Above, men shouted and wheels rumbled on the deck. She’d witnessed the drills. She recognized that sound—the guns being run out.
“They can’t fight.” The cry burst from her lips, and she raced for the ladder.
Behind her, Belinda cried out—not a scream, not a whine, but a wail of fear and pain.
Phoebe swung back and reached Belinda’s side before she toppled sideways. Even before Phoebe set her hands on Belinda’s belly, she knew her time had come.
Above, a line of guns bellowed as though saluting the oncoming child.
22
Phoebe appeared on deck. Darting between recoiling guns and water barrels, gun smoke wreathing her tumbled hair like a halo, she raced aft toward him, and Rafe’s heart leaped with joy at the sight of her, then clenched with fear for her.
“Phoebe, go back,” he shouted through the speaking trumpet. “’Tis not safe—”
A crash of gunfire from the French frigate rolled across the water. Iron shot sailed above the waves toward the Davina like fat, deadly birds. Most dropped into the sea yards short of the brig. Two struck the bulwark. Splinters flew, and two men tackled Phoebe, dragging her out of harm’s way.
They loved her too. Even the ones who wanted Rafe out of the way respected and adored Phoebe. Fearless or foolish, her actions didn’t matter. She ran onto the deck and into the path of danger to help others.
Sickened by the sight of blood—a gunner’s arm lanced by a six-inch splinter—for the first time in a life at first dedicated to stopping bleeding then dedicated to spilling blood, Rafe leaped from the quarterdeck and stooped to lift Phoebe to her feet. “What are you doing up here?”
“Belinda.” Phoebe gasped for air. “It’s her time. We’ve got to get to port.”
“We are heading there, lass. ’Twill be no more than a quarter hour to Guernsey, Lord willing something stops the Frenchman before he stops us.”
“Lord willing?” She widened her eyes at him. “Since when do you care about the Lord’s will?”
“Since I have only half my crew. Now get below. You will do your patient no good if you have your head shot off.” He gently turned her toward the hatch.
She ran back, paused beside the wounded man, then dropped down the hatch, the man following. As he returned to his quarterdeck, Rafe guessed at the dialogue. She would help the man remove the knife-sized splinter from his arm, but he had to come to her. Belinda needed her. She had treated Phoebe awfully for the most part, abducting her, accusing her of killing Gideon Lee, being demanding and rude. But Belinda needed Phoebe’s aid, so she went. Duty called.
If someone needed him, perhaps he would set duty before his own desires to for once accomplish what Davina wanted for him. Not that she would know. But he would. He would know that he had succeeded at something.
At that moment, he needed to succeed at reaching the island of Guernsey before the French drew near enough to damage his vessel into surrender. Along the horizon, Derrick sailed the French prize out of harm’s way, as instructed. Two cable lengths off his starboard quarter, the Frenchman, who was still the enemy, drove a diagonal path through the water, guns blazing, rigging white with all sails crowded onto the yards, a full bloom of canvas to catch every gust of wind. They would think a privateer on the way home would be full of cargo. Instead, they would find French prisoners, a lady about to deliver a baby, a sick child, and a midwife who would fight every French Navy man to protect Belinda.
If the Frenchman caught them.
“How far to port?” Rafe shouted to the masthead.
A roar of gunfire from the frigate drowned out the answer.
Too far. Half a dozen rounds of shot slammed into the Davina’s hull. The brig shuddered. In the aftermath of the silence from guns, brig, and crew, a scream rose from below.
Belinda in travail.
“Lord, for her sake, let us reach harbor in time.” Rafe didn’t realize he’d prayed, let alone aloud, until half a dozen men spun toward him and stared.
“Amen,” one said.
Riggs curled his upper lip. “Since when did you get so holy?”
“Since when did you decide you want to be in the hold with the French prisoners?” Rafe responded.
The men laughed. Riggs ducked behind his gun and snatched up the swab for the already cleaned weapon.
Rafe glanced to the frigate. It was gaining. They had more men, more sail power. Guernsey and safety lay no more than a quarter mile away. It might as well have been a quarter of the globe away. The Frenchman held all the advantages despite the nearness of British land. No ships could sail out of harbor in time to help send the enemy packing, and Guernsey possessed no shore battery. Rafe saw the harbor, the masts of ships anchored there, the steeple of the church.
He leaned toward them as though he could increase the brig’s momentum. “Just a wee bit more speed. Just enough to—” He broke off, realizing he was praying again.
Perhaps he hadn’t addressed God directly, but he had been praying for the past nine years, calling out in need, and there he stood, alive and well and loved.
Phoebe loved him. Mel loved him. Jordy had loved him enough to die for him.
Jesus had loved him enough to die for him?
No time for that. The wind shifted closer to the island. They must tack or founder. He shouted the orders to the topmen. Yards squeaked as halyards dragged them around. Sails flapped, hung, then caught the wind. The brig lurched forward, swung to larboard seconds before another round of gunfire erupted from the frigate. Round shot sailed harmlessly past and died in the sea.
And the harbor mouth appeared. Three cable lengths. Two. One.
The Frenchman tacked, drove up on the Davina’s stern. If the frigate swung sideways, she could rake them, kill half the crew. More. The wrong placement of a ball could blow them all up.
Including Belinda, Mel, Phoebe.
Because he had selfishly brought them along.
How had he ever thought he had killed his conscience? It must have merely been dormant. Now it reared its head, ready to strike in a vulnerable moment.
No vulnerable moments, not this close to the prize.
They needed speed. More speed. He gazed down the deck, up to the sail, back to the deck. Something other vessels had done—
The last broadside from the French had stopped against the superstructure, ripping away a section of bulwark and rail. It gapped along the side like a mouth with a missing tooth. If they fired the adjacent gun, it was likely to fall over the side and into the sea.
And lighten the brig by a ton. If they did the same with another . . .
“Send guns two and eight over the side,” he shouted through the speaking trumpet.
The crew straightened and stared at him.
“Now,” he commanded.
The men glanced to the French vessel gaining on them yard by yard, then leaped into action. Chocks slid across the deck. Tackles were sliced from cleats. A rumble like thunder drowned out Belinda’s next cry as the truck wheels rolled the heavy guns to the gap in the side and sent them careening over the edge and into the channel. One geyser of water. Two. The guns vanished. The Davina leaped forward, a runner who had discarded a burden.
Rafe had discarded a burden. Firepower wouldn’t have beaten that size vessel. Even Watt had run from frigates. Victory lay in speed now, outwitting or outrunning the enemy.
They outran them. At first the frigate seemed to have stopped in the water, hanging suspended between sky and surf, then she slipped behind by a yard, then two, then a dozen. She tacked in an attempt to rake the brig. Her shot landed harmlessly in the sea.
And the Davina slipped into St. Peter Port.
“Lower the topgallants.” Rafe gave the first of the orders for taking in sail, then dropping anchor.
“Sir,” the helmsman exclaimed, “there’s our prize.”
Indeed, the French merchantman rode at anchor a hundred yards away. Men crowded against her rail, and two of them, including Derrick,
lowered a boat over the side.
“Please get out the cutter.” Phoebe had reached his side. “Belinda’s not doing well. We need to be on land.”
Rafe turned to her and grasped her hand. “What’s amiss?”
“I think the baby is breech.” Phoebe was pale.
“Can you turn it?” Rafe looked down at Phoebe’s small hands, perfect midwife hands, slender and long-fingered. “Under better circumstances?”
“I’ve done it once before.” Phoebe bit her lip. “Or it could turn on its own, but she’s scared, Rafe. I think she’ll feel safer on land.”
“Does not everyone?” He managed a smile for her, then issued the orders to have the cutter prepared, the bulwark repaired, the men fed and rested. “We have more work to do.”
“You aren’t staying here?” Phoebe’s eyes shone deep green with her anxiety. “I don’t know this place. Do they speak English?”
“’Tis an English island, for all ’tis closer to the coast of France than to England. Most will speak English.”
“Where will we go?” Her voice and face were calm, but she twisted her hands together beneath the cloak of his that she had made her own.
He drew her hands out and held them, warming them. “Do not fash yourself, lass. We will find a place for Belinda. She is precious to me too.”
“Of course she is.” Phoebe yanked her hands free. “I must go to her.” She turned her back on him and stalked down the deck.
Rafe didn’t try to speak. He understood her anger. He felt her anger slicing through him. He simply followed her like Fiona followed Mel. And like Fiona, he would break away, blacken himself in the tar of his mission.
“Cutter’s ready, sir,” a man called from the rail. “Do you want us to fetch up the ladies?”
“I will bring them.” He dropped down the ladder and approached the huddled group of females. Mel lay on a pallet, too still, too pale in the lantern light, Fi tucked up in a ball at her side. They would have Phoebe if he didn’t return. Had things gone differently, Mel would have had Watt, and one day perhaps he would have admitted he was her father. Now he was all she had. He knew Phoebe was right and he should cease his plans and stay with this child, help her recover from her injury. But if one day she learned he had let her mother’s killer go free? She adored him now. She might despise him then.
He couldn’t let her down either.
He stooped and stroked her temple, where wisps of red fuzz sprouted. “You will have your bonnie hair back again, lass. But ’twill grow on land. We are going up top and ashore.”
“For good?” she asked in her now quiet voice.
“Aye, mostly.”
Belinda let out a wail, and he patted Mel’s shoulder. “Let me get Mrs. Chapman settled in the cutter first and I will return for you.” He rose and crossed to where Belinda huddled against the bulkhead, doubled over as far as her middle would allow, whimpering and sobbing, responding to Phoebe’s soothing voice and words with one coherent phrase. “I want my husband. I don’t want to die without my husband.”
Rafe exchanged a glance of concern with Phoebe. He couldn’t free George Chapman and sail back to Guernsey in less than three days. Belinda wouldn’t be in travail that long. She would have delivered the bairn or be dead by then.
“I will bring him just as fast as I can,” Rafe promised recklessly. “But you will not die. ’Tis only a wee bairn.”
“But something’s wrong.” Belinda clutched at him, her hands surprisingly strong. “Please help me. You’re a physician.”
“Aye, and in your situation, you need a midwife. All I can do different is use the forceps, and I have none.”
“Get some. There are doctors here, surely,” Belinda pleaded.
“Aye, and Phoebe will fetch one if she thinks she must.” He stroked Belinda’s sweat-dampened hair away from her face. “I am off to fetch your husband.”
“Oh, yes, yes, I want my husband.” Belinda began her keening again.
“Let’s get her and Mel ashore as quickly as possible. Both will be better off.” Phoebe scooped up Fiona and muttered, “If you bite me, I’ll throw you into the harbor.”
Fiona gazed at her with adoring eyes.
How much had changed in five weeks.
Rafe stooped and lifted Belinda into his arms. She was heavier than her voluminous gowns suggested, and he staggered beneath her weight. “I am going soft in my old age.” He tried to make a jest of it.
“Let me, Captain Rafe.” Derrick came down the ladder and lifted Belinda as though she weighed no more than Mel. “There, there, Mrs. Chapman, nobody’s goin’ ta die, so you just hush that talk.” His deep, melodious voice continued to blend with Belinda’s whimpers up the ladder and across the main deck.
Rafe lifted Mel into his arms. She felt no heavier than that frightened three-year-old girl he’d carried home from the Mediterranean, both of them grieving, confused, him outraged as he had never known he could be. “We will be finding him,” Watt had said when he learned of the murders. “We cannot have Melvina growing up to be ashamed of her father.”
Had Watt meant himself or Rafe? Rafe never knew for certain, but he took it upon himself to lead the way to avenging Davina’s death. Mel turned to him for comfort and love. She needed to know he had done all he could to see that justice had been carried out.
She had nearly died because of him. Surely he owed her that much, a purpose behind his voyages, his absences, her nearly fatal fall.
“I love you, Melvina Docherty.” He kissed her shorn head.
She smiled up at him. “Aye, I ken. ’Tis why I decided to wake up. You were weeping over me.”
“Aye, weel.” He cleared his throat. “Sometimes even I have a heart.”
“Then do not go away again.” Animation rang in her voice as he climbed the ladder. “Please, Papa. I know you love Phoebe. Marry her and be done with this. I can’t take care of her.”
“Phoebe needs no one to take care of her, I am thinking, wee one.”
“Someone else will get her if you do not.”
And she was better off.
He said nothing, simply delivered Mel to the cutter and dropped into the small boat beside the ladies and Derrick. He discussed with Derrick where to go. St. Peter Port was familiar to them, a haven they had sought in the past. They knew the inns. It would have to be an inn.
“The George is the nicest,” Derrick said.
“Oh, please, the George,” Belinda cried out.
Rafe refrained from snorting. If it gave her comfort, he would find rooms there.
Enough gold ensured that the finest inn in St. Peter Port would accept their somewhat bedraggled and decidedly odd cavalcade. They certainly collected enough stares and catcalls along the route from harbor to street. Sailors, military men, and ladies of questionable repute laughed and pointed and asked rude questions in five different languages. Mel giggled, apparently recalling her French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, even if she didn’t remember her letters. Phoebe blushed over compliments to her looks. Belinda continued to whimper or cry out in Derrick’s arms.
The George faced the harbor and welcomed their gold, if not their party. A sturdy country girl with an accent somewhere between English and French showed them up the steps to two rooms at the far end of the gallery. Rafe placed Mel in one, with a request accompanied by more coins that the maid stay with her as much as possible, and Phoebe and Derrick took Belinda to the other.
“Come back, Papa,” Mel murmured from the bed. “You are all I have.”
“You have Phoebe now. She will take care of you if aught goes wrong with me.” He kissed her cheek, then left without looking back. If he did, if he got even a glimpse of her bright green eyes, he knew he would stay.
Unease rustled through him like stalking footsteps in the grass. A premonition of his death? He’d expected that every day for nine years. This mission was no different.
He shoved the thought aside and knocked on the other door.
Derrick emerged, shaking his head. “I can see why women keep us out of the birthing chamber. They turn into something other than our sweet wives.”
“Davina kept screaming that she hated me.” Rafe blinked in the torchlight bright along the gallery. “I just remembered that. Peculiar.”
She had forgotten he wasn’t the bairn’s father. Watt was gone, back to sea, and Davina had claimed Rafe.
“Maybe it is peculiar,” Derrick said. “She just keeps asking for her husband.”
“Then let us go fetch him for her.” Rafe started to turn away.
The door opened and Phoebe slipped out. “I want to say goodbye.” Her smile didn’t waver. Her eyes were steady on his. Even her hands rested on opposite forearms without fidgeting. But two tears coursed down her cheeks.
“I’ll be on the cutter.” Derrick glided away into the dark beyond the torches.
“Stay,” was all Phoebe said.
“I cannot. I have to get George Chapman.” Rafe tried to smile. Failed.
Phoebe shook her head. “You’re still going after Brock.”
“Mel deserves to have one of her fathers do something good in his life.”
“Often ‘good’ is giving up what we want for the sake of others.” She took a shuddering breath. “Jesus didn’t want to die as He did, but He did it for our sakes. For yours, Rafe, if you’ll just give up this desire to destroy.”
“You destroyed for the sake of others.”
“Yes, but—”
He laid a gentle finger across her lips. “Hush, lass. Naught but death will stop me from what I’m about.”
“Rafe, no.”
“I intend to stay alive.” He kissed her, then stepped away. “I love you, Phoebe.” Before simply standing near her bound him to her and away from what he believed he must do, he spun on his heel and strode away, to the Davina, to the destruction of one who had lied and cheated and robbed innocent people of life.
23
“I’m going to die.” Belinda’s claim had been going on for so many hours, Phoebe didn’t believe it, but sometime in the middle of the night, after twelve hours of her travail, Phoebe began to wonder if her sister-in-law spoke the truth.
Heart's Safe Passage Page 29
