Heart's Safe Passage (29 page)

For some of the men, she could do all too little except hold a hand and pray. For others, she let them lean on her until they reached the main hatch. “I’ll be down shortly to look at that,” she assured them. Or to remove a splinter of wood as thick as her forefinger, splint a broken bone until Rafe could realign the bones, or sew up a gash.

And as she crawled, staggered, and even rolled across the deck, the guns crashed and boomed, cannonballs flew, and men and rigging tumbled to the deck. After what felt like an eternity, she returned from below deck just as a cheer rose from the
Davina
’s crew. Every man capable rose and clapped and stamped, Rafe included from his position on the quarterdeck, Derrick and Jordy near, Watt at the wheel behind them, grinning like a jack-o’-lantern.

Watt, the ringleader Rafe had protected regardless. Watt, who wanted to be captain. Enough to kill Rafe?

No time to consider it. Across the yards of foaming seawater, the French vessel wallowed beneath a tangle of canvas, lines, and spars.

“Dismasted her, we did.” The old cook leaped from beside one of the guns and picked up Phoebe, spinning her around. “We’ll beat ’em now.”

“Grappling hooks,” Rafe shouted. “Prepare to board.”

“Grappling hooks? Board?” Phoebe called after the cook.

She’d lost his attention. Along with every able-bodied man aboard, he raced for the gunwales. They brandished pikes and cutlasses, pistols and swords. With their smoke-blackened clothes and smudged faces, they looked like demons from the netherworld rushing to seize lost souls.

Which was exactly what they were doing.

Heat seared through Phoebe’s middle, blazing white-hot, sending her insides coiling and lifting like a snake about to strike. “Stop! Stop! You can’t do this!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Either no one heard her or they completely ignored her. They tossed grappling hooks to the other vessel, dragging it alongside the
Davina
. Frenchmen, ordinary sailors from this well-armed merchantman, struggled from beneath the fallen rigging. They brandished their own lethal weapons. Steel glinted in the sunlight. Shouts and battle cries rose like an oncoming storm. Deafening. Chilling.

Phoebe grasped the still-warm barrel of an abandoned gun and willed herself to remain where she was. She had patients to attend. She would have more. She must stop shaking and grinding her teeth in an effort to remain on the brig’s deck. She would do no one any good racing after the men. She certainly couldn’t stop them.

Then a man surged through the main hatchway, a second, a third . . . a dozen. They sported bandages on their heads and arms and legs. Those were bandages she had affixed with care, cloth intended for baby diapers and tiny garments, sacrificed to keep these men’s wounds clean.

And they headed for the rail, stumbling, staggering, shouting. All bore weapons. Where but moments earlier they had gasped and cursed as she stitched up their wounds, they now acted with the same enthusiasm as their crewmates, vaulting the rail to walk the narrow plank bridge leading to the French vessel.

And Phoebe’s control broke. She shoved off the gun as though launching from a catapult and flung herself onto the walkway. Twenty feet below her, seawater foamed and roiled. So did her stomach. She yanked her gaze forward and leaped onto the deck of the Frenchman, her only weapons shears, a scalpel, and a handful of needles.

“Rafe! Rafe Docherty!” Again the bellowing men, clash of steel, and occasional shot drowned out her voice.

She didn’t see him in the teeming mass of men fighting hand to hand. She grasped a line attached to the remaining mast and pulled herself onto the rail. Above the heads of the throng, she managed to find him. For half a minute, she lost him for the red heat of rage blinding her.

He wasn’t trying to stop the men; he was leading them.

“How dare you, you—you—” She broke off on a scream.

A diminutive Frenchman swung a hatchet at Rafe’s skull. He ducked, spun. The Frenchman vanished amidst the feet of the fighting men.

The coiled snake inside Phoebe struck. Venom poured through her veins, burning, blazing, propelling her off the rail and into the fight like shot from a cannon. She thought she was shrieking something, likely Rafe’s name. She knew she lashed out with her elbows, knees, and fists. Men fell away from her as though she were as deadly as a sixteen-pounder, fell back until she saw Rafe before her. He pushed toward the quarterdeck, Derrick ahead of him, Jordy beside him, Watt—

Phoebe screamed and lunged. Her foot tangled in tumbled rigging, and she crashed to the deck. Winded, she lay on fallen lines, struggling for breath, struggling to rise.

Her head rose far enough for her to see Watt plunge a dagger toward Rafe’s back.

17

Jordy threw himself between Watt’s blade and Rafe’s back. The dagger plunged into Jordy’s chest. Blood spilled across his shirt. He staggered back, rammed into Rafe, and fell, taking the younger man down with him.

Watt pulled the blade free in time to clash with Derrick’s cutlass. Steel rang, a death knell even above the cries and clashes around the deck, those growing less furious, Watt and Derrick’s conflict growing more fierce. Watt yelled in Gaelic, incomprehensible words that sounded like curses. Derrick said nothing, just slashed and parried with the single-edged blade of the cutlass.

Beside them, Rafe managed to extricate himself from beneath Jordy and kneel beside his friend, his mentor, applying pressure to the older man’s chest with his hands. Ankle throbbing, Phoebe half walked, half crawled over tangled rigging to Rafe’s side. She still held her bag of medicines and managed to produce a bandage. In silence, her throat too thick with tears to allow words to pass, she thrust the pad of linen toward Rafe.

He shook his head, his face an impassive mask. “Too late. He’s gone.” He took the cloth anyway, wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of Jordy’s mouth, then draped it over his face. Without another word, Rafe gathered up his weapons and ran toward the French merchantman’s quarterdeck, shouting, “To me,
Davina
s! To me!”

Phoebe stared after him, her breath snagged in her throat, that snake of outrage coiling and rising within her once again. A red haze blazed before her eyes. Blood roared in her ears. Only vaguely did she notice the cessation of exploding pistols, clanging blades, bellowing men. She held Jordy’s hand so hard even this large man might have cried out in protest had he been alive to feel it.

But he wasn’t alive. Rafe’s friend, his mentor, a man who had been with him all his life, had followed him to sea though he strongly disapproved, had sacrificed his life for a man who didn’t care about his life. A man who used people in his endless quest for revenge.

So why did she love Rafe Docherty so much her heart burst with the mere sound of his voice?

Dominick, I hope you have found a way to come rescue me from myself before I do something tragically stupid—again.

Another week of this. Maybe two. Too long. And with Jordy dead, who would rein Rafe in even a bit? Derrick, the former slave who owed his freedom to Rafe? Watt, who had betrayed and tried to kill him?

Phoebe’s head snapped up. What of Derrick and Watt? She saw neither of them. The deck where their blades had rung such an ominous toll lay empty, splattered with blood and black powder.

Slowly, her ankle screaming as she put weight on it, Phoebe rose and looked around. The French had apparently surrendered. They stood huddled like cattle waiting for slaughter, a ring of men from the
Davina
holding them against the rail opposite the privateer. Rafe stood on the quarterdeck issuing orders to half a dozen of his men, amongst them Derrick. Watt was nowhere on the deck.

Head spinning, ankle throbbing, insides coiled tighter than a carriage spring, Phoebe limped to the quarterdeck and the captain who had seized victory twice—first from his own mutinous men, then from the French. His voice was clipped, his Scot accent thick, his eyes as cold as the North Atlantic beneath them.

Phoebe pressed her hands, her fisted hands, against her hips and waited for someone to notice her.

“Secure the prisoners below on the
Davina
,” Rafe was directing. “And put a few of your own men in there with them. You all deserve to be flogged or hanged, but I will not do it, as I need to get to England. If you obey every one of my commands and keep your heads until we complete our mission, I will not turn you over to a civil court either and may even see that you receive the prize money. But a few of you are the ringleaders along with Walter McKay.”

His voice held no inflection as he mentioned the unfamiliar name, but his eyes flicked toward the
Davina
. Phoebe followed his gaze and finally noticed Watt bound to the rail. His face appeared as pale as the canvas sails, a trickle of dried blood marred one shoulder of his shirt, and his lower lip quivered like that of a child about to cry or perhaps throw a tantrum. No other man stood nearby. Rafe had to mean Watt when he said Walter McKay.

Phoebe gripped the edge of the quarterdeck. Her arm shook. She should return to the brig, tend to those of her patients who hadn’t made sudden recoveries when victory appeared. She should make sure Belinda was all right. And Mel. Mel had spoken.

She started to hobble toward the plank leading back to the
Davina
. Her ankle gave out on her and she slumped to her knees. If she tried to cross that narrow strip of wood, she would tumble headfirst into the sea.

“Lord, what have You brought me to?” Quietly she sobbed out the words. “I’ve been a good and faithful servant all my life. What have I done to deserve this?”

And everything else.

Her insides coiled and burned. She pounded her fists on the deck. When she raised a hand to her lips to stifle her desire to scream, she saw that blood and powder and sand covered her knuckles. Only the kind of will that kept her calm in the most frightening of circumstances in the birthing chamber kept her from being sick right then and there. She took several deep breaths and crawled toward a nearby gun to drag herself to her feet. She didn’t know how she would return to the privateer. At that moment, she didn’t care if she did, except she needed to be with her patients. She held responsibility for one expectant mother, one concussed daughter, and a handful of fighting men.

Let Rafe manage them. Rafael Docherty, physician turned killer.

The man she loved. Stupid, stupid, stupid her.

She leaned on the gun and took several deep breaths. They didn’t help. Every inhalation snagged on the stench of smoke, sweat, and the effluvium of battle. After this, the worst situation in the birthing chamber would look tame, clean, peaceful.

She longed for hushed rooms with blazing fires and soft hands, soap and water and smooth, white sheets. She yearned for clear water to soothe her parched throat, a warm bath, clothes not stiff with salt. She saw them in her mind’s eye.

She felt a calloused hand on her cheek, firm fingers gripping her shoulder. “Phoebe, are you a’right, hinnie?”

Hinnie, like he called his daughter. His voice held the same tenderness, his hands the same gentleness with which he treated Mel. Herein lay the reasons why she loved him, if anything in that most powerful of emotions made any sense.

“I seem to have twisted my ankle.” She spoke with utter calm, matter-of-factly, as though they discussed weather on dry land. “I was afraid to walk back to the
Davina
.”

“I will have to be carrying you then.” He rounded the gun and slipped an arm around her shoulders.

She should tell him not to touch her with blood on his hands. She let him lift her into his arms before saying, “You can’t carry me across that bit of wood. We’ll both topple into the sea.”

“Aye, weel then, we will drown together, no?”

“I’d rather not drown, thank you. And neither would you.”

He didn’t respond.

She lifted her head from his shoulder so she could see him. Though mere inches away, she read nothing in his face but caught his eyes flicking toward Watt again.

“Why did he want to kill you?” she asked since they weren’t on the plank yet.

“What makes you think he wanted to kill me?” Harshness, a hint of anger, better than the coldness.

“I saw him aim for your back. I saw—” Her voice broke.

“I am sorry for that and so much more.” His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, as though perhaps he swallowed back emotions like grief. “Weel then, you may as weel ken that he is my uncle, my mither’s brother. He has ne’er been fond of the Docherty family.”

“Then why is he aboard your ship?”

Rafe gazed into the distance. “He is the only family I had left who was not a wee child who only wanted her mama. He gave me something to live for.”

And fueled Rafe’s hatred of James Brock for nine years? No time to ponder that now.

“I—” Phoebe blinked back the tendency toward tears. “I’m so sorry. What will happen to him?”

He said nothing as they reached the plank connecting the two vessels. With no effort, or so it seemed, he stepped up and strode across, then leaped onto the brig’s deck.

At last he answered her when they reached the top of the companionway. “I have a complete right to hang him.”

Phoebe gasped. “But you won’t.”

“Will I not?” Rafe’s hold grew taut. “He mutinied, he tried to kill me. He murdered my first officer. Flogging doesn’t seem like enough.”

“But—” Phoebe decided not to argue. The man was understandably distraught. She would talk to him later, after he calmed himself.

After he measured the worth of his booty from the French privateer.

Her mouth thinned.

“Are you in pain?” Rafe asked.

“Only when I stand on that foot. It’s probably just sprained a bit.”

“I should examine it for a break.”

“My ankle? You’re not going to touch my ankle.”

He gave her a gentle shake. “I am a physician, you ken.”

“I know you were a physician.” She ducked her head as he started down the companionway ladder. “Physicians take an oath to do no harm.”