Jade Star (Star Quartet 4)

“My friends never give up. It’s like a contest now. They come up with all sorts of ploys to make me cough up the facts, and I sidestep.” He turned around and leaned back against the railing. “God, I’m tired. And a doctor is supposed to be able to cure anything and everything. As if I could do anything about seasickness!”

“I would have helped you if you’d just asked me,” Jules said.

“Thank you, but it took all my resolution not to throw up, given the stench in the cabins. No reason for you to turn green, and you would have, I guarantee it.”

“I never get sick,” Jules said with all the confidence of a young person who thought of illness as weakness.

“I hope you never do,” Saint said. There would probably not be a better opportunity, he thought, silent for few moments. “Jules,” he said very abruptly, hoping to throw her off balance, “your friend Kanola—did Wilkes’s sailors rape her?”

She stiffened as if he’d shouted an obscenity in her ear. She heard Kanola screaming, saw that awful man with that thing sticking out from his belly, and tried to shut off the awful memory. “I don’t know,” she managed after a moment. “Wilkes dragged me to his cabin, said he would protect me.” She wanted clarification of exactly what rape was, but was too embarrassed to ask.

Thank God, he thought, she hadn’t seen it. He had absolutely no doubt that Kanola had been raped, repeatedly.

“Then what happened?”

His voice was matter-of-fact, and she tired to keep herself calm and in control, but it was difficult. “She managed to escape the men and jumped overboard. She couldn’t have made it to shore. We were too far away.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, wishing there were something a bit more he could say. He continued calmly, as if discussing the present sunny weather, “I know that Wilkes drugged you once before you arrived in San Francisco, and that he touched you and kissed you.”

“No!”

“You told me that, Jules.”

“No,” she said again, hating the dank chill that crept over her flesh at his words.

“I don’t want what happened to eat at you, Jules. I don’t want you to bury it deep. It truly helps to tell a friend. Tell me what he did to you. Then you can forget it.”

She jerked away from him and snarled at him, her voice vicious, “What do you care what he did to me? You want to hear all the marvelous details? Friend, ha!”

“What did he do, Jules?” he asked again, not allowing her to anger him. He heard the remembered fear in her voice and knew that her spate of words was bravado—no, more like protection, self-protection.

“I think,” she said finally, getting a hold on herself, “that I should begin to call you Saint. That’s how you’re acting, of course. A saint—so full of human caring and kindness, so anxious to make the poor little creature forget her nightmare. You can go to hell, Saint!”

Saint was not a violent man. In fact, once, when he was only fourteen years old, he’d gotten into a fight with another boy and broken his jaw with one blow. He’d been appalled. Now, he thought, looking at her set face from beneath lowered lashes, he wouldn’t mind at all breaking his rule. A good thrashing would, at the very least, make him feel a hell of a lot better. He’d said nothing more, for there was nothing to say.

Jules said now, pointing toward a small knot of native women on the dock, all of them dressed garishly, “There are the prostitutes. But I don’t see my father or any of his friends—many times he goes to the dock when a whaler comes in and rants and screams about Satan, and evil, and disease.”

“I don’t know much about the Satan or evil part,” Saint said calmly, ignoring the bitter irony in her voice, “but I sure as hell know about the disease.” He saw that the two sailors who were at the oars of the tender were already waving and shouting toward the women.

There were about a half-dozen other ships, most of them whalers. The long, narrow dock was bustling with local people hawking wares, and here and there in the distance Saint could see a black frock coat. Either a businessman or a preacher, he thought, or one of those useless diplomats from Oahu.

“Come,” he said, and helped her out of the tender. Her hand was cold and clammy, and he added gently, “I’ll be with you, Jules.”

She allowed him to assist her, then pulled her hand away. They walked into Wharf Street. Saint glanced briefly toward the fort, built in the early 1830’s and now used mostly as a prison. It was looking a bit th

e worse for wear, he thought. Dwight Baldwin’s home looked as neat as a pin, set back from Front Street, its paint fresh, its garden neat and green. He and Baldwin, a Protestant medical missionary, had been good friends during Saint’s stay in Lahaina. He started to ask Jules about him, when she suddenly pulled off her bonnet and shook her head. Her bright flame hair drew several glances, then a loud gasp.

“Juliana! My God, it is you!”

Saint turned to see a young man staring at Jules as if looking at a ghost. It was John Bleecher, the planter’s son. He wasn’t pimple-faced now, Saint noticed. Indeed, he was a handsome young man, well-formed, open-faced, and at present, pale as death.

Jules was very still. She moved closer to Saint, saying only, “Hello, John. How have you been?”

John roused himself. “Saint? Dr. Morris? Yes, it is you. Juliana, what happened? Everyone has believed you dead. Kanola’s body . . . well, it washed up on shore, and since you had been seen with her, we all thought—”

“Yes, I know,” Jules said, interrupting him in a curt voice. “She’s dead, but I’m not. I . . . well, I survived.”

“I don’t understand,” John said helplessly, wishing he could fling himself upon the pale, beautiful girl he’d wanted for two years now. But there was something terribly wrong. What was she doing with Saint Morris? He’d been gone for a long time now, five years.