Heart's Safe Passage (41 page)

“And I was right to fear him,” Rafe mused aloud. “He has powerful friends and family.” The highest being the greatest power of all—his heavenly Father.

God would have to be great indeed to change Rafe’s heart. He smiled to himself and began to pace the weather deck.

Another eight to ten hours to Guernsey with nothing to do didn’t please him, especially when rain began to fall. He retreated to his cabin, a canvas-sided box off the wardroom, but with a bed and chest and washstand. Someone had given him a clean shirt and shaving gear. And Cherrett had left him a Bible with a simple note saying, “We will meet again. You can return it then.” As though they were friends. The idea rested a bit askew on Rafe, a man who had avoided friendship for far too long.

“I will be doing that,” Rafe murmured, then sat down to read, to sleep, to pace the deck again once the rain ceased. The captain’s own steward brought Rafe meals, and eventually they reached the island.

“You’re free to go,” the captain told Rafe. “But Admiral Landry has revoked your letters of marque.”

“No matter that.” Rafe drew a handful of paper from the inside pocket of his cloak. “I already destroyed them.”

The captain’s personal gig crew took him ashore, and he ran up to the George, and Phoebe.

“She’s not here,” Mel explained, hugging him. “She left with Derrick day before yesterday.”

“With Derrick? Where’s our French prize?”

“In harbor.”

Rafe hadn’t seen it in his haste to reach the inn. He didn’t look for it now. He left Mel’s room to bang on the door of the adjacent chamber.

Chapman opened it. “Hush. Baby Phoebe is sleeping at last.”

“Phoebe?” Rafe stared at him. “You named your bairn Phoebe?”

Chapman sighed. “Belinda wanted it.”

“It’s the least I could do after bringing her along.” Belinda’s voice drifted from inside the room. “Even if now—”

“’Tis good to hear that your bairn is well, mon, but I want to ken where the adult lady Phoebe might be found.”

“Phoebe?” Chapman’s eyes darted from side to side. “I—I don’t know. She’s not here. Wasn’t here when we arrived. Abandoned my Belinda during her lying-in.”

Rafe’s gut clenched. He couldn’t believe Phoebe had abandoned a patient in the middle of her labor. “What are you saying? Where did she go?”

“She’s gone to Dieppe to find James Brock,” Belinda called out. “She abandoned me so she could fight your battles for you. It wasn’t right, but—”

Rafe didn’t wait to hear any more. He spun on his heel and raced back to the harbor in time to catch the captain’s gig. “Dieppe,” he said, breathless. “How can I get to Dieppe?”

Phoebe took a long, deep breath. She would not scream. She would not pound on the walls. She would not be sick. She could bear the confines of a prisonlike room. Her heart and spirit were free of her past.

But that didn’t free her from Rafe’s past. Nor her own stupidity of meeting with Brock alone. While he reminded her of their previous meeting and asked her what she wanted with him, another man slipped up behind her, lifted her over his shoulder, and calmly walked out of the inn with her. Her attempts to call for help failed. Her French was inadequate to the task. If anyone spoke English, he pretended not to. They wouldn’t go against a man with so much money he spent with a lavish hand.

So she paced what appeared to be a larder. Its stone walls were certainly cold enough to keep meat fresh. Her fingers and toes were numb. More of her grew numb with cold if she sat. So she paced like Rafe on his brig—back and forth, repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Her slippers whispered on the flagstones. And her heart slowed. As darkness closed in on a window too high and small to help her, a fetter inside her snapped away. She no longer felt imprisoned by the walls. They embraced her, sheltered her. Her body could be imprisoned, but God held her heart and soul, and nothing imprisoned Him.

She opened her mouth to pray aloud, then heard footfalls on the other side of the door, the heavy footsteps of a man. She hoped it was dinner or at least a glass of water.

It was the man who had carried her from the inn then dumped her into a carriage. It was the man who had chased her and Rafe through the streets of St. George’s.

“Mr. Brock will see you now.” He sounded like someone from Massachusetts or maybe New York.

“I hope he’ll see me over supper.” She smiled.

The henchman grunted and took her arm in a hand large enough to surround her bicep. He guided her through a kitchen, then down hallways of a house with wood paneling and crystal sconces, fine furniture and velvet draperies, but not a single painting, statue, vase, or anything moveable. By the time they reached a library with no books on the shelves, Phoebe guessed what was afoot.

“You kept me locked away until you had everything moved out?” she asked, smile still in place.

“I came back to France to pack everything up that’s worth shipping home,” Brock responded. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather—” The henchman pushed her into a chair. “Stand.”

Brock glared past her shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt you, Mrs. Lee.”

“No?” Phoebe rubbed her bruised arm.

“Leave us,” Brock commanded.

“But, sir—”

“Keep an eye out for Docherty,” Brock directed.

Phoebe drew on her training to show no reaction to Brock, conjured Tabitha’s voice in her head, telling her to remain calm in the face of the direst situation.
Never let a patient or family member know if you’re flustered, scared, distraught—anything.

Tabitha had seen her share of taxing situations in the twelve years she had been a midwife. Not once in three years did Phoebe see her teacher become flustered in the birthing chamber. “You may have hysterics afterward,” Tabitha admonished.

The desire for hysterics roiling in her middle, Phoebe smiled at James Brock. “Why do you think you need to look out for Captain Docherty?”

“Because you’re here.” Brock smiled. “Or do you think I abducted you because I think you’re charming?”

Phoebe laughed, though she felt like screaming.

“Indeed, Mrs. Lee, you are merely the means to an end.” Brock gestured to the room, empty save for a few pieces of furniture. “I have decided to retire and wish to return to America permanently, but before I can do that, I need to put an end to Rafe Docherty. He’s proved a difficult man to catch or kill.”

Phoebe turned on her best lady-of-the-plantation drawl. “I expect he’d say the same thing about you, sir.”

Brock laughed. “
Tres bien
, madam. But whatever reason you have for looking for me, you’ve done me a good turn.” He paused.

Phoebe could have filled in the momentary silence with what Brock would say next. She feared if she opened her mouth, she would start screaming, railing against her stupidity, her carelessness, her need to manage every situation the way she wanted it to be.

“With you here,” Brock concluded, “Docherty is sure to follow.”

26

Rafe found Derrick a quarter hour after reaching Dieppe. He was haggling with a fisherman for the use of his boat to go up the coast. When Rafe strode up to him, he broke off his negotiations and flung up his arms as though about to embrace his captain. He shook Rafe’s hand instead.

“I knew you’d come,” he said. “I’ve been—”

“Where’s Phoebe?”

“He’s got her.” Derrick’s face crumpled. “She just disappeared from the inn, but she was talking to him before she did.”

“He came to her?” Rafe clenched his hands into fists. “If he’s harmed her—” He stopped himself from making the threat, from even thinking it. “Where?”

“Ten miles up the coast, but, sir—”

Rafe turned to the gaping fisherman and addressed him in French. “I need your boat. How much?”

A gleam in his dark eyes, the fisherman named a price that was likely more than he would make from his trade in a year.

“That’s robbery,” Derrick protested.

Rafe drew his purse from his pocket and paid the man. At the clink of the leather pouch, the fisherman looked like he wished he’d asked for more.

“Do not be greedy,” Rafe admonished him. “My friend here and I could have taken your boat without your permission, had we a mind to be dishonest.” He turned to Derrick. “We are going to be followed, I have no doot. Do not fash yourself about it. They are friends.”

“Friends? Who?”

“Let us be off first.” Rafe dropped into the fishing smack and, choking on the reek of fish, set about hoisting the single sail. “Do you have any weapons?”

Derrick loosed the painter and leaped aboard. “I got a brace of pistols and stickers. Now then, who’s goin’ ta be following us?”

“A few lads from the British Navy.”

“Did I hear you right? You said the Navy?”

“Aye.” Rafe took the tiller. “Which way?”

“East. What are you doing having truck with the Navy?”

Rafe told him as they navigated the fishing boat along the rocky coast of Brittany. “They’d like to have an excuse to lock Brock away,” he conceded. “When I learned Phoebe came—Derrick, why did she come? And why did you let her?”

“She would have come whether I came with her or not.” They tacked further east, and Derrick hauled the line to better catch the wind in the single sail. “I thought it better to come with her, not that I did such a good work of taking care of her. I should have stood guard outside her door.”

“Brock would have found a way to get her even if you had.” Rafe fixed his gaze on his friend. “What better way to lure me in than to take Phoebe.”

“Yes, sir, we be sailing right into a trap.”

“’Tis not a trap if we ken ’tis one.” Rafe scanned the coastline, ash-gray against the charcoal of the sea in the darkening twilight, a rocky landscape not easy to defend. “We’ll set in here.”

They steered the tiny craft into an inlet not much larger than the boat itself. No one challenged them as they used a rocky outcropping for a mooring post. No one challenged them as they climbed onto the rocks despite inevitable noise from falling pebbles and the scrape of boots. Lights blazed in the near distance, and no one challenged them as they stalked toward them, toward the aroma of wood smoke on the frosty air.

“I don’t like it,” Derrick murmured.

Rafe nodded. His gut felt like someone had crushed it beneath the wheels of a two-ton carronade. No challenge to their presence meant they were supposed to get inside without a hindrance, then the trap would spring. Brock’s men would surround them, capture them, probably even kill them.

A copse of stubbled pine rose up along the path from water to house. Rafe slipped into it, motioning for Derrick to follow. Derrick blended with the darkness beneath the prickly branches. Rafe drew the edge of his boat cloak over his face so its paleness would not shine in the approaching night.

“We’ve got to find them before they find us,” he said in the undertone he’d learned traveled less distance than a whisper. “What do you suggest?”

He knew nothing about land tactics. One couldn’t hide on the ocean if one encountered another vessel. One fought or prayed to outrun a larger enemy.

Prayed. Of course he’d prayed, to get away from an enemy, to stay alive for Mel’s sake if nothing else, to keep his daughter safe. Those prayers had been answered, and he hadn’t even acknowledged either that they were prayers or that God had listened. Yet there he stood, ready to finalize what he’d wanted and never prayed for because, unlike what Phoebe had accused him of what felt like a lifetime ago, he did have a conscience, one that knew his quest for vengeance was wrong.

“If Phoebe wasn’t there,” he told Derrick, “I wouldn’t go. But she is there, and I don’t have a choice but to rescue her. Will you—” He sought for the right way to ask his question through a dry mouth. “Will you pray for our safety and Phoebe’s?”

“I have been all along.” Derrick squeezed Rafe’s shoulder. “Welcome back to the Lord, my friend.”

Rafe shook Derrick’s hand as though they’d been separated for years, and the tension inside him uncoiled. Peace descended, and he knew what to do.

“They want me, not you. Go back to the boat and get back to Dieppe for aid, or direct the Navy lads here.”

“I’m not letting you go in there alone.” Derrick’s gentle voice held steel. “I’m going to set up a decoy while you slip in.”

“Nay, that will not do. They might kill you, and I will not have anyone else’s blood on my hands.”

“They’ll have to catch me to kill me.” Derrick’s voice held a smile. “I know how to get around in the dark. Did a lot of that back on Jamaica when I wanted to see my wife.”

Rafe suppressed a chuckle, then sobered. “You do not ken this territory.”

“I can find the house and the sea. That’s enough.”

“You could trip.”

“And I could’ve been shot all these years fighting. Now let’s go. Time’s a-wasting.”

It was. Short of tying Derrick to the tree behind him, Rafe couldn’t stop the other man from doing what he liked. He was no longer a subordinate, no longer one of the crew. Rafe had given up being a captain.

“God be with you,” was all he said.

“He will.” Derrick slipped from the copse and strolled toward the house, his footfalls nearly silent, his tall frame a mere shadow against the now cloud-blackened sky.