Read Online Wrecked by AJ Harmon - Free Book Online

in her voice
front and center.
    Andrew continued walking to the window and stood looking
outside, his feet apart, his hands clasped behind his back.
    “I am Captain Andrew Wentworth of His Highness’s Royal Navy.
I arrived in America during the war and stayed since I am unable to return
home.”
    Bess had watched a movie on Netflix - one of those
historical romances set in England. She swore this guy could have come right
from filming!
    “ His Highness?” she asked.
    “King George.”
    History had not been one of her strong subjects in school.
She’d found it monumentally boring. She did know, however, that Queen Elizabeth
had been the monarch of England for quite some time. “King George?”
    “His Royal Highness, King George III.”
    He was serious. While Bess couldn’t see his face – he was
still staring out of the window – she heard his voice.
    “What year did you come here?” she asked, almost afraid of
the answer.
    “The year of our Lord, one thousand, seven hundred and
eighty-one.”
    Her legs gave out and Bess fell onto the mattress. The man
standing in the room with her was transparent and arrived in the good ol’ USA
in 1781. Maybe she was having hallucinations.
    “I understand this may come as a shock to you,” he said as
he swung around and looked at her. “But on my honor, I speak the truth.”
    “I’m sure you do,” Bess muttered.
    “So now that I have introduced myself to you, I think it
would only be polite for you to do the same.” He raised his eyebrows and waited
for her to speak.
    “Bess.”
    “Bess? Is that short for something?”
    “Elizabeth. Williams.”
    “Elizabeth,” he whispered, a pained expression on his face.
    “Yes. Elizabeth.” Bess wondered why her name caused him such
apparent anguish. “Are you okay?”
    “Elizabeth was my love’s name.”
    “Oh.” What could she say? “And what happened to her? Did she
also live in… in 1781?”
    “I assure you,” Andrew stated emphatically, “I am not crazy nor
am I telling untruths.”
    “Somehow, I think I believe you,” Bess admitted.
    “Really?”
    She nodded.
    “I have not allowed many to see me,” he replied. “But there
is something about you. I don’t know what it is but I feel you are trustworthy.”
    “I’d like to think so,” Bess said. “Huh? You allowed me to see you?” realizing the meaning of his statement.
    “Yes. Over time… your time… I have learned how to… appear ,
although when I really needed to… when it meant more to me than anything else
to speak to her… to tell her how much I loved her… to be able to have her know
the feelings of my heart, I couldn’t.”
    “So… you are… a ghost, then.” Bess accepted the
ridiculousness of her sentence as she looked up at the Captain, noting again
that she could see right through him, yet she was carrying on a full
conversation with him.
    “I… I died when my ship wrecked below the cliff.”
    “In 1781?” Bess asked.
    He nodded and began pacing back and forth. “I was coming for
my Elizabeth when a great storm arose and killed my crew and destroyed my ship.
That was when I died, I suppose, but I don’t know how I died.”
    “How can you not know?” she asked incredulously. “I mean, if
you’re dead…”
    “I don’t know if I drowned or was struck on the head with
part of the ship. Maybe the waves bashed me against the rocks,” he shrugged. “The
last thing I knew, I was standing on my ship as it broke to pieces and the next
minute I was lying on the beach, just a short way down there,” he nodded in the
direction of the cliffs. “I stood and brushed the sand from my clothes, emptied
my boot of water and began searching for Elizabeth.” He paused for a moment.
“But no one seemed to see or hear me. I would stand directly in front of
someone and scream at them, just inches from their face, and they would just
walk right through me.”
    “That must have been… confusing,” Bess sympathized.
    “Hmm. And