Windswept (42 page)

Her father continued to dodge her questions about Jacob and refused to listen to her pleas on his behalf. Piney Beade had turned down her requests to see Jacob with an uncompromising attitude that convinced her that her father was behind his decision. The night guard who’d let her see Jacob before now told her that the prisoner himself had left a strict order that no females were to be allowed to his cell. “I guess that includes you, little kissin’ cousin,” the guard had sneered, and then followed his cold-hearted teasing with an offer to amuse her himself once his shift was up.

And Jacob was the most aggravating male of all. She’d made several attempts to visit him despite his objections, but he had spun a web of privacy around himself that was tearing her apart. Didn’t he see that this isolation he’d forced on them was worse than any taunting she might have to suffer from his cellmates?

At least Willy Turpin seemed to understand her plight. Until today. Now he was avoiding her as well. Once she’d dismissed her students, she’d marched across the courtyard of Proctor Warehouse and Salvage as she’d done every day, to see Jacob’s first mate. She’d caught a glimpse of his naval cap through a window, but when she’d entered the warehouse, the little man was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is Willy?” she asked Skeet who was standing around idly with his mates.

He looked to his companions for support and shrugged. “Don’t know, Miss Nora. He was here a minute ago, and now he’s gone.” The other men gave her the same half-hearted responses, but one made the error of glancing up the stairs at the same time he professed to knowing nothing of Willy’s whereabouts.

“Aha!” she said, traipsing toward the stairs. She gathered her skirts and climbed to the second floor. The mumbled curses of Jacob’s men convinced her she was on the right trail.

She found Willy in the cupola, which was fine with her since there was no way he could run. “What’s happened, Will?” she demanded. “It must be bad since you’re hiding out like a coward. You’d better tell me since I’ve had my fill of cowards and traitors and mule-headed men in general!”

He seemed to shrink before her eyes. “Ah, Miss Nora,” he moaned, “it’s bad enough. I was going to tell you once I’d had a pint to fortify my nerves.”

Her own nerves sent a quick patter to her heart, and she leaned against the cupola railing. “What is it? Tell me.”

He took a deep breath and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Your father and his men have finished gatherin’ evidence so I hear. Jacob’s trial is set for Monday.”

“Monday? That’s only three days from now.”

“Don’t I know it. And I haven’t yet found a legal way to save the captain from the…”

He refused to say the words, but Nora interpreted the rest of his sentence. She fought the hysteria that threatened to banish all logic from her mind. “From what, Will? From the gallows? Is that what you’re not telling me?”

“Aye. There’s talk that the sentence will be hangin’.”

Anger fought with horror inside Nora and won. “That’s preposterous,” she said. “You can’t hang a man for stealing a few bank notes, even if Jacob were guilty, which he’s not!”

“You’ll have to talk to the judge about that. I just know what I hear. And as long as you’ve heard this much, you might as well know that there’s also a rumor that the punishment will be swift. It’s possible the hanging will be carried out the next morning.”

The cupola suddenly seemed to be spinning on its own crazy axis, tilting and whirling with the caprices of the wind. Nora gripped the railing with both hands and grounded her rampaging emotions by fixing her gaze on Willy’s face. “This can’t be happening,” she said.

Willy came beside her. “You’d better sit a minute, Miss Nora, and then we’ll go downstairs.”

“I don’t need to sit,” she lied. “I need to stop this.”

“I know. I know,” Willy said. Then in a low voice, though no one could hear but her, he said, “I give you my word, Nora. The captain won’t hang for a crime he didn’t commit. Will Turpin won’t allow it.”

She pushed away from the railing and stood straight. “Neither will Nora Seabrook,” she announced. “Excuse me, Will. I’ve got some work to do. And it involves getting through some dense heads!”

She marched down the steps of cupola without looking back.

Nora was waiting on the front porch for her father when he came in for lunch. He noticed her when he passed through the gate and stopped and stared as if this stick-postured woman were a stranger. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Well, Nora, what a nice surprise to see you home for lunch.”

She never altered the sober facial features which she hoped signaled her intent. “I’m always here, Father. It’s you who’s chosen to stay down by the harbor every day, gathering more evidence, I assume.”

He stepped up onto the porch. “I’ve been busy, yes. But now I’m done and happy to have more time to spend with my family.”

She affected a thin-lipped smile and was gratified when it seemed to baffle him. “I wonder if you’ll think that after we’ve had a little talk.”

His jowls drooped with weariness. “Oh, Nora, if it’s about that Proctor again…I’ll be on a constant diet of oatmeal and mush if you don’t let me do the job the judicial system of this country hired me to do.”

“And which you are doing very poorly."

“Now, listen here, daughter…”

She blocked his way to the door in case he tried to escape to the house. Her heart beat quickened to a rapid staccato as she prepared to meet the enemy head on. “I’m afraid it’s you who’s going to listen, Father. We can talk out here in privacy or we can go inside where Mama and Theo and Fanny are right now tucking napkins under their chins. It’s your choice.”

Her father’s lips formed a perfect O as he expelled a long, slow breath of capitulation. “I suppose I’ve avoided this conversation as long as I can,” he admitted. “I choose here. If I have to listen to one more of Sid’s giggles or Theo’s pompous adages, I think I’ll go mad.” He removed his jacket and tossed it over a chair. Folding his hands over his abdomen, he said, “Let me have it, girl, but not one foolish word about the supposed romantic adventure of a sea faring life which you seem to think you’ve had.”

“This has nothing to do with any romantic notions of sea voyages. It has to do with a man’s life. Jacob Proctor has been falsely accused, and if you continue with this…this witch hunt, you will be condemning an innocent man.”

“Oh, really? You are singing a different tune now, young lady. Aside from a mountain of evidence which I have gathered in the last month or so on Jacob Proctor, need I remind you that you ended up on his ship in the first place because you went there in search of evidence yourself. Where was this loyalty to Captain Proctor then?”

She’d hoped he had forgotten that but had an answer prepared in case he hadn’t. “Yes, I did, but the difference is, I truly didn’t think I would find any evidence, and you anticipated finding tons of it before we even landed in Key West. You arrived here with preconceptions about Jacob, Father, and that is most…unjudge-like!”

His face reddened with restrained anger. “Why do you think I was sent here, Nora? Because Judge Carlton wanted to reward me with a few years in paradise? No. I was sent here because this island reeked with foul play and thievery and an outright lack of respect for the law. There was something rotten festering on this island, from the previous judge right down to the poorest of the wreckers, who by the way is
not
Jacob Proctor!”

“So from the start, in your eyes, Jacob was guilty of the crime of success? Oh, come now, Father, you can’t believe that’s a reason to hold a man’s life to a microscope.”

“No, but it’s a reason to suspect him above all others. And since I’ve been here I’ve found sound, irrefutable facts to back up my suspicions.”

She risked opening a Pandora’s box when she asked, “Like what?”

“Like several thousand dollars in New Bedford, Massachusetts bank notes. Like eyewitnesses who saw Captain Proctor running from the beach the night a mule line drew the
Marguerite Gray
to the reefs, which was, as it turns out, a signal from Proctor to the
Gray
’s skipper to steer toward the lights. It wasn’t an accident that the
Gray
ran into the reefs, Nora. It was a carefully executed plan to make it look like she did. Proctor led her there with a rope and a couple of mules.”

Nora braced herself to admit her culpability that night. “It wasn’t like that, Father,” she said. “I can vouch for Jacob’s innocence.”

“And how can you do that?”

“Because he was with me at the beach, not running a mule line.”

She’d rendered her father speechless for several moments, but he soon recovered to blast her with his conclusions. “Lying now, too, Nora? I saw you that night, remember? I practically ran into you on the back steps of our house when Piney came to tell me of the mule line. You were home, Nora, not with Jacob Proctor.”

She remembered Jacob sending her home and how she’d run from him as fast as she could. Everything had happened in a rush that night. Of course her father would think she was lying now. She truly had met him on the back steps at the same time the mule line was spotted.

“And it’s not just that,” he continued. “Remember when Theo followed Proctor’s trail into the shore cave and discovered a secluded place only the perpetrator would be likely to know about? Theo found a lantern big enough to lure ships.”

Nora wished now she’d told her father about finding the lantern damaged and her suspicions that Jacob had foiled the plans of the real criminal. If she told him now, he’d probably only accuse her of lying again to protect Jacob.

“And of course there’s the matter of the bank notes,” he said. “Irrefutable. They were in Proctor’s warehouse. And they’d come directly off the
Marguerite Gray
. Add to all this the testimony I’ve been procuring from other island wreckers over the last few days, and the evidence against Jacob Proctor is most compelling.”

“But I know him, Father. I know Jacob, and I am absolutely positive he didn’t do any of these things.”

Her father leveled a thick finger at her face. “You’re trying to argue with a Federal judge using intuition, Nora? I’m surprised at you! Besides, you only think you know this man. But you don’t. I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but don’t you see that Proctor only used you to get to me?”

“That’s preposterous. What
evidence
do you have of that?”

“The man sailed away with you, Nora.”

Her voice trembled with frustration. “I told you…that was my fault, not his…”

“Let me finish. When he discovered you on the
Dover Cloud
, he should have done what any man with honorable intentions would have done. He should have turned around and brought you back. Short of that, he should have sent you home on the
Sea Hound.
But did he? No. He would much rather envision the hell he put this family through worrying about you while he wiled away his days on some remote island.

“The only thing which kept me from tearing the man limb from limb when the
Dover Cloud
sailed back into Key West was seeing that you were delivered home safely. He didn’t harm you. For that I’m grateful. Apparently there is a thread of decency somewhere in the man.”

She wanted to shout that there was
only
decency in Jacob Proctor. There was nothing in him that could make him commit the terrible crimes her father had just listed. She wanted to tell him everything, but what she’d learned about Jacob and what had happened to them on the island was his to tell. She couldn’t betray his trust in her by revealing a past he may not want anyone to know. At least she wouldn’t tell it now. But if it seemed that Jacob might hang, she would do or say whatever it took to stop that.

“Father, I don’t believe Jacob did any of the things you’ve told me. He is not capable of such deception. He is the fairest, most honorable man I’ve ever known. But even if he had, why in God’s name are you recommending that he face the gallows? None of these charges merit such strong punishment.”

Her father’s face became as hard and cold as stone. “Treason on the high seas is punishable by death, Nora. And so is murder. In the five years that Proctor has been on this island, twenty-three people have died on those reefs. Twenty-three people, including women and children. You will never convince me that luring ships and innocent people to a watery grave isn’t tantamount to murder.”

“Jacob didn’t kill anyone," she protested. "He has spent the last five years of his life trying to save lives.”

“Maybe he didn’t kill intentionally. Perhaps his motives were only to plunder as many riches as he could, but people
have died
, Nora. That is an irrefutable fact. This practice of luring ships to the reefs has to stop, and it’s going to stop with Proctor.”

Nora felt the tenuous hold she had on rationality begin to slip. Her father was so sure, so unreachable. She couldn’t persuade him with her arguments, because she didn’t have facts to back them up. She only had feelings, but to her they were the truth of the matter. She knew Jacob hadn’t done any of those things. Her fear for his life boiled inside her and threatened to explode in a torrent of words that could create a rift between her and her father that would never mend.

She bit back her anger and forced a contained calm to guide her actions. Grasping her father’s hand, she pleaded, “Give me more time, Father. I’ll find evidence to prove Jacob’s innocence. Please postpone the trial. Please…”