If I Wait For You (19 page)

“
A rogue what?”

“
Wave,” he whispered,
before kissing her softly.

She jerked her head back, suddenly
looking at him suspiciously. “And you were looking for
me?”

“
Yes.” He kissed her again,
this time tugging slightly on her lower lip. He felt her smile
beneath his mouth.

“
Because you thought I’d
been swept overboard and were completely and utterly
distraught.”

His tongue traced her lips. “Yes.” He
was just about to show her how truly grateful he was that she had
not been swept away when he heard footsteps thundering down the
stairs.

“
Here she is, Mr. Dawes,”
West said, backing away from Sara but not turning toward his third
mate. “Safe and sound.”

Zachary skidded to a halt at the door,
a wide smile on his face. “Gave us quite a scare,” Zachary said,
his eyes going from Sara to West.

“
That’s what I understand,”
Sara said, entirely too enthusiastically.

West nodded to Sara before departing
the room, still shaken to the core, not only by the aftermath of
the wave, but by the storm still raging inside him. If they had not
been interrupted, he would have made love to her, and have been
glad of it. He would have buried himself inside her and begged her
to be his wife. As he made his way top deck to assess the damage,
he was not certain whether he was glad of Zachary’s interruption or
not.

It was too beautiful for Sara to look
at and think: “This is where I will say good-bye. This is where my
heart will break.”

But she couldn’t help but
think that, even as her heart swelled at the sight of Hawaii, the
largest of the Sandwich Islands. Never before had she seen so many
shades of green, going from bright to deep as the lush terrain rose
from the sea, and finally to the snow-capped peak Mauna Loa. Her
brother explained the mountain that loomed over the lush island was
a volcano, and Sara tried to imbed the sight of it into her mind.
Not for the first time did she realize with stark clarity that she
was living an adventure that few women—or men—could even dream of.
She smiled despite the ache in her heart, committing the sight to
memory as she had committed so many things. Once the
Julia
weighed anchor,
she would never again step foot on this great, lumbering ship that
had become so very dear to her. It was her home, a place where she
had felt safe. A place where, oddly enough, she felt she
belonged.

Even the thought of the convoluted
plan suggested by a mildly desperate-sounding Captain West Mitchell
was enough to make her stomach twist in guilt and nervousness. She
had stood before him, her brother beside her, as he described what
he’d concluded would be the best course of action. Even though Sara
had known he wanted her away from him, she couldn’t help but feel
slightly bewildered that he had concocted such a thoroughly
detailed plan to send her back to New Bedford, to send her away
from him, without ever consulting her. She hated to feel so
helpless, had thought that meek and pliable girl she’d been was
banished forever.

The fact that her own brother had been
part of the planning and agreed made her even more
angry.

“
While we are in Hilo, you
will stay with the Tillinghasts. I have stayed with them several
times in the past ten years. I will introduce you as my
wife.”

Sara let out a sound of
protest.

“
It will do neither of us
any good to manufacture yet another lie,” he’d said harshly. “I
will simply introduce you and leave you to them. The Tillinghasts
often take in whaling wives and their children. It will not be an
unusual occurrence for them.”

“
Makes sense,” Zachary said
to Sara’s great irritation.

“
Have I no say in
anything?”

“
And what is it that you’d
like to say?” West asked, one eyebrow lifting with maddening
condescension.

Sara came closer than she
cared to be to blurting out what was in her heart. She didn’t want
to leave the
Julia
. She didn’t want to leave West. She wanted, she realized
with sickening clarity, for him to change his mind, to sweep her
into his arms and beg her to marry him. But it wasn’t going to
happen. He did not love her. If he did, he would marry her, or at
least ask her to stay with him. Sara opened her mouth and just as
quickly pressed her lips together, horrified at just how close
she’d come to making an utter fool of herself. She swallowed past a
thickening knot in her throat.

“
I’ve nothing to
say.”

And she’d said nothing since, not for
two days had she even brought up what would happen to her when they
finally reached Hilo. She refused to let him see she was crumbling
inside, that every wave hitting the hull of the ship was like the
ticking of a great clock, marking the time she would have to say
good-bye.

Sara turned away from the railing, her
eyes immediately seeking out West’s familiar form. She must
remember how he looked today, filled with the excitement of finally
reaching the Sandwich Islands, of the prospect of spending long
weeks on shore. The men were just as excited, for they would step
on land for the first time in six months. The ship was alive with
their chatter, and even West’s reprimands at idle hands were taken
good-naturedly. They would all be getting shore leave in Honolulu.
Sara would remain in Hilo. Alone.

Fear swept through her at the thought
of what she faced in the months ahead, and she turned away from the
cheerful sight of the hardworking men, the glorious, windswept
captain who shouted orders with such gusto. Sara looked at the
island, let the lush greenness of it soothe her, and tried to put
from her mind the journey she faced, and the end of that journey,
where she would lie to everyone she met.

“
Not thinkin’ of jumpin’
are you, Mrs. Mitchell?”

Sara smiled at Mr. Mason, though she
knew it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ve heard too many tales of sharks
in these waters to be taking such a chance, Mr. Mason,” she said in
a parody of her usual jaunty self.

He put his gnarled hands next to hers
on the railing, the contrast between his aged, work-roughened hands
and her sturdy female ones marked. “I hear tell you’ve got quite a
journey ahead of you.”

“
Not any longer than what
I’ve already seen.”

Mr. Mason rubbed his hand over his
face, the sound of his callused hands making an audible rasping
against his beard. “Aye. You should be home and safe in your own
bed by Christmas.”

Tears flooded Sara’s eyes abruptly as
memories assaulted her already fragile mind. She would not be going
home, but to a stranger. She had no home. No family other than
Zachary, and he would be thousands of miles away from
her.

“
Now, now,” Mr. Mason said
with gruff kindness. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“
Oh, no, Mr. Mason. I’m not
crying.” He let out a chuckle as she wiped away her
tears.

“
Well, then, there’s
something mightily wrong with those eyes of yours.” They stood in
silence for a time, Mr. Mason’s hands moving back and forth over
the railing in a restless manner. “He’ll be home afore you know
it,” he said finally.

Sara swallowed down another rush of
tears. “You shall all be home before I know it,” she said
tearfully. “I shall miss you all dearly.”

“
Aw,” he growled, waving a
hand at her. But his wind-ruddy cheeks turned even pinker above his
beard. Then he moved off, shouting an order to a young sailor who
was staring rapt at the island.

West knew he was doing the right
thing, knew it down to his core. Sara had no business on the ship
now and that rogue wave only cemented that belief. He would never
forget the way he’d felt when he thought her lost, swept off the
ship by the wave. Even as he’d ordered those boats cast off, he
knew she was dead. And he’d wanted to die, wanted to fall to the
deck and never rise up. He could not live with that kind of fear,
that something would happen to her, that he could lose
her.

He had kept his distance from Sara
since the tsunami, and in the days since he’d outlined his plan for
her, she had grown cold and wary. He couldn’t blame her. One minute
he was looking at her as if he’d like to take her into his bed and
love her forever and the next he was ignoring her. She was driving
him mad. He was driving himself mad. His war continued even as he
carried her from the whaleboat to the soft-sanded shore so that her
dress would not become sodden. He tried not to think about how soft
she was, how well he liked the feel of her in his arms. Her face
was turned away from him, but that only made her vulnerable neck
visible to him and he fought the urge to place his lips on that
soft white skin.

The right thing, the right thing. The
honorable thing. Over and over West told himself that leaving Sara
behind was the only way and be damned with his heart that felt like
a leaden weight in his chest. Each step they took in the soft,
silty sand toward the Tillinghast’s small home and mission school
felt like a step toward some horrid fate. Certainly, he thought,
living without Sara was not a pleasant thing. But living with her,
being tortured by wanting her—or worse, losing her to some
accident—would be a far more difficult thing. That rogue wave had
been a minor incident, but one that nearly killed her. Had she been
on deck, or even in the top cabin, she might have died. She could
have died below had she struck her head harder. Logic told him
people died a hundred different ways on land and at sea, but he’d
be damned if he could have prevented her death only to have her
taken from him.

And he knew, if she stayed, he would
marry her. They would have children. He choked with the dread that
filled him when he thought of something happening to a child,
something happening to Sara.

This was the right thing. The only
thing.

Sara walked beside West, stoic,
silent, hands fisted in her skirts. He knew she was dreading being
introduced to the Tillinghasts as his wife. She was a woman who
loathed mendacity, and being put in a position to lie again and
again was wearing her down. He could see it in the strain around
her eyes, her stiff posture. Her silence.

It was one thing to pretend to be
husband and wife on a ship of men, West knew, it was quite another
to continue the ruse before a god-fearing, rightly-married couple.
He comforted himself with the knowledge that he would be with the
Tillinghasts for less than an hour before departing for the ship.
Her hand suddenly clutched West’s arm, as she stumbled on the
entirely too solid and steady ground.

“
You’ll get your land-legs
back in no time,” he said. “Tonight, when you sleep, your bed will
pitch and roll as if you’re still on the
Julia
.”

“
And when I go back to sea,
I’ll have to become acclimated to the pitching and rolling all over
again,” she grumbled, dropping his arm.

Despite their unsteady gate, if was
wonderful to feel the soft sand beneath his shoes, to touch the
broad leaf of a tree, to smell the earth. The years he had left at
sea loomed before West like a prison sentence. Only this time it
was worse. For not only would he long for his life in New Bedford,
he would long for Sara in a way he’d never longed for Elizabeth.
God, how he would miss her. Who would he talk to at night? Who
would help him stitch up those frightened sailors who could walk
knee-deep in whale gore but faint at the sight of the smallest
amount of their own blood. Who would tell fearsomely false
stories?

Who would make him smile?

They walked down a well-worn path, the
jungle meticulously cut back, toward a neatly-built hut just now
becoming visible through the thick greenery around them.

“
Mr. Mitchell, perhaps I
can stay on the ship until it’s time for me to go.” It was not the
first time she’d said such words. West had explained that they
might be in the islands for several weeks before they could find a
suitable ship for her to sail on, and she would be far more
comfortable staying with missionaries. West would return to the
ship and sail on to Honolulu in Oahu, a three-day sail from
Hilo.

As they approached the house, a couple
emerged, looking incongruously Western in this lush jungle. She was
wearing a simple dress, and he a black suit and waist coat. They
looked dour and serious, until they saw West. Then they broke out
into welcoming smiles.

“
Captain Mitchell,” Mrs.
Tillinghast said warmly. “How good it is to see you again.” She
gave Sara a curious look.

“
My wife, Sara,” West said,
completely aware of her stiffening by his side at the
introduction.

“
Well, how wonderful,” Mr.
Tillinghast said heartily. “So please to meet you, Mrs. Mitchell. I
must say I admire your courage in accompanying your husband on such
an arduous journey.”

“
Her journey, I’m afraid,
at least on the
Julia
, is ending here. I was hoping you would consider letting
Sara stay while she waits for passage to San Francisco.”

“
Of course,” Mrs.
Tillinghast said. “Being a woman on a whaler can be so trying, I
know, dear.”