Heart's Safe Passage

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  No more. No more. In harbor, no helmsman stood at the wheel to force him to propriety. The nearest watch stood halfway down the main deck and out of sight.

  “And I’ve not paced this half hour or more,” he added with the merest hint of a smile.

  She’d been drawn to him as he wanted her to be, connected to his spirit because of those moments of contact on the wharf, those seconds of admitting their attraction to one another. Attraction without love or even liking and respect on her side. Something purely carnal and therefore wrong with a good woman like her.

  Completely wrong regardless of the woman, a faint voice from his past reminded him—a past whose teachings he’d set aside for the sake of destroying James Brock.

  She laid her hand over the cheek he’d caressed. “Nor have you spoken to me since I promised not to run off again.”

  “Perhaps I do not want you to change your mind. And if I do not speak with you, you cannot tell me otherwise.”

  “Do you think I’m that fickle?”

  He quirked up one side of his mouth. “You’re a female, no?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  He laughed. Doing so felt like a rusty chain drawing the sound from the deep well of his chest. Yet once the sound spilled past his lips, breathing grew easier and he could speak truth to her. “I ken you have questions I do not care to answer.”

  “Don’t you think I deserve answers?” She gestured toward the town, still bright with torches and lanterns and raucous with music and mirth. “He was chasing me with a pistol and a club.”

  “Only because you chose to be with me.”

  “And if I hadn’t, you’d likely be dead now.”

  “You have no faith in my ability to fight.” He tried to smile, to make light of her statement.

  She pursed her lips. Instead of the tightness making them thinner, it emphasized their fullness, their ripe strawberry pinkness.

  He turned his back to the rail and grasped it with both hands hard enough that a splinter drove into his palm. He welcomed the pain. “Aye, I ken you hear the talk aboard—I’ve lost my will to fight. I have. I never set out to become a fighting man. On the contrary—” He shook his head, erasing the memory of a life to which he could never return. “I found a way to draw out the man who has eluded me for nine years. ’Tis all I wish to fight. No more French merchantmen and certainly not Americans. I do not need more plunder. I need only to see James Brock at my feet, as his actions—” He broke off again. “Nay, lass, I will say no more.”

  “Then this will be a long night.” She stood in front of him, the lantern light behind her creating a golden nimbus of her hair, an angel’s halo. “I’m not going anywhere until I have more answers than that.”

  “You will grow mighty weary.”

  She folded her arms across her chest.

  “I’ll take you and Mrs. Chapman and Mel ashore tomorrow. Any danger has sailed.”

  “Can you be certain of that? He might have left his men behind.”

  “Perhaps. I’ll have Jordy go ahead and make certain, but I doot he has. ’Tis a hostile place for a lone American.”

  “But two American ladies are safe?”

  “Aye, with me you will be. The market is fine with goods—”

  She shot out her hands and grasped his shoulders. “I may be a Carter by birth and a Lee by marriage, but I am no flibbertigibbet of a female more interested in fripperies than a man’s life.” Her voice dropped. Her eyes sought and held his. “Yours, for example.”

  “My life is doomed to the pit. Do not fash—um, concern yourself over it.”

  He worried himself over how he would manage not to kiss her again in the next half a minute if she didn’t move away from him. It would work to distract her, perhaps even drive her into hiding.

  And would cheapen her.

  He tore his gaze away and stared past her to the line of foam creaming against the mouth of the harbor, and the vast, black ocean beyond. Once again his enemy had vanished into that endless sea. But not forever. James Brock couldn’t run forever or hide beneath a flag of truce like a child hiding under his mother’s apron.

  “No one’s life is doomed to the pit until it’s over. Jesus is always ready to receive you if you—”

  He laid a finger across her lips. “No more. I grew up in the kirk. I ken all the right words and actions, how to repent and save my soul from condemnation forever. But any desire to give my life over to God died with my wife on the deck of a Barbary pirate’s boat. She died screaming for God to save her, but He did not. Instead, He’s allowed James Brock to prosper when ’tis his fault Davina died with a knife across her throat. But not before they used her while they forced me to watch. All because James Brock did not keep his word, because he took every farthing my family possessed and lined his own pockets. And you want to talk to me about Jesus ready to accept me if only I—what? Repent of my sins? Give up my desire for revenge? Let a murderer go? Nay, lass, you can keep your God.” Not until he ran out of words and the quiet of the brig settled around them did he hear the savagery of his tone, a savagery cultivated in nine years of nightmares and pain, in blood and the burning pain of hatred.

  Phoebe had heard it, though. She’d understood his words and possibly more. Tears spilled down her cheeks in silent, silver ribbons. Her lips moved, but she said nothing. Her fingers flexed on his shoulders, and she laid her head against his chest. She wrapped her arms around him and held him.

  No one had held him in comfort since his mother had also died beneath the relentless Mediterranean sun. His chest tightened. His throat thickened. The urge to hold Phoebe close, bury his face in her hair, and weep as she did sent barely suppressed shudders running through him.

  He remained motionless. He wouldn’t weep as she did, silently, gracefully. He would weep like a mountain cat deprived of her prey—with soul-deep, howling anguish. He must hold on to his pain. Without it, he knew nothing.

  But he let her continue to hold him until her tears dried and her breathing grew steady. He couldn’t have pushed her away had his life depended on it. She was too soft, too warm, too kind—everything he could not allow himself to have and yet longed for with every particle of his being.

  “So you ken the truth now.” His voice was rough, but not with anger this time. “’Tis not a tale for a lady’s ears.”

  “Even the simplified version I suspect you gave me.” She released him, leaving him cold. “It was worse, wasn’t it?”

  “I do not wish to say. You’re a lady—”

  “I’m a midwife. Birth is untidy and sometimes worse than usual. I watched a woman die before my eyes, with hemorrhaging we couldn’t stop.” She looked away, blinking. “And still what your wife suffered was worse. That woman was in her bed with her husband holding one hand and her mother holding the other.”

  “Davina’s father remained in Edinburgh, but my mith-er—” The break in his voice left him speechless for a full minute. He took in more than one ragged breath before he could continue. “She was with Davina.”

  Phoebe’s eyes widened. She gasped.

  “And my father they made a toy of like a cat does a mouse.” He couldn’t stop now. The sluice gate had opened and the floodwaters descended. “James Brock was to pay a ransom for us. He was a diplomat for the Americans. They would not pay ransoms to pirates, and my own country was taking too long, but I got the money together. I took every pound, shilling, and pence my family had earned and saved for years of hard work and took it to Brock, but he sold me out. Me with my three-year-old daughter just trying to get our loved ones free ended up on the pirate’s boat instead of Brock’s. Brock expected them to kill me too, while he ran off with the money and my vessel. But they set Mel and me ashore on Naples after—after they’d killed my parents and wife. And you want me to repent instead of seeing this man receive justice?”

  She clasped her hands before her and once again looked him in the eyes. “Yes.”

  “Ah, you dear, innocent lady.
We’ll see if your faith is ever sorely tested, if you feel the same.”

  “God doesn’t test us beyond what we can endure.”

  “’Tis a falsehood, that. I am a living testimony to say my faith died on the deck of that boat.”

  “A true faith—”

  “Hush now.” He stopped her words with his lips this time, a swift brush of contact. “Go to your bed. I have no more patience for talk of true faith. My thoughts are straying elsewhere to how a man achieves forgetfulness.”

  He didn’t wait for her to respond. He stepped around her and strode off to the main hatch. He would sleep belowdecks with most of the crew and let Jordy have his cabin back—a mere bulkhead from the ladies. Rafe needed rest.

  Five minutes in his hammock told him he wouldn’t get it. Even those brief words to Phoebe conjured the images, the sounds, even the essence of tar and sea, sweat and blood, and worse, so much worse. Every time he closed his eyes, Davina’s sweet face swam behind his lids. She’d cried out for him to save her at first. Then she gave up on her husband and called on God, begged Him to take her, to forgive her. There, beneath the laughing, taunting corsairs, she had told Rafe she loved him.

  Finally, the beautiful wife he’d adored for what felt like all his life had met his stare and admitted she loved him. He’d waited for her to say that for nearly four years of marriage, and it came too late to give him solace.

  It contributed to his anger against the man responsible for her death.

  He wished in those moments that he were a drinking man for the sake of forgetfulness in the loneliness of the night. But he’d seen what alcohol did to men, destroying their minds and willingness to work. He’d tried at first, but Mel needed him. He couldn’t loll in a drunken stupor when his baby daughter cried in the night for her mama.

  The company of women worked better. Not the sort who made a living on the docks, but women with breeding and education, who could talk and listen too. But they wanted marriage. He couldn’t blame them. It was only right, the upright man he’d once been reminded him. But he could not make that kind of commitment until everyone responsible for the deaths of his wife and parents was gone to their reward.

  And then what decent woman would want him, a man with blood on his hands, even if most of it had flowed from the enemies of his country as he killed in the name of serving his king? More truthfully, his actions stemmed from killing in the name of lining his pockets to seek out and destroy his personal enemies.

  “Ah, but you are a despicable mon.” He spoke to the man his mind conjured, his own image poised on the quarterdeck with Phoebe. “I did not deserve her tears.”

  Or her prayers. Yet he knew she prayed for him. As though he heard her voice, saw her person, he knew she knelt in his cabin and cried out to God for his sake.

  “Do not waste your time with the Lord, mo ghraigh.” The endearment my darling slipped out unbidden, unwanted, perhaps too much the truth. “He does not waste His time with me.”

  But Rafe could waste a great deal of time with Phoebe.

  Aching like a man with an ague, he rolled out of the hammock and returned to the deck. He couldn’t pace and keep others awake. The cutter and lights of the town lured him. What harm lay in a few hours of surcease, breaking his personal code amongst the lights, liquor, and ladies of the night? It was the least of his sins, so numerous a few more would make no difference in his eternity.

  He strode aft to the boat—and found Phoebe waiting for him at the rail.

  At the sight of her, calm and still save for the breeze flirting with her gown and the fringe of her shawl, a warmth kindled inside him, a sensation he hadn’t experienced for so long he barely recognized it for what it was—joy.

  He feared it more than any enemy he’d met over the hilt of a sword.

  Phoebe watched Rafe approach, his strides long and easy, his hair lifting in the breeze above broad shoulders set with an easy straightness one saw in a man of self-confidence. And it was all posturing from Rafe Docherty. His outward calm and assurance hid a soul ravaged by grief and hatred, yet aching for love and full of honor and kindness.

  She hadn’t wondered what interrupted her prayers for him and urged her to return to the deck, to slip past the men on watch and wait by the rail. She knew. She’d urged him to bring up the past, to talk of his loss and the horrors vivid despite the few words he used to describe them. A body didn’t sleep after an episode like that. She knew from the night she’d finally spilled the contents of her heart to Tabitha and Dominick, who then stayed up with her as she wept for the first time in a year, held her, loved her, assured her that God didn’t hold grudges. If anyone should understand that, it was Dominick Cherrett.

  So she waited for Rafe, determined to go with him no matter what direction he chose. If he never came, she would sleep on the deck. But he would come, and he did, a formidable shadow gliding across the planks to where she stood.

  He grasped her hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.” Despite the warmth of the night, her hands felt cold against the warmth of his, cold and tiny within his encircling clasp. “I thought you might not be able to sleep.”

  “Does your training extend to predictions of the future then?” His grip tightened. His upper lip curled. “Or is that your faith?”

  “Not my training, the prompting of the Lord.” She smiled.

  He snorted. “Do you intend to come to the fleshpots of the town then?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Why would I want such a thing as that?”

  “The fleshpots of the town, I don’t know. I’d think a sick head and risk of disease in the morning would be a deterrent. As for my company?” She shrugged. “I’m better than the sort you’ll find in St. George’s.”

  He stared at her for a moment, his eyes silver in the moonlight. “You’re a strange lass to be so bold in your speech.”

  “It’s been my best defense against matchmaking mothers. They come to think that having my fortune and family connections for their sons might not be worth the embarrassment of a daughter-in-law who speaks outright of things ladies aren’t supposed to understand.”

  “Aye, I can see that it would.” He tilted his head and surveyed her through thick, dark lashes. “Are you rich then?”

  “Quite. I was too young to understand the terms of my marriage contract, but apparently the money and property my father left me came back to me upon my husband’s death, along with most of my dowry.”

  “So why did you not try to buy your freedom from me instead of holding a wee knife to my throat?”

  “I—” She bit her lip and looked away toward the port city, leaned her ear to the poignant strains of a ballad strummed upon a guitar.

  My love is like a red, red rose . . .

  “Would it have worked?” she asked by way of an answer.

  “I do not ken.” He released one of her hands and curved his hand around her cheek, turning her face back to his. “I’m thinking perhaps ’twould be best for all of us, no? I can find a midwife in St. George’s to come along for Mrs. Chapman and see perhaps if one of the British naval vessels will see you safe home.”

  “Why?” Her entire body chilled. Sickness cramped her belly as though they sailed through a gale instead of gently rocking at anchor in a harbor. “Why do you want rid of me now?”

  He released her and shoved his hands into the pockets of his breeches, but his eyes held hers. “Because I want you to stay.”

  10

  “You ken you will have no reputation left after this night.” Rafe gave her what passed for a smile across the table of the otherwise empty coffee room of an inn whose name Phoebe hadn’t been able to read in the flickering torchlight.

  Boisterous talk and laughter rose from the taproom across the entryway, and outside the window an Irishman with a Spanish guitar sang mournful ballads. But the coffee room lay quiet and dark save for a candle burning on the table between Phoebe and Rafe. Fragrant steam r
ose from a fresh pot of coffee that an inn serving maid had just brought to them with a knowing smile and wink for Phoebe, which had likely prompted Rafe’s remark.

  Phoebe merely shrugged. “I have no reputation after being aboard your . . . um . . . brig.”

  “You have Mrs. Chapman there as chaperone.”

  Phoebe raised her brows. “She is three years younger than I am and about as good a chaperone as—as Fiona.”

  “Still, you should not have come with me.” Even as he spoke, he lifted the battered tin pot and poured the nearly black liquid into their cups.

  “I couldn’t let you come alone.”

  The truth, but not the complete truth. She shifted on the hard banquette, guilt stabbing her for the deceit by omission, even if she meant it for his good.

  “I told you I’d have not done anything so bad.” He stirred cream into his coffee, gazing down at his cup as though the action took concentration. “Nothing worse than ruining the reputation of an otherwise righteous lady.”

  “My reputation is worth less than your soul.” She took a deep breath, then added, “Rafe.”

  His head shot up. His gaze clashed with hers, his eyes wide, his brows raised far enough for the left one to make a question mark. “You used my Christian name.”

  “You called me Phoebe.”

  “I’m weary of Mrs. Lee.”

  “And I don’t think ‘Captain’ sets well upon your shoulders.” She smiled. “Now what do we talk about to make the night pass and its pain go away?”

  “Nothing,” Rafe said with quiet intensity, “makes the pain go away.”

  “I’m sorry. Of course it doesn’t. That takes prayer and time.”

  But he didn’t pray, and time hadn’t healed his wound.

  She laid one hand on the table, half reaching across the scarred wood to him. “How do you keep going without faith, Rafe?”

  “I have faith in my ability to see James Brock pay for his crime.” He too rested his hand on the table, but not close enough to touch hers.