, “or I’m going to leave so you can, and then you’ll be all by yourself with no one to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” she quipped wryly, attempting good humor despite the misery. “It’s only my third day at sea, and it looks like I’ll spend the rest of the trip in bed…sick.”

“Well, just don’t think of the present. Concentrate on the future and what a wonderful time we’re going to have once we get settled in New York. I’ll work all day, and you can go shopping and spend my money.”

She sniffed with pretended disdain. “Your money? You’re the one who insisted we have accounts at separate banks, remember? I’ve my own money. You can’t accuse me of spending yours.”

“Not that I’d care if you did,” he soberly reminded her, “but the reason I wanted you to keep your money separate is so you wouldn’t be penniless in case I make bad investments and lose my inheritance. I’ve done that before, you know.”

Jade knew what he was thinking, feeling, and changed the subject. “You know I’m not going to be one of those giddy-headed women who spend their time shopping and giving dainty little teas and formal dinner parties.”

“Of course not,” he said, then added with mock annoyance, “Now I’m warning you for the last time. If you don’t be quiet and get some rest, I’m leaving to gamble away all our money or find a wild woman to get drunk with—or both.”

Jade made a face at him, then obediently closed her eyes.

The day wore on, and she was able to sleep only in spurts, for the sea was getting rougher with each passing hour, and she awoke each time the ship rolled or bounced. It was impossible to tell whether the water slashing against the porthole was rain or angry waves. The noises the ship made were frightening, as though it were being dashed to pieces by the unrelenting sea. Colt went to the captain to be reassured that everything was under control. He was told that, for the moment, there was no cause for alarm. The Atlantic Ocean could be cruel at this time of year. There was not any need to drop anchor, as the weather was not that bad…yet. Everyone should just stay inside and not venture out on deck.

When the dinner hour arrived, Jade was sleeping and Colt was famished, so he left her to go to the dining room. He returned a few hours later with a bowl of warm broth and the news that half the passengers were in their cabins as sick as she. “Even Mrs. Vordane,” he added with a touch of glee. “By the way, I now know that your story about her daughter isn’t so incredible after all.”

“Why do you say that?” she asked as he helped her sit up against the pillows so she could try to drink the broth. “Did she tell you the same story she told me this morning?”

He shook his head, held the cup to her lips so she could slowly sip, then told her how he felt like he’d had dinner with a stranger. “A very attractive stranger, I might add. It wasn’t the way she looked. I mean, she looked as plain and dowdy as ever, but there was a radiance, I guess you’d call it, without her mother around. She laughed and talked, told jokes. She was just bubbling. I actually enjoyed her company. And when we finished eating, she asked me to go with her to the ballroom, where some of the passengers who aren’t sick were trying to enjoy themselves…passing the time to keep from worrying about the storm. I hope you don’t mind, but I went because I felt sorry for her.”

Jade did not care that he’d entertained Lorena, certainly was not jealous, but she was feeling sick again, because her stomach obviously did not like the invasion of the broth. Sliding downward on the pillows, she lay on her back, felt the familiar heaving. “I think I’m going to die here,” she moaned. “Right here in this bed.”

Colt knew she was dramatizing. “No, you won’t. Once the storm passes, you’ll feel better.”

“Tell me more about your evening with Lorena,” she urged, wanting to get her mind off her misery.

He said there wasn’t much left to tell. “I thought she’d confide in me, the way she did with you, but I guess that’s too personal to tell to a man. So we drank champagne, and we did manage one waltz before the orchestra had to give up due to the rough seas. Finally, one of the officers came in and said the captain would feel a lot better if everyone turned in for the night so he wouldn’t have to worry about anybody getting washed overboard.”

“Your bride is here dying in her bed, and you’re out dancing and drinking with another woman,” Jade teased. “For shame, Colt Coltrane. It appears I’ve married a womanizer.”

“And I’ve married a woman with a green face.” He laughed. “You look like a leprechaun.”

Jade felt positively smothered with nausea but attempted humor, pretended a thick Irish brogue as she faintly whispered, “Faith an’ begorra, me laddy…fetch the bucket. ‘Tis a sick leprechaun I am—”

But there was not time, for the broth departed violently from her angry stomach, and she burrowed her face in a towel she clutched for such an emergency.

The fever returned, and this time it seemed worse. Colt awoke sometime during the night to hear her moaning incoherently beside him, felt the heat of her flesh as her temperature soared. He rang for a steward to bring quinine, but was not surprised when no one responded, for the ship was steadily rising and falling in the boiling sea. No doubt everyone was staying in his cabin.

He got up and went to the porthole and stared out at a black void. To go on deck now, grope in the darkness in this storm, was suicide. He’d have to wait till the first gray light so he could see the way. Meanwhile, he could only pile blankets on top of Jade when she began to have the chills that accompanied the fever.

The night wore on, and finally, Jade seemed to relax. Her moans ceased; she fell silent. The fever seemed to abate. Even the struggle of ship against sea grew less violent. Colt dared to sleep.

A loud rapping on the door to the inner corridor brought him out of an exhausted stupor. He groped in the semidarkness, glancing at Jade in the misty light that filtered through the porthole to see that she still slept peacefully.

He opened the door to find Lorena Vordane standing there looking very frightened. In an emotional voice, she begged, “Mr. Coltrane, you must come with me.”

Colt shook his head, attempting to clear it. Was he still asleep?

“Please,” she repeated, hysteria threatening to take over. “You must come with me. My mother is furious and—”

She stumbled as the ship bounced up, then down, and she fell against him. He caught her, tried to swing her inside, but she struggled, jerked back, slammed against the opposite wall, cried out as her back painfully struck the thin wooden railing. Clutching at it to steady herself, she began to beg, tears streaming down her face. “Please, Mr. Coltrane. You’ve got to come with me. You don’t know how she is. She goes crazy when she thinks I’ve been with a man. She woke up while we were out, and she started screaming at me the minute I walked in, accusing me of all kinds of terrible things. When I tried to tell her I was with you, she went berserk. She’s been nagging at me for hours because she thinks we were…” Her voice trailed off and she glanced away, embarrassed. Then she stared up at him once more with watery, imploring eyes. “You’ve got to come with me, tell her where we were, that we weren’t alone.”

“What are you talking about?” Colt hissed impatiently, still groggy, unable to grasp such a ridiculous story. Then he saw the big reddening welt on the side of her cheek, the imprint of finger marks in her flesh. He reached for her again. “Come inside, please. Get out of the hallway.”

“No, no, no!” She swung her head wildly from side to side, blonde hair flying recklessly about her face. “You’ve got to come with me. If you don’t, she’s going to beat me. She’s waiting now, with a strap in her hand, and if I don’t bring you back with me to swear we weren’t alone tonight, that we weren’t doing anything wrong, she says she’s going to beat me till I can’t walk. She’ll do it, too. You just don’t know her…”

Colt could see the girl was close to being hysterical. God, her mother was a maniac, he fumed, glancing about to make sure Jade still slept soundly. “All right,” he told her finally, disgusted and angry. “Let’s go and get it over with, and fast.”

He stepped into the narrow hallway and closed the door behind him.

The ship gave a sharp pitch upward, then rolled to the side, spanking the water as it fought to right itself. A chair that had been fastened against one wall came loose and slid loudly to the other end of the cabin.

Jade awoke and dizzily sat up to glance about in the terror that comes when a person is awakened abruptly. Where was Colt? And what time was it? How long had she slept? Struggling to stand on wobbly legs, she cautiously fought to keep from falling as she made her way to the porthole. Barely visible was the thick grayish roll of the ocean, spitting white as waves cracked, split, to spew skyward in protest of a reluctant dawn.

Someone screamed when the ship suddenly seemed to catapult upward, bobbing from side to side as the wind and waves beat and pounded. There was no bottom to the world, only a thrashing in an abyss, and time seemed to stand still.

The heart-wrenching impact of the storm’s fury came as the sky exploded in jagged fingers of lightning, unleashing the boiling rage of the tempest beyond. Furniture came unfastened, crashed, bounced off walls; glass broke and shattered. There were more screams in the distance, above the storm, as passengers became terrified by nature gone wild.

Jade fell to the floor, roughly tumbling head over heels as the ship seemed to turn on its side. She attempted to right herself just as the ship pitched in the opposite direction, sending her spinning backward. She had to get out, get to the deck, to a lifeboat, lest she be trapped here when the ship went under, as she knew it would!

She groped in the grayness to the door leading to the outside of the cabin. The ship lurched in that direction aiding her by slamming her against the wall. Her head struck hard; she was dazed, but rational enough to still feel the burning, shrieking command within her soul to get out…get out or be trapped forever at the bottom of the ocean.

On her knees, she wrapped both hands about-the door handle with all, her might. The door flew open just as the ship careened in the opposite direction, a giant wave dancing over the railing to wash her backward like a rag carelessly sloshed from a bucket of dirty rinse water. Again her head cracked against the wall. The ship bounced up, then down, and she was catapulted once more, this time out the door and onto the deck. Smacking against the railing, she grabbed it and held on with both hands, the sounds of her terrified screams for help lost in the cacophonous shrieks of the storm.

From the cabin came the sound of Colt’s shouts as he entered from the other side, calling her name. He fell, fought to stand up, and, in terror, realized the door leading to the promenade deck was open and banging…and Jade was not in her bed. “God, no, Jade…” He fought with all his strength against the bucking and bobbing to get to that doorway.

Jade’s grip was weakening. Suddenly, just as she heard Colt, the ship was caught in a grinding, twisting whirlwind that sent it careening straight upward. Just as abruptly the ship fell with a resounding thud that tore loose a crate of stored deck chairs. It shot like a cannon straight down the deck—toward the railing where Jade clung for her life.

Colt reached the doorway, clutching it with both hands as he fought to stand, but he slipped, fell. Jade watched in horror as the crate smashed into his head, and she had one heart-stopping glimpse of blood spurting before the crate continued on its way and hit the railing right beside her, wood splintering as the railing gave way.

The crate flew into the wind and waves, and the gray fingers of the sea reached out to grasp it and pull it ever onward.

The railing to which Jade clung was subsequently torn loose, and she followed the tumbling, tossing crate to whatever fate awaited.

When Jade fell from the ship, her mouth was open in a soul-wrenching scream, causing her to swallow water as she hit and sank beneath the churning, foaming surface. She felt herself slipping away, being sucked into a dark, cold abyss that was taking her down, down, down. It was so easy to just relax, to allow herself to be carried away, the water twisting and turning her body in frolic, like happy children playing.

It would be easy, her mind told her through the panic, to let the sea have its way…and her life.

But she did not want to die.

The salt water was burning her throat, her nostrils, and she felt herself suffocating. With the lithe and muscular legs that had taken her to ballet stardom, Jade began to kick and thrash. Her head ached. Her chest felt as though it were going to explode. She strained, stretched, flippered her toes as never before…and began to thrust, to project herself upward.

Her head reached the surface, and she coughed, spit out the salty water, gulped fresh air, then was slapped in the face by yet another wave, once more knocked below. The sea had not given up its fight.