Heart's Safe Passage (22 page)

Belinda punched Rafe again, and he caught hold of that wrist too. She clenched her teeth and growled like an angry kitten.

In the doorway, Watt snickered. Rafe shot his crewman a glare and caught hold of Phoebe from the corner of one eye. The pull to turn around and gaze upon her grew powerful within him.

Belinda began to cry.

Behind Rafe, the door clicked shut, Watt running away from feminine tears. Rafe braced himself against the lure, the heart-softening heat of a woman’s tears—and failed. He released Belinda and stepped back. “What’s amiss then, lass?”

“Everything.” Sagging onto a chair, Belinda covered her face with her hands and sobbed. “I am as ugly as a porpoise. I don’t think we’ll ever get George free. And my midwife is incompetent, and I’m sure she’ll kill my baby.”

Phoebe sucked in her breath. If anyone should be throwing things, it should be her, not Mrs. Chapman. But Phoebe remained quiet and calm and still out of his sight unless he turned.

He turned. He couldn’t stop himself. “What happened?” he asked Phoebe.

“A lack of understanding of her own condition and a lack of trust in my ability.” Her voice remained steady, her face expressionless. Her hands shook at her waist.

“I understand enough to know that I’m going to have this baby soon, and she won’t help me.” Belinda’s wail rang loudly enough to be heard all the way back to Bermuda.

Rafe clamped his hands against his thighs to stop himself from clamping them over his ears as he continued to address Phoebe. “False pains?”

“I have examined her and have every reason—” She broke off and narrowed her eyes. “What would you know of that?”

“I am a father. That plagued . . . Davina often near—you are not telling me she’s further along than we thought, are you?”

“I wish I weren’t.” Phoebe glanced at Belinda. “Captain Rafe knows of these false spasms in the belly that make you think you’re entering your confinement. So I am not making this up to—to get even with you.”

Belinda turned to him with big, dark eyes like drowned pansies. “So it’s true? I have to go through this for weeks, not just hours?”

“Aye, that seems the way of it.” He took one of her hands in both of his. “Why do you not go to your bed and rest? I’ll send for some tea.”

“The galley fires are doused for the night,” Phoebe pointed out.

“Then we’ll light them again. She needs to drink. I do not think water from the butts will do.”

“It tastes foul.” Belinda had ceased weeping and now merely sulked, her lower lip protruding and the corners of her mouth turned down. “Will Mel come read to me?”

“I can read to you,” Phoebe said. “No need to disturb the girl.”

Bless her. She wouldn’t be wanting to leave the cabin, following him onto the deck, drawing him further into wanting and enjoying her companionship.

“I like the way Mel talks better.” One hand to her swollen belly, Belinda pushed herself to her feet with the other hand braced on the table and staggered toward the bed.

Rafe slipped his hand beneath her elbow and steadied her to the bunk. “And here I’ve been thinking—” Realizing he was about to compliment Phoebe’s voice, he clamped his teeth together. “Mel is likely in her bed for the night.”

Except she wasn’t. Not a quarter of a minute after he uttered those words, his daughter burst into the cabin, hair tangled and eyes wide, Fiona clutched in her arms. “Is Mrs. Chapman all right?”

“Quite.” Rafe eased the lady onto the bunk and patted her shoulder as though she were a child younger than Mel. “She had a wee bit of an upset.”

And someone needed to clean up the broken glass.

“I’ll fetch her some tea.” Before anyone could naysay her, Mel darted off again.

“I believe I’ll go with her.” Phoebe followed at a slightly more sedate pace, her back straight, her head held high.

“I don’t know what I was thinking bringing her along.” Belinda snatched up a pillow and clutched it to her chest. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“Aye, I’m thinking she does. She delivered twins in Bermuda, and the mither was doing well. That takes skill. But if you prefer, we can get you a different midwife when we reach England, should the necessity arise.”

“That’s the trouble.” Belinda began to weep again. “I think it’ll be too late.”

“God, do please help me.” The heartfelt plea for assistance slipped out unbidden. He ran his tongue over his lips, half expecting to taste the bitterness of mold, so long had the time been since those words had spilled from his mouth.

Phoebe influencing his thoughts again, talking about God and help and relying on Him, all through that night when he’d have killed James Brock in cold blood—or gotten killed first—if she hadn’t intervened.

He backed to the door. “We’ll manage just fine if it is.”

Without God.

“Get yourself tucked into bed, and Mel and Ph—Mrs. Lee will be along in a trice.”

He left the cabin and started up the companionway. Glass tinkled beneath his feet, and he stooped to gather it. He couldn’t keep running away from Phoebe, neglecting duties simply to avoid her presence. Like now. He needed to clean up the glass before someone ran through in bare feet. Calling someone else just wasn’t right. The men would begin to think Rafe considered himself above such menial duties, when he never had been in the past.

He wasn’t in the present. He simply wished to end the visceral reaction he had to nearness to Phoebe. It was unwholesome and certainly unholy. She was a good woman, a decent woman. He would never dishonor her, even if she would do so herself, which she would not. Her faith sustained her, gave her courage and backbone, but she’d fallen for him. He’d read it in her eyes earlier when he picked her up off the deck, the wonder, the softness, the light of joy. He’d suspected that night she insisted on coming ashore with him, and his body yearned toward it, another chance to love and be loved.

And he pushed it away. He pushed it away every time he looked at her, heard her voice, wished for someone to talk to. She pulled him away from his mission, the only way he knew to give Davina rest and ease his conscience. No female must interfere with his plan, if it meant he avoided Phoebe for another two or three weeks.

But the glass needed to go.

He stooped and began to gather up the shards. Fortunately, Belinda had thrown a goblet of no great worth. It was well suited to shipboard life—solid and thick. The sturdiness of the glass made cleaning it up easier. Few slivers clung to the wood of the ladder. He could be done and gone before Phoebe and Mel returned.

He collected the glass in his kerchief and carried it onto the deck to toss into the sea. Then he returned to the quarterdeck, watching, listening, waiting to hear her voice. Three more weeks of this would be torture. The last two had nearly driven him to the bottle of rum he kept for purely medicinal purposes like numbing a man’s senses before an amputation.

Laughing at himself, he crossed to the wheel to give the helmsman a rest. If he wasn’t going to sleep, he may as well let someone else do so.

“Is all well, sir?” the man asked. “Watt called me to take over here, then went below.”

“All is well.” Rafe caught a whiff of smoke. “They’ve gone to restart the galley fire for some tea for Mrs. Chapman. Is all well here?”

The sailor—Hazelwood?—hesitated a full minute before saying, “Aye, sir, I believe so now.”

“Which means?” Rafe pinned the man with his eyes.

Hazelwood moved from foot to foot, shifting his broad shoulders to keep his balance. “Now that you keep Sam Riggs and Tommy Jones locked up at night. Riggs is pure trouble, he is, and leads the rest along with talk of our own riches.”

“You too?” Rafe didn’t recall if Hazelwood had been with the would-be mutineers and had chosen not to make inquiries.

Hazelwood shrugged. “Do I have to answer that, sir?”

“No.” Rafe laughed.

Hazelwood stood still. “I have six brothers and sisters who are counting on me making some money. I thought that’s what a privateer is for.”

“So it is, and you’ll have your opportunity soon, I promise. Meanwhile, you have food and a place of shelter and wages coming to you. Now get to your hammock before you admit to too much.”

“Aye, sir.” The youth saluted and plodded from the deck, shoulders slumped as though he bore a burden.

Rafe took that possible burden into consideration. If another ringleader arose from the ranks, they would mutiny and go after a prize. If they did, he would have to step in and lead them. None of the men knew how to lead a fight. Watt thought he did, thought his years in the British Navy had prepared him, but the Navy had rid themselves of his incompetence, and only Rafe’s loyalty to familial duty kept him aboard. Most of the other men were too green to war. The ones who weren’t would remain loyal to Rafe and not fight if he didn’t. For all their sakes, he would have to fight, and he was tired of war, as much as it had served his purpose with prize money restoring his family’s fortunes and then some.

“No battles, please.” He gazed into the binnacle light but didn’t know for certain to whom he spoke. “Not with the ladies aboard. And Mel . . .”

He shuddered to think of harm coming to his daughter because of his actions. Dear, mischievous Mel, all he had left—

“Please protect my daughter.”

A hand landed on his arm, as light as thistledown, burning like molten glass. He started and glanced to the owner of the touch. The binnacle light had robbed his night vision and he blinked, but he didn’t need his sight to know Phoebe stood beside him. Her jasmine scent, her stillness wrapped around him.

He removed one hand from the wheel with the intention of removing her fingers from his sleeve. Instead, he pressed her hand against his forearm and held her near him. Too weary from too many sleepless nights, he carried no strength for pushing her away.

“Who were you talking to?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Whoever watches out for sailors and fools.”

She laughed low in her throat. “You mean God? Were you praying, Captain Rafe Docherty?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I were. He stopped listening to me a long time ago.”

“Stopped listening, or did you stop talking?”

“I stopped talking when He didn’t save my wife.”

“Oh, Rafe, He was listening. He—”

“Had other plans for her.” He removed his hand from hers and ground his teeth. “Aye, weel, I have different plans too, and they do not include trust in a God who would let harm come to another person like that.”

“He let His own Son be hung on a cross so we can be redeemed. Was that without purpose?”

“And who is redeemed by Davina’s death? By my parents’ deaths?” He intended the words to come out with anger. Instead, his throat closed and the binnacle light blurred.

Phoebe moved her hand to his face, stroked his cheek so the rasp of his whiskers sounded like footfalls tramping through dry leaves.

“I don’t know.” She dropped her hand to his shoulder. “We may never know, but the Bible promises that all things work together for good. We just have to trust—”

“I’ll trust in myself and my skill with a pistol and sword.”

“And sleep when your conscience is clear?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

She snorted, a delicate, ladylike snort, but a snort nonetheless.

“What would you know of my sleeping habits?” he demanded.

“Or lack thereof? Ah, Rafe, you may pace on the main deck now, but I am aware of every step you take. My prayers and my heart follow you.”

His own heart jumped and twisted. He knew exactly what she meant, except for the praying part. His heart followed her too. His heart, which wasn’t dead after all. His heart, which he must guard until James Brock paid for his crimes.

“Don’t, Phoebe. Stay away from me if you know what’s good for you. I can’t care for you the way you seem to want.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both.”

“And we can’t just be friends? I miss talking to you.”

He missed her companionship too. But he shook his head. “I do not think of you as a friend, Phoebe.”

“I don’t think that’s true. I think—”

He brushed his finger across her lips, quieting her, then replaced his finger with his lips. He held the wheel steady with one hand and slipped his arm around her waist, drawing her close against him so she’d know he wasn’t thinking of friendly dialogue as mere acquaintances over a cup of tea.

Her response told him she didn’t think of him as a mere friend either—giving him a reason to send her packing but a yearning to keep her close. She buried her fingers in his hair, murmuring something he couldn’t hear above the sigh of the wind and the roaring of blood in his ears.

Oh, she tempted him, tempted him in ways far beyond the physical. She tempted him to abandon his mission and live a life of friends and family and the kirk on a Sunday.

As it had been with Davina—no, better than what they had known, more than the mere affection they’d had for one another. Before the consumption took her and all the medical advice said take her to a warm, sunny, and dry climate—where she died not of the disease that would have likely taken her within a year or two, but horribly, painfully—

He jerked himself away. “Go.” He grasped the wheel with both hands as though it were an anchor to sanity instead. “I do not want you.”

She laughed at him. He deserved it. She knew he was lying.

He felt like beating his brow against the wheel, a mast, something that would drive sense back into his head.

He took a steadying breath and smelled only the sea. She had left him as quietly as she’d arrived. A moment later, he heard a door slam, felt the door slam beneath his feet. Probably pretending it was his skull.

“Lord, please spare me from all females.”

But of course he didn’t mean that. He wouldn’t trade away his daughter for anything. When she bounded onto the quarterdeck a score of minutes later, he welcomed her with a smile and a brief hug.

“How are you faring, lass?”

“Well. I think Mrs. Chapman will fall asleep soon.” She slipped around to the other side of the wheel to lean against the binnacle. “Are all ladies in her condition so . . . hysterical?”