A Light For My Love Read online

  A Light For

  My Love

  by

  Alexis Harrington

  Copyright © Alexis Harrington, 1995

  www.alexisharrington.com

  Smashwords Edition

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  In Memory of

  Katherine Kirkland Brown

  1951-2007

  To the crews of F/V Cornelia Marie,

  F/V Northwestern,

  F/V Wizard, and F/V Time Bandit

  May you find your way back to your home port . . .

  PROLOGUE

  Astoria, Oregon

  October 1880

  China Sullivan ran down the street in the fog-shrouded dawn. Her heart pounded against her breastbone. Hurry, she told herself, every second counted.

  Headed for the wharf, she clutched a letter in her hand. It was a poorly spelled, masculine scrawl of words that would profoundly affect at least three lives if she could not reach its writer in time. What she would say she wasn’t sure, but she had to try. She tightened her cloak against the chill mist, fear and fury impelling her forward toward the waterfront.

  Something had awakened her with a start just a half hour earlier. She realized now it had been the sound of the front door closing. On the pillow next to her she’d found this accursed letter from her older brother, Quinn. At the bottom of the page she’d also found Jake Chastaine’s scribbled signature. A rough, brawling fisherman’s son from down the hill, he was Quinn’s best friend, but China detested him. She was mildly surprised that Jake could even write, considering that he’d skipped more days of school than he’d attended.

  The letter contained Quinn’s good-bye to her, saying that he and Jake would be leaving on this morning’s tide, shipping out on the Pacific Star, a full-rigger bound for Canton. The journey would take more than a year.

  She had scrambled into her clothes and run downstairs and out the door.

  Now she dashed past the tidy, gracious homes in her neighborhood, past maple and walnut trees, shed of their leaves. A hollow reverberation sounded beneath her shoes on the sidewalk, and her breath came in harsh gasps, creating vaporous clouds. Dodging a puddle in the muddy street, she agonized over this turn of events.

  Quinn was really, truly going. How could he simply leave? she wondered. Didn’t he realize that without him in their tiny, parentless family, she’d have to raise their younger brother, Ryan, practically by herself? Aunt Gert was a dear soul but so giddy-brained, with her collection of people’s calling cards. China had long ago assumed responsibility for running the house and directing the help. She had tried every argument on Quinn. Some of their encounters ended in disgracefully raised voices and slamming doors. But in the end he could only give her a bored look and keep repeating the same answer. He had to go—if he didn’t, he was going to bust. He was almost twenty and he hated the soft life they had in this big house, he said. He wanted adventure, he wanted to see the world with Jake.

  Jake, she thought venomously. It was at his feet that China laid the blame for Quinn’s ideas. He had far too much influence on her brother. In fact, many people fell prey to his indefinable magnetism—even Aunt Gert adored him. But China wasn’t so gullible.

  Even his name irritated her. John Jacob Chastaine. Trust that a swaggerer like him would be named after the town’s famous and affluent founder, John Jacob Astor.

  She paused on the corner, breathless, holding her side, to let Mr. Gerding’s milk wagon pass. The driver gave her a startled look, as if wondering why a well-bred young woman was out at this hour of the morning. She had Jake to thank for that too. She lifted her hem and hurried across the street, which was slick with fallen leaves.

  When it had occurred to her that Jake might be the only one who could talk sense into her brother, in desperation she’d sought him out. And she was desperate. Nothing short of this calamity could have made her want to spend more than two minutes with Jake. He was not the kind of boy her mother had raised her children to associate with. And where had the meeting with him gotten her? China’s face burned when she thought of that discussion in the parlor alcove yesterday afternoon.

  “Jake, the family needs Quinn. There are just the four of us, counting Aunt Gert. The Captain is never home. You’re the one person who can make him see that he has to stay in Astoria.”

  Jake Chastaine stood at one of the long windows with his shoulder slouching against the frame. China turned a displeased eye on his dungarees and work shirt. The gentlemen in her circle wouldn’t dream of appearing in a lady’s parlor dressed like that. But Jake was no gentleman.

  At twenty-one years old, he was tall, muscular, and long-legged, having skipped altogether the awkward, lanky phase other boys went through. Although he was certainly not the type of man who appealed to China, even she had to admit that he was good-looking, in a rough, earthy way. Quinn had mentioned once or twice that Jake turned female heads wherever he went. Well, Althea Lambert could probably vouch for that.

  There was an offhand self-assurance about Jake that had always annoyed China. A boy who had grown up on the docs had no reason to exhibit such insolent confidence. Was she the only one who saw through the veneer of his lazy charm to his barely suppressed, reckless danger? That Quinn had brought him home all those years ago—well, there was just no accounting for it.

  Jake pushed aside the lace curtain and looked out at the masts lined up at the wharf in the Columbia River as though he hadn’t heard a word she’d said about Quinn. He thrust a hand through his sandy hair, finally directing his gaze at the well-furnished parlor.

  “The Captain gave you a nice house, China,” he said, gesturing at the room. “I grew up poor, in the row houses on Tenth Street.” He gave a wry chuckle and turning back to her, fixed with a stare. “But you know that. I don’t want to spend the next fifty years working on a fishing boat like my pop.” He looked absently at the scars left on his hands by fish hooks and heavy nets. “There has to be something better and I’m going to get it.”

  China raised on brow and gave him a skeptical look. She wondered if that was what he was telling Althea as well. China knew a lady shouldn’t even acknowledge such tawdry gossip, but the whispers were flying around town about the ship chandler’s daughter. Althea was saying that Jake Chastaine had gotten her in trouble, then refused to marry her. That scandal alone had given China more than adequate reason to bar him from the house. But Aunt Gert had reported that Jake swore Althea’s claim was nothing but a jealous lie, and Gert sided with him.

  He narrowed his eyes briefly as he glared at her full in the face. Then, as if seeing her thoughts, he said, “I’m not the one who got Althea Lambert pregnant.”

  China blinked at the blunt term—no one of her acquaintance ever said that word. Expecting, or in the family way, or enceinte, those were words they used.

  “If she really is pregnant,” he added as a cynical afterthought.

  Caught in his unwavering gaze, for an instant China almost believed him. Then she pushed away the thought. Of course he denied responsibility—China wouldn’t have expected more from him.

  “The reason I’m going is because I want a better life than I grew up with,” he continued. “If Quinn wants to come along, I can’t stop him. He’s old enough to make his own decisions.”

  China couldn’t fault him for wanting to improve his lot. But Quinn had a decent life right here and now. Her brow wrinkled as she grew impatient. “My father is never home in this nice house he gave us, Jake. I’m eighteen and I can count on my ten fingers the number of times I’ve seen him. I hardly know him, and Ryan—he’s only ten. He thinks the Captain is an exciting stranger who comes to visit.” China was grateful that Zachary Stowe, her most ardent suitor had not interest in a career at sea. Being a sailor’s daughter had been hard enough. To be a sailor’s wife was unthinkable. “We’re all the family we have, the four of us. If my mother were still alive . . .” Her voice trailed off, then she repeated, “Quinn will listen to you. If he’s really your friend, tell him to stay home.”

  He shook his head with finality. “He made this choice himself. I have my own plans. I need to prove—” He shrugged his shoulders and jammed his hands into the pockets of his dungarees. “Look, it’s his decision.”

  Jake was every bit as stubborn and unreasonable as Quinn. China cast about in her mind, trying to think of a way to move him from his resolution. Then an idea struck her. It was disagreeable at best, but she didn’t know what else to do. “Maybe if you stayed in town, Quinn would too.”

  He looked at her and carefully search her face. For the briefest moment, she saw something in his clear green eyes that was so intense, so painful to look upon, that she could only stare, unable to identify it. Then it vanished and his expression became, well, suggestive was the only way she could describe it. Even if Althea Lambert was lying about Jake—and in China’s mind, that was unlikely—she hadn’t created his reputation. He’d done that himself, and it was firmly established. Suddenly China hoped that Aunt Gert was still close by in the back parlor down the hall and not in some far-off corner upstairs.

  He gave her
a slow smile. “And maybe there’s another reason you want me to stay. One that has nothing to do with Quinn.”

  China felt a blush heat her cheeks and ears. “If you’re implying that you interest me in some way—” she began indignantly, putting special distaste on “you.”

  It seemed to do the trick. The smiled faded and he flinched as though she had rapped his knuckles with a ruler. When he spoke, his words were hostile, but at least he returned to the subject at hand. “Damn it, China, I’m not Quinn’s father. He’s going to do what he wants. And maybe he should.”

  “Then there’s no point in continuing this conversation, is there?” she said, anxious to end the meeting. “But know this, Jake: if you take Quinn with you, you will never again be welcome in this house as long as I live in it.”

  Jake glanced out the window once more, as though there were something fascinating to see beyond the glass. Suddenly he turned to face her and walked to the dark brocade settee where she sat. For a horrible moment she thought he was going to sit beside her, and she gathered her full pink muslin skirts to rise in retreat.

  Instead he stunned her by dropping to one knee in front of her. He reached out and rubbed one of her black curls between his fingers. She sucked in her breath and pulled back. She’d never been this close to him; he certainly had never touched her. His eyelashes were uncommonly long, she thought, irrelevantly, and he smelled of the ocean.

  He gave her a another long, searching look. “I’ll never be welcome?”

  She shook her head, wary of his closeness.

  In a low, intimate voice he said, “Then here’s something to remember me by,” and he covered her mouth with a hot, voluptuous kiss. His mouth on hers was evocative and demanding, as though he was trying to bend her to his will. His touch made her insides feel shivery in a way she’d never known. China was so completely shocked, she couldn’t speak. Then he jumped to his feet and strode from the alcove. An instant later, she heard the front door slam.

  All through the night she’d been tortured by the though that her first kiss, an important event in a young woman’s life, had come from that impudent son of a fisherman. And what was even worse, for an instant she’d almost liked it.

  Now, in the cold dawn, China hurried down the wharf, her feet pounding on the weathered boards. She had to step carefully to avoid the gaps left by missing planks, through which she could see the oily river water eddying far below. Held in place by the thinning fog, the pungent odors of creosote, rotting sawdust from the sawmills, and refuse from the slaughterhouse and seventeen fish canneries slapped her in the face.

  The docks were alive, swarming with horses and wagons and shouting, swearing longshoremen rolling barrels, filling cargo nets. China hung back for a moment. This was no place for an unescorted woman. But then she thought of her mission again and hurried on.

  Only a few ships were in port this morning. Where was the Pacific Star? Suddenly she heard the deep-chested bawl of a horn and looked through the lifting mist to see the huge barkentine being towed downriver by a tugboat. Indistinct figures moved on the deck.

  Too late. Oh, God, she was too late.

  “Wait!” she yelled at the top of her voice. She jumped up and down, waving the letter like a flag. “Quinn, don’t go! Quinn! Come back.” But the river was wide and her words were lost under the noise of the tug’s steam engine and the screeching gulls hovering over the docks.

  She stood like a statue on the planking and didn’t try to stop the tears that blurred her vision as she watched that ship carry away her brother and the man who had convinced him to go. For no matter what he said, China would always blame Jake for this. The vessel would continue its westerly course down the last seven miles of the Columbia River and then it would cross the bar into the Pacific Ocean. After that, any fate could befall her brother—disease, accidents, drowning were all common to sailors. It was entirely possible that she would never lay eyes on Quinn Sullivan again.

  China took bitter pleasure in knowing that Jake Chastaine faced the same risks.

  Chapter One

  Astoria, Oregon

  January 1888

  Jake Chastaine stood on the dock in the waning daylight, the long shadow of a main mast falling across his shoulder and over the planking. He glanced back at the tall ship behind him, a graceful barkentine named the Katherine Kirkland. Then he pushed his hands into his back pockets and took a deep breath as he scanned the town laid out before him.

  The steep streets looked the same, reminiscent of San Francisco’s. More homes had been built, but up behind them lush forests still rimmed the town, dropping back to Saddle Mountain to the southeast. From the crown of those high-hilled streets, he knew, a person could watch fog creep in from the Pacific Ocean. It stole up the Columbia River and spread out over Young’s Bay, cloaking in soft gray mists the tall ships anchored at the wharf.

  Or if the weather was clear, the bones of the Desdemona showed themselves. They rose from the sandbar named for her, the first ship to run aground there in 1857.

  On the west end of town, sitting proudly on its own block, was the biggest house in Astoria. It was an impressive structure, with red shingles and a three-story turret, and within its sturdy walls lived a sea captain’s beautiful black-haired daughter.

  Every night a hall window on the second floor glowed with a lamp that burned for all the men gone to sea and all the souls lost forever to its dark, icy depths.

  Jake lifted his eyes to the faraway red roof on the hillside. He’d faced a lot of uncertainties since the long-ago day he sailed from Astoria. But he knew that lamp was still—and would always be—there in the window. Nothing would change that.

  After all, it had burned in his heart, kindled by hope, consumed by futility, for half of his life.

  *~*~*

  Jake paused just inside the door of the Blue Mermaid, taking in the chaos before him.

  The noisy, hot saloon was in the heart of Astoria’s toughest district, aptly known as Swill Town. The dirty windows were steamed over, and the place was jammed with seamen, loggers, and fishermen. A nickelodeon played in the corner. Dancing to its tinny melody, a nearly comatose sailor shuffled around the floor with a bored-looking saloon girl. He held a gin bottle by the neck while his head sagged on the girl’s powered-white chest. Kerosene lamps hung from the ceiling, their smoky flames adding to the haze. There were so many spittoons placed around the floor, a person had to walk carefully to avoid stepping into one. Like most of the buildings on the waterfront, this one was built on pilings over the Columbia River, and the stench of low tide drifted up through the floor. Added to that were the smells of fish, beer, and whiskey, all overlaid with a trace of opium smoke.

  Jake smiled. The Blue Mermaid was like any of the other fifty such establishments in Swill Town—dirty, crude, and raw. But to him it felt like home.

  “By God, I don’t believe my eyes! Jacob Chastaine!”

  Jake turned to see Pug Jennings vault over the bar, an amazing feat for a man of Pug’s short stature. He plowed through the crowd, and when he reached Jake, he gave him a hug that crushed the breath right out of him. The saloon owner stood not one inch over five feet, but in his compact body he had the strength of a bear. Any patron foolish enough to challenge him came to regret it when he found himself on his duff in the street, his broken nose bleeding into his lap.

  “Lemme look at you,” Pug said in his gravelly voice. His entire face lit up with an ecstatic smile as he held Jake back at arm’s length. “I can’t believe it’s you. You sure got big since you’ve been gone. But I knew you. I’d know you anywhere. When did you get in?”

  Jake laughed with honest pleasure. Here, at least, someone was glad to see him. Even if it was Pug Jennings, and even if this was the Blue Mermaid. Thank God, it looked the same, right down to the painting of the coy nude that hung on the back wall. “Early this morning. It’s good to see you, Pug. I wasn’t sure you’d still be here after all this time.”

  “Of course I’m here. Where would I go?” he questioned, waving Jake toward the counter. “I’ll buy you a drink.” The little man returned to his post behind the crowded bar, playfully slapping one of the saloon girls on the rump as she passed. He stepped up on an eight-inch riser that ran behind the bar and brought him up closer to Jake’s height.