Heart's Safe Passage

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Phoebe resisted the urge to clap her hands over her ears. The young man perched on a sea chest next to the head of the bunk possessed no such compunctions. His handsome features twisted as though he too experienced the labor pains. Phoebe glanced at him, glanced at the girl, glanced at the cramped space, and wanted to scream herself.

  She couldn’t help this woman. What ever made her think she was ready to practice midwifery on her own? The ladies of Loudoun County were right in rarely calling on her. Belinda might be better off without her.

  Phoebe took a step backward and fetched up hard against Rafe Docherty’s chest. For a moment, he closed his arms around her, held her close, his lips at her ear, his breath fanning her cheek. “You are a qualified midwife, no? You’re wanting to do this all the time, no?”

  She nodded.

  “Then do not fail this lass now. She needs you.” He released her and slipped away.

  But his warmth remained, spilling through her, easing her fear. She could do this. She must.

  She looked at the young man. “Out. Get me boiling water and clean cloths.”

  “How—how do I do that?” His lower lip protruded as though he were about to cry.

  “Someone will show you. Now go.” She stepped out of the doorway and swept her hand toward the companionway.

  The man departed like she’d kicked him in the back of his nankeen breeches.

  Phoebe closed the door. “What’s your name?”

  “T-Tess. Who are you?”

  “I’m Phoebe. I’m a midwife.”

  “Ooooh.” Some of the fear left the girl’s eyes. “You can help me?”

  “Yes.”

  We can always help, Tabitha had said. Even if it’s only by praying.

  “Let me examine you. No, wait.” Phoebe opened the door. “I need soap and water now.”

  Derrick brought news that the young man, the husband, had settled in the bow with a bottle of rum. “And Captain Rafe has gone ashore with the cutter.”

  “And left us stranded here?” Phoebe pretended to be annoyed.

  Getting away from Derrick would surely be easier than from Rafe Docherty.

  “I righted the longboat.” Derrick grinned. “These landlubbers don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “That’s good anyway. Can you get me boiling water?”

  “The other gentleman seems competent at that. He’s the uncle.”

  “Then please fetch water for me. I can do nothing until I have clean hands.”

  He brought her soap and water from the elder Mr. Torren. She washed on the deck, then returned to the cabin and examined the young woman. And examined her again. Then Phoebe sat on one of the sea chests and closed her eyes to pray.

  She’d never delivered twins. She only knew they tended to come early. And the young woman’s pains seemed extraordinarily fierce, or else she was uncommonly poor at managing.

  After two hours, during which the spasms of labor grew closer and closer together, Phoebe began to suspect the latter. Tess Torren wept and protested and declared again and again that she couldn’t go through with the birth.

  “I don’t want it like this,” the girl sobbed.

  “But it’s how we get babies.” Phoebe sponged the girl’s face with cool water. “You’ll forget the pain once you hold him or her in your arms.”

  Them in her arms.

  Phoebe shuddered and prayed some more.

  “How would you know?” Tess’s lip protruded. “Do you have children?”

  Phoebe didn’t answer. She couldn’t share that she had held her son for only minutes before he quit breathing, too young to hang on to life on his own. Yet in those moments, she had forgotten the pain of the preceding hours.

  But not the reason why he’d come more than two months early.

  Momentarily, her hands balled into fists before she managed to relax them, wash them, and examine the patient again.

  “Only a little while longer.”

  Too soon for her to face whether or not she could truly manage on her own. Not soon enough to get it behind her and the best or worst exposed.

  “It’ll all be over with soon.” She repeated the litany again and again until, with a speed that left her shouting for aid, the babies came, two tiny, perfect infants, a boy and a girl.

  Derrick took the first one, washing him and wrapping him with hands that swallowed up the child in infinite gentleness. Phoebe managed the second child before the uncle appeared and lent his aid so she could finish with the mother.

  “May I see him?” Mrs. Torren asked.

  “It’s them.” Phoebe laid the boy in her arms. “He’s perfect.”

  He was red and wrinkled and heart-achingly beautiful in his lusty cry. Not too early at all, but new mothers rarely knew when the first child would come.

  And Tess Torren seemed to have forgotten her pain indeed. A beatific smile softened her pinched features, and her eyes widened with wonder. “Two of them. I managed to do even better than I’m supposed to.”

  Phoebe tried not to laugh. “Yes, you did well. Now how are you going to manage?”

  “I don’t know.” Tess yawned. “I’m too tired to think of that.”

  “You’ll need to.” Phoebe glanced to the uncle and noticed the husband standing in the companionway behind him.

  The young man’s face was pale but composed, and he didn’t reek of rum. He blinked several times as though stepping from blackness to sunlight, and his mouth worked without words emerging. Tears lent his blue eyes a glassy glaze.

  “Come in, Mr. Torren.” Phoebe offered him a smile. “If you’re sober.”

  “I am.” He flushed. “Rum doesn’t set well with me. But Tess—” He blinked and the tears spilled unchecked. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s all right. But she’ll need a woman to help her.” Phoebe slipped past the uncle and beckoned to Derrick. “Let them be alone a while. I’d like to talk to you.”

  She led him on deck and inhaled deeply of air that didn’t smell like the blood and other effluvium of the birthing chamber. “I need you to take me ashore.”

  “I can’t do that, ma’am.” Derrick shook his head.

  “But I need to find her a woman who’s willing to sail with them.”

  “I can go.”

  “Do you know what to look for?”

  “Some.” He sighed. “Not much. My wife always managed on her own.”

  “You have a wife?” Phoebe asked, distracted.

  “Yes, ma’am. She lives in Edinburgh—” He broke off on a laugh. “Didn’t you think they have black folk in Edinburgh?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m from Virginia.” Phoebe’s face grew warm.

  Virginia, for all its beauty, wasn’t a welcoming place for men like Derrick.

  “I understand.” As she had seen more often than not on this big, gentle man, Derrick’s smile was warm, kind. “I almost ended up in Virginia. I was on a French merchantman nearly nine years ago. Captain Rafe captured it and freed me, then found my wife and babies on Jamaica and took them to his country to live.”

  A kind and generous act. Not the act of a man who had abducted—or abetted abducting—her.

  “Then he’ll surely understand why I need to go find a woman for this poor child,” Phoebe insisted.

  “He’d tan my hide if I let you go ashore right now.”

  Phoebe laughed. “I can imagine Rafe Docherty doing many things, but laying a hand on you is not one of them. Now please take me ashore, or that new mother is going to be at her wit’s end within a day.”

  And surely God smiled on Phoebe’s petition for freedom, with all this happening to support her bid to get ashore and to people who could help her.

  Derrick tapped the toe of his boot on the deck. The wails of two babies rose up the companionway along with Mrs. Torren’s exclamation, holding panic.

  “Get the longboat ready.” Phoebe tossed the words over her shoulder as she dashed back to the cabin.

  She started issuing instruc
tions the instant she stepped over the coaming. “We need cots for these babies. Crates lined with soft cloth will do. They need to be kept safe and warm. Now. Go.” She looked at the uncle, who seemed the most competent of the two men. “Tess, you need to stay calm. You’ll upset the babies if you get distraught, and your milk may not come in. Now let’s work on this.” She glanced at the husband. “She may be more comfortable with you gone for a bit.”

  Chin not quite steady, he fled.

  Phoebe knelt by the bed, holding one baby while Mrs. Torren held the other. “Do you want to nurse or find a wet nurse?”

  “I—I don’t know. Which is better?”

  “Finding a healthy wet nurse this quickly could be difficult.”

  No sense admonishing her to have thought of these things ahead of time before going to sea in her condition. She might not have had a choice.

  Unlike Belinda, who could so easily be in a similar position should the rest of the voyage not go quickly enough. All the more reason to get them free.

  “So let’s see how you do. It’s not very successful to start with . . .”

  Things went better than Phoebe had hoped. Best of all, the love the young woman showed for her babies brought a rush of tears to Phoebe’s eyes. She wanted to lay her head down and sob for all she had lost and never expected to have again.

  She sighed with relief when the uncle returned with two small crates lined thickly enough with fine linen to pad the sides and protect the infants from splinters. At last, as dusk began to fall over the harbor, mother and babies slept, and Derrick agreed to take her ashore.

  “But you stick with me, you hear?”

  She heard but didn’t acknowledge so. She kept silent on the way ashore, mind racing, planning. Surely in a busy harbor she could get away.

  After she found Mrs. Torren help.

  She started at the market. Most stalls still stood despite the late hour. Torches lighted the wares of fruit and ribbons, seafood and costly fabrics, exotic spices and costlier jewelry—a pirate’s treasure trove of goods and people. Phoebe began to ask after an appropriate woman.

  Darkness fell, and the stalls began to close up. Every woman she asked for information sent her in another direction. Her feet dragged. Her stomach growled. For the first time in days, she wanted to eat. But she had no money. Belinda hadn’t brought Phoebe’s purse along, no doubt on purpose. She wouldn’t ask Derrick for coin and be beholden to a man she could never repay, a man she intended to betray the first chance she found.

  He walked along with her, his very size keeping the unsavory elements of humanity away. And he talked to people too, getting the attention of those who shied away from Phoebe’s American accent.

  In the end, he found a nursery maid for Mrs. Torren. The woman was young, spotlessly clean, and employed as a maid to one of the island’s plantation owners. “But I’d like to leave this island,” she admitted, shifting a basket of sweetmeats and fruit from one hip to the other. “Going to sea doesn’t frighten me.”

  After that, slipping away proved almost too easy for Phoebe’s comfort. While she and Derrick waited for the maid to give notice and pack her things, Phoebe asked for a necessary, then simply left the house and walked the mile back to St. George’s. In all her questioning, she’d managed to learn of the diplomats sailing on the American ship and where they were staying. She headed straight for that inn, stepped into the light and noise and stench of spilled wine.

  And saw Rafe Docherty on the other side of the taproom.

  8

  Phoebe stood in the doorway. Rafe caught sight of her over the heads of other patrons, sailors mostly. Several of those sailors drifted toward her, eyes intent upon her golden hair, her fine figure.

  The sailor who should have been with her appeared nowhere in the inn. No one could miss Derrick if he stood anywhere near. Rafe would have him cleaning bilges for the next two months for letting her come ashore. He’d make Derrick clean bilges indefinitely if he’d allowed her to come ashore unaccompanied. If anything happened to her—

  He began wending his way through the crowd, being careful not to jostle the elbows of men lifting tankards of ale and stronger spirits. He didn’t want a fight or any distraction to keep him from reaching Phoebe before she vanished.

  Men swarmed near her. She darted a glance around the room, her eyes wide, her lips parted. Her gaze clashed with Rafe’s. Her head came up, her chin set, and she spun away. In a flash she vanished out the door and into the night.

  Rafe forgot about care and shoved the imbibers aside. A chorus of protests followed him; a fist landed on his shoulder. He dodged and ducked and sped out the door. He slid to a halt. Which way?

  Footfalls clattered to his left. He sprinted in that direction. “Mrs. Lee, stop! Phoebe!”

  A flash of golden hair gleamed in the light of a torch. Rafe pressed forward. He could catch one small female.

  One small, quick female. She slid between two buildings so close together Rafe needed to turn sideways to fit. The action slowed him. It didn’t slow her. Her heels rattled on stones behind a building, then died away altogether, drowned in the tumult of another tavern’s off-key fiddle. Rafe paused at the end of the close buildings, ears straining to hear, eyes straining to see. A crowd of gentlemen and brightly dressed women cascaded from the door across from Rafe. The aromas of roasting meat accompanied them with a spill of bright light from the candles inside. Other than the merrymaking crowd, the street lay empty. No sign of Phoebe.

  He couldn’t let her go. She mustn’t find the Americans. If she told Brock where she’d been, he would vanish again, and no amount of manipulation of George Chapman could draw him out again. Nine years of searching, earning the wealth he needed and hunting the world for the elusive diplomat, would be wasted. He couldn’t retire. He couldn’t keep Mel ashore safe from harm, educated with females to become a lady good and proper.

  He turned toward the harbor. She wouldn’t go further inland, further from her goal of getting help. No Americans and few naval officers sought out the inns and taverns in the environs of the city. But a dozen streets and alleyways lay between Rafe and the wharves.

  He slowed his pace, proceeded with caution. Every alleyway and intersecting street received his scrutiny. Most lay in darkness. Some sported lanterns or torches above the doors, and light poured through windows.

  Movement in an alley smelling of rotten fruit and spilled perfume caught his attention. Then the gleam of gold sent him racing down an alley and into the back door of a shop. Fabric surrounded him—silk like sapphires, brocade shimmering like Mayan silver, muslin shot with gold. It rustled and swayed in the breeze of his passing like the skirts of dancing ladies.

  His running lady appeared nowhere in the storeroom. No flash of gilt hair, no flicker of her green gown, not a whisper of her dainty slippers on the wooden floorboards. He paused, listening for the sigh, the breath of another being in the room.

  He heard the voice, the nasal tenor voice with the absent R of northeastern America. The voice he hadn’t heard for nine years. The voice of the man he’d been trying to find all day.

  He’d found James Brock without needing to free George Chapman from prison, without having to drag two females across the Atlantic, without having to face his growing attraction to Phoebe Lee.

  Let her escape. If she could return to America, good for her ingenuity. He headed toward the sound of that voice, the man who had destroyed his life.

  He flung open the door into the shop itself. Scents of sandalwood, bergamot, and patchouli assailed his nostrils. More brilliant fabrics from the Orient tiered before him for yards, filling the sight, the senses.

  But not so much he missed the four men at the far end of the narrow chamber. Four of them, not one.

  One man stood behind the counter, his face ashen, his hands trembling on a length of fabric he measured. Another man stood between two others. He was tall, slim, and elegant in a suit of deep blue wool with etched silver buttons and an enormous
ruby in the center of a snowy cravat, his silver hair cut short and brushed forward. The men on either side of him stood at attention like soldiers on guard.

  They were soldiers on guard. They wore the clothing of gentlemen too, but sported rapiers and pistols slung from belts beneath their short coats. And their dark eyes never stopped scanning the world around them.

  They lighted on Rafe, and the men stiffened. “Sir,” one said.

  “What?” Brock turned his head.

  For the first time in nine years, Rafe came face-to-face with James Brock and his cold, ice-blue eyes.

  “Who are you?” Brock demanded. “You look familiar.”

  “I should.” Rafe took a step forward, his hand dropping to his dirk. “You as good as killed my wife.”

  “You must be mad.” Brock yawned and returned to his transaction.

  Rafe took another step forward, his heart racing, the rest of him controlled. “Does the name Rafael Docherty mean anything to you? Or perhaps Davina Docherty?”

  Brock dropped his purse. Coins chimed and rolled across the floor. He and his guards made no move to collect them. The shopkeeper dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl after the money.

  Rafe took another step forward. “Thirty pieces of sil’er, Mr. Ambassador?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Brock’s face shone as white as his cravat. “Shopkeeper, get rid of this man. He’s annoying me.”

  The shopkeeper remained on hands and knees.

  “Go away, whoever you are, or my men will make you,” Brock commanded.

  “What’s an American politician doing on a British colony during a war?” Rafe asked, still quiet, still calm—outwardly.

  “No business of a Scot.” Brock raised one hand encased in a cream leather glove. “Men, remove this foulness from my sight.”

  The men stalked forward. Rafe held his ground.

  And a gentle hand dropped onto his arm like a feather. “Come along, Rafe,” said Phoebe’s melted-honey voice. “I can buy fabric in another store.”