Heart's Safe Passage

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “Silly wee beastie.” The man Phoebe knew only as Cook surged out of the gloom.

  Although his tone was just as gentle and affectionate as Rafe’s had been, it didn’t send that ache swirling through Phoebe as had the captain’s words, his tone.

  She hugged her middle, willing away fear of Riggs, willing away this ache for Rafe. “Riggs was caulking the deck and Fiona toppled over the tar bucket. Do you have what we need?”

  “Aye, that I do.” Cook produced a tub from behind a bar holding the containers on their shelves, and set it in her arms. “Can you manage it, lass, or shall I carry it up?”

  “It smells like dinner needs your attention. I’ll manage.” She wanted to take it to Rafe, have an excuse to finally break the impasse between them. “Thank you.”

  The wooden tub sagged in her hold. She staggered a bit but hefted it onto one hip and crept back to the hatch, glad the sea lay in relative calm so she and lard didn’t go tumbling across the lower deck like a child’s hoop. Once at the ladder, though, she hesitated, not sure how she would manage the steep steps and lard. If she set it on the tread above her, she could balance it as she climbed. Once on deck, she could simply slide the tub across the planks.

  She started up. One, two . . . The decks lay close together, barely more than five and a half feet. Three—

  A shout rang overhead. “Sail ho. The Tricoleur.”

  A French ship. The enemy to this English vessel.

  Feet pounded around her, below her, above her. Phoebe froze on the ladder, not sure if she should continue up or descend.

  “Enemy in sight!” men cried. “A fight! A fight!”

  Fiona began to bark. A female screamed—Belinda, no doubt. And a man hurtled through the hatch, tripped on the tub of lard. It slammed into Phoebe’s middle. She folded like a fan, wind driven from her lungs. Her arms flailed in the air, grasping at—nothing. No rail. No rope. Her hands clutched space, and she fell.

  Her back struck the lower deck, her head something harder. Lights flashed before her eyes. A scream echoed through her head—not hers then. She gritted her teeth against pain in her belly and back and skull. An old blow. Another scream. Another tumble down steps. Blood. So very much blood.

  No, not blood. That was then, a different set of steps, a different floor, a different Phoebe. This was lard. Greasy, stinking fat oozing from a split in the tub beside her. A different man crouched over her, one with the kindness of an angel and a soul as empty as a broken glass.

  And she loved him. God forgive her. She’d told Dominick and Tabitha she might, but the uncertainty had passed. She knew she’d lost her heart for the second time in her life, and to possibly the second-worst man she could find. Maybe even the worst one. Worse than Gideon Lee.

  She doubled over, sobbing.

  “Where are you hurt, lass?” Rafe stroked her hair away from her face. “Do you ken if aught is broken? Did you hit your head?”

  Though his hand felt steady and warm, tension rang through his voice.

  Phoebe held her breath in an attempt to suppress her gasping breaths, the flow of tears, the mourning for losing her heart so unwisely again. Around her, the brig had fallen into the relative quiet of normal activity, the tumult of potential action silenced as though someone had slammed a door. And Rafe hadn’t been the man who ran into her. He had been shorter.

  “I must have.” She raised her head and blinked in the brightness of three lanterns held up by a ring of men with concerned faces. “I don’t remember everyone coming.”

  “You lost consciousness then.” Rafe cupped her chin in his hand and turned her face toward him. “Jenkins, bring that lantern closer. Yes, there. Shine it into her eyes.”

  Phoebe dropped her lids against the brightness.

  “Nay, lass, let me look to see if you’re concussed.” He lifted one of her lids with a fingertip.

  His face hovered mere inches away. His breath fanned across her lips in a light caress, his gray eyes gazed into her one open eye. She opened the other so she could gaze upon him so close, so concerned, so—

  She closed her eyes again. “Why?”

  “Your pupils will tell me if you have bruised your brain.” He gave her that tilted corner of his lips that passed as a smile. “Are you seeing one or two of me?”

  “One is quite enough, thank you.”

  “Aye, I thought as much.”

  “But I didn’t mean why look into my eyes. I meant—” She remembered their audience and clenched her teeth.

  He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Are you in pain?”

  “Not a great deal. But I don’t know what happened.”

  “Watt the clod ran into you,” Jordy announced. “I think he should be cleaning this muck off the deck.”

  “’Tis a day for muck on the decks,” Watt grumbled. “But better the grease than the tar. I am sorry, Mrs. Lee.”

  “It’s all right. It was an accident.” She started to shake her head, winced, and barely resisted the urge to lay her cheek against Rafe’s shoulder, so broad, so close, so tempting.

  She stiffened her spine. “The French ship?”

  “Sheered off, the cowards,” someone grumbled. “Saw us and turned tail and ran.”

  “And when we didn’t give chase,” added another man, one back in the shadows beyond the circle of lantern light, “who’s the coward?”

  Silence. Stillness below deck. The arm around Phoebe grew as taut as a backstay.

  “We have ladies and a child aboard,” Rafe said in a quiet, even tone that nonetheless hummed with the tension of a steel wire in the wind. “There will be no fighting. I’ll say naught more about it. Now get to your duties. Cook, I’m afraid we’ll need more lard for the dog. And hot water for Mrs. Lee to no longer resemble a greased pig.”

  A ripple of nervous laughter ran through the men as they began to disperse around the lower deck and back up the ladder.

  Phoebe glared at Rafe. “You don’t speak to me for a week, then have the audacity to call me a greased pig? If that bite-sized excuse of a dog hadn’t dived into the tar and—”

  He brushed his fingers across her lips. “Hush. You’ll be doing yourself an injury. Now then, do you need someone to carry you to your cabin?”

  She thought she might. Her knees felt like water.

  “I can manage.”

  She meant she should manage. She wanted him to carry her too much.

  She allowed him to lift her to her feet. Her skirt slapped against her legs, sodden with lard. Her stomach rolled. She must look a fright. If she’d intended to attract the man with her good looks, she had failed.

  No, not attract him. She must not. He was more wrong for her than Gideon had been. As she climbed the ladder to sunshine and fresh breezes, she listed the ways to keep her mind off of him close behind her. He came from an enemy country. He was on a deadly mission. He held no faith in God.

  She could change all that. She had at least another month before they reached England. Surely in that month God would honor her prayers and bring this man to his knees.

  But it hadn’t happened with Gideon.

  She shoved that memory aside. Gideon was dead, gone, her mistake paid for and then some.

  She paused on the deck, dizzy from her aching head, queasy from the lard, heartsick with memory and knowledge. The sun beat down warm for October in the North Atlantic, so the sailor said. All lay quiet.

  A chill ran through Phoebe for no logical reason. Belinda still stitched baby clothes beside the rail. Mel and Watt rubbed oil into Fiona’s hair to remove the tar. Riggs scraped at the spilled tar on the deck, diligent despite his mutinous expression. Others performed their duties of adjusting sails, holding the brig on course, polishing the brass guns ranged along the gunwales. Peaceful for a vessel intended as a machine of war.

  A war against one man. A vessel that existed to salve the hatred of another man.

  No wonder cold seeped through her. She was more of a fool to love him than to have loved Gid
eon. If she couldn’t change Rafe . . .

  She’d been unable to change Gideon.

  She bowed her head in case her despair showed on her face, and plodded aft. A glance back told her she had made a slimy mess on the deck. She paused at the top of the companionway and addressed Rafe without looking at him. “I’m so sorry for the mess. I’ll help clean it.”

  “And risk your hands? Now go down, and we’ll have hot water for you in a few minutes.” He strode away, his footfalls firm on the deck planks, and she wished she had a serious injury so he would take care of her.

  Odd she knew he would. Seeing to the sick and injured aboard any ship rarely fell to its captain. But Rafe Docherty seemed cut from a different cloth. He saw to everything aboard, from caring for the sick to navigating the vessel to ensuring the captive guests enjoyed every comfort the brig had to offer.

  Within minutes of leaving her, he did indeed send down a barrel and men with canisters of hot water so she could wash away the lard. It was seawater that left her skin a little sticky, but better sticky than slippery. She smelled of the jasmine soap she’d purchased on Bermuda, heady and warm compared to Belinda’s sharp tang of lavender.

  No one appreciated it other than her. Belinda and Mel, seated on the deck with the latter now reading Evangeline, wrinkled their noses. A scrubbed and shorn Fiona sneezed, and Rafe appeared nowhere in sight.

  Despite an ache in her skull where she’d landed on the deck, Phoebe climbed to the quarterdeck and leaned against the taffrail behind Jordy once again at the wheel. “How big is this ship?”

  “’Tis a brig. We have only two masts.” He leaned toward the compass and turned the wheel a quarter revolution. “A hundred and seventy-five tons. Eighty feet long. Not so big, but big enough to get the job done.”

  “What job is that?” Phoebe stared at the Scotsman’s graying hair as though she could see the truth through his skull. “Killing men?”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “We’re a privateer, no?”

  “Were, I think. But how big a brig or any vessel do you need to kill one man?”

  “None, lass, but I’ll not be talking of it further. Talking does no good. Only prayer.”

  Phoebe wanted to argue with him but guessed it would do no good. So she changed her tack. “Why did he take his family to the Mediterranean during a war?”

  “It was during the Peace of Amiens. And Mrs. Docherty, the younger one, she—” Jordy’s gaze strayed past Phoebe’s shoulder. “You’d best leave the quarterdeck, Mrs. Lee. He’s coming back and may not wish to find you here.”

  “I’m not afraid of him, Mr. McPherson.”

  So why had she let him avoid her? Not fear. On the contrary—she wanted to stay with him, follow him around like Fiona followed Mel. She’d remained aboard the Davina instead of leaving when she’d had the opportunity because she wanted to block Rafe from his course, then she acted no differently than she had as a schoolgirl attempting to gain Gideon Lee’s attention by avoiding him, peering at him over the edge of an open fan.

  She remained on the quarterdeck as Rafe strode aft, paused to speak to Riggs and then to Mel and Belinda, and continued on. At the top of the ladder, he hesitated, his gaze falling on Phoebe. She waited, hand on the taffrail, half expecting him to order her away.

  He merely inclined his head, then sauntered toward her, one corner of his mouth tipped up. “Mrs. Lee, you look a wee bit less greasy since I last saw you.”

  “I feel a bit less greasy.” She gave him a full smile.

  “And you are well?” Something flickered in his eyes—amusement, speculation, even warmth? “Your head is a’right?”

  “Well enough.” She dared touch his arm. “Thank you for the bathwater. I know it’s an imposition.”

  “So is having you breaking a limb slipping on your own lard supply.” He didn’t draw away from her. “But I am thinking perhaps you should keep to your bed for a day or two to let the head heal.”

  Phoebe shuddered. “I fare much better on deck.”

  “Aye, an odd form of seasickness that is, to affect you only in the cabin.” Rafe glanced at Jordy. “Do keep a watch on Riggs. Jones is well subdued, but Riggs is trouble in the making.”

  “’Tis a’ready been made, if you ask me.” Jordy growled the words.

  “I did not ask you.”

  “And Watt—”

  “Nor about my—other senior crewman. Derrick will relieve you at the helm at the turn of the glass.”

  The hourglass, whose dripping sand measured time, appeared half full on its stand atop the binnacle.

  She should have waited another quarter hour. Derrick never stared at her as Jordy did, as though she meant Rafe harm. She didn’t. That letter was supposed to help him, protect him from himself if she failed.

  She smiled up at him again. “Do you have a moment to walk with me, Captain?”

  “I cannot think why you would wish to do so, Mrs. Lee.” He did not smile back.

  “Because I’ve missed your company?”

  Jordy snorted.

  Rafe headed for the ladder, Phoebe beside him. “He does not approve of you aboard, you ken,” he said.

  “I do know that. Neither does Watt.”

  “And neither do you?” He assisted her to the deck, then began to walk along the weather rail where salt spray touched their faces, cold but not too much to chill—enough to refresh. For the first time since meeting them, Phoebe understood why Tabitha and Dominick enjoyed walks along the beach in the morning mist. The swirling damp air felt like a cloak sheltering them both together.

  “I’d rather not be here,” Phoebe said, then wondered if she spoke the truth. “I prefer stable ground beneath me and a bath with fresh water.”

  “Then why did you stay?”

  “Why have you been avoiding me since I stayed?”

  He touched the back of her hand, which rested on his arm. “Because you stayed.”

  The deck rolled beneath Phoebe’s feet as though a thirty-foot swell had passed beneath the bow. Never would she imagine him to be so open, so blunt. So vulnerable.

  “You should have taken your opportunity to run, Mrs. Lee.” He spoke nearly too softly for her to hear. The gentleness of his tone felt like a caress.

  Phoebe tightened her hold on his arm. “I couldn’t go after I knew what you’re doing.”

  “Ah, you want to save my soul.”

  “I want to save your life. Only Jesus can save your soul.”

  “Why?” He paused and faced her. “What am I to you that you would do this?”

  “I don’t know.” She met and held his gaze. “I just couldn’t go.”

  “I am thinking you will regret it.” He touched the tender lump on her head. “You have been injured a’ready. It could be worse next time.”

  “And you are almost certain to die if you continue. Rafe—” Her heart ached. Instinct prompted her to hold him close. A glimpse of Belinda staring at her and Mel grinning held Phoebe rooted like a garden statue. “How long do I have to work on changing your mind?”

  He laughed. Chuckled to be accurate, a low rumble more in his chest than his throat. “You have nigh on four weeks, but Jordy has failed for nine years.”

  “That,” Phoebe bit out, “is because Jordy talks of being a man of faith while fighting alongside you on the same mission. Can you believe in his sincerity?”

  “Aye, but then he has been so all my life. Derrick, now, that is different. He fights with me out of loyalty and a sense of duty.”

  “As does Watt?”

  “Not very subtle of you, Mrs. Lee.”

  “I was Phoebe the other night.”

  “Calling you Mrs. Lee reminds me you are a reluctant passenger, not my friend.” He resumed walking.

  “But I am your friend.” The knotted end of a rope swung in her direction, and she danced aside to avoid it, noting Tommy Jones splicing lines twenty feet above her.

  Had he swung the hemp on purpose?

  “If you’ll
let me be,” she concluded.

  “I do not have friends, Mrs. Lee. But if I did . . .” Rafe paused, glanced up at the now safely coiled line, then faced Phoebe. “If I did—nay, I cannot say that. I am better off keeping my distance.”

  Phoebe opened her mouth to deny the truth of his words, then gazed into his gray eyes—eyes she once thought as cold and hard as quartz but now were something marginally softer. Marble perhaps, or at least flint. And she decided maybe he was right. Yet if she let him drift from her, her presence aboard the brig held no purpose. She wouldn’t be with him in England if Dominick sent someone to help stop Rafe from his present course of action.

  “Don’t avoid me, Rafe.” She released his arm and tucked her hands inside the boat cloak of his she still wore on deck. “Please.”

  “Now then, how can I refuse a lady anything?” He rested his hand on the lump on her head, allowing his fingers to linger in her hair a moment. “Do tell me if you have headaches or see double or are dizzy or faint. I am still thinking you might be concussed. No strenuous activity until we are certain you are all right, aye?”

  Odd questions coming from a ship’s captain. “Yes, but . . . does it mean I can’t climb the rigging for fresh air as you seem to do?”

  “Nay, certainly not.”

  “She cannot climb the rigging in a dress.” Mel popped up beside her father. “’Tis why I prefer my breeches.” And like a cat fleeing up a tree, with Fiona yapping and bobbing on the deck as though in futile pursuit, Mel leaped onto the shrouds and swept halfway to the crosstrees in seconds, then hooked her knees over a stay and released one hand.

  Phoebe’s stomach dropped to her toes.

  “Melvina Davina Docherty!” Rafe shouted. “Do not dare let go.”

  Suddenly Watt poised beneath Mel. “Go ahead, lass. I will catch you.”

  “You will not.” Rafe glared at Watt.

  He shot Rafe a triumphant glance and held up his arms. “Come on, lass, you ken you can trust me.”

  For a heartbeat, Mel appeared as though she would take the dare. Then she laughed, wrapped her arms and legs around a stay, and slid to the deck.