Forever Safe (Beacons of Hope) (38 page)

Tom glanced at the front row, where Victoria’s mother was already seated and talking pleasantly with Henry’s sister and her children. In looking at her now in the latest fashion with the regality of a queen in her fancy gown, he’d never guess she’d once been a simple light keeper’s daughter.

He doubted he’d ever make such a sweeping transformation. But he was willing to try to be a part of Victoria’s world, if that would make her happy.

A movement by the house caught his attention. Arch, who’d been waiting by the door, was finally opening it. Tom held his breath. He needed more than the brief glimpse he’d gotten when he’d caught Victoria looking out the bedroom window. He needed to see her walking toward him on her father’s arm. He needed to see her smile to know she was okay. He needed to put the ring back on her finger and make her his for good.

As the door widened, Henry stepped out. Tom waited for Victoria to make her appearance. But the door closed behind Henry without Victoria anywhere in sight. The muscles in Tom’s chest constricted. He willed Arch to open the door again and for Victoria to float out in her wedding gown. But the slight stoop of Henry’s shoulders was all the evidence Tom needed to piece together what had happened.

Victoria was gone. She’d run.

Even though panic slammed him with the force of regular nor-easter, he forced his face to remain expressionless. “I’ll be right back,” he said to the rector, praying it was true. Then, as calmly as he could so that he wouldn’t worry either his parents or Victoria’s mother, he whispered, “Give me a minute.”

At his words, Mrs. Cole’s sightless eyes found him. The elegant lines in her face drooped with dismay. And Tom had the feeling she’d guessed what had happened too.

He tried to keep his stride smooth and unhurried as he crossed to Henry. But a fist was closing about his throat, choking off his air. The escalating panic made him want to tear off his bow tie and suit coat and sprint as fast as he could.

Henry shook his head gravely, answering Tom’s worst fears. She was gone.

“I’m sorry, Tom,” Henry said in a low voice, as they met halfway between the house and beach. “I really thought things would be different this time, that she’d finally make it down the aisle. I thought you were the right man. And I thought she loved you enough to make herself do it.” His eyes held genuine remorse.

“She does love me.” Tom hadn’t imagined it. Had he? At times he’d feared her powers over him were turning him into a lovesick sap, that he wasn’t thinking clearly anymore, that he was losing his edge. But even if he was growing a little soft, he couldn’t have misread all of the clues.

Something else was holding her back.

Fear. He’d seen it in her eyes before. Especially the day she’d almost married Nathaniel.

She was afraid. He still didn’t know of what. But he planned to find out.

“Do you know where she went?” he asked.

Henry shrugged. The motion was filled with resignation and defeat. Maybe a father could make excuses for his daughter running from a couple of weddings. But now? There were no excuses left. Clearly Victoria had problems that even true love couldn’t conquer.

Tom narrowed his eyes on the house, on the window, and then returned to the door. “I’ll find Victoria.”

“But even if you find her—”

“
When
I find her.”

“When you find her, she still won’t go through with the wedding.” Henry obviously spoke from experience, had likely tried to convince Victoria in the past, to no avail.

Tom moved away from Henry. “Tell everyone the wedding will start soon.”

Henry shook his head. “Most of them will guess what’s happened.”

“We’re getting married,” Tom insisted. “Just tell them to wait.” He didn’t stand around to listen to any more of Henry’s protests or nay-saying. Instead, he finished walking calmly to the house. He turned down Arch’s offer to help look for Victoria. This was something he had to do for himself. He had to be the one to find her and talk with her.

Once he entered the house and the door closed behind him blocking him from the sight of curious guests, he jolted into high speed. He raced up the stairs, taking them two and three at a time. When he reached the bedroom, a rapid sweep of the room left him no clues.

He bolted back down the stairs and scanned the rest of the rooms before barging out the back door. One glance was all it took to see her footsteps in the sand, leading away from the house.

She had at the most a five-minute lead. From the deep indentations and wide spacing of her footsteps, he could tell that she was running. But as he sprinted after her, he surmised that she was getting tired, a fact that was confirmed when the spacing of her footprints showed that she’d finally started walking.

Within a minute, he saw her in the distance, struggling to reach the top of a dune. He didn’t say anything, didn’t want to alert her yet that he was close on her heels. Once she disappeared over the other side behind a tall clump of yellowing grass, he picked up his pace.

By the time he reached the dune, his lungs burned from his effort. When he crested the hill, he stopped short at the sight of her crumpled in a heap at the bottom. His heart skidded up into his throat. Had she fallen?

“Victoria!” He slid down the sandy embankment and fell to his knees next to her, attempting to assess her condition. “Are you hurt?”

Her face was buried in her hands, and soft sobs echoed in the hollow.

He lifted his hand to her shoulder but hesitated to touch her. He didn’t want to frighten her any more than she already was. But the shuddering of her body and the brokenness of her sobs reached inside and ripped at him. He lowered his fingers to her back tentatively. At his touch, she leaned toward him.

He released his breath and gathered her into his arms. She came willingly, and he lifted his eyes heavenward with a grateful whisper of a prayer. She was afraid. But not of him.

“I’m sorry,” she said against his coat. “I’m so sorry.”

He hugged her closer and kissed the top of her head, which was covered with a sheer veil. For a moment, he held her, attempting to catch his breath and steady the frantic pace of his heartbeat.

When her shaking diminished to an occasional quaver, he finally spoke. “What are you afraid of, Victoria?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was sad and muffled against him.

He brushed a hand gently down her arm. She sighed and snuggled into him. She might not know what she was running from, but he knew what he’d been avoiding all these years. How could he expect her to stop and face her fears if he wasn’t willing to do the same?

“You asked me to tell you about Ike,” he said quietly.

She sat up and looked at him, her long lashes wet with tears.

His jaw clenched, but he forced the words out anyway. “It’s my fault he died.”

She didn’t say anything. She reached for his fingers that he hadn’t realized he’d bunched into a fist. She gently pried them open and laced her fingers with his.

He didn’t want to talk about this. But he swallowed the resistance that formed in his throat, and then he plunged back in the pit of hell where he hadn’t wanted to return. To the frosty dark night with the mist falling and the stench of death all around. “The night Mom came after Ike and me, she cut me free from my bindings and started to work on Ike’s. But he stopped her and told her to take me out of the camp before it was too late.”

From their spot in the back of the wagon with all of the corpses awaiting burial, he’d been able to see the guard who’d been assigned to the night watch squatting two dozen feet away in the woods relieving himself. He supposed the guard had assumed that since Tom and Ike were bound and weakened, they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, and so the guard had taken his time.

“I told Ike I wouldn’t leave without him. But he pushed me away. Told Mom to take me.” Tom shuddered and felt Victoria stroke his arm.

“You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to,” she said.

Now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop. “I told Ike that I’d carry him. But when I slid out of the wagon, I couldn’t hold myself up without Mom’s help. That didn’t stop me from turning back to Ike and trying to free him.” He closed his eyes as the nightmare repeated itself. “Ike told me to go. Mom tried to pull me away. But I was stubborn, and I kept sawing away at the rope around his hands. When those were free, I started trying to free his legs.”

Thankfully, the wind and the rattling branches overhead had muted their whispered conversation and kept the guard from hearing them. Even so, Tom had sensed that time was running short and had sawed faster. “Ike warned me, said he’d kill himself first before letting me try to drag him away.” He could picture Ike’s gaunt face, and he could still hear the hiss of anger in his brother’s voice. “I didn’t believe him. I wouldn’t leave him. And he knew it. So before I could stop him, he yanked the knife from my hands and plunged it into his heart.”

Tom tried to block out the picture of Ike slipping lifelessly out of his grip and falling back against a corpse. The knife had stuck deep into his chest, the blood pooling against his thin shirt, and his arm falling away from the weapon.

His mom hadn’t stopped to retrieve the knife, hadn’t waited to even check Ike’s pulse. Instead, she’d dragged Tom away, wrapped her arm around his waist, and hoisted his arm over her shoulder. Then she set out, having to half-carry and half-drag him most of the way.

“So you see,” Tom finished. “I killed Ike. Maybe not with my own two hands. But if I’d listened to him and left when he told me to, maybe I could have figured out a way to return and save him.”

“Your mom told me you both would have been hung for being spies.”

Tom nodded. Deep down he realized Ike wouldn’t have lasted another day, not with the amount of blood he’d lost from his wound. And deep down he also knew that if he’d tried to carry Ike away, they wouldn’t have made it. His mom had hardly been able to manage him, much less attempt to haul Ike too.

“It sounds like Ike was a stubborn man,” Victoria said. “Maybe even more stubborn than you, if that’s possible.”

Tom nodded. “Ike always did like to get his own way.”

“But he was loyal, and he loved you deeply,” she said “He sacrificed his life so that you could have yours. Don’t you think he’d want to know that you’re happy now, that his sacrifice wasn’t in vain?”

Tom pulled Ike’s ring from his pocket. “This was his. The one he was planning to give his girl.”

Victoria’s eyes rounded, and the wetness on her lashes sparkled in the morning sunlight.

“I think he’d be happy to know I’m giving it to you,” Tom said, lifting her hand and kissing her ring finger gently. “He’d be happy to know all the joy and love we’ve found together.”

“Oh, Tom,” she said breathlessly, her eyes filling with tears again.

“Will you marry me?”

“I want to.”

“But what?” he asked softly. “Why are you afraid?”

She took the ring and turned it, studying it as though seeing it for the first time. “I think maybe I’m afraid of the future, of
my
future.”

When she lifted her gaze to his, her light brown eyes reminded him of her mother’s. So pretty, clear, delicate, and…

His pulse halted. “Are you afraid of going blind like your mother?”

She started to shake her head, denial forming in her expression. But then she stopped. She caressed the ring and finally nodded. “I’m terrified of it. I try not to think about it, try to pretend that it’s not a possibility, try to act like I’ll have a normal future. But the truth always seems to catch up to me on my wedding day. It’s the one time I can’t keep from thinking about my future and the fact that I’m dragging someone else into my problems.”

He hadn’t considered that she might have inherited the disease. But if her grandmother and mother had both gone blind, there was the real possibility that she might someday as well. He released a breath of relief. At last he understood why she was running from commitment. “We’ll handle whatever comes our way.”

“But I don’t want to burden anyone I love with such an uncertain future.”

She started to pull away from him, but he held her fast. “Do you think my mom is a burden on my dad?”

Victoria shook her head. “Of course not. They adore each other.”

“He loves helping her. He even loves being able to carry her around and hold her more.”

A smile tugged at Victoria’s lips. “I think you’re right.”

Tom traced his finger down her cheek. “I won’t complain if someday I get to carry you around and hold you more.”

Her smile turned tremulous and then her bottom lip wobbled. “I could go blind, Tom. Blind. Don’t you understand that?”

He nodded. “And I could go deaf. Or lose my arm. Or die tomorrow.” He rubbed his thumb across her lip to still the trembling. “None of us know what our futures will bring. But that can’t stop us from living. Or getting married.”

She was silent for so long that his pulse gave a thud. Then without warning, she slipped the ring onto her finger, back where it belonged. And she bestowed a smile upon him that made his limbs turn as weak as the sand. “Thank you for telling me about Ike.”

He nodded and had to swallow before he trusted his voice to speak. “I think it’s time we both stopped running from our fears, don’t you?”

Without waiting for his assistance, she stood and held out a hand to him. “Does that mean you’ll think about staying here at Race Point as the assistant keeper?”

He clasped her hand and rose, so that he was standing next to her. Victoria had wanted to stay with his parents, especially to be there for his mom. While he was glad to see her maturity since the first day they’d arrived, he hadn’t planned on living at the lighthouse, at least not long term. But maybe it was time for him to put the past to rest once and for all. Maybe by remaining instead of running, he could finally find forgiveness and peace with not only all that had happened to Ike, but also what had happened to his mom.

Victoria squeezed his hand. “She wants you to stay. They both do.”

“Only if you promise to stay here with me.”

“Are you sure you want me? I have no doubt that I’ll still have to battle my fears many more times in the years to come.”