Forever, For Love Read online

  Forever, For Love

  Becky Lee Weyrich

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1989 by Becky Lee Weyrich

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition July 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-305-2

  Also by Becky Lee Weyrich

  Swan’s Way

  Savannah Scarlett

  Rainbow Hammock

  Captive of Desire

  Sands of Destiny

  The Scarlet Thread

  Once Upon Forever

  Summer Lightning

  Silver Tears

  Tainted Lilies

  Almost Heaven

  Whispers in Time

  Sweet Forever

  Rapture’s Slave

  Gypsy Moon

  Hot Winds from Bombay

  The Thistle and the Rose

  Forever, For Love

  For a special friend, my aunt,

  Vesta Dickerson

  Galveston News, Wednesday, June 10,1981

  Pandora’s Box Recovered!

  A dramatic postscript was added this week to the Historical Preservation Society’s rescue of the fabu­lous Gabriel Castle on Broadway. Saved from the wrecker’s ball by an anonymous eleventh-hour dona tion last year, the great pink marble palace stands as a reminder of the Oleander City’s glory days, a monu­ment to the Sherwood and Gabriel families, and a tribute to architect Nicholas J. Clayton’s fine talents.

  A spokesman for the Castle Museum said at a press conference today: “We have made quite a find. In response to our plea for the return of original furnish­ings that were auctioned several years ago, a distant relation of the Gabriel family wrote the museum from New Orleans that she was sending us a lady’s writing desk. In transit, the piece was damaged slightly, re­vealing a secret drawer which contained Pandora’s Box. The mahogany box, over a hundred years old, is believed to have been owned at one time by Jean Laflite. In later years, Ward Gabriel presented it to Pandora Sherwood.

  “Besides some fifty or so letters, clippings, and mementos from Galveston’s golden years, the box contains two coins of Spanish silver, a lock of hair tied in ribbon, a shell on which has been painted a single rose, and a pair of antique opal earrings. We hope these items will shed new light on the Sherwood-Gabriel family history, so that we may offer our museum visitors an even more complete exhibit.”

  Prologue

  August 27, 1886

  Galveston, Texas

  Ten-year-old Pandora Sherwood huddled in the linen sheets of the strange bed, clutching her pair of white angora kittens tight against the frocked bodice of her nightgown. At this terrifying moment, the wriggling, blue-eyed fur balls seemed her only links to the past. All else had been swept away a week ago this very night.

  When the fierce tropical cyclone roared in over Matagorda Bay, her parents, her friends, her home, the whole town of Indianola vanished on the crest of the storm tide. As if by some whim of destiny, Pandora, her kittens, and her young maidservant, Cassandra, had floated to safety on a deep bureau drawer.

  But why had she been spared? Pandora wondered. To come here to live with strangers, in a strange house, on a strange island? To quake with fear each time the wind blew or the thunder rumbled in the distance? At times like this, in the darkest, loneliest part of the night, Pandora almost wished she had drowned with her mother and father.

  Why hadn’t her parents listened to her? She had warned them of her terrible dream two nights before the storm. But they had dismissed the dream along with all her other premonitions as no more than childish fantasy. They had refused to leave their home, and they had died.

  The full moon, sailing high above Galveston on a sea of storm-tossed clouds, shed eerie patterns of silver and black on the silent landscape below.

  Shadows cast by the lacy wrought-iron trim of the balconies played over the white-painted brick of the Sherwood mansion on Broadway, giving the effect of some grotesque magic lantern show. The whole world seemed distorted, twisted, unreal. And Pandora, wide awake, all alone, and terrified in the bedroom on the second floor of the big, white house, felt herself an integral part of that unreality.

  Pandora was aware of the night air pressing in through her open window. It felt as warm and sticky as blood—the blood of the woman who came in her dreams.

  She tossed restlessly on the bed, fighting the heat, the humidity, and her own subconscious. The dream would come again tonight. She tried to avoid imprisoning sleep. But it was no use. Her lids grew heavy. Once she nodded off, she was powerless over the midnight visitations that had plagued her since earliest childhood.

  Suddenly, the sound of bells could be heard over the distant pulse of the Gulf, filling the quite night. It seemed as if every church bell in the city was clanging a desperate warning… a warning to Pandora alone. This was the way it always began.

  Even when sleep finally overtook her, Pandora tried to shut out the sound, pulling the pillow over her head, hoping to escape the visions sure to come. The effort proved useless. The toll of the bells was the prologue to the usual grisly nocturnal drama. The nightmare would come as surely as the storm that it presaged.

  An instant later, all was total, deafening silence once more. Pandora tensed and moaned softly, waiting for him to appear. Perhaps she would see his face this time. But would she recognize him?

  The sound of his boots came to her clearly. Heavy boots, pacing the hallway outside her door. Then his husky voice, calling, “Darling! Darling, where are you? Hurry, the ship’s waiting. We haven’t much time left.”

  Pandora was certain the man called out to her. She tried desperately to answer him each time she heard his voice. But her attempts to speak brought only frustration and silent weeping as she slept.

  Pandora had mentioned this night visitor to her aunt. But Tabitha Sherwood had only laughed and said, “Well, the bounder’s back, is he? That’s the ghost of Jean Laffite you heard, my dear. He’s haunted this house since the day it was built. Some say he buried treasure on this site and comes back in search of it. I’ve never heard him myself, mind you, but I know he’s here.”

  As certain as her aunt was that the ghost was a part of her house, Pandora was just as convinced that he was her own personal property. She’d heard him many times at her parents’ home in Indianola, before their deaths in the storm, before she came to live with her father’s brother and his wife and their little daughter, Angelica.

  As the man’s voice faded from her dream, another took its place, a child’s voice reciting a singsong nursery rhyme. Pandora relaxed slightly. She knew this apparition. The sad little girl had come a thousand times before, slipping down the chimney or in through a window when no one was watching. She would sit for a time and play cat’s cradle at the hearth, twining the silken thread round and round her chubby fingers. Lovely, dark-haired, sad-eyed Jeannette. Pandora had no idea how she knew the girl’s name. But it seemed to belong to her.

  When Pandora was very young, she had tried to tell her parents about this girl who came to her in the night.

  Her father, with a hopeful look in h
is green eyes, had said to his wife, “You see, my dear, our Pandora’s as normal as can be. She even has a make-believe friend like all children her age.”

  Pandora’s mother had said nothing. She had turned away, tight-lipped and grim, as if she had heard not a word that either her husband or her daughter had spoken. At her mother’s reaction, Pandora had sighed and shrugged and vowed never to mention Jeannette to anyone, not ever again.

  Soon Jeannette began to fade. “Don’t go!” Pandora pleaded in her sleep. But it was no use. Already the little girl on the hearth was losing substance. Pandora could see through her—the painted tiles around the fireplace, the brass tongs and shovel, the last glowing embers in the grate. Then, like a puff of smoke blown by a strong wind, Jeannette vanished completely.

  When she disappeared, so did the bed, the fireplace, the very room where Pandora slept. Suddenly, she found herself high in the air, hovering over Galveston. Miraculously, she had a gull’s eye view of the island. She could see all from east to west, from the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston Bay. Yet everything looked so different. There were no houses on Broadway, no Broadway, in fact. No fluttering palms or fragrant oleanders. The whole place was barren of trees, save for a grove of three small oaks, struggling to sustain their foothold in the sand.

  Soon she began to descend, her eyes focusing on a single scene being played out on the beach. A tall, handsome man with dark, shoulder-length hair was hurrying a woman toward a waiting boat. His arm embraced her shoulders protectively. He wore heavy boots. She was barefoot. When they reached the hot sand of the beach, he swept her up into his arms to carry her the rest of the way. For a moment, he stood motionless, leaning down to press his lips against hers in a long, deep kiss that sent a shiver of pleasure and pain through Pandora. A kiss of farewell, perhaps?

  Then he turned, and they both gazed back at a great red mansion in the distance. Pandora saw tears on the ebony-haired woman’s face and she realized that she was crying, too.

  “It’s over, darling,” the man said in a voice husky with emotion. “But we’ll find another place to be together.”

  The woman leaned her head against his shoulder, clinging to him desperately. “It makes no difference, my love. We’ll always be together now. Nothing else matters.”

  Suddenly, Pandora spotted something that neither the man nor the woman could see—a movement in the grove of oaks. The gleam of a pistol barrel. She tried frantically to call out to them, to warn them. But they ignored her cries.

  “I love you, darling,” the man whispered to the woman in his arms. “I’ll love you until the day I die.”

  “Our love will last longer than that,” the woman assured him. “We’ll love each other through all eternity.”

  And then it happened. The sharp report of a pistol, followed so quickly by a blossom of red blooming at the woman’s breast. The man cried out in anguish and disbelief.

  His lover lay dead in his arms.

  Desperate now, Pandora felt herself reaching out, trying to wipe away the blood, trying to soothe the grieving man. But even as she drew near, the scene faded, dissolving to blackness before her eyes.

  Out of this total void came the nightmare’s final evil, a scene so terrible that Pandora felt herself trembling in anticipation even before it materialized.

  The black nothingness before her closed eyes turned into monstrous waves, driven by cyclone winds. In the midst of the terrible tempest, Pandora saw herself, naked, clinging to a bit of flotsam for her very life. Her bright copper-colored hair flew in the wind and she writhed and screamed in agony as cold rain pelted her body. Time and again, the huge waves slammed against her, trying to sweep her away. She coughed and gasped, half drowned in the deluge. She could feel herself weakening. She could not hold out much longer against the killer storm.

  Ahead of her, she saw long black fingers reaching out for her, ready to tear away her life-saving grip. Then, as she watched, she spied a thin, silver thread spiraling to her, a lifeline from a figure far below. As she drew nearer, she spied a ghostly woman with ebony hair and a bloodless white face.

  “Come, share my love and my grave,” the woman instructed.

  The waves quieted, the wind died, the blackness gave way to a bright, blinding light.

  Pandora’s nightmare was over… for now.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  September 15, 1893

  Galveston, Texas

  Ward Gabriel stood at the window of his beach cottage, nervously running his fingers through his unruly shock of black hair. His mood was as turbulent as the sea outside. A muscle twitched at one side of his square jaw and his slate-gray eyes reflected the Gulf’s restlessness. Something more than foul weather was brewing, but he wasn’t sure what. Maybe part of his uneasy feeling had to do with the flame-haired beauty who was celebrating her birthday tonight.

  He had declined the Sherwoods’ invitation to the elegant soirée. He’d used work as his excuse and, since Horace Sherwood was his employer, there had been no questions asked. That was good, he told himself. He would have been hard pressed to explain his real reasons for excusing himself from the festivities. He wasn’t sure he understood them himself.

  He had wanted to be there for Pandora’s birthday celebration. He’d been looking forward to it. For years he’d watched with rapt attention as Pandora grew and changed—from an adventurous child to a mischievous, pre-teen pixie to a charmingly flirtatious coquette. Now here was the moment he had waited for so long—the night that Pandora Sherwood would become a woman. An exciting thought! He’d even decided on a very special gift for her.

  But then Mr. Sherwood had confided in him. “There’ll be a surprise in store for our guests. Since Pandora’s turning eighteen, I’ve decided to announce her engagement to young Dr. Saenger at her birthday ball.” Ward had been too stunned to reply.

  It had come as a shock to hear that Pandora planned to marry… ever. Somehow he had pictured her racing her matched team of white horses up and down Galveston’s streets forever, leading the town’s dandies on a merry chase for years to come, and trucking off to Europe whenever the spirit moved her. He couldn’t picture her catering to a husband, managing a house, raising a passel of kids. Pandora wasn’t the type. She wasn’t like ordinary women. She needed excitement in her life, adventure, fun… passion.

  But now she was going to be wed. He had known for years that Pandora’s parents desired this match. It had even been mentioned in her father’s will. The wealthy Sherwoods had feared their daughter might fall prey to some fortune-hunting cad. Jacob Saenger was both brilliant and stable, the perfect man to manage Pandora and her money. Still, Ward had never believed that Pandora would accept such a loveless match.

  “Pandora married?” He couldn’t imagine it.

  What had shocked Ward most was his own gut reaction to the news. He’d felt cheated and angry, and it didn’t make a particle of sense. Why, he was allowing himself to pout like a rejected lover! Nothing could be farther from the truth.

  He was fond of Pandora. He’d always liked her. Well, almost always. He frowned, remembering. From their first meeting, when she was only eleven and literally fell into his life out of an oak tree, she had seemed more adult than child to him. And even then, as angry as he’d been, he had taken to her. Since that initial, explosive meeting, when he’d caught her spying on him and a lady friend, she had intrigued him. She was different, a little wild at times, with a quick temper and a strange, faraway look in those wise, green eyes. Ward felt as if she knew some secret that no one else in the world would ever be allowed to share. Perhaps it was her sense of mystery that so attracted him.

  Although Ward had often wondered what made her so different, so exotic—yes, that was the word—he’d never thought of her in a romantic context. He was much too old for her—almost thirty to her eighteen. And the life he led, traveling the world as mercantile tycoon Horace Sherwood’s chief purchasing agent, left littl
e time for settling down. Not that he’d ever seriously thought of it, mind you.

  Still, he mused, his heavy brows drawing together in a frown, she could have waited and given me a chance! He’d thought for a long time now—never seriously, of course—that it might be interesting to give her a whirl, provide her with a few thrills before she settled down to wifing and mothering. He’d told her five years ago, when she’d asked why he’d never married, that he was waiting for her to grow up. He realized now he’d been only half-joking.

  Yes, the news of Pandora’s engagement had hit him hard, there was no denying it. Perhaps he’d reached that time in life when his mortality was beginning to make itself felt. After all, if a man never married, never fathered children, what did he leave behind on earth to show that he’d ever lived and loved and toiled—that he’d ever even existed?

  Or perhaps the very opposite was true, he and Pandora were two of a kind—both free spirits, meant to blow with the wind. If she could get entangled in the web of matrimony, then he could be none too safe himself. Maybe for the first time in his life he was experiencing real fear. Whatever the cause, he had no longing to be present when the end of Pandora’s freedom was announced.

  Ward turned away from the window and the thundering waves of the Gulf. He’d said he would work tonight and so he would!

  Setting his coffee mug down on the cluttered oak desk, he opened a thick ledger and stared hard at the neatly penned entries. The lines of figures danced before his eyes and his mind wandered, straying to the white mansion on Broadway. His hand moved from the page to touch the antique box he’d meant to give Pandora tonight. The hand-rubbed mahogany felt smooth and soft to his touch—as alive as a woman’s warm flesh.