Heart's Safe Passage

by Laurie Alice Eakes

Phoebe’s smile faded. “I don’t know that it will. I can only pray that once he realizes his bird has flown and is several more years out of his reach, he’ll remember that Mel needs him, especially now.”

  Or realize it wasn’t what he was supposed to do and turn his heart back to the Lord. For she needed him.

  “He needs to be healing men, not harming them,” Phoebe added.

  “He needs to heal himself, or let the Lord do it.”

  “I’m hoping . . .” Phoebe shook her head. “Let’s keep looking.”

  “I’m going to ask ten more people,” Derrick declared, “then take you back to the inn to sit down before you fall down.”

  He needed to ask only three. A matelot, coming off a fishing smack that lay low in the water with either an excellent catch or smuggled goods, proved to be an American.

  “I’ve done business with him.” The man, a youth really, grimaced. “Not the kind I’d like. He says I’m too young or some such nonsense.” He glanced sideways at Phoebe. “But I can’t see him minding himself over a pretty female wanting to do business with him.” He told them where Brock lived. “Like a king the French fear more than Napoleon around these parts.”

  Night was falling, too dark and too late for a journey by sea or land to the inlet and house that James Brock had called his home for six years.

  “Tomorrow,” Derrick said. “You should be rested before you meet with him.”

  “Yes.” Phoebe doubted she would rest. Her heart raced. Her stomach knotted and twisted and doubled back on itself.

  Now that seeing the man face-to-face was so near, she recognized the complete folly of her actions in coming to Dieppe.

  “It’s too late to go back now,” she muttered.

  “I could get us back to Guernsey tonight,” Derrick offered.

  “No, I can’t do that.” Phoebe took Derrick’s arm to give her strength for their walk back to the inn.

  As she’d feared, she slept little. The wakeful hours she spent on her knees praying about what she was doing, praying for Rafe, praying for Belinda, for Mel, for everyone she knew, then for Rafe again.

  “Lord, I should have prayed for him more and condemned him less.”

  Daylight arrived at last. Cold and stiff, she rose, washed, and donned her once elegant but now sadly limp gown despite the ministrations of an inn maid. All she could do with her hair was comb it, braid it, and wind the plait into a coil to anchor with the few pins she had left. She wouldn’t look much like Phoebe Carter Lee of Loudoun County, Virginia, but she had learned how to act like a lady no matter what the circumstances.

  Her breakfast tray barely touched, save for the fine, rich coffee, Phoebe opened her bedchamber door as a servant was about to knock.

  “Un monsieur est ici vous voir,” the girl said.

  Phoebe stared at her blankly. “A gentleman here . . . ?”

  “Oui, oui.” The girl bobbed her head, sending dark curls dancing. “Ici. La café.” She tugged on Phoebe’s arm. “Vite. Vite.”

  Phoebe didn’t remember the word, but she got the idea that the girl wanted her to go in a hurry. So she went, her heart leaping into her throat, one name screaming through her head like cannon shell: Rafe. Rafe. Rafe.

  The maid opened the door to the little coffee shop on the ground floor. “La dame americaine, monsieur.”

  “Merci bien.” Not Rafe’s accent. Not his voice. Not him.

  Phoebe stood paralyzed in the doorway as James Brock strode forward.

  Rafe felt like a prisoner. He wasn’t. He enjoyed the freedom to roam about the seventy-four as he willed, except for going onto the quarterdeck without permission. He’d even been given fine quarters amongst the ship’s officers once Lord Dominick Cherrett finished with him. But he wasn’t on his own vessel, giving his own instructions to the crew, making his own decisions as to the destination and how they would reach it.

  “The respite from command will be good for you,” Cherrett had said the night before.

  Leaning on the weather rail, watching the English coastline slipping out of sight at least two knots faster than his two-masted brig could sail, Rafe didn’t agree with Cherrett in the morning any more than he had the night before. Rafe needed to return to Guernsey, needed to see Phoebe.

  Which was why he found himself aboard a ship-of-the-line instead of the Davina.

  “Why have you taken me into custody?” Rafe had inquired of Cherrett, as though he didn’t know.

  “Phoebe asked me to stop you. And here I am.” Unhurried in his movements, Cherrett returned to the window seat. “Do sit down. No, wait.” He rose again. “Hot coffee?”

  Rafe didn’t sit. He gripped the back of a chair and raised one eyebrow. “I ne’er thought the day would come when an English lordling would be serving the likes of me.”

  “I spent time as an indentured servant, don’t forget.” Cherrett smiled with surprising warmth and proceeded to pour coffee from a silver pot in the center of the great table. “For my sins.”

  “And for mine I am here?” Not sitting would have been churlish, so Rafe slid onto one of the chairs and wrapped his cold hands around the warm china cup.

  Cherrett laughed. “To stop you from carrying out at least one act I am here.” Cherrett took an adjacent chair. “We received a rather odd letter from Phoebe a month ago. She seemed to think you were about to commit a serious crime and wanted you stopped.”

  “I was going to.” Rafe gazed at the reflection of the lantern lighting his coffee. “I cannot think that ridding the world of James Brock is such a bad thing, but ’tis not my place to do it.”

  “Indeed?” Cherrett leaned forward, his face intense. “What are you saying? This mission to go after Brock is over?”

  “Aye, for me.” Rafe shifted on his chair, avoiding Cherrett’s eyes. “I have had a change of heart, you ken.”

  “I don’t know. Do tell me more.”

  Rafe shrugged.

  “Would it help,” Cherrett asked, his voice suddenly losing its aristocratic drawl and oddly more gentle, “if I tell you I will be the new pastor of the church in Seabourne when I return?”

  “I have had naught to do with parsons for nearly a decade,” Rafe interjected.

  “I understand. It was a calling I devoted my life to running away from.” Cherrett snorted. “No, spent my life fighting so hard I hurt a lot of people in the process.”

  Rafe flashed him a swift, questioning glance, and this man, who could have enjoyed a life of privilege and ease, told a tale of rebellion, death, and servitude.

  “But I found forgiveness from the Lord in the end.” His eyes seemed to glow for all their dark coloring. “And of course I found my beautiful wife too.”

  Rafe said nothing. He couldn’t find the right words, nor the voice with which to express them.

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Cherrett added. “And those we’ve hurt may never forgive us.”

  “Like Phoebe,” Rafe managed.

  “If she truly does love you, she will.”

  “Aye, the great question, no? If she truly loves me. I am thinking she might add me to the men who have hurt her beyond forgiveness.”

  “I wish I could say she wouldn’t do that. But we can pray for her.”

  And he had prayed for Phoebe, for Rafe, and for James Brock, citing the verse in the fifth chapter of Matthew that said to pray for those who wronged you.

  Rafe knew that verse. He’d read it one day because Mel wanted him to, and in a fit of anger that he now realized was the calling of his conscience, he’d thrown his Bible into the sea.

  “Are you done with your quest to bestow justice on Brock?” Cherrett asked at the end of his prayer.

  Rafe examined his heart and found only a sense of hope, of promise for a different purpose in life than destruction. “Aye, ’tis behind me.”

  “Then I’ll pray that God shows you what’s before you.” Cherrett rose and held out his hand. “And I’ll tell the captain we can safely go to wherever you’ve set P
hoebe and Mrs. Chapman on shore.”

  “Guernsey.” Rafe stood and shook the proffered hand. “But why would you or the British Navy do that for me?”

  “Not for you, for me. And perhaps so they can capture Brock for themselves.”

  “But how did you know I had set the ladies ashore?”

  “One of your crew isn’t as loyal to his captain as he should be. When you sent a few of your lads ashore with the French prisoners, he sent a message to the Admiralty regarding some escaped American prisoners.”

  Rafe wasn’t about to admit to that.

  Cherrett laughed. “Officially, we’ve seen none aboard your brig. And Guernsey is neutral territory, despite being English.”

  They’d parted on amicable terms, and now Cherrett was gone, set ashore at Poole in the early morning to see his father for the first time in nearly five years.

  “And I was right to fear him,” Rafe mused aloud. “He has powerful friends and family.” The highest being the greatest power of all—his heavenly Father.

  God would have to be great indeed to change Rafe’s heart. He smiled to himself and began to pace the weather deck.

  Another eight to ten hours to Guernsey with nothing to do didn’t please him, especially when rain began to fall. He retreated to his cabin, a canvas-sided box off the wardroom, but with a bed and chest and washstand. Someone had given him a clean shirt and shaving gear. And Cherrett had left him a Bible with a simple note saying, “We will meet again. You can return it then.” As though they were friends. The idea rested a bit askew on Rafe, a man who had avoided friendship for far too long.

  “I will be doing that,” Rafe murmured, then sat down to read, to sleep, to pace the deck again once the rain ceased. The captain’s own steward brought Rafe meals, and eventually they reached the island.

  “You’re free to go,” the captain told Rafe. “But Admiral Landry has revoked your letters of marque.”

  “No matter that.” Rafe drew a handful of paper from the inside pocket of his cloak. “I already destroyed them.”

  The captain’s personal gig crew took him ashore, and he ran up to the George, and Phoebe.

  “She’s not here,” Mel explained, hugging him. “She left with Derrick day before yesterday.”

  “With Derrick? Where’s our French prize?”

  “In harbor.”

  Rafe hadn’t seen it in his haste to reach the inn. He didn’t look for it now. He left Mel’s room to bang on the door of the adjacent chamber.

  Chapman opened it. “Hush. Baby Phoebe is sleeping at last.”

  “Phoebe?” Rafe stared at him. “You named your bairn Phoebe?”

  Chapman sighed. “Belinda wanted it.”

  “It’s the least I could do after bringing her along.” Belinda’s voice drifted from inside the room. “Even if now—”

  “’Tis good to hear that your bairn is well, mon, but I want to ken where the adult lady Phoebe might be found.”

  “Phoebe?” Chapman’s eyes darted from side to side. “I—I don’t know. She’s not here. Wasn’t here when we arrived. Abandoned my Belinda during her lying-in.”

  Rafe’s gut clenched. He couldn’t believe Phoebe had abandoned a patient in the middle of her labor. “What are you saying? Where did she go?”

  “She’s gone to Dieppe to find James Brock,” Belinda called out. “She abandoned me so she could fight your battles for you. It wasn’t right, but—”

  Rafe didn’t wait to hear any more. He spun on his heel and raced back to the harbor in time to catch the captain’s gig. “Dieppe,” he said, breathless. “How can I get to Dieppe?”

  Phoebe took a long, deep breath. She would not scream. She would not pound on the walls. She would not be sick. She could bear the confines of a prisonlike room. Her heart and spirit were free of her past.

  But that didn’t free her from Rafe’s past. Nor her own stupidity of meeting with Brock alone. While he reminded her of their previous meeting and asked her what she wanted with him, another man slipped up behind her, lifted her over his shoulder, and calmly walked out of the inn with her. Her attempts to call for help failed. Her French was inadequate to the task. If anyone spoke English, he pretended not to. They wouldn’t go against a man with so much money he spent with a lavish hand.

  So she paced what appeared to be a larder. Its stone walls were certainly cold enough to keep meat fresh. Her fingers and toes were numb. More of her grew numb with cold if she sat. So she paced like Rafe on his brig—back and forth, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Her slippers whispered on the flagstones. And her heart slowed. As darkness closed in on a window too high and small to help her, a fetter inside her snapped away. She no longer felt imprisoned by the walls. They embraced her, sheltered her. Her body could be imprisoned, but God held her heart and soul, and nothing imprisoned Him.

  She opened her mouth to pray aloud, then heard footfalls on the other side of the door, the heavy footsteps of a man. She hoped it was dinner or at least a glass of water.

  It was the man who had carried her from the inn then dumped her into a carriage. It was the man who had chased her and Rafe through the streets of St. George’s.

  “Mr. Brock will see you now.” He sounded like someone from Massachusetts or maybe New York.

  “I hope he’ll see me over supper.” She smiled.

  The henchman grunted and took her arm in a hand large enough to surround her bicep. He guided her through a kitchen, then down hallways of a house with wood paneling and crystal sconces, fine furniture and velvet draperies, but not a single painting, statue, vase, or anything moveable. By the time they reached a library with no books on the shelves, Phoebe guessed what was afoot.

  “You kept me locked away until you had everything moved out?” she asked, smile still in place.

  “I came back to France to pack everything up that’s worth shipping home,” Brock responded. “Sit down.”

  “I’d rather—” The henchman pushed her into a chair. “Stand.”

  Brock glared past her shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt you, Mrs. Lee.”

  “No?” Phoebe rubbed her bruised arm.

  “Leave us,” Brock commanded.

  “But, sir—”

  “Keep an eye out for Docherty,” Brock directed.

  Phoebe drew on her training to show no reaction to Brock, conjured Tabitha’s voice in her head, telling her to remain calm in the face of the direst situation. Never let a patient or family member know if you’re flustered, scared, distraught—anything.

  Tabitha had seen her share of taxing situations in the twelve years she had been a midwife. Not once in three years did Phoebe see her teacher become flustered in the birthing chamber. “You may have hysterics afterward,” Tabitha admonished.

  The desire for hysterics roiling in her middle, Phoebe smiled at James Brock. “Why do you think you need to look out for Captain Docherty?”

  “Because you’re here.” Brock smiled. “Or do you think I abducted you because I think you’re charming?”

  Phoebe laughed, though she felt like screaming.

  “Indeed, Mrs. Lee, you are merely the means to an end.” Brock gestured to the room, empty save for a few pieces of furniture. “I have decided to retire and wish to return to America permanently, but before I can do that, I need to put an end to Rafe Docherty. He’s proved a difficult man to catch or kill.”

  Phoebe turned on her best lady-of-the-plantation drawl. “I expect he’d say the same thing about you, sir.”

  Brock laughed. “Tres bien, madam. But whatever reason you have for looking for me, you’ve done me a good turn.” He paused.

  Phoebe could have filled in the momentary silence with what Brock would say next. She feared if she opened her mouth, she would start screaming, railing against her stupidity, her carelessness, her need to manage every situation the way she wanted it to be.

  “With you here,” Brock concluded, “Docherty is sure to follow.”

  26

  Rafe found Derrick a quart
er hour after reaching Dieppe. He was haggling with a fisherman for the use of his boat to go up the coast. When Rafe strode up to him, he broke off his negotiations and flung up his arms as though about to embrace his captain. He shook Rafe’s hand instead.

  “I knew you’d come,” he said. “I’ve been—”

  “Where’s Phoebe?”

  “He’s got her.” Derrick’s face crumpled. “She just disappeared from the inn, but she was talking to him before she did.”

  “He came to her?” Rafe clenched his hands into fists. “If he’s harmed her—” He stopped himself from making the threat, from even thinking it. “Where?”

  “Ten miles up the coast, but, sir—”

  Rafe turned to the gaping fisherman and addressed him in French. “I need your boat. How much?”

  A gleam in his dark eyes, the fisherman named a price that was likely more than he would make from his trade in a year.

  “That’s robbery,” Derrick protested.

  Rafe drew his purse from his pocket and paid the man. At the clink of the leather pouch, the fisherman looked like he wished he’d asked for more.

  “Do not be greedy,” Rafe admonished him. “My friend here and I could have taken your boat without your permission, had we a mind to be dishonest.” He turned to Derrick. “We are going to be followed, I have no doot. Do not fash yourself about it. They are friends.”

  “Friends? Who?”

  “Let us be off first.” Rafe dropped into the fishing smack and, choking on the reek of fish, set about hoisting the single sail. “Do you have any weapons?”

  Derrick loosed the painter and leaped aboard. “I got a brace of pistols and stickers. Now then, who’s goin’ ta be following us?”

  “A few lads from the British Navy.”

  “Did I hear you right? You said the Navy?”

  “Aye.” Rafe took the tiller. “Which way?”

  “East. What are you doing having truck with the Navy?”

  Rafe told him as they navigated the fishing boat along the rocky coast of Brittany. “They’d like to have an excuse to lock Brock away,” he conceded. “When I learned Phoebe came—Derrick, why did she come? And why did you let her?”