Heart's Safe Passage (36 page)

“Phoebe.” Rafe’s voice rang clear and sharp through the frosty air. “Get below.”

She meant to shake her head, but only her hair, free in the wind, moved.

“Mrs. Lee.” Rafe again, sharper. Closer. He strode toward her. “Get below. Now. That’s a frigate sailing toward us, and if we can’t tack and outrun it and it’s French, we’re in for an uncomfortable fight.”

“You want me below.” Her voice emerged barely above a whisper. “I can’t go there.”

“You have been a’right with me lately. You will do a’right now.” His hands as gentle as his voice now, he grasped her shoulders and turned her from the rail. “I’ll take you down.”

“Belinda. Mel.”

“We’ll fetch them.”

“But if it’s a battle . . .”

“We run from frigates. With this much warning, we’ll likely manage to get away. We can maneuver in shallower water if we can reach it in time. But it could be close.”

“And if we don’t get away?” She gazed up at him, trying not to show how badly she was shaking.

Of course he knew. His face softened, and he drew her against him. “Then we lose and they’ll likely guillotine me.”

“They wouldn’t dare.” Tears starred her lashes and spilled over.

“Shh.” He brushed the tears off her cheeks with his fingertips, then tilted up her chin. “But if the worst happens . . .”

He kissed her, a silent reminder that no matter what the future, he loved her. The knowledge gave her the impetus she needed to break away from him when someone called for clearer direction, then slip aft and gather her charges together. Two sailors appeared to carry Mel and Belinda to the lower deck, dark now with lights and fires out. Mel talked more than she had in the days since she’d regained consciousness, but Belinda sat in silence, a state more unnerving than her histrionics.

Phoebe huddled between the two, one arm wrapped around Mel’s frail frame and the other around Belinda’s shoulders, not quite as plump as they had been at the beginning of the voyage. Phoebe concentrated on breathing slowly in and out, in and out, while her ears strained to hear the orders given above.

Those proved to be few, mostly for sailing instructions. More sail, haul to larboard, to starboard, full and by. Voices remained indistinct, the lookout’s reports incomprehensible. Every time Rafe’s voice rose loudly enough to penetrate the deck, Phoebe’s heart leaped. He’d kissed her instead of saying words. He’d helped her forget her fear of the dark confinement below. She’d drawn on his strength. Yet he believed he’d weakened her faith. He had simply shown her the weaknesses in it.

The ugliness of her bitterness loomed before her like a sea monster, a hideous creature ready to devour her with a truth she didn’t like. A sob racked through her. She gulped it back. She wanted to cry out in protest. She’d been a Christian for years. She’d claimed to be a Christian before she married Gideon. A warning had sounded in her head about marrying a man of whose faith she was uncertain, but she’d ignored it. Phoebe Carter wanted what she wanted, and her parents gave it to her.

Marriage to Gideon Lee had shaken her faith. She couldn’t understand why God would allow her to be so mistreated, why her life, intended to be perfect—an enchanted existence of being adored, pampered, and protected—had turned into a nightmare. But when her baby died, stillborn in a labor too early after Gideon had shoved her down the steps, Phoebe reached out to the Lord for strength, for another chance at life. When her mother came to tell her Gideon had died, indeed that he had been buried while Phoebe lay delirious with fever and loss of blood, she had turned her heart fully back to the Lord.

Because Gideon was dead.

Self-loathing rose in Phoebe’s throat like bile. As a rumble like distant thunder reverberated overhead, Phoebe faced a monster far more frightening than a French man-of-war. The shaky foundation—no, the despicable foundation—upon which she had built her façade of holiness.

“Dear Jesus, where do I go from here?” She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until her words fell into the otherwise silent brig.

“Then—then it was a gun?” Belinda whispered. “Phoebe, tell me it was thunder.”

“I don’t know.” Phoebe assured herself she didn’t know for sure. Just because the day started out bright and sunny didn’t mean a storm hadn’t blown up. The English Channel, someone had told her, tended toward stormy weather.

“It was a gun.” Mel rested her head on Phoebe’s shoulder and gripped her hand. “But we’re not going to die. I don’t think God would save my life so I would die like this.”

“My baby,” Belinda moaned. “I can’t have my baby down here and see him fall into French hands.”

“You won’t.” Phoebe spoke with more conviction than she felt. “And the French aren’t at war with Americans. They—they’ll take care of us.”

Belinda wrapped her arms around her middle. “But my back hurts. What if it’s my time?”

“Of course your back hurts,” Phoebe said in a bracing tone. “It’s not comfortable down here. The deck is cold and hard, and the air is foul.”

“But my back hurts,” Belinda persisted.

And it could mean her travail had begun.

Phoebe laid a hand on Belinda’s abdomen. It was distended and firm with a hint of movement from the baby. She detected no contractions, not the merest hint of tightening. Of course, it could begin in the back . . .

“You’re all r—”

Another rumble sounded from above. The
Davina
lurched to larboard. All three women shrieked.

“We’ve been hit.” Belinda began to sob. “I’m going to die so close to George. Oh, I’ve been so wicked, I’m going to kill our baby.”

“They’ll cut off Papa’s head,” Mel whimpered. “’Tis what the French do to people like him. He’ll go under that blade and—and he doesn’t believe in God.”

“Hush, both of you.” Ashamed of herself for coming so close to an actual scream, Phoebe snapped at her companions. “Belinda, Captain Docherty will surrender before he endangers our lives in a futile fight.” She hoped. “And, Melvina, your father does believe in God.”

“But he doesn’t follow Him. Uncle Jordy and Derrick tried to convince him he should, and so have I, but he doesn’t like God because of what happened to my mither.”

That was part of the truth. Phoebe didn’t think she should tell Mel the rest, how her father didn’t follow God because Rafe wanted to get revenge on the man who had caused Davina’s death.

Gideon had chosen not to follow God because he preferred his wild ways, the drinking, the gambling, the women. Phoebe had thought she could change him once they were married. Instead he changed her, turned her into a woman with bitterness buried deep within her, so deep she found striking another man with a poker far too easy, and not regretting her action even easier.

She should have learned her lesson. Instead, she thought she could accomplish the same thing with Rafe. She thought staying with him instead of getting herself and Belinda to safety would lead Rafe back to the Lord. How vain of her. How arrogant. How sanctimonious. There she sat with an expectant mother about to deliver and a child barely recovered from a trepanning, huddled on the lower deck of an English privateer, being chased by a French frigate half again their size and with three times the men since their own prize crew was aboard the French merchantman, because she thought herself so spiritual she could sway Rafe Docherty from his course. Instead, she’d poured out her anger and bitterness against the male gender and shown him how much of a hypocrite she was.

“Lord, can You ever forgive me?” She surged to her feet and began to pace, stumbling in the darkness.

Above, men shouted and wheels rumbled on the deck. She’d witnessed the drills. She recognized that sound—the guns being run out.

“They can’t fight.” The cry burst from her lips, and she raced for the ladder.

Behind her, Belinda cried out—not a scream, not a whine, but a wail of fear and pain.

Phoebe swung back and reached Belinda’s side before she toppled sideways. Even before Phoebe set her hands on Belinda’s belly, she knew her time had come.

Above, a line of guns bellowed as though saluting the oncoming child.

22

Phoebe appeared on deck. Darting between recoiling guns and water barrels, gun smoke wreathing her tumbled hair like a halo, she raced aft toward him, and Rafe’s heart leaped with joy at the sight of her, then clenched with fear for her.

“Phoebe, go back,” he shouted through the speaking trumpet. “’Tis not safe—”

A crash of gunfire from the French frigate rolled across the water. Iron shot sailed above the waves toward the
Davina
like fat, deadly birds. Most dropped into the sea yards short of the brig. Two struck the bulwark. Splinters flew, and two men tackled Phoebe, dragging her out of harm’s way.

They loved her too. Even the ones who wanted Rafe out of the way respected and adored Phoebe. Fearless or foolish, her actions didn’t matter. She ran onto the deck and into the path of danger to help others.

Sickened by the sight of blood—a gunner’s arm lanced by a six-inch splinter—for the first time in a life at first dedicated to stopping bleeding then dedicated to spilling blood, Rafe leaped from the quarterdeck and stooped to lift Phoebe to her feet. “What are you doing up here?”

“Belinda.” Phoebe gasped for air. “It’s her time. We’ve got to get to port.”

“We are heading there, lass. ’Twill be no more than a quarter hour to Guernsey, Lord willing something stops the Frenchman before he stops us.”

“Lord willing?” She widened her eyes at him. “Since when do you care about the Lord’s will?”

“Since I have only half my crew. Now get below. You will do your patient no good if you have your head shot off.” He gently turned her toward the hatch.

She ran back, paused beside the wounded man, then dropped down the hatch, the man following. As he returned to his quarterdeck, Rafe guessed at the dialogue. She would help the man remove the knife-sized splinter from his arm, but he had to come to her. Belinda needed her. She had treated Phoebe awfully for the most part, abducting her, accusing her of killing Gideon Lee, being demanding and rude. But Belinda needed Phoebe’s aid, so she went. Duty called.

If someone needed him, perhaps he would set duty before his own desires to for once accomplish what Davina wanted for him. Not that she would know. But he would. He would know that he had succeeded at something.

At that moment, he needed to succeed at reaching the island of Guernsey before the French drew near enough to damage his vessel into surrender. Along the horizon, Derrick sailed the French prize out of harm’s way, as instructed. Two cable lengths off his starboard quarter, the Frenchman, who was still the enemy, drove a diagonal path through the water, guns blazing, rigging white with all sails crowded onto the yards, a full bloom of canvas to catch every gust of wind. They would think a privateer on the way home would be full of cargo. Instead, they would find French prisoners, a lady about to deliver a baby, a sick child, and a midwife who would fight every French Navy man to protect Belinda.

If the Frenchman caught them.

“How far to port?” Rafe shouted to the masthead.

A roar of gunfire from the frigate drowned out the answer.

Too far. Half a dozen rounds of shot slammed into the
Davina
’s hull. The brig shuddered. In the aftermath of the silence from guns, brig, and crew, a scream rose from below.

Belinda in travail.

“Lord, for her sake, let us reach harbor in time.” Rafe didn’t realize he’d prayed, let alone aloud, until half a dozen men spun toward him and stared.

“Amen,” one said.

Riggs curled his upper lip. “Since when did you get so holy?”

“Since when did you decide you want to be in the hold with the French prisoners?” Rafe responded.

The men laughed. Riggs ducked behind his gun and snatched up the swab for the already cleaned weapon.

Rafe glanced to the frigate. It was gaining. They had more men, more sail power. Guernsey and safety lay no more than a quarter mile away. It might as well have been a quarter of the globe away. The Frenchman held all the advantages despite the nearness of British land. No ships could sail out of harbor in time to help send the enemy packing, and Guernsey possessed no shore battery. Rafe saw the harbor, the masts of ships anchored there, the steeple of the church.

He leaned toward them as though he could increase the brig’s momentum. “Just a wee bit more speed. Just enough to—” He broke off, realizing he was praying again.

Perhaps he hadn’t addressed God directly, but he had been praying for the past nine years, calling out in need, and there he stood, alive and well and loved.

Phoebe loved him. Mel loved him. Jordy had loved him enough to die for him.

Jesus had loved him enough to die for him?

No time for that. The wind shifted closer to the island. They must tack or founder. He shouted the orders to the topmen. Yards squeaked as halyards dragged them around. Sails flapped, hung, then caught the wind. The brig lurched forward, swung to larboard seconds before another round of gunfire erupted from the frigate. Round shot sailed harmlessly past and died in the sea.

And the harbor mouth appeared. Three cable lengths. Two. One.

The Frenchman tacked, drove up on the
Davina
’s stern. If the frigate swung sideways, she could rake them, kill half the crew. More. The wrong placement of a ball could blow them all up.

Including Belinda, Mel, Phoebe.

Because he had selfishly brought them along.

How had he ever thought he had killed his conscience? It must have merely been dormant. Now it reared its head, ready to strike in a vulnerable moment.

No vulnerable moments, not this close to the prize.

They needed speed. More speed. He gazed down the deck, up to the sail, back to the deck. Something other vessels had done—

The last broadside from the French had stopped against the superstructure, ripping away a section of bulwark and rail. It gapped along the side like a mouth with a missing tooth. If they fired the adjacent gun, it was likely to fall over the side and into the sea.