Love and Dreams: The Coltrane Saga, Book 6 (45 page)

Bryan sat beside the bed, head bowed, hands clasped. He had removed her gag, but Jade would not speak to him. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, and every so often she would shift her gaze to sweep over him in quiet rage.

“Jade, you’ve got to listen, understand.” He tried once more to reach her. “I did what I did only because I love you. I can make you happier than Coltrane ever could. He’s got a life of his own now, and he doesn’t need you. I
do
.”

Still she did not respond.

It wasn’t fair, Bryan thought miserably, that she should react this way. He had saved her life, for God’s sake. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have died, adrift in the ocean. He had taken her to his home, nourished her, held her through her nightmares, comforted her in her grief. He had shared everything he had with her, and she owed him, he thought, ire rising. By God, she owed him something. What he had done had been for her own good, and it was time she treated him with some gratitude and respect.

He got up and removed his tweed coat, folded it carefully across a chair. Then he took off his high-button shoes, stockings, garters. Clad only in trousers and shirt, he lay down beside her. She did not move. He reached over and caressed her breast through her dress. No response. He might as well have been touching a corpse.

Suddenly he could stand no more. With a maniacal scream of rage, he started jerking at her clothes, ripping at her dress. “You’re mine, damn you, and I’m going to have you. You can’t treat me this way. I’m your husband, and you have a duty to honor me…obey me…”

Jade merely regarded him with the same sweep of scorn and loathing, and made no move to stop his assault. She had promised herself she would not give him the satisfaction of evoking any kind of response in her ever again.

Afterward, he looked down at her and shook his head in horror. “Oh, dear God, what have I done? I’m sorry, so sorry, but I love you so much, and you’re driving me crazy, Jade…crazy. Jesus, don’t look at me like that I can’t stand it.”

He covered his face with his hands and stumbled from the bed, leaning against the wall of the cabin as sobs shuddered through his body.

Jade took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She did not care how he suffered, but it was not a pretty sight to see, all the same.

Suddenly the cabin seemed to reverberate with the sound of harsh pounding at the door. It was Monroe Burton, and he was excitedly shouting, “Skipper, you better come quick. We got trouble.”

Jade’s eyes flew open.

Bryan unbolted the door and demanded, “What the hell are you talking about?”

The ship gave a sudden pitch, and Monroe lurched into the room, grabbed the doorframe lest he fall. His eyes widened at the sight of Jade’s almost nude body, but he forced his mind back to the problem at hand. “A sloop coming up on us fast, and they want us to lay up. Looks like the one that was moored next to us in the harbor. Can’t see who it is, but they fired what sounded like a pistol to let us know they want to board.”

“Colt!” Jade cried jubilantly, but they did not hear her, because Bryan was already out of the cabin and making his way up on deck as fast as he could, with Monroe right behind him.

She struggled to her feet, and oblivious to her shredded gown, she went after them.

On deck, Bryan strained against the rain that had started falling in blinding torrents once more. Shielding his eyes with his hands, he looked through the gray fog enshrouding them and could see a boat on the aft port side of them. He strained to identify it, then realized it was Nathanael G. Herreshoff’s sloop, the
Vigilant
.

“What the hell!” he cried. “What do they want?”

“It’s gotta be that son of a bitch Gibbons,” Monroe said. “Who else’d come after us and raise hell? They gotta be crazy! We ain’t layin’ over.” He turned to the other crewmen who were clinging to the riggings. “Get the guns from below. They wanna act like pirates—we’ll treat ’em like pirates!”

Bryan stared out in silent disbelief. It had come to this, he thought in panic—all because he had dared to fight for the woman he loved. Now innocent people might die, but above all else, he knew there was no way on Earth he could ever make Jade love him again. Or had she ever? Had it all been a dream—on both their parts?

Deep in torment, he was not aware that Jade had made her way up on deck and stood but a few feet away.

Neither did he see Colt as he came to stand on the bow of the
Vigilant
.

And Colt, so mesmerized by the sight of Jade, did not see the storm’s fury tear loose the booms gallow behind him. It came whipping about with the force of a boomerang.

Jade screamed a warning—too late.

And Walt Gibbons saw, and he also cried out.

But Colt had no time to hear or react as the renegade boom struck him on the back of his head with such force that he was flung overboard into the black, churning waters that waited like a yawning crypt.

Jade did not hesitate, did not think of the danger of what she was doing. In a flash, she was over the railing, leaping to the water below.

Bryan screamed, “No, God, no—” just as Monroe and the others appeared from below with weapons in hand.

The crew of the
Marnia
, preoccupied with the approaching sloop, had been negligent in their war with the sea. They were not prepared for the sudden wave crashing over them, and the yacht tipped on its side, sending the screaming men overboard.

Jade hit the water feet first, going under, then fought her way to the surface, coughing and gasping against the splashing salt water. Turning round and round frantically, she searched for Colt. And then she saw him, floating facedown on the crest of a wave like a bit of flotsam. She swam toward him, calling on every ounce of strength within. The struggle seemed futile in the storm’s fury.

Walt Gibbons, a veteran seaman not given to losing control in an emergency, barked orders to his men. They manned their positions, kept the sloop afloat, while Walt worked his way to the side. He carried a round life ring attached to a rope. Expertly, he threw the rope up and out, sending the ring to within yards of Colt. “Grab it,” he shouted to Jade above the gale. “Grab and hold on, and we’ll pull you in.”

With a cry of thanksgiving, Jade’s arms went around Colt, and she quickly maneuvered him onto his back so that life-giving air could reach his lungs. Then, bobbing up and down herself, swallowing more water, she managed to cling to the rope and hang on to Colt at the same time.

It was history repeating itself, Jade realized in terror, only this time it was Colt in the water fighting for his life. “Please, God”—she tried to see some sign of life—“not again, God. Don’t let me lose him again—”

They were dragged through the foaming sea to the sloop, and one of the crewmen jumped in to aid her, tying the rope around Colt so he could be pulled on board. Then he helped her stay afloat until the ring was dropped back down for the two of them.

Suddenly, miraculously, Colt opened his eyes to look about wildly, then turned his gaze downward, to the water, to her. “Jade!” He shook his head as though to clear it, legs swinging crazily as his body was turned around and around in the wind. He fought to see her again, then screamed, “Jade…my
wife
! Oh, God—” Then his head slumped to one side.

Jade shrieked in horror, beating at the water with her fists in protest. It couldn’t be. Dear God, he had
remembered
. In that one fleeting instant, he had called her his
wife
, and now he couldn’t be dead—he couldn’t!

The crewman yelled for the men above to hurry. Dizzily, Jade felt a rope going under her arms, the sudden jolt of being lifted upward and out of the hungry jaws of the angry sea.

And then everything went black.

Jade opened her eyes to see Walt Gibbons anxiously staring down at her. “Are you all right? Miss Jade, do you feel all right?”

Her only thought was instantly of Colt, and she whispered his name. Walt grinned, said he was in better shape than she was.

And suddenly Colt was there, kneeling beside her to lift her tenderly in his arms and whisper the words she’d prayed so long to hear. “My love…my wife…”

Jade began to cry, so happily…dear God, so happily. “You do remember,” she sobbed. “Oh, Colt, you do remember it all now, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Things are still a bit fuzzy, but it’s coming back. All it took was another hard hit on the head, the storm triggering memories of the other one. The doctors said it might happen suddenly like that, and it did. We’re together, Jade, and we always will be. I swear it.”

“Please,” she begged as he bent to kiss her. “Please, don’t let this be another dream like all the others.”

He drew her close against his chest and held her in the breeze of the waning storm. He pointed to a rainbow, pastel streaks of beauty against the gray sky of the horizon. She followed his gaze, sighed in wonder of such an omen.

“It is a dream,” he murmured. “And this time we aren’t going to wake up. We’re going to live in it…the way we were meant to…the way we did before.”

Epilogue

Jade and Colt hid away for several days in a New York hotel, to savor the miracle of his recovery. Bryan and all his men were presumed lost at sea, and the only obstacle remaining in the way of their resuming a normal marital relationship, other than society’s shock, was reaching some kind of understanding with Lorena over little Andy.

“Are you sure you want to go with me?” Colt asked Jade as they prepared to leave the hotel for the meeting he had arranged with Lorena at her mother’s house. “You don’t have to. It might not be very pleasant. You know how her mother is.”

Jade fiercely shook her head. “No way are you leaving me behind, Colt Coltrane. I want to be there when those two she-devils start trying to explain why they tricked you.”

He hugged her against him, then took a deep breath and guiltily confessed, “As much as I love little Andy, I can’t help wishing he’d never been born into this. Now I’ll always be tied to Lorena, like it or not.”

Jade forced what she hoped was confident smile. “After all we’ve been through, darling, we can handle anything—together.”

Hand in hand, they left the hotel and went to the Vordane house.

Lorena opened the door. Jade noted at once how pale she looked, how drawn. She brushed a strand of straggling hair back from her forehead with one hand, waved them inside with her other. “Come in, please,” she whispered.

She led them into a dimly lit parlor, which Jade thought was terribly depressing, but then the whole atmosphere of the house was like a tomb.

“You don’t have to worry about Mother.” Lorena motioned them to sit down, took a chair opposite. “We had a terrible fight this morning, and I told her if she didn’t get out, I would. I am, anyway, as soon as I can find a place. I won’t stay here with her.”

Colt looked at Jade, then at Lorena. “Have you got money?” he softly asked. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here, to talk to you about support for Andy.”

She had been sitting with her hands folded in her lap, staring down at them. When she heard what Colt said, she looked up sharply. “You don’t have to do that, Colt. I’ve got a trust fund from my father. I’m old enough to get it now, and Mother can’t do anything about it, so I don’t need your money.”

Colt looked at her, puzzled.

Jade could suddenly keep still no longer. Struggling to hold her temper, she bit out her words. “Let’s stop beating around the bush. Tell us the whole story—why you and your mother took advantage of Colt and made him think he was married to you.”

Lorena’s reply was so low, so faint, they had to strain to hear and then had to ask her to repeat it, because they exchanged looks of disbelief that they could have heard right.

“I needed a father for my baby.”

Colt stiffened, rage boiling within. “What did you say?”

Lorena burst into tears and then went on with her hysterical confession. She had become pregnant by the man she had run away to Europe with, and when Colt had been injured, her mother had seized this opportunity as a way to save the family from scandal by forcing her to pretend he was her husband. Either that, Triesta Vordane had threatened, or she’d be sent to a convent to hide till the baby was born, then be forced to give him up at birth. Lorena had not wanted that, had wanted with all her heart to keep the one living memory of the man she had loved. So she had agreed.

“And now I’m sorry,” she cried, raising swollen, miserable eyes to Colt. “You thought Andy was your son, and I know you love him. I died every time you held him, hating myself for the lie but not able to do anything about it. I was glad, honest to God, I was glad when it all came out. Because now I don’t have to lie anymore.

“I know you can never forgive me,” she hoarsely whispered, “but please believe me when I say I’m sorry.”

Jade’s heart went out to the girl, for she knew she was telling the truth, knew she’d had no choice but to go along with her mother’s evil scheme or else her baby would be torn from her arms at birth. She could not hate her nor could Colt. But her heart also went out to him, for he could not stop loving a precious little infant he’d thought of as his son for months merely by a few spoken words. She wished she could help, give comfort, but did not know what to do.