Elusive Hope (38 page)

“Still, we will leave it for you,” Eliza said as the man brushed past her, his suspicious eyes flitting over her. “What are you doing here? Come to spy?”

Blake drew his wife back. “We were worried about you.”

“No need.” Graves swatted dirt from his stained and torn shirt. Cuts marred the skin on his arms and neck. “Unless you hear them and wish to help, it would be best if you didn’t come at all.” His dark glance roved over them. “Good. Just four of you.” He wiped sweat from his forehead, leaving a streak. “There can never be six,” he muttered, his expression suddenly tightening.

James and Hayden exchanged a glance that said they agreed the man was mad. Or at the very least, he couldn’t count, though their fifth member, Thiago, now remained at the entrance as if ready to bolt at the first provocation.

The anxious twist of Graves’s lips soon raised into a sinister grin. “I tried to stop you, you know.”

“Stop us from what?” Eliza asked.

“From coming to Brazil. But I was wrong.”

Hayden stepped toward the crazy man, his curiosity roused. “How did you try to stop us?”

A maniacal gleam crossed his eyes. “Don’t you remember? The storm, the mists, the illness, the first mate’s injury, the fire”—he paused, thinking—“oh, and the birds.”

Of course Hayden remembered. That voyage from Charleston to Rio had been fraught with one odd disaster after another. Even Captain Barclay had commented that in all his years of sailing, he’d never seen such bad luck. Which was all it was. Just bad luck. “You cannot expect us to believe you caused any of that,” Hayden said.

One brow arched in imperious delight. “You’d be surprised what kind of power is available for those willing to call upon it.”

James rubbed the scar on his cheek. “There are only two types of power on this earth. The power of God and the power of the devil.”

Graves chuckled. “Indeed, dear doctor, indeed.”

“But why?” Blake asked. “Why would you want to stop us?”

“For revenge, of course!” Graves erupted in fury, fisting his hands. “I was to be a senator, then president someday. If not for the South seceding, I would have been!”

Whether it was the scorching heat, the stench, or the lack of food for days on end that had done it, Graves had gone undeniably insane.

“Someone had to pay, you see.” Graves’s hurried tone spiked with anger. “So I tried to destroy your hopes, your dreams, as you destroyed mine. But I was wrong. We were meant to come here.” He waved a bruised, filthy hand over them. “Besides, you will soon suffer enough, and I will be more powerful than any president could be.”

Blake gathered Eliza close. “Then, we will leave you be, sir.”

Breaking free from her husband, she stepped toward Graves, extending a hand. “Mr. Graves, please come back with us. You aren’t safe here.”

“You are dabbling in things you don’t understand,” James said. “Dangerous things.”

“Evil things.” Thiago added from the entrance.

Eliza took another step. “Please, we care about you. Come back with us.”

For a mere second, the evil glint in Graves’s eyes softened, replaced by a look of pleading, as if a part of him, buried deep within, cried for help. But then it was gone, hardened into granite as black and infinite as a bottomless pit.

“Ah, but that’s where you are wrong,” he said. “You’ll see. When I gain my power, I will crush your little colony to dust.”

The next evening, Hayden sat whittling in the center of town, longing for some peace after a long day’s work. But that was not to be. He could hear his father returning from his treasure hunt. The fiend’s spurious laughter grated over Hayden—that gloating I-don’t-find-you-amusing-but-I’ll-laugh-anyway-to-win-your-favor chuckle that Hayden knew too well. Why? Because he had perfected it himself. Trying to ignore the grating sound, he chipped away at the piece of wood in his hand. He still didn’t know what he was making. Other than a mess. But whittling kept his hands from doing what they longed to do—wringing his father’s neck. Why hadn’t the man fallen off a cliff or been bitten by a poisonous snake, or better yet, devoured by a wolf? Surely that would be a just end. But apparently God wasn’t just, or surely He would have punished Patrick long ago.

Which meant it was still up to Hayden.

All around him, the townsfolk clustered in groups after supper, talking about the day’s events and their plans for tomorrow. Both Blake and James had tried to engage Hayden in conversation, but his mood was too dour for company. He’d spent hours with them, chopping down trees for a barn and a dock, hoping the hard work would get his mind off of his situation. But all it had done was delay the inevitable confusion and despair that haunted his evening hours. The more Hayden sought to catch his father alone, the more people surrounded him like a fortress of worshipping toadies. It was as if God protected Patrick, while leaving his victims defenseless.

The odious man now sauntered into the clearing, a lady on each arm, conversing in his cavalier tone and looking none the worse for wear after a day of hunting gold. Dodd, on the other hand, followed behind him, carrying shovels and pick axes and appearing as if he’d wallowed for hours in the mud with pigs. Amazing. His father had even charmed Dodd into doing his work for him. Hayden scored another slice of wood and flicked it aside as colonists gathered to hear news of the treasure hunt.

A captive audience was the golden goose to a man like Patrick. Swinging about, his eyes twinkling, he began an embellished account of their adventures, drawing gasps from the ladies and admiring grunts from the men. Mr. Dodd, however, shook his head and circled the group to get his supper.

Hayden’s own meal rebelled in his stomach. Rising, he slipped the knife into his belt and wood in his pocket and made his way to the edge of camp. Plunging into the jungle, he kept going until he could no longer hear his father’s voice, until the familiar buzz and hum of night creatures suffused all other sounds. He sat on a log and breathed in the thick air, scented with orchids and lemons and musk. Dim light from a half-moon spread a dusting of silver on branches and leaves. Brazil truly was a beautiful place, teeming with life. But Hayden couldn’t stay. Once he got his revenge—in whatever form that took—he would go back home. In fact, depending on the type of revenge he exacted, he might be
forced
to go back home. The thought unnerved him, and he shifted on his seat. He would miss his new friends, his honest work. And most of all, he would miss Magnolia. But what choice did he have? Every time he looked at her, his mind conjured up a myriad of sordid images of her in his father’s arms. Even worse, she seemed to be enjoying herself. Hayden shook the pictures from his head. No, he must start anew. Perhaps help his friend in his furniture shop in Savannah, learn how to survive on honesty and integrity rather than lies and deceit.

Like his father.

Visions of the man pranced tauntingly through Hayden’s mind—his mischievous grin, swaggering gait—along with the wake of hapless victims fawning over his every witticism. Especially the females. Yet how was Hayden any different? He dropped his head into his hands, not wanting to consider the question, yet not able to avoid the suffocating truth of its answer. Crackling sounds echoed, louder and louder, finally fading into female moans and sobs. Hayden looked up. A mass of pearly moon-dust materialized in front of him, glittering in the starlight. It floated through the air like a cloud that had lost its way, uttering the woeful cries of a woman. Hayden could only stare at it, transfixed in confusion as it began to twirl and spin in a mad rush that soon took the shape and form of Miss Grayson.

Hayden swallowed. His heart raced.

“Hello, Joseph,” she said, a vacant look in her once lustrous brown eyes.

Joseph Murphy, the name he’d used all those years ago.

“What? Nothing to say? The charming Joseph, with ever a witty retort on his lips, has suddenly gone silent?” She raised her chin, that pert little chin he had so adored—at least for a time.

“I’m sorry, Julianne.”

“Oh,
now
you’re sorry.” Clutching her skirts, she sauntered about the clearing as if she were strolling through a ballroom. Yet not a twig snapped, not a leaf stirred beneath her silk slippers. “But you weren’t sorry when you ran off with my dowry.” She swirled to face him, her hooped-skirt bobbing. “Left me with a ruined reputation and no prospects.”

Just as his father had done to Magnolia.

The words spun a tempest in Hayden’s mind. Shame fisted in his throat, threatening to strangle him. He gripped his neck and forced himself to breathe. Julianne wasn’t real. She was only a figment of his guilt-laden mind. Yet, as he stared at the agony folding her beautiful features, he suddenly wished she
were
real. Then he could tell her how sorry he was. Then he could somehow make up for what he’d done.

“What I did was wrong.” He slowly rose.

“Wrong?” Her voice spiked, her eyes flashed. “It was more than wrong. It was cruel, heartless, and wicked. You don’t know what happened to me, do you, Joseph? After you left?” Gathering her pink satin skirts, she floated across the clearing like a lily on a pond. “I never married, of course. Watched all my friends find love and have babies. But worse than that, I became the laughingstock of Williamsburg. A cursed woman whom the Yankees found easy prey when they stormed in to occupy our town.”

Nausea bubbled in Hayden’s gut. “No.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” He stepped toward her, but she withdrew. “I didn’t mean to…I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Then why
did
you, Joseph? Why?” A tear spilled from the corner of her eye.

Visions didn’t cry, did they? Hayden sank back onto the log. “I was trying to find my father.”

“And you have finally found him, haven’t you? A man after your own heart.”

Hayden stared at the dirt. “No, I was only pretending to be like him, penetrating his social circles. It was the only way to find him.”

He kicked a rock with his boot. How his mother would have hated that. “No!” He hung his head. “I’m nothing like him.”

The swish of skirts sounded, and Julianne knelt before him, studying him. Her eyes, now devoid of tears, turned hard as quartz. “Then you must kill him. It is the only way.”

Up close, she looked so real. The shimmer of her skin in the moonlight, the wisps of hair dangling over her forehead, even the locket around her neck. “How will killing him help you?”

“He started this. He’s the reason you swindled me, ruined my life. He should pay.”

Which was exactly what Hayden had planned to do. Yet there was something familiar in Julianne’s face. An expression…a madness…that brought a memory of Graves to mind.

Revenge. Was Graves’s insanity the destiny for all those who sought revenge?

And what of Blake? The man had every reason to seek retribution from the Yankees, but he’d forgiven. The comparison between the two men shook Hayden to his core.

As if she could read his thoughts, Julianne’s face contorted. Flames flickered in her hard eyes. “Kill him,” she hissed. “It’s what you’ve wanted your entire life. Now’s your chance.”

“I don’t know what I want anymore.”

“You fool! You weak, pathetic fool.” She rose and brushed off her skirts, her face angular and harsh. But then it softened back into its familiar graceful curves. A glaze covered her eyes. “You must do it for me. The price for my forgiveness.”

A breeze swept through the trees, swaying leaves and bringing shadows out from hiding. Dark mist slithered over the ground, swirled around her feet, and rose to circle her skirts like a cobra beneath its master’s flute. And for the first time in his life, Hayden sensed pure evil. Dark, heavy, powerful, all-consuming. And with it came a heady lust, an irresistible yank on his heart to obey her words. To murder his father.

“Do it!” she shouted, her eyes fiery coals.

“Oh, God.” Hayden dropped to his knees. “Help me!”

All went silent. All save the frogs and crickets and night herons. He lifted his gaze. Julianne was gone. So were the shadows. Instead, a spire of moonlight lit the spot where she had stood. “God?” Hayden’s breath tangled in his throat. “Jesus, are you there?”

A breeze played upon his face, spinning through his hair and cooling the sweat on his neck. “You exist. All this time I thought you were a fable, a myth.” Burning traveled from his throat to his eyes. He would not cry. He hadn’t cried since his mother died.

“I’m so sorry, Lord. I’ve hurt so many people. Ruined so many lives.”A tear escaped. He batted it away.“I don’t deserve Your attention. I deserve nothing but judgment and pain.”

Palm fronds fluttered, like angels laughing. No, not laughing, singing! Soft words sifted through his soul, “I
LOVE YOU, SON. YOU ARE FORGIVEN
.”

Son? No one had ever called Hayden that before.

A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation
.

The verse blared in his mind from a time long ago when he’d sat in the back of a cold, dark church in Tennessee and listened to the first sermon he’d heard since his mother died. Yet now as an overwhelming feeling of love and belonging fell on him, he could not deny that God was present, wrapping His arms around the little orphan boy shivering and starving on the streets of Charleston.