Heart's Safe Passage (23 page)

“Nay, not all. I think Mrs. Chapman has been spoiled and now her husband is in prison. She has a great deal to worry her.”

“So do you, and you don’t go all funny for nothing.”

“I’m a sensible male.” He winked.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Disrespecting your captain. I could have you punished for that.”

“But you won’t.” She darted forward, executed a handstand, and landed on her feet again, her face sober. “Captain Rafe—I mean, Papa? Mrs. Chapman says I should call you Papa, if you like it.”

He liked it too much to speak when she called him that. He merely inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“All right then, Papa, why did you let the men get away with mutiny? Isn’t it dangerous?”

“I need them to sail this brig, child, and am counting on their guilt at their disloyalty to make them more loyal for not getting what they deserved. Understand?”

“I think so.” She wrinkled her brow. “May I be lookout tomorrow? I’m not very good at sewing, and that’s all Mrs. Chapman wants me to do now.”

“No, you may not be lookout. I believe I’m the one who needs to be up there.”

Where Phoebe would be too far removed by shrouds and ratlines to come near him.

Mel sighed. “What can I do then?”

“What may you do then,” he corrected. “Tell her you have schoolwork you’re neglecting, which I’m certain you are.”

She grimaced. “But I want to do something. I’m tired of sitting still.”

“You chose to come aboard, hinnie, so you may pay the consequences. Now get yourself to your bed.”

“Oh, all right.” She sighed but kissed him on the cheek before dashing off to her cabin.

Rafe occupied himself with creating lessons for her in his head. Should he start teaching her the principles of chemistry? Her mathematics were excellent, but females didn’t usually learn the sciences. Mel, however, was far from a typical female. She would want to know science. But how to teach chemistry aboard a ship? Perhaps he would persuade Phoebe to teach Mel biology and explain womanly things to her.

It took no persuading. When he asked Phoebe the next day, she agreed in an instant.

“And I’ll teach her how to embroider,” Belinda added.

Behind Belinda’s back, Mel grimaced, but said nothing more than, “I can make a coat for Fi.”

And thus the next week and a half passed peaceably, if still with too little sleep for Rafe until Phoebe began to join him on his nighttime pacing. At first they said little. Then she began to draw information out of him, details about his growing up in Edinburgh, his interest in philosophy and the sciences, his family, his country, and God. He told her of things he hadn’t thought about in years, harmless but naughty boyhood pranks. “I could not do my studies all the time,” he said.

In turn, Phoebe talked of growing up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where horses were king and her family next in line. “I got everything I wanted,” she declared, “and it wasn’t enough.”

“Not very subtle of you,
mo leannan
.” The endearment slipped out before he could stop himself, and he rushed on. “I ken you are saying I will get my wish with Brock and still not be happy.”

“I honestly wasn’t thinking that, but now that you mention it . . . What does
mo leannan
mean?”

“My annoying one.” He drew her hand up, kissed her fingertips, and gave her a gentle push toward the companionway ladder. “Get your rest, Mrs. Lee. I am on watch now.”

He climbed to the quarterdeck to relieve Derrick at the helm. His friend, the closest thing to a chaplain the brig possessed, lingered for a minute. “I couldn’t help but hear, Captain Rafe, and Mrs. Lee be right in that. If you don’t have the Lord in your heart, everything you have will be nothing.”

“Go to bed, Derrick.”

“Aye, sir.” Derrick flashed him a grin. “I’ll go to my hammock and pray for you.” He chuckled all the way down the deck.

Rafe shook his head and couldn’t be angry. Sometimes he wondered what he would do in the future. Finish raising Mel, yes, but she would likely marry in ten years or less, and then what purpose would he find in life after the first twenty-three had been devoted in one direction and the next nine in another? Where would the next thirty or forty go? He pondered the question without answers other than those he didn’t want to accept. Focusing on the immediate goal rested more comfortably on his shoulders.

His relief helmsman arrived at midnight, and Rafe retreated to his bunk. He slept long and deep until he began to dream of Davina hauled away by the barbarians, the pirates plaguing the Mediterranean. Her screams filled his head and brought him jerking upright, his head fogged from sleep, screams ringing in his ears.

He should have found another way to ensure George Chapman would cooperate other than having his wife at hand. This screaming over nothing could not continue. They all needed rest, and she had surely awakened everyone.

Grinding his teeth, he tugged on his clothes. Not until he pulled his shirt over his head did he realize that daylight blazed through the portal. He shoved his feet into his boots and stalked out of his cabin.

“Rafe!” Phoebe flung herself against him. “It’s Mel. She’s fallen.”

“Where is she?” He set Phoebe from him and raced for the knot of men gathered amidships. “Step aside.”

They did, turning grim and pale faces toward him. In their midst lay Mel, crumpled like a discarded banner with her bright hair and white skin. His daughter, too pale. Too still.

Certain his heart had stopped, he dropped to his knees beside her and felt for a pulse in her neck. It was there, fluttering, weak, but constant.

Breath rasping in his throat, he glanced up at the ring of men and Phoebe. “How far did she fall?”

Jordy, as white as Mel, pointed to a dangling line and sagging spar thirty feet above the deck. “She was up top, and I told her to get herself down or I’d wake you up. She’s as nimble as a monkey, but she just fell.”

Rafe’s gaze flicked to that dangling line, and he feared he would be sick right there on the deck. Swallowing the bitterness of bile, he began to run his hands over Mel in search of broken bones, especially her spine. If her spine was damaged—

He dropped his head to press his cheek against hers. “Be all right, you disobedient brat. Dear God, please let my lass be all right.”

A touch as light as spindrift brushed across his head. “May I help? I can do things other than midwifery, you know.”

He didn’t know, but Mel needed help, and Rafe would take it any way he could find it. He couldn’t move, couldn’t let go of his precious child long enough to finish looking for her injuries.

Apparently taking his silence as acquiescence, Phoebe finished looking Mel over for breaks, fractures, anything shattered beyond repair.

“I think one or two ribs may be cracked.” Phoebe rested her hand on Rafe’s shoulder, nudging, gently urging him to straighten. “But her head—”

He jerked upright and stared into her face, seeking the truth, the worst. She met his gaze, but her eyes held a hint of fear.

“I think her skull is fractured.”

A collective gasp followed by murmurs rose from the men. Rafe closed his eyes and willed his heart to beat normally, not stop or gallop out of control. Mel needed him in control, needed special care.

Not that a fractured skull required care for long. He’d seen it before. Falls aboard ship were not uncommon. The lucky ones died on impact and didn’t wake with their brains so scrambled they were good for nothing but taking up space in Bedlam.

Not that he’d put his lass in a hospital for the insane. He’d keep her with him, protect her.

Or do his best to heal her.

He clamped his teeth together and made himself look at his daughter’s head. Behind her left ear, blood pooled on the deck, nearly the same color as her hair. Someone coughed and ran across the deck to be sick over the side. Rafe knew how he felt. Blood during battle was one matter. Blood oozing from a wound on a child was quite different.

“Let’s get her below.” He tried to be brisk as he began to issue orders. “Several of us, so we don’t jostle her and cause more damage. I need bandages and seawater. It should be nearly as cold as ice this time of year.”

No one moved.

He shot a glare around the circle of onlookers. “Now.”

Phoebe sprang to her feet. “I’ll get bandages. We have extra sheets that are still clean.” She raced aft.

And started everyone else moving. Watt and two others ran for the line of buckets kept at the rail for water in case of fire. Others simply scattered.

Derrick crouched down and held out his massive arms. “I’ll take her, Captain. Won’t move a hair on her head. You just go on and get things set up for her.”

“Yes. Yes, thank you.”

Feeling as though he stumbled through a fog, Rafe descended to the miniscule chamber in which Mel slept.

Phoebe met him at the door. “Not here. She needs light and air, and we’ll need space to tend to her needs. Put her in the stern cabin.”

“But you and Mrs. Chapman—”

“Will manage.”

Rafe’s glance flew to Belinda. She stood by the table, gripping the edge for support, her face white. “Of course it’s all right. Whatever the child needs from us she may have.”

Someday he would ask her how she could be so kind to his daughter and so hateful to Phoebe. For the moment, he managed to nod in acknowledgment of her generosity and enter the cabin to ensure it would suit as a sickroom. Clean? Yes, as spotless as it could be after weeks at sea. Phoebe darted ahead of him and began to change the bedding for clean sheets reeking of lavender.

Rafe’s stomach roiled. He couldn’t be sick, not in front of the women, not in front of his men, not when Mel needed him healthy and strong and able to pull up memories he tried daily to suppress.

“We need—we need bandages,” he managed. “And cold water.”

“And hot tea.” Phoebe added.

Rafe stared at her. “She can’t drink anything.”

“Not for her.” Phoebe smiled at him. “For you. Now, sit down before you fall down, Rafe. You can watch. If I do something wrong, let me know.”

Her tone patronized him. A blazing retort sprang to his lips. He swallowed it. She didn’t deserve him taking out his fear on her.

He sat on the window seat. Words reverberated through his skull.
Not Mel. Not Mel. Not Mel.
He realized he was praying again, begging the God he had rejected so long ago.
Don’t punish me through my daughter. Weren’t Davina and my parents enough?

Apparently not. Derrick brought Mel in and laid her on the bunk. She didn’t move. Her chest scarcely moved, so shallow were her breaths. With a head wound like hers, she couldn’t live for long.

He dropped to his knees beside her and took one of her limp, white hands in his. “I never should have brought you aboard. ’Tis all my fault, lass. You ken I meant the best.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Captain.” Jordy stepped over the coaming and loomed above Rafe. “I inspected that line. There was naught wrong with it.”

Rafe surged to his feet. “There had to have been. Lines do not just break with no reason.”

“I didn’t say there was no reason.” Jordy’s eyes blazed. “I said there was naught wrong with the line until someone half sliced it with a knife.”

13

During her apprenticeship with Tabitha, Phoebe had seen a concussion like Mel’s. A farmer putting a new roof on his barn after a storm had slipped and fallen. The wife had called in Tabitha as the nearest person with any medical knowledge. Although she had applied cold compresses and tried to keep him from starving by spooning drops of broth into his mouth at regular intervals, no one could help the man. He needed a physician, but the nearest one resided twenty miles away and couldn’t leave his patients to tend to one man, who was likely to die anyway.

And he had. One night he simply stopped breathing.

Phoebe sat beside the bunk, holding Mel’s limp hand and stroking Fiona, who curled up beside her young master, keeping guard on Mel and refusing to leave for any reason. Phoebe prayed for Mel not to suffer a fate similar to that man. She was a mere child. A disobedient one, as she shouldn’t have been in the rigging at all. But she was also warm and amusing, smart and loving.

“And if she dies, Lord,” Phoebe murmured in the silent cabin, “Rafe will never trust in you or believe You love him.”

Worse, Rafe thought he was being punished, perhaps for his quest for revenge. Phoebe wasn’t certain, though, since he’d said nothing about abandoning his plans to destroy James Brock. The brig remained on her course. The sliced line had been repaired. Rafe was testing all of the lines for soundness after sitting beside his daughter’s bed for nearly six hours without a break in the tedium.

Phoebe moved in and out of the cabin, resettling Belinda in Mel’s box of a cabin, making sure everyone, including Rafe, had a decent noontime meal. Phoebe listened for complaints from Belinda, a dozen responses gathered on her tongue to shut up the younger woman, but that hadn’t been necessary. Belinda simply took her sewing on deck, and when the skies clouded and threatened rain, she retired to the stern cabin, where she sat sewing and gazing out of the windows. Phoebe hoped she was praying too, praying for Mel, praying for Rafe.

“But why would you use this child to punish him? And his wife. Dear God—” Words failed Phoebe. She didn’t know what to say, what she was saying.

She knew that Rafe needed to trust God regardless of what happened to Mel. But as she sat by the child’s bed hour after hour with no change in her breathing, not a hint of movement, Phoebe felt a quaking in her middle—the shaking of her own faith.

She shot to her feet and paced the bit of open space in the cabin. God had a purpose in everything. Everything worked together for good for those who loved the Lord and were called according to His purpose. But what of those who rejected God? Surely this couldn’t happen simply because Rafe was bent on his own revenge and not trusting in God to take care of James Brock in this life or the next. Surely God wouldn’t mete out punishment by destroying a child.