Heart's Safe Passage (17 page)

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 rose 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.

“Will killing him and condemning yourself to a lifetime of running or a hanging bring your wife and parents back? What will happen to your daughter if something happens to you?”

“I expect there’s a distant cousin or two who could take her in for enough sil’er.”

“Then why isn’t she with them now?”

“She has me to run to.”

Phoebe stared at him for a full minute, then reached out her hand and touched his. “Don’t you hear what you’re saying, Rafe? Your daughter runs away to be with you regardless of the danger. She needs her father. She lost her mother tragically and now needs her father desperately. How can you be so selfish?”

“Mel will be a very well-off young lady.” He didn’t look at Phoebe.

She glared at him. “She wants her father.”

“She has—” He sighed. “I have to do this. I want to die with peace.” He straightened. “I will die with peace.”

“Will you?” She met and held his gaze. “You only think you will. But believe me, you won’t. I felt neither peace nor relief after my husband died.”

One corner of Rafe’s mouth tilted up. “No one thinks you grieved him either.”

“No.” Phoebe hid her face behind her coffee cup. The strong black brew rolled over her tongue, cream softening its bitterness. She inhaled the invigorating fragrance and sent up a prayer for strength from a power much greater than a robust brew.

Surely God would help her bring Rafe back to Him. Surely God would honor her sacrifice for the man there in the shop with the lovely fabrics and scented oils.

“I grieved the waste of a young life,” she said.

“Aye, I have done that myself—my own. But Watt convinced me to come to sea with him, and Jordy came along because he has al’ays followed me, and eventually I worked out that destroying Brock was what I wanted to do. When he sleeps in eternity, I can sleep.”

“In eternity, Rafe?” She moved her hand a fraction of an inch closer to his, wanting, needing to touch him again, feel his vitality and warmth, his life. “What sort of eternity?”

“Not now, Phoebe.” His tone held an edge.

She opened her mouth to continue anyway, then closed it again, shook her head, and gave in. “What were we talking about before you began to concern yourself with my reputation—finally? Ah, yes, Melvina’s education. She’s remarkably well read for a child her age. Did you teach her?”

“Her maternal grandfather was a scholar.” He lifted his cup but didn’t drink. “She lived with my mither-in-law until she died. She was eight. Mel, that is. I placed her in the first school that year. But she ran off back to Edinburgh, and I was visiting. She did not like the separation after that.”

“So you’ve been teaching her?”

“Aye, and Jordy. He’s better at the mathematics than I am.”

“And you read Aristotle and Hobbs and Locke where?”

“’Tis not all war and mayhem aboard the
Davina
, you ken. Most of the time we have naught to do but watch the sea and weather.”

Phoebe shuddered. “Don’t talk about the sea or I may break my word about not trying to escape again.”

“Aye, there is that wee trouble of yours. We’ll get a potion here in the market. ’Tis one reason why I set into port here—to give you a respite and buy more of the ginger.” He sipped from his cup then, his head turned toward the window and their reflection in the glass.

It appeared perfectly innocent, the image of a man and woman on either side of a rough wooden table. Not so much as the toes of their boots touched. But the hour was later than they should have been together. Or perhaps earlier. The guttering candle had dimmed, their reflection faded. And the musician packed up and vanished along the wharf, his guitar tucked under his arm. It was a nearly empty wharf now, empty and devoid of light, as individuals, groups, and pairs slipped off to inns and homes and vessels.

Indeed, no time for a lady to be alone with a man to whom she was not married, let alone barely acquainted with. Yet she spoke the truth when saying his soul meant more than her reputation. If through her actions she could show him God’s love and forgiveness, His mercy and grace, perhaps she could dissuade him from his course toward destruction—his own destruction. She could start by being honest.

“Rafe, it’s not the sea that makes me so ill, it’s the confinement because—”

“Not now.” He shot to his feet and sped toward the door.

Phoebe jumped up and followed. “Where are you going?”