Gift from the Sea (17 page)

“Please step aside and let us do our duty, young woman.” He made a move to go past her, but she blocked his way. Short of pushing her aside, the minister had nowhere to go. He looked down at her, holding his torch to light her face. “You are misguided, Margaret Rose, you and your parents. I have no doubt that you thought you were doing God’s work in rescuing this man, but you must see that he has shown his true colors now.” His voice was softer, almost kind, as if he were speaking to a small child. “If we are to clear your father’s good name, we must find this man and bring him to justice.”

“But there are things you do not know. There are reasons why he has come here.”

“Yeah,” a boy looking no older than fifteen and standing just behind the minister spat out. “He came here to spy on us, to take back information to his officers so they—”

The minister held up a silencing hand. “Brother,” he said and the boy fell silent. Behind him the others waited, their flickering torches casting an eerie golden light over the scene. At the same time, Jeanne and Frederick arrived to take their place on either side of Maggie.

“We must find him,” the minister said.

“I know,” Maggie agreed, “but you don’t have to hurt him.” She fixed her eyes on the hunting rifles that several of the men carried. “He is not armed.”

The minister hesitated, glancing back at his flock and then down at Maggie once more. “It is as I feared the day I called on the patient,” he said. “This man has deceived you, child. He is about the work of the devil and you must…”

“He is trying to save his country—and ours,” Jeanne said. “He has brought valuable information to us that must be given to the proper authorities as soon as possible. It is urgent, I assure you.”

“He is a man of God,” Maggie whispered.

“Nevertheless justice will be served,” the minister replied and turned to face his followers.

Maggie grasped his sleeve. She had seen his hesitation and realized that he was far less sure of himself than he wanted everyone to believe. “Please,” she begged.

Reverend McAllister pulled free of her grip and spoke in his pulpit voice, the words echoing across the landscape. “Stefan Witte! If you can hear me, know that we mean you no harm. We are laying down our weapons, for we believe you to be unarmed.” He nodded at the men before him and reluctantly they leaned their rifles against the barn wall. “If you can hear me, come out. You are in no danger from me or these men.”

Everyone waited. Maggie saw that her mother, Sarah
and Jeanne’s maidservant had come out onto the porch. Beside her Frederick and Jeanne slowly turned to survey the surrounding landscape. The minister and his band of men did the same. But outside the circle of the golden light nothing stirred, and the only sounds were the whisper of the wind in the dried grasses and the distant crash of the waves on the beach below the inn.

“Come, Maggie,” Jeanne said as she took her elbow. “There is no more to be done here. Come wait inside with your mother while Frederick and I make some calls.”

Maggie paced the length of the foyer as she strained to hear Jeanne’s side of the telephone conversation.

“Yes, that’s right,” followed by an exasperated sigh. “I assure you this is of the utmost importance. If you would just mention my name, the ambassador is expecting my call and I can promise you that he would wish to be interrupted.” Another long sigh. “I see, and your name again is? Well, Willard, may I speak to your superior?”

Maggie could stand no more. Either she must escape or she was in danger of ripping the phone from Jeanne’s hand and screaming at the person on the other end until he understood this was a matter of life or death.

“Maggie?”

Mama’s quiet voice was more irritating than Jeanne’s attempts at diplomacy with the person on the other end of the line.

“What?” she snapped.

“Perhaps if you went up to the cupola,” Mama suggested in the same tone she might use to suggest that Maggie lie down for a bit. “It’s been a place that has always calmed you before.”

Maggie was about to ignore this advice just as she had been prepared to refuse any suggestion other than searching for Stefan. But then she realized what her mother was really suggesting. In the cupola she would be high enough to survey the area from all directions. In the cupola was Papa’s telescope. From that vantage point she might see something those searching the grounds would miss.

She bent and kissed Mama’s forehead. “Brilliant,” she whispered. “Thank you, Mama.” She flew up the back stairway without stopping until she had reached the top of the narrow metal staircase and opened the trapdoor.

At first she raced, opening every window, her mouth repeating a single prayer,
Please, God.
But what right had she to ask anything of God, she who had willfully turned her back on her faith?

Outside the windows she heard nothing but the muffled voices of the searchers calling out to one another as they spread out over the property and beyond. She saw torches near the pond and waited for word that someone had fallen through the thin ice but none came. “Thank You, Heavenly Father,” she murmured with a sigh of relief.

For an hour she repeated her rhythmic pattern of moving from window to window. Once she tried the telescope but it was useless in the dark. Exhausted, she slumped against the window ledge, listening to the search party call to one another from various parts of the grounds.

She caught a word here and there as gradually the men returned to the front of the house ready to disband. “Too dark,” she heard. Then, “Pray we find him, Reverend, before it’s too late.”

She heard the minister propose that they return to the church to rest, warm up and resume their search at first light.

Before it’s too late.

Pray.

The words hummed in Maggie’s brain and penetrated her heart and she fell to her knees.

“Father in Heaven,” she murmured, “forgive me for doubting You, for turning away in my hour of need. Mama says You are always there even when one of us turns away. Papa says You are patient with us and forgiving. Please help me find him.”

She rallied her energy and searched the horizon for some place they might have missed. If only it were closer to dawn than to midnight. If only there were more light.

“Papa, what if the sun wouldn’t come up one morning?” she had asked when she was five.

Papa had laughed. “It will come up. We may not see it for the clouds, but the light will be there, telling us the sun is there beyond the clouds.”

“But how do you know for sure?” she had demanded.

“It’s called faith.”

“What’s that?”

“The belief in something you can’t see,” Papa had replied.

“Like God?” she had asked and knew now that it was still true.

Like God. How could she ever have doubted?

“Stefan has never doubted You,” she said to the vast blackness of sky and water beyond the land. “His sister and nephew died horrible deaths and he never blamed You. He is trying to do Your work. He has faith—deep and abiding. Please help him. And if it be Your will, keep him safe and bring him back to me. I know that together we could do good work in Your holy name, and I am ready to do that work.”

She was on the verge of closing her prayer but realized
there was one more promise to be made. “And if it be Your will that Stefan is gone from my life forever, I will accept that as I now accept the loss of Michael and George. I accept that in having known them and having had these few weeks with Stefan, I have been truly blessed.”

She was murmuring these last words when something caught her eye. It was not a movement. In fact the landscape had never been so still and quiet. But her eye was drawn to the place where she, Michael and George had played as children and escaped their parents as teens. It was the place where Michael and George had sworn her to secrecy when they confided their intent to volunteer as soon as America declared war. It was the place where Maggie had gone every day after they left to pray for their safe return. Even after they received word that George had been killed in battle, she had prayed there for Michael. Until the day the news came that Michael also had been taken. That day she had gone to the cupola instead.

Her eyes were riveted on that secret place, that hiding place. Had God led her back to the time when her faith had been most fervent, back before the days of denial here in the cupola? Back to the time when she had sat alone under the thicket of grasses and rose vines and prayed for an end to this horrible war? Stefan was out there. She was as sure of that as she was that the sun would rise the following morning.

Ever since she’d heard the news of Michael’s death, it seemed as if she’d been running away, chased by the sorrow over what might have been. But as she slipped down the stairway, stopped at her room to retrieve the sealed envelope and some cash she’d saved and hurried out into the night, she knew with clarity that she was running toward something. Stefan certainly, but more. She was
running toward the future, a future she had thought would never be. Only now did she understand fully that her life had not ended when Michael had died. She understood that in the time she had left on this earth there were likely to be many new beginnings. Every beginning required an ending but if she focused on the ending, she would surely never know the fullness of the life she had been given.

By the time she reached the arbor, her shoes were soaked and her hair was coming free of its pins. Careless of how she must look, she pressed on, racing against the coming dawn.

Please let him be there,
she prayed as she entered the narrow passage beneath the tangle of vines.

He’s here, the dried grasses seemed to whisper back as they swayed in the wind.

“Stefan?”

Stefan was shivering violently. Why had he not thought to take the blanket? His slippers were soaked and caked with sand and mud. Torches flickered in the distance, marking the disappointing progress he had made in his journey. His destination was the harbor. His prayer was that there would be a boat there, perhaps a skiff belonging to Sean or the Hunters. But he had barely made it past the inn before he’d heard the angry and excited voices of men on the hunt. Desperately he had sought shelter and found it along a path overgrown with the remnants of tall grasses and wild rose vines that formed a kind of arbor a short distance from the cottage.

He was having trouble thinking straight. His eyes kept closing, and he could no longer feel his toes. Would it end as it had begun, with him freezing to death so close to his destination?
Please God, not yet,
he prayed.
How can I
clear my name and theirs if I am imprisoned or worse? I don’t know what You want of me.

He shook himself alert. He could hear the distant calling of his name and was aware of the torches moving in the other direction—away from him, their light fading in the darkness. He fought for consciousness, clinging to the thought that he’d heard Maggie calling his name.

Maggie stood still, listening for any movement, but she heard only the rhythmic sounding of the foghorn at the lighthouse in time with the beating of her heart. Slowly she moved farther into the darkness, toward the faint moonlight at the far end of the arbor.

“Stefan, I’m here,” she said softly.

She inched forward and suddenly someone grasped her arm. She swallowed a scream.

“Maggie, go back,” Stefan said, his voice hoarse and weak.

She fell to her knees beside him, uncaring of the soft, muddy ground that soaked her clothes. Instinctively she raised her hand to his forehead. He was cold but not feverish. “God has answered my prayers,” she told him. He gazed at her in wonder, but she didn’t pause for a second.

“Can you walk? We have to hurry.” She struggled to rise, but he held her fast.

“No,
liebchen,
you must go back,” he said, and he held her face in the palms of his hands, drawing her closer. “I love you too much to—”

To stop the flow of words she did not want to hear, she closed the distance between them and kissed him. In an instant it was as if they had been created for this single moment. Their lips met and there was no war, no danger, no time but this moment.

“If you truly love me,” she whispered as Stefan brushed back her wet hair to expose her forehead. He kissed her there.

“No conditions,” he murmured as he continued kissing her temple, the tip of her ear, her cheek and jaw and finally covered her lips once more with his own.

But this kiss was different from the first. This was a kiss of farewell.

“No,” she protested, pushing away from him. “I’m coming with you. Once we get away, we’ll call my Auntie Jeanne and—”

But where would they go? She clung to him, attempting to warm him with her own heat, spreading her shawl over them both as she looked toward either opening of the arbor. One led to the pier and Sean’s fishing boat, which would take him to safety. The other led back to the inn and the certainty of help.

Hearing voices, they moved farther into the underbrush. “Sh-h-h,” he whispered as he held her close.

“She came this way,” Frederick called back toward the inn. “Jeanne saw her from the window.”