Roanoke (The Keepers of the Ring) by Angela Hunt, Angela Elwell Hunt Read Free Book Online Page B

allow her a moment of privacy with her uncle.
    “Jocelyn, you can ’t go home. Today we cross the Solent to the Isle of Wight. I have business at Cowes with Sir George Carey, who wants to use our new colony as a privateering base.”
    “After that, can I go home?”
    “No, child.” His glance softened as he looked at her. “We’ll return to Portsmouth to pick up a few late-arriving colonists and more supplies. But you cannot go home. Your father wishes you to remain with me.”
    “If we ’re returning to Portsmouth, I want to go home.”
    “ ‘Tis impossible. Now be a good girl and go find your cousin.”
    “ ‘Tis not impossible.” She nodded in conviction, but her voice quavered as she thought of the resolution in her father’s eyes when he placed her mother’s ring in her hand. He had known then that he would send her away!
    She clutched at her uncle ’s sleeve and injected a note of pleading into her voice. “I want to go home, Uncle John. Papa needs me, and I cannot leave him. By all that’s merciful, Uncle, you must let me go. Papa is your brother, and he has no one to tend him. If ‘twere Eleanor dying, or even having the baby—” she intensified her whisper, “—would you not want to be at her side? Have mercy, uncle, and let me go home.”
    “Your devotion is most praiseworthy, madam,” the Portuguese said, turning to face her. His grin was an open and shameless confession of his eavesdropping, but he turned to John White and Jocelyn felt hope rise in her heart. “Let the lady return to her father if she chooses.”
    John White’s expression gentled. “If you still want to leave us when we return to Portsmouth, I will not stop you,” he said finally, his voice heavy with disappointment.
     
     
    Far from satisfied, Jocelyn followed Audrey into the bowels of the ship through a series of steep and narrow stairways the sailors called “companionways.” There were at least four decks under the main upper deck, Audrey told Jocelyn. The upper deck was reserved for the seamen who worked the ship; the deck under that was for the passengers. Below the passenger deck was a deck for cooking and the storage of cargo, and at the bottom of the ship, barrels of water, food, and stone for ballast jammed the orlop deck.
    Jocelyn did not care to tour the ship, for she had no intention of remaining on it for more than a voyage to Cowes and the return to Portsmouth. When Audrey led her to Eleanor, though, Jocelyn felt her anger soften. She could not be angry at her uncle and cousin once she saw how badly Eleanor fared on the ship.
    Her vivacious cousin lay curled on a stuffed mattress, her skin a sickly gray-green. Agnes Wood sat devoutly beside her, her expression screwed into a sour snarl, but her face cracked into humanity as she tried to explain Eleanor’s condition. “‘Tis seasickness,” Agnes said when Jocelyn looked at her cousin in horror. “Master Ananias said ‘twill pass once we reach the open sea. ‘Tis only the harbors that are so choppy.”
    Jocelyn didn ’t have the heart to remind Agnes that they would be in the harbor for many days to come, so she sank onto the wooden floor next to Eleanor. “I don’t know which of us is sorrier to be here,” she said, trailing her hand over her cousin’s glistening brow. “Mayhap you should come off the ship with me when we return to Portsmouth. Let your father and husband go to Virginia without you.”
    Despite her weakness and nausea, Eleanor ’s pale blue eyes flew open in protest. “Leave?” she croaked, struggling to raise her head. “Why, never, cousin! I couldn’t leave my husband. Ananias isn’t—well, I won’t leave him. This is only something to be borne, and I bore the sickness gladly enough when I was first with child. ‘Tis just—” she paused and gestured frantically toward her maid. Agnes expertly pulled her mistress’ head toward a low basin while Jocelyn turned away.
    Why had her father put her aboard this living