The Randolph Legacy by Eileen Charbonneau Read Free Book Online Page A

are green branches; they can mend, they can be taught to grow in a different direction. But not him. His leg cracked, his heart followed. Weakness. A failure of the heart. He was a suicide, then, wasn’t he?” He turned from the window abruptly. “What does your Society of Friends think of suicides, Miss Mercer?”
    Judith touched her forehead. “I am terribly fatigued and must beg to be released.”
    His smile creased through the saber scars. “Released? Released? You
are hardly my captive, dear lady. Of course you are free to go. Go, come, all decks, all times, as the Admiralty ordered. Even I am not that free. But of course you are used to freedom. You are an American.”
     
     
    W hen she felt her foot slip on the step, a firm grip took her elbow. It eased her down.
    “ Mon dieu, Judith, you are as pale as a lily.”
    Fayette’s concerned eyes so relieved her she rested her head against his broad chest. His arms enfolded her. There. Safe. “They said thou was on duty in sick bay,” she said.
    “I’m just going off. Where’s your father? Are you ill?”
    “I must see him, Fayette.”
    He looked behind him. Satisfied by the empty silence, he pulled her into the shadows. “Now? Why? He’s sleeping.”
    “Please.”
    He shook his head, but took her arm. They descended the stairwell until there were no more steps. They stood in the lowest caverns of the Standard. Judith smelled apples, the cold iron of the anchor and chain, earthy potatoes, and briny seawater as they walked past the lockers. At the far end of the dank hallway, she saw a small, rounded door. Fayette retrieved a key from his vest pocket.
    “He’s locked in?” she asked.
    The Frenchman frowned. “The curious are locked out. He has a key. Tied around his neck.”
    He opened the door, stooping to enter. Judith’s head touched the planked ceiling. The room was nothing like she’d imagined, nothing like a dungeon, except for the darkness.
    As her eyes adjusted, they scanned a capacious gilt armchair, some tacked-up netting studded with conch shells. And shelves. They were set low, as if for a child, or a man who could not walk. Books—an astonishing number, perhaps a hundred. Beside them were Washington’s wondrous miniature ships, their white sails raised on lines woven from her nightly hair-leavings. She had never seen the ships like this, together in their graceful beauty. They had helped keep him sane through his captivity, Judith realized. That alone would have been enough to give them full Quaker purpose.
    A breeze from the hallway cleared the air. Fayette raised his lantern. Suspended from the low ceiling hung a hammock. From it, even breathing sounded. Judith stepped closer.
    Washington shifted and sighed deeply. No blanket covered him, only
a rough gray frock, mended many times with his even stitches. Judith felt a distinct rush of pleasure being able to see him like this, unobserved except for Fayette’s wary eye.
    Any lingering distrust of Fayette had been vanquished during Judith’s time in the captain’s cabin. The Frenchman was her ally. He was the reason the cocooned dreamer was alive, and so much more at peace than he who lived in splendor above.
    Judith laced her fingers in the strings of the hammock. She pushed, watching fondly. Fayette’s hand glided gently down her spine before his fingers fanned out at the small of her back. An intimate gesture. Judith didn’t stiffen. Beneath their joint gaze, Washington smiled in his sleep. His cheekbones were sharp, his frame not meant to carry so little weight. It would all be remedied—the thought birthed itself in Judith Mercer’s heart—once she brought him home.
    He opened his eyes. “Judith?”
    “Yes,” she whispered, sweeping the hair back from his forehead. “It’s only me, collecting my wager from Fayette. No snoring comes from thy hammock.”
    “Wager? He will not even allow me to swear, and you two are wagering?”
    “Shhh,” she whispered, rocking. “Back