The Guardian

By Jacqueline M. Sinclair

Do you believe? Yes.
Are you worthy? No.

But Arianna had been and Preston Wade gave his life to save her.

For a hundred and fifty years he’s been trapped between a world that won’t release him and a heaven that won’t accept him, consoled only by thoughts of her peaceful eternity. He didn’t know she was A Cursed, didn’t know that she’d be born and reborn, never able to live enough lives to pay for her father’s sins.

It was wasted.
His death gained her nothing.

Finding her again, after all these years, was a cruel twist of fate. Her compassionate soul is living the life a nurse, doomed from the moment she was born. Even as Christin Hester, Arianna’s destiny remains unchanged, and if he saves her again, so will his.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacqueline M. Sinclair
• Release date: Aug 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370035472

Jacqueline M. Sinclair

Jacqueline grew up in the rural southeast and is the youngest child of a large and rowdy family. Reading was an escape when there wasn't much else around to do. She loves everything from classical literature to true crime and everything in between. With her two children grown and gone, she's surrounded by a menagerie of adopted pets and a two-legged thief who refused to give her heart back after a night of karaoke. With a day job and a dream job, her writing is a steamy combination of real life and seeking to answer the age-old question of what would happen if...and then characters come along and completely derail the plan. Letting them have their say provides plenty of sleepless nights and an endless combination of coffee and wine, but she hopes you enjoy their stories.

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Title Page

Copyright Page

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

The Guardian

© 2016 by Jacqueline Sinclair

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from the author, except brief quotes for the purpose of reviews.

Cover design:

Ally Hastings

Editor:

Faye Carter

Dedication

To my mom. She’s always believed in the little bit of magic in me. Love you forever.

Letter from Preston

To those who read this:

I would die for you. Have you said those words? Did you mean them? Would you do it if you knew what that bargain would bring? An eternity of nothing but guarding souls crossing over while you are left behind. That is what it brings you.

To understand how I exist, you must understand how I died. And why. Then ask yourself, again: Would I do it?

I’ll be waiting for you to cross. Let me know what you decide.

Preston Wade

Prologue

April 1865

Vicksburg, Mississippi

PRESTON PEERED OVER the railing, observing the mass of soldiers that snaked through the wharf. Rows of men were still waiting, yet another train had arrived and rumor was, the SS Sultana was expecting to board more POWs.

Two other vessels had already departed, laden with soldiers returning home. It was with no small degree of distress that he had watched them leave. Had he been assigned to one of those he would be underway, already closing the distance between him and Arianna.

How long had it been since he’d seen her? Heard her laugh as she scolded him for interrupting her reading in the library? He wondered if she was aware he’d been freed. He couldn’t be certain she’d known of his capture and the months he spent as a prisoner at Camp Sumter.

It had been too long. Years. He’d been one of the first to enlist and had remained by the men he now called friends month after bloody month, year after beleaguered year. His time as a POW had been harder than the atrocities of battle. Overcrowded conditions, lack of food for even the soldiers, let alone the prisoners they guarded, disease and vermin were common. Prisoners had turned on their own, beating and killing to loot food, clothing, and shelter from those who’d managed to salvage any.

The sheer brutality of it, of watching men once bonded by cause and conscience reduced to animals, was enough to sicken his soul. Preston doubted the world would ever know how many had lost their lives in the squalor, even at the hands of their own brothers-in-arms.

Preston shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable. His feet throbbed inside boots that were too small. The raw skin having blistered, busted, and festered. He knew the infection was worse. He could smell the rot and he bit into the sores that lined his cheek to keep from groaning out loud. They wouldn’t heal and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. The rest of his body was more of the same.

His undershirt had long ago gone to pieces and the scratchy wool of his uniform, embedded and fused to his skin with dried blood and pus, tugged at the wounds on his back. Every move was excruciating, but at least he was going home.

Preston’s gaze drifted from the crowded boat to the Lady Gay. She was leaving the wharf without a single prisoner, yet there were hundreds still waiting for transportation home, to board the Sultana. He exhaled, his attention drifting to the water below, but the breath failed to release the growing concern in his belly.

How many do’ this boat hold?

He’d been wondering the same thing, but Preston ignored the man and returned to watching the line of weary soldiers. The decks were shrinking but as the men left land, their mood shifted. Songs were sung. Laughter and camaraderie filled the air.

Rumor is they done patched the boiler.

This time Preston turned to the old soldier standing to his left. The malnourished state of bodies was so common place among them that Preston would normally pay no mind. This man was no different, hardly more than leathery skin draped over bones. His body, crooked forward at the waist, caused his unkempt, white hair to shield the sides of his face, despite his cap. The stringy mess swayed from side to side each time the man danced from one foot to the other.

What struck Preston about him was his uniform. The tattered remains of the worn material were comparatively clean. Tidy stitching held frayed ends together on his right sleeve where a musket ball may have ripped through. Many other neatly stitched repairs peppered his dress.

The buttons that remained were polished and complimented the glint in his gray eyes. He was proud of the years he’d offered of himself, and it showed in his dress, bedraggled as it was. Preston had no doubt that mentally, the pride and stature of the old man’s spine was ramrod straight.

Patched it? Preston asked.

That what they say. Say it ain’t the first time, neither.

Until the war, Preston’s hands had barely known the feel of labor or industry, but he did know the boiler should have been replaced. Hearing this news, and knowing that extra supports had been added to the decks, gave Preston the idea that the captain himself was worried about the extra passengers. Why else would they need to fortify the boat? News of the boiler caused the simmering concerns he already had to reach out and squeeze his heart.

Names Bill, the old man said, continuing his musing. How many folk you reckon this boat was meant to hold? he asked, again, as if he were inquiring about the price of a horse. Preston couldn’t help but admire the soldier’s steel nerves.

Not more than 400, I’d say.

An agreeable nod of his head was Bill’s only response. Preston stuck out his hand. I’m Preston Wade. Gnarled fingers wrapped around Preston’s offered hand with a firm shake. A lifetime of callouses scraped against his palm as their grips relaxed and their hands parted.

Mr. Wade, proud to know ya, he said with a nod.

They turned back to the railing letting the joyful noise of the boat fill the silence. Even mother-nature seemed to be encouraging the joy, sending brilliant hues of blue and orange streaks across the sky as the sun dipped beyond the horizon. Nightfall seemed to temper the merriment. The men grew quieter, except the mumbled grumblings when another train of POWs arrived. Another empty boat departed the dock. Bill exchanged a silent but knowing look with Preston.

If there had been any doubt that there was greed behind their cramped quarters, the departure of the empty vessel dispelled them. It was no secret the boats were being paid to take them upriver; five dollars for each soldier, ten dollars for officers. Preston surveyed the open decks, the shadows of men, their meager clothing hanging from their emaciated bodies, sick, diseased, and covered in louse, they were men, nonetheless, and being herded onto the boat and corralled like cattle. Still, the decks swelled with bodies and every vacated space created on the dock was filled with another soldier waiting to board. The cycle continued well into the night.

When the Sultana was finally freed from her moorings and slipped away from the dock, a chorus of approval rose from the crowd. Preston surveyed the scene from his coveted spot along the rail. Not a square inch of room had been spared, but, they were finally underway, even if the massive paddle wheels were begrudging in their efforts to propel the overloaded boat up the swollen Mississippi.

You got a lady at home? Bill propped his crooked frame on the railing and turned his attention to Preston.

For the first time since boarding, Preston smiled. A lady was an understatement. Arianna was his everything. He lived and breathed for her. He bowed his head to hide the tenderness he knew exuded from him when he thought of her and the old man smacked his lips and hummed knowingly.

Preston didn’t have to admit it. Thoughts of Arianna changed him from the inside out, the relaxation and peace he felt when he was lost in those memories transformed him into a man devoured by love, a hopeless romantic lost in reality.

Bill made no attempt to hide his smile. Mus’ be somethin’ to be gett’n a man like you off kilter.

Preston’s smile grew wider. She is. My father remarried after my mother passed, he explained. A younger version of my mother, you see. I have two half siblings, a brother and a sister, and Arianna came to tutor.

The old man nodded and Preston leaned against his cramped span of railing. My sister is the youngest of us all and Arianna was hired two years before this war began.

Preston faltered in his reminiscing, as if something from the memory gave him pause. We’d made a dirt track for racing our horses at the farm of my friend, Micha. It had rained the night before I met her and my young mare, while she was fine for travel, lacked the breeding and motivation for even novice racing. I was covered in mud from my ride behind the pack.

Preston ran a hand over his unruly and unkempt mass of black hair, as if expecting to find it caked with mud. She was just finishing her meeting with my father when I had burst into the house proclaiming my frustration. Despite my outburst and appearance, she was kind and friendly. Preston dipped his head at the memory of her, a smile playing on his lips.

During our brief conversation there remained a hint of amusement in her eyes. It was much later in our talks before she asked what had happened to me that day and since then, every time my temper began to simmer over the insignificant, she’d remind me, Your mud is showing."

Those had been the moments that kept Preston company at night. It had been Arianna’s voice he heard comforting him when the sound of cannons threatened his reason, when the cries of men ate at his sanity. Those moments were his and he replayed them when a moment of peace could be found.

Bill seemed to recognize Preston’s nostalgia and left him to his thoughts, perhaps wanting to spend the miserable journey lost in his own. It was fine with him. It gave him the solitude to remember the days spent with Arianna before the war, to remember her laugh as they walked through the garden, her delicate palm against his face as she held his gaze in a moment of tenderness.

The vision of her tear streaked face when he’d left her still haunted him, her forced smile doing nothing to hide the despair and fear in her eyes as they had said their goodbyes. He’d vowed then, before ever leaving the boundary of his father’s estate, that he would spend the remainder of his life making sure tears never stained her cheeks again.

How would she see him when he returned? Would she be appalled at the rank sight of him? Revolted by images of not just the things he’d endured, but the things he’d done?

These horrors were insignificant in the scheme of things, but for a moment, Preston considered delaying his return until he was healed, until he was some semblance of the man he’d been when he’d left her. Yet, his mind found comfort in the thought of Arianna’s gentle hands cleaning his wounds, her love and patience washing away the remnants of the war from his mind while she healed his body. His need to see her was fierce and grew more desperate with each turn of the Sultana’s massive wheels.

Time passed and distanced was closed, but Preston merely had to breathe deep to remind himself where he was. Men on the decks slept where they could, the open air doing little to dispel the stench of sickness and disease, of war. It was slow, miserable travel, but the Sultana continued upriver to Memphis.

There, Preston, along with some of the other soldiers, helped unload cargo and earned some money for their work. Preston headed to the telegrapher’s office, eager to contact his family before taking off again. It was surreal, his