IN THE LANTERN room, the wind howls as I refill the oil reservoirs. The spray from the waves flies against the windows, rattling like stones. It reminds me of my father telling dramatic stories of waves so big they came crashing over the top of the lantern room one winter and how the whole lighthouse had swayed from the strength of the gusts. Those were the tales of my childhood, the tales I asked him to tell again and again as I sat, spellbound, beside the stove, eyes alight with fear and excitement, willing such a storm to visit us again. While my sisters didn’t share in my delight for the storms we experienced during the worst winters, I was always drawn to the wildest weather, finding something terrifying and fascinating about the fury of the sea. My father once said if I were to cut myself it would be the North Sea spilling out of my veins, not blood. “That is the way with true islanders,” he says. “At one with the sea; willing participants in the coming and going of storms.”
I haven’t been in the lantern room long when I hear footsteps. Presuming it is Brooks come to take over on watch, I am astonished to see it is not my brother but Mr. Emmerson who appears at the top of the stairs.
“Mr. Emmerson!” Flustered by his presence, I pull my shawl about my shoulders, fussing with the locket at my neck as it snags stubbornly on a loose thread. “You gave me quite a fright.”
He smiles apologetically, his face lit by the hand lamp balanced precariously on the top step. “Forgive me, Miss Darling. I’m sure it is entirely against regulations for me to be up here, but I couldn’t sleep with the storm raging and I very much wanted to see the lamp in all its glory.” I am unsure whether I should insist he go back downstairs or be delighted by his interest. “I’m afraid I have startled and interrupted you,” he continues, “so I will bid you goodnight.” He picks up his hand lamp and turns to leave. “Please, forgive my intrusion.”
“Since you are here you might as well stay,” I offer, regretting the words as soon as I utter them. “It seems a shame to have made your way up all those steps only to start immediately back down again.”
“It does rather, doesn’t it?” His effervescent smile is as distracting as ever, pulling one from my own lips despite the very improper situation I find myself in.
Hauling himself awkwardly up the last step, he apologizes again. “Since your father showed me the apparatus I am like a child with a new toy. I only wanted to see it work.” He walks slowly around the lamps. “It really is extraordinary. Look how perfectly the prisms fit together to send the beam of light farther. It reminds me of a physics lesson. The angle of incidence . . .”
“. . . equals the angle of reflection,” I add.
“Precisely. The universal law of science.”
That impish smile again. Surely it will be the undoing of me.
As calmly as I can and despite the almost audible thumping of my heart, I talk knowledgeably about the Argand lamp and the Fresnel lenses and explain how the soot from the candles dims the light if the lenses are not regularly cleaned. “The Fresnel lenses have a stepped surface that bends the light,” I explain. “I’ve always thought them rather beautiful.”
“They are beautiful indeed. Like rose petals unfurling around each other. Pretty enough in the singular, but something rather spectacular when multiplied and placed together so cleverly.”
“My father was a little doubtful of them initially,” I continue, standing to one side as Mr. Emmerson circles the lamps. “A Scottish physicist first convinced Trinity House to adopt the new lenses. The light travels much farther because of them.”
“It’s extraordinary.” He stands up, almost touching the roof of the lantern room as he turns to look out of the windows. “What a privilege it is to be up here.” For a moment, we stand alone with our thoughts as the wind howls at the windows. “It really is blowing, tonight,” he adds. “It whips up a recklessness in a person, don’t you think? It makes me want to run around in circles and chase the clouds.” He pauses and looks at me, a wild excitement flashing in his eyes. “Could we?”
“Could we what?”
“Step outside.”
I laugh, shocked by the suggestion. “In this weather? You would be blown back to Dundee, Mr. Emmerson!”
“Then at least I wouldn’t have to suffer the agony of another boat trip. You would be doing me a great favor!”
There is something so infectious about his enthusiasm that I feel myself start to concede. The storm’s wildness has found its way under my skin, too. I glance at the door which leads to the platform that runs around the perimeter of the lantern, from where we clean the windows on clear days.
“I suppose, since you’re here, you might as well experience the full force of the storm. The wind will take your breath away, mind.”
Mr. Emmerson grins. “Then let us hope I have plenty to spare.”
Opening the door, I tell Mr. Emmerson to follow me outside. We are instantly buffeted and blown so violently we have to grip the top of the iron grillwork to stop ourselves being blown away. I shriek and then laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.
Mr. Emmerson tries to speak but his words are whipped away and all he can do is peer at me through narrowed eyes, laughing with the wind as we are pushed forward and pulled back, nothing but a pair of rag dolls. A sudden gust blows me sideways, causing Mr. Emmerson to reach out and steady me. My hair whips wildly around my face as I am buffeted again, glad of Mr. Emmerson’s arm locked around mine like an anchor, securing me to him, and for a wild wonderful moment I want only to stay here at the top of my dear lighthouse, with Mr. Emmerson beside me and all of the North Sea’s temper booming like cannons below.
The energy of it infuses me with a rare recklessness, and as Mr. Emmerson leans toward me I close my eyes, ready for the kiss I have imagined in my most secret, private thoughts. But his lips do not meet mine, only press close to my ear so that I can feel the warm touch of his breath against my skin as I catch the words “. . . wonderful, Miss Darling! So very wonderful!” Beneath the noise, I cannot be sure if it is the lighthouse, the storm, or something else he is talking about.
“We must go back inside,” I shout, barely able to form my words through the wind.
We stagger forward like a pair of drunken sailors spilling out of a tavern, fighting against the strength of the wind to open the door before we stumble back into the lantern room, laughing and catching our breath.
Mr. Emmerson smooths his hair, sent every which way by the wind. “I’m afraid I resemble an inmate of Bedlam, Miss Darling.”
“Then I must resemble one myself,” I laugh, straightening my shawl and tucking stray hair behind my ears as I catch my breath. “What madness!”
“Beautiful madness though, Miss Darling.”
“Island fever infects us all, sooner or later.”
His quiet smile ignites the ember of intrigue I’d felt the very first day I met him at Dunstanburgh. I feel it in the burning of my wind-whipped cheeks and deep in the pit of my stomach.
Desperate to return to more familiar ground, I tell Mr. Emmerson how my father gave me and my sisters lessons in astronomy up here in the lantern room. “I once envied my brothers for being sent to school at the castle in Bamburgh, but not anymore.”
“I cannot think of a finer place to study the stars. Believe me, there is no worse place to learn anything than a frigid schoolroom with a teacher too eager to use his cane.”
“I can imagine. I feel very fortunate to have been raised here.”
Mr. Emmerson turns to look at me. “No wonder the prospect of exchanging it all for a drab rectangular home on the mainland is so unappealing?”
The inflection in his voice carries the same question I’d heard when we’d walked among the rock pools earlier. It is a question to which I do not have a ready answer, and yet there it is, suspended between us like the spider webs that hang between the rafters in the boathouse.
I let out a weary sigh, wondering if he hears the regret carried in it. “It would certainly not be an easy exchange, Mr. Emmerson. And certainly not one I care to dwell on when I am still needed here.”
I try to focus on the storm beyond the window but I see only how different things might be in less complicated circumstances. Might I then permit myself to give up everything I am in order to know what I might yet become?
An uneasy gaze settles in Mr. Emmerson’s eyes. “Of course. We must always put duty first.”
And with that, as surely as an oar knocked clumsily against the boathouse rafters, the strands of what might have been are snapped, the fragments left behind to blow in the wind.
With my mind and my heart racing, I turn my attention back to my task. “I must go to the service room to record the tides.”
He nods. “I have distracted you long enough.” As he turns to leave, he notices a conch shell on a ledge beside the door. “Your favorite, I presume? I’ve seen lots of them dotted about the place.”
“My father used to tell me the North Sea lived inside,” I say, picking the shell up and pressing it to my ear. “He said even when I was far away, I would always be able to hear home, as long as I had a conch shell with me.” I smile at the rush of imaginary waves caught inside before handing it to Mr. Emmerson. “You must take it with you, as a reminder of your time here.”
He hesitates. “Would you speak into it, Miss Darling?”
I laugh. “Speak into it? Whatever for?”
With his eyes fixed firmly on mine, he rests his hand on the shell. “So that I might hear your voice, even when you are far away.”
A flush of heat rushes to my neck and cheeks. “Mr. Emmerson, I . . .”
“Forgive me. I have said too much. I am not myself tonight.” Picking up his lamp, he starts to make his way down the steps. “Your father said he expects the storm will blow through tonight.”
I nod, barely able to think or speak. “All storms pass, Mr. Emmerson. Even the most passionate and persistent ones.”
The gentle acquiesce in his eyes is the only reply required.
I wait until I can no longer hear the echo of Mr. Emmerson’s footsteps before I sink onto the stool, as dizzy as a new sailor at sea. With the wind shrieking at the windows, speaking my anguish for me, I accept that whatever my heart might fool me into feeling, and however convinced Sarah Dawson might be of her brother’s true feelings, the irrefutable fact remains that George Emmerson is engaged to be married and even the wildest storm in the whole of Northumberland cannot, and should not, tear apart a commitment such as that.
At 4:00 A.M. Brooks relieves me from my watch and I sink into my bed, where I lie awake until dawn, no longer disturbed by the wind, but by the very absence of it. The storm has passed and with its departure Mr. Emmerson will also leave.
After all, I have given him no compelling reason to stay.