Heart's Safe Passage (33 page)

“I’m not hungry.” With him so near, her stomach knotted too tightly for food.

“If you are worrying about what Mrs. Chapman said there in the cabin, think naught of it. I will not, if ’twill please you.” He tucked his hand beneath her chin and tilted her head up. “Unless ’tis what I said about ne’er seeing one another again that has you distraught.” He smiled, perhaps to assure her that he teased her. Or perhaps to send a thrill through her.

She gripped the edge of the table. “I don’t want to see you again. I want to get off this brig right now, take Belinda somewhere safe until we can get back to America, or until Dominick—” She snapped her teeth together—too late. The damage had been done.

Rafe’s smile vanished. His hand closed on her wrist, not hard, but ensuring she couldn’t slip away from him. “Until Dominick what? Dominick Cherrett, I presume.”

“Ye-es.” Phoebe ran her tongue over parched lips. “I wrote him. From Bermuda. One of the Navy ships took the letter.”

“And what did you write?” His voice held that deadly quiet she would rather trade for one of Gideon’s shouting rages. Gideon had been a boy having a temper tantrum. Rafe was a man in too strict control of his feelings. His face was a mask of indifference, his body taut. Only the faintest tremor in his hand on her wrist suggested the anger he held in check.

Phoebe picked up her mug of coffee with her free hand and held it in front of her mouth. “I told him I needed help because I’d been abducted and that you had to be stopped before you committed murder.”

“Did you now?” He released her wrist and removed the cup from her hand to return it to the table. “Is that all you told him of my personal business?”

“Yes.” The truth—strictly speaking.

“Are you certain of that?”

“Yes.” She remembered every word.

“And what makes you think Lord Dominick can come to your rescue?”

“I was thinking more of your rescue than mine.”

“Of course.” Sarcasm dripped from his words. “How could I forget that? Nor can I forget that you think you know what’s best for my life, my soul, my heart. So how do you think Lord Dominick is going to rescue me from three thousand miles away?”

“He’ll find a way. He said if I’m ever in need, however great, he’d come to my aid.”

“Why?”

Phoebe jumped at the abruptness of the question. “Because he and Tabitha are my friends.”

“You will have to do better than that, bonnie Phoebe.” His voice gentle, he caressed her jaw with his thumb. “What were you to Lord Dominick?”

Phoebe slapped his hand away. “I don’t like your implication, sir. He’s my friend, nothing more.”

“That’s a great deal to ask of a mere friend. Ask and expect to receive. So I’ll ask you again, what are you to him?”

“Please.” Realizing she was shaking, Phoebe held on to the table edge. “Please don’t make me talk about this.”

He said nothing. He wouldn’t make her do anything. Except he’d implied something vulgar and improper, and now she must tell him the truth. Or at least part of it.

“I saved Tabitha’s life,” she blurted out.

“Ah, that makes a wee bit of sense. How?”

“I helped her through a rough lying-in.”

Rafe nodded, then leaned one hip on the table as though ready for a long story. “Was that before or after you killed the husband of one of her patients?”

20

The lantern swinging from the deck beam shed a yellow glow over Phoebe’s face, emphasizing its sudden pallor. Her knuckles gleamed white through the fine skin on her hands gripping the edge of the worktable.

And Rafe decided he should cut out his tongue before he said anything so cruel to anyone ever again. Regardless of his reasons for the unkindness, Phoebe had suffered enough. She didn’t need to suffer by his hand—or tongue—also.

“I’m sorry.” The words, so rarely falling from his lips, nearly choked him. “I had no right to say such a thing.”

“No, you didn’t.” Gravel had gotten blended with the honeyed cream of her voice. Her eyes grew dull, like moss gone too long without water. “You talk as though I—as though I—I killed him on purpose.”

“Some of the tavern talk implied as much. After your husband and all.”

“And you believed the talk?” Phoebe pushed herself to her feet.

Rafe opened his mouth to accuse her of running away again, but wasn’t that his intent, to keep her away from him, to make her hate him rather than . . .

He could scarcely countenance the notion that she loved him. She knew he was a reprobate, a man on a violent mission. She knew his past for the most part, and she knew what he intended in the future. She’d seen him in battle. Yet she looked at him with a tenderness that created a churning custard of his heart, and he had to be rid of her, for her sake. He would only hurt her.

For his sake, he wanted to stop her from walking away from him, hold her close, find a minister to marry them—

He snapped his thoughts closed on that notion and stared at Phoebe hovering in the doorway. “You are not going to stay and tell me the truth? Or am I to presume that the rumors, for once, are not false?”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip so hard Rafe expected blood to well forth. For a moment, her spine appeared stiff enough to crack at a touch. Then she collapsed. Her posture slumped, her head bowed. “Rumor is partly right.” She spoke in a murmur barely audible over the crash of waves against the hull.

The sailor’s corner of Rafe’s mind, which he’d developed over the past nine years, realized the sea had grown rougher, indicating they drew near to the Bay of Biscay, an area fraught with storms and French vessels attempting to break the British blockade. There would be too many of them from the Navy and more gun power than his little brig could manage. He needed to be on his quarterdeck in the event of danger, especially now that Jordy and Watt were no longer around, and Derrick had gone to sail the prize into Portsmouth to sell to the Admiralty. But right now, Phoebe was more important. She had been more important for too long now, a dangerous distraction he could not resist.

He glanced at her dejected posture, thought about her last words, and reached out to take her hands. “You do not need to tell me, Phoebe. ’Twas cruel of me to mention a word of it after all you’ve found yourself saying about your husband.”

Which had been his intent, to turn her from him, but he could not. And that spelled trouble.

She pulled her hands free, giving him hope that perhaps he had succeeded in sending her off, then she simply swallowed some coffee, set the cup on the table, and folded her hands in her lap. “It was an accident. That is—” She stared past his shoulder. Her face was pale with two spots of red high on her cheekbones. “He’d—he’d beaten his wife so badly she went into travail two months early. It was my second lying-in on my own. Tabitha was too near her own to go out. The woman survived, but the baby . . . it was too soon. Too small. It never breathed.” Tears starred her lashes, and he rested one hand on her shoulder, whether to comfort her or stop her he didn’t know.

She continued in a high, tight voice. “It was a son after three daughters, and the man was angry. He blamed me. He blamed Tabitha for not coming herself. He blamed his wife for being weak.” Her voice rose. “She had a broken arm because of him, and he blamed her.”

“Shh.” Rafe kneaded the tension from her shoulder. “You ken ’twas not your fault.”

“I know.” She bowed her head. “I went home. And he followed me. He stormed into the house and up the steps. He was shouting.” A shudder ran through her. “All I could think was to stop him from reaching Tabitha and Dominick. So I picked up a poker and caught him in the middle with it. He folded up and fell. He broke his neck. He shouldn’t have. But he did.”

“It was an accident, Phoebe.”

“I know. Everyone said that. Everyone who mattered anyway.” She sighed. “But others knew about my husband and decided I am a dangerous female to be around. So I fled back to Loudoun County and tried to start over. I thought I had. I thought I’d forgiven him and Gideon and myself. But when there was that fight and you and Jordy and Derrick ran into it like everyone else, it was like watching Gideon and that husband, and I realized I’m not the loving Christian I’m supposed to be. I want to save your soul, but now I see mine for the tarnished vessel it is.”

“But isn’t that the point of Christianity? Jesus forgives those who repent?”

“You’re preaching salvation to me?” She glanced up at him, her eyes alight with amusement. “You who want nothing to do with God?”

“Nay, lass, He wants naught to do with me. I have not repented.”

“If you did—”

“Have you then?”

“I thought I had. But there must be more bitterness inside me than I knew.” She swallowed as though trying to clear her palate of the taste. “I’m so uncertain now. For four years I’ve been sure Gideon was behind me, but then there was this man, and now this . . .” She shook her head.

“Sometimes when a mon is shot, the ball carries cloth and other debris into the wound. I can remove the lead and what I think is all the cloth, and the wound may even seem to heal. But then days or even weeks later, the mon has trouble, a fever, pain—” He stopped before getting too gruesome. “I must open the wound site again and find what is the source of the infection. ’Tis more often than not a bit of cloth or wood, a fragment of lead left behind. Once ’tis gone, the wound can heal. I think—” He gazed at Phoebe’s beautiful face with a warmth deep inside him, the glowing coals of wonder. “Perhaps God has used me to lance your wounds so they can truly heal.”

“Maybe He has.” She pursed her lips and half closed her eyes, pensive, calm. Then suddenly she smiled up at him. “And you, Rafe, how can we cleanse your wounds?”

“You do not wish to talk of that.” He turned to the table and began to pour molasses into the bowl. “The weather has been cold enough we still have an egg or two for this, but there’s no milk, so I use molasses to make it moist enough.”

Phoebe was staring at him. “How do you know such a thing? I mean, how to make a pudding?”

“I didn’t start out as captain of a ship. I was a lowly crewman, one of the lowliest, since I knew little about sailing. But that dried biscuit that gets weevils in it disgusted me. The captain then made some jest about me being too fancy for plain sailor fare, so I must be wanting pudding and I could make it for the crew.” A chuckle rose in his chest. “So I bribed the cook to teach me how and did it. Now ’tis a tradition for me to make it once in every voyage. Will you fetch me the raisins?”

She rose and drew the tin of raisins from its shelf. “I didn’t think you would go to sea when you knew nothing about sailing.”

Rafe began to beat the batter. “I was willing to do anything to catch James Brock.” He smiled at her. “I still am.”

“I know.” She slapped the tin onto the table with more force than necessary. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Phoebe?” Rafe began to stir raisins into the batter. “I wish you weren’t here. I never intended for you to come along. Indeed, I would rather you had not. I did not want a lass who despises men to be aboard my brig.”

“I don’t despise all men.”

Selfishly, he wanted her to.

“Only those who’ve hurt me.” Her lip quivered.

“Did I not hurt you by bringing you with us?”

“No, not by bringing me. I had to help Belinda in the end. But the rest . . . You will hurt me, Rafe, if you continue on your current course.”

“Then do not love me, Phoebe. I warned you straightaway what I am like, what I’m doing. I have no room for a lady or God in my life, telling me ’tis wrong to go after Brock. I cannot live with the knowledge that he is free, while Davina and my parents are dead. I hear her screaming in the night, and I ken I have to go after him.”

“Would Davina and your parents want you going against the Lord?” The gravel had gone from her voice. Soft as it was, though, she may as well have boxed his ears.

He sighed. “Phoebe, nay, my parents would not approve. But Davina . . .” He braced himself. “Davina was the most beautiful, the most soft-spoken lass I ever met, but her heart was not with the Lord until the end. When she called on Jesus to save her, the pirates slit her throat.”

Shock registered on Phoebe’s face. “I didn’t know. I just assumed—I mean, you married her and you said you followed the Lord then.”

“Aye, weel, you make a number of mistakes when you are that young.”

“Quite young for a man heading to university.”

“Her father had a great deal of influence over who was accepted.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You married her to get into university?”

“Nay, not as that sounds. I loved her since I kent what the word
love
meant.” He took the last roll of dough and slid it onto its pan. “But she—”

His head filled with the memory of Davina weeping, still pretty in her tears, fragrant with roses and as soft as thistledown in his arms as he tried to comfort her, his childhood friend with a broken heart.

“She loved someone else.” There, he’d said it. For the first time in thirteen years, he admitted that Davina had not married him for love. “She loved someone who did not want a wife, just the adulation.”

Phoebe’s eyes widened, her lips parted. She said nothing. And he loved her in that moment. She offered him no words of sympathy, no foolish declarations that a silly girl of eighteen had loved the wrong man but had surely come to love him—all the nonsense he had heard from his minister at home, from Jordy, from Davina herself.

“I was her dearest friend,” he continued, unable to stop, like a lanced boil releasing its poison. “But I was too much of a lad to her. Even in the end, she said if I had learned to fight instead of learning medicine, I could have saved her.”

“So you learned to fight.” She stretched flour-daubed hands out to him. His mother had done that when he was a child running in with some hurt needing tended.

He didn’t feel as though Phoebe were his mother. She should be a mother—mother to many children. His children, in a softer, kinder world, where God still cared. Yet hadn’t he just suggested that God cared about Phoebe, cared enough to want her wounds cleansed and healed? If that were true, perhaps his own—