Heart's Safe Passage Read Online Free PDF Page A

Seabourne to visit her aunt and uncle to get away from Leesburg, away from the gossip after her husband’s death. Despite her recent brush with death then—from a blow, a fall, her baby being born too early and stillborn—she felt no indisposition. On the contrary. She’d felt healthy again upon her arrival on the eastern shore. Upon the water, she’d never experienced anything like this outright nausea. If this was the effect of sailing on the open sea, then she had another reason to get off the brig immediately.
    “This is barely edible now,” she told Belinda.
    “I still think I can eat the whole thing,” Belinda declared.
    “You don’t have any sickness?” The midwife in Phoebe took over her tongue now. “Not in the morning or afternoon? Not from the ship’s motion?”
    “I haven’t been ill at all. Everyone says how one gets dreadfully sick, but I haven’t ever.”
    “That’s a relief.” Phoebe began to work on the box marked P RESERVES . “I hope you stay that way, if you insist on remaining here. Of course, if you eat moldy bread, I can’t guarantee you will.”
    “I’ll pull off the moldy bits. And of course I’m staying. Captain Docherty needs me.” Belinda held out her hand. “Do hurry. I’m so hungry I almost feel sick.”
    Phoebe refrained from saying Belinda should have brought a maid instead of a midwife. Phoebe hadn’t been much different when she’d gone to stay with her aunt in Seabourne. Pampered and petted all her life by everyone except her husband, she had to learn to cook, clean, iron, even pin up her own hair. When she apprenticed with Tabitha, she had to learn more—how to do often unpleasant tasks for other women without showing revulsion. She could do all proficiently now.
    But Belinda was pampered and petted by everyone, including her husband, and could do none of those tasks. She would never survive alone on a brig for weeks, even months. And if she was far enough along in her condition, she might go into labor at sea. If she wouldn’t allow Phoebe to examine her, she surely would object to one of the sailors delivering her child, if anyone knew what to do. If trouble arose . . .
    No, she must get Belinda to agree to go ashore, once Phoebe figured out how to get them ashore. If Belinda refused, Phoebe would return the favor Belinda had done her and force the younger woman onto a boat or into the water itself.
    The roar of wind and surf suggested the idea of going into either boat or water lacked good sense now. As though remaining on the brig of the enemy was sensible. They were likely headed straight out to sea, away from the mouth of the Chesapeake, away from the last spit of land.
    Then Phoebe must find a way to turn them around.
    She wrestled the lid off the box of the jars of preserves and selected one marked P LUMS . Her little knife wouldn’t do for slicing bread, and Belinda hadn’t thought to include utensils or cutlery in her cabin stores. Phoebe rose and glanced around in search of something with a bigger blade. Her glance landed on the rack of weapons hanging from one bulkhead. Cutlasses, rapiers, an ornate sword hung there—
    Behind an iron bar with a prominent lock.
    The penknife would have to do for cutting the bread and spreading the preserves, and one vague notion of how to get away would have to go. She could only gaze upon the blades rather than employ them for good use, rather like Tantalus in the myth always thirsting for water but unable to reach it.
    Phoebe set the bread and preserves on the table and tore off a hunk of the former. “This will make a mess, but we do have water.”
    “I want something hot too.” Belinda had turned petulant again. “Why can’t they prepare me something hot?”
    “I believe they douse fires in a storm. You’ll have to wait for the sea to quiet.”
    “And sleep.” Belinda yawned and picked up the bread and preserves bottle. “I don’t care if it’s messy.” She snatched up Phoebe’s knife and