Against all odds, the sun rose that morning over the Miramichi. Few had expected to see it. The charred remains of the forest steamed in the frigid air. Snowflakes fluttered to the ground, ominous out of all proportion to their size.
Pulling his well-singed coat tightly around him, Harris cupped his hands over his mouth and breathed out to warm his fingers. He wandered down to the wharf, shaking his head at the sight of several vessels gutted by the fire. Their scorched hulls bobbed in the choppy water like blackened corpses. How many human remains they would pull from the river in the days ahead, Harris could not bear to think.
A joyous shout went up behind him. It sounded completely out of place amid such desolation. Only when the men of Chatham surged past him onto the dock did Harris notice the St. Bride sailing in on the morning tide, hull riding low with her precious cargo of life.
Melting back to the fringe of the crowd, he watched passively as families reunited—laughing, embracing, weeping. He wanted to rejoice for them, to mourn with them, to share and allay their fears for the future. But some unseen force had excised his heart and left in its place a chunk of stone. As with burns, the earlier hurts he’d suffered on Jenny’s account had smarted and stung. This final, deepest one had cauterized his emotions.
Captain Glendenning disembarked and shouldered his way through the press of townspeople. “I’ve bad news for ye, Harris.” He stared at the ground and swallowed hard, as if working up the nerve to say his piece.
Harris waited for the master to speak, without dread or even much curiosity.
“’Twas rough seas last night,” said the captain at last. “More times than I care to recall, I thought my wee barque would end up at the bottom of the strait. But the Almighty held us in his hand and we rode it out. That’s more than I can say for some.”
He drew a deep breath. “Douglas’s sloop floundered at the mouth of the river. Went down with all hands. I’m sorry.”
In answer to Harris’s questioning look, he added, “About Miss Len…that is, about yer wife.”
Harris shook his head. “She wasn’t with Douglas, after all.”
“Oh, Thank God! The crew’ll be beside themselves to hear it. Where is she?”
Nodding toward the opposite bank of the river, Harris could scarcely find his voice. “Over there somewhere. She didn’t run away. She came after me. I’ll need a boat to go look for her.”
He did not say, whatever the fire has left of her body. That was what he meant, though. His face remained impassive and his words emerged calm though rather wooden. But deep inside, the rock that had once been his heart wept tears of blood.
Jenny swallowed her tears.
Thinking she heard the slap of oars against the water, she’d roused herself and tried to call out. The sound would not push past her tightly clamped lips. She threw every ounce of her remaining strength and will into it, but all that came out was a strangled peep.
It woke her.
She longed to turn and flee back into blessed unconsciousness, but that way lay death. At some time during the endless night, while the world burned around her, Jenny had made the hard decision to live. She owed it to Harris.
He had never given up on her, no matter how often she pushed him away. If by some miracle he was alive now, he would cling to life for her sake. Difficult as it might prove, she could do no less for him.
“Ye can’t stay here any longer.” She spoke the words aloud. Hearing a human voice, even her own, heartened her. “At least the fire’s stopped burning.”
She gazed at the seared tree trunks, stabbing the air like row upon row of ebony lances. A bitter wind whipped the last wisps of smoke heavenward.
“It’s no use waiting for someone to come along and rescue ye,” she scolded herself, “like Harris did at the wedding. Grow a backbone, lass!”
Steeling herself against the cold, she wallowed ashore. She gasped as the raw wind blasted her drenched clothes.
“D-d-don’t just stand here and f-f-freeze, ye dolt. Move!”
She lurched up the gentle incline of the riverbank. Perhaps she could find a patch of charred moss to cower under while her clothes dried. Or a pocket of glowing embers by which to warm herself.
To her vast surprise, Jenny heard herself laugh. “T-to think I’d be longing for a fire so s-soon again.”
Hearing the edge of hysteria in her laughter, she clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle it. To survive, she would need all her wits about her and they were already badly dulled from hunger and exhaustion.
She heard the slap of oars against the water, just like in her dream. Oh, no—had she begun to hear imaginary noises? At first she tried to ignore the sound, convinced it could not be real. Only when it began to recede in the distance did Jenny believe her ears.
Scrambling over fallen timber and the ash that had once been underbrush, she cried out, “Stop! Help! I’m alive!”
She reached the water’s edge just in time to see a small boat making its way upriver. Back into the Miramichi she waded up to her knees. Hands cupped around her mouth, she threw the dregs of her strength into cries for help.
“Turn ’round and come back, damn ye! Don’t leave me to die here!”
It appeared the boatmen meant to do just that.
Jenny’s voice faltered. Sobs shuddered through her.
What now? taunted a wee voice in the back of her mind. The same one that had asked her if she would ever quit running.
Roderick Douglas’s voice. If she gave up now, who would ever make him pay for what he’d done to Harris?
“I don’t know what now,” she growled, dashing the tears from her face. “But I’ll think of something.”
As she looked up again, squaring her shoulders to meet the next crisis, Jenny saw that the boat had turned and was rowing back toward her.
“Did ye hear that?”
Harris scanned the shore, desperately searching for some pocket of unscathed forest where survivors might huddle. Though he could see none, he was certain he’d heard a voice calling for help. Where had it come from?
“Still yer oars and let me listen!” he ordered the men Captain Glendenning had loaned him.
They rested as Harris strained to catch any sound from the shore. All he heard were the gulls wheeling overhead, their shrill cries mocking him. If only he could throw a net over a hundred or so of the creatures, like the hero of a Jack-tale his grandfather had once told him. They would bear him aloft for a bird’s eye view of…
Of whatever there was left to see.
Could his numbed heart withstand it—gathering up Jenny’s burned body? Or would it thaw, showing him that he had depths of pain yet to plumb?
For years he had sheathed his heart in a protective mantle of ice, fearing the hurt only love could inflict. The greater the love, the sharper the weapon, the deeper the wound. Though a thick-enough coating of ice could blunt the sharpest sword, it was still vulnerable to the gentle warmth of the sun. Jenny had come into his life like sunshine, melting all his defenses, laying him bare to the unbearable.
Did he regret it?
Not for a minute.
Harris nodded to the oarsmen. “Go ahead and row, lads. My ears must’ve been playing tricks on me.”
The boat began to move.
“What’s that, back there?” One of the men pointed downriver.
Harris squinted in that direction. “The fallen tree, ye mean?”
“Near that. Whatever it is, it’s moving.”
“A deer, most likely.”
“Never saw a deer that color.”
The young fellow’s eyes must be better than his own, for Harris could not properly make out any color. “Take us back for a look then.”
As they rowed closer, it became evident that the figure was human. And he or she was wading out to meet them. The oarsmen put their backs into each stroke, shooting the small craft along, with a welcome push from the river’s current.
It was a woman.
She raised one arm out of the water, waving. Her sleeve—what color was it? The lavender-gray of heather?
At first Harris refused to let himself believe it, for hope only opened the door to despair. At last, there came a moment when he could no longer deny it was Jenny.
Alive. Whole. His.
Harris threw himself into the Miramichi.
He half expected rapture to buoy him up and let him walk over the water.
“Harris!”
Seeing his own wonder mirrored in her face, it dawned on him that she’d despaired of his life, just as he had despaired of hers.
“Jenny! Oh, Jenny, lass!”
They grappled each other and all the power of hell could not have torn them apart. They kissed and time stood still. As if from a great distance, Harris heard the oarsmen cheering. Then, for an instant, a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and the lingering pall of smoke.
Suffocated with panic, Jenny struggled to pull herself awake. She felt warm, and that was wrong.
The warmth of dry blankets. The warmth of hot food in her belly. Sweetest of all, the warmth of the man she loved pressed close against her. Surely it must be some trick of her mind beguiling her to surrender to sleep and death.
She woke gasping in Harris’s arms.
“Wist, Jenny. Ye’re with me, lass. It’s over.”
“Harris?” All was dark. “Where are we?”
“Aboard the St. Bride. Don’t ye recognize yer ain berth? It’s a mite snug, but that’s all to the good. Ye were so cold when we brought ye here, I feared ye might never warm up.”
She kissed him then, to further convince herself it was real. Kissed him deeply, possessively, longingly.
He responded in kind.
The tight confines of the berth gave them little room to maneuver, but that didn’t matter. Their bodies blended together. Flesh rubbed against flesh, kindling an elemental heat. The barque rocked them in a seductive echo of the mating rhythm. They breathed the musk of each other’s desire. She imbibed his intoxicating kisses and he hers—potent and delicious as Highland usquebaugh.
Their hands roamed, reassuring themselves that they were truly together again. Each drawing the other closer, as if it could be done.
Ah, but it could…
Jenny tugged Harris on top of her. A gurgle of pleasure and fulfillment gushed from her throat as he entered her.
A reunion in the sweetest, most personal sense.
The time had come for Harris and Jenny to sail away, leaving the devastation of the Miramichi behind them, like a bad dream. The prospect gnawed at Harris as he paced the dock, poisoning even the fresh joy of his happily ever after with Jenny.
There was so much here that needed doing, to meet the early winter. Otherwise the fire would claim more victims in its aftermath. For now, survivors were digging roasted potatoes out of the blackened fields to sustain them until help could arrive. They needed to build temporary shelters. They needed to distribute clothing and other essentials to those who had lost everything. They needed to tend the injured and to dig graves.
Knowing they’d need the kind of leadership Harris had provided during the fire, they had asked him to stay.
Harris pulled his coat tighter against the bitter wind.
Stay—how could he?
Jenny loved him. She had said it, she had shown it, and at last he believed it. But he also knew what Jenny believed about love—that adversity would kill it as surely as an autumn frost withered summer’s choicest rose. Harris had no illusions that this wouldn’t be a winter of painful adversity for the Miramichi. One followed by years of struggle and hardship to rebuild their settlement.
Could he bear to watch Jenny’s love for him wither and die in such a harsh climate, turning to resentment…even hatred? Could he bear to watch it blight their children’s upbringing as his and Jenny’s had been blighted?
Yet how could he turn his back on people who needed him? People who had welcomed him into their community. People who had faced their fears to come to his aid.
So lost was he in perplexity that he scarcely noticed Jenny steal up beside him, until she rested her head against his arm.
“If I’d a penny, I’d offer it to ye for yer thoughts, Harris.”
“Ye’d make a bad bargain then.” He smiled down at her to soften the rueful tenor of his words.
“I doubt it.” She clasped his hand and glanced up at him through her lashes. “Maybe there’s something else I could exchange ye?”
That suggestion, together with her look of winsome mischief made his knees go weak. The wind wafted her unbound hair around her like a mantle of chestnut silk. The day’s chill had nipped her cheeks to a vibrant pink. A man would be a fool not to follow her to the ends of the earth, if she lured him.
“I ken these folks’ll have a hard winter ahead.” He didn’t mean to sound so gruff. But he continued, gruffer still. “They’ve asked me to stay, Jenny. They need someone to lead them, and I know I can do it.”
She opened her mouth to speak.
Resisting the urge to hush her with a kiss, Harris hurried on. “I know how ye feel—that love can’t last in hard times, but I ken ye’re wrong, Jenny. We didn’t fall in love at some fancy party or courting in a fine parlor. It was a storm that brought us together. Since then we’ve been through fire and flood and the wrath of Roderick Douglas. I will love ye for better or worse, Jenny. For richer for poorer. Can ye not love me that way, too? I’ll go away from here, if ye ask me to, for ye mean everything in the world to me. But…”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the rest. If Jenny chose to go, to run from adversity as she had so often in the past, what did it bode for their future together? He could not promise her a life of perfect happiness, no matter how much he wanted to. If trouble did find them one day, as was all too likely, would Jenny run from it again—and from him?
“Oh, Harris…”
He braced himself to hear her out.
“Of course we’ll stay, if that’s what ye want. As long as I have ye, nothing else matters. I know I used to reckon love was like a greenhouse flower, and maybe that’s the way of it for some folks, poor souls. Ye’ve shown me another kind of love, though. It’s strong and hardy as the heather. For all that, it’s beautiful and sweet…and wild. Do ye mind what it says in the Good Book— ‘Whither thou goest, I will go’?”
Harris gathered her into his arms, too overcome to say anything more than “Jenny. My ain Jenny.”