Night Winds (37 page)

“I’m not Sara,” she insisted
. All she wanted was the chance to be alone.

“Sara
? Don’t you know me?” he asked stubbornly. His eyes were wide, unfocused, and the dark spot on his bandaged head seemed wider than it had before. He grabbed her wrapped hand and squeezed it.

Pain flashed over her so fiercely that Shae yanked back her arm
. Breath hissing through her teeth, she felt as though she’d been jolted from a nightmare.

Whimpering, she rubbed her injured hand
. “Don’t touch it again, Mister,” she warned the old man.

“I’m your Papa
. Don’t you recognize me?”

Nausea washed over Shae, and her eyes filled with moisture
. Her Papa . . . He’d gone out to look for her as well, just as this man searched relentlessly for a daughter who might well be dead.

Didn’t that mean King had loved her, in spite of everything?

Pity for the old man moved her. She reached out with her uninjured hand and touched his arm. “Will you come with me . . . Papa? Will you come where we can get you help?”

He embraced her before she could pull back
. “Oh, Sara, honey, I’ll go anywhere with you.”

Though her earliest impulse had been to recoil, Shae patted the back of the stranger’s ragged jacket
. How would it have been, she wondered, to have had a father like this? A father who could have hugged her, who could have shown his love. Or had this man, too, waited until it was too late? Was this the embrace that his lost daughter had for years awaited?

Almost reluctantly, she pulled away
. “Your head is cut. It needs attention. I’m taking you to see a doctor. St. Michael’s isn’t far from here.”

*

In Tuttle’s office, Phillip’s sleep had been at first unbroken and desperate, the sleep of one who’d too long struggled to avoid it. But after that, the shapes he’d fought against broke loose from the darkness: jagged silhouettes of buildings, trees, rising amid waves, then crumpling into white foam.

Phillip’s arms jerked as he reached out to grab Jacob, Eva’s younger son
. The boy vanished and he saw a casket swept past in the current, a casket that he somehow knew contained his father’s long-dead corpse.

The waves roared like ceaseless thunder
. Their foam turned pink with blood. Something pale bobbed in the wreckage. When he rolled it over, he saw Shae’s dead eyes staring past him, her blue lips parted as if there were something she needed to tell him, something so important that he leaned close to try to hear.

And then the sharks came circling
. The first closed in, its huge mouth gaping, and tore chunks from her dead flesh.

A shout of agony awoke him, and Phillip jolted upright, sweating in his makeshift pallet on the floor
. He panted as if he’d run a footrace, and he shook from head to toe.

His eyes squeezed shut against the nightmare images still flashing through his head
. No wonder he had fought so hard against his body’s need for sleep.

Running his fingers through his hair, he checked the desk clock and tried to shake off his terror
. Yet a residue of anxiety remained. For the horror of the storm’s costs was no less frightful than the truth.

And those truths, unlike the nightmare, would not fade when he awoke
.

He sat in Tuttle’s chair, folded his arms across the desk, and laid his head down
. He might steal, perhaps, another hour of rest before someone came to get him.

God knew, with what he had to face, he’d need all of his strength.

*

Shae held the old man’s arm as the pair walked
. All the while, he talked excitedly about events which, as near as she could tell, had taken place before the war. Though it was hard to tell, in the dim light she judged him to be more than seventy years old. Could it be that senility and not his head wound were causing his confusion? She began to wonder if he even had a daughter, Sara. If so, perhaps she’d grown and moved away long before the hurricane. With his present state of mind, she had no idea how to help him. Even if she knew precisely what to do, under the present circumstances, she couldn’t handle her own needs, much less someone else’s.

She felt relieved to reach the infirmary, where she might find someone to help the old man and maybe her as well
. Though the entryway was crammed with people in various conditions who were sleeping on the the floor, one of the nuns reacted quickly when she saw the two of them come in through the front doors.

“Is he a relative?” the sister asked
. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and she was prettier than Shae might have expected, with full lips and long-lashed brown eyes that her plain habit did nothing to diminish. Probably some young man had been disappointed by her calling.

“I’m afraid that I don’t know him,” Shae said
. “I just found him wandering the streets. He’s quite confused. I couldn’t just leave him there. He thought I was his daughter.”

“Sara?” the man called
. He clutched her arm more tightly. “Sara, don’t leave me!”

His desperation tore at her.

“We’ll take care of him,” the nun said kindly.

“I can stay a bit,” Shae offered
. “It isn’t as if I’ve anywhere to go.”

The nun smiled
. “Bless you, dear. A group of the ladies from the grand houses on Lee Boulevard brought a wagon full of food. It’s probably cold by now, but I believe there’s gumbo left and cornbread. Coffee, too. Come over into the waiting area, and I’ll clear some seats for you.”

Shae sighed, thanked her, and followed, then sank gratefully into one of the pair of wooden chairs
. Remembering her manners, she offered to help the nun bring food.

“Don’t get up,” the sister said
. “Stay with him so he won’t be afraid.”

The food, when it arrived, was barely warm, but to Shae, it tasted wonderfully delicious
. The pungent stew of sausage, rice, and okra at last appeased the appetite her earlier bowl of broth awakened.

As she wolfed down her own food, she noticed that the old man wasn’t eating
. Guiltily, she laid the spoon down in her bowl and tried to coax him to take a few bites of his own.

With a groan, he pushed her hand away much harder than she might have expected
. His spoon clattered to the floor and splattered gumbo.

“Don’t want to eat,” the old man asserted.

The long-lashed nun appeared with a red-haired man beside her.

“We’ll take over here,” the nun told Shae.

Shae found a rag to wipe up the mess. Glancing up, she caught a glimpse of Augustus Lowell. He strode importantly through the doorway and looked about, clearly searching for someone.

Shae slipped into a side corridor and hoped he hadn’t recognized her in her improper garb
. She knew Lowell hated her. He’d done everything but take out a newspaper advertisement decrying her inferiority after she and Ethan were engaged. What in heaven’s name would he want with her now? Had he come to chastise her for being so ungrateful as to disdain his foul son’s lust? Or did he wish to bribe her to keep quiet about Ethan’s unsavory doings with the housemaid or his men’s attempt on Phillip’s life?

She thought, for half a moment, of Augustus Lowell’s fortune, of the fresh start his bribe might buy her
. The thought repelled her, though. As far as she was concerned, if she never saw another Lowell man in her life, it would be too soon. And if she saw one after, she would know she’d gone to Hell.

She opened a door at random and stepped inside an empty office, dimly lit with an oil lamp
. Closing it, she latched it, to be sure no one would follow.

And then she turned and saw him
. She blinked twice, convinced that this must be some devilish hallucination. Her vision cleared, and a choked cry caught in her throat.

This was no mistake, she realized, as her heart banged like Delilah’s hoof beats on the stairs
. This was truly Phillip, sleeping with his head atop the desk.

*

Phillip was walking on the beach again with Shae, and it was so cruelly real. Wavelets collapsed, rustling as gently as her petticoats. Gulls’ cries softly welcomed the first stars in the east.

The setting sun had warmed the sand beneath his bare feet, and it bathed Shae in its last crimson rays
. Her hair fluttered behind her shoulders in a breeze perfumed by the yellow flowers on the dunes.

He was keenly aware they were alone here and painfully conscious of how her flesh would feel like heated silk, how it would taste like salted sweetness
. But even as desire overtook him, he knew she wasn’t real. He trembled with the fear that if he reached for her, he’d touch only empty air. Or even worse, the sharks would come to shred her loveliness into another bloodsoaked nightmare.

But she touched him instead
. He felt the warm tips of her fingers stroke the fine hair at his temple, felt them trace the angle of his jaw. Heard her whisper, “Phillip . . .” as reverently as a benediction. Felt the warm puff of her breath upon his ear.

Too soon, the dream-spawned spell broke
. Too soon, he stirred from sleep. Only to realize she was leaning over him, still touching, still breathing his name like the sigh of the gulf breeze.

“Please don’t be another nightmare,” he prayed aloud
. “Please, not anymore . . .”

“This isn’t any nightmare,” she whispered, her tears reflected the lamp’s weak flame
. “It’s what I’ve been dreaming of.”

He dared at last to touch her, though he half-expected his hand to pass through her fleshless apparition
. But the tears felt wet, the cheek as warm and smooth as he’d imagined.

“My God, Shae
. My God!” All caution abandoned, he rose, then crushed her to his body with a long, deep kiss.

He felt her breath hitch, heard her whimper, so he reluctantly released her
. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

She nodded, then shook her head, her hand clapped to her mouth
. Her tears came faster now, and with them sounds of weeping. She reached for him once more. “Everything’s been so wrong. I was so sure my life was over. Come and show me you’re alive, please. Come and make me glad that I am, too.”

She leaned into his embrace and let him pull her to the pallet he’d used earlier, his nest of blankets on the floor
.

Comprehension dawned on him
. She was truly real. Her red-gold hair streamed down around a plain shirt, and, oddly, dark knee breeches swathed her coltish legs. The effect was wonderfully provocative, but he hadn’t many moments to enjoy it before she lay beside him and pressed her mouth to his.

Desire flared in him, almost painful in its urgency
. He rubbed a palm along her side and reveled in the smoothness of its curves. Pulling up her shirt, he reached beneath it to feel the warmth of belly, ribs and soft, ripe breasts.

She tore her mouth away to gasp, but he allowed her no time to recover
. Consuming her lips with his, he opened her mouth with his questing tongue.

When he could bear the torment of his need no longer, he pulled his head away.

“Shae, I was so certain you’d been killed. I tried so hard to keep my eyes from closing, because everytime they did I saw you die agai
n
”

“

No winds could ever keep me from you. No waters could carry me away . . . from this,” Shae swore. She unbuttoned the brown shirt and let him coax it to a puddle on the floor. Beneath it, she wore only her mother’s cameo, depending from the golden chain.

Even in the dim lamplight, he saw the bruises that had blossomed against her ribs and on one shoulder
. Her arms were marked as well.

“Oh, Shae,” he whispered, afraid that he might hurt her when they touched.

“They’ll heal,” she said, unbuttoning the breeches, allowing them to slide down to the floor. She took his palm and laid it against her heart. “
I’ll
heal, now that I have you.”

He felt the strong pumping beneath his hand
. Shifting his position, he kissed the very spot. He smiled at her gasp of pleasure. Already, he had grown to love that sound.

His mouth blazed a moist path to her nipple, and she collapsed against the pleasure of it
. But her hands managed to keep busy, to fumble with the buttons of his shirt. He helped her to remove it, but pulled away when she fingered his belt.

“Not yet, my love
. Not yet,” he whispered and finished undressing her instead. “I’m not finished my examination.”

“Oh, so this is business
. Do you treat all your patients so?”

He laid her flat and stroked her thigh, then was rewarded with a moan
. “I’m known to be quite thorough, but I’ll admit to taking extra pains with you.”

He lightly kissed the bruise upon the shoulder, then paused to linger at the fullness of her breasts
. She writhed against him, increasingly impatient with his deliberate torment.