The Affectionate Adversary (5 page)
No matter whether incurred on sea or shore, an injury often resulted in suppuration and the victim’s demise. Death, in fact, seemed to Sarah as common as life. At a young age, she had lost her mother to an unnamed illness. Five years ago, her father had died of pneumonia. Her husband, too, was dead. He was killed instantly when a horse ran amok and toppled his carriage.
Reputable physicians tried bleeding, applying various tonics and plasters, and even surgeries in an effort to heal their patients. But success was uncommon. It was no wonder that Sarah’s father had made a fortune in the sale of opium and its derivatives, for easing pain proved far more successful than curing its cause.
As Dr. Winslow had confessed, not a single one of the men who lay moaning in this galley could have much hope of recovery. Sarah touched the key and chain inside the cloth bag she wore. Was Mr. Locke married? And if so, why had he not mentioned his wife? No, it was his father who haunted him at his darkest hour. Were the man to perish, Sarah must know more than his father’s name and city of residence. She laid the back of her hand against his cheek and stroked upward to his temple.
“Sir,” she said, leaning near his ear, “may I be so bold as to ask your name?”
At that, his eyes opened. He reached up, and with a cold finger he touched her cheek. “I am Charles Locke,” he answered. “Charles Locke of London.”
With her free hand, she pressed his palm to her face. “And I am Sarah. Sarah Carlyle.”
“Miss Carlyle.” He turned his head toward the fingers that lay upon his temple. “I thank you.”
“I am …” How could she correct him at a time like this? To insist that he call her Lady Delacroix seemed ridiculous. She despised titles and all that went with them. “I am Mrs.
Carlyle,” she finished. “I am a widow.”
“Mrs. Carlyle, your hand is soft. You smell of lavender.”
With a start, Sarah drew back from the touch of his palm upon her cheek. But he held her other hand pressed firmly to his temple.
“Stay here,” he said, his voice firm. “Pray for me, Mrs. Carlyle. And after I am dead, tell my father—” his lips tightened as he fought emotion—“tell him I tried to do his will. Though I failed … tell him I tried.”
Standing over the wounded man, Sarah knew a tenderness she had never felt in all her life. It swept over and through her, welling up in her eyes as tears that brimmed and spilled down her cheeks.
“Mr. Locke,” she managed to whisper. “Trying is all that matters, for the results of our efforts always lie in the hands of the Almighty.”
For an instant, his blue eyes opened again. “Mrs. Carlyle,” he addressed her. He did not speak again.
Of the one hundred and thirty-three men aboard the
Tintagel
, only eleven lay alive in the makeshift hospital inside the galley of the
Queen Elinor
. The faces of the dead came to Charles as he slept. The captain. The first mate. The boatswain. Merchants. Steersmen. Helmsmen. The ship’s boys. Danny Martin.
Anguish pouring through him at the memory of the lad whose cheerful hop-skip across the deck had become so familiar, Charles knotted his fists. “Danny,” he murmured.
A cool hand instantly covered his forehead, and again he smelled lavender. Opening his eyes, he saw that she was there, as she had been so many long days. Mrs. Carlyle. How could he have survived without her?
“Are you hungry, Mr. Locke?” she asked now, as she always did. “I have a hearty soup just here. It is quite warm and good, for I ate a bowl of it myself at luncheon.”
Charles closed his eyes. He knew fever raged through his body, for he could feel the heat inside his veins as his blood rushed through his head and pounded inside his ears. His leg throbbed with pain. His arm was paralyzed. His chest flamed.
Now she was singing a hymn, something his mother used to hum while she knitted beside the fire. Mrs. Carlyle’s voice lifted through his agonizing torpor. Sweet, clear tones with none of the affectations young ladies often used to impress their listeners. She was a songbird, a lark, a gift from God.
She sang day and night. Even when he could not see her, he heard her voice. Sometimes she went away—to sleep, he supposed, or to attend the other patients. But always she returned to his side, took his hand, wrapped his senses in soothing lavender, and raised him from the fire with her song.
He loved her. This much Charles knew. More than anything in his life, he loved Mrs. Carlyle. He loved her gentle smile. Her soft touch. Her lovely voice. He loved her eyes—deep brown eyes with long black lashes and brows that swooped like the wings of a dove across her forehead. He loved her nose, a pert and proper nose, with just the hint of pink along the bridge. He loved her mouth, full and beckoning lips that mesmerized him as she spoke or sang or fretted.
His physical pain mingled with the agony of knowing he had lost everything. Lost the gold. Lost young Danny. Failed his father. Somehow squandered all hope of the future he had once dreamed possible. But Mrs. Carlyle was near. In that, he could die a happy man.
“The rains passed us to the east,” she was saying now, as though they conversed over a tea table. “The captain said he expected a squall, but we had not a single drop. Though our freshwater stores are low, I am pleased at the storm’s passing. I am not fond of a tossing sea.”
“Mrs. Carlyle, will you marry me?” Charles asked her. Every day, he asked. Many times a day. She always said the same thing.
“No, Mr. Locke, I shall not marry you. Please do be reasonable.” With a sigh, she reached into her bag to retrieve a book. Quite often, she read Shakespeare’s sonnets to him. Sometimes it was Milton. But usually, she chose passages from a small volume of the Psalms. Each time she read the words of Scripture, her voice softened and mellowed, as though she were drinking the comfort she found therein.
Today, instead of a book, she held up something smaller. “This chain was taken from your neck,” she told him. “The captain gave it to me for safekeeping. Mr. Locke, I must be so impertinent as to ask if you are married. I should be remiss if I failed to inform your wife of your condition immediately upon our arrival in London.”
He studied the links of gold and the key lying in her palm. “I have no wife,” he said at last. “That is my father’s chain. He gave it to me at our parting. Father to son.”
As he spoke the words, Charles closed his eyes in painful memory. The chain was many generations old, a rare treasure forged by some unknown craftsman. Each Locke father had passed it to his eldest son. And on down the line to him. The last of the line. The only son of James Locke. And he had failed them all.
From slave to serf to farmer to tradesman and finally to steward of a great estate the Locke men had labored, climbing slowly and painfully through the ranks that society had imposed upon them. In Charles Locke reposed the dreams of all those who had come before him, all who had toiled on the land and served others in the quest for freedom from such bondage. At last, with James Locke came the single opportunity—enough gold to build a fortune. And James had passed the chain, along with the key to the box of coins, to his son. No longer servants, the Lockes would become masters. They would not plow the dirt or wash other men’s floors. They would not tally another’s gold. No—they would count their own money now.
James had entrusted all this grand hope upon his only male progeny. And Charles had failed. The chest of gold had gone to a pirate band. Sea rovers. Thieves who would squander it on drink and women and baubles.
“Keep it,” he told the woman, pushing her hand away. “I do not want the chain or the key. I have no need of either.”
“‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want,’” the voice beside him said. “‘He maketh me to—’”
“No!” Rearing up from his pallet, Charles leaned across and bellowed in her face. “No! No more Psalms, Mrs.
Carlyle.”
Stunned, she drew back as if he had hit her. “Mr. Locke!”
“God took it from me! Took it all. I shall not praise Him!” As he shouted, two men came and pressed him back onto the pallet. “Leave off reciting Bible verses! No more!”
“Be still, Mr. Locke!” Dr. Winslow’s face appeared before him. “You will wake the other patients.” He turned to Mrs. Carlyle. “Dear lady, I beg you … leave us now. You can see the effects of the fever for yourself. I must remove the leg. The surgery cannot be delayed.”
“Please, sir,” she begged. “Another day.”
“Another day and the infection may spread to his chest. If the heart is attacked, he cannot live.”
“But without his leg, he may be too disheartened to go on. Sir, you see how heavy his spirit lies within him.”
“He has lost all, madam. As you have told me, his young companion perished at sea, and his father’s gold was stolen. What reason does he have to live?”
Her beautiful eyes appeared in Charles’s vision now. Brown, dark with unshed tears, they searched his face as if seeking answers he could not give. She closed her eyes, and her lashes formed shadows across her cheeks.
“He has not lost everything,” she said in her soft voice. “He wishes to live, Dr. Winslow. Of that I am convinced.”
“Because he asks you to marry him? Madam, surely you see this is the rambling of a man consumed with ague.”
“Of course I understand that!” The dark eyes flashed. “But it is evidence of human feeling. Though he may be fevered, he has an awareness of life. He mourns his lost friend, and he thinks of his future. He smiles when I sing to him, and he fights to recover his health. He battles the ague just as he battled the pirates. You must not remove his leg, sir. Not yet.”
The doctor let out a hiss of frustration. “I shall not debate the matter with you after today. If his fever has not broken by morning, the leg must come off.”
As Dr. Winslow vanished from Charles’s vision, a tear slipped from the corner of Mrs. Carlyle’s eye. She flicked it away like an annoying fly. “Mr. Locke, you are to recover your health at once. I implore you. I command you. If you do not, you will lose your leg and perhaps your life. Dr. Winslow has amputated one survivor’s arm and a leg from two others already, and every man his knife touches is dead within the week. Now, if you are sensible in the least, you will obey me and rid yourself of this ridiculous fever. Do you understand, sir?”
He reached out and took her hand. “Will you marry me, Mrs. Carlyle?”
“Mr. Locke, if you can muster the will to recover, I shall consider it.”
Smiling, he relaxed onto his pillow. This was a happy thought indeed.
