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

to fight, accumulate more wealth, perhaps buy vessels of their own. No one got wealthy sailing back and forth across the Atlantic, risking life and limb, enduring cold, damp, and bad food for no purpose. He would have to compensate them somehow, or be worrying about mutiny.
    “No Americans,” Rafe said. “’Tis like fighting our cousins.”
    “Aye, but—” Jordy stopped.
    Feet pattered up the quarter ladder, and Mel appeared from the gloom, Fiona clicking behind. “I have the ginger water, Captain Rafe.”
    Rafe flinched at the sobriquet his crew had adopted from Mel. He didn’t mind it from the crew; he disliked it from the child. He wasn’t Mel’s captain, for all he demanded obedience while on board.
    “Are you feeling poorly, sir?” Jordy asked.
    “’Tis not for me.” Rafe took the tankard from Mel and did consider drinking it himself for a moment. “Mrs. Lee has not taken to the sea so well as her sister-in-law.”
    “Hasn’t she now. I had no notion of it aboard the cutter.” Jordy leaned over the wheel, staring at the binnacle compass. “We’re getting pulled to the north. Can we get a man or two up top to set some sail? The wind is dropping.”
    Rafe shook his head. “As much as I’d like to be away from the coast in a trice, I’d prefer no more sail until light. We’ll not be that far off course that ’tis worth the risk. And with an ailing passenger . . .”
    “Why would she not be sick aboard the cutter?” Mel asked. “It bounces around like a cork in boiling water.”
    “And when have you been boiling corks in water?” Rafe tugged Mel’s shorn hair and frowned. “I told you to wear a cap on deck.”
    “I cannot find one.”
    “Ha. You’re going to regret doing this.”
    “Aye,” Jordy agreed, “I said it deserves a thrashing.”
    “Ha.” Mel tossed back the ragged locks. “Neither of you ever did such a thing to me.”
    “Aye, and it shows. As for Mrs. Lee not being sick aboard the cutter, the weather was not so bad until right before she came aboard. And speaking of the lady, I should see how she fares.”
    “Do you think you should go down there alone?” Jordy lifted one hand from the wheel and rubbed his belly.
    “Ah, yes, she got you too?” Rafe pictured those small, high-arched feet curving into delicate ankles.
    Abraded ankles.
    “Mel, fetch the comfrey salve. Jordy here tied Mrs. Lee a wee bit too tightly and she has some scrapes that need tending.”
    “Aye, sir.” Mel executed a perfect acrobatic flip despite the canting brig and landed on the main deck.
    Jordy grimaced. “That bairn is going to break a limb one of these days.”
    “Or give me an apoplexy before I’m five and thirty.” Holding the tankard of ginger water, Rafe paced across the quarterdeck, his body shifting to the roll of the brig, until he reached the skylight. It was closed to keep out sea and rain, and the glass was colored green for privacy, but light glowed through from his cabin, a reminder of Phoebe Lee’s eyes glittering with suppressed emotion despite her calm exterior.
    He understood her illness, the roiling of rage and frustration suppressed to make the body sick. Absently, he sipped at the ginger water and listened, one hand on the taffrail for balance. No sound rose from the chamber below, nothing loud enough to penetrate deck planks and creaking timbers, or the roar of the sea and whistle of wind through rigging.
    Quiet didn’t mean all was well. She might sleep, but he hadn’t dosed her earlier draught with enough opiate to guarantee sleep. She might very well be awake, plotting, scheming, trying to work out a way to escape.
    There is none, my dear lass.
    As if in reassurance to him, the last glimpse of light from shore winked out behind a wave. When the Davina lifted to the crest of the next swell, the horizon remained a line of black between sooty sky and phosphorescent sea. Gone. The threat of Phoebe Lee’s friends vanished beyond the waves.
    But Rafe remained