Once and Always (Sequels 1)

“You’re wrong,” Captain Farrell said with gentle finality. “Jason has needed a women like you since the day he was born. He needs you to heal wounds that are deep, to teach him how to let himself love and be loved in return. If you knew more about him, you’d understand why I say that.” Getting up, Captain Farrell walked over to a small table and picked up a bottle. He poured some of its contents into two glasses, then handed one to her.

“Will you tell me about him?” Victoria asked as he went to the fireplace and stood looking down at her.

“Yes.”

Victoria glanced at the potent-smelling whiskey he’d handed her and started to put it down on the table.

“If you want to hear about Jason, I suggest you drink that first,” Captain Farrell said grimly. “You’re going to need it.”

Victoria took a sip of the burning stuff, but the burly Irishman lifted his glass and gulped down half the liquid in it as if he, too, needed it.

“I’m going to tell you things about Jason that only I know, things he obviously doesn’t want you to know or he would have told you. By telling you these things, I’m betraying Jason’s trust, and until this moment, I was one of the few people close to him who had never betrayed him in some way or another. He is like a son to me, Victoria, so it hurts me to do this; yet I feel it is imperative that you understand him.”

Victoria slowly shook her head. “Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me anything, Captain. Lord Fielding and I are at outs most of the time, but I would not like to see either of you hurt by the things you tell me.”

A smile flickered briefly across Captain Farrell’s grim features. “If I thought you might use what I tell you as a weapon against him, I’d keep my silence. But you won’t do that. There is a gentle strength about you, a compassion and understanding that I witnessed firsthand last night when I saw you mingling with the villagers. I watched you laughing with them and putting them at their ease, and I thought then that you were a wonderful young woman—and the perfect wife for Jason. I still think that.”

He drew a long breath and began. “The first time I saw your husband, I was in Delhi. It was many years ago, and I was working for a wealthy Delhi merchant named Napal who shipped goods back and forth from India all over the world. Napal not only owned the goods he traded, he owned four ships that carried them across the seas. I was first mate on one of those ships.

“I’d been away for six months on an extremely profitable voyage, and when we returned to port, Napal invited the captain and myself to come to his home for a small, private celebration.

“It’s always hot in India, but it seemed even hotter that day, especially because I got lost trying to find Napal’s home. Somehow I ended up in a maze of alleyways and when I finally worked my way out of them, I found myself in a squalid little square filled with filthy, ragged Indians—the poverty there is beyond imagination. At any rate, I looked around, hoping against hope to find someone I could speak to in French or English in order to ask directions.

“I saw a small crowd of people gathered at the end of the square, watching something—I couldn’t see what—and I went over to them. They were standing outside a building, watching what was going on inside it. I started to turn back, to try to retrace my steps, when I saw a crude wooden cross nailed up outside the building. Thinking it was a church and that I might find someone I could speak to in my own language, I pushed through the crowd and went in. I elbowed my way past a hundred ragged Indians toward the front of the place, where I could hear a woman screaming like a fanatic, in English, about lust and the vengeance of the Almighty.

“I finally got to where I could see, and there she was, standing on this wooden scaffold with a little boy beside her. She was pointing to the child and screaming that he was the devil. She shrieked that he was ‘the seed of lust’ and ‘the product of evil,’ and then she jerked the child’s head up and I saw his face.

“I was stunned when I realized the boy was white, not Indian. She shouted at everyone to ‘Look upon the devil and see what vengeance the Lord takes’; then she turned the boy around to show the ‘vengeance of the Lord.’ When I saw his back, I thought I would be sick.”

Captain Farrell swallowed audibly. “Victoria, the little boy’s back was black and blue from his last beating and it was scarred from God knows how many other beatings. From the looks of it, she’d just finished beating him in front of her ‘congregation’—the Indians don’t object to that sort of barbaric cruelty.

His face contorted as he continued. “While I stood there, the demented hag screamed at the child to get down on his knees, to pray for forgiveness from the Lord. He looked her right in the eye, not saying anything, but he didn’t move, and she brought her whip down across his shoulders with enough force to send a grown man to his knees. The child went down to his. ‘Pray, you devil,’ she screamed at the kneeling child, and she hit him again. The child said nothing, he just looked straight ahead; and it was then I saw his eyes . . . His eyes were dry. There wasn’t a single tear in them. But there was pain there—God, they were filled with such pain!”

Victoria shuddered with pity for the unknown child, wondering why Captain Farrell was telling her this hideous story before telling her about Jason.

Captain Farrell’s face twisted. “I’ll never forget the torment in his eyes,” he whispered hoarsely, “or how green they seemed at that moment.”

Victoria’s glass crashed to the floor and shattered. She shook her head wildly, trying to deny what he was telling her. “No,” she cried in anguish. “Oh, please, no—”

Seemingly oblivious to her horror, Captain Farrell continued, staring straight ahead, lost in the memories. “The little boy prayed then, he clasped his hands together and recited, ‘I kneel to the Lord and ask his forgiveness.’ The woman made him say it louder, over and over again, and when she was satisfied, she hauled him to his feet. She pointed at the dirty Indians and told him to beg the righteous for their forgiveness. Then she handed him a little bowl. I stood watching as the little boy went into the crowd to kneel at the feet of her ‘congregation’ and kiss the hems of their dirty robes and ‘beg them for their forgiveness.’ ”

“No,” Victoria moaned, wrapping her arms around her and closing her eyes as she tried to blot out the image of a little boy with curly black hair and familiar green eyes being subjected to such demented evil.