The Randolph Legacy by Eileen Charbonneau Read Free Book Online

subject,” she said quietly.
    “The ideal of equality is maintained in your sacred documents, but its actual practice is not. Slavery, for instance?”
    “We feel everyone is on his own path in the journey toward the Light.” Her father came to her aid.
    “Or the darkness. Don’t you people acknowledge the existence of Hell, of punishment?”
    “Acknowledge it, of course,” Judith replied. “We do not choose to dwell on the darkness.”
    “Is it as easy as that, woman?”
    Open your heart to him. She prodded her fear to unlock her paralyzed throat. “That choice stems from our will. And free will is God’s blessing, is it not, Friend Willis?”
    He leaned across the table again. “What if the darkness has a life, a will of its own? What if it visits nightly?”
    Judith felt a spark of the Light pierce through the darkness, through her fear. “Speak to it,” she urged in a faint whisper.
    “What?”
    “Speak to it, find what it requires of thee.”
    He turned abruptly. His boots sounded hard, even on the Persian carpet, as he prowled around his heavy chestnut furniture. His sword rattled in its shaft. “I know what it requires of me, woman! I should have been made a commodore after Trafalgar. By now I should be on my way into the Admiralty! Instead, I am cursed, pitied, laughed at by enemies, attached to this useless frigate like a Roman galley slave. That’s what my demon requires of me!”
    Her father laid his hand protectively over Judith’s arm. “Thou could resign thy commission,” he said.
    The captain stood his ground. “Go down, sir? Admit defeat by the hands of an insolent boy who did not know his place?”
    “What boy?” Judith whispered, her heart racing.
    “You know very well what boy, Quakeress! The one who would not fight! You know the story, you’ve heard it from that arrogant Frenchman. Have a care who you choose as your friends along this voyage, Mercers. Lafayette, indeed. His name is no more Lafayette than mine is
Nelson ! He signed on to escape the guillotine’s blade, most likely. He could have jumped ashore on any continent. He must have made powerful enemies around the globe!”
    “Or perhaps powerful friends here,” Judith said.
    “Oh, they speak well enough of him below, with his salves and remedies—that’s kept the lash more than once from that crafty Frenchman’s back. But I have my eye on him. I’ve had my eye on him since he carried the body off.”
    “Body?”
    “The cat-o’-nine-tails did not kill that boy, his own unyielding heart did! Don’t let any tell you differently. I was going to make that powder monkey my cot boy after the battle. He would have lived here, serving me with those fine-boned hands.”
    “From where did this boy come?” Judith asked.
    “The Ida Lee. He was weeping like a child over a dead midshipman. It was supposed to be a warning shot. It was off, that’s all. Such things can’t be helped. The boarding of the Ida Lee was my sworn duty! We were heading toward Trafalgar shorthanded; I had to supplement the crew.”
    He shrugged—a heavy act in his medal-laden uniform—before turning his back on her scrutiny. He leaned on the shining brass railing, and looked over the calm sea beyond the cabin windows.
    More. Tell me all of it, she demanded silently.
    “I picked him up myself, by the scruff of his neck—he was that small,” he began. “‘I will provide you with someone to serve who is worthy of your tears,’ I told him. He didn’t answer. He didn’t speak a word to me until his defiance during the battle.
    “Soon after the boarding, the Ida Lee sank in a gale off the Bermudas, all hands lost. I had saved him, Miss Mercer, saved him from that fate, by taking him on the Standard ! Why do those angry, accusing eyes visit me nightly? This ship is a man-of-war. Why does he glide around its glorious purpose—war?
    “I gave him control of the lashes. He only had to pledge allegiance—to me, to his new country. Boys that young