Till Dawn Tames the Night (52 page)

Breathing heavily, Vashon lowered the pistol. He stared at Peterborough, hardly able to choke out his words. "If it was ever said that I did a noble deed, then let it be proclaimed that I could not kill my own brother."

Peterborough had obviously seen the reason for Vashon's change of heart. He stared at Aurora,
then
lunged madly for Vashon's pistol. "If I cannot kill you, Vashon, then I shall get you where you're most vulnerable!" Josiah grabbed the pistol, and while it was still in Vashon's hand, pulled back the hammer and aimed it at Aurora.

Isaac thrust her back but there was no place to take cover in the barren landscape. The captain took out his pistol, yet before he could shoot, the men were once more in a death conflict. With a grunt of rage and terror, Vashon struggled with Josiah to take control of the gun, twisting his body in front of the barrel to shield Aurora. Before anyone could stop him, Peterborough finally had his revenge. He fired the weapon and sent the blast square into Vashon's torso.

When Vashon stumbled back, the viscount desperately scooped up the emerald. He rubbed the jewel in his palm and appeared to relish the scene before him.

Hunched over, Vashon removed his hand from his stomach. It was covered in blood. Aurora cried out and Isaac aimed his pistol at Peterborough.

A wild glint appeared in Vashon's eyes and before Isaac could kill the viscount, Vashon reached out to Peterborough.

"Take my hand, Josiah," he said. "Don't be afraid. This blood is your blood,
brother."

Peterborough blanched.

"Take it, Josiah," Vashon gasped, the pain obviously becoming too much for him. "Take it as my atonement for the past."

"Stay away, Vashon."

"I said, take it, brother!" Vashon pushed forward.

Frightened, Peterborough backed to the edge of the bluff. Below him was the straight treacherous fall to the beach. All too aware of this, Josiah looked around for an escape. He stepped back onto the outcrop that had held Michael
Dayne's
box, but he misjudged his mark. He slipped and desperately reached for a horribly stunted
wych
elm that protruded from the cliff. Vashon was in no shape to assist him, so Isaac released Aurora and went to the edge of the cliff.

"Help me," Peterborough begged, clinging pitifully to the
wych
elm.

"Do you know who I am, viscount?" Isaac asked in a low monotone.

"Help me, you fool! I see you're a captain of a ship! I'll get you a thousand ships with my emerald, just help me!"

Isaac leaned down. "I'm the captain of the
Leviathan,
Lord Peterborough. I'll give you my hand so that you may climb back to the top." Isaac held out his hand, the hand that Peterborough himself had crippled. Peterborough grasped it for dear life.

The two men stayed suspended like that for a moment: Isaac not wanting to save Peterborough yet unwilling to be the one to plunge him to his death; and Peterborough pleading desperately for pity and more assistance.

In the end, the issue was decided by fate. Isaac tried to save him, but with only two fingers a solid grasp was nearly impossible.

"I can't hold on!" Josiah cried, slipping inch by inch, ever closer to the jagged granite boulders below.

When he finally fell, Isaac's only words were, "You could have."

Peterborough met his end at the rocky bottom, the emerald tumbling just beyond his limp grasp.

Horrified, they all stood at the top and stared down at Peterborough's sprawled broken figure. As if he couldn't help himself, Vashon whispered,
" 'Whosoever
possesses the Star of
Aran
shall see his enemies die.'
" Vashon
then crumpled to the ground.

"My love, my love," Aurora cried softly, the blood running down his shirt frightening her. Isaac's face grew grim as he saw Vashon's condition.

"My love, it will be all right," she whispered, weeping beside him, unable to keep her gaze away from his face. "It must be," she said, weeping.

"Isaac," Vashon
whispered,
his features taut with pain.

"I'm here, Vashon." Isaac bent down and took Aurora by the shoulders.

"You recall your promise on the
Seabravery?"

"Vashon, don't do this." Isaac's voice shook.

"No, now's the time.
You promised me. Do you recant that now?"

Isaac nearly wept with reluctance. "No, Vashon."

"Then you'll do it?"

"I'll keep by my promise."

"Good.
Aurore
?
"
he rasped to her.

"I'm here, my love. We'll get a surgeon—"

Vashon touched her face. His fingers became wet with her tears. "Even though the words were never spoken, you are my wife, Aurora."

"No, Vashon, no.
We'll speak the words.
Someday.
I swear."

"This," he reached down to the emblazoned brass key still hanging around her neck, "this is all you'll have left of me. Go there."

"Vashon, don't say such things."

He turned from her and she saw a tear slip down his cheek. That more than anything affected her. He'd feared she'd make him vulnerable, and that the prophecy had come true. He finally loved her, and it had been that love that had forced him to spare her life at the expense of his own. She began to sob madly until Isaac pulled her off him. Cook, who served as the
Seabravery's
surgeon, arrived on the bluff and began quickly ministering to Vashon's wounds. Other seamen arrived to help also, and soon she was lost in the pandemonium.

"Come along, Aurora," Isaac said numbly. "I've got to return you to London."

"No, I cannot go," she cried, watching Cook bandage Vashon while another seaman took off his shirt and placed it under his head.

"I've got to take you. He made me promise. We've got to go now."

"I won't."

Isaac roughly grabbed her arm. "Don't you see he's dying? Don't you see he doesn't want you around for you to see him like this?"

"But I must be around. I love him," she sobbed.

Her tears softened him, but he stood by his promise. "It's what he wishes, Aurora. Do as he wishes." He pulled her away.

"Please, let me be there when he goes. Let me hold him. I have nothing but him." She wept bitterly and fought him. He nearly lifted her off her feet to drag her unwilling body along the heath-covered down. There were men everywhere on the bluff now. He snapped an order to a few oncoming men to return to the ship to help prepare her for sail.

"I beg of you, Isaac, I would rather you kill me than force me from him now!" she lashed out, viciously pulling his arm.

"I gave him my word, Aurora."

"I have nothing to return to. I have nothing to live for," she cried. "Don't do this to me!"

"He wanted you to go on. You will go on."

"Don't make me." She wept in a small wretched voice. "Don't make me live without him."

"My child."
Isaac finally broke down and wiped the tears streaming down his own cheeks. He held her to his burly chest. She wept against him and he rasped the crudest words he'd ever had to speak.

"You must."

The beggar begs by God's command,

And gifts awake when givers sleep,

Swords cannot cut the giving hand

Nor stab the love that orphans keep.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Fragments on Nature and Life

Aurora stood at the door to Peterborough's former residence, Blackwell House, the London mansion of the titled
Blackwells
. She was pale, her eyes swollen as if she still spent long hours weeping. To Isaac, she looked as tragic and inconsolable as that afternoon when they had sailed from Hugh Town, leaving Vashon behind on that bluff covered in blood and swarming with the
Seabravery's
men.

But this day, when Isaac watched her stare up at the enormous wainscoted front doors of the mansion, he was struck by the subtle difference in her face. Gone was the stiff armor of propriety she'd used so frequently on their voyage; gone too was that air of offended innocence that Vashon had found so titillating and yet so annoying.

He had always thought of Aurora as beautiful, but today her beauty haunted him. Her face held a softness that he'd never seen before and a strength that looked as if not even a tidal wave could break it. Isaac considered himself an old hardened Jew, callused by brutality and prejudice, too jaded to appreciate the sublime things like beauty and grace. But even he found himself inspired by the fact that both this woman's softness and her strength came from loving a man as hard and brutal and wild as Vashon.

"Use the key," he whispered, urging her forward.

Aurora stared at him,
then
impulsively took his hand. In their shared grief, Isaac had become the father she never had. He smiled at her and squeezed her hand. Finally she found the courage to look down at the brass key in her hand. Holding her breath, she fitted the key in the enormous brass lock.

Isaac opened the doors and led her into a huge marbled hall with a staircase that looked grand enough to be in a Roman temple. But everything was dark, for all the shutters on the house were closed, verifying the previous occupant's expected long absence.

In silence she sauntered through a great saloon done entirely in red and gold, the furniture looking ghostlike with its dust shrouds of linen. They went from room to room, each more elegant and more abandoned.

The house depressed her. There were no servants to fling open a window and let in some fresh air,
nor
to light the
lusters
when evening came to call. The house was the finest she'd ever been in, but as she wandered its passages and formal rooms, she couldn't picture herself living there. There were no dragons on the carpets, no gilt dolphin feet on the settees. The beds weren't draped in muslin; instead they were dressed in fine silk brocades.

Vashon was nowhere to be found. She couldn't picture, him anywhere, not on the
tapestried
fauteuils in the saloon, not having his breakfast in the Wedgwood morning room, nor reading a book in the Egyptian-inspired library. He was not there. She could find evidence only of Peterborough.

She'd seen enough. She'd asked Isaac to escort her out when they came to a small mahogany door that led up to the fifth-floor attic rooms. To satisfy her curiosity, she lifted her skirt and mounted the stairs, only to find
herself
in an old, unkempt nursery. Dust grayed everything from the rotting lace curtains at the dormer windows to the painted floor cloth that had once been bright blue. There was a schoolroom beyond, and she was just about to walk to it when her skirt caught on something. She stopped and looked down.

It was a small wooden rocking horse, a dear little toy, obviously well used and well loved. She brushed away some of the dust with her hand and revealed chipped blue paint, faded to the color of a robin's egg. The horse had a real mane and tail. Enchanted, she tried to set the thing in motion, but one of its runners was split off and it wouldn't move.

She tried not to think of him as a little boy, riding his rocking horse in the nursery, impressing his nanny with his talent. She tried desperately not to think of him, but when her hand lovingly ran over the cracked leather saddle and she saw the name "Vashon" painted in gold lettering on its cantle, she couldn't stop the lone tear from escaping and christening the little horse. In her pain she wanted to hug that little rocking horse to her breast and sit in a corner, never to rise again. And for one wild moment she thought of doing just that before Isaac touched her arm and bade her rise.

"There's more to see beyond this room," he said.

She shook her head. "I don't want to see any more. I can't find him, Isaac. He's not here," she said with a truth that stabbed her like a knife.