A Light For My Love (35 page)

"But—"

He strode to the bedroom door and turned back
to her. "I don't want you there, China." Then he was gone, his
steps reverberating through the hall, down the stairs.

China looked around herself, at the bed she'd
shared so briefly with him, where she'd given him her body and her
heart. He could try to shut her out, but she wasn't about to let
him face this emergency alone. She might not be able to help fight
the fire, but she could be there to give her support—something.

She threw off the covers and gathered up her
discarded nightclothes. She couldn't let them be apart at this
horrible moment.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jake pounded down the center of the pre-dawn
street, straight through puddles left by the night's rain. Soaked
to the knees, he barely felt his wet wool pants slapping heavily
against his legs. He had no coat, but he was sweating through his
shirt. His heart hammered so fast in his chest, he couldn't detect
its separate beats. A sharp-clawed cramp dug into his side. He
braced it with his hand and kept running. He had to get to the
wharf before too much damage occurred. He'd had experience with a
shipboard fire; the tricky part was keeping it contained. If it
spread too far, he'd be back in the repair yard for weeks.

But before Jake reached the waterfront, his
fear began to escalate. The low clouds in the western sky glowed
faintly, ominously red. The blaze would have to be huge to be seen
from here. Now and then, the smell of smoke and burning tar drifted
to him on the shifting wind. He ran faster.

When he reached Monroe's dock, he ground to a
stop on the wooden planking, appalled by the lurid spectacle ahead.
The waterfront stood in bright relief, as though lighted by an
August sunset. Gasping for breath, his side aching, he gaped in
horror at the enormous fireball in the Columbia River that was his
ship. It looked as though the ceiling of hell had cracked open and
reached up through the water to envelop her.

The
Katherine Kirkland
was completely,
hopelessly engulfed in boiling yellow and white flames, and
drifting slowly downriver. He realized she must have been cut loose
to prevent the fire from spreading to the wharf. Now the current
carried her toward the ocean like a Viking's funeral pyre. The tar
he'd ordered for her hull created an oily black smoke that hovered
over her like a death shroud. He could hear the roaring noise of
the inferno, and even here, where he stood, waves of dull heat
reached him.

Sweating and lightheaded, he gripped the
bollard next to him with a shaking hand.

The
Katherine
's masts burned from the
deck to their heads, their cross-pieces making them look like
leafless trees. Bits of canvas sail fluttered up toward the sky,
carried on hot drafts and glowing crimson, then wafted down to the
black water.

Through the blinding white translucence of
the burning hull planks, the frames of her skeleton were darkly
visible. Suddenly, her foremast gave a creaking groan and crashed
heavily to the deck in a raging blizzard of hot sparks.

Dying. His ship was burning to death, taking
with her the past four years of his life and the future he'd
planned so carefully. And there wasn't a single goddamned thing he
could do about it but watch. Horrible, aching grief welled up
inside him, bitter and dark.

Jake tightened his hold on the bollard and
leaned over the edge of the dock and vomited. The roiling water
below seemed to spin in a dizzying vortex, and he briefly feared
he'd lose his balance and fall in. Finally he drew a shaky breath
and straightened, as weary as an old man.

Farther down the dock he saw a small knot of
spectators, and he made his way toward them. One of them, Monroe
Tewey, broke away and met him.

"It's a hell of a thing, Jake, a hell of a
thing." Monroe's eternal toothpick darted from one side of his
mouth to the other.

"Do—" Jake's voice came out as a croak and he
cleared his throat. "Do you know how it happened?"

Monroe nodded, rubbing his short, grizzled
hair. "It was the crimps that did this, five or six of them, and
they had it in for you personal. My boy saw them leave your ship
with your two crewmen. Knocked out they was, and those bastards
dumped them in a dinghy. I guess they'll wake up on some other
ship. Then the crimps poured gallons of kerosene over the
Katherine
from stem to stern and threw a torch on her. One
of them said something about this being your reward for helping the
Sailors Protective League last night."

Biting, ironic laughter formed in Jake's
chest and sat there, itching at the back of his throat. All this
time he'd worried that China was the one in danger, that the crimps
would retaliate against her. Big hero that he was, he'd jumped into
the fray at Harbor House to save both her hide and her precious
boardinghouse.

Monroe took up the rest of the story. "My boy
ran to get me right away, but with all that kerosene she went fast,
Jake. By the time we got back here, she was burning so hot I
couldn't do nothing but cut her lines. Otherwise, the whole wharf
would have gone up. She was a real beauty." The man shook his head,
and looked at the flaming wreck on which he'd so recently worked.
"It's a hell of a thing," he muttered again, with obvious regret.
Then he added in a louder voice, "We've got coffee over here, if
you want some."

Jake jammed his hands in his pants pockets
and gazed after the
Katherine
, saying nothing. After a
moment Monroe gripped Jake's shoulder, then left him in silence and
returned to the group farther down the dock. Jake felt their eyes
on him, but he didn't acknowledge them. He couldn't do anything but
witness the death of his ship.

That was how China found Jake a few minutes
later. A gray dawn was just breaking, but the clouds overhead
concealed most of the light.

As she neared him, she stared openmouthed at
the burning hulk in the river, aghast at the magnitude of the
destruction. She'd supposed that one of the holds had caught fire,
but this—oh, God, this was complete obliteration. She'd never seen
anything like it.

In the odd half-light she approached Jake,
but he continued to watch the blaze, his expression blank. His face
still eerily lacked color. He didn't look at her. He didn't
move.

"Jake?" He appeared so disconnected, she
began to wonder if he was aware of her presence.

Only his mouth moved. "You weren't supposed
to come here. I told you not to." Then he turned his head to regard
her with eyes that froze the blood in her veins. "But when did you
ever listen to me?"

"I-I didn't want you to be alone with this. I
wanted to help." Her voice reflected the way she felt—uncertain,
frightened.

"Help!" He laughed then, and the empty,
humorless sound of it made goose bumps rise on her scalp and neck.
His teeth gleamed white. "Help." He shook his head and laughed
again until tears came to his eyes.

She knew he didn't love her, but even the
tenderness and affection that had radiated from him a few hours
earlier were gone. She gestured feebly at the warped, charred mass
of oak that burned on in the river. "Well, yes, now I see
that—"

He glanced at the onlookers, then gripped her
elbow and hauled her farther down the dock. China tripped over a
coil of rope and he jerked on her arm to keep her upright. Leading
her to a wall of crates that gave them some privacy, he released
her.

"What more could you do?" he demanded. "Light
the match for the sons of bitches who doused her with lamp
oil?"

His voice quavered and she looked up into his
face. She saw raw grief and rage there. She saw indictment.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, her
heart beating heavily in her chest. She tried to back away, but he
clutched her shoulders in a tight hold that made them ache.

"You wouldn't listen to me when I told you
the kind of trouble you could stir up." He shook her slightly. "Why
did you hang on to that damned crusade of yours, like a dog with a
bone? China, those bastards burned my ship! They set fire to her
because they saw me last night at the sailors' boardinghouse. And I
was there because I was trying to protect
you
." Even as he
shouted at her, tears coursed down his face, catching on the gold
and red stubble of his beard, but he seemed not to notice. He
pressed his forehead hard to her shoulder for an instant, and a
single, enraged sob escaped him. Then he pushed her away, regaining
some control. "They even took the two crewmen who were standing
watch."

Contrition swamped her. She had believed that
only she and Dalton were at risk. Yes, it was dangerous work, but
the danger had been just to her. Or so she'd thought. Behind her, a
high-pitched moan echoed across the water, sounding for all the
world like a banshee's wail. She glanced back at the remains of the
Katherine Kirkland
and saw she was beginning to break
up.

China turned back to him. Her own voice shook
and was hardly more a whisper. "Oh, God, Jake, I'm so sorry. None
of this was supposed to happen. You weren't even supposed to know
about the league." She twisted her hands in the ends of her shawl,
her words gaining volume. "But that day you saw me with Dalton, you
assumed such horrible things. I wish I'd been strong enough to let
you believe whatever you wanted. I wasn't."

Jake sighed and pulled out the tail of his
shirt to wipe his face. How long was that incident going to hang
over his head? he wondered. He'd been wrong to make the accusation,
but her offended pride was nothing compared to his current
catastrophe. His stomach was still a little jumpy, but otherwise he
felt dead inside. All of his emotions, save howling anger, were
draining away, leaving him hollow.

"Maybe it wasn't supposed to happen, but it
did! Jesus, China, did you really think your enemies would let you
thumb your nose at them without getting even somehow?" He strode
back and forth in front of the crates. "How did you get mixed up
with Williams in the first place?" In the gloomy dawn, she looked
pale and frightened. Right now, he didn't care.

"I told you how. He formed the Sailors
Protective League and I wanted to work with him," she hedged.

"Oh, so he just came to your door one day and
asked you, a woman he didn't know, to take strange men into your
carriage house and nurse them back to health. And you agreed."

"Well, no, not exactly."

He stopped pacing and gripped her chin.
"Well, just how was it, exactly? Goddamn it, I have a right to know
why my ship is burning up out there in the harbor!"

China glared up into his bloodshot eyes, and
pushed his hand away. She hated him for forcing her to open this
wound. "I met Dalton the day he came to tell me that he'd been
shanghaied with my brother. But the crimps didn't just steal Ryan.
They smashed his skull. Dalton held him in his arms while he
d-died. He wanted me to know so I could stop worrying about
him."

The information stunned Jake. "Ryan is dead?"
He thought back to that conversation he'd had with Williams the
morning they sat with Willie Graham. "Why the hell didn't you tell
me before now?"

"Because until last night, when you helped
with the fire at the boardinghouse, you didn't have the right to
know." China tipped her face down, trying to hide her tears, but it
was no use.

"Who told you that? Dalton?" he scorned.

She looked at him again, her shaky voice
adamant. "No, Jake. I know you don't like him. But I'm grateful to
him because he came all the way back to Astoria to tell me what
happened to my brother. I was never really certain. I only knew
that he left for school one morning and never came home. For two
years, every time someone came up the walk, I'd run to see if it
was him. Sometimes at night I'd imagine that I heard him at the
front door, and I'd hurry downstairs to look." Her voice broke and
a sob crept up her throat, almost overtaking her ability to speak.
"I-I should have guessed he was gone. Two days after he
disappeared, I opened the front door and found a seagull sitting on
the porch."

"Jesus," Jake said, automatically touching
his Saint Nicholas medal. Among seafarers it was a commonly held
belief that gulls were the souls of unshriven sailors who had
drowned at sea.

China pulled in a steadying breath. "Dalton
took care of Ryan so he wouldn't be alone at the end. H-he died
so . . . horribly. When he told me about the
league, I offered the carriage house because I felt I owed it to
him, and because it was the right thing to do. You did the right
thing, too, last night."

"And this is what it got me," Jake said with
weary reflection.

Finally, the tears that she'd successfully
pushed down so many times before came to her now in hard, gasping
sobs. The losses were too great for her to bear with a brave
front.

He put his hand on the back of her head and
drew her face to his shoulder, but it was the action of a stranger.
He was tense and distant, and she sensed in him an aloofness, a
rejection. It felt so familiar, she almost expected to look in his
eyes and see a cocky, rude insolence. God, how that hurt. China
loved him with the full measure of her heart, and remorse over the
loss of his ship sat like a millstone on her conscience. There was
so much pain in their history—so many misunderstandings, so many
things left unsaid.

He dropped his supporting hand from her head,
forcing her to stand upright and alone. He lifted his gaze to
follow the
Katherine
. Caught in the main current, her hull
was far downriver now, leaving a trail of smoking debris in her
wake.

"What about all the agreements you set up
with your shippers? Will you be able to make other arrangements for
them?" she asked quietly. The feeling of separation was stronger
than ever.