Sea Fire (36 page)

When Jon awoke at last, the mid-day sun was blazing hotly down. He stirred uncomfortably, feeling much like a fish baking on a stone. When he opened his eyes, he saw that only his face was protected from the burning rays by the canopy of his shirt. Cathy was seated
quite near him, under the canopy, her knees drawn up and the child cradled in her lap. Her blue eyes were smiling as they met his.

“Good morning,” she said gravely.

Jon yawned and sat up, his head brushing the canopy as he ducked from beneath it.

“You gave me the blanket,” he said, almost accusingly, as he noticed it for the first time twined around his legs.

“You looked cold,” Cathy explained. Jon frowned at her.

“How do you feel?” he asked, anxiety shading his voice.

“A lot better than I did at this time yesterday,” she answered with a wry grin.

Jon, remembering her agony, did not grin back. If anything, he looked even more worried.

“You should be resting,” he told her sternly. “God, you even got dressed! You’re not strong enough. . . .”

“I’m fine,” Cathy interrupted quietly. “Really!”

To tell the truth, she still felt quite weak, but that was only to be expected, after all. And she certainly wasn’t going to tell Jon. He would be convinced that she was at death’s door.

He looked skeptical.

“You should be resting, not moving around,” he repeated stubbornly. Cathy sighed, and the baby whimpered at her movement and then was still. Jon fixed the tiny form with his eyes, his frown deepening.

“Is she all right?” he demanded, hazy memories of Cray’s lusty bawling flitting through his head. “She seems awfully quiet.”

“She’s fine, too,” Cathy assured him with a smile. “And I’ve thought of a name: what do you say to Virginia, after your mother?”

Jon said nothing, just stared at her with narrowed gray eyes. If the child really was his—and she could be; her birth date made that possible—that was the name he himself would have chosen. But if she were Harold’s, born prematurely from the multiple traumas Cathy
had suffered, then. . . . Cathy was staring at him expectantly, waiting for his response. What did it matter? Jon decided silently. They could sort out the child’s paternity at some later date. For now, Cathy’s well-being was what mattered most to him. If it made her happy to insist that the baby was his, and name it after his mother, then he would not object.

“Virginia suits me,” he said. “As long as her middle name is Catherine. For
her
mother.”

Cathy beamed at him. “Virginia Catherine,” she repeated slowly, glancing down at the sleeping infant. Then she looked quickly back at Jon, her eyes twinkling. “What do you think Cray will say when he finds out he has a sister?”

“I can’t imagine,” Jon answered dryly, his eyes flickering to the child. Then he decided it was best to leave that topic before it became sticky, and rose to his knees.

“I bet you’re hungry.” He changed the subject adroitly. Cathy nodded.

“I am,” she replied a little hesitantly. “But is there enough food? I can wait. . . .”

She sounded worried, and Jon realized that the true exigencies of their position were beginning to occur to her.

“There’s plenty,” he said harshly, to cover up the lie. “Jerky, anyway, and if we run low there’s always fish.”

He jerked his head in the direction of the ocean, his mouth twisting with forced humor. Cathy smiled, as he had intended, her worried expression clearing.

“Somehow I can’t see you as an expert fisherman,” she murmured teasingly as he crawled to the end of the boat, where their precious supply of jerky and water was stored. Jon grinned at her over his shoulder.

“My accomplishments are legion,” he announced, sounding injured that she should doubt it. Cathy’s eyes twinkled.

“I know,” she murmured roguishly. Jon, returning with the supplies, laughed aloud.

“Eat, you provocative
minx,” he ordered gruffly, passing her a generous piece of the dried beef. “Before I forget that you’re incapacitated. I have other appetites besides food, you know.”

“I remember,” Cathy replied in the same provocative tone she had used before, her blue eyes sparkling at him. Jon groaned, and tweaked a lock of her golden hair in retaliation. When he said nothing Cathy gnawed hungrily at the jerky. She was almost finished with it before she noticed that Jon was not eating.

“You’re not eating,” she accused, her eyes round as they searched his face.

“I ate before I went to sleep,” Jon lied smoothly. “I’m not hungry. Finish your food.”

But Cathy would not. Stubbornly she held what was left of her piece of jerky out to him, insisting he take it.

“If you don’t eat, I don’t,” she told him firmly. Jon had not eaten for more than twenty-four hours, thinking it best to save what food there was for Cathy, who needed it far more than he did. He was hungry, but he refused to take more than a bite to humor her. If he was wrong about their location, they might be at sea for a long time. With his large frame, he could survive without food for quite a while. But Cathy—and the baby. . . . He shuddered to think of what long days at sea without food would do to them. Because, of course, catching fish, without hook, line, or bait, was far easier said than done.

“Where are we?” she asked a little later, after she had sipped from the water jug and settled back comfortably against the gunwale, holding the sleeping Virginia on her lap.

Jon grimaced. “As near as I can make out, we’re midway between the Madeira Islands and the Canary Islands. There’s another strip of islands through here, small ones, that the Portuguese call Ilhas Desertas—the deserted islands. With luck, we should make landfall on one of them.”

“Shouldn’t we head for somewhere with people?” Cathy sounded faintly doubtful.

“Beggars can’t
be choosers, my love, did no one ever tell you that?” Jon responded a shade grimly. Cathy heard only the endearment. His love. More than anything in the world she wanted to be that again. Now that he had accepted Virginia as his daughter, there was really nothing to keep them apart. She would forgive him his earlier suspicions, and even Sarita, and he would admit that he had been totally, stupidly wrong about Harold. The thought of Harold caused her a moment’s unease. He was, after all, still her legal husband, and she supposed that made him Virginia’s legal, if not biological, father. . . . But she resolutely pushed that thought aside. She could worry about that later. For the moment, she gave Jon her most dazzling smile.

“Am I your love?” she asked softly. Jon’s eyes darkened as he looked at her. Hearing, he pretended not to.

Jon rowed steadily for the next few hours, stopping only to take brief sips from the water bottle. The first time Cathy brought this to him, he ordered her fiercely not to move about so. He could tell that she was not feeling as well as she wanted him to think. She needed rest, and so he told her, glaring at her so sternly that she meekly agreed to do as he said.

Cathy dozed, and fed Virginia, who slept like an angel most of the day. The sun beat down mercilessly on the small boat. Without the protection of Jon’s shirt-canopy, she knew she would have been burnt to a crisp. She huddled beneath it, doing her best to keep Virginia cool, feeling uncomfortably warm herself. Every time she looked at Jon, his muscles bulging and glistening with sweat as he worked to get them safely ashore, she felt a surge of love. Perspiration poured down his face, and his black hair was wet with it. Rivulets ran down amongst the thick fur covering his chest. The sun had turned his skin a deep red-brown, almost the color of an American Indian Cathy had once seen. She knew he had to be hellishly hot, sore and hungry, for he still refused to eat more than a bite, instead watching her threateningly until she consumed what he decreed she
should eat. But he continued to row with tireless strength, and Cathy’s admiration grew with every stroke. He was truly a man in a million. She was proud that he was her children’s father. He was the strongest, handsomest, bravest man she had ever known!

Every glance she bestowed on him was soft with feeling. Jon had no trouble interpreting the looks she turned on him, but he was wary of her seeming affection. How much of it was genuine and how much brought on by the knowledge that, without him, she and her child would be at the mercy of a merciless fate? he wondered with forced cynicism. As he had learned to his cost, she was entirely capable of succumbing to cupboard love, which would vanish as soon as the need for it did. His heart was in an odd, fluctuating state, his emotions so confused that he didn’t know what he felt. Only one thing was perfectly clear to him: loving her openly had brought him nothing but heartache. If love her he still did—and he was admitting nothing, not even to himself—he would take good care that she should never find it out.

The sun went down, and still Jon continued to row. They had sighted nothing, not so much as a coral reef, certainly nothing that could be remotely classed as land. He began to feel worried. If he was wrong about where they were—and it was very possible—they could drift out to sea and eventually die. Jon didn’t fool himself that Cathy and the child would last for long in an open boat. Already Cathy’s face was flushed a bright pink by the sun even though she had been shaded from it by his shirt. With her fair skin, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Jon thought of her dying in such a way, and his resolve stiffened. He would get her safely ashore, please God. . . . And the baby, too, of course.

Toward morning he slept again, sharing the blanket at Cathy’s insistence. She had awoken as he lay down by her side, and had cuddled against his chest, her head resting on his shoulder as she drew the blanket over them both. Virginia she had placed between
them. Jon had been too tired to protest. He was grateful for the warmth, both of the blanket and her affection, however mercurial. Curling one arm around her shoulders, he had brushed her soft hair with his lips before falling asleep with the suddenness of a thunderclap.

The next day was sheer hell. The sun beamed down even hotter than before, so hot as to make the wooden sides of the boat painful to touch. The food was nearly gone, and Jon insisted that Cathy should eat what was left. Thinking of her small, fragile body and the child that drew its strength from her, he was easily able to ignore his own emptiness. The water was in short supply as well. Jon consumed his fair share of that, knowing that if he did not, laboring as he was under the broiling sun, he would soon pass out. Then much good would he be to anyone.

Virginia wailed incessantly, a thin, reedy cry that nothing Cathy did could hush. Vainly she offered the child her breast, sponged her down with sea water, sang to her. Still the baby cried. It became as much a background noise as the gentle slurp-slurp of the sea.

“She’s so hot,” Cathy said to Jon when Virginia had finally fallen asleep. Her tone was a combination of apology and worry. Jon, looking across at her, thought that she looked as if she were suffering from the heat herself. Every inch of her skin not covered by that loose white petticoat was reddened. Her blue eyes were huge and appeared unfocused; her mouth was slightly swollen by the sun. Golden wisps of hair escaped from the thick braid she had secured with a strip torn from her petticoat to frame her small face. Suddenly Jon was struck by the fact that she no longer seemed to be sweating. Alarmed, he reached out a hand to her, feeling her forehead and cheeks and hands. She was burning hot, and not from the sun. It was fever!

If Jon had thought the past four days were a nightmare, he had no words to describe what happened next. Cathy was desperately ill, with what
he suspected was child-bed fever. His own mother had died with it after giving birth to him, and he was mortally afraid that it would claim Cathy too. She lapsed in and out of consciousness, sometimes knowing him, sometimes not. He cared for her as best he could, sponging her fiery body with sea water, forcing sips of what fresh water remained between her lips, even managing to spear a fish with his knife and feed her its tender flesh. He cared for Virginia, too, out of necessity. It was not in him simply to let the child die, although sometimes, when it seemed as if he would lose Cathy at any moment, he wished with all the strength left in him that she had never been conceived. Grimly he pictured his life without Cathy in it, and knew it for an empty vessel. She was all the world to him, and she was slipping away. . . .

Jon prayed as he had never prayed before in his life. He made God impossible promises if He would only let Cathy live. But as he grimly held Virginia to Cathy’s fever-hot breast, he began to prepare himself for the worst. No one could burn so, and survive.

That night she was delirious, calling out his name and yet not seeming to see him as he loomed above her. She thrashed wildly, sobbing with pain and fear. Jon, restraining her as gently as he could, felt tears roll down his own cheeks. God, he loved her—he couldn’t hide from the knowledge any longer. And she was dying. . . .

The moon rose high above them, casting its silvery light down over the small boat and its occupants. Jon, looking down with anguish into Cathy’s unconscious face, thought that she looked like a ghost already. Under his hands, she was small and helpless, as small and helpless as the infant who lay sleeping fitfully at her side. He felt fiercely protective of her, wanting to gather her up in his arms and howl at the cruel fate that seemed determined to snatch her away. She had no one but him to save her, and he could not. The realization was tearing him apart.

“Hot—so hot,” Cathy breathed fretfully,
her shadow-filled blue eyes opening wide and gazing directly into his, seeming to see him. Jon tenderly smoothed the tangled hair back away from her forehead, wiping the sizzling surface of her skin with a damp cloth.

“I know, sweetheart,” he murmured consolingly, barely able to get the words out past the lump in his throat. Beside him, Virginia stirred, whimpering. Jon barely noticed the baby’s cries; all his attention centered on Cathy.

“Cray,” she whispered, turning her head blindly as she searched for the source of the sound. “Cray,” she said again, more firmly this time, and reached out her hands toward the wailing infant. Her arms were too weak to support even that small movement, and her hands fell helplessly to her sides. Still she yearned toward the child, until Jon, his throat working, picked the baby up and placed her on Cathy’s belly. Cathy’s hands came up again to gently rub her tiny back. Virginia quieted almost at once. Cathy’s eyes closed then, and she seemed to smile. Her hands fell limply back.