The Lightkeeper's Bride (17 page)

The man moved to Will’s left, toward where the chest had been stashed. Will realized he hadn’t gotten the chest back into the place where it had resided. It sat two feet further from the opening and was not shoved against the wall. The fellow crouched and moved his hands along the rock wall. Will heard a clatter and something scrape.

Then a tiny light flared, and he saw a lantern and matches in the man’s hand.

Will crouched down and pressed back against the rocks behind him. If he stood still, perhaps the man wouldn’t examine the rest of the cave. The wick caught flame, and the lantern’s warm yellow glow pushed back the shadows in the cave to two feet in front of Will. He remained just barely covered by the dark. As the light probed the other corners of the space, he saw the outline of the cave better. It widened to about eight feet and went back into the hillside fifteen feet or so.

The fellow set the lantern down and crouched in front of the chest. Will could only pray the pirate didn’t remember exactly where he’d placed it last. A click echoed against the cave walls and the man lifted the lid on the box. Will sidled to the right so he could see better. His boot scraped a loose rock. He froze when the fellow stopped and lifted his head. The man reached toward his waist, and Will caught the gleam of a gun in the lamplight. His fingers tightened on his own gun, but before the fellow withdrew his weapon, another man called down from atop the cliff.

“Chesterson, are you about done? I need to get back.” The accomplice’s voice was cultured.

“Almost,” the workman shouted. “Give me a minute.” The man tipped his head and listened with his hand still on the butt of his gun. Will didn’t move. “Lousy rats,” the man muttered. He knelt in front of the chest again and withdrew a stack of ledgers. He laid a compass and other instruments on the rocky floor. A metal lockbox came out next.

Will couldn’t let the evidence get away. He brought up his pistol. The man pulled out a burlap sack then put the lockbox into it before tightening the top and turning back to the rope dangling outside the opening. Will relaxed a bit when he realized the man intended only to take a small portion of the contents of the chest. Could he apprehend the perpetrators? If he let them leave, Will might not be able to discover their identity. But if he stopped them now, Philip might never find the ship itself. Uncertain how to proceed, Will took another step and a rock rattled.

The man whipped out his gun and turned toward him. “Don’t move!” he barked.

Will had the advantage because he could see the man and the guy couldn’t see him. “Drop it! I’ve got a gun on you,” he said. Will’s finger tightened on the trigger, but rather than dropping his gun, Chesterton fired. Something struck Will on the left side of his head, and his vision blurred. He struggled to stay conscious, to depress the trigger on his pistol, but he was dizzy. The next thing he knew, he was falling. His hand struck a rock and the gun clattered across the rock floor. Then a cold metal barrel dug into his forehead.

“If you move, I’ll kill you,” the man said. He dragged Will roughly to his feet.

Will’s head throbbed, and a wave of nausea struck him. The man half-dragged him toward the front of the cave. Philip’s pistol was somewhere behind them and of no help to him. He had no strength to fight the man’s rough handling. In the shaft of sunlight streaming into the mouth of the cave, Will saw the hard glint in the fellow’s eyes, the cruel twist of his mouth. This was no gardener but a thug dressed as one.

“We’ve got a problem,” the man shouted up to his partner. “There’s a snoop in here.”

“What?” The accomplice’s voice was faint, as though he’d moved away from the edge. When he spoke again, he was louder. “Did you shoot him?”

“Yeah, I nicked his head. What should I do with him?”

There was silence for a long moment. Will felt his strength beginning to return. If he could ward off action for a few more minutes, he might be able to get out of this.

“Kill him,” the man above said. “We leave no witnesses.”

“We should make it look like an accident,” Chesterton said, “so no one comes looking for us. Maybe tie him up here and let him die on his own, then come back and take off the ropes?”

“He’ll stink up the cave. Besides, that’s too risky. He might get away,” the voice said from above.

There was another pause. Then the man’s hand tightened. He hauled Will out of the cave opening. Will’s muscles tightened in preparation for a fight. He wasn’t going down without a struggle. Before the other man from above spoke, the thug’s grip on Will’s arm turned painful. Will had no time to realize what was happening. He went sailing off the ledge where they stood. He plummeted toward the waves crashing on the rocks fifty feet below. His arms pinwheeled out, and he bit back a shout.

Time seemed to slow as he fell over the cliff face. If he struck the rocks, he was a dead man. He barely had time to pray before the water rose to meet him. A wave took him under and battered him against the rocks. Something struck his forehead. Saltwater filled his mouth. His lungs burned with the need to breathe. He couldn’t see, couldn’t tell where he was or how to escape the roiling ocean.

Pain shot up his arm when a wave rolled him into another rock. The waves tossed him until he lost all sense of time. He made it to the surface, took a lungful of air, but then was hit by another five-foot wave, which drove him down again. He was barely able to stay conscious.

His arms flailed as he grasped for something to cling to. His hands scraped a rock and a fingernail tore from his forefinger, but he barely felt it. His head came up and he drew in a breath before the sea took him under again. His backside scraped sand on the bottom, and then the current shot him to the surface again, suddenly twenty feet out. When his head next broke the surface, he found himself rolling out to sea in the grip of an undertow. He weakly tried to swim to shore, but the strong current carried him farther away. His arms came up but were puny weapons against the power of the sea.

He would never make it to shore.

E
IGHTEEN

K
ATIE CHEWED HER
scone but it was like choking down sand. The sun shone through the window into the parlor, but its cheery presence wasn’t enough to lift her from the gloom that had encased her since Florence had confronted her hours ago. What was she going to do? If the good folks of Mercy Falls found out her real heritage, any respect she’d managed to earn for herself would be gone. No one would take kindly to being deceived for all these years.

Jennie played at her feet, and Katie didn’t smile when the baby giggled at her. She felt like crying instead.

“Katie, dear, is something wrong?”

Katie glanced at Lady Carrington. Her green eyes were filled love and concern. Katie managed a smile. “I’m not hungry. I didn’t sleep well last night.” She took a sip of her tea.

“I saw you speaking with a woman earlier. You haven’t been yourself since. Who was she, my dear?”

The tea scalded Katie’s tongue and she choked. Setting down the cup, she searched for some way to avoid Lady Carrington’s question. She smelled the stew on the stove. “Does the stew need to be stirred?”

Lady Carrington sniffed the air. “I think perhaps you’re right. I shall be right back.” She put her tea on the table and rose.

Katie leaned against the back of the sofa and let out the breath she’d been holding. Her head throbbed and she still felt sick. Of all the things she’d tried to control over the years, this was the one she’d always known would become a wildfire if any wind blew on the spark.

She longed to speak to Mama. First to be sure she was truly making a recovery and then to ask for advice. But no, she couldn’t tell her of Florence’s demand. Not now when she was so sick. Papa was no help either. He was still incoherent. It was Katie’s duty to protect her mother, to smooth the rough road ahead. If she had the money, she’d gladly give it to Florence to make her disappear, but as far as she knew, there was little money for them to even live on.

She rubbed her forehead and got up. A shout came from outside, and she went to the front door to see what was causing the commotion. The buckboard was parked at the foot of the hill below the lighthouse. Philip ran up the slope toward the house.

He shouted again. “I need help!”

Her pulse picked up speed. She threw open the door and stepped out onto the porch. “What is it?”

He reached her. “Something’s happened to Will!”

A brief vision of Will’s dark smiling eyes flashed through her mind. He had to be all right. “He’s been hurt?”

Philip stood panting and red-faced from his run up the slope. “We found a chest in a cave. He sent me to the buckboard to get a rope to haul it up. When I got back, he was gone. The gun I’d given him was lying on the cave floor, and I found blood by the opening to the cave. A piece of his shirt was caught on the ledge hanging out over the ocean. As if—as if he went over the side.”

“And the chest?”

“It was still there.”

She tried to place this cave of which he spoke. “Are you saying the cave was in a rock face overhanging the sea?”

He nodded. “Just south of here, down Hanging Rock Road. We walked about an hour beyond the end of the road down the beach.

He had to have a rope or someone to help in order to get up with the chest.”

“Could he have climbed down?”

“No way. It’s a fifty-foot drop.”

“You fear he—he fell?” She covered her mouth in horror and wanted to close her eyes against the mental picture of Will’s broken body on the rocks.

Philip went even whiter. “He wouldn’t have left of his own free will. He was waiting for my return with the rope, and he would have been stranded on the ledge without help.”

She didn’t want to believe anything could harm that strong man. “I’ll come with you. We must call the constable. Get a search party.”

“I’ll have Lady Carrington call the constable. You and I will go by boat to search for him. If he fell into the sea, perhaps he needs our assistance.” She could only pray he was still alive. Anyone diving into the sea was more likely to hit rock than water.

She stepped back inside and told the older woman what had happened.

Lady Carrington promised to call the constable. “Take my yacht.

It’s moored down at the dock.”

“Thank you so much!” Katie returned to find Philip gazing out to sea. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I thought I saw something out there.”

“I saw binoculars in the well house,” she said. “I’ll fetch them.” She rushed around the side of the house and threw open the wooden door to the building that housed the pump for the well. A pair of binoculars hung on the wall by the door. She grabbed them and stepped back outside. The currents could have carried Will close to the lighthouse from where Philip had told her they’d been. She handed the binoculars to Philip. He trained them on a spot just to the left of the lighthouse.

She prayed for Will as his brother scanned the waves.

Philip lowered the binoculars. “It’s just driftwood,” he said, his voice sharp with disappointment.

“Let’s take the binoculars with us. If you suspect he’s adrift, we’ll need them. The constable will be searching the land,” she said. “Lady Carrington has a small yacht moored nearby.”

He stared at her. “You can sail?”

“A bit.”

“I’m an expert seaman,” he said.

He led her down the stone steps to the road and down to the pier where the boat floated. Under less stressful circumstances, she would have delighted in exploring the hold and expansive deck. She stepped into the boat as he held it steady. He hopped in with her and grabbed the rigging on the small craft. The sails flapped then billowed with air. Once the rope was loosened from the piling, the wind caught the canvas and the boat picked up speed. She moved to the bow and brought the binoculars to her eyes. Finding a man in this vast sea would be as difficult as finding an unbroken seashell on the rocks.

She put down the binoculars. “So you believe the pirates who took the ship stashed that chest? And that they found Will, I mean Mr. Jesperson, at the cave, that they—disposed of him?”

Philip paled. “I hope not, but the evidence—” He broke off, his voice choked.

She shielded her eyes with her hand and stared out at the rippling waves, hoping to see Will’s hailing wave. The thought that he had been harmed made her shudder.

Philip steered the boat with obvious expertise. “I think we should keep it about a hundred yards offshore,” he called above the flapping of the canvas and the rush of the wind.

“There’s a riptide that runs along here,” she said. “I’ve heard it said that the current hugs the shoreline only about fifty yards out. Perhaps we should go in a little closer.”

He nodded and moved the rudder. The boat veered toward shore.

Katie looked through the binoculars again. She saw an albatross floating atop the waves, several pieces of driftwood but no man in the whitecaps. “How far is this cave?” she asked.

“We’re a ways out yet,” Philip said.

“How long since you left him?”

“About three hours. If he’d gone over the side just before I got back, that would have been about two hours ago.”

She prayed that God would buoy him up and keep him safe until they found him. Spending that kind of time in fifty-degree water would be deadly.

Philip pointed. “There is where we left the buckboard.”

“Then we should be seeing him if he is in the water.” She redoubled her efforts to find anything in the sea. “Will!” she screamed over the sound of the wind and waves.

Her eyes ached from the brilliance of the sun bouncing on the water.

A gull flew up with a startled squawk. She moved the binoculars to that direction. At first she saw nothing but whitecaps and moved on.

A flutter of something made her return her gaze. “I see something!”

A white face appeared then vanished in the water again. “It’s a man!”

She pointed in the direction, twenty feet closer to shore. Will clung to a piece of driftwood. One hand waved weakly, then the movement made him lose his grip on the log. He made a grab at it but it floated away.