Heart's Safe Passage (3 page)

“You should have warned me.” Rafe chose to remove the gag first. He could exact a promise of no violence if the woman could speak. “I need to untie the kerchief.”

He needed to be close to her despite the abhorrent aroma of lavender. He moved her hair to untie the kerchief. The pale gold tresses lay across her shoulders and over the coverlet like a cascade of silk thread. He tried to brush it aside with the back of his hand. The strands clung and coiled and tangled in his fingers.

Perhaps dropping Jordy headfirst from the crosstrees wasn’t punishment enough.

Rafe extricated his fingers from the woman’s hair and slipped the sharp edge of his dirk between her pale skin and the kerchief.

“Don’t hurt her,” Mrs. Chapman cried.

Mrs. Lee lay still and quiet. He would have too with a dirk at his throat.

A few deft strokes split the linen kerchief. It fell away, and she spit out the handkerchief gagging her mouth. “Water.” It was a mere croak.

“Phoebe, your voice! What happened to your voice?” Mrs. Chapman leaped from the window seat. The
Davina
twisted down the side of a wave, and Mrs. Chapman flew forward.

Rafe caught her shoulders before she struck the deck. “Have a care, madam. You do not have your sea legs yet.”

“Nor will she get them.” Raspy, Mrs. Lee’s voice still held the bite of venom.

Perhaps providing her with water for her probably parched throat was a poor idea. Who knew what she would sound like with her voice clear. Sound like or say.

Rafe guided Mrs. Chapman backward to one of the chairs bolted to the deck around the table. It had arms and would hold her better. “Stay here until someone can help you.”

“But Phoebe—”

“I’ll see to your friend.”

But not as he liked. He couldn’t risk putting her ashore.

He patted Mrs. Chapman’s shoulder, then returned to the bound woman. “I am going to cut your bindings now, madam, but do not get violent.”

“I am not a violent person,” she whispered.

“Aye, and Watt walked into your fist?” Rafe lifted her hands and slit the ropes, then crouched to do the same with her ankles.

The ropes fell away, revealing red marks and a few bleeding sores marring the creamy smoothness of her skin. He must tend to them. No, he would allow Mrs. Chapman to tend to them. Having an unattached and beautiful female aboard was bad enough without adding touching her to the bargain.

He turned his back on Mrs. Lee and crossed to the table. A carafe of fresh water crouched between the fiddle boards slotted perpendicular to the tabletop to keep beverages and cups from sliding with the vessel’s roll. He poured water for Mrs. Chapman first, then carried a second cupful to Phoebe Lee.

She lay huddled on the bed as though the ropes continued to bind her. If possible, her face—at least what he could see behind the spill of her hair—had grown paler, and her breath rasped between her lips.

“Are you ill then, lass?” He crouched before her, the cup in both hands.

“Phoebe, you can’t be seasick,” Mrs. Chapman protested. “I need you well, and I feel perfectly fine.”

“I’m all right.” Mrs. Lee’s voice sounded a bit stronger. “Just . . . my hands and feet. I can’t feel them.”

“Oh no. Let me.” Mrs. Chapman started to rise again.

“Sit down before you fall.” Rafe waved her back.

He braced the cup of water between his knees and the chest beneath the bunk and lifted one of Mrs. Lee’s hands. A small hand as smooth as porcelain and just as cold. He began to chafe it between his palms. His calluses, earned from nine years at sea, grated on her delicate skin. He winced with each scrape. She didn’t move. Her fingers warmed beneath his. He grew warm. He started on her other hand. Their eyes met through her curtain of hair. His mouth went dry, and he released her fingers.

“That’ll do. You can manage your feet yourself, no?”

She nodded and pushed herself upright. “May I have that water first?”

“Aye, of course.”

He needed the water. Gallons of it in him. Over him.

He handed her the cup, then backed away, half expecting her to throw it at him.

She drank several dainty sips. “Thank you. That’s much better.” Her voice proved as light as sea foam and sweet as ripe peaches.

Rafe took another step backward, closer to the door. “Let me fetch some ointment for your wrists and . . . er . . . ankles.”

“Do you have any comfrey?” she asked.

Rafe started at the question, then remembered she was a midwife, a healer. Not so odd for her to ask what sort of salve he had, or for Mrs. Chapman to want it if she fell ill.

Or were in need of a midwife.

He nearly groaned aloud. The brig pitched and rolled through the next wave, and Rafe’s stomach joined it. Surely not. Surely she wasn’t—

He glanced at Mrs. Chapman. He couldn’t tell beneath her cloak and with her well-fed physique. And no matter if she were expecting Chapman’s bairn now that the dice were cast and this friend of a well-connected man had come aboard. He couldn’t let either of them go and just might find the lady’s condition useful to his plans.

A prickling started in his middle. Not his conscience. He didn’t have one of those anymore. Not that he knew of.

But the smell of lavender reminded him of his mother, so he maintained courtesy. “Aye, madam, ’tis a comfrey salve.”

“I’m surprised.” Phoebe Lee glanced toward the wall, where a rack held a sword, two pistols, and a selection of knives. “Or maybe I shouldn’t be.”

“Nay, madam, you should not be surprised we can manage wounds here. We’re part of this war.” He grimaced. “These wars.”

“Which is why you have no business having Mrs. Chapman aboard.”

“He needs me to free George,” Mrs. Chapman said.

“Ha.” Mrs. Lee looked him in the eye, her glance shards of green ice. “You shouldn’t lie to an innocent like Belinda, Captain. You don’t need her help to free her husband. In truth, I doubt you have any intention of freeing her husband.”

“Of course I do.” Rafe fingered the hilt of his dirk.

Mrs. Lee curled her full upper lip. “Because you’re such a kindhearted man? Because you’re on the side of the Americans after all? Do please tell me of your altruism, sir.”

“Phoebe, be nice.” Mrs. Chapman had paled, and her knuckles gleamed white on the arms of the chair. “He may change his mind if we’re unkind to him.”

“No, he won’t. He holds all the cards in this game.” Phoebe Lee skewered him again. “Don’t you?”

“Aye, I suppose I hold a winning hand now that I hold Mrs. Chapman.”

“What—what do you mean?” The young woman licked her lips. “I thought I—I was going to help somehow.”

“You will, lass.” Rafe gave her his best smile—a mere tilting of the corners of his lips. “After he’s freed, you will ensure his good behavior until I get what I want from him.”

“I thought as much.” Mrs. Lee bared her teeth. “You have no scruples, do you?”

“Nay, madam, I do not. I lost them on the deck of a Barbary pirate’s boat nine years ago.” He backed to the door and grasped the handle. “Of course, once my mission is complete, Mr. and Mrs. Chapman may have a long and prosperous life together. Now, if you’ll be excusing me, I’ll fetch that comfrey salve.”

“Wait.” Mrs. Lee shot out a hand.

“Aye?” Rafe arched his brows in query.

She took a hobbling step toward him, lost her balance, and grasped the edge of his desk a mere yard from him.

Did the woman bathe in, wash her clothes in, and wear bags of lavender?

Rafe’s nostrils pinched. “What?” His tone was sharp.

“I insist you set me ashore and allow Belinda the same courtesy.”

“You’re not in a position to do any insisting, madam.” He gave her a mocking bow. “Now that you’re here, you must be my guest. I can’t release you to tell your friend Lord Dominick Cherrett anything of me.”

“Ah, so you know of him.”

“I’ve stayed alive knowing such things, and ’tis too possible Cherrett’s uncle the admiral in the British Navy will work out who I am and have my letters of marque removed. And no woman, especially not one your size, is going to make me a pirate.”

“And no Englishman is going to make Belinda and me traitors to our country.”

“I’m no Englishman, and I don’t want you here any more than you want to be here, but now that you are, you’re going all the way to England with us.”

2

“You can’t keep me aboard.” Phoebe’s breath rasped in her throat.

“Aye, but I can.” Docherty’s nostrils pinched as though he smelled something foul. “I have no choice.”

“Of course you have a choice.” Phoebe dug her fingers into the desk so she didn’t gouge them into his eyes. “You can set me ashore.”

“Nay, lass, I cannot risk it.” He started to turn away.

“If you don’t set me ashore, I—I’ll—” She snatched a penknife from its rack on the desk.

Docherty caught her wrist. “Do not you dare, madam.”

“Phoebe, no,” Belinda cried from her chair. “I need you.”

“Not aboard this brig.”

“Let go of the knife,” Docherty repeated in a burr rolling like distant thunder. “If you harm me, my crew will lock you in the hold until the end of this voyage. Do you like the notion of being a prisoner of war?”

Their gazes met, locked, held.

Phoebe’s knees sagged, and she leaned her hip against the carved mahogany edge of the desk. Going back to the bed and feigning illness seemed like her best escape. No, not feigning. She felt ill—knotted stomach, spinning head, a brain that must have lost its powers of reason.

She couldn’t look away from the man’s eyes. They were gray. Not blue-gray. Not hazel. Just pure gray like the sea on a stormy day. They pierced into her eyes from beneath straight dark brows that contrasted with the red of his hair. Rich, dark red like garnets. Like blood. Though wind-tossed, it hung to his shoulders and swung forward against the plains of his cheeks in a sheen of satin without a hint of curl.

Her hand itched to reach out and smooth the glossy locks. Out and up. She barely came to the middle of his chest. He was too tall to stand upright in the low-ceilinged cabin. And he appeared strong enough to lift her in one arm and Belinda in the other.

A man she could best only by trickery, not combat.

Slowly, she adjusted her stance, balanced on her own feet, and backed away. “I think . . . I think I need to sit down.”

Before she sagged in his hold or was sick down the front of his damp boat cloak.

“Please.” The single word nearly choked her.

“The wee knife, madam.” His gaze pierced her like shards of gray ice.

She shivered but didn’t let go. “You’re forgetting that I’ve seen some of your crew. I prefer to remain armed.”

“Apparently your fists are more than sufficient. Let it go before you get yourself hurt.” His tone, though low, cut like honed steel.

“Phoebe,” Belinda whimpered.

The captain’s hold tightened. Phoebe gritted her teeth, braced for pain, for the twist of her wrist bringing agony or the vice of hard fingers that would crush her wrist bones, or at the least numb her fingers into dropping the blade.

Behind parted lips, Docherty’s white teeth looked clenched. Slowly, with strength that required no application of pain to enforce his will, he drew Phoebe toward him a half step, a whole step. Scents of ginger and tar, nutmeg and salt-wet wool assailed her nostrils. Heat washed over her, through her. His face loomed so close to hers she could have counted his whiskers. She needed to let go, surrender to his greater strength. But she’d done that once too often with her husband. No man would treat her like that again.

She tightened her hold on the knife.

A gleam, a flash of silver, shot like lightning through Docherty’s eyes. “Aye, you’re a strong-willed lass, aren’t you?”

Phoebe kept her focus on his eyes. “I’ve had to be to survive.”

“You’re going to get yourself hurt.” From her stance by the table, Belinda sounded more petulant than frightened. “And I need you more than you know.”

With the same kind of abruptness he’d employed when he grabbed hold of her, he let Phoebe go. “A’right then. Keep the wee knife. But if you use it on me or any of my crew, you will pay the consequences same as any enemy combatant aboard this brig.” With a grace and speed surprising for a man who had to stand with his head bowed, he spun on his heel and stalked from the cabin.

Phoebe tensed, expecting the door to slam. It didn’t. The latch click proved inaudible above the roar of sea and creak of rigging.

But the bolt sliding home on the outside sounded like a gunshot.

Like the clang of prison bars.

Phoebe dropped to her knees and tucked her face into the crook of her elbow. “God, what have I done? What are You doing bringing me into this?”

“Don’t blame God.” Belinda let out a sob. “God wants me here and I brought you along. If you need to shout at someone, shout at me. I told you that on the cutter.”

Phoebe lifted her head and shook back her tangled hair. “I never shout at anyone.”

Except for her husband Gideon—once. Once too often.

“I am a calm, reasonable lady dedicated to bringing life into this world and preserving the lives already in this world.” Her fingers tightened on the knife.

Belinda’s gaze dropped to the blade. “Then what’s that for?”

“Self-protection. No one says I have to let myself be ravished aboard this pirate ship.”

“They’re not pirates. They’re—”

A thud and a string of curses pierced through the deck head.

Phoebe rolled her eyes upward. “Then what are they? Knights Templar upholding Christendom and glory—or whatever they stood for?”

“They’re British privateers. No different than my George.”

“George,” Phoebe said, pulling herself to her feet, “never abducted anyone.”

“Neither have these men. I came willingly and I asked them to bring you along. So I suppose that makes me the abductor.”

“I suppose it does.”

But she couldn’t shout at Belinda now any more than she could on the cutter during the short periods in which they had removed her gag so she could eat or drink, times when not another vessel ran near enough to hear her cry for help. Belinda acted without thinking through the consequences—like a child. Shouting at Belinda was like shouting at a puppy for chewing up shoes. Puppies chewed shoes in their path. Belinda swept people along in hers.