Merline Lovelace (12 page)

Her heart thumping, Sarah searched among the tiers for the square front of the Presbyterian Mission House. She thought she caught a glimpse of it, but the tall sail of a junk cut off her view. Gripping her hands together tightly, she rehearsed again the words that would tell Abigail and Charlie of their father’s death.

To her profound dismay, the carefully rehearsed phrases flew out of her head the moment she walked into her shabby, cheerfully cluttered home. A lump lodged in her throat at the sight of Charlie’s cricket bat and schoolbooks scattered about the sitting room, and at the graceful watercolors Abigail had painted and hung to hide the cracks in the wall plaster. She’d been happy here. Despite her worries over the Abernathys’ precarious financial status and Papa’s increasing
eccentricities, Sarah had been happy and busy and at home with Cook and his many relatives.

Now she would leave this house forever for a yet-to-be-determined home in a chill, misty land that she barely recalled.

“Are you all right?”

She looked up to find Straithe watching her with sharp concern. Blinking away a silly, missish sheen of tears, she tried to force a calm reply past the lump in her throat. Before she could respond, the sound of running feet brought her around.

“I know where it is,” a young voice shouted. “I left it in the umbrella stand. I’ll get…”

Charlie came dashing around the corner and cannonballed right into Straithe. The captain staggered back a step or two, but managed to catch both his footing and the startled boy before they both tumbled to the floor. The youngster stared up at the unannounced visitor, his face smeared with something that looked suspiciously like blackberry jam and his brown curls standing in their usual disarray.

“I say! I beg your pardon, sir. I—” He broke off, his eyes widening as he recognized Straithe. An instant later, he saw the figure standing a few paces behind the captain.

“Sarah!”

The joyous shout bounced off the sitting room walls. Childish tears of happiness sprang into Charlie’s eyes as he threw himself at his sister. Her own eyes filling, Sarah dropped to her knees and enfolded him in her arms. Her conical straw hat tipped back, then fell down her back. The strings cut into her neck as she hugged the small boy fiercely.

He recovered before she did. Squirming and now
thoroughly embarrassed by his display of emotion, Charlie pushed out of her hold and glanced about.

“Where’s Papa? You found him, didn’t you?”

She swallowed. “We…we found him.”

“Surely you didn’t come back without him?” His brown eyes, so like her own, rounded to saucers. “Did he barricade himself in a swine hut, like that time in the Punjab?”

“No.”

The boy fairly hopped from foot to foot in his excitement over his father’s adventures. “Never say he’s gone off in search of another hermit!”

Sarah’s throat ached from the tug of her hat strings and the words she couldn’t seem to force out. Her whole body trembled with the need to pull her brother into her arms once more and smooth his unruly curls.

“No, Charlie,” she said hoarsely. “He hasn’t gone off in search of another hermit.”

“Then where is he?” the boy demanded. A sudden frown creased his forehead. “And why are you crying? You never cry, Sarah!”

“I’m…not crying. I…”

“Yes, you are!” His lower lip trembled. “Why, Sarah? Has something bad happened to Papa?”

To her shame, she couldn’t answer.

Straithe took on the painful task. Kneeling, he bought himself to Charlie’s level. “Your papa’s dead, lad.”

The boy whitened beneath his coating of jam. “Dead?”

“Yes. He died most valiantly. He took a musket ball while helping us make our escape from a horde of…”

“No!”

The small cry of distress was the first evidence of Abigail’s presence. Sarah whipped her head around and saw her sister standing in the sitting room doorway. Before Sarah could say a word, every bit of color leached from Abby’s face. She started to sway, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

With a low exclamation, Straithe jumped up. He caught Abigail just as she started to fall. Sweeping her up in his arms, he stared down into her face.

Sarah hadn’t thought she could hurt more. But the sight of Jamie Kerrick’s expression as he gazed at her sister sent a new, splintering pain into her heart. He looked as though a lightning bolt had come through the roof and struck him where he stood.

“S
he’s an angel.”

Liam Burke’s murmured observation brought Jamie’s gaze from the chart he’d been studying. He wasn’t surprised to see that his friend’s concentration had strayed from the chart to the sunswept deck…and to the two women seated under the sailcloth awning amidships. Of the two, one in particular riveted Liam’s attention.

The breeze molded her gray mourning dress to her slender form. Ribbons in the same pearly shade anchored a straw chip hat atop her golden curls. A few of those downy curls feathered the column of her neck, bent gracefully as she read aloud from the book in her lap to the boy seated cross-legged on the deck beside her.

“An angel come down to earth,” Liam mused. “To show us that beauty and goodness do exist in this world after all.”

“Aye,” Jamie agreed dryly, “she’s as near to perfection as any female I’ve ever come across.”

Lost in contemplation of Abigail Abernathy’s breath-taking image, the brawny Irishman gave no
sign of having heard the touch of irony in his captain’s reply.

In the week since the
Phoenix
had slipped out of Macao, Jamie had discovered that perfection could be a bit wearing on the nerves. He, like the rest of his salty crew, found himself constantly censoring his speech to keep from raising a flush of embarrassment on the beauty’s cheeks. Even more than their speech, they’d had to moderate their behavior. The men had quickly learned that a careless fist laid alongside a mate’s head in argument or one of the rough and ready practical jokes that enlivened months at sea brought tears of distress to those magnificent eyes.

“She reminds me a bit of my Kate,” Burke murmured.

Jamie glanced at his friend in surprise. To his knowledge, this was the first time Liam had spoken his dead wife’s name aloud in years.

“Katie’s hair was a sort of brown, not gold,” Burke continued softly. “And she couldna lay claim to such fine eyes, but she had the same sweet air about her. Even with the young ones pullin’ at her skirts and the babe a’squallin’ in her arms, she would always gift me with a smile when I walked through the door.”

The thread of pain in his friend’s voice kept Jamie silent. Nothing he said could ease the hurt of a man who had lost a wife and three children. For a few moments, only the creaking of the masts and the sound of the sheets rattling added substance to their separate thoughts. Then Burke pulled his gaze from the women seated under the awning. His dark eyes thoughtful, he turned to the captain.

“I’m thinking that Miss Abigail will be the makin’ o’some man.”

The comment was too close to those of The Reverend Mr. Abernathy for Jamie’s comfort.

“Assuming the man wants making,” he replied with a shrug.

“Aye, assuming he wants makin’.”

Flattening the charts with his palms, Jamie drew his first mate’s attention back to the task at hand. “I don’t know about you, but all I want at this moment is to get us safely through the Sunda Straits.”

At the mention of the channel that cut through the vast Malay Archipelago, where shallow seas foamed the shores of thousands of small islands and pirates were thicker than fleas on a dog’s hide, Burke’s gaze snapped to the charts.

“Are we nearin’ the straits, then?”

“By my reckoning, we should sight Nantua Island before sunset.”

Nantua Island. The very name put a knot in a sailor’s gut. The island consisted of little more than a long stretch of white beach fringed with dark mangroves and bamboo huts set on slender piles, backed by purple mountains rising to the clouds. Yet that idyllic tropical paradise was governed by a sultan who sent out his fleets to prey on ships of all flags.

“Goin’ home so early as we are,” Burke said slowly, “there’s little chance of pickin’ up a convoy. We’ll have to rely on our speed and our guns to get us through the straits.”

Nodding, Jamie rolled up the charts. “Speed and guns and a keen eye for shoals and reefs. If we run aground or get becalmed, we’ll have pirates swarming aboard like sand crabs on a dead jellyfish. Post a sharp lookout day and night. I’ll send Henry Fulks aloft. The lad has the sharpest eyes of any aboard.”

The charts slid into their rack with a thud. “Make sure he lashes himself tight to the mast. The seas will start to boil when we approach the straits. And tell the men to rig the boarding nets in case the bastards try to slip up on us in the dead of night.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Burke turned to leave, only to pause in the open hatch. His flame-red hair ruffling in the wind, he stared at the two women some yards away. Jamie didn’t need to ask what he was thinking.

The Malay pirates were notorious for their treatment of prisoners. Captured men either went into the sea with their throats cut or were chained to rowing benches until they died of thirst or starvation. Women, if they were lucky, went to the slave markets.

Sarah’s generous curves would fetch a handsome price on the block, but the exquisite Abigail would bring a fortune. The thought made Jamie’s chest squeeze.

“We’ll take no chances until we shoot the straits,” he informed Burke tersely. “Keep the gun ports open and the rum at half ration.”

Liam acknowledged the commands with a nod and went to inform the crew of their position. Jamie annotated the ship’s log concerning their course and speed, then followed Burke out of the steering cabin a short time later. His soft-soled boots made no sound as he ducked under the aft boom and walked amidships. Above the creaking of the masts, he caught the musical cadence of Abigail’s voice as she read from the epic of King Arthur.

“And so was graven upon its hilt, I am Escalibore, unto a king to be.
Arthur graspeth it strong in hands yet small, And…”

His childish face alight with enjoyment, Charlie finished the verse. “And pulled it fair, and firm, and free!”

Abigail stuck a finger in the leather-bound volume to mark her place, and gave the boy a teasing smile. “I don’t know why Sarah wants me to read this story to you yet again. You know it by heart.”

“Because it’s the only one that will keep him still,” Sarah interjected, her fingers flying as she mended one of the youngster’s shirts. “You know very well that if we force him to his lessons, he’ll soon be off climbing ropes or begging Mr. Burke to teach him another knot.”

“Or badgering Gunny to let him prime the twelvepounders,” Jamie drawled.

Startled, both sisters swiveled on their stools. Abigail’s face registered a shy welcome under the brim of her straw hat. Sarah’s, Jamie observed, quickly assumed a mask of politeness.

She’d been like this since the day they’d left Macao, he thought irritably. Cool. Distant. As quiet as a church mouse whenever she was in his presence, which wasn’t often. She devoted most of her time and attention to the needs of her brother and sister. The rest she spent treating the crew’s various ailments, having taken on the role of ship’s doctor in place of the African. Jamie could count on the fingers of one hand the number of words he’d exchanged with her in the past week. For reasons he had yet to understand, the outspoken Miss Abernathy had retreated into a shell of silence.

Even her physical appearance seemed to reinforce this withdrawal. Her high-waisted, long-sleeved mourning dress of black jersey made her a mere shadow of the vibrant woman he knew her to be. What was worse, she’d scraped her hair back into a tight knot at her nape and covered it with a lace cap and straw bonnet that an ancient dowager with no sense of fashion or self might have worn. Jamie’s fingers itched to pull off the unflattering headwear, and he regretted that he’d ever wished Sarah back in skirts. He much preferred her in borrowed shirt, vest and trousers, or even baggy Chinese clothing, with her face raised to the sun and her hair spilling down her back in a tangle of ginger-spiced curls.

Abigail’s worried exclamation pulled Jamie’s gaze back to the younger sister. “Oh, no, Charlie! Surely you haven’t been playing around the cannon? You
promised
you wouldn’t!”

The boy flushed. “I only wanted to watch the shot being loaded.”

Her voice shaking, Abigail clutched the book to her chest. “Don’t you remember how you singed your eyebrows and set the curtains afire that time you stuffed your toy rifle with firecrackers and lit them! Please, please, promise us you won’t go near the guns. Sarah, tell him he must not!”

Sarah poked her needle through the fabric. “Abigail, pet, you should know by now that telling Charlie he must not do something is the surest way to get him to do exactly that.”

Her color draining, Abigail turned the full force of her luminous, turquoise eyes on Jamie. She held out a trembling hand to beseech his aid.

“He’ll listen to you, sir. Will you not add your
voice to mine and order Charlie to stay away from the guns?”

Wishing heartily that he’d kept his mouth shut, Jamie took Abigail’s fingers in his and patted the back of her hand.

“I don’t need to issue an order to Master Charles. He won’t play around the guns now that he knows how much distress it causes his sister.” Jamie sent the culprit a level look. “Will he?”

“I wasn’t playing!” the boy protested indignantly. “I was learning to load grapeshot. Gunny says you have to use grape against the pirates in these waters. It rips through their boats and their guts like—”

“That’s enough, Charlie!”

Sarah’s sharp command cut the boy off, but not before Abigail had paled even more. Deathly white, she dropped the leather-bound book and gripped Jamie’s hand with both of hers.

“Pirates?”

A man would have to have been carved from whalebone to resist the fright in her eyes. Gentling his expression, Jamie hunkered down beside her.

“Now, Abigail, there’s not a pirate ship built that can come close to the
Phoenix
when she’s got the wind in her sails.”

Her lower lip trembled. “But…but what if there’s no wind? What if we’re becalmed? That happened several times on the voyage out.”

Jamie refused to lie to her. “Then we open our gun ports and blast out of the water any ship so incautious as to approach us.”

“Just as Mr. Burke did at Dong-Lo!” Charlie put in helpfully, having taken every detail of his father’s last hours to heart.

Abby darted a look at the tall, muscular Irishman conferring with the ship’s boy some yards forward. After a moment, she brought her limpid gaze back to the captain.

“Well,” she said with a brave attempt at a smile, “I daresay you and Mr. Burke are a match for any pirates.”

Jamie grinned and squeezed her hand. “That’s my girl.”

At the sight of that crooked smile, a fist seemed to tighten around Sarah’s heart She couldn’t, she simply couldn’t, watch any longer. Wadding the shirt she was mending into a tight roll, she rose abruptly.

“I’m feeling the sun,” she offered to the others by way of explanation. “I’ll finish my mending below decks.”

Concern at once infused Abby’s face. Withdrawing her hand from Straithe’s, she started to rise.

“I’ll come too, and hold a cool cloth to your head.”

“No!”

Abby blinked up at her sister, startled.

“No,” Sarah said more calmly. “You stay above decks with Charlie and keep him from mischief.”

The last thing she wanted at this moment was company. She loved Abby with all her heart She rejoiced that her sister seemed to be taking to Jamie Kerrick more and more with each passing day. She truly believed that a match between the two of them was the only answer to their respective situations. But watching that match unfold before her eyes made her want to howl like the kitchen cat the time Charlie had trod on its tail.

With a curt nod to the captain and an admonition
to her brother to behave, she took her sewing and her aching heart below.

By the time the younger Miss Abernathy came down an hour or more later, Sarah had regained control of her emotions. Abby found her in the saloon, which the sisters had more or less appropriated as their sitting room between meals. Sarah was sorting through the lengths of thread in her sewing basket, left hopelessly tangled after Charlie had pawed through them in search of fishing line. She looked up at Abby’s entrance and smiled in answer to her anxious query.

“Yes, sweet, I’m feeling much better.”

“Are you sure? You looked so pale there on deck, you quite worried me.”

“It was just a touch of the sun. Where’s Charlie?”

“I left him with Liam. He promised to watch him most closely.”

“Liam?”

“Mr. Burke.” Anxiety filled Abigail’s eyes. “Should I not call him so, even though he asked me to? I’m not being disrespectful, truly. He’s so much older than I, I know, but so very kind.”

“Well, while we’re aboard ship, I suppose there’s no harm,” Sarah replied with a smile. She patted the bench beside her. “Come and help me sort through these threads. Charlie got them all tangled.”

Abigail settled happily beside her sister. “He’s such a scamp, far more adventurous than Harry or Giles ever were. I don’t know how we shall keep up with him for the rest of the voyage.”

“All we can do is try,” Sarah returned.

Privately, she gave thanks for Charlie’s indomitable spirit and inexhaustible energy. She could only hope that the boy’s escapades would provide her some measure
of distraction from the growing friendship between Abby and the captain.

She couldn’t know how prophetic that thought was. The very next afternoon, the intrepid six-year-old blew Sarah’s hard-won calm out of the water with the force of a twenty-four pounder fired at close range.

The disaster occurred just before teatime.

Sarah had instituted that most English of all rituals, afternoon tea, in an attempt to establish some sort of familiar routine for her siblings in the midst of the sudden upheavals in their lives. Every day for a week now, she’d presided over the small ceremony that took place in the saloon at precisely four o’clock. John Hardesty supplied fresh tea filched from the ship’s cargo. The captain and Mr. Burke and the other senior members of the crew contributed delicacies such as biscuits and precious preserves. Sarah poured for Abby and Charlie and whomever chose to join them.