The Lost - J. D. Robb [76]
Father Joubay put his hand on her head and began to pray over her. “God keep you safe, Isabelle. Show Him that your love is true and pure and free.”
Show Him that your love is true. Is that what Father Joubay had said? God knew her heart better than anyone.
Isabelle felt the boat turn into the waves again, but this time instead of climbing over the mountain of water, it wallowed in the troughs.
The screeching wind made any more conversation impossible. His lips moved, but Isabelle could not hear what he said. Prayers surely. They held on to each other and, as the giant wall of water broke over them, she whispered, “God bless you too, Father.”
The storm came with such force that Sebastian Dushayne had to brace his body to stand at the open window and watch the harbor, his narrowed eyes the only concession to the rain that bit into him.
Anger pulsed through him, his rage matching the weather around him. Sebastian knew the boat would be lost the moment that the clouds dimmed the sun and the servants began to light candles.
The curse would not allow those on board the island trawler to reach the shore. Joubay and the doctor would die along with the fool who let money convince him that his boat could beat the curse’s fury.
The storm brought an early twilight, but Sebastian could see the boat as it struggled in the waves with a desperation that he could feel even this far away.
Joubay would pray. Sebastian knew better than to try that. God had no place here. This was the devil’s playground. The sounds of the revelry in the next room proved that. God’s minions were not welcome and lasted only as long as it took to seduce them with life’s pleasures.
The boat disappeared from sight and the words of the curse crawled through Sebastian’s memory as clearly as if it had been yesterday. Joubay, because you love this island, I cast you out. If you dare to return, you will die.
Even if Joubay was coming back with a solution to the curse, it would die with him. Sebastian wished he had never trusted, even for a moment, that there was a chance he could escape this island, his prison. He continued to stare at the roiling harbor. Suddenly, quiet settled around him as though a shield of silence held him between his world and some other place.
Two ephemeral shapes rose from the water, shrouded in the rain, but rising, rising, rising out of sight as a song echoed, sung in a lovely voice more than alto but not quite a soprano. “I will be with you always in light and in love. My light surrounds you with love from above.” The song ended, the cocoon vanished and the wind came back with renewed strength.
Cursing, Sebastian pushed the shutters closed, pressing with all his strength against the east wind that battered them.
He returned to the grand salon where the others partied, all of them unaware that people were dying within sight of this room. Why tell them, he thought. They were tourists, here for entertainment, for the taste of another time as if man had lived better or more fully in 1810.
If he told this group what was happening, they would be shocked and it would ruin the mood.
Sebastian had watched people die for so long he had grown used to it. He would take one of the women to bed and let her help him forget what he had witnessed.
The prettiest in this group, he was fairly certain her name was Genetta, reached for the one remaining cream cake and drank the last of the champagne with drunken greed.
No one complained. The group was already bored with the illusion of nineteenth-century life conjured for their entertainment and were well into the carnal pleasures that transcended time and place.
Genetta looked at him with a provocative pout and he nodded. She would be the one. Her gold blond hair was natural; her body was not too muscular, like so many other