Fire at Midnight (37 page)

“What if he were to become a loyal subject of Queen Anne?” she proposed. “He has already been punished for smuggling. His mother and brother are both English subjects.”

When Porter seemed to consider the idea, Sebastién came to his feet amid a thunderous rattle of chain.
“Non,”
he said emphatically.
“Non,
I could not.
Non
,” he repeated, shaken by the proposal. His jaw had gone slack, and his eyes were wide with incredulity.

“There is no pain involved in the process,” Jacques assured him. His expression hinted at a suppressed smile.

“
Non
,” Sebastién persisted, horrified. He looked at Rachael in dismay.

“If I am willing to risk my reputation to spare your life and restore your freedom, then you must be willing to make some sacrifices, as well,” Porter cautioned.

“You ask me to denounce … everything.”

“No justice,” Hugh shouted.

“I ask you to embrace a new country. Men before you have done it.”

“Impossible,” Sebastién insisted. “I was born a Frenchman. I will die one.”

“That is my point, young man,” Porter replied, exasperated. “As a known French privateer, you very likely
will
die one.”

“I have been divided between France and England all my life,” Sebastién told Porter. He indicated Hugh, Eleanor, and Jacques with a sweep of his hand. “They will bid me do their will until I have no will of my own.”

He snaked his arm through the lengths of chain and grasped Rachael’s hand. “This young English girl has given me the only acceptance I have ever known. You cannot imagine what she has endured for my sake, and yet she remains at my side. She is my country. I would not be parted from her, unless it is by death.”

While Porter had admired the young Frenchman’s poise throughout the trial, he now regretted his stubbornness. He had enjoyed the challenge of ferreting out the facts of the case, just as his friend Phillip Morgan had known he would. Porter preferred justice to power plays. Evidence, rather than influence, should vindicate an innocent man. He would not have absolved Falconer of guilt on the basis of a plea from Morgan; such indiscretions had toppled men from loftier positions than the one he held.

He had quietly threatened Jacques’s bribed judge with exposure and then installed himself as the man’s replacement. It was a move that went uncontested, given Porter’s considerable wealth, his personal connections, and his blood ties to Queen Anne.

He did not regret the deception he had undertaken; the subterfuge had been necessary to get at the truth. He had approached Rachael in the guise of a priest because men of the cloth often had access to information judges did not.

It had been a high stakes gamble for him, and he had wagered on the Frenchman’s integrity. Falconer could have fled England despite the risks, leaving him to explain his unorthodox handling of a reputedly dangerous prisoner.

He had placed Rachael at dead center of a dilemma. Other than an infant brother, she was left with no family, and Falconer had no country. She loved the Frenchman; that much was obvious. But Falconer was unwilling to accept the English side of his heritage, and his upbringing had made him an enemy of England. They would never find peace in England or France.

Porter smiled as a solution occurred to him.

“There is another option,” he said.

Tarry had borrowed a strange contraption from the late Henry Winstanley’s collection of inventions, a chair mounted upon a set of wheels. The vehicle allowed him to leave the confines of his sickbed, and he was amazed by the ease with which he navigated the gangplank of the ship.

He wheeled by Rachael with a cursory greeting and his eyes swept the deck, a look of determination on his face. Spying Sebastién, he began to work the wheels of the chair briskly, his movement across the timber of the weather deck aided by the gentle swell of the sea.

“We need to talk,” he informed the Frenchman. When Sebastién moved to aid him with the chair, he held up his hands. “I am quite capable,” he said as he gripped the wheels. Sebastién nodded and followed him into an area behind a bulkhead. “So, you’ve gone and gotten yourself transported,” Tarry said gruffly.

Sebastién nodded and smiled slightly. “Better than hanging, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Tarry admitted. He paused. “And you’re taking Rachael with you.”

“I’m not abducting her this time, if that’s what you mean,” Sebastién said. “You can ask her yourself.”

Tarry’s eyes strayed to where Rachael stood on deck, engrossed in conversation with Phillip and Eleanor. He glanced back at Sebastién, clearing his throat and impatiently knuckling the moisture from his eyes as the Frenchman suddenly took an undue interest in the construction of the bulkhead.

“I will take good care of her,” Sebastién promised.

Tarry cleared his throat again. “See that you do,” he said sternly.

The silence that followed was strained. Finally, he drew himself up proudly in the chair and faced Sebastién squarely.

“I guess the better man won, then,” he said. When Sebastién looked puzzled, Tarry nodded his head in Rachael’s direction. “We never really were rivals, were we?”

Sebastién placed his hand on Tarry’s shoulder. “She loved you first. I could never compete with that.”

“But she loves you now. And she never loved me the way she loves you.”

“You have only yourself to blame,” Sebastién said.

Tarry shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“You saved my life at the lighthouse, and you and your father saved me from hanging. You’ve had more than one opportunity to rid yourself of a rival.”

“You didn’t skewer me on the beach. Humiliated me, yes, but allowed to me to live. I felt I owed you.”

“You have been a worthy opponent, in all things,” Sebastién said. His eyes swept over the chair and the young man who occupied it. “The better man did not prevail,” Sebastién told him. “The luckier one did.”

Tarry smiled. He leaned back in the chair and dipped one thin arm into his coat pocket withdrawing a small case he handed to Sebastién.

“Open it.”

The black velvet box popped open under the gentle pressure of Sebastién’s thumb and forefinger. A deep purple amethyst ring mounted in white gold reposed in a circle of black satin.

“This is so sudden,” Sebastién quipped, resorting to humor to conceal his surprise. “We hardly know each other.”

“Amethyst is Rachael’s birthstone,” Tarry explained. “Under the circumstances, I doubted you’d had the opportunity to visit a jeweler.”

“They don’t usually bring their wares to the gaol,” Sebastién agreed.

He looked at Sebastién sharply. “You do intend to marry her, don’t you?”

“If she will have me.”

“She damn sure will,” Tarry said. “I told her that in no event would she undertake a journey to the colonies without the protection of a husband.”

“Oh, you did, did you?” Sebastién grinned and glanced at Rachael. She was looking their way with great interest. “What did she say?”

“She said in that case, if you didn’t ask her soon, she would marry the first seaman who proposed to her.”

Sebastién tossed the ring into the air and caught it without missing a beat then startled Tarry by seizing his hand and shaking it vigorously.

“
Merci
,” he shouted to Tarry over his shoulder as he crossed the deck toward Rachael with purposeful strides.

The motion of the ship was soothing as it rocked in harmony with the gentle swell of the sea. Rachael stood on deck, looking at the shore where those who had come to bid them farewell still stood, watching as the great craft made its way out to sea. The individual most easily distinguishable from this distance was The Dane, who stood waving vigorously.

She heard the tap of footsteps on the planks behind her and spun around, smiling as Sebastién made his way to her.

“James is sleeping … like a baby,” he informed her.

She laughed. The sound transformed his face, causing his eyes to brighten and the faint lines around his mouth to ease. He stood beside her, waving at The Dane as the shore of England continued to recede from view.

“Did you all have code names?” she asked.

“What?”

“The Frenchman, The Dane …”

Sebastién’s shoulders shook with laughter. “No member of my gang ever called me ‘The Frenchman,’ at least not to my face. That was your term for me when you were angry.”

“What about The Dane? That must have been a code name.”

He erupted into laughter again.

“What?” She was on the verge of laughing in response to the comical expression on his face.

“The truth may disappoint you,
ma chérie,
but the reason most of us called him The Dane was because we could not pronounce his real name.”

“Oh.” The disappointment in her voice prompted him to laugh again, and he hugged her as she waved toward the shore.

“What do you think America will be like?” she whispered.

“Unlike France or England, I would expect,” he replied. “I have never been to the colonies. Most of the men I have known who ventured there did not return.”

She pulled a face. “That is either very encouraging, or terrifying.”

He chuckled. “I think it is a good sign,” he said reassuringly, as he folded an arm around her and drew her against him. “Porter is a fair man.”

Rachael nodded in agreement. Porter might have sentenced him to death or to long imprisonment, but instead he had offered him a new life. If he had simply freed him, there would be those who might suspect that Sebastién had informed on them to save himself, and he would face certain jeopardy.

The kindly judge had recognized his torn loyalties and had suggested a solution that promised to free him from the past as well as assure him of a future of his own design. Even Jacques Falconer had supported Porter’s decision. Jacques had even recommended that Sebastién be put aboard a ship bound for the colonies as a free man rather than as a transported prisoner of England.

Hugh had been strongly opposed to the idea of transport, but had ceased opposition after Porter had warned that under no circumstances would his grandson be allowed to return to France.

“Will you miss France terribly?” she asked softly.

“No more than you will miss England.”

“It is a pity that you could not stay to see your mother married to Phillip Morgan.”

“I care only about my own wedding. It cannot come soon enough!” he added, with a warm glint in his eye. He took her hand and studied the deep purple of the amethyst ring she wore. “Morgan will be furious when he learns you refused my proposal.”

“I did not refuse you! I only said I would not marry you in England. I can think of no better beginning for us than to be wed in the colonies, in our new home. We will be neither French, nor English there!”

Sebastién looked at her. “Non,” he said after a moment of contemplation. “You will always be my beautiful English girl.”

Rachael turned once more to watch the coast of England as it faded from view. It slowly became no more than a distant spot upon the horizon, and with its gradual disappearance came the certainty that life with Sebastién Falconer held a promise of love and adventure.