Love's Rescue (Keys of Promise #1)
Christine Johnson
Prologue
October 11, 1846
The gale nearly knocked Elizabeth Benjamin flat. In all of her sixteen years, she’d never experienced such terrible winds, and Key West enjoyed its share of storms. She held fast to her brother’s hand. At eleven, Charlie usually rebelled at her mothering. Not today.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be here.” His words could barely be heard above the howling wind.
Elizabeth was beginning to think the same, but time had nearly run out. Within days, she must sail for Charleston, where she was expected to secure a prominent match. That meant leaving her beloved Key West and the man who had captured her affections. Today might be her only opportunity to change the course her parents had set out for her.
She and Charlie had nearly reached the harbor, where Rourke O’Malley’s wrecking sloop was moored. Just thinking of him bolstered her courage. If he could endure such weather, so could she. Though the rain now pelted down, ruining the fine blue muslin gown she’d donned just for him, maybe he’d see her as courageous.
“Can we go home?” Charlie asked.
She yanked her brother toward the wharves. “We need to secure our skiff.”
The twelve-foot boat belonged to Charlie, but he only went sailing when she bribed him. She adored the freedom of the turquoise seas and seized every chance to improve her seafaring skills. That secret love cost her many an evening helping Charlie complete his studies.
When she’d told her maid this morning why they must leave the house in such weather, Anabelle had shaken her head and proclaimed that Mother would tan both their hides when she found out.
“We will be home before Mother returns,” Elizabeth had assured her. She could wriggle anything past the girl who giggled with her every night after the lamps were blown out. “She’ll never know we were gone.”
The striking, caramel-colored maid grinned. “You’re a fool for him.”
Elizabeth had pretended she didn’t know who Anabelle meant, which was silly, considering their every conversation centered on him. Rourke O’Malley wasn’t the richest wrecker in Key West, but he was by far the handsomest and most daring. He wore his sun-streaked dark hair pulled back at the nape in the fashion popular decades before. His bronzed skin and eyes the color of the emerald depths made her stomach flutter. His smile left her speechless. For the first time in her life she’d seen an advantage to being born female.
If only he would stop treating her like the barefoot child she’d once been. At the last dance, he’d chosen older girls for partners. With her, he talked of the voyage across the straits to his native Harbour Island, or Briland as he sometimes called it, of turtling and wrecking. He inquired after her fishing exploits and noted how she’d sailed Charlie’s skiff past his sloop on a perfect beam reach. Her excellent seamanship ought to show him how perfectly matched they were, but instead he’d danced with empty-headed girls. He’d even bowed and kissed her friend Caroline’s hand, but not hers. Never hers.
Well, today he’d see her as a woman.
Elizabeth stomped forward, pulling the reluctant Charlie with her. They turned off Caroline Street to take their usual route to the wharves, but the boardwalk across the tidal pond was flooded. Though Charlie begged to go back, Elizabeth refused. By the morrow, Rourke might have sailed or, even worse, begun to court one of those addle-brained girls who whispered behind their fans whenever he walked into a room. The ship to Charleston might arrive to whisk her away. Good things did not come to those who waited.
So she tugged Charlie another block to Whitehead Street, which had a small bridge over the narrow end of the pond. Even there, the water ran deeper than she’d ever seen, nearly to the planks. If this gale continued, the bridge would be underwater too, necessitating an even lengthier return.
After they rounded the corner onto Front Street, the wharves lay ahead, but the two-story warehouses blocked her view of the vessels except for a smattering of mastheads. Usually the harbor was so full of ships that the masts sprouted like grass. Some of the masters must have decided to haul anchor and ride out the gale at sea.
Not Rourke. Please, not Rourke.