Heart's Safe Passage

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “Will you fetch me some dry clothes, please?” she asked.

  “I don’t know where—oh, all right.”

  Rustling, snapping, the creak of hinges followed. A few moments later, Belinda brought Phoebe a nightgown reeking of lavender. Her throat burned, but she was done for now. With Belinda’s aid, Phoebe exchanged wet things for dry, then snuggled into the quilts on the bunk, covers smelling of sea air and sunshine and oddly calming.

  A knock sounded on the door. “May I come in, ladies?”

  “Of course.” Belinda tucked a stray curl behind one ear with one hand and gripped a chair back with the other. The smile she granted Docherty was positively coy. “You’re being so kind to my friend.”

  “I like my carpet in here.” His tone was brusque, chilly as sea air. “Drink this, Mrs. Lee.” He crouched beside the bunk, slipped his arm beneath Phoebe’s shoulders, and lifted her enough for him to hold a cup to her lips.

  Ginger tingled in her nose. Ginger and—

  She jerked back. “You’re trying to drug me.”

  “Aye, there is a wee bit of poppy juice in there.” His clear gray eyes met hers with a gentle compassion that made her own eyes sting. “’Tis the best way. ’Twill calm you without incapacitating you.” One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Believe me, I ken how you are feeling.”

  Ginger, of course. She’d smelled it on him earlier.

  “Odd you’d choose to be a sailor,” she murmured.

  “I did not choose it.” The harshness returned. “Drink. I have not all night to play nursery maid.”

  “Then take it away. I am not seasick.”

  “Indeed?” His brows arched. “Seems I have seen evidence to the contrary.”

  “No, no, it’s the cabin, the smell.”

  “Aye, the lavender.” He grimaced.

  “What’s wrong with lavender?” Belinda sounded belligerent. “It makes me happy.”

  “It makes me ill,” Phoebe muttered.

  One corner of Docherty’s lips twitched. Their eyes met in a moment of understanding.

  “Drink the ginger water,” he said. “’Twill help whatever the cause.”

  “I don’t want my brain to be as useless as mush.” She glared at him. “However you want it to be.”

  “Considering Mrs. Chapman’s condition, I do not want your brain like porridge either, but I do not wish you suffering from the sickness either.” He held the glass to her lips. “Drink.”

  “Considering Mrs. Chapman’s condition,” Phoebe countered, turning her head away, “a reasonable man would let us go.”

  “Aye, but you are presuming I am a reasonable mon.”

  She opened her mouth for further protest, and he tipped the contents of the glass between her lips. She could choke, spit it all over herself and perhaps him, or swallow. She swallowed and prayed he spoke the truth about the poppy juice being a small amount.

  “Ver’ good. That should calm you.” His glance of approval was almost warm.

  Nothing felt warm about the speed with which he departed from the cabin. The slam of the bolt on the outside of the door felt like an icicle through her chest.

  “See, I told you he was kind.” Belinda had resumed consuming bread and jam and licked her fingers between words.

  Phoebe didn’t shudder when she looked at her sister-in-law this time. For that she did owe him a debt of gratitude. He’d been kind about her sickness, even if he thought it was mal de mer. He’d drugged her in his kindness, a fair treatment for sickness like hers. And a way to keep her quiet until they sailed too far away for her to get Belinda and her back to land? No, he’d claimed not enough to incapacitate her, and in those moments of his gray eyes compassionate upon her face, she believed him.

  Dangerous, that kindness in him. She must never forget that he was not any more altruistic about making her survive the voyage than he was about getting George out of prison in England—he possessed some ulterior motive for that too, or she wasn’t a fully qualified midwife.

  A midwife not all that far from her teacher if they hadn’t left the Chesapeake yet. Not all that far from her teacher’s still well-connected husband. If she could find a weapon . . .

  If she could get her brain to clear and her limbs to work . . .

  “No.” She fought against the poppy juice. It dragged her down like anchor chains. She shook them off and used the bulkhead to pull herself upright. “No, no, no, he isn’t kind. He’s a devious scoundrel, a cur—”

  Belinda’s eyes widened with shock. “Phoebe, that isn’t very Christian of you.”

  “I don’t feel particularly Christian toward him.” Phoebe flopped her leaden legs over the side of the bunk. “He’s a—a rogue, a louse, a—”

  She didn’t know, or at least wouldn’t use, worse epithets for him than she’d already applied. Name calling got a body nowhere. She needed action, a clear head, and a lot of help from God.

  Her conscience twinged that she would ask for God’s help after heaping uncomplimentary appellations upon a fellow being and while planning to be what she claimed she was not—a violent person.

  “I won’t have to do anything violent if he cooperates.” She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Belinda surged to her feet.

  “What are you going to do? Do you want to get us locked up in the hold or something?”

  “No, I’m going to get us set ashore.” Phoebe dropped her head into her hands. “If the cabin will stop spinning.”

  “But I don’t want to—”

  “Do you want one of those men delivering your baby?”

  “If necessary, yes, if that’s what I must do to go to England.”

  Phoebe groaned. “I should have guessed.”

  She tried to stand. Her legs gave way beneath her. On hands and knees, she crawled to the desk and opened the bottom drawer. A pile of thick leather-bound books rested within. Logs. Perhaps interesting reading, if she were to remain aboard the privateer.

  “But I won’t,” she vowed between her teeth.

  “What won’t you do? What are you doing?” A glance back showed Belinda sticking the penknife into the jar of preserves and licking it off.

  Phoebe’s stomach protested. She closed her eyes and concentrated on her task—searching. She didn’t look at Belinda. She didn’t answer her. She slipped her hand inside drawers, beneath paper and books, quills and wax wafers. She felt along the sides of the drawers and on the bottoms of the ones above. She used her hand to measure, seeking a hidden compartment.

  “You know that’s rude,” Belinda said.

  “Abducting someone is rude.” Phoebe scowled at the desk.

  No more drawers. No results. Nothing as interesting as a hidden compartment. So where could it be?

  She scanned the top. A fiddle board kept an inkwell, a pen holder, and a box of sand in place. She braced her hand on the fiddle board as she staggered to her feet. It didn’t move in its slot on the desktop, and yet . . .

  She yanked the board from the desktop with a screech of protesting, swollen wood.

  Belinda gasped and knocked the plum preserves onto the floor. It rolled with the tilting of the ship but didn’t break and stain the plush carpet.

  “You’re destroying things.” Belinda was white.

  Phoebe stared at her. “Are you frightened of these men? If so—”

  “Not these men. You. I thought you’d understand. I thought you’d want to come. I thought you’d stay with me no matter what.” Huge tears began to roll down Belinda’s round cheeks. “You were so faithful to my brother, even if—but you’re going to make something horrible happen, and then George won’t get free.”

  “Oh yes he will. If we get free, we can go to Dominick, as I wanted to in the first place.”

  “He can’t help.”

  But Docherty had confirmed that Dominick, son of a British peer, could. If he still held enough influence to get someone’s letters of marque revoked, he held enough power to get a prisoner free, despite being marri
ed to an American lady.

  “We’ll get him free without subjecting ourselves to this.” Phoebe swept out one hand to indicate the cabin. It happened to be the hand holding the fiddle board. It cracked against the bulkhead and split down the middle without the screech of rending wood.

  Belinda screeched, though. Phoebe smiled, for a shining brass key lay on the rug. If only it proved to be the right one.

  She sank to her knees to snatch it up. The brig dipped and twisted. Phoebe took long, deep breaths, thought about aromatic ginger water.

  And a gray-eyed man smelling of eastern spice.

  A shiver ran over her skin. She curled her fingers around the key. If this was what she hoped it was, she would be rid of the man whose presence, whose voice, whose moments of tenderness raised gooseflesh on her arms with the merest hint of memory.

  “Phoebe, please tell me what you’re doing.” Belinda wasn’t whining, pleading, or commanding. The quietness of the question drove a spike of ice through Phoebe’s middle.

  “I’m doing what I must to get us off this brig.” She hauled herself to her feet. Her head spun from the opiate in the ginger water, but her stomach cooperated. She could manage a spinning head. “I won’t let you risk George’s baby like this, with a stranger we have no reason to trust, if he thinks nothing of alienating us to our countrymen.”

  Belinda didn’t respond. Her dark eyes wide, she stared at Phoebe as she dragged and stumbled her way across the cabin, shoved aside boxes of provisions and trunks of clothing, and fetched up hard against the opposite bulkhead.

  The one with the array of weapons. The locked-up weapons. But Phoebe held a key. If it fit . . .

  She slid it into the lock. It turned. Tumblers fell into place. The lock clicked open.

  Phoebe curled her fingers around a dagger with a six-inch double-sided blade and lethal point. Then she turned back toward the door.

  And found Belinda right behind her. “If you don’t put that back right now, I’ll scream to get the captain or someone down here.”

  Phoebe smiled. “Go right ahead.”

  3

  Guided by the distant glow of lantern light through canvas walls, Rafe prowled between the double row of muttering, sighing, snoring men sleeping in hammocks suspended from the deck beams, and pushed open the door to the source of the light—a cabin beneath his own quarters. The chamber was made up of no more than canvas walls and a wooden post frame, too flimsy a shelter for two beings he wished to keep out of harm’s way as much as possible aboard a vessel that could and did go into action at a moment’s notice. But not on this run, not with noncombatants aboard, however much that annoyed the crew hungry for prize money. He didn’t like vulnerable people exposed to more danger than necessary. Even this canvas room would not do for long for its inhabitants. They needed to be back in their own cabin, now that he had had a good look at the Americans and deemed them harmless.

  Not that he had intended to welcome two Americans aboard.

  Grinding his teeth over the unwelcome passenger, he knocked on the door to the temporary cabin. In response, a high, clear voice called, “It’s unlocked.”

  “Why?” Rafe turned the handle.

  The instant the door latch clicked, one of the beings went into action. She sprang up from the lantern-lit hammock and charged toward him, tiny legs flying, mouth open in a joyous grin.

  “Do not leap on me, you wee beastie.” He scooped the black-and-white terrier into his arms.

  She proceeded to lap her miniscule tongue across his chin.

  “She doesn’t like being stranded down here any more than I do.” The disembodied voice rose from the depths of the hammock.

  “Why was the door unlocked?” Rafe emphasized his earlier query.

  “As if a lock would stop anyone from breaking in. The walls are canvas. Rip.” A hand emerged from the hammock and sliced through the air. “They’re to hold me hostage. Which sounds rather intriguing.”

  “You would not think so if you had it happen to you.”

  “It must be better than being stuffed down here like cargo. ’Tis stifling and boring.”

  “You have your books.”

  One of the tomes thudded to the deck. “Stuffy and boring.” A head emerged from over the edge of the hammock. Dark red hair gleamed in the glow of the lamp.

  Dark red hair that should have hung in a braid at least a foot past thin, childlike shoulders. Except it now swung in a tangled, ragged mass to just above those shoulders.

  “What . . . did you do . . . to your hair?” With care, Rafe set the dog on the deck and closed the yard and a half distance between door and hammock. He curled his fingers around a hunk of the ruined hair and glared into the child’s green eyes. “Answer me, Mel.”

  “I cut it.” A round chin jutted. Mel’s full lower lip protruded. “It was heavy and ugly, and I’d have cut off more if Jordy did not stop me. Now I look more like you.”

  “I don’t want you to look like me. I’ve told you ’tis not safe.”

  “Only if we lose a fight.” Mel rolled off the hammock and scooped up the dog. “Besides, I have Fiona here to protect me.”

  Rafe set his hands on his hips and scowled. “She’s a wee dog. She cannot protect you against a horde of bloodthirsty Frenchmen or Americans. If they think we’re related—”

  “They’ll treat me with courtesy and kindness.” Mel chuckled in a voice surprisingly rich for a child of barely twelve years. “What did that one broadsheet call you? The scourge of the English Channel?”

  “You should not be reading such nonsense.”

  “Why not? You’re a hero.”

  “Nay, I’m no more than a legalized pirate making a profit off this war with France.”

  “And now America.” Mel rubbed grimy hands through the dog’s black-and-white fur.

  Fiona wriggled and made noises that sounded as though she were trying to purr like a kitten.

  “See, she thinks so too.” Mel grinned.

  Rafe sighed. “You’re both daft. There is naught heroic in war. I’d like to see it all end.”

  “But how will you make money if the war ends?”

  “I have more than enough.”

  More than enough to provide a fine home. More than enough to return to most of the life he’d had before evil men ripped his world apart. More than enough to see Mel educated and clothed properly and himself made respectable.

  But not enough to get him what he really wanted until he’d made landfall in Southampton in July and visited his usual haunts, sought out his usual informants. One sent him to the Nore, to a prison hulk rotting with its human cargo in the Thames, to one of those prisoners aboard, then across the sea to lands he’d avoided since Great Britain and America went to war the previous year.

  He didn’t want to fight Americans. Their complaints against Britain held merit. They didn’t deserve to be destroyed.

  Except for one of them.

  Who would take one look at Mel and use the child as Rafe was using Mrs. Chapman—bait to draw his quarry from hiding, draw him into surrender.

  “I’m retiring after this voyage,” he announced.

  Mel stared at him, horror registering in big green eyes. “You cannot. We’ll have to live on land then. I’ll have to dress properly in front of people.”

  “Aye, shoes and stockings and no cutlass in your waistband.” Rafe frowned at the unsheathed weapon.

  Mel set Fiona on the hammock and removed the cutlass. “I thought perhaps I should be carrying it with strangers aboard.”

  “They are two harmless women.” He thought of Watt’s black eye, of hands that appeared too delicate and smooth to have inflicted such damage, and added, “Mostly harmless.” If he thought little of her hands, her eyes, her fairy-tale-princess hair. “And one has the seasickness.”

  Reduce her to nothing more than the crumpled, retching stranger, and she wouldn’t haunt him so.

  “Ugh.” Mel grimaced. “I don’t have to do any cleaning up, do I?�
�

  “Nay, but I’m thinking you can make me more ginger water for her.”

  “More?” Mel gave Rafe a sidelong grin. “We’re running low on ginger. What happens if she drinks up all your ginger water?”

  “We’ll stop in Bermuda and buy more ginger.” He turned toward the door. “And get a proper barber to undo as much damage to your hair as possible. Until then, wear a cap when on deck.”

  “I can go on deck?” Mel grabbed Rafe’s arm. “I’m not one of the prisoners?”

  “You were never a prisoner, you imp. You had the lock and were supposed to use it until I assured you all was well up top.”

  “I did stay down here with Fi, and I am always obedient.”

  Rafe snorted. “I wish I were that good at raising you. But now that you have mentioned obedience, obey me in this: keep out of the way of our guests.”

  “I thought they were not dangerous.”

  “Aye, weel . . .” Rafe drummed his fingers on his thigh and gazed up as though he could see through the deck. At that moment, he couldn’t hear through it either. The ladies either slept or remained nearly motionless. “I do not trust the one to not be up to some tricks. She is not happy about being here.” He reached for the door and caught sight of the book still lying on the floor. He stooped to retrieve it.

  Mel dove in front of him, snatching it up first. “I—I still need to do my work in this.”

  “You threw it on the floor.” The bantering tone left Rafe’s voice. His muscles tensed. “You threw your Bible on the deck.”

  “I did not. I dropped it. I—” Mel’s chin jutted again. “I saw you throw one overboard once.”

  “Aye, weel, one thing you should have learned aboard this brig is that I am not the best example for a child.”

  “But you are.” Bible clutched in one hand, Mel laid the other hand on Rafe’s arm and gazed up at him with limpid eyes. “Do not be angry with yourself for me being here. You are the best teacher in the world. You make certain I can read well and write a fair hand and do my sums better than any of those schools you sent me to.”