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Aurora of North Manitou Island (Great Lakes Romances) (Volume 5)

By Donna Winters

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CHAPTER 1
Thanksgiving Day Evening, 1898
Lightkeeper’s Quarters
South Manitou Island, Michigan

“Harrison’s gone! I just know it!” Aurora Richards released her pent-up fears in the solitude of her cold bedroom. “Nothing would have kept him from our wed-ding today. Nothing! Unless . . . ” She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again in a vain attempt to block out a vision of Harrison’s small sloop wrecked on the shoals of the Manitou Passage.
With fingers numbed by the chill of her unheated bedroom, she unhooked the bodice of her satin wedding dress while gloomy thoughts continued to taunt her. “Today should have been the happiest day of my life. Instead, it has been the most endless, anguishing . . . ”
She placed the costume, one she had spent months beading with a thousand seed pearls, on a rose-scented padded hanger, and hung it against the door of the wardrobe. The gesture was an admission that all her plans, all her dreams, the very purpose of her existence had come to an end, and she couldn’t help thinking she never wanted to lay eyes on the gown again.
With a rumpling of muslin, she rid herself of petticoats and corset and kicked off her wedding slippers. Pulling on the thick flannel nightgown she had thought she would never wear again, she let the soft fabric fall down about her legs, scurried across the cold hardwood floor, and flipped back the covers of her bed.
Snuggling into the down mattress, she doused the kerosene lamp, leaving the room bathed in the spill of soft light coming from the lighthouse tower.
She lay her head on her pillow, pulling the feather comforter up over her ears, hoping to bury her fears beneath the covers and drift off to sleep. A few restless moments later, she threw off the comforter. Kneeling beside her bed, she searched underneath for her fur-lined slippers, then returned to the wardrobe for her heavy flannel wrapper and began to pace from window to door and back again.
Through the frosty glass, she tried to make out some vestige of Harrison’s sloop approaching the lighthouse dock, but the turbulent waters of the crescent bay were ominously empty. Below her bedroom, in the parlor, more than a score of wedding guests still waited for news of her missing bridegroom and the search party that had been sent out over six hours ago. But she could not bear to hear more of their well-meaning reassurances.
Never in her wildest imaginings would she have dreamed the ordeal that had become her wedding night. And never, in the five years she had known Harrison Stone, had he ever failed to present himself at the promised hour.
Now, after years of courting and planning and waiting for the perfect day on which to seal their union in holy matrimony, the only man she ever loved had left her a bride without a bridegroom. Not only that, but also distraught with worry over what might have become of him on the freezing, storm-tossed waters of northern Lake Michigan.
Tears welled up, spilling down her cheeks. She retrieved the last of her dry handkerchiefs from her dresser. A glimpse in the faintly illumined beveled mirror above it reminded her she had forgotten to loose her hair. With fumbling fingers she managed to remove the hairpins from her Gibson Girl style, shook her head vigorously to free her waist-length golden-brown tresses, and pulled on the sleeping cap that hung on her bedpost. She would forego braiding her hair for tonight.
Staring at her tear-stained face, she addressed herself. “Thanksgiving Day, and what have I to be thankful for? A ruined wedding? A dead bridegroom? I feel as though I’ve been widowed even before I’ve become a wife!”
As she resumed her pacing, Harrison stood at the forefront of her mind. Tall. Quiet. Intrepid. He had courted her with dignity and persistence from the day she had turned fifteen. Oh, the plans they had made over the years! They’d marry and live as lightkeepers on a Lake Michigan island. They’d have four children—two boys and two girls—and teach them the traditions of keeping the light, and the ingenuity necessary for running a steam-powered fog signal.
He wanted the girls to be just like her, with bright smiles and laughing blue eyes, and brown hair shimmering with highlights the color of the noonday sun. She wanted the boys to be just like him. How she adored his strong chin and soft gray eyes, and each one of the ten freckles across the bridge of his distinguished nose.
No one on earth could ever understand her the way Harrison did. He knew when she needed him near for comfort. Then, he would take her hand in his and sit close beside her. It was almost as if his own strength was imparted to her by the firm, yet gentle contact.
He knew, too, when she needed to be alone. At those times, when she would bury herself in her sewing, he would sit quietly across the room and read, refraining from interrupting or demanding her attention. In his considerate and thoughtful ways, he reminded her of her father.
How she had loved her papa, but he had been taken from her when she was only thirteen. Mr. Trevelyn, the head lightkeeper on South Manitou, and his sons, Nat and Seth, had been steadfast friends, helping to see her and her mother and sisters and brothers through the loss, but they couldn’t take the place of her papa.
Two years later, Harrison had been hired as second assistant keeper, and from the moment they had first met, it was as if they were made for each other. Besides her papa, he was the only man she had ever loved. He was her world.
But Harrison is gone!
The thought pierced her heart with a cruel and merciless stab. She was trying desperately to staunch a new flow of tears when footsteps pounded up the stairs.
“Aurora!” Her eighteen-year-old sister, Charlotte, shouted to her even before she reached the bedroom.
Aurora arrived at the door just as Charlotte charged into the room, nearly knocking her over.
“Aurora, Harrison is safe!”
“Is he here?”
“No, not yet, but he’s all right!”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been watching the North Manitou light from the tower. I saw . . . ” Charlotte caught a ragged breath.
Though she had run down more than a hundred twen-ty spiral steps in the lighthouse tower, through the long passageway, then up a flight of stairs to the second floor of the keeper’s quarters, Aurora could summon no patience for word of her beloved.
“For pity sake, tell me what you saw!”
“The OK signal . . . from the North Manitou light. Three long flashes, then a long-short-long, just like Mr. Trevelyn taught us!” She referred to the Morse Code used by the head keep’ whenever he had gone out in the light service vessel on a rescue mission and was coming home safely.
Aurora, heart soaring, threw her arms about her youngest sister. “He’s alive! Harrison’s alive! He’s coming home to me!”

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