His men would fight and fight well. They always had. That he remained alive and free attested to that. But he didn’t want a fight with the ladies and his daughter aboard. His still-ailing daughter. A daughter who improved daily. She took in a diet of broth and tea. She squeezed their hands in response to questions. She’d even smiled once or twice. Her limbs weren’t paralyzed. He’d pricked her extremities with a needle, and she’d whimpered in protest.
Those whimpers had been the only sound she’d made. His gregarious, lively child lay nearly silent and too still.
Because someone had tried to kill him, knowing Rafe had been the one planning to take the top watch that morning, but Mel let him sleep and went up herself.
Rafe paused at the rail and grasped the ratlines, then began to climb. Within moments, the deck lay no more visible than a suggestion of solidity beneath the gray blanket. So dense grew the cloud cover he had to feel for each handhold, each line onto which he set his feet. He tested the ropes too, leaned his weight on every one of them before trusting his body to their support. Again and again he performed this task, as he had every day since Mel’s fall. Not a single line or cable, stay or hawser yielded more than it should have. The man had struck once and not tried another time, making catching him impossible. No one had seen, heard, or detected anything amiss. Yet a would-be killer lurked aboard the Davina.
Certain he was annoyed enough to chew nails into pulp, Rafe slid down a backstay and climbed to the quarterdeck. Jordy stood there, watching the compass, the barely drifting fog, the wheel for signs of turning.
“’Tis all quiet,” he greeted Rafe in the murmur that didn’t travel as far as a whisper. “Too quiet for my liking.”
“’Tis inevitable this time of year. I’m thinking ’twill lift in another day.”
“Aye, with an unpleasant storm.”
Rafe studied his old friend, his mentor, one of the remnants from his carefree boyhood. “You seem blue-deviled today. Is it the fog or something more?”
“What do you think, lad?” Even in an undertone, Jordy’s irritation rang through. “That precious lass was nearly killed, may ne’er be the same again, for what was meant to harm you. And we cannot for certain lay blame at any mon’s feet.”
“I have my suspicions same as you.” Rafe allowed his gaze to drift forward with the fog, but he saw no one clearly, only walking shadows. “I should have tossed all the mutineers overboard or back onto Bermuda at the least. The British Navy would have been more than happy to take them aboard.”
“But we cannot sail the ship without them.”
“Aye, ’tis one reason why I kept them on.” Rafe gave Jordy a tight-lipped smile. “And the old adage to keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies closer. I cannot watch them if they could be coming up behind me aboard another vessel, even if I could have replaced them.”
“Humph.” Jordy sounded dubious.
Rafe wished he could argue. Of course he should have put them all ashore. He should have remained in harbor until he could replace them. He’d waited nine years to lure Brock into his trap. He could wait another few weeks.
Brock had nearly sprung the trap too soon. Or perhaps intended to spring his own trap. Phoebe had foiled him with running away from Rafe.
Phoebe. Rafe should have left her ashore too, yet he was glad he hadn’t. She’d been invaluable in caring for Mel. At the same time, the mere thought of her left him feeling as substantial as a cream custard in the region of his heart, a heart he thought he’d hardened against mankind—and women. He’d poured so much love into Davina as a youth who barely understood that women were a different and exotic species, the pain of losing her ripped apart any thoughts of caring about a female again. Then Phoebe Carter Lee landed on his deck—
He gripped the rail to stop himself from bolting below to join her in the great cabin. She needed time alone with Belinda, Phoebe had told him, to persuade her to undergo another examination.
“She’s complaining of pains again,” Phoebe had confided in him, more inclined to do so now that she knew his background. “I know this is normal, but how can one be quite certain without looking?”
“You cannot. But I admit I ken little more of childbirth than you and possibly less. We worked more with disease and serious injury than childbearing, though I have used the forceps upon occasion.”
“Oh, do tell me about that.” Her green eyes had glowed, her face animated.
Rafe slammed the door on that part of his life and left the cabin to the women and his daughter. He must, must, must not want Phoebe Carter Lee—in any sense of the word.
“I should have sailed straight back to Bermuda,” he told Jordy. “Brock is likely setting a trap for me now, and we’ve a killer aboard and—” His throat tightened with confessions he didn’t know how to make to the man who had helped raise him, to even himself. Certainly not to the God who had left him far behind.
“As soon as the fog lifts, lad, let us change course and sail for the Firth of Forth instead of the Nore. You can marry that beautiful lass below and return to your practice.”
“As though nothing has happened? Take nine years of this life and toss it away?” Rafe gripped the rail hard enough to cut his palms with the rough edges. “Let that man continue to get away with his lying and cheating and murdering? He’s hiding behind investing in American privateers now, and they love him for his contributions to their cause. What if he comes after me? What if—”
The notion slammed into his head like a mallet. Stars danced before his eyes, an explosion of dawning light.
“Nay, nay, I’m mad to think it.” He rubbed his temples, trying to eradicate the idea.
“Think what?” Jordy asked.
“Naught. It isn’t possible.” He strode away, his feet silent on the damp deck planks, his mind screaming with ideas. One idea shouted the loudest—talk to Phoebe. She was sensible. She would disabuse him of the knowledge in a heartbeat.
He descended the ladder to the great cabin and listened to gain an idea of what lay behind the door. No voices penetrated the thick wood. He scratched on the panel. No one responded. He turned the handle. The door remained locked.
“Phoebe?” He kept his voice low and feared she wouldn’t hear him.
The door opened an instant later. She stood in the sliver of the opening, her face flushed, her eyes a brilliant glass-green in contrast. “What?”
“Oh, aye, I am begging your pardon?” The depth of the bow he gave her matched the sarcasm of his tone.
She smiled. Her posture and face relaxed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t take my temper out on you.” She stepped over the coaming and into the companionway, drawing the door closed behind her. “Don’t ask me what’s wrong. I’m sure you can guess it’s Belinda. How George Chapman can love her as much as he apparently does doesn’t speak highly of his character or judgment of people.”
“Considering who one of his investors is, I concur about his judgment of people. But what of Mrs. Chapman?”
“She’s as childish as a newborn kitten and as mean as a rabid dog. Except with your daughter. She’s as kind as a—a—”
“Mither kitten with her bairns?”
“Something like that.” Phoebe smiled.
Rafe clasped his hands behind his back to keep himself from reaching for her. “Is Mrs. Chapman giving you trouble then?”
“She’s lied to me about her condition so often I don’t know what to believe, and I doubt my own ability to say.”
“And what does your instinct tell you?”
“That she could have this baby a week from now and not much longer.”
Words crowded onto Rafe’s lips. He caught a whiff of lavender from Phoebe, no doubt from her proximity to Belinda, and controlled his impulse to curse over the woman’s lies to her sister-in-law and to him.
“We cannot have a newborn aboard this brig. You cannot be nursing Mel and Belinda both.” He smoothed a fingertip across the groove forming between Phoebe’s eyes. “Do
not distress yourself, lass. We’ll reach port as quickly as we can.”
“Which is when?”
“If the fog lifts, not so long. Two weeks to Cornwall at the outside.”
“Rafe.” She caught hold of his hand and clutched it between both of hers. “I don’t think we have two weeks. Is there nowhere closer?”
“Perhaps a channel island. Guernsey.”
“Or you could set us down in France.”
“Nay, lass, I cannot risk it. I’d never get you back.”
“Then abandon your plan. Your daughter needs care on land. Belinda can’t have this baby at sea. I’m not sure she’s well. Her hands and feet are terribly swollen. And—please, Rafe, abandon this plan of yours. It’s not worth the danger, the trouble, the—everything that comes with it.”
Gazing into her big eyes, he felt himself tilting on the precipice of saying he would.
Which was precisely why he needed to stop himself from caring about her. Davina deserved to be avenged. His father and mother deserved to be avenged. Mel deserved to know that justice had been perpetrated on the man who had robbed her of her mother, her grandparents, and, for too much of her life, her father. And now—if Rafe was even remotely right in his assumptions—Mel’s own ability to live a normal life.
“James Brock is trying to kill me,” Rafe announced without preamble. “If I do not kill him first, he may succeed, and then who will see to Mel’s well-being if she does not return to her normal self?”
Phoebe gasped. Her nails cut into the back of his hand. “What are you saying? You think Brock connived that accident?”
“Aye, that I do.”
“How?”
“He got to one of my men while we were in harbor. Paid him, no doot.”
Phoebe paled in the meager light. “But who?”
Rafe blew a long sigh through pursed lips. “I was hoping you would tell me I’m daft for thinking it.”
“You’re not. It makes a great deal of sense. I just don’t know who it could have been. Who went ashore?”
“Mostly men I trust. Mostly, but one or two . . . I cannot stake my life on any mon.”
“Or your daughter’s life.” Phoebe grasped his shoulders—hard. “Don’t you see? This means you have to give up your pursuit of him. You have to get everyone to safety as soon as possible, or whoever this is will try again. And then where will we be, a ship without a captain? Isn’t it enough that your daughter is so poorly? Rafe, please, you’ve got to stop this destruction.”
Again he gazed into her fiery green eyes and nearly said he would. Ideas flashed before him. Asking Phoebe to be his wife. Taking her to Edinburgh with Mel to set up a house—nay, a home. More children—
Other images flashed before him. Davina ailing. His diagnosis. His father’s diagnosis. Davina pleading for God to forgive her moments before the pirates slit her throat to shut her up.
“I’ll be resting when that man is dead.” He removed Phoebe’s hands from his shoulders and turned his back on her.
She didn’t try to follow. She gave out a tiny, hiccupping sob, then slipped into Belinda’s cabin and closed the door without a sound.
Rafe stalked back to the quarterdeck. Noting Jordy still at the wheel, Rafe sucked in his breath, feeling the full impact of what he’d said to Phoebe, the near accusations he’d made.
Jordy and Derrick. Jordy had been with him all his life, teaching him to ride, showing him how to sail and fish, how to load a gun and hunt—when he could draw him away from his books. And Derrick? Derrick had been his friend for nearly nine years, humbling in his gratitude for Rafe freeing him and his wife and children from slavery. Neither of them would succumb to the lure of money or any other persuasion that led to killing him. Yet who else had been ashore? Half a dozen fetching supplies. He would find those six and question them.
A useless exercise. Every instinct pointed in one direction. But he could be wrong. Pray God he was.
He snorted at his thought of praying only for this. God wasn’t about to listen to a man not interested in repenting.
Not even if it would restore your daughter to health? Phoebe’s voice rang in his head. Would you give up your pursuit of James Brock for the sake of your daughter?
She hadn’t asked that of him, but her voice sounded as loudly in his ears as though she had shouted the question from the crosstrees.
He knew the answer—no, he wouldn’t. Letting James Brock go wouldn’t change a thing for Mel. If she was going to fully wake up, she would do so whether or not the man roamed free and alive.
And what if you’re not alive? Phoebe might as well have been standing beside him. Will she want to wake up?
He retraced his steps toward the great cabin just as the deck lurched beneath his feet and a gust of wind lifted his hair away from his neck. Glorious, glorious wind.
“All hands on deck,” he shouted. “Topmen aloft.” He raced for his cabin to shove his feet into his boots, then flung himself into the shrouds to climb and climb and inspect the approaching storm about to blow the clouds away and push the Davina to—not too far off course, he could only hope.
Mist lifted and shifted around him, swirling like the gauzy gowns of dancers on a ballroom floor. Men swarmed up the ratlines and joined him, streaming out along the yards to tighten sheets and secure them fast to the spars. Sails snapped and bellied out in the rising wind. Sun shone through a rent in the clouds, and someone began to sing in a rich, warm baritone.
“Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings; it is the Lord, who rises with healing in His wings. When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again a season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain.”
Derrick, of course. No one else aboard possessed the boldness to sing a hymn amidst a crowd of sailors. One of the men laughed—too close to Rafe. He shifted his hand from a line to the man’s wrist and squeezed until he held the sailor’s attention. “Do not laugh at him again. ’Tis far better for all than those drunken songs you favor. Understood?”
The man’s features twisted in a spasm of pain. “Didn’t know you was going soft with religion, sir.”
“There’s naught soft about Derrick, let alone God, lad, and do not forget it.” Rafe released the man’s wrist, swung onto the forestay, and slid to the deck in seconds. He began his inspection of the deck by daylight, checking every cleat and line holding boats and guns in place. No one needed a loose cannon in a high wind. And a high wind they were about to get. From the quarterdeck, Rafe caught sight of the waves swirling toward them, a mountain of water plunging across the sea to crash upon their deck. Yet the clouds shredded into nothing more substantial than puffs of wool left on thistles in the countryside. A windstorm, no more. Cold, biting wind that sheared straight through one’s warmest wool coat and whipped the men’s queues out like flying ropes.
And into the gale walked Phoebe. Despite her hair streaming around her like a veil and her skirts billowing hard enough to send her sailing above the deck, she glided toward him, her feet taking up the roll of the deck with practiced and graceful ease until she stood beside him at the binnacle compass. “Don’t tell me to go below. I need to feel the wind.”
He gazed at her, drank in her glowing face and flowing hair, and wondered why he shouldn’t do what Jordy suggested and take her home to make a home. He loved her. Fool that he was for it, he couldn’t deny it—except to her. He must deny it to her. He wasn’t finished with Davina’s ghost. Once that apparition of his last attempt at love and a family was sent away with Brock’s lifeblood, he would be free to love.
And Phoebe wouldn’t want him then.
He turned his back on her, shrugging. “Do as you like. Just don’t get swept overboard.”
Despite his rejection then, she sought his company later that day and the next. And he accepted her presence near him, her hand upon his arm as they talked, more often than not at Mel’s bedside, watching for signs of her waking. He accepted Phoebe’s probing questions about his past, even h
er talk of God’s love and forgiveness. Each word from her landed on his ears, his senses, and was absorbed into his being like rain on the ocean until the ache, the longing to drop to his knees and beg her to marry him regardless, grew so strong he left the cabin in the middle of a sentence and slammed the door behind him.
And not five minutes later, Phoebe came charging toward him across the deck. “Rafe.” She grasped his arm with both hands, her face glowing as brightly as the autumn sunlight. “Rafe, Mel is waking up.”
“What? Truly?” He seized Phoebe by the waist and spun her around.
Her skirt flew up a wee bit too high, and she shrieked. “Set me down!”
“My apologies.” He did so at once. “But the news . . . my daughter . . .” He grasped Phoebe’s hand, his earlier annoyance with her shoved aside, and raced for the companionway. “Set the course for north by northeast,” he shouted over his shoulder to the helmsman.
He didn’t even notice who had taken the wheel. Watt or Jordy. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered at that moment except the possibility that Mel was waking up. He took the companionway ladder in one bound and burst through the cabin door to fall to his knees beside the bunk.
“Mel? Melvina Docherty?” He took her hand in his and squeezed. “Are you ready to wake up from your nap yet?”
She squeezed his hand, and the corners of her mouth twitched, relaxed, then turned up into a smile.
Belinda began to weep behind him and murmur a prayer of thanks. Phoebe rested her hand on his shoulder and applied a gentle, reassuring pressure. Across the cabin, the door flew open again, and Derrick and Jordy charged through the opening, Fiona yapping at their heels. Then she leaped past them and scrabbled at the edge of the bunk with her front paws.
And Mel turned her head toward the dog’s frantic yips. “Fi.” The syllable emerged more as a sigh than a word, but everyone heard it. The dog recognized it and took a flying leap onto the bed. “Fi,” she said again, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Mel, my lass.” Rafe’s throat closed, and further words refused to emerge. He pressed his cheek against his daughter’s, hoping the contact would say what he found he could not.
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