Caution to the Wind (12 page)

Perhaps he had kissed her to remind her of her place in the world. Her jaw tightened and she stabbed again with the metal arm. His strategy had worked. His kiss had so knocked her off course that he had imprisoned her in his quarters before she regained her senses.

Amanda shook her head, knocking a blonde curl in front of her eyes. She blew it away with a sharp puff and jiggled the metal arm, feeling for the lever that meant her freedom.

Enough thinking about the captain. May he rot for all she cared!

But
why
had he kissed her? The question poked and prodded her brain while she felt for the unseen lever that would release her.

And she had kissed him back, without any attempt to protest his boldness. What had he thought of that? Had he expected her to withdraw from his advances, to play the frightened maid? Maid though she might be, and surely her inexperience in kissing had to be evident, how surprised he must have been when she didn’t resist. Instead, she had melted like butter against him. Heat pricked the tips of her ears.

A boom shook the
Amanda
. A split-second later, the ship listed, throwing Amanda against the heavy door.

She swore softly and pulled the metal arm out of the keyhole. She put her eye to the darkness, trying in vain to see the mechanism within. It had been years since she had last done this, and this lock had proven more difficult than those at the farm. She shoved the instrument inside the lock again. The battle overhead would not make her task any easier. She must free herself soon.

At last, Amanda felt the little lever move inside the lock. She eased the latch in the mechanism upward with a satisfying click. One tug on the door handle freed her from her prison. Brushing sweaty palms against her tunic and breeches, she considered her next move. It had been some time since her swim in the sea and her clothes were nearly dry. No longer in need of a change of clothing, she might as well do as she normally did.

Shutting the heavy oak door, she relocked it in one deft maneuver, surprised at how easy it was now that she had learned the lock’s secrets. She smiled with satisfaction, imaging Captain Stoakes returning to find the door still locked, but no prisoner inside. She stashed the metal arm in her waistband alongside the rest of the instrument. Let him stew on that one!

Amanda found Doctor Miller, hands bloody, in the common area, examining a man with a jagged wound on his leg.

“You know he’s going to be quite angry, don’t you?” Doctor Miller peered through his spectacles at the man’s injury, his eyes lacking their characteristic sparkle.

So he had stopped to tell the doctor.

“Not sure what you mean, Doctor.” She strode to the basin and poured water from a pitcher over her hands.

“Amanda…” he began.

She held her hands frozen in midair. “So he told you everything? Even my real name?”

She watched a rivulet of water roll down the back of her hand and pool into a mirrored drop at her finger’s tip.

“Told me?” Doctor Miller snorted. “I am the one who should have told him long ago.”

She whirled to face him. “You knew?”

“Well. Not your name perhaps, but that you were a woman? Yes. One would have to be blind not to see that.”

“So what’s the captain’s excuse? He certainly sees well enough when he’s sighting the enemy.”

“Yes, but he’s looking for the enemy. In a way, the captain is blind to you. Because he expects his men to be obey his rules without question, it never occurred to him that you might have broken them all on your own.”

Doctor Miller waved her toward the man he had been examining. “Could you help Martin, dear?”

Martin’s beaming face suggested he was more interested in the discussion than in the bloody gash across his shoulder.

“Martin, you can’t tell anyone what you just heard. Please.” She threaded a thin needle.

“Your secret is safe with me, Miss,” Martin said. “I won’t tell a soul that don’t already know.”

Amanda wondered at his choice of words until Doctor Miller broke into her thoughts. “Amanda, don’t worry about the captain. He is more concerned for your safety than angry at you. In fact, if he’s angry at anyone, it is himself.”

Amanda snorted. “He’s concerned for his ship. For some reason, I pose a danger to him and his men, although I can’t imagine what it would be.”

“Can’t you?” The doctor’s eyes shone above his spectacles.

“No, I can’t,” Amanda said, feeling contrite when Martin stiffened under the first jab of her needle. “It’s not like I’m in the way during a battle. I’m down here helping you. The rest of the time, I’m in the galley cooking just to feed his insatiable appetite.”

“I think he understands your value,” the doctor replied, “even if he hasn’t admitted it to himself.”

“He wants to put me ashore,” Amanda said, knowing she sounded miserable.

“Did he say that?” the doctor asked.

Even Martin’s face showed doubt.

“Yes,” Amanda said. “He told me we would discuss it after the battle. Who is to say that I am in any more danger here than on land? For all we know, the British took Baltimore last week and burned my family’s farm to the ground.”

“Perhaps…” The doctor shrugged. “But, on land, you would at least have had neighbors,
female neighbors
, to whom you could turn to for help. On the
Amanda
, you’ve been forced to bunk with sixty men.”

“There were never sixty of them at once.” Amanda took another stitch. “My shift only had thirty-five.”

Martin chuckled his appreciation of her humor.

“I’m not in any danger,” she said, her tone turning serious. “The men of the
Amanda
are honorable.”

Martin looked up from the needle poking halfway out of his shoulder to nod his head, a look of pride at her defense on his blunt features. She steadied him with her hand and resumed sewing.

“Yes, they are, but at one time, the captain thought the rule necessary. Perhaps it still is for all but the most exceptional cases. Either way, the captain is, right now, at war with his rule about ‘no women on my ship.’” He did a poor impression of Captain Stoakes, and her hand shook from stifled laughter. “He’s only just discovered his rule has been broken and nothing dire has happened because of it. Perhaps we need to give him time to come to terms with that.”

“He does love his rules, doesn’t he?”

The doctor must have heard the doubt in her voice. “Amanda, you are as much a member of his crew as anyone else on this ship. If nothing else, you have been a godsend to me. I could have managed. I have before, but the men have definitely fared better under your ministrations.” He smiled thoughtfully. “Even old Joe seems to be recovering well. I had no idea chicken soup and lemon cake could help a man recover from a broken arm.”

“Chicken soup cures everything,” she said, her mood, if not her hopes, lightened by the doctor’s praise.

“Yes, well, the point is that every man on this ship, me included, will fight to make the captain see you have earned the right to be here.”

Amanda frowned. “I hope so, but he is a stubborn man.”

“That he is,” agreed the doctor. “And there’s always a chance that we won’t have the opportunity to come to your defense before he’s made up his mind.”

Amanda glanced up, her frown deepening. Was he trying to cheer her up? If so, his approach needed refining.

“But, mark my words,” the doctor continued. “I have known the captain for a long time. You won’t stay ashore for long. You’ve become a member of his crew. You’ve become a part of him too. You are one prize he will not be so willing to let go.”

Amanda blushed at being compared to the captain’s quarry. She hoped the doctor was right, yet she did not quite share his confidence. She agreed the captain needed her, but perhaps he did not realize it yet.

She knotted off the thread and clipped the end with the scissors.

If she couldn’t convince him of her worth through the needle and his stomach, she would have to find another way.

Chapter Nine

The battle lasted well into the next day, the two ships circling each other like vultures waiting for death. Bright flashes of cannon fire rocked the moonlit night.

Before a final volley brought down the main mast of the English ship, she battered the
Amanda
with everything she had. When she ran out of shot, her crew used the captain’s silver. Forks and knives tore through canvas like grape and sunk deep into the white pine of the
Amanda’s
main mast.

A steady stream of wounded kept the doctor and Amanda busy. Above their heads, shot peppered the deck, shattering the ankle of one man. Amanda held his hand when the doctor forced a block of leather-covered wood between the poor man’s teeth. She tried not to flinch when he set his saw to the pulpy mass that had been the man’s bones. The soft thud of the dead foot falling onto the straw-covered floor would haunt her dreams.

Her shipmates descended the stairs in a steady stream of blood, bodily fluid and broken limbs. Some hobbled to a table under their own power; others had to be carried. Alternately sewing, setting and comforting when that was all she could do, Amanda didn’t give even a passing thought to what the captain would think when he found his quarters empty.

****

The first thing Will noticed was the gaping hole in the wall where an uncommonly well-aimed English cannonball had found its mark. The shot left a breach about the size of a man, surrounded by shattered planks. Beyond, lay nothing but open air and a choppy sea.

“Amanda?” His voice echoed off the walls of the empty room.

Only the soft whoosh of waves and the distant trill of an albatross answered his call.

His gaze swept the room, and he fully expected to see what remained of her bloody, mangled body. Splinters covered his desk, his chair, and his bed, but no blood, no mangled corpse, no dead Amanda.

His heart tightened as though squeezed by a giant fist. If not in his quarters, where could she be?

Clinging to the jagged edge of his wounded ship, Will squeezed broad shoulders past ragged planks. A tight fit for him, Amanda’s small frame could slip through without effort. He looked past the tips of his blood-spattered boots to the white-capped crests licking at darkened planks just a few feet below. Could she have become disoriented by the blast and fallen in? Or perhaps her sense of self-preservation had driven her to madness, the opening her only means of escape. The door, after all, had been locked.

He scanned the sea, hoping to catch sight of a small head bobbing on the waves. Hope dwindled with each passing second, surpassed by reason and what Will knew to be true. Whether disoriented or mad, for surely she would never have slipped through the rent in the wall on purpose, more than five minutes in the cold, choppy Atlantic would be enough to overcome the strength and will of the sturdiest man, let alone a fragile woman.

God! He brought his palm to his mouth. He had sought to keep her safe by locking her in his quarters. Had he gotten her killed?

Death was a constant companion in war. Will had witnessed his share of death, come close to experiencing it himself on many occasions. However, for Will, and probably for most men, attention to duty and the constant call to action offered the antidote to fear. Amanda didn’t have the soul of a fighter, or the strength of a man, but she had performed her duties well even if she weren’t an official member of his crew. As much as any man aboard, she had earned the right to go to her station and not simply wait for death with nothing more to do than contemplate her own fate.

Even before he reached the open deck, he had decided to let her out, but the
Amanda
had drawn within enemy range. Too much time had been wasted to turn around and release her. He would send someone below as soon as a man could be spared. That moment never came.

Now she was gone.

A torrent of emotions swamped Will—remorse, dread, fear, and an overwhelming sense of loss that bore down on him like a hurricane. He drew back into his quarters and leaned against the wall. His legs folded beneath him, too weak to hold the weight of his emptiness and the loss in his heart.

“She’s gone.” Will stumbled into Doctor Miller’s quarters some time later.

It might have been an hour or it might have been a day. He would never know how long he remained propped against the wall of his empty quarters, as lost to time as Amanda was to him. Even now, the world about him, his ship, his men, the doctor seemed unreal. Trying to focus on the wavering forms was like trying to seize the remnants of a dying dream.

He teetered and grasped a support beam just in time to keep from toppling forward. Through vision that had grown blurry, he saw the doctor’s face. Confusion mixed with concern puckered the brow above his nose. The doctor helped him to a chair, then turned and spoke to someone standing nearby. The words were garbled as though they traveled through water before reaching Will’s ears.

A moment later, Doctor Miller tried to hand him a glass half-filled with a tawny liquid. Will reached for it, but he had little strength left. He only managed to raise his arm a few inches before the energy left him and his arm fell to hang limply at his side.

A warm hand curled his fingers around the glass. Then the hand moved the glass closer until Will could smell the buttery warmth of the liquid. He gazed into the glass for several seconds, then downed it in one gulp. The last of his strength spent, he let his hand fall to his side. The glass dropped from his limp fingers and rolled into a corner, a casualty of the battle raging in the captain’s soul.

Will’s hazy world wobbled for a moment then stilled. Then it wobbled again.

He wanted to lash out at whatever tormented force would not allow him to slip into a mindless oblivion. He longed for the dark emptiness that would ease the crushing pressure around his heart.

Once more, the room swam in front of his eyes, but this time he registered a slight force against his shoulder. Will tried to raise his hand to swat it away, but found he lacked the strength. Mustering what little remained, he managed to turn his head.