"And if you'd never told him?"

"He'd be a long time dead by now."

"So you and Bedelia go out to sea on The Samarkand, and eventually you find your way here?"

"Yes. We came here by chance; the winds brought us here and it seemed like paradise. There was nobody at this end of the island back then. It was like the beginning of the world. We weren't the first visitors, of course. There was a mission in Poi'pu. That's where she had Niolopua. And while she was recovering, I finished work on the house." He looked past her, along the beach. "It hasn't changed much," he said. "The air still smells as sweet as when I was here with her."

She thought of Niolopua as he spoke: of the many times she'd seen unreadable expressions cross his face, and wondered what mysteries lay buried in him. Now she knew.

He'd been the dutiful son, watching over the house built for his mother all those long years ago, watching the horizon and waiting for a sail, the sail of his father's boat, to come into view. She wanted to weep, for the loss of him. Not that she'd known him well; but he had been a connection to the past, and to the woman whose love had made so much of what had happened to Rachel possible. Without Bedelia, there would have been no house here in Eden.

"Have you heard enough?" Galilee said to her.

In a sense, she'd heard more than enough. It would take her days to comb through what he'd told her, and put the pieces together with what she already knew: the tales she'd read in Charles Holt's journal, the oblique exchanges she'd had with Niolopua and with Loretta; that last, bitter confrontation between Cesaria and Cadmus. All of it was illuminated by what she now knew; and yet paradoxically was all the darker for that. The pain and the grief, the allegiances and the betrayals, they were so much deeper than she'd imagined. All of which would have been extraordinary enough had it simply been some story she'd heard. But it was so much more than that. It was the life of the man she loved. And she was a part of it; she was living it, even now.

"Can I ask you one last question?" she said. "Then we'll leave it for another time."

He reached out and caught hold of her hand. "So, then, it's not over?"

"What do you mean?"

"Between us."

"Oh God, my sweet…" she said, reaching up to touch his face. He was burning hot; as though in the grip of a fever. "Of course it's not over. I love you. I said I wasn't afraid of what you had to tell me, and I meant it. Nothing would make me let go of you now." He was trying to smile, but his eyes were full of tears.

She stroked his brow. "What you've told me helps me make sense of everything," she said. "And that's all I've wanted, since the beginning. I've wanted to understand."

"You're extraordinary. Did I ever tell you that? You're an amazing woman. I only wish I'd found you earlier."

"I wouldn't have been ready for you," Rachel said. "I would have run away. It would all have been too much…"

"You had another question," Galilee said.

"Yes. What happened to Bedelia? Did she stay here on the island?"

"No, she missed the social life of the big city, so she went back after three and a half years. Picked up where she'd left off."

"And Niolopua?"

"He went with me for a few years. Out to see the world. But he didn't like the sea very much. So I brought him back when he was twelve, and left him here, where he wanted to be."

One question answered, and another demanded to be asked. "Did you ever see Bedelia again?"

"Not until the very end of her life. Some instinct-I don't know what it was-made me sail back to New York, and when I got to the mansion she was on her deathbed. I knew when I saw her she'd been holding on, waiting for me to come back. She was dying of pneumonia; and Lord, to see her there… so weak. It broke my heart. But she told me she wasn't ready to die until she'd seen Geary and me make peace. God knows why that was so important to her, but it was. She ordered him to come up to the bedroom-"

"The big room overlooking the street?" Rachel said.

"Yes."

"That's where Cadmus died."

"A lot of Gearys have been born and died in that room."

"What did she say to you?"

"First she made us shake hands. Then she told us she had one last wish. She wanted me always to be there for the Geary women, to comfort them the way she'd been comforted. To love them the way she'd been loved. And that would be the only service I'd do for the Gearys after her death. No more murder. No more torture. Just this promise of comfort and love."

"What did you say to that?"

"What could I say? I had loved this woman with all my heart. I couldn't deny her this; it was the last thing she was ever going to ask for. So Geary and I agreed. We made a solemn oath, right there at the bottom of her bed. He agreed to protect the house in Kaua'i from any of the male members of his family: to dedicate it to the Geary women. And I agreed to go there when the women wanted me, to keep them company. Bedelia didn't die for another two days. She clung on, while we waited and watched-Geary on one side of her, me on the other. But she never said another word after that; I swear she made us wait so that we'd think about what we'd promised. When she died we grieved together, and it was almost like the old times; like it had been at the beginning, before everything went wrong between us. I didn't go to see her buried. I wouldn't have been welcome in the elevated company which Nub now kept-the Astors, the Rothschilds, the Carnegies. And he didn't want me standing beside his wife's grave, with everyone asking questions. So I sailed away. The day Bedelia was put in the ground I caught the morning tide. I never saw Nub again. But we wrote to one another, making formal arrangements for what we'd agreed to do. It was strange, how it all ended up. I'd been the King of Charleston when he met me; he'd been a wanderer. Our roles were reversed."

"Did you care? That you had nothing, I mean."

Galilee shook his head. "I didn't want anything that he had. Except Bedelia. I would have liked to have taken her with me. Buried her here, on the island. She didn't belong in some fancy mausoleum. She belonged where she could hear the sea…"

Rachel thought of the church that she'd visited when she'd first come to the island, and of the small ring of graves around it.

"But her spirit's here, sometimes."

"So she was one of the women in the house?"

Galilee nodded. "Yes she was. Though I don't know if I dreamt them or not."

"I saw them clearly."

"That doesn't mean I didn't dream them," Galilee said.

"So she wasn't her ghost?"

"Ghost. Memory. Echo. I don't know. It was some part of who she was. But the better part of her soul has gone, hasn't it? She's out in the stars somewhere. All you saw was something I kept, for company. A dream of a memory of Bedelia. And Kitty. And Margie." He sighed. "I was their comfort when they were alive. And now they're dead, a little piece of them is mine. You see how things always come around?" He put his hands to his face. "I'm all talked out," he said. "And we should make our plans to leave. Somebody's going to come looking for your husband sooner or later."

"One last thing," Rachel said.

"Yes?"

"Is that how I'm going to be one day? Like the women in the house? I'll die, and you'll just dream me up when you're lonely?"

"No. It's going to be different for us."

"How?"

"I'm going to bring you into the Barbarossa family, Rachel. I'm going to make you one of us, so death won't take you from me. I don't know how I'm going to do that yet-I don't even know that I can-but that's my intention. And if I can't…" he reached for her, took her hands in his, "if I can't live with you, as a Barbarossa, then I'll die with you." He kissed her. "That's my promise. From now on, we're together, whether it's to the grave or the end of time."