Lady in the Mist (14 page)

“I . . . he . . .” She sighed. “Yes, he kissed me. I didn’t expect it.”

“You didn’t seem to dislike it.”

Between collar and hairline, her neck turned rosy pink. “I was taken aback, is all. I suppose you’d be happier if I’d slapped him.”

“I would be, yes.”

“I’ve never slapped anyone in my life. I bring life into this world. I don’t do anything that could lead to ending it.”

“Which is why I love you so much.” He braced his legs against an increase in the pitch of the deck and clasped his hands behind his back. “And if it were any other man, someone worthy of you, I wouldn’t mind nearly as much. But Cherrett—Tabbie, he’s English. He acts like a roué.”

“You can’t know that.” Tabitha turned her back to the rail and gripped it with both hands. “He’s usually a gentleman and—” She caught her breath. “Raleigh, we have company.”

15

______

Compared to a frigate, the vessel was small, a mere two-masted sloop built for speed and boldly flying the Union Jack from its mainmast. It swooped over the horizon like a hawk stooping on a rabbit, and the
Marianne
might as well have sprouted ears and a furry tail.

Tabitha’s stomach dropped to the pit of her belly. Her hands flexed on the rail as she waited for the explosion of the long gun mounted on the sloop’s bow.

In front of her, Raleigh’s face whitened and he spun. “The anchor.” He sprinted forward. “Loose the sail.”

Tabitha sprang to obey. She didn’t take time to remind him she hadn’t touched a belaying pin or sheet since he left two years earlier. Surely she remembered how to spring the knot free and let the canvas fall without sending it flapping from the spar like a broken bird wing. Surely . . . surely . . .

She grappled with the salt-stiffened lines, tugged at the belaying pin holding it fast to the rail. Rough hemp scored her palms.

Behind her, Raleigh took an ax to the anchor hawser. A loss for him, the anchor. Better than his life. Better than the fishing boat.

She kept her gaze fixed on the sloop. Every second drew it nearer, made it larger. She caught the movement of men on the deck, the flash of a telescope.

“How dare you? How dare you?” she shouted at them. “This is our country, our ocean.”

She slammed her fist into the belaying pin. It sprang free and sailed across the water to disappear into the foam of a wave. A big, beautiful wave that lifted the smack and edged her toward shore. Of course. The tide had turned.

“We can do this, Raleigh.” Tabitha grasped the sheet and raced across the deck, the sail swirling out behind her.

The
chunk
,
chunk
,
chunk
of the ax on a hawser as thick as a man’s arm was the only reply.

“If I can sheet home, draw that line taut, and flatten the sail—”

A gust of wind caught the canvas and tore the line from her hand. With a shriek of frustration, she dove after it, tackling the trailing end against the rail. The sail sagged. The smack yawed, then dropped into a trough. Seawater splashed Tabitha’s face. She coughed and blinked to clear her eyes, and held fast to the line.

“Help me,” she choked out. “Raleigh—”

The sloop drew nearer, loomed too close, black-hulled and menacing.

Tabitha scrabbled for footing on the slippery deck. One of the discarded fishing lines caught on her ankle. She landed on her knees. But she held fast to the sail line, her front pressed to the gunwale, her legs entangled in skirts and fishing tackle.

Another chunk sounded a dull vibration through the deck, and the
Marianne
pitched and rolled, uncontrolled in the heightening waves of an incoming tide.

“Tabbie, the sail,” Raleigh shouted. “If we don’t—” He interrupted his admonition with something like a bellowed prayer. His footfalls pounded on the deck. He tore the line from her hands. “Got it. Hold on tight. I’ll help you.”

“No, the wheel. Get the wheel.”

They swung and dipped over the waves like a mere bucket on the swells. And the sloop drew nearer, near enough for her to see faces of the men, mere blurs of white against the misty blue of the sky.

But the gun didn’t fire.

“They’re not going to fire on us,” she announced with relief.

“They don’t have to.” Raleigh sounded breathless. He hauled the sail across the boom and slammed a belaying pin through the knot. “They’ll just run us down.”

“But why?”

“I don’t . . . know.” He stumbled over the fishing poles stretched across the tiny deck. “But they’re chasing us or they’d have sheered off by now.”

“The water gets shallow soon.” Tabitha leaned on the wheel, fighting the waves, the current, the boat’s lack of propulsion—besides the water—without the sail raised. “If we can get into shallower water than their draft can draw, we’ll be safe.”

“No, we won’t.” Raleigh fought with the sail, a single, too-small square of canvas in comparison with the vessel behind them. “We’ll go aground and lose the boat.”

Of course they would. Tabitha knew that. She had lived by the sea all her life. They didn’t want to ground a boat, not even on sand.

And the sloop had guns. Only fourteen she could see, but that was fourteen too many, too dangerous, too overwhelming.

“Where?” She cried out, scanning the coastline. “Where should I—”

The smack jerked like someone stumbling over a rock on a path. A crack like small arms fire resounded over the deck, and the sail caught the wind, rode up the next wave, and settled into an even bow-to-stern pitch.

“Praise God,” Raleigh shouted.

But the sloop still gained on them, faster, with more men to manipulate her sails.

“Head north by northwest,” Raleigh directed, still struggling to secure the sail.

Tabitha glanced at the compass mounted above the wheel. They were headed due west, straight for shore, close enough now that she saw people standing on the beach to watch. As she leaned on the spoke to force the rudder around three degrees on the compass, she turned her head to view the sloop. In moments it should run aground.

Its commander wasn’t that foolish. He too had adjusted his course and ran on a similar heading, parallel to theirs. With its greater speed, the sloop drew ahead of them, close enough for Tabitha to see the rude gestures many of the sailors on the enemy deck made, before the vessel dipped her Union Jack in an insolent salute, and she vanished around a headland, only her towering masts visible against the horizon.

“She’s gone.” Tabitha sighed with relief. “She was only teasing us. I wish I understood her game.”

Raleigh joined Tabitha at the wheel, soaked with seawater and perspiration. “She’s a bit close in, even for the British.”

“Close in? Raleigh, you’ve been away too long. We’ve had British ships sail right up our rivers or into the Chesapeake and waylay our ships.” She squinted against the brightness of the horizon for a glimpse of the sloop. “I still see her masts. She must have slowed.”

“Or maybe she’s coming about to make another pass.” Raleigh’s lips thinned into a hard line. “Something’s wrong around here and has been since I got home.”

“It’s been longer than that.” Tabitha stepped aside to relinquish the wheel to Raleigh. “Should we come about too, and head back to your jetty?”

“We can’t.” He tilted his head like a hound sniffing the wind.

Tabitha understood. The light breeze from earlier had turned to a brisk wind, clearing the sky of the earlier haze, but blowing from the south. Tacking into the wind with only two of them would be difficult.

“It was always a risk,” Raleigh said. “Always is with only two people aboard. We’ll sail into that cove north of your house.”

The British sloop had headed in that direction.

She scanned the northern horizon but couldn’t be sure if she saw masts there or simply a cloud formation. “I’m willing to try.”

“No, it’ll risk hurting your hands. I can fetch the boat home with the Evans brothers or my father later.”

“But we don’t have an anchor.”

“Plenty of rocks.” Raleigh squinted at the compass. “We’ll tie up to one of those.”

“All right.” She laid her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry you lost your anchor.”

“Just another black mark against the British.” Raleigh covered her hand with his and smiled at her. Wind ruffled his sun-streaked hair, and his eyes were as blue as the sea around them. He looked young and carefree and so much like the youth she’d fallen in love with that her heart began to soften toward him.

“I’d like to come out with you again,” she said before she lost her courage.

“Tabbie.” He raised one hand as though he intended to touch her face.

A wave caught the starboard quarter, lifted the smack, and sent it slamming into a trough of the next wave. The bow yawed and the sail flapped. Their course altered too close to the shore.

“Never court a lady while in command of a vessel.” Raleigh laughed, a rich, heartfelt rumble in his broad chest. “Good way to go aground.”

He turned his attention to the navigation. Tabitha watched him for a minute and absorbed what he’d said. Courting. Yes, he was courting her and she encouraged it.

She mustn’t let herself be confused by his looks—enhanced by the two years away and hard work aboard a man-of-war—and his entreaties to her heart. She mustn’t let her attraction to another man scare her into Raleigh’s arms.

Her mouth hardened as she narrowed her eyes against the glare of the horizon. White-capped waves rolled toward them. Plumes of foam broke and swirled into the air, obscuring the view, but she thought she saw it—the sloop poised just far enough away for only its masts to show above the waterline.

“No, not possible,” she murmured.

She adjusted her hat brim to better shield her eyes. Surely she saw only mist or spray, and her anxiety over British ships in the area was making her imagine too much. She imagined a great deal while walking through the mist—knights and castles, children and a man to love her, rising from the fog—her dreams conjuring images where none existed. So why shouldn’t she summon the sight of British war vessels from foam along the horizon? It was all her father’s doing, his legacy to her, as her midwifery skills were her mother’s—the stories of romance and danger, love and adventure, clouding her reason.

She was not—she could not be—seeing a sloop riding motionless across the path they were taking. It had gone. It wouldn’t remain in the area in the middle of the day, and the cove to which they headed wasn’t large enough for even a two-masted runner like a sloop. It was nothing more than a fine place to swim, fish from shore, or tie up a smack or rowboat.

“Raleigh,” she said just loudly enough for him to hear her. “Do you see anything around the headland before the cove?”

He glanced at her, then toward the northern horizon. “A lot of foam. There must be a storm brewing out at sea somewhere, but we’ll be all right.”

“You don’t see masts?” she persisted.

“I don’t—” He muttered something, then swung toward her. “Take the wheel. Just keep us on this heading.”

Before she even grabbed the wheel from him, he sprinted forward and swung onto the jib boom.

“Be careful.” The wind snatched her words and tossed them over the larboard rail.

Raleigh balanced with the aid of a forward stay, a precarious perch on the slender strip of wood. The single sail bellied out in the rising wind and blocked him from view. But rising above the canvas, she saw the sloop’s masts looming larger, nearer.

“God, please—” She stopped herself before she prayed.

She didn’t want Raleigh snatched away from her again, not before she knew if she forgave him, if she still loved him, if the future held marriage and children with him. If she prayed, the opposite might happen. She might make God notice her, and if He had a plan for her life as Pastor Downing claimed, He might remember to implement it. Thus far, it went completely opposite to what she wanted. Or needed. And right then, she needed that sloop to vanish.

“We need to luff,” she shouted to Raleigh.

But of course they couldn’t. They needed at least another person to help man the sail to tack into the wind. With the wind behind them now, they skimmed over the water like a flying fish headed straight for a net. Without an anchor, they couldn’t even remain where they were, a mile from shore.

Tabitha’s fingers tightened on the wheel. She fixed her gaze on the compass, then the sea, then the compass again. If she adjusted their course a fraction to the northeast, they could sail past the sloop, head for the next inlet. If the sloop was anchored—

That was it!

“Raleigh!” Tabitha put every bit of her lung power into the call. “I have an idea.”

A moment later, he ducked beneath the boom and reached her side. “Let me help.” He took over the wheel.

Not until she held only the taffrail did Tabitha realize the strain she’d placed on her arms. Her hands hurt and she feared she would have blisters. She must be careful. If Mrs. Parks delivered within the next two weeks, Tabitha would need her hands.

She focused on Raleigh, on the threatening bulk of the sloop. “They have to be anchored. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be staying in the same place.”

“I thought of that. We can sail around them. By the time they up anchor, we’ll be gone.”

“That’s what I was thinking.” She smiled at him. “Maybe I’ve stayed on land for two years, but I still remember a thing or two you taught me.”

“And I’ve learned a thing or two about the English.” Raleigh was grim. “It doesn’t make any sense for them to anchor there in broad daylight.”

“Unless someone is in trouble or they need water?” Tabitha squinted at the masts. “We are nominally at peace with England and can’t deny them emergency care.”

Raleigh cast her a swift glance. “Do you trust them?”

“No. But it’s daylight. They wouldn’t be bold enough to impress men in daylight, not right off our shores anyway.”

“Wouldn’t they just.” In those few words, Raleigh sounded angrier, more bitter, and yet somehow more British than she’d ever heard him.

She shivered in the wind-borne spray. “They’ve got to be stopped,” she ground out. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll find a way.”

“I didn’t hear you.” Raleigh leaned on the wheel, turning the smack two more points to the northeast. “What did you say?”

“Never you mind.” Tabitha returned her attention to the sloop. She saw the upper deck now, the gangway, and tiny figures moving about. Five men stooped behind the stern chaser gun, but it wasn’t run out.

From tales she’d heard from those who’d fought at sea against the British in the revolution, that gun could be run out in seconds. Seconds. But surely they saw she was a female. They wouldn’t fire on a female. They didn’t fire into American boats, only fired across them, threatened them.

Still, she had to force herself to stand straight, her head up, and not huddle on the deck as the
Marianne
skimmed past the anchored sloop so close to the stern she saw a face in the window. She gasped, blinked, looked again. The face was gone, but she would have testified in court she knew who it was.