Starlight & Promises (45 page)

“I cannot forget him, Steven, nor do I wish to,” she replied with a sad smile. “His image dwells in my heart. Though I’m flattered by your proposal, I cannot accept, knowing I would be unable to share your sentiments. I place no blame on you for Christian’s death. You merely tried to help me and Richard. You will always remain a friend, but I can promise you no more than friendship.”

Despite her resistance, Steven crumbled her defenses, his suit aided by Aunt Delia and Chloe, who expressed their belief that she required someone to look after her and the baby needed a father. Steven seemed the perfect choice to Samantha’s family. Wearied by their persistence and battered by her emotions, she finally agreed to marry him. She would never love again but admitted the logic of their arguments. She could not allow her baby to suffer without the love of a father because of her selfishness.

In the Tasmanian wilderness

Christian lived in a world of pain with no memory of the final moments before the ammunition exploded. When he swam up through the darkness, Garrett’s voice echoed from the ether, vague, far away, and muffled by a ringing inside his skull. He tried to open his eyes, but a soft object pressed against them. He raised a hand to his face to touch the bandage wrapped around his head, and agony shot through his arm.

“Hey, none of that,” Garrett said, his words as faint as a breeze. Christian’s hand was clasped gently and his arm moved back to his side. The slight effort exhausted him. He fell back into the dark void.

Though the bandage still covered his eyes when he awoke again, his hearing had improved. The words spoken by Jasper and Garrett, who talked nearby, now clearly penetrated his senses.

“It’s been three weeks,” Garrett said. “He needs a doctor. It’s a miracle he’s lived this long.”

“We cannot move him yet,” came Jasper’s voice. “The breaks were clean, and I see no sign of fever or infection. Internal damage would be evident by now. But if we were to move him, he may suffer more injury.”

“M-may I vote?” Christian asked, his voice as corroded as an anchor chain.

“Chris!” Two voices resounded as one. Rapid footsteps clattered on a wooden floor.

“You’re awake,” Garrett said.

“A-astute of you.” He wet his lips to aid his speech. “Don’t dare m-mince words. What happened?”

“Do you remember the explosion?” Garrett answered.

“Ap-apparently not. Refresh m-my memory.”

“In the munitions hut at the pirates’ camp in Macquarie Harbour.”

Images swamped him like a tidal wave. Samantha and Landry. Miggs and the pirates. Creeping into a hut stinking with cannon grease and black powder. Then nothing.

“A bullet must have set off the charge early,” Garrett said. “Jasper and I made it to the tree line, but the blast caught you and Richard.”

“R-Richard?” Christian questioned with hesitance, though he suspected he knew the answer.

Garrett cleared his throat. “He … he didn’t make it. We found him lying on top of you. You fell through rotten floorboards and into an earthen cellar beneath the hut. The blast hit Richard in the back. He died instantly and shielded you from the worst of it.”

Now Christian remembered. “Powder ex-exploded. Something slammed against me. Richard. S-saved my life.” Sorrow ran through his pain. He didn’t want to ask. He had to. “S-Samantha?”

“We saw no sign of her. Miggs’s cabin was in flames. If she was locked inside … I’m sorry, Chris. Our first concern was to get you away from the town. The
Maiden Anne’s
men were barely holding off the pirates. As we dragged you from the splintered hut, they were climbing back up the cliff. I assume they made it.”

“Yes,” Christian said, unable to vent his grief at Samantha’s probable death. He recalled a moment outside the hut when he thought he heard her call his name. He buried the memory with his pain but made a silent vow. If she was dead and Miggs the agent of her demise, he would return to the pirate town and burn it to the ground. “Where?”

“We are in Queenstown,” Jasper said, “a silver mining settlement north of Macquarie Harbour. We could hardly fetch your large carcass all the way back to Hobart, so we made for the closest settlement. It consists of no more than a few shanties, a saloon, and a mining office, but we have walls, a bed, and freshwater.”

Christian tried to nod and groaned instead. He sucked in a tortured breath. “When?” He avoided asking about his injuries, wanting to delay for as long as possible what they would undoubtedly tell him.

“Three, four weeks, perhaps,” was Garrett’s reply. “You broke both legs and your left arm in the fall. All were clean. Jasper straightened and splinted them. Fortunately you were unconscious at the time. You probably cracked a few ribs, suffered a concussion, and the remainder is merely scrapes, cuts, bruises, and burns. No internal injuries, we trust.”

Christian attempted a laugh. It came out as a rusty chuckle and ended on a deep cough that brought sharp pain to his chest. Leave it to Garrett to blurt out the gory details with no finesse. “As good a-as new,” he managed to say. He struggled to lift his arm again. A hand caught it. “My eyes?”

“Powder burns,” Jasper said. “You caught a powder flash. You must have looked back as the ammunition exploded.”

“Must confess … don’t remember that.” He hesitated before asking, “Am I b-blind?”

Jasper sighed. “I cannot tell you, Christian. I have seen this kind of injury aboard ship. Some recover their sight. Some do not.”

“I see.” His lips twitched at his pun, and he bobbed his head. “Wait and see.”

“Indeed. Once your bones knit and you can sit a horse, we shall return you to Hobart. If you should fail to regain your sight by then and not find a doctor there, surely someone in Boston can help you.”

“Brilliant,” Christian uttered bitterly. No denying the fact that science had little use for a tracker who could not even see the ground beneath his feet.

“Concentrate on getting well,” Garrett said, his voice breaking. “Mind Nurse Jasper, and you’ll soon be up and about.”

Christian turned his head on the pillow and fell asleep, moisture oozing from his eyes beneath the bandage.

In another four weeks, Christian could stand and hobble for short distances with the aid of two wooden canes, though his legs remained in splints. Jasper removed the splint from his left arm and the bandages from his eyes. When he opened his eyes for the first time, he encountered no more than what he expected—darkness. His bruises and other injuries healed and became but part of a painful past. At last he could draw breath without feeling like a boulder was crushing his chest. Two more weeks, Jasper told him, and the splints would come off his legs. He could then learn to walk and ride again. When, or if, he would recover his sight was a subject they shunned in mutual, silent consent.

The weeks soared by in anticipation of Samantha’s wedding. Steven hungered to question her regarding the Smilodon, but the bitch fell mute whenever he brought up the subject. When she was absent, he took to scouring her bedchamber.

Though he riffled through every piece of clothing and read every scrap of paper, he failed to find the letter from Richard. Impatience twisted in his gut like a knife, and he dared not push Samantha too vigorously for fear she would cry off from the wedding and her family would exclude him from her life entirely. Therefore, he bided his time. Once they married, she would give him the letter one way or another.

The cat’s discovery became only a small part of his revenge on the Colchester family. By marrying Samantha, he would control her fortune and Richard’s, since she and Chloe were her uncle’s only heirs. He would also control Samantha herself. With that thought, he barely kept a tether on his lust. Since the night in that dingy tavern when he had looked into her golden eyes and recognized her as a Colchester, he had wanted her. Since Richard could no longer pay for his sins, Samantha would. She would pay dearly with her body and her soul.

Over Samantha’s objections, Delia dragged her to the modiste, to fittings for a wedding gown. Since the first wedding had been such a hurried affair, Delia demanded that this time Samantha would wed in a manner befitting an earl’s niece.

Samantha stood on the platform at Madame Louella’s while the modiste draped material across her for Delia’s approval. Her eyes remote, features indifferent, Samantha nodded to any and all of Delia’s suggestions concerning cut and fabric.

Delia pursed her mouth, and her brows came together in a frown. “Samantha, do you have no preference at all for your wedding gown?”

Samantha looked up, and Delia’s chest tightened at the emptiness reflected in her niece’s eyes. In the girl’s deep state of mourning, she had accepted Steven’s proposal only with great reluctance. Delia convinced herself that love would develop over time, or in any event, contentment. She had reservations about love, as written about in novels, even existing. Should it prove to be more than myth, the emotion was more likely to be detrimental rather than beneficial to one’s peace of mind. She had felt no burning love for her own husband. Nevertheless, they had suited, become friends and congenial companions. What Samantha needed, for her sake and the baby’s, was a comfortable friend who would take care of her.

Samantha stepped down and began to don her walking outfit.

With a sigh, Delia pointed to a bolt of cream silk brocade. “That one will do, Madame Louella, with the gold lace trim.”