Heart's Safe Passage (40 page)

Which would make leaving France difficult. If she could leave France. The day and a half the arrangements and journey took left her too much time to think about the folly of what she was doing. Brock had shown no compunction over having his henchmen go after her too, because she was with Rafe. What would stop him from killing her there in Dieppe?

The answer was simple—nothing. From what Belinda told her and what they had learned thus far in the French city, Brock was a powerful man everyone feared and no one wanted to say much about.

The fact that he would learn she was a fellow American, a woman from one powerful family and related through her marriage to another, might give him pause before he tried to strike out at her again.

Might. But she had left letters with Mel. One for Rafe, one for Tabitha and Dominick, and one for the governor of Virginia telling them where she had gone, with whom she intended to meet, and what to do if she did not return. At least, the letters to the Cherretts and Governor Randolph said that. The letter to Rafe said to let the true diplomats manage James Brock. It was out of his hands. She begged him to use his hands to heal, not harm.

She doubted Brock would harm her. Perhaps confine her until he got away again, but if he did, she would have served her purpose in seeking him out—keeping him out of Rafe’s sphere.

So, to find James Brock in Dieppe before Rafe did. A difficulty, since Phoebe spoke too little French to matter. Her schoolgirl attempts at the language left the listeners shaking their heads and laughing at what she was certain they were calling an American bumpkin, or some French equivalent. Derrick wouldn’t tell her.

Derrick spoke West Indian French, oddly accented to these Bretons but comprehensible. He asked questions of shopkeepers and servants passing through the street, urchins living on the streets, and sailors. Whether due to his size or his kind, gentle smile, most of the people talked to Derrick. None of them laid claim to having more than a passing knowledge of an American living in Dieppe, until nightfall.

Phoebe thought her feet would fall off and stay behind from sheer exhaustion. She was cold and wet from a light rain, yet she stubbornly refused to stay in an inn and wait.

“I don’t sit still well,” she admitted.

“You like to manage things yourself, I’m thinking.” Derrick patted her shoulder, then snatched his hand back. “I do apologize, Mrs. Lee.”

“Don’t.” Phoebe took his hand in both of hers. “I know that could get you into trouble with other ladies, but not with me. I appreciate your care and kindness.”

“I appreciate all you did for the captain.”

“I didn’t do enough, but if we can find Brock . . .” Phoebe turned away and huddled inside one of Belinda’s shawls that smelled only faintly of lavender now. She wished she hadn’t left Rafe’s cloak behind. It always made her feel protected, safe. Oddly close to him.

Her heart ached for him, for herself, for them.

“Do you know yet what you’re going to do once you find Brock?” Derrick paused beside a vendor selling a spicy-smelling fish stew. “Let’s have some supper and talk on that a bit.”

She ate the savory stew along with more crusty bread and fresh cider, though she would have declared she wasn’t hungry if Derrick had asked her. He probably knew that, so he hadn’t asked.

Food gone, they continued along the wharves of the port, busy despite the English blockade. Plenty of small fishing boats and other craft slipped in and out, as she and Derrick had.

“About Mr. Brock, if we find him, what do we do with him?” Derrick asked.

“It’s not a very good plan.” Phoebe paused to gaze over the choppy water of the harbor, slate-gray beneath a sky only a shade lighter. “I inherited a great deal of money when my father died. By the terms of my marriage contract, it came back to me upon my husband’s death since we had no children. I’ve spent little of it. So I’m going to offer it to Brock to buy up his shares in the privateers if he’ll disappear.”

Derrick leaned against a half-stone, half-wood structure that looked old enough to have been built by the ancient Celts, and crossed his massive arms over his chest. “What will you do if he says no?”

“The same thing I’ll do if he says yes—we’ll take him to England to have a little voyage on one of those prison ships to Australia.” She smiled.

“And what makes you think that’ll stop Captain Rafe from going after him?”

Phoebe’s smile faded. “I don’t know that it will. I can only pray that once he realizes his bird has flown and is several more years out of his reach, he’ll remember that Mel needs him, especially now.”

Or realize it wasn’t what he was supposed to do and turn his heart back to the Lord. For she needed him.

“He needs to be healing men, not harming them,” Phoebe added.

“He needs to heal himself, or let the Lord do it.”

“I’m hoping . . .” Phoebe shook her head. “Let’s keep looking.”

“I’m going to ask ten more people,” Derrick declared, “then take you back to the inn to sit down before you fall down.”

He needed to ask only three. A matelot, coming off a fishing smack that lay low in the water with either an excellent catch or smuggled goods, proved to be an American.

“I’ve done business with him.” The man, a youth really, grimaced. “Not the kind I’d like. He says I’m too young or some such nonsense.” He glanced sideways at Phoebe. “But I can’t see him minding himself over a pretty female wanting to do business with him.” He told them where Brock lived. “Like a king the French fear more than Napoleon around these parts.”

Night was falling, too dark and too late for a journey by sea or land to the inlet and house that James Brock had called his home for six years.

“Tomorrow,” Derrick said. “You should be rested before you meet with him.”

“Yes.” Phoebe doubted she would rest. Her heart raced. Her stomach knotted and twisted and doubled back on itself.

Now that seeing the man face-to-face was so near, she recognized the complete folly of her actions in coming to Dieppe.

“It’s too late to go back now,” she muttered.

“I could get us back to Guernsey tonight,” Derrick offered.

“No, I can’t do that.” Phoebe took Derrick’s arm to give her strength for their walk back to the inn.

As she’d feared, she slept little. The wakeful hours she spent on her knees praying about what she was doing, praying for Rafe, praying for Belinda, for Mel, for everyone she knew, then for Rafe again.

“Lord, I should have prayed for him more and condemned him less.”

Daylight arrived at last. Cold and stiff, she rose, washed, and donned her once elegant but now sadly limp gown despite the ministrations of an inn maid. All she could do with her hair was comb it, braid it, and wind the plait into a coil to anchor with the few pins she had left. She wouldn’t look much like Phoebe Carter Lee of Loudoun County, Virginia, but she had learned how to act like a lady no matter what the circumstances.

Her breakfast tray barely touched, save for the fine, rich coffee, Phoebe opened her bedchamber door as a servant was about to knock.

“
Un monsieur est ici vous voir
,” the girl said.

Phoebe stared at her blankly. “A gentleman here . . . ?”

“
Oui
,
oui
.” The girl bobbed her head, sending dark curls dancing. “
Ici. La café
.” She tugged on Phoebe’s arm. “
Vite. Vite
.”

Phoebe didn’t remember the word, but she got the idea that the girl wanted her to go in a hurry. So she went, her heart leaping into her throat, one name screaming through her head like cannon shell:
Rafe. Rafe. Rafe.

The maid opened the door to the little coffee shop on the ground floor. “
La dame americaine
,
monsieur.
”

“
Merci bien
.” Not Rafe’s accent. Not his voice. Not him.

Phoebe stood paralyzed in the doorway as James Brock strode forward.

Rafe felt like a prisoner. He wasn’t. He enjoyed the freedom to roam about the seventy-four as he willed, except for going onto the quarterdeck without permission. He’d even been given fine quarters amongst the ship’s officers once Lord Dominick Cherrett finished with him. But he wasn’t on his own vessel, giving his own instructions to the crew, making his own decisions as to the destination and how they would reach it.

“The respite from command will be good for you,” Cherrett had said the night before.

Leaning on the weather rail, watching the English coastline slipping out of sight at least two knots faster than his two-masted brig could sail, Rafe didn’t agree with Cherrett in the morning any more than he had the night before. Rafe needed to return to Guernsey, needed to see Phoebe.

Which was why he found himself aboard a ship-of-the-line instead of the
Davina
.

“Why have you taken me into custody?” Rafe had inquired of Cherrett, as though he didn’t know.

“Phoebe asked me to stop you. And here I am.” Unhurried in his movements, Cherrett returned to the window seat. “Do sit down. No, wait.” He rose again. “Hot coffee?”

Rafe didn’t sit. He gripped the back of a chair and raised one eyebrow. “I ne’er thought the day would come when an English lordling would be serving the likes of me.”

“I spent time as an indentured servant, don’t forget.” Cherrett smiled with surprising warmth and proceeded to pour coffee from a silver pot in the center of the great table. “For my sins.”

“And for mine I am here?” Not sitting would have been churlish, so Rafe slid onto one of the chairs and wrapped his cold hands around the warm china cup.

Cherrett laughed. “To stop you from carrying out at least one act I am here.” Cherrett took an adjacent chair. “We received a rather odd letter from Phoebe a month ago. She seemed to think you were about to commit a serious crime and wanted you stopped.”

“I was going to.” Rafe gazed at the reflection of the lantern lighting his coffee. “I cannot think that ridding the world of James Brock is such a bad thing, but ’tis not my place to do it.”

“Indeed?” Cherrett leaned forward, his face intense. “What are you saying? This mission to go after Brock is over?”

“Aye, for me.” Rafe shifted on his chair, avoiding Cherrett’s eyes. “I have had a change of heart, you ken.”

“I don’t know. Do tell me more.”

Rafe shrugged.

“Would it help,” Cherrett asked, his voice suddenly losing its aristocratic drawl and oddly more gentle, “if I tell you I will be the new pastor of the church in Seabourne when I return?”

“I have had naught to do with parsons for nearly a decade,” Rafe interjected.

“I understand. It was a calling I devoted my life to running away from.” Cherrett snorted. “No, spent my life fighting so hard I hurt a lot of people in the process.”

Rafe flashed him a swift, questioning glance, and this man, who could have enjoyed a life of privilege and ease, told a tale of rebellion, death, and servitude.

“But I found forgiveness from the Lord in the end.” His eyes seemed to glow for all their dark coloring. “And of course I found my beautiful wife too.”

Rafe said nothing. He couldn’t find the right words, nor the voice with which to express them.

“It hasn’t been easy,” Cherrett added. “And those we’ve hurt may never forgive us.”

“Like Phoebe,” Rafe managed.

“If she truly does love you, she will.”

“Aye, the great question, no? If she truly loves me. I am thinking she might add me to the men who have hurt her beyond forgiveness.”

“I wish I could say she wouldn’t do that. But we can pray for her.”

And he had prayed for Phoebe, for Rafe, and for James Brock, citing the verse in the fifth chapter of Matthew that said to pray for those who wronged you.

Rafe knew that verse. He’d read it one day because Mel wanted him to, and in a fit of anger that he now realized was the calling of his conscience, he’d thrown his Bible into the sea.

“Are you done with your quest to bestow justice on Brock?” Cherrett asked at the end of his prayer.

Rafe examined his heart and found only a sense of hope, of promise for a different purpose in life than destruction. “Aye, ’tis behind me.”

“Then I’ll pray that God shows you what’s before you.” Cherrett rose and held out his hand. “And I’ll tell the captain we can safely go to wherever you’ve set Phoebe and Mrs. Chapman on shore.”

“Guernsey.” Rafe stood and shook the proffered hand. “But why would you or the British Navy do that for me?”

“Not for you, for me. And perhaps so they can capture Brock for themselves.”

“But how did you know I had set the ladies ashore?”

“One of your crew isn’t as loyal to his captain as he should be. When you sent a few of your lads ashore with the French prisoners, he sent a message to the Admiralty regarding some escaped American prisoners.”

Rafe wasn’t about to admit to that.

Cherrett laughed. “Officially, we’ve seen none aboard your brig. And Guernsey is neutral territory, despite being English.”

They’d parted on amicable terms, and now Cherrett was gone, set ashore at Poole in the early morning to see his father for the first time in nearly five years.