Tides of Love (Seaswept Seduction Series) (21 page)

Just before his lips captured hers, a raw-throated scream broke them apart.

* * *

The situation at the edge of the surf came as close to complete and utter chaos as any Noah had ever seen. People shoved past him, stumbling toward, or over, the beached skiffs. Men grappled with lines and dug oars from the bilge, swaying from drink. Hoarse shouts of alarm and hands raised to the heavens became the pattern in a matter of a minute. He didn't have to ask what had happened. The distant, savage groan of a ship's hull being fractured against the shoals rang through the night.

A sound you only had to hear once to remember forever.

"Shipwreck," Elle breathed by his side.

Half-turning, he gripped her shoulders. "Don't even think of getting near the water. I mean it, Elle. Don't even
think
of it." He let her go—before he did something stupid like kiss the woman he had wanted to kiss all night—and plunged into the throng.

He scanned the beach for a sign of Zach. The fog made it impossible to see more than twenty yards. Blessit, what a night to put the test to the lifesaving crew's preparedness. Noah had not encountered one sober man yet.

He snagged Daniel Connery's arm. "Zach? Have you seen Zach?"

Daniel jerked the length of rope in his hands, tightening the square knot. "Hundred yards down. By the edge. Where the wreckage is washing up. Look for the flares."

Noah kicked off his shoes and sprinted, lungs near to bursting, eyes tearing behind his lenses. He caught sight of Zach, then Caleb, standing in a small group of men he recognized as members of Zach's patrol. When he reached them, his brothers were involved in a heated exchange.

"The ship's too far out to fire the breeches buoy, Cale."

"You can't go." Caleb shoved Zach in the chest. "I found you sleeping on the damned beach, and now, you want to be some hero? Nobody here is fit to sail. You aiming to lose one of your men, Constable?"

Wavering flares splayed a blazing ring of light across the sand, casting the men in brushstrokes of gold. With a shift in wind, Noah noted the potent stench of whiskey drifting from them. "I'll go." He shoved inside the circle. "Do we know the location? What kind of ship? How many men?"

"Noah, no.
" Caleb flinched, equal measures of fear and fury etching his face.

Noah met Zach's startled gaze. "Instead of standing here arguing about what man in this group of six is fit to sail, you'd better worry about the group of fifty down the beach who aren't and are preparing to capture their moment of glory."

Zach yanked an unsteady hand through his hair. He looked from Noah to Caleb to the ocean and back.

"Go on, Zach. Take your men with you. Someone needs to control what's going on." Noah tipped his head in the direction of the tent.

Zach nodded and said to the man next to him, "Get Seaman Bennett." He gripped Noah's shoulder, squeezed once, then shouldered through the group.

"Dammit." Caleb slammed his fist into the open palm of his other hand.

A boy no older than sixteen appeared at the edge of the circle, a ragged blanket fisted at his neck, a mop of red hair standing at stiff angles about his head. Shivers shook his gaunt shoulders and rocked him where he stood. "Si-Sir?"

Noah stepped forward. "Tell me what you can, son. Anything you can. Quickly."

"I'm a seaman on the
Queen's Jewel,
sir. A wooden clipper, eleven on board. No passengers, praise be. Headed to Charleston with a cargo of woolpacks, printing paper, and ironmongery. We sailed past Hatteras without incident and the cap'n, he said making it past the watery graveyard should be cause for celebration. So he opened a crate of fine brandy, of which two hundred cases was stored below. The cap'n, he was the worse for drink lots of times." The boy glanced around and wiped his nose on the blanket. "But this time he was staggering before the breakers was even sighted. We weren't concerned, sir, reading the calm weather. Then the fog, she rolled in heavy as a mama's teat, and the cap'n, he mistook the Cape lighthouse for something it weren't." The boy shivered, his throat working.

"Go on," Noah said.

"At half past, the fog was swelling and the night getting darker and darker. Then, sudden like, the
Jewel,
she bounced hard on the shoal, sir. The man on lookout, he began signaling. We tried to wear around, almost got it when she swung, broadside on, with her head to the southward. The after port and starboard boats were cleared and lowered, both hitting water about the same time." The boy's lids fluttered and he quaked. "I was in the... lee boat, sir. Me and Deck O'Malley. The boat on the weather side, sh-she got caught by a swell. Dashed under the ship's counter like a finger... shoved her there. They screamed. And the sea? She just roared."

Noah swallowed past the rise of sickness. "Get him out of here. Someone get him out of here. Keep him warm and put some food in his belly."

Jeb Crow seized Seaman Bennett's arm and led him away. The boy turned and yelled, "O'Malley, he washed over the side. I tried to help him. Clinging to debris the... last time I saw him, sir. To a scrap of skiff, sir."

"A skiff." Noah closed his mind to the distant sounds of destruction. "Someone's skiff got tangled with the clipper."

Caleb wrenched him around by the shoulder. "I'm going with you."

"I've done this before, Cale. Remember?" He slipped his spectacles in his pocket and strode down the beach, the wind whipping his hair into his face. "I'd simply forgotten how ghastly looking for survivors is."

"Can you see without those things?" He nodded toward Noah's pocket.

"Well enough."

"Goddammit, I'm going. You can't stop me."

"Cale—"

"You need me on this one, little bro'."

Noah halted by the boat and cocked his head, looking into stubborn gray eyes exactly like his own. "Maybe I do."

Chapter 9

"They might have been caught on the way."

C. Wyville Thomson

The Depths of the Sea

"You let them go?" Elle hurried alongside Zach, trying to contain the quiver in her voice.

He stopped and waited for her to backtrack before he answered. "Do you think I wanted to send them out in this mess? Fog so thick I could carve a design in it." Swishing his foot through the bubbly froth at the water's edge, he said, "I can't allow anyone standing on this beach to go. I was lucky to find six capable volunteers. Lucky we're only searching for ten seamen. Plenty of space to bring them back if they're found. Maybe they'll even locate some of the cargo."

Elle seized a scrap of wood as it washed against her boot. A perfectly planed, smoothly varnished splinter. "Part of the hull." She let it fall to the beach.

Zach dropped to his haunches and covered his face with his hands. The wind tossed strands of black hair against his fingers. "I'm resigning this post. Am I so responsible for these shipwrecks that I put my family at risk? How can I control what happens on those blasted shoals?"

Sinking beside him, she hugged her knees to her chest. Waves lapped at her feet. "I'm sorry I said that about letting Noah go."

"Oh, Elle." He shook his head. "Have you told him?"

She laid her cheek on her knee and stared into the fog. "What?"

"That you love him."

She tightened her arms about her legs.

"Tell him before he returns to Chicago. Tell him when his skiff lands on shore. Give him a chance to—"

"To cringe and back away as if I had the plague?"

"He's not that frightened of you."

"Close."

"What about Christa's—"

"She
told
you." Elle's hand shot out; a shower of water drenched his trouser leg.

"A little." He plucked at the damp cloth.

"Wonderful. Everyone in town knows I kissed Noah in the alley behind the Nook. Of course, they imagine I hauled him there. Poor beleaguered man."

"No, you're wrong. She only told me because...."

"Told you because of what?"

He stood and dusted the seat of his trousers. "I've got to get back. Make sure Jeb is keeping the boats anchored."

She yanked him off balance. "Tell me."

"All right! I had to get him at Christa's." He tugged his arm loose. "He was a mess. Almost as bad as Caleb at his worst."

"The parlor? Was he in the parlor?"

Displeasure hardened his jaw. "How do you know about the parlor, Elle
?"

"Was he?"

Grunting once, he strode away.

Elle raced after him. "Zach,
please.
"

"I don't think he would appreciate me telling you this." He flicked a nervous glance at her. "I mean, he didn't say, not in so many words. Not to give you some idea he said anything. Blast, I just don't want to betray his confidence. He's always been, you know." He waved his hand in a circle at his side, rummaging.

"Private."

"Yes. Private."

She averted her eyes, refusing to beg. She'd done enough to last three lifetimes. A few feet up the beach, Seaman Bennett slouched against an ale barrel, the glow from a campfire revealing a face aged by tragedy. "I'll go to him." She headed the boy's way.

"Ellie?"

She glanced over her shoulder.

"Since the first day Noah brought you home, I've loved you like a sister. Caleb and I have never made a secret of it. But this"—his gaze shifted—"I'm torn in two about it. I don't know whether to push you two together, shove you apart, or stick my blasted head in the sand and mind my own business. I've never understood what Noah was thinking, and I guess this time, I don't have a good clue about you, either."

As his words battled past her bewilderment, a burst of love flooded her heart. "Zach?"

He abandoned his study of the sea, his eyes bright with fear.

"Noah's safe." She placed her hand on her chest. "I would know if he weren't."

"The other night, Ellie, I saw a flicker of something when he—when he talked about you. I think you should tell him how you feel, give him a chance to make good on it this time." He returned his regard to the sea. "I believe he wants to."

For the next hour, she comforted Seaman Bennett and watched the waves for a sign of Noah's skiff. The seed of hope Zach's words had planted in her foolish, forgiving heart flourished with each breath she drew.

* * *

"Starboard, Caleb," Noah yelled, hand cupped around his mouth to elevate his words above the deafening roar of the clipper's hull splitting apart, seam by seam. He swabbed his spectacle lenses, practically useless from the spray kicking into his face.

He glanced at the two seamen huddled in the stern. They looked all of sixteen, tear-streaked faces and pink noses. He and Caleb had come upon them clinging to a section of the hull.

"Where?" Caleb threw his hands up.

Noah squinted, a dull ache beginning to pound behind his eyes. If only the moon shone brighter, and the blessed fog rolled out to sea. Still, something... a flash of color, fifty yards ahead. He pointed.

With a deft torque, Caleb circled the skiff and rowed like the devil, muscles bunching beneath the dark material plastered to his chest. He dabbed at the blood on his cheek, the result of a slap from the flat side of an oar. "Dammit, Noah." He maneuvered through the debris surrounding them.

"One more pass, Cale!"

Caleb slapped the oar to the water, his voice rising above the shrieking wind. "The fog... thicker... sucked under."

Noah stared at what remained of the clipper, knowing his brother spoke the truth. The ship lay port side to shore, a doomed position. Coupled with the fog and the hunks of debris keeping them from moving closer, the chances of finding anyone alive were slim. He and Caleb had already had a fierce argument in front of the wild-eyed young seamen. Afraid to terrify them further, Noah had relinquished the oars and agreed to leave. Only, some thread of recognition or... ah, he didn't
know,
but he had to try again. Holding up his finger, he mouthed, "Once more."

Caleb scowled and dug in, sending the boat in an angry skip.

Jagged fragments of wood cracked the hull as they cleaved the water in two. Pages from a book and a leather boot floated past. A pair of men's trousers. Noah gripped the sides and swallowed down a parched throat. Christ, why did he insist upon searching? Death surrounded them. He could sense it, imagined he could smell it, sour, like the scent of rotting meat. If only he was able to erase the image of Seaman Bennett watching Deck O'Malley float away on part of a skiff.

The boat slowed, and Noah looked back to find Caleb dragging the oars.

"No more. Too dangerous."

He shifted on the hard bench, the wind pressing his shirt against his chest. Searching the hazy distance, his urgency puzzled even him. That blessed speck of color would not leave him be. He tucked his spectacles inside the canvas shoe sitting by his bare feet. Catching Caleb's gaze, he dipped his hand down, then up—
I'm going in.

Caleb wrenched the oar and cursed loudly enough for him to hear.