Miracle (22 page)

"Yet she lives in a fantasy," Clayton said, holding his hands palm up toward the cheery fire.

John moved up beside him, stared down into the fire, then handed him a drink. "Port," he announced. "I recall from your last visit that it was your favorite."

Raising one eyebrow, Clayton accepted the glass. He detested port. However, it was the duke's favorite.

"Enjoy, Your Grace. It'll be our little secret. Miracle has no idea I've stashed
meself
a bit here and there. She doesn't approve, you know. Says 'When the wine is in, the wit is out.' "

"I fear she may be right, but thank you, anyway." Clayton turned the glass up, swallowed, then shuddered.

John dropped into a chair and regarded Clayton with a weary smile. "The first time you came here, Your Grace, I wasn't certain I liked you. Thought, actually, that you were a self-centered, arrogant ass and not good enough for
Mira.
I haven't totally changed my mind."

Clayton flashed him a smile and reluctantly drank again.

"I'm not even certain that I trust you or your reasons for being here. And if I thought for a moment that
Mira
despised you as much as she says she does, I would have long since sent you packing. She's very special to me, understand. There is nothing I wouldn't do to keep her happy."

The man sighed, and his eyes took on a sleepy look. "I sense in you, Your Grace, a thread of goodness. A man of compassion. A gentleman of compunction. While I question your motives for choosing
Mira
to, possibly, take her place at your side, I do not question my desire to see her rescued from this future her parents have provided for her. I do not relish the fact that she is looked upon as an oddity. I do not relish the fact that her mother and I have instilled in her the unrealistic fantasies of two people who cannot accept the cruel hand fate has dealt them."

Clayton stared down into his glass of port and watched the fire reflect on its amber surface. The liquor and warmth from the hearth made him drowsy, or perhaps it was simply capitulation that drained his resolution from him. Sinking back into the chair, he again turned the glass up to his lips and imbibed deeply.

John's eyes shone with fondness and delight as he smiled and reminisced. "Her mother -and I knew she was special from the day
Mira
was born. Most babes cry with their first breath.
Mira
laughed. From that moment on, our lives were filled with her indomitable spirit and insuperable sense of dignity. She has taught me much, Your Grace, of gentleness, of patience, and of faith. I have not always been a benevolent or attentive man. Children have a way of doing that, sir. Of forcing aside our less than desirable traits for those more redeeming . . . if we choose to save our loved ones from the mistakes we make of our own lives. Do you care for children, Your Grace?"

His gaze fixed on the dancing flames, Clayton allowed a faint smile to turn up the corners of his lips. "I've never given the possibility a great deal of thought. Perhaps because I've never met a woman who I could visualize as mother of my children."

"Never?"

Clayton looked at Hoyt and was struck by the intensity of the old man's stare. Those eyes, pale as a cloud-swept sky, seemed all-knowing, and at the same time, desperate.

"Never?" John repeated, his tone sharp as an arrow.

Clayton waited a moment before downing the remaining port, then he put aside his glass and left the chair.

"Miracle is watching the tower tonight. Says we're likely to have a storm, which means we will. She can tell at a glance when trouble is brewing," John told him pointedly and with a touch of humor in his voice. "You might find her at the bottom of Black Bluff near Saint Catherine's. She digs clams there and swims while she waits for nightfall."

"Thank you," Clayton said, then started for the door.

"Your Grace?"

He looked around.

"The damned lighthouse is little more than dust and rotten timbers. Perhaps she will listen to you if you convince her that her being there is far too dangerous—"

"What gives you the idea that she would ever listen to my advice?"

"Because she likes you. Oh, don't look so skeptical, Salterdon. I've known her much longer than you have, you know."

"You love her very much, Mr. Hoyt."

The old man looked thoughtful, his eyes distant, well- grooved lines of concern forming between his brows. Before Johnny could answer, Clayton slipped from the room.

*
    
*
   
 
*

Clayton made his way to the foot of the Undercliff and walked the stretch of craggy beach toward Saint Catherine's Lighthouse. Time and again he slowed and glanced back, watched the waves lap at the prints his feet had etched in the damp sand. He was in no danger of being cut off by the encroaching tide, as there was always that wickedly steep staircase grooved into the
Undercliff's
face that rose like a monolith above the chapel. Still, the hour was growing late, the light dim, the wind stronger and colder. He buttoned his cloak.

He wasn't certain what had driven him to come here. Perhaps because he felt he owed her the explanation of why he had decided to leave Cavisbrooke. She would be relieved, no doubt. After all, only last evening she had demanded that he go.

He found her footprints first. Tiny indentations of her bare feet in the sand. They
ribboned
up and down the narrow stretch of sand, first toward the water, then back again, as if she were dancing with the waves. Then, at last, his gaze sought for and found her. Miracle sat upon the ground, her back braced against the rib of the decaying ship where he had first landed on the isle. The girl appeared abnormally interested in one of her feet.

"I fear I've hurt my foot," she announced to him as he joined her and bent to one knee beside her. The wind toyed with her long red hair and had kissed bright color onto her cheeks. Yet, she did not look up at him, but focused on the bleeding injury on the sole of her foot.

Clayton yanked the linen stock from around his neck and proceeded to bind it tightly around the injury. "That's what comes from frolicking barefoot amid a lot of broken shells and stones,
Meri
Mine."

Miracle said nothing while he wrapped and tucked. He sat back on his heels. Leaning against the boat, she regarded him at last with her big eyes that looked as deep and green as the water beyond her. "You sound like my father," she told him. "Or how I always fancied him sounding, had he ever shown any interest in my welfare . . . had he even spoken to me at all." She laughed and moistened her lips with her tongue.

"I don't feel like your father," he said.

"What do you feel like?"

He stared into her eyes, her face, her lips that were red and slightly dry from the cold wind. The scattering of little freckles on her nose gave her the appearance of an imp, a child full of mischief. There was something intensely innocent and yet sensual in the way she regarded him, as if he were some fascinating curiosity she had found washed up on her beloved Black Bluff sand.

"I'm not certain," he finally admitted, then forced his gaze away, to a pair of curlews that were fluttering out over the water in search of food.

"I've been sitting here these last minutes trying to decide whether I like you," she confessed. "I suppose if I like you, then I would have to trust you. And if I trusted
you . . ."

"What would you do,
Meri
Mine?"

From the corner of his eye, he saw her tip her head, as if she were regarding his profile intensely, perhaps waiting until he looked at her again. But he didn't.

At last, she raised one hand from her lap and caught his chin in a deliberately firm hold with her cold fingertips, and turned his face back toward hers. "Then I suppose I would share my secrets with you."

"What sort of secrets?"

"Miracles. Do you believe in miracles, Your Grace?"

Her fingers trailed over his cheek, to the cut on his forehead that she touched with incredible tenderness. In her eyes came a look of despair and guilt, as if she somehow blamed herself for his misfortune.

"Do you?" she asked again. "Believe in miracles?"

"I . . .
don't know." He shook his head. "No. I suppose I don't."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because I've never witnessed one."

"Perhaps you simply don't know what to look for."

With no warning, Miracle leapt to her feet and struck out at a run toward the lighthouse and chapel. Slowly, Clayton stood, and with the wind whipping the tail of his cloak around his shins, watched her pause at the door of the ancient stone chapel and look back. "Come on!" she called, then disappeared into the building. Still, he remained where she had left him, the skin of his face warm and tingling where she had touched him.

Water rushed around his booted ankles. Coming to his senses, Clayton followed Miracle's tracks up the strand, to the
doorless
threshold of the chapel, then stopped. Darkness loomed back at him, as did the smell of dampness, rotting kelp, and fish. "Miracle," he whispered into the chamber. "Come out where I can see you."

There came a scratching sound. Then, from the farthest corner of the small chamber, a scant light flickered to life. With candle in hand, Miracle turned back to Clayton, her face little more than an apparition in the dim, wavering illumination. Her eyes looked liquid.

" '
Tis
bad luck to tarry in the threshold of a church," she told him, and her voice in the cold chamber sounded hollow. "Mayhap God will question your piety."

The ocean surged and hissed behind him.

Clayton took a cautious step into the chamber, his gaze fixed on Miracle's face, her gentle eyes and tolerant smile. She lifted her hand toward him. "Quickly," came the encouragement. "Our time is short. The tide will be in soon."

"Then perhaps we should leave," he hurriedly offered.

Appearing to float across the floor, Miracle moved along the far wall of the chapel, the candle raised and illuminating the enclosure which, Clayton noted, had apparently been chiseled from the Undercliff itself. There were no seams, no mortar, no signs that the chapel had been constructed from anything other than solid stone. He might well have been standing in the mouth of a cave.

"Have you never seen anything so inspiring, Your Grace?" She held the candle up to the frescoes and figures cut into the stone: images of the Virgin Mary cradling her infant Jesus. Around her feet bowed a multitude of robed and armored soldiers, their bloodied swords cast upon the ground. But it was Mary that captured his attention. Her eyes, reflecting the candlelight, looked alive and weeping tears.

Her countenance radiating awe, her voice slightly breathless, Miracle said, " '
Tis
said that buried beneath this floor is a saint. That as long as he sleeps peacefully, no harm will come to those who live near the Undercliff."

"And if he's disturbed?" Clayton asked.

"Then the face of these monoliths will crumble into the sea."

Clayton looked beyond Miracle to the distant dark doorway. Miracle moved toward it. "The stairway to the lighthouse," she explained. "Since the outside staircase has fallen to ruin, 'tis the only way in or out. Would you like to see the tower for yourself, Your Grace?"

There was challenge in the invitation. Why, he couldn't guess. Perhaps because she thought he wouldn't care to delve too deeply into the wet, stinking tomb. Or simply . . . perhaps she
was
a little crazy. This odd behavior could be nothing more than her innate ability to flaunt her unpredictability.