Heart's Safe Passage by Laurie Alice Eakes Read Free Book Online Page A

if you suffered from the seasickness.”
    “Like you do?” Mel’s eyes twinkled.
    Rafe responded with a narrow-eyed glare. “Insolence will get you naught but a caning.”
    Laughing, Mel scooped Fiona off the hammock and darted past Rafe, out the makeshift door, and into the darkness of the lower deck. “Bring the ginger water to me when you’ve made it,” Rafe called softly to the retreating figure, “and then you can recite your lessons to me, if you cannot sleep.”
    Mel would stay with Rafe and recite. Neither of them ever slept during a storm. Mel didn’t remember why, having been but three years old when a storm ripped through their lives, but Rafe did. So he ensured they knew how to spend the wakeful hours in the dark and wet, in the heaving seas and lashing winds. Mel recited lessons and Rafe concentrated on listening, correcting, teaching until the sun returned.
    The sun should return with the dawn. Already rain fell only in spurts, though the waves loomed before the prow and white-rimmed mountains climbed and slid down the other side.
    Rafe’s stomach rolled with them. He’d never gotten used to heavy seas, never lost the nausea that kept him surviving on ginger water and ship’s biscuit for days on end. Unlike he had done for the lady below, he never dosed himself with the merest hint of poppy juice. He needed his head completely clear. A drugged privateer captain meant death for himself and his crew at the hands of the enemy.
    The enemies.
    He sighed as he climbed to the main deck and strode aft to the quarterdeck ladder, his boat cloak flapping around his legs in the gale, his hair catching on his wet cheeks and eyelashes. He disliked the notion of Britain fighting more than one country at a time. War with America was a mistake. They were only a generation removed from being Englishmen, Scots, Welshmen, and half a dozen other nationalities. Yet if the Americans hadn’t declared war on England the previous year, he might never have found out how to run James Brock—merchant, politician, murderer—to earth with a scheme so unscrupulous, so craven, he couldn’t do enough to make up for his actions of the next two months, if he acknowledged a conscience.
    He preferred to keep that suppressed. A conscience had brought him nothing but grief.
    And his latest actions had brought him another enemy. No doubt James Brock had learned something by now, might even be considering an action against the captain of the Davina .
    And in a moment of weakness, he’d allowed Mel to come aboard.
    Loneliness, like a conscience, was no good for a man’s safety.
    Rafe grasped the taffrail hard enough to nearly rip it from its bolts. “You will pay for that too.” He glared at the distant lights gleaming from the eastern shore of Virginia, a sign they were out of the Chesapeake. His breathing eased. In a few hours, the chances of them running into trouble with an American vessel would come close to disappearing. Mrs. Phoebe Carter Lee and her powerful friends on shore would be of no danger. He just needed to get through the night, through the storm, beyond where the woman would think he would dare set her—onto land anywhere this side of Bermuda.
    He strode to the wheel, where Jordy held the Davina on a steady course east. “I can take the wheel for you if you want to seek your bunk.”
    “I’d rather be here till we’re far from land.” Jordy spat to leeward. “I do not trust those Americans not to chase us down and pick a fight at dawn.”
    “Let them try.” Rafe rested a hand on the binnacle. “We’re not fighting the Yankees on this voyage.”
    Jordy snorted. “Aye, and how do you plan to let them know that? Or our own lads, for that matter. We’ve not taken a prize in three months, and they’re growing restless.”
    “Greedy, are they not?” Rafe tried to laugh.
    His mirth fell flat. Restless men on a privateer spelled potential danger. They didn’t know what their captain intended, and they wanted