Gift from the Sea (20 page)

It was almost comical, and Maggie felt a wave of hysteria threaten—when suddenly Mrs. Pritchard stepped to her side.

“Seriously, Margaret Rose,” she said, “I know that your poor mother has been ill and your father is such a busy man, but really we must discuss your future. I am quite fearful that your grief has gotten the better of you and you are making rash decisions.”

Maggie had been on edge all night—searching for Stefan, coming so close to escape, facing the people at the church and now what? She wasn’t sure how much more she could take. It was her last thought before the room went black and blessedly silent. And this time she wasn’t faking.

“M
aggie, wake up.”

Mama’s voice came through the blackness, accompanied by the hum of a concerned chorus of others. She fought her way back to consciousness and opened her eyes a slit to find herself reclining on the same sofa Stefan had recently vacated. She smiled and turned her face to the cushion, certain that she could still smell the essence of him as she allowed her eyelids to flutter closed.

“Maggie.” It was the distant echo of Stefan’s voice, the last thing she had heard before fainting. She opened her eyes and waited for him to come into focus. But he was gone.

“She’s coming around,” Mama said and was immediately interrupted by Mrs. Pritchard’s wail.

“I was afraid of this. She’s exhausted and distraught. It’s all been too much for her. She’s completely overcome, and who can blame the poor child? That horrible man—that
German…
” She ground out the last word as if it were a bitter taste in her mouth.

Maggie was sorely tempted to surrender to the pleasant netherworld of unconsciousness, where she could at least
imagine Stefan being there, touching her cheek, speaking her name. “Stay with me,
liebchen,
” he would murmur. “All will be well.”

Eyes closed, she reached for his hand and felt instead the flush of her own skin. “I’m fine,” she said, turning over so that she was facing her mother and the others. If they had taken Stefan away, then she must go to him.

“You are not fine, Margaret Rose,” Mrs. Pritchard protested. “Lucie, I think it would be best if she went to her room.”

Maggie forced herself to a sitting position. “I am fine,” she repeated firmly.

“Perhaps what would be best for all concerned, ladies,” suggested the minister, “is if we turn our thoughts to the return of our brothers Gabriel and Thomas now that this man is in custody.”

“Yes, excellent idea, Reverend,” Mama said and waited while the women followed the minister across to the library before turning her attention back to Maggie. “Eleanor is right, Maggie. Enough is enough. Go upstairs now.”

“But Stefan…”

“…has been taken back to the cottage for questioning, and trying to go to him will only make the authorities more suspicious,” Mama said in a low voice as she wiped Maggie’s brow with a cool, damp cloth. “Can you think of no one but him? What about your father and Tom?”

The anxiety that Maggie saw in her mother’s eyes brought her back to the full reality of the mess Stefan had created for everyone. Her mother was right. As much as she wanted to go to Stefan and assure herself that he was not being mistreated, she had to think of her father. “An hour,” she bargained in a teasing attempt to lighten the
mood by reminding her mother of how as a girl she had bargained for shortened nap times.

“Until I come for you,” her mother countered and she did not smile.

Despite Maggie’s every attempt to fight her weariness, sleep won out; the sun was waning when she woke. The day was almost gone. What had she missed? What were they doing to Stefan? She ran to the window and looked across the yard to the cottage. She could see a few of the soldiers milling about, setting up their campsite near the barn. The captain and Sean were smoking their pipes and talking as if they were old friends.

She opened the door to her room and leaned over the banister. There was a soldier stationed on the landing between the foyer and the second floor. She eased down the hall to the back stairway and jumped when another soldier leaped to his feet at the sight of her.

“Miss,” he said with a polite nod as he made room for her to pass.

“Why are you here?”

“Orders, miss.”

“Yes, yes. But why here on this stairway?”

He glanced behind him at the spiral stairs that led to the cupola, and Maggie’s eyes widened in horror. “Surely you aren’t holding Stefan up there. The man will freeze. He’s already fought his way back from a serious case of frostbite and—”

“Captain Swann thought the cupola the safest place to hold the prisoner while the cottage is being readied for his incarceration,” the soldier explained, then shut his lips tight as if he’d already said too much.

A thousand questions ran simultaneously through Maggie’s brain. Incarcerate? What happened to house arrest? Were they taking him away after all? And above the fray rose the single question uppermost in her mind: How can I get to him?

“Have you had anything to eat, Private?” Maggie asked, keeping her voice calm and chatty. She’d heard Jeanne use this same tactic dozens of times when she wanted something.

“No, miss. The others are making camp and having their supper, and then I’ll be relieved. Thank you,” he added.

She fingered the afghan she kept on the railing for those times when she had stayed in the cupola reading or just staring out at the Atlantic. “Private, it’s very damp today, and with the sun going down, the temperatures are sure to drop. As the prisoner’s nurse, I really must insist that he have this extra protection.” She cradled the afghan in her arms. “I could take it up to him, make sure he’s all right. You know just last night he suffered a setback and well, we—”

“Sorry, miss. Orders,” he reminded her. He held out his hand. “I’ll give him the cover, miss.”

Maggie was just about to pass him the afghan when there was a crash on the stairway below and the soldier turned his attention away. He was distracted just long enough for Maggie to dash up the stairway and slip inside the cupola.

Stefan pulled her to her feet as she bent to trip the latch on the trapdoor. “Maggie, what’s happened now?”

His questions were answered with the private’s knock at the trapdoor.

“Please, miss,” the soldier pleaded, keeping his voice low. “You’ll get me in trouble with the captain.”

Maggie glanced at Stefan, torn by her wish to be with him versus the fate of the poor soldier below. “Five minutes,” she said softly. “They all think I’m still asleep. Just five minutes, please.”

“Not a second more,” the young man replied, and they heard him move back to his post.

“Maggie, what are you thinking?” Stefan chastised her even as he pulled her to his side and wrapped the wool afghan around them both.

“I am thinking that since you came into my life, I have been unable to think straight, and in spite of believing I was running in the opposite direction, I have moved steadily along a path that has brought me to my senses.”

Stefan held her close and kissed her hair. “How so?”

“I have survived the valley of the shadow of death, and despite all my doubt and denial, God was with me for every step.”

“And now?”

Maggie lifted her face to his. “I know now that God has led me to you.”

Instead of embracing her fully, sweeping her away with the power of his kiss, Stefan released her. “Do not think of me as your salvation, Maggie.”

“I don’t. That’s not what I meant.”

“Ours is an impossible love,
liebchen.
You know that. We have had these few moments in time, but now we must understand that each of us will move forward on a new path, one that cannot include the other.”

“No! The ambassador will read your letter and send word that you are to be freed immediately. We will go forward from there.”

“Even so, I have nothing to give you, Maggie. What
kind of life would we have with people always wondering, speculating? I will be a man without family, without country, without a home to call my own.”

“Do you love me? You said you loved me. Was that nothing?”

He held her close, rocking her from side to side as he murmured against her ear, “I love you more than I can ever express.”

“Then that’s all I need,” Maggie said and cupped his face in her palms as she stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

“Miss? Time’s up.” The latch on the trapdoor rattled. “They’re coming to change the guard, miss. Please.”

Stefan set her away and reached up to remove the gold cross from around his neck. “Take this,” he said. “Know every time you look at it that I am thinking of you—only you.”

He bent and released the latch, and the soldier pushed the trapdoor aside as Stefan helped Maggie through it. Below them they could hear the new guard coming down the hall.

“Go,” Stefan and the soldier begged in unison, and Maggie hurried down the back stairway that led to the kitchen, clutching the gold cross so tightly that when she finally opened her fist, the imprint of it was clear in her palm.

Stefan waited until he was sure that Maggie was safely on her way down the back stairs to the kitchen. Then he went back to the window and waited, alert to the changing of the guard below.

“Private, call for the prisoner.” The voice was that of the captain, a middle-aged man who reminded Stefan of the Belgian resistance fighter who’d given him his first assignment and then helped orchestrate his plan to bring word to the Americans.

The private climbed the spiral stair, and his eyes begged Stefan not to reveal Maggie’s visit.

“Danke,”
Stefan said quietly as he followed the young man to the landing and faced the captain.

“This way,” the captain instructed but there was no malice in his tone, only weariness.

Stefan followed the man down the back stairway and into the kitchen. He heard Maggie’s breath catch at his unexpected appearance and caught the glint of the gold cross around her neck as he passed her.

But the captain neither paused nor spoke as he traversed the kitchen and exited by the back door. Stefan had no choice but to follow his lead, since the young private was right on his heels.

He gave Maggie a smile as he passed but did not dare risk touching her face or hand, as he so longed to do.

Outside the captain slowed his stride and fell into step alongside Stefan. “You understand English, right?”

“Some,” Stefan replied warily.

The captain laughed—heartily as if Stefan had just shared a good joke—then pulled a cigarette from his pocket and offered it to Stefan.

“No, thank you.”

Captain Swann shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He paused to light his cigarette and took a long draw on it as he studied Stefan. “Dismissed, Private,” he muttered. “I’ll take it from here.” The relieved private saluted and scampered off toward the campsite. Captain Swann hitched one booted foot onto a stump and leaned on his knee as he exhaled smoke.

Stefan stood straight and tall but not quite at attention and waited for what might come next.

“You have some powerful friends,” Swann said. “What exactly is the connection between you and the duchess and her British companion?”

“I met them last night for the first time.” He saw by the tensing of the captain’s body that he preferred to hear the answers he expected rather than the truth.

“So you expect me to believe that they called the ambassador and summoned us all the way out here because they liked you so much after meeting you for the first time last night?” He took another draw on the cigarette. “Do I look like a fool?”

“No, sir.”

“Or perhaps it’s your lady friend and her parents who’ve staged this whole thing,” he muttered more to himself than to Stefan.

“Maggie—the Hunter family—only cared for me after they found me on their beach. It was the Christian thing to do. They would have done the same for anyone.”

“Even a German?”

“They did not know that I was German when first they brought me here. That came later.” He did not add that the family was well aware of his nationality within an hour of rescuing him.

“You and the daughter have something going between you.” It was not a question, so Stefan did not respond.

The captain crushed out his cigarette with the toe of his boot and started in the direction of the cottage. “Well, let’s get you in and settled,” he said.

“Where’s Aunt Jeanne?” Maggie asked the following morning as she helped her mother prepare food for the soldiers.

“She’s in her room writing the ambassador and others who might help.”

“And has there been any word about Papa?”

Lucie backhanded a tear and continued peeling peaches. “Chief Anderson sent word that we are free to visit this afternoon—with an escort of the guard, of course. I thought I’d take along some of my peach cobbler. It’s your father’s favorite.”

The paring knife trembled and then fell from Lucie’s fingers as she burst into tears. She covered her face with her apron as Maggie led her to a kitchen chair and knelt beside her.

“Mama, it’s all going to work out. Once they read Stefan’s letter—once they understand what…”

Lucie dropped her apron and stood up. “We should never have allowed the man to stay so long. The minute he was able to travel, we should have…” She turned and faced Maggie. “Your father is in jail, Maggie. And so is Tom. These are our family, our dear friends. Who is Stefan Witte to us?”

Maggie swallowed hard but did not back down in the face of her mother’s anger. “He is the man I love and he is a man who has had the courage to do what is right. He is so like Papa—and you—in that, Mama.”