Charon's Crossing

"You needn't worry," he said. "I'm not about to confuse you with Cat again."

The air was chilly with the onset of evening; the sun was dipping towards the sea. The waves pounding against the shore seemed to echo the beat of his own heart.

It was the perfect setting for his story, and he began it quickly, without preliminaries.

He told Kathryn of his first meeting with Cat and of how he had been entranced by her, and of the subsequent, secret encounters that had seemed so romantic; of how Cat had refused to let him declare his intentions to her father.

"She told me that she had already tried to discuss modern ideas about love and marriage with him in the abstract," he said, his voice low, "and that he had chastised her, calling her thoughts stuff and nonsense bred by the revolution on the Continent. But she assured me that she'd gradually been winning him over and that she would tell me the instant she sensed his willingness to accept me as her suitor."

Matthew gave a short laugh, turned his back to the cliffs and stood staring out at the sea.

"I was such a fool. I believed her. Hell, why wouldn't I? I was besotted with love. I would have done anything for her." He took a deep breath. "And, eventually, I did."

"Perhaps Cat was bored with her life, perhaps she had done the same thing before. I only know that it was all a game. And it would have been a harmless one, with me the only loser... if something had not happened which would change the lives of everyone involved."

He began to walk along the shore, his steps long and steady. Kathryn kept pace with him. He glanced at her from time to time as he told her his story, watching the play of emotions on her face, the skepticism warring with pity and then both losing the battle and giving way to amazement that he could have been so foolish.

But he spared himself nothing. He knew now that he was telling the tale as much for himself as for her. It was time to say aloud the things he had been thinking for what might as well have been an eternity.

Confession was good for the soul, or so they said, which was almost as terrifying as it was amusing considering that he no longer knew whether a soul was something he possessed.

At last, he reached the point in his narrative that would be the most difficult. He paused and turned again to the sea.

"Sometimes," he said in a low voice, "sometimes, I almost wish I had never been at Charon's Crossing the night Lord Russell and his cohorts schemed to start the war before the Americans knew it had been declared. But I was, and I heard them plan to capture for the Crown all the American ships lying at anchor in the harbor."

Only the ugliest bit of the tale remained now. Matthew stared blindly across the sea to where the sun lay dying, bleeding crimson rays into the black water, and he shuddered.

"I know what you overheard," Kathryn said quietly, "and of your hope to rescue Catherine before the Americans made their move."

He nodded. "Yes. I know you read it."

"But I don't know what happened. The entries ended so abruptly..."

Matthew choked out a laugh. "As did all else on that night, Kathryn."

"That was... it was the night you—you—"

"Don't be shy, madam. Yes, it was the night I died, the night I lost everything, not just my life but..."

"But the woman you loved?" The simple words were hard to get out. Why should they have been? Why did they leave such a knot in her breast?

"Loved?" He laughed again, the sound bitter. "I never loved Cat. I know that now. I was just too besotted to admit the truth. What I felt was lust, plain and simple." He bent, scooped up a handful of fine, white sand and let the breeze take it as it sifted slowly through his fingers. "It was the mystery I loved. The furtive meetings that held within them the tang of danger, the sly glances exchanged behind her father's back... Oh, Cat was good at what she did. She was as skilled at the art of deception as she was at the art of teasing a man until his body ruled his head, and I was fool enough to be taken in by it."

"What happened that night, Matthew? No one on the island says anything about you... about you dying in an American attack."

He laughed. "Nay, how could they? There was no attack."

Kathryn licked her lips. "What they say is... is that you were killed for piracy."

Anger flooded through him, rose like a foul medicine in his throat and flooded his mouth with the taste of bile. He swung towards her, the setting sun painting him in blood-red tongues of flame, and grabbed hold of her shoulders.

"Who says such a thing? Tell me, and I will stuff his lies down his throat until he chokes on them!"

"The islanders talk, Matthew. It's all old, meaningless gossip."

"Meaningless, to defame me?" His mouth twisted. "I have defamed myself enough without anyone adding to it. Russell must have concocted such a tale. It would have kept Catherine's skirts clean of scandal, but how could anyone have believed it? There were witnesses that night, people who must have seen, and heard, everything."

"What?" Kathryn whispered. Her eyes sought his in the thickening darkness. "What did they see? What could have been so awful that it turned you into... I don't know much about—about spirits, but surely, it isn't usual to—to end up trapped in the place where you..."