The Widow's Walk Read online

  Rackham looked at Adam and Eli then he beckoned them nearer. As they approached, Rackham smiled, revealing several holes where teeth had been.

  “I have something to tell the both of you,” Rackham said. “After I’ve killed you, Canfield, my man Kilgoyle is going to murder this here manservant of yours. And when you’re both lying dead at my feet, I’m going to give that pretty little wife of his to Yancy. Then I’m going to drag Constance into the house, where we will get to know each other much, much better.”

  At Rackham’s obscene mention of the women, it was all Adam could do to keep from choking him barehanded. But that would do no good, for it would leave Yancy Kilgoyle as a witness, and then he would have to be killed too. No, Adam thought. God willing, he would simply have to kill Rackham first. Because if he failed, what happened next was unthinkable.

  Instead of answering Rackham, Adam pulled Eli aside. Eli was a big man and a good shot, but most importantly, Adam trusted him. Placing his face close to Eli’s, he began issuing some final orders.

  “Now you listen carefully to me,” Adam whispered. “If I’m killed, I want you to run like hell back to the gun table. Scoop up all the pistols you can carry then hurry back to Constance and Emily, and the three of you head straight for the barn as fast as you can. Open the cellar door and get all the male slaves up and out as quickly as possible, and arm as many as you can. That’s the only thing that will stop Rackham and Kilgoyle from raping both of our wives. Doing so will forever reveal Seaside as a slave station, but that can’t be helped. Do you understand me, Eli?”

  Before answering, Eli turned and again glared with hatred at the two other men.

  “Yes, sir, but if you fall dead, first I’m gonna pick up a couple of those guns and shoot both them bastards dead.”

  Adam shook his head vehemently.

  “No, Goddammit, you listen to me!” Adam said. “If you try that, Rackham will kill you! If I’m dead and Rackham remains alive, your only hope will be in numbers. And those numbers can come only from the barn! Promise me you’ll do as you’re told!”

  “All right, then,” Eli answered angrily. “But once I do everything you say, I’ll see to it that both them bastards lay dead, one way or the other.”

  “That’s up to you,” Adam answered. “Now let’s get on with this.”

  “If you’re done conspiring with your pet manservant, what’s say I get to killin’ you, eh?” Rackham shouted. “I ain’t got all day, Canfield!”

  Then he gave Constance another lecherous look.

  “And besides,” he added, “I got other business to attend to after you’re dead.”

  Adam and Eli turned and walked back to their wives. By now both women were crying openly and they desperately begged their men to stop this madness, despite the shame it might bring upon them.

  Adam shook his head.

  “No, my love,” he answered. “I may have been impetuous in this, but my path is set now. If I fall, follow Eli’s orders to the letter.”

  Then he reached out and caressed her cheek.

  “And never forget, my darling,” he said softly, “how fine ye were to me.”

  As Adam and Eli began walking to the gun table, something Adam just said stabbed at Constance’s heart.

  “Were . . .” Constance thought. He said: “ . . . how fine ye were to me.”

  Upon reaching the table, Adam selected one of his pistols then he carefully checked the load. The place where this would happen was already laid out. A sword had been stuck into the ground nearby, and two more swords, each one ten paces away in opposite directions, had also been shoved into the ground, marking where the combatants would turn and fire. Because all that remained was for the duel to begin, without further ado Adam and Rackham walked to the center sword, whereupon they turned their backs to one another.

  Adam was a crack shot, but this was his first duel. And although he had been in many scrapes during his time at sea, he had never been forced to kill a man. He knew that this must be done, but deep in his heart he wondered whether his nerves would hold, and if his aim would run true.

  “At long last,” Rackham whispered over one shoulder, “I’m going to get a taste of that pretty wife of yours.”

  Adam cocked his pistol then pointed it straight up into the air, as did Rackham.

  “I’ll see you in hell,” he said quietly.

  Rackham smiled again.

  “You first . . .”

  Eli Jackson and Yancy Kilgoyle came to stand side by side before the gun table. Kilgoyle turned and looked at Jackson.

  “Would you like to do the honors?” he asked snidely.

  Eli shot a steely glare at Kilgoyle.

  “No,” he answered. “This is your sort of thing, not mine. But no matter what happens, I’m gonna kill you sure. Maybe not today, you bastard, or even tomorrow. But in the end, I’m gonna wear your guts as a necktie.”

  Kilgoyle only laughed.

  “Then let’s get on with it,” he answered, “ ’cause my itch for your woman is gettin’ stronger by the second.”

  Kilgoyle turned and looked at the two combatants.

  “On my command,” he said, “you will march one pace at a time toward your respective swords, where you will then turn and fire at will. Moreover, it has been decided that this will be a fight to the death. Does each of you agree to these terms?”

  “I do,” Adam answered.

  “Gladly,” Rackham said.

  “Very well, then,” Eli replied.

  The next few seconds were the longest of Adam’s life. Everything seemed to occur in slow motion; the singing of the birds was lengthened, the clouds passed overhead more languidly, and the offshore breeze magically softened to a mere caress. Had the circumstances been different, he would have welcomed all of it. But such was not the case, because one of them was about to die.

  Then Kilgoyle said the words.

  “On my count, you may commence walking!”

  As Kilgoyle counted out the paces, each man marched diligently toward his impaled sword. At the count of ten, Rackham and Adam swiveled quickly, took aim and fired.

  Her heart in her throat, Constance watched as the pistol muzzles flashed and gunpowder smoke swirled about the two combatants. She watched in horror as Rackham’s ball hit Adam squarely in the left side, spinning him around and down onto the ground. Constance was about to run to Adam when Kilgoyle’s voice rang out again.

  “No!” he shouted. “It has been agreed that no quarter, nor aid, shall be given! Now get back to your place, woman!”

  Seeing Adam bleeding and suffering was tearing Constance’s heart out, but she had no choice. With tears running uncontrollably down her cheeks, on trembling legs she walked back to again stand alongside Emily.

  Adam agonizingly came to his feet. He put one hand inside his shirt, and when he withdrew it, it was covered with blood. Even so, he managed to stagger back over to the gun table and put down his weapon.

  Rackham was already there, gloatingly checking the load in his next pistol. He waited until Adam looked at him, then he made a show of glaring lecherously at Constance.

  “One more ball,” he said Adam. “I only need to put one more ball into you, and then I get to put myself into her.”

  After selecting another of his pistols, Adam glared hotly at Rackham through his pain.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said.

  “And just what, pray tell, might that be?”

  “Your ball found the wrong shoulder,” Adam said. “And my gun arm still wants you.”

  Yet again the two men went to stand back to back at the single sword impaled into the grass. By now Adam could barely stand, and he wavered from side to side.

  Steady on, he said to himself. Whatever happens, this will be your last shot and it has to count, or else . . .

  Once again Kilgoyle began calling out the paces. Adam staggered along to the count as best he could, desperately hoping that he would not fall. At last the two men re
ached the count of ten, whereupon they turned and fired.

  Yet again, Constance watched in horror as the two gun muzzles flashed and acrid gunpowder smoke filled the air. But this time Rackham missed and Adam prevailed, the ball from his gun striking Rackham squarely over his right eye. Rackham was literally lifted backward off his feet and thrown some distance to the ground, dead where he lay.

  At once Adam did his best to hurry back to the gun table, where he dropped his spent weapon and picked up another fresh pistol. He quickly cocked the pistol and placed the muzzle squarely against Kilgoyle’s forehead. Eli immediately approached Adam and took hold of him, helping him to remain standing.

  “Eli . . .” Adam said breathlessly.

  “Yes, sir . . .” Eli answered. “I’m here for you . . .”

  Adam looked Kilgoyle squarely in the eyes. He briefly pointed his pistol at the body of Jack Rackham then he quickly reinstated it squarely against Kilgoyle’s cranium.

  “Now, then,” Adam said to Kilgoyle. “You and my man here are going to pick up that worthless corpse and tie him across his empty saddle. And then you are going to leave. If you so much as darken my door again, I will shoot you on sight. Do you understand me, you dumb bastard?”

  Shaking nearly beyond control, Kilgoyle nodded stupidly.

  “Then get to it . . .” Adam said.

  When Adam started to falter, Emily and Constance took him into their arms and gently laid him down upon the grass.

  Adam looked up at Constance and gave her a weak smile.

  “Emily can tend to me for now, my love,” he said. “Go and get a pistol from Eli, and then point it directly at Kilgoyle while they load Rackham’s body onto his horse. If Kilgoyle so much as breathes wrong, shoot him.”

  As much as Constance wanted to stay with him, she knew that she must do as he ordered.

  “I will, husband,” she said.

  But just as Constance accepted one of the pistols from Eli, she suddenly felt her head start to spin. The feeling became stronger and stronger, until she began losing consciousness. Soon everything around her began to melt into nothingness, and . . .

  CRYING ALOUD, Constance awakened with start. At once she curled into a ball, the way a little child might do after having a terrible nightmare. Covered with sweat and breathing heavily, she frantically looked about herself to find that she was back in Seaside’s dining room, lying atop Garrett’s rumpled sleeping bag.

  The fire she had set in the hearth earlier this evening was little more than embers now, telling her that she had been gone for some time. As if it might somehow grant her a modicum of safety, she skidded across the floor to the far corner and pulled her knees up tight against her chest, sobbing.

  She would remain that way until dawn ascended over the Atlantic.

  Chapter 16

  “I don’t mean to pry, honey,” Dale Richmond said to his wife, Virginia. “And I’m not asking you to betray any confidences. But I do have a question for you about Garrett.”

  The Richmonds were enjoying their first cups of coffee before making breakfast. They loved these mornings together, and for as long as Dale could remember, he had asked the same Sunday morning question of himself: Am I feeling religious today, or merely spiritual?

  If the answer was “religious,” he went to church. And if the answer was “spiritual,” he stayed home and made a big breakfast with his wife. He would then retire to the couch, where he reclined with Freckles at his feet and read the Sunday paper from beginning to end. Lately, the spiritual answer had been winning out over the religious one.

  After taking another sip of coffee, Virginia put down her cup and looked into Dale’s eyes. She wasn’t sure what he was getting at, but she suspected that it might have something to do with Garrett’s private conversation with her. Although she was hesitant about discussing it, she hadn’t entered into any sort of professional relationship with Garrett. That said, there was no issue, save for that of any mother questioning whether to reveal her child’s innermost thoughts.

  The unsettled nature of her gaze was not lost on Dale.

  “What?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘what’?” Virginia asked. “If you have a question for me about Garrett, just ask it.”

  Dale shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m sort of worried about him,” he said. “The other day when we were out hunting he asked me several rather cosmic questions, none of which I answered well, I’m afraid. For better or worse, I got the impression that he was doing some real soul-searching. Then again, he’s got a lot on his plate just now, and it could’ve been nothing more than that.”

  Dale reached out and put one hand atop Virginia’s.

  “I’m just wondering if you’ve seen a change in him,” he said. “I know I have.”

  At first, Virginia hesitated. But she and Dale had never kept secrets from each other, and this was no time to start. Besides, she was rather concerned about Garrett too. Over the next ten minutes she explained her conversation with him. While sipping his coffee from time to time, Dale listened attentively. When Virginia finished, he let go a long sigh.

  “Good Lord,” he said. “That was certainly some dream. So you’re the shrink . . . can you tell me what it means?”

  “I think his subconscious was trying to create his perfect dream girl,” she said. “And as I told Garrett, the fact that she seemed to be straight out of the antebellum period and that she desperately needed his help only added to her allure.”

  Thinking, Dale went to the refrigerator and produced a carton of jumbo eggs.

  “Is scrambled okay?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “This is what we get for having such willful children, Ginnie,” he said as he cracked four eggs into a mixing bowl. “But Garrett is especially stubborn, and we both know where that came from.”

  Virginia snorted out a short laugh.

  “Your side of the family of course,” she said.

  “Yeah, right,” Dale answered. “What is it you used to say to your clients when they were telling whoppers? ‘It’s your dream, so make it as big as you want.’ ”

  Virginia laughed.

  “You remember that one, eh?” she answered. “I’m duly impressed.”

  Dale went back to the refrigerator and retrieved some smoked bacon, which he unwrapped on the cutting board. The moment the familiar scent hit the air, Freckles bounded up from her dog bed and began whining plaintively.

  “Not yet, girl,” Dale said. “But once it’s cooked, if there’s any left over, it’s all yours.”

  As if she were actually answering him, she let go a happy bark.

  “How the hell does she always seem to understand you?” Virginia asked. “It’s like the two of you can communicate, or something.”

  Dale smiled as he pulled another frying pan from the cupboard, placed it on the range, and then set the burner on medium.

  “It’s all about the bond between man and dog,” he said. Then he laughed a little. “Being a woman, you wouldn’t understand.”

  Virginia rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah, that must be it,” she answered. “We women just never learned to speak ‘dog.’ ”

  Virginia watched lovingly as Dale began frying the bacon. Their marriage had been a long and wonderful one, and they were looking forward to the remaining years. She felt better now after telling Dale of her conversation with Garrett. And because of that, she decided that turnabout was fair play.

  “Okay, buster,” Virginia announced. “I’ve shown you mine. Now show me yours.”

  Dale turned around and looked at her quizzically.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” he said, “I’m in the middle of cooking breakfast, and this is not the time to play ‘doctor,’ even though I am one. But if you’re still interested later on . . .”

  Virginia laughed.

  “No, dummy,” she answered. “I mean your conversation with Garrett.”

  “Ah,” Dale said. “Now I get
it. Oh well, a boy can still dream.”

  Dale swiveled back around and started turning the bacon.

  “His questions were largely metaphysical,” he answered. “He wanted to know if I believed in the hereafter, reincarnation, and that sort of thing. Like I said before, I got the impression that he was doing some soul-searching, and that he wanted my guidance. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help, though. Does any of that reflect in his conversation with you?”

  “No, not really,” Virginia answered. “Then again, a few days transpired between my conversation and yours, so maybe my answers influenced his questions to you. But there’s a bigger issue here, Dale.”

  “Which is?”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to renovate an old house and then live in it. As a matter of fact, my guess is that when it’s done, it will be absolutely charming. That’s not the point. What concerns me are his motives. It’s almost as if he is so obsessed with the past that he really wants to live there. And if that obsession becomes strong enough, then it’s unhealthy. He’s already stretched pretty thin, and now his preoccupation with restoring the house isn’t helping. Plus, when I spoke to him I got the impression that he had more to tell me, but he didn’t for some reason. That’s not like him, and the more I think about it, the more it all worries me. It’s almost like that old house actually has some weird power over him.”

  Dale placed four slices of whole wheat bread into the toaster then he poured another cup of coffee before returning to his chair. As he sat there thinking, Virginia could see the concern registering on his face.

  “What is it?” she asked gently.

  Dale sighed and looked into her eyes.

  “Ginnie,” he asked, “do we have a son who’s in trouble?”

  Thinking, she worriedly rubbed her forehead.

  “I only wish I knew.”

  Chapter 17

  Garrett was still sitting on his balcony when the sun came up. The alcohol had eventually calmed him, but not so much that he couldn’t function. He then cleaned up, changed his clothes, and left for Seaside in search of answers.

  While driving, he still agonized over whether to tell Constance about his “flashback.” They had previously vowed to tell each other everything, but this seemed a special circumstance. If the nature of his experience had been less intimate, there would be no doubt. But as things stood, he didn’t know what to do. He was now experiencing the same sort of phenomena as was Constance, and that realization disturbed him to his core.