Heart's Safe Passage

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “I’m not weeping. I don’t weep, cry, or snivel.” Another shudder ran through her. “I also don’t get ill. I’ve been ill only once before in my life.” She looked up at him with her big eyes dark and red-rimmed. “If this continues, I’ll be dead before we reach England.”

  “It does get better, I promise. But we’ll be in Bermuda in two days or so if the wind holds. We can take some time there for you to recover a bit and . . . er . . . examine Mrs. Chapman to see if she’s fit to sail further.”

  “She’s not. A ship is no place for a child to be born.”

  “Many a bairn has come into the world at sea and survived bonnie and braw.”

  “Bonnie and what?”

  “Strong. Which you’ll be soon enough.” He rose and held his hands down to her. “Come down to find a book to read. I expect Mrs. Chapman will be wanting you to read to her.”

  “I expect so.” She made a face. “And she likes the cabin, whereas I feel better in the fresh air.”

  “Perhaps Mel can read to her. She’s a canny lass and reads well.” He clasped Mrs. Lee’s hands between his, balancing her and himself between rail and cutter. “I’ve made certain of that despite her inability to stay at school.”

  “Her inability to stay at school? How is that?” She made no move to release herself.

  “She runs away every time I place her in one. I get back to shore to find her skulking around the wharves, awaiting my return.”

  Mrs. Lee stared at him. “How could she? I mean, why would she take such a dangerous course of action?”

  “I’m all she has, along with Jordy and Watt and Derrick too, of course. We’re the closest thing to family she has, and she misses us.” One corner of his mouth flicked upward. “I ken perhaps you do not understand this.”

  Mrs. Lee turned her face away. The wind snatched at her words, shredding them so he couldn’t be certain he heard them correctly, but he thought she said, “Don’t be so sure I don’t understand.”

  The idea that she could indeed understand Mel missing him warmed something inside him enough to twist it, an aching pain like fingers forced down on taut muscles.

  “So I am not such a poor father,” he said, pressing his advantage.

  She gave him a sidelong glance. “You could choose not to go to sea.”

  “Aye, and I shall—soon.”

  “But not soon enough for my sake.” She sighed. “Will you leave us on Bermuda?”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “I need Mrs. Chapman with me.”

  “Why?”

  “I will not discuss it.” He used the same tone he used when Mel tried to wheedle some action out of him, and regretted it instantly.

  He’d refused to discuss other matters with the widow today. It was unfair to her. The entire voyage was unfair to her. Her pallor, her tensed jaw, the white knuckles of the hand gripping the rail shouted out her frustration and anger. She’d offered him a chance to grant her forgiveness, and he had walked away. She wanted to talk about her “incarceration,” for all practical purposes, aboard his brig, and he wouldn’t compromise. Not compromising had kept him alive these past nine years, and he wouldn’t change now that his goal lay in sight, not even for the sake of a lady whose skin resembled fine porcelain, whose hair shimmered like pirate’s gold, whose eyes glowed or darkened with her moods, whose womanly form drew his attention, plagued his mind, distracted him. If only the scent of lavender oil didn’t remind him of his mother, who had determined he should grow into a godly man. Every whiff made his stomach knot.

  He swung away from Phoebe and the fragrant reminder of the mother—nay, the parents—who would never approve of what he was doing. But Davina would approve. Surely she welcomed his mission for her sake.

  And her daughter’s?

  “Melvina is safer aboard this brig than she was at any of the schools I put her in.” He spoke to the gray expanse of the sea. “She is frighteningly resourceful, and no one could hold her behind locked gates.”

  “And would your wife approve of her here?” Phoebe Lee asked from close beside him.

  Lavender. His mother. Davina.

  He made himself face Phoebe. “Aye, she would approve. I am going about exactly what she asked me in her last minutes of life.”

  6

  Phoebe decided dying would prove easier than suffering hours locked up in the cabin, with its low deck beams and dark-paneled walls. The second night in the cabin, though, Phoebe spent more time kneeling on the window seat with the windows open and Belinda whining about the draft than she did rolled up in Docherty’s cloak on the deck. “I need to feel the wind.”

  “And I need to be warm,” Belinda responded.

  “And see the waves,” Phoebe insisted.

  “You can’t see them. It’s black as pitch out there.”

  But it wasn’t. A nearly full moon sailed along with them, sparkling in the midnight-dark water like fallen stars and limning the edges of the waves with silver crests.

  “How can anything so empty and stark make me feel so free?” Phoebe laughed with a breathy chuckle and pressed her hands to her cold, damp cheeks.

  Odd that an image of Rafe Docherty would swim before her eyes at that thought. His features were too strong, too hard to call beautiful, and handsome sounded ordinary, dull to describe a man with such controlled and quiet power banked inside him. Pleasant—no, pleasurable—to look upon came close to describing him, rather like the fascination of the moon in the waves that drew her gaze yet chilled her to the bone, threw her off balance if she let go of a solid anchor.

  He left her unbalanced, confused, aching with an emptiness she thought she’d banished with her midwifery studies, with friends, with other people’s children like Tabitha and Dominick’s two little boys. She could be independent, serve the women of her county, rich or poor—especially the poor—and not need a man’s attentions, let alone anything else. Then Captain Rafe Docherty, an unscrupulous, probably criminal Scotsman, looked on her with kindness after she’d threatened to slit his throat, and a hole ripped open inside her. She tried to repair it with talking to him, asking his forgiveness, delving into his past.

  He’d rebuffed her. He hadn’t granted her forgiveness. He wouldn’t discuss why he lived the kind of life that could do nothing but endanger his daughter or risk leaving her an orphan. He’d walked out on her, pulling on a thread that unraveled her carefully woven inner strength.

  Or perhaps the sickness brought on by confinement in the cabin simply made her feel undone. Other than an occasional ague, illness had rarely been a part of her life. For the months she’d enjoyed her condition of being an expectant mother, those last months before her husband died, she hadn’t suffered more than a twinge or two of discomfort in the morning for about a week. Now the idea of two more days, let alone two more months, of sailing left her shaken and convinced she could take a knife to anyone if it would get her onto dry land.

  If only violence wasn’t so against what God would want her to do, no matter how desperate she felt. He wanted her to trust in Him to take care of her, no matter what. She tried not to demand to know why He wasn’t doing so.

  “Just stop this sickness,” she prayed again and again through the night. It was temporary quarters, a cabin at least ten by fifteen feet, not a clothespress of a room.

  In the morning, Mel came down and offered to set up their breakfast on deck, and Phoebe murmured a Psalm of praise as the tangy sea air washed into her face like a cleansing draught.

  “I’ll simply stay on deck and enjoy the sunshine,” she announced. “In fact, Mel, may I borrow your Bible for a while? If you don’t need it now, that is.”

  “No, I do not. I did my reading this morning, ma’am, but ’tis going to come onto rain soon.” Mel gestured toward the horizon. A bank of black clouds inked the line between slate-blue sea and ice-blue sky.

  Phoebe moaned. “Don’t tell me I’ll have to go below.”

  “Why would you want to stay he
re in the rain?” Belinda upended a bottle of molasses over her bowl of oatmeal porridge. “I want to be warm and dry below.”

  “I feel better up here.” Phoebe rose and touched the awning. “This is canvas. It should keep me dry.”

  “Aye, so long as the wind does not blow it down.” Mel grinned.

  “Minx.” Phoebe scowled at the child.

  Mel laughed and scampered away toward the quarterdeck and the man with dark red hair streaming in the breeze. He leaned on the taffrail as though he bore not a single burden.

  But he bore a hundred of them, or Phoebe wasn’t a lady born and bred. He bore them alone, forming a shield behind which he didn’t always manage to conceal the gentle, kind man he must have been most of the time in the past.

  She smiled at him. She smiled at the way he kept himself from smiling, at the way he kept his tone neutral or made it harsh, at an odd kind of joy over how much he loved his daughter.

  Oh yes, she caught him looking at the child with that tenderness he’d shown when Phoebe first became ill. Even more so. He was clay in that child’s hands, or he’d have found a place on land strong enough to hold her in place and not risk her life at sea. Dangerous for a man on what was probably an illegal mission. Most definitely illegal, treacherous, outright deadly.

  If she remained aboard, Phoebe vowed to protect Mel. But none of them would remain aboard. As soon as they reached Bermuda, Phoebe would find a way to get them home to America. And she would take Mel with her. She would manage to keep the child from running off to a seaport and the danger of any number of horrors happening to her, incidents that would surely wipe the elfin smile from the child’s face.

  Mel wasn’t that much of a child, or wouldn’t be for long. Keeping her aboard, whatever the reasoning, was another black mark against Captain Rafe Docherty.

  Yet watching him reach out and ruffle Mel’s ragged hair, then stoop to pat the ubiquitous dog at the girl’s feet, Phoebe experienced a tightening in her chest, a constriction of her throat. For a flash, such tenderness softened his features that longing tore at a once-buried wound in Phoebe’s heart—the wish for a child of her own to love and a husband who would cherish both of them.

  A husband and child didn’t seem to be in God’s plans for Phoebe’s life. Her punishment, she supposed, after the mistakes she had made. She was to serve other women in their quest for motherhood, in being good wives.

  She glanced at Belinda, round and pretty, robust in her health, and suppressed a twinge of envy. If Rafe Docherty did get George Chapman out of prison and safely delivered to his wife and child, Belinda would have everything, except for selflessness. She was as self-centered as her brother had been—most of the time.

  Belinda rose from the table and wrapped her cloak around her. “I’m going to make sure Mel can stay in the cabin with us. She said her father makes her go below, and that has to be so dull for her. Maybe I can do something with her hair. And her clothes.” Belinda shuddered. “A young girl in breeches is an abomination.”

  “But practical if she climbs the rigging.” Phoebe smiled at her sister-in-law for her kindness to the child.

  “She shouldn’t be climbing the rigging. It’s not safe.” Belinda plodded toward the quarterdeck, her gait an exaggerated roll between her natural plumpness, her advanced condition, and the tilting cant of the deck.

  “And sometimes she’s surprisingly kind,” Phoebe murmured to no one in particular.

  Her gaze shot to the captain, also capable of unexpected kindness. She didn’t like it. Life would be so much easier if people like them behaved one way or the other so she could know what to expect, could avoid errors of judgment as had caused her so much trouble the year before and three years before that.

  Two times too many.

  Belinda’s voice drifted to Phoebe, high and sweet, the words indistinct. Mel turned from her father, and her face lit up. She ran to the quarterdeck ladder and leaped to the main deck. Belinda caught hold of the child’s arm, and her tone took on a scolding note, though it was gentle at the same time.

  “Don’t jump down like that,” Phoebe imagined Belinda saying. “A lady always walks.”

  Mel’s laughter rippled forward. Fiona yipped in joyful response, and the three of them vanished down the companionway to the cabins.

  The notion of going below to confinement disturbed Phoebe’s breakfast. She must escape the ship to escape this illness every time she entered the cabin, this weakness born of the past she should have put behind her long ago. Surely Bermuda would allow her enough of a respite to regain her strength and find a way back to America. Somehow.

  Meanwhile, she survived on the deck, watching the sea, watching the band of rain draw nearer, watching the captain stride about the quarterdeck, climb the rigging, lounge sixty feet above the deck as though stretched out on a chaise on dry land, though the sway above looked more profound than the rolling of the deck. Phoebe couldn’t look at him up there. The idea of climbing that high left her dizzy.

  She shuddered and looked away to find Mel standing beside her chair. “I thought you went below with Belinda.”

  “I left Fi with her for company, but I forgot I need to finish a mathematics problem before I stay below.” Mel perched on the edge of the chair and applied chalk to slate. “Jordy and Watt and Captain Rafe insist I know my calculations for celestial navigation.”

  “Do they think you’re going to be a sailor?” Phoebe smiled.

  “I wish I could be. I love the sea.” Mel glanced at the angry waves piling up along the horizon. “Being up top is like flying, though Captain Rafe doesn’t like me up there. He says it’s too dangerous.”

  “I should think so. It makes me queasy to look at the men climbing.” Phoebe took a deep breath of salty air. “I didn’t know I was such a weak creature,” she admitted to Mel. “Land is so substantial, it doesn’t demand much of a body.”

  Mel balanced the slate on her knees and performed some complicated calculations before responding. “I don’t like it, but Captain Rafe says we’re staying ashore after this voyage.”

  “Indeed. I wonder how he intends to get us back to Virginia.” Phoebe risked a glance upward.

  A handful of raindrops spattered onto the deck.

  “You’d best go below.” Mel rose, tall for her age and whipcord thin. “I need to show Jordy or Captain Rafe my calculations.”

  “Why don’t you call him Father?” Phoebe asked.

  Mel looked surprised. “No one’s supposed to know we’re related. He’s afraid they’ll harm me to get to him if they do.”

  “I guessed so.”

  And he’d told her. Confided that bit of information in her when he didn’t need to. She wondered why.

  “You have the same cheekbones,” Phoebe added.

  And Mel would be a stunningly beautiful young woman.

  Phoebe glanced up again in time to see Docherty sliding down a backstay. She’d seen enough sailors doing it to realize it was a typical method of reaching the deck, yet it looked rather entertaining and carefree, something a boy did as a lark.

  Rafe Docherty looked neither boyish nor playful as he stalked forward to Phoebe. “A squall’s blowing up. You need to go below.”

  “And good day to you too, sir.” Phoebe rose, curtsied, and gave him a sweet smile.

  Mel giggled.

  Docherty set his hands on his hips. “I said you are to obey me, did I not?”

  “You’d best,” Mel whispered loudly enough to be heard at the helm.

  “I’m not one of your crew.” Phoebe pushed her chair further beneath the canopy. “A little rain won’t harm me.”

  “Nay, but a great deal will. Now go, or I’ll carry you down.”

  The threat nearly worked. She didn’t want him that close to her. His proximity made her insides feel odd, rather tense and tingly. Even at that moment, when more than a yard of deck separated them, she experienced a tugging to rise and step forward, as though he were the North Pole and she the compass ne
edle.

  She gripped the edge of the table. “I’ll take the risk.”

  “All right. I dare say the weather will punish you enough. But you get below, Mel, either to the ladies’ cabin or to your own.”

  Mel cast Phoebe a pleading glance. “Do come, Mrs. Lee. Mrs. Chapman says she is going to make me put on a dress.”

  “I think you’ll look quite pretty in a dress,” Phoebe said diplomatically.

  “I’ll look like a freak, won’t I?”

  “You’ll look like what you are.” Docherty touched Mel’s cheek. “My daughter. Now scoot.” He glanced at Phoebe. “Both of you.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. Whatever you wish, sir.” The girl gathered up her things and dashed through the increasing showers to the companionway.

  Watching her, Phoebe made two observations—Melvina Docherty spoke uncommonly good English for a child who had run away from four schools and spent more time than was prudent skulking in port cities or aboard a ship, and she was desperate for female companionship. Of course. She was twelve. Her femininity would soon be impossible to disguise well.

  And she shouldn’t remain around a ship full of sailors.

  Not comfortable bringing the latter matters up to a near stranger, Phoebe addressed her curiosity about the former. “Who sees to her education?”

  “I do, mostly.” Docherty cast his daughter one of those heart-meltingly tender glances. “She’s a canny lass. Her celestial navigation is nearly as good as Jordy’s, and he’s better than most.”

  “Not yours?” Phoebe gazed up at him from beneath her lashes.

  He didn’t look at her. “I do a’right, but I was not raised to the sea like Watt.”

  No, he wasn’t. He spoke uncommonly well too. The accent was there, strong with rolling R’s and musical cadence, but his grammar was better than hers.

  What were you raised to? She thought the question, urged it onto her tongue.

  He walked away before the words found voice. The rain pounded on the deck, creating a curtain between them. Just as well. She hadn’t wanted him to walk away. Worse, part of her wanted him to carry her below.