Heart's Safe Passage (11 page)

Phoebe glanced up again in time to see Docherty sliding down a backstay. She’d seen enough sailors doing it to realize it was a typical method of reaching the deck, yet it looked rather entertaining and carefree, something a boy did as a lark.

Rafe Docherty looked neither boyish nor playful as he stalked forward to Phoebe. “A squall’s blowing up. You need to go below.”

“And good day to you too, sir.” Phoebe rose, curtsied, and gave him a sweet smile.

Mel giggled.

Docherty set his hands on his hips. “I said you are to obey me, did I not?”

“You’d best,” Mel whispered loudly enough to be heard at the helm.

“I’m not one of your crew.” Phoebe pushed her chair further beneath the canopy. “A little rain won’t harm me.”

“Nay, but a great deal will. Now go, or I’ll carry you down.”

The threat nearly worked. She didn’t want him that close to her. His proximity made her insides feel odd, rather tense and tingly. Even at that moment, when more than a yard of deck separated them, she experienced a tugging to rise and step forward, as though he were the North Pole and she the compass needle.

She gripped the edge of the table. “I’ll take the risk.”

“All right. I dare say the weather will punish you enough. But you get below, Mel, either to the ladies’ cabin or to your own.”

Mel cast Phoebe a pleading glance. “Do come, Mrs. Lee. Mrs. Chapman says she is going to make me put on a dress.”

“I think you’ll look quite pretty in a dress,” Phoebe said diplomatically.

“I’ll look like a freak, won’t I?”

“You’ll look like what you are.” Docherty touched Mel’s cheek. “My daughter. Now scoot.” He glanced at Phoebe. “Both of you.”

“Aye, aye, sir. Whatever you wish, sir.” The girl gathered up her things and dashed through the increasing showers to the companionway.

Watching her, Phoebe made two observations—Melvina Docherty spoke uncommonly good English for a child who had run away from four schools and spent more time than was prudent skulking in port cities or aboard a ship, and she was desperate for female companionship. Of course. She was twelve. Her femininity would soon be impossible to disguise well.

And she shouldn’t remain around a ship full of sailors.

Not comfortable bringing the latter matters up to a near stranger, Phoebe addressed her curiosity about the former. “Who sees to her education?”

“I do, mostly.” Docherty cast his daughter one of those heart-meltingly tender glances. “She’s a canny lass. Her celestial navigation is nearly as good as Jordy’s, and he’s better than most.”

“Not yours?” Phoebe gazed up at him from beneath her lashes.

He didn’t look at her. “I do a’right, but I was not raised to the sea like Watt.”

No, he wasn’t. He spoke uncommonly well too. The accent was there, strong with rolling R’s and musical cadence, but his grammar was better than hers.

What were you raised to?
She thought the question, urged it onto her tongue.

He walked away before the words found voice. The rain pounded on the deck, creating a curtain between them. Just as well. She hadn’t wanted him to walk away. Worse, part of her wanted him to carry her below.

She inhaled the briny freshness of the air. It worked on her system like an elixir. Not a bit of sickness while she huddled under the canvas awning, chilled, damp from the rain blowing into her meager shelter, but invigorated and well.

Until the wind increased. Within an hour, the waves began to raise as high as the deck and send rivulets of greenish salt water cascading over the boards as the brig canted, then back the other way when it twisted and fell into a trough. Phoebe braced herself, fearing the sickness might return in such heavy seas. It didn’t. Cold air kept away the specter of sickness, cleared her head of anything but how she could free herself through their calling at Bermuda, how to persuade Belinda not to remain with a man who couldn’t forgive a minor transgression.

All right, it wasn’t so minor. But he could have subdued her in seconds if he’d chosen to do so. Why he hadn’t she couldn’t be certain. Maybe he, unlike her, couldn’t practice violence against the opposite sex.

She sought him out, couldn’t find him or anyone else on deck. They had to be there. Someone manned the helm. The rain had grown too dense to see through. She couldn’t go below now if she wanted to. She’d take the wrong direction and possibly get swept overboard. She should have listened to him, should have risked her health and gone below. Now—

A gust of wind slammed into the canopy. With the drumroll rumble of tearing heavy cloth, the awning ripped from its moorings. Phoebe flung up her arms to protect her head from pelting rain and hail.

The canopy crashed down on her. It slammed into her hands, sixty square feet of sodden canvas. The weight knocked her from her chair and onto the deck. Seawater swilled into her mouth. She gagged on the saltiness, coughed to breathe, swallowed a scream with a quantity of the ocean.

And the canvas held her down like a soaked shroud. Like an angry man.

She did scream then, kicked and cried out, punched at the enveloping fabric with her fists. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Blackness surrounded her. She was going to die because he was angry, because he couldn’t forgive. Because she thought for herself and—

A hand grasped her arm. She struck out with her other fist. Another hand grabbed her wrist and pulled.

“No, no, you can’t make me. You can’t—” The cold rain and wind struck her face like a slap. She choked on her cry and went limp in the man’s hold, the hysteria stopping as quickly as it began. She was aboard the brig again, drenched and cold and held by a man who had touched her only in kindness.

She sagged against him, too mortified to speak.

“I told you to get below.” Half carrying her, Docherty headed aft. “Will you be listening to me next time?”

So he’d left her on deck to teach her a lesson.

She nodded against his chest.

He snorted. “I doot it. Now get you below and change your dress before you catch a chill.” He left her at the top of the companionway.

She obeyed him this time. She stumbled into the cabin to find Fiona snoring in the center of the bunk and Mel and Belinda reading
The Adventures of
Roderick Random
and laughing over the scrapes the young Scotsman got into when he moved to London.

“Wait until he ends up at sea.” Phoebe dropped the drenched cloak onto the bare deck outside the cabin. “It’s not particularly amusing.”

“Oh, but it is.” Mel sprang up and retrieved the cloak. “You should have come down sooner. This will take a year to dry if the sun doesn’t come out.”

“You look like a drowned rat,” Belinda added. “You’d better not get a chill and die on me.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Phoebe muttered through chattering teeth. “Will you help me find dry clothes?”

Belinda shook her head. “I can’t risk moving around in these seas. But you’ll find warm things in the bottom trunk.”

Warm things that fit Belinda, who was wider and shorter than Phoebe. But the woolen stockings and dry gown felt too comforting for a poor fit to matter.

Phoebe wrapped a shawl around herself and joined Belinda at the table. “I’ll read for a while.” She read, trying to distract herself from closed door and windows, but the smells of dampness and bilge water overpowered her will. The sickness bested her. She curled up on the deck with ginger water laced with laudanum and escaped into sleep.

Quiet woke her. The deck no longer undulated beneath her but gently rolled like an oversized cradle. And everything was black—the cabin, the sea, the sky. Belinda’s snores rose above the hiss of waves against the hull. Mel and Fiona curled up together at Phoebe’s feet, as though they were both puppies. The entire vessel seemed to sleep except for the man who paced the quarterdeck above.

Did he never sleep?

He admitted to suffering from mal de mer, an odd condition for a man who chose to be at sea most of the time. Maybe being on deck helped him as it did her. The longer she sat awake in the cabin with Belinda’s lavender oil cloying above the dank odors of mildew and a chamber pot that needed to be emptied, the more she wanted to join him for a midnight stroll.

Phoebe rose and stepped over girl and dog. She located her shoes, mostly dry, beneath the desk where she’d kicked them off, and slipped out of the cabin. Even Fi continued to sleep.

The binnacle light shone off tendrils of fog swirling across the deck like dancing ladies in fine gauze gowns. Dampness caressed her face, cleansing, refreshing, healing. She breathed deeply of the tannic air and climbed the quarter ladder. Her leather soles sounded like wooden clogs in the stillness, and she paused at the top of the steps.

Murmuring voices broke off their dialogue. “Who goes there?” A shadow loomed through the fog between lantern and Phoebe.

She held out one hand. “Phoebe Lee.”

“Aye, I should have known.” Docherty took her hand and led her up the final tread onto the deck. “The quiet woke you, no?”

“Yes.” She drew her hand free. The deck tilted enough that she lost her balance and grasped his arm.

“Aye, hold on to something.” He settled her hand into the crook of his elbow. “We’re fair to being becalmed in this fog and need to be as quiet as mice, as sound travels in a fog, you ken.”

“I do. I lived on the eastern shore for three years.”

She liked the strength of his arm beneath her fingers and the fine wool of his cloak.

“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said belatedly.

“Nay, Jordy and I were simply discussing when this will lift.” He led her to the far side of the quarterdeck, where he removed her hand from his arm and set it on the rail. “I’m used to Mel’s company on nights like this. And in storms.” He moved half a step away from Phoebe and spoke so softly she barely heard him. “Is she . . . well?”

“She’s sound asleep with her dog. Reading to Belinda—” Phoebe stopped and wished she could see Docherty’s face. She felt him, though, a tension radiating from him as palpable as the mist. “You didn’t expect her to stay with us in the cabin?” Phoebe asked.

“The storms make her restless. I usually hear her lessons. And she does not like the quiet of the fog. But I expect she’s growing up and needing females around her instead.”

“Instead of you?” Phoebe smiled and touched his hand, a pale blur on the weather-smoothed railing. “We’re new and interesting, that is all. She’ll want her papa again soon enough.”

“Aye, perhaps.” Even the mere murmur of his voice sounded heavy, burdened, infinitely sad. “This is no place for a female alone.”

“This is no place for a female at all.”

“’Tis temporary, I assure you.”

“So Mel says.” Phoebe worried her lower lip, working out something to say, to ask, a way to make polite conversation. “What lessons do you possibly teach her?”

He snorted, possibly an attempt at laughter. “You think I know naught of history and literature because I am at sea?”

“Well, the sailors I’ve met haven’t seemed precisely educated.”

“And how many is that?”

Phoebe let out a breathy chuckle. “All right, only a few. The husbands of patients who happened to be home at the woman’s confinement.”

One husband who should have remained at sea for his wife’s sake, for Phoebe’s sake, for his own sake.

She suppressed the memory of that fateful night and tried again. “Did you attend good schools?”

“Aye, the University of Edinburgh. ’Tis not Oxford or Cambridge, but ’twill do for teaching Mel about her country, do you think?”

Phoebe flinched at the hint of sarcasm. “I did come across as a bit of a snob, didn’t I?”

“A wee bit.” His tone softened. “But I take no offense. ’Tis a normal assumption. But we prize education in my family, you ken.”

“You still have family, besides Mel, that is?”

“I have an uncle.”

An uncle and a daughter. Phoebe bit back the words of sympathy, and other remarks spilled out like water dumped from a bucket. “I have one of those. He’s actually my mother’s sister’s husband. I was visiting them when I met Tabitha and Dominick. I watched her sew up a gash on his hand, though they didn’t know I was watching, and I wanted to know more about her. How wonderful to heal instead of harm.”

He said nothing. Tension radiated from him.

“And here I showed you and your men harm.” Phoebe sighed. “You have a low opinion of me, I expect.”

“Nay, Mrs. Lee, I do not.” He spoke in a rumbling murmur that blended with the ship’s timbers and sea. “If for no other reason than that you are kind to Mel and to Mrs. Chapman, who is not kind to you.”

Phoebe’s fingers flexed on the rail. “At least I’ve shown some Christian behavior. I’ve known Belinda all her life. She was spoiled by everyone and married a man who spoils her. His capture was difficult for her, and she’s been quite brave about it. Sensible until—” She clapped a hand to her mouth.

Docherty emitted another one of his snorts. “Until she agreed to my plans for getting her husband free? Aye, ’tis not sensible, I ken, but ’twill reunite them faster than any other way. Whatever you think of me and what I’m about, madam, consider getting George Chapman free of a prison hulk as saving his life. ’Tis some good I can offer.”

“Yes, I’ll concede that.” Phoebe took a deep breath. “And now that you’ve mentioned doing some good . . . Captain Docherty, I can’t stay aboard. This mal de mer is hurting me every time I go below, and I can’t live on ginger and laudanum for weeks. I need nourishment. I’m shaking, I’m so weakened already.” She held up one hand.

He clasped it in his and returned it to the rail, warm and sheltered beneath his fingers. “’Tis steady now.”

“Sir.”

“Aye, I ken what you are saying. But you will improve, I assure you. Unless ’tis not a normal seasickness?”

“I—” She couldn’t look at him, dim though his profile was. She stared at the pale blur of their clasped hands, then into the opalescent fog swirling above the water. “I’m all right on deck. But it’s getting too cold to stay up here all the time.”

“Aye, ’tis so. Perhaps if we get rid of the lavender?”

Phoebe laughed. “It is awful, isn’t it? Usually women in Belinda’s condition are sensitive to smells. Her sense of smell seems to be diminished. Could it have some accident in Bermuda?”