If I Wait For You (34 page)

“
Of course not.” West
seemed genuinely surprised she would think he would not move the
highest mountain to clear her of all wrong-doing. “This whole
business will be sordid and taint us, no matter that we’ll be
telling the truth. There will be people, you know Sara, who will
continue to believe in your guilt no matter how clear the evidence
is against the judge. We have been protecting you, but once the
details are released, there will be no doubt about who you
are.”

Sara frowned and chewed her lip. “I
know. But it will be worth it, won’t it? We will have children some
day, and I refuse to have the name Dawes forever sullied. My father
was not rich, but he was a good man.”

West smiled down at his wife’s fierce
expression. “Darling. Your teeth are bared.”

Sara refused to give in to
his banter. “I’ve spent enough time running away from who and what
I am. I am Sara Dawes and I refused to be ashamed of that. I want
to shout it, to tell everyone I meet that I am
the
Sara Dawes.”

“
Bravo.”

She folded her arms and looked away
from her grinning husband. “Hmph.”

“
I have always loved you
for who you are,” West persisted. “But I have to say being secretly
married to New Bedford’s most notorious woman has been a bit
exciting. Now that it will be all in the open and you are
vindicated, where will the titillation be?”

Sara gave him a long, mischievous
look. “In never quite knowing whether I actually did receive that
note of yours.” Then she spun around and helped herself into their
landau.

West heaved himself up beside his wife
who was obviously trying to suppress a face-splitting grin. He
leaned over to his wife, who continued to ignore him, and whispered
in her ear, “There was no note.”

Sara spun around so quickly, her nose
struck his with enough force to make her eyes water.

“
There’s no need for tears,
darling. All turned out well enough. There was no need to ask you
to wait. I knew you would. And you see, I was right.”

Sara glared at him. “I am not crying,
you fool. And I did not wait. Not a second. It was only sheer luck
that you came home before my wedding.”

West captured her mouth with his, and
she was instantly soft against him, all pretense of anger
vanquished. “The luckiest of happenstance.”

She pulled away from him. “You wrote
the note.” There was only the tiniest of questions in her
voice.

“
I did.”

“
Because if you hadn’t,
nothing would change. We’d still be married and glad of
it.”

“
I wrote the damned
note.”

“
I know you did,” she said
adamantly, but she bit her lip.

Three weeks later, a package arrived
at the Mitchell house, salt-stained and rumpled. In it was two
letters, both addressed to Sara.

“
I pray this letter finds
you well, Mrs. Mitchell. And I also pray you forgive my delay in
forwarding you the enclosed missive. Just this past week I
discovered the letter tucked in the bottom of my sea chest where it
has languished all these years. In the tragedy of the storm, it was
quite forgotten. Yrs Truly, Captain Richard Crowley.”

Sara knew what the second letter
contained—West’s note—and she found herself afraid to open it. She
let it sit before her, yellowed and torn at one corner, for a long
moment before opening it.

Sara, my love, please wait for me. I
love you with all my heart. Never doubt that. My only regret is
that I could not say the words aloud.

West

A tear slipped down her face as she
held the note to her heart. She’d known he written it, but to hold
it in her hands, to read his words, nearly broke her heart all over
again.

West found her, sitting on their bed,
her cheeks still wet from tears, re-reading the short missive. “The
letter,” he said simply.

“
The letter.” She sighed
and shook her head, giving him a smile that tore at his heart. “I
can hardly think of how I would have felt if…Oh, God,
West.”

He understood. What if he’d come home
after she’d married Gardner. What if she’d read that letter as
Gardner’s wife, not his?

“
You waited long enough,
love. Just long enough.”

Dear Readers:

Thank you so much for
purchasing this book. I’ve wanted it published for years, but the
whaling theme made various publishers uneasy. Still, I believe in
this book and, while it may not be politically correct today and
distasteful to our modern sensibilities, whaling was an enormous
part of our country’s history.
If I Wait
For You
is one of the most romantic love
stories I’ve ever written and I’m grateful I was able to finally
get it out to readers. At the time I wrote it, I wanted to write a
trilogy featuring each of the brothers. Jared, in particular, still
tugs at my heart. I so want to give him a happy ending. If you want
that, too, let me know when you review the book or shoot me an
e-mail from my website,
www.janegoodger.com
.
Maybe Jared will finally find his true love and we can heal his
broken heart.

Happy Reading!

About the author:

Jane Goodger lives in Rhode Island
with her husband and three children. Jane, a former journalist, has
written numerous historical and contemporary romances. When she
isn’t writing, she’s reading, walking, making sea glass jewelry
(WickfordSeaGlass.com), playing with her kids, or anything else
completely unrelated to cleaning her house. You can visit her
website at www.janegoodger.com.