The Locket Ch 1

Chapter One

Oregon Coast,1894

Bone-weary from a hard day at sea, Misha trudged up the long mud-rutted road to the boarding house that sat on top a hill less than a mile outside Mist Harbor, Oregon. A thick, cold mist hovered close to the ground wetting everything: the rhododendrons that grew wild, the azaleas that lined the cement walkway to the front porch, and the saw grass that grew easily in the sandy soil. Misha paused a moment to push back a lock of hair that repeatedly fell across his brow and into his eyes.

The land was windswept and salt battered, yet he enjoyed the salt-taste of the air and the swooping sea birds as well as the playful sea animals. He loved the way the trees bent to the power of the wind and found a way to survive despite the brutality of the elements.

His purpose here was short lived, he reminded himself. He didn’t intend to find himself attached to these parts in any way.

He smelled of a hard days work. The lingering aroma of sweat and Chinook salmon filled his nostrils. It was not a scent he had any use for, but for the time being the job on the fishing boat gave him a reason for staying in the small coastal town. Right now he couldn’t wait to submerse himself in a hot bath, wash the stench from his body, and ease his stiff, strained muscles.

The sea had always been one of his favorite places. But fishing?

By God no, he’d just as soon relax and watch the sails billow on a clipper as the majestic ship rounded the horn or stand at the tiller with the wind whistling around him. He’d even rather battle a hurricane off the Bermudas.

Blending in with the people who lived in this small coastal village had been imperative.

The quest he’d undertaken had led him straight to Miss Ariel Cameron’s boarding house in Mist Harbor, and there the trail stopped. Thinking about Ariel set his nerves on edge.

Ariel was willow thin, femininely delicate, and hardly capable of the atrocities he’d set out to avenge less than a year ago. Yet the evidence he’d uncovered had sent him here, to her home. The name he’d followed had been her name. The men he’d followed had landed in Mist Harbor more than once, her father one of them.

He walked up the immaculately kept steps to the house and opened the door to the screened in porch.

"Misha," the captain boomed out a welcome. "Fine weather we’re havin’ now. Just right for the salmon runs."

The rocker squeaked as the captain moved back and forth in the wicker chair.

"Just right," Misha acknowledged and stepped through the next door to the parlor. A blast of heat met him as he nodded his head in polite recognition to the other borders. In a pale blue day dress, Ariel moved with a slight limp through the hallway and disappeared into one of the first floor rooms. Even though she seemed to favor one leg, the sway of her hips enticed all of Misha's senses.

He didn’t understand the feeling but in a way no other woman had touched him, she beckoned to him. Her amber colored eyes were wide and when she smiled, they glistened and shimmered, reminding him of the bronze mosques in Constantinople when the sun beat upon them. Miss Ariel Cameron was unique--unconventional--and she fascinated him. She was the key to his revenge as well as his salvation.

He walked past the borders sitting in the parlor, through the kitchen, and into the back room. Until he stepped inside his own room, he watched Ariel flit like a beautiful butterfly from one room to the next, always busy, always with something in her arms.

Closing his eyes, he let his mind wander to happier times. He wasn’t sure he liked himself. He had become a cold, calculating man. A man who would stop at nothing to see justice served.

No, the Misha Petrovich who set his haversack on the floor then sat in the one chair in the tiny bedroom he now called his own was very different from the man who had come to America two years ago seeking adventure with his best friend Alexi Popov.

From the moment he stepped foot on the docks in Mist Harbor, his heart tightened. He vowed the men responsible for killing his parents and sister after pillaging his ancestral estate, would pay dearly.

Reaching the end of the trail he followed for almost a year, he had never expected to find a fragile, beautiful woman. He had never expected a female to have played any type of role in his family’s tragedy. Nevertheless, the trail stopped on her doorstep.

"Your bath is ready." The lady of his thoughts whisper soft voice floated in through the crack in his bedroom door. The sound left him thinking of other more pleasurable pursuits than revenge. He wanted satisfaction. He wanted to bring the perpetrators to their knees and most of all he wanted to ruin them, make their lives a living hell.

Indeed, with Ariel he could find a different kind of satisfaction, one that would leave her reputation shredded, her pride demolished, and her heart shattered.

"Yes, thank you," he answered, rising from the bed and slipping from his sweat-stained shirt. He stretched, unfastened the belt buckle then let his pants slip to the floor. Kicking them free, he sat down to take his boots off.

"I’ve left towels by the door." Her embarrassment registered and he laughed softly. His new plan for restitution was suddenly reinforced, taking root, and spreading like a wildfire through his body.

He settled into the tub. The hot water felt seductive, the pine scented soap an aphrodisiac to his battered soul. Too bad his legs hung over the edge of the tub. Thoughts of a certain bathing room his friend Alexi had introduced him to in the Crimea came to mind as well as a certain little Russian servant girl who had taken particular delight soaping his back. He sighed and settled himself deeper into the water, wishing Miss Ariel would soap his back for him.

Oh, yes, in time she would do a great deal more for him than soap his back. A minute twinge of guilt settled in the outskirts of his empty, broken heart and then it too passed. He could no more allow himself to feel pity for the woman who had something or perhaps everything to do with the loss of his family than he could let that same feeling stop him from pursuing his plans to their bitter end.

"Mr. Smith?"

Once again she called him, stirring him, heating him, and suggesting so much more with a voice as sweet as summer ripened berries.

"Do you need anything?"

His hardened, cynical thoughts did not bear repeating and while he silently cursed his unruly body and cautioned himself to move slowly, he told her, "No, everything is fine."

"You sure now?"

He detected a hint of excitement and the scent of freesia. He wondered if she would be at the dance this evening. He wondered, too, if she could dance. While she limped very slightly, she always favored her right leg. He’d never seen her walk on the beach, but several times he’d caught her wistfully gazing at the ocean from the stair steps down to the sands below.

"Unless you’d like to wash my back--" He smiled to himself then let the words hang in the air while he waited for a reaction. The tiny gasp that came seconds after made him shift uncomfortably in the now tepid water.

"Sir?" she questioned.

He could imagine her small pointed chin lifting several notches in the air and her back stiffening.

"It was only a thought," he told her, trying to take the edge off his voice.

"Very well. I’ll leave you to finish." Her words sounded tense and strained.

He heard the rustle of skirts and petticoats. When she was gone, all that lingered was freesia and his unsatisfied body.

"Ah, well, you can’t blame a man for trying." And for a moment more he leaned his head back on the ivory rim and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the candle was burning low and the dining room was brimming with noise. His bath was cold. And a plate of food sat on a three legged stool by the tub, a note attached.

Mr. Smith,

I didn’t want to wake you. So I had the captain leave the dinner plate. I hope it doesn’t grow too cold. We are all off to the dance in an hour so if the house is too quiet when you wake, you’ll know where we are.

Sweet dreams,
Miss Ariel

Sweet dreams--yes they’d been sweet and Miss Cameron had been the leading performer.

With no interruptions, he finished washing and wrapped a towel around his waist. Taking the dinner plate with him and eating as he walked, he removed himself from the bathing area. Naked, he settled into bed with a smile on his face thinking of the dance and how he would use this social opportunity to begin his sojourn into Miss Ariel’s heart and her life. Perhaps satisfaction would come.

It was time to go to work. Quickly he rinsed himself off and dressed.
Whistling a tune he learned on his grandmother’s lap, he left the boarding house and headed for the dance.

***

Earlier that same afternoon Ariel Cameron was having second thoughts about attending the dance. She’d never been quite so bold. Usually she was very cautious. Rarely did she attend public dances, but the new man at the boarding house made her spin dreams and caused her head to whirl. She didn’t know why she’d set her sights so high, but Misha Smith had stolen her heart the very second she’d seen him walking up the path to her home, his seaman’s bag slung over one shoulder.

Misha Smith looked like her vision of a god sent from the heavens above. Tall and broad of shoulder, the sight sent tantalizing shivers down her spine. His gray eyes were rimmed with a dark sapphire blue.

Gorgeous eyes, beguiling eyes, she thought as she tapped her ribbon-decked cane on the hardwood floor.

She stood in her bedroom, staring at the mirror and thinking she might be making the biggest mistake of her life.

Her appearance at the best of times could not match Misha’s handsome good-looks. She didn’t resemble a goddess, nor did she possess fashionable good-looks.

While she tried desperately to push her fears and memories aside, her father’s pain-filled words still rang a death knell in her thoughts.

Useless cripple.

She didn’t want to think of herself as a cripple or useless. She forced the damning words to the back of her mind and stiffened her shoulders. In truth she could do most anything she set her mind to.

The door to her bedroom burst open. "Land sakes, girl, but you’re a beauty. You look like a goddess ready to descend from the heavens." Helen, the captain’s wife, stepped back and eyed Ariel critically. Helen held her pipe in one hand, her gaze raking over Ariel, her eyebrows furrowed tightly.

Ariel smiled at the elderly lady. "Truly, you don’t have to be nice. I know who I am and what I look like. I’m too thin, my neck is too long, and my eyes are set too far apart."

"Pshaw!" Helen cackled then inhaled long and hard on her pipe. "You have a tiny waist, one a man could put his hands around. Your skin looks like fragile porcelain and your eyes shine like rich amber. Don’t complain about your looks to me. I’d trade with you any day of the week." Helen cackled once more then snorted. "Now then, how are you planning to get to the dance? You can’t walk all that way. You’d be too tired to dance."

After three days of vacillating about her decision to go to the dance or not to go, Ariel was tense, excited and--much to her distaste--very frightened. Helen had spent endless hours arguing the merits of attending the social event. Though Ariel repeatedly told the older woman she might be able to watch the other people but not only couldn’t she dance, she didn’t know how to dance. If her dream came true and the handsome Misha Smith asked her to dance, she was horribly afraid she’d humiliate herself.

Still she knew if she didn’t emerge from her shell soon, she might never have another opportunity to fall in love and find a special man. Despite her bad leg, she had dreams and wishes she’d all but given up hope of having fulfilled. When visions of her future opened up in front of her, all she saw was a lonely, empty hole in her heart.

"I’m afraid I will have to walk," she sighed unhappily and looking at the fragile slippers Helen had bade her wear, she knew her answer would simply not do. She also knew that walking the distance to the barn where the dance was to be held would be both painful and tiring.

Helen waived her notion aside. "Nonsense! You’ll ride with the captain and myself," she told Ariel sternly.

Once again Ariel stared at herself in the mirror, mentally rearranging her hair to look more sophisticated. "Of course," she said, dreamily. "Do you think I should wear my hair up?"

"Absolutely not," the indomitable woman told her. "Leave it down. You have beautiful hair and it simply won’t do to hide those gorgeous silken strands on top of your head. Now are you about ready? We don’t want the fiddles to start without us."

Suddenly feeling jitters that made her terribly uneasy, Ariel looked to Helen, her voice trembling, "I can’t go." She turned from the mirror, and when she tried to stand, she sat right back down on the chair, her knees so wobbly she knew this was all a huge mistake.

Helen inhaled then blew the smoke out slowly while tapping her foot on the floor. The silence between them was an unbridgeable gap Ariel didn’t want to cross. She felt nauseous and light headed. Fear strangled the breath from her, but the terror also gave her a good dose of common sense she’d here-to-for been lacking.

As if she were through thinking about the subject, Helen cleared her throat and stared straight at Ariel. "I won’t hear another word like that. You’re all dressed up and I’m not about to let you stay home. Now, I’ll be waiting for you downstairs, and if you’re not standing in the parlor in five minutes, I’ll be sending my man up to this bedroom to haul you down." With that said, Helen left the room.

Studying her reflection in the mirror, Ariel heaved a desperate sigh and tried to smile. "You’re a ninny to even think a man as perfect as Misha Smith would notice you let alone ask you for a dance. If he did ask, do you think he’d want a woman who walked with a limp, a woman who can’t walk down the steps to the beach because she might not have the endurance to walk back? That man could have any woman he wanted and you know that for an absolute fact." She pinched her cheeks wishing she could put a dash more color there.

When she’d seen him dressed in only his towel, he’d nearly stolen her breath. He didn’t know she’d seen him walk from his bedroom to the bathing room. She hadn’t meant to stare, but he’d looked so breathtakingly beautiful she just couldn’t turn away. His shoulders were wide, his legs long and well-muscled, and even though he wore next to nothing, he had an indefinable aura of strength, of unleashed power--restrained, but gathering force--waiting for something. She wished she understood him better. He was so tall, tan, and healthy looking. The tattoo he wore--the rose and the saber--on his shoulder intrigued and fascinated her. Something about the way he walked, the way he moved, his air of bored indifference during any circumstance told her he wasn’t at all like any of the men around here.

"Of course not," she spoke to herself again, still staring into her mirror and biting down on her bottom lip in hopes of attaining more color there, too. "He’s a foreigner." And do you know any other foreigners?

No!

Why on earth did she believe that nonsense? His English was flawless with no trace of an accent, his grammar sound, his manners impeccable. She was more a foreigner than he was. She’d been born in France, in Paris. The thought made her smile, and when she studied her reflection peering back, she decided she wasn’t quite as plain as she’d thought earlier, but she certainly wasn’t the beautiful butterfly Helen described a few minutes ago. Her face was long and slender, her amber eyes too wide in her opinion and her hair while it shone in the sunlight was too fine.

"All right then, chin up. Just go to the dance and enjoy every wonderful moment. If he notices you, then the time spent will be even sweeter. If he asks you to dance, you can respectfully decline."

Or I could say yes.

Ariel practiced. "Yes. Oh, yes," she said, gazing into the mirror.

She picked up the hairbrush and ran it through the length of her hair several times before she was satisfied with the blond curls that cascaded nearly to her waist. Then almost as an after thought, she found a pale blue satin ribbon and wove the shiny length through her hair.

She rose and stepped back. The little sigh she gave her appearance was one of forlorn despair and wishful thinking that with a little luck she might not have appeared quite so plain. Her mother had been beautiful, and her father had once said she looked like her mother.

She wanted so much to have Misha notice her. If he didn’t, she would have to resign herself to a life of spinsterhood, she decided. Because after seeing Misha and dreaming about him, no other man would do.

And now she expected some sort of miracle. She expected him to fall madly in love with her.

Just like every other man she’d met, he treated her with a politely formal yet cool detachment.

He was secretive. So, why did she care so much if he noticed her? Because he’d touched a place in her heart, she told herself.

And yet her instincts cried out to her, beware. Her heart neglected the warnings.

With one last look into the mirror, she left.

.