Whispers from the Shadows (32 page)

Turning from the exit, he lurched toward his bed and fell to his knees beside it, clasping his hands upon the extra-long mattress.

“Ready, Captain?”

Ready? No. He could not leave, could not budge, could not do anything until this hand had lifted. He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and prayed.

Twenty-Four

T
he monsters roared and snapped. Gwyneth could hear them, could feel them, and from the corner of her eyes, could see them. But if she turned toward them, they vanished. Like smoke, like vapors. Like life.

She drew in a deep breath as she positioned her hand over the paper again. But she trembled too much and didn't dare to touch the pencil down.

“Help me. Lord, please.” The words slipped past parched lips and buzzed about her head. But did they then float through the drawing room ceiling? She looked up, frowned. Not the drawing room, her bedchamber. When had she come up? Or had she never gone down? She was still in her nightdress, and it was dark outside the window.

It always seemed to be dark. A time that had once meant rest and peace. Or had signaled dancing and laughter, and then a sweet fall of exhaustion onto a down-filled bed.

Maybe that had been the illusion, nothing but a dream. Maybe this was reality, this endless tunnel of echoes and locked doors. She could bang upon them for hours and only give herself a headache.

You cannot know
, the monsters whispered from their crevices.
You are not strong enough to know. The truth would break you.

She looked at the corner it had come from, expecting to see the gnashing teeth and yawning mouth. Nothing. Breath heaving, she squeezed her eyes shut. She needed sleep. That was why the monsters had returned, that was all this was. Hallucinations. Waking dreams.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she shrieked.

“Gwyneth child, you said you was going to bed.” Rosie. Just Rosie.

She dragged in a breath and shoved her hair from her face. “Did I?”

A
tsk
was the woman's only answer. Steady hands smoothed the tangled hair away and started to braid. Slow, deliberate movements that brought a single notch of order.

There is no order, only chaos. Your father is gone
.

Gwyneth shuddered and couldn't stop.

Rosie sighed. “You gotta take better care of yourself, child. You eat the pudding I brought you and then get yourself into bed.”

Your father is gone
.

She looked at the bed and her stomach cramped. 'Twasn't a soft mattress, nay. 'Twas hard wooden planking covered only in a red-stained rug. Hard. Forbidding. Cold as the grave. “I…can't.”

Thad is gone
.

The heavens cried out, low and moaning, and a slender tongue of fire shot through the sky. Gwyneth jumped. “What was that?”

Rosie's breath came out and in, slow and steady. “A summer storm over the bay, child. Thunder and lightning. Nothing more.”

Thunder and lightning.
Death and destruction, to take him away forever.
Another mocking laugh from the clouds.

Air wouldn't come, her lungs wouldn't fill. A cloud of gray edged out her vision.

“You stay with me, now. Take pity on an old woman, I can't carry you into bed alone if you faint. You hear me?” Rosie gave her a little shake.

She blinked until the fog retreated a bit. “I can't do it again. I can't lose anyone else, I can't. I can't.”

Rosie crouched down before her. Somehow her face looked soft and comforting while her eyes snapped with flint. “You haven't lost anyone else, Miss Gwyn.”

Thunder roared.
We will devour him whole. We will steal him from you, we will kill him…and we will destroy you.

“The storm.” She choked back a sob. She mustn't cry. Uncle Gates would hear her. He would come. “The storm will take Thad.”

Rosie gripped her shoulders and leaned close until her face was all Gwyneth could see. “That storm's here, not in Bermuda with
Thaddeus. Do you understand that? It's
our
storm, not his. He's fine and well, and he's out adventuring like he loves to do.”

Like he loves more than you. Because you are nothing but a broken glass figure. Shattered. Worthless.

Though she closed her eyes tight, still she could see the sizzling flash of lightning. “He is never coming back.”

Warm hands framed her face and bade her listen. “Look at me, child.” When she obeyed, she found Rosie's eyes damp. “I don't believe that for a minute. But what if you're right? What if Thaddeus never comes home?”

Gwyneth shook her head, a frantic attempt to keep the words away.

“What would you do then? Waste away until you die too? Let the nightmares taunt you into doing something stupid?”

Another sob tried to bully its way up her throat, but she held it back with a hard swallow.

Rosie shook her head. “You do that, missy, and you let them win.”

We've already won.

“They've already won.”

The woman snapped upright, her eyes sparking. “Oh, no, they haven't.” She reached past Gwyneth to the paper-strewn vanity top and came up with a book. Its worn leather cover looked familiar, but what was it?

“ ‘Blessed Lord, let me climb up near to Thee…' ”

The prayer book. Of course. But what good could it do? Perhaps God had listened to those men who had first prayed the words. Perhaps He had let them climb onto His lap. But they had been so very much stronger than she, strong enough to flee persecution and build a new life in this wild land.

And what, beloved, have you done?

She lifted her head and turned it toward Rosie, though
she
had not been the one to whisper those words. Those soft, silent words that filled her heart rather than her ears. That beat back the shadows just a stitch and lifted that foggy veil just an inch.

“ ‘…and love, and long, and plead, and wrestle with Thee, and pant for deliverance from the body of sin, for my heart is wandering and lifeless, and my soul mourns to think it should ever lose sight of its beloved.' ”

Mourn
, came the hissing breath that clawed up her spine.
Mourn
the loss of your beloved. He is gone. They all are. Everyone you loved
.

A shiver overtook her…but then a warmth seeped in.
Am I gone? Am I dead?

“No.” Her lips formed the word, though no breath gave them voice.

No. I
AM
.

Yes. He was. She closed her eyes again and watched as another flash of light danced across their shuttered lids.

“ ‘Wrap my life in divine love, and keep me ever desiring Thee…' ”

“Oh, God, forgive me.” She leaned forward, eased off her stool until the summer-warm floor welcomed her knees. How long since He had been her desire? How long since she sought Him, sought Him and expected to meet Him? “Let me climb up near to Thee.”

Rosie settled beside her and rested one comforting hand on her back. “ ‘…always humble and resigned to Thy will, more fixed on Thyself, that I may be more fitted for doing and suffering.' ”

Fitted for suffering.
Suffer she did, but not for Him. Not for His glory, but for her own misery, and that, it seemed, was a crucial difference. Because the grief that consumed her, while understandable, had kept her fixated on herself, not on Him. She had not been like Papa, who turned ever more to the Lord in the face of mourning. She had been like…a child.

My child. Come unto Me, my laboring and heavy-laden child. I shall give you rest.

“Rest.” The word came out on a moan. A yearning, a plea. She stretched a hand along the rug as if she could grasp that promise and pull it close.

The hissing, waking nightmare of a voice came again.
His rest is death. If that is what you seek, then go find it. Join your father, your mother.

“No.” No, no, no. Exhausted as she was, she knew that was no answer. Had she wanted death, she would have screamed when her father fell. She would have let Uncle Gates strike her down then and there. She would have slid into the jowls of the monster on the ship and plunged into the netherworld. But death was not what she sought—simply peace. Rest.

And she had thought she had it. Had thought it in her hand and,
more, happiness with it. That all she had to do was make a place for herself here, beside Thad. That if she could but stay in his arms…but he had left. And what if, as Rosie asked, he never came back? How would she survive then? How, for that matter, could she join her life to a ship's captain's and suffer this anew every time he left?

Rosie wove her fingers through Gwyneth's still-outstretched ones. “Where is your rest, Gwyneth child? Was it in your daddy?”

Her muscles went taut across her shoulders, up her neck, down her back. Papa, precious Papa—his death certainly marked the end of her peace. But if it had been in him, then would she not have felt so anxious, so exhausted every time he was away? On each and every campaign? But she hadn't. She worried, certainly, but it had never consumed her. Not like this.

She shook her head, the rug rubbing her forehead.

Rosie smoothed a hand over Gwyneth's hair, so neatly caught back now. “No, your rest can't lie with him. Maybe it seemed so at first, since his loss started you on this journey. But he never stopped being gone, yet you stopped being so restless for a while there. Right?”

She tried to swallow, though her throat felt too dry. “I…” An attempt at a steadying breath sent a tremor through her. “I cannot explain it. I had begun to feel safe—”

“Only when Thaddeus was here. Ain't that right?”

Of course not. That couldn't be, and she opened her mouth to say so. But her tongue tangled around the words, and the realization pounded her like the rain did the pane of her window.

Every time, every
single
time she had slept before he went on this trip had been when he was home. As if attuned to his footsteps, she had awakened the minute he left the house—and often fallen asleep within minutes of his return. Beginning, for some bizarre reason, the very day she arrived.

“That makes no sense.” She squeezed Rosie's fingers and wished she could grasp the workings of her mind so easily. “Perhaps now it would, given how much I…”

Rosie chuckled. “Go ahead and say it. How much you love him. We all know you do.”

Perhaps she did, and perhaps they all knew it. But such words ought not be spoken so casually. “But at the start, I scarcely knew him. I knew only that…”

She jerked upright and met Rosie's gaze. “I knew only that my father trusted him, and so
I
trusted him.”

Rosie patted her hand. “Makes sense when you think of it like that. Rest can't come unless you put your trust in someone. Problem is, you put yours in a man. And as wonderful a man as he is, he can't always be here, child. He gonna go away now and then. He gonna mess up now and then when he's home. He gonna fail you.”

He will fail you always. He will never come home. Why should he come home to you?

She shook her head to clear it of those doubts and called up the image of Thad. Thad, with his selfless heart and intuitive spirit. Thad, who must have altered his entire life to accommodate her needs these last two months. His smile, always so quick to try to tease out hers. His hands, so quick to catch her when she fell. His eyes, speaking those words she wouldn't yet put to voice.

Was trust enough to have made the connection she felt to him? Was it merely that her father had entrusted her to him? It couldn't be. That alone couldn't account for how her feet always found him, for the way he had filled her heart.

Had Papa known, when he sent her here, that she would tumble straight into love? But loving him wasn't enough. Not when his absence sent her back into this abyss.

Rosie tipped up her chin. “Where is your rest, child? In who?”

Nowhere. In no one
.

Her lips parted, ready to echo those words so obviously true. Had she anyone to give her such a thing, any place in which to find it…

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

She heard Him, heard Him call her. Heard it in the silence, in the whisper within, the murmur that pulsed with a light from which the darkness fled. Inch by inch, the next flash of lightning seeming to strike within her.

Blessed Lord, let me climb up near to Thee…

“Oh, dear Jesus.” Tears blurred her eyes, and she made no attempt to blink them away. They magnified the truth before her. When the Lord blessed her, she needed to rejoice and praise Him, recognizing that a gift had been given, one so thoroughly undeserved. And when loss came, as it always did, then hers was not to rail, was not to succumb to the dark waves. Hers was to focus her eyes on Him and
walk across them. Not just to weather the storm, but to trust Him to still it. To breathe peace into the night.

To be her rest, if she would but go into His arms. His, that would never let her go.

“Did you hear what Emmy was reading this morning?” Rosie urged her up and steadied her when her knees wobbled.

Gwyneth shook her head. Since Thad left, the days had run together like watercolors.

“I didn't figure. You was more focused on your drawing than anything else.” She slipped an arm around Gwyneth's waist and led her toward the bed. “She read that part in Mark four where Jesus was asleep in the boat and the storm came up.”

Gwyneth stood still while Rosie positioned the pillows against the headboard and pulled back the blankets.

“There, now. You sit and have your pudding right here.”

Pudding in bed. Shaking her head, Gwyneth sank onto the mattress and leaned back upon the feather pillows.