Heart's Safe Passage Read Online Free PDF

used it to break the wax seal over the end of the jar and scoop out some of the jellied fruit. Much of it slid onto the table. Enough landed on the bread to apparently satisfy Belinda, for she began to devour the repast.
    With a bit more grace, Phoebe spread plum preserves on her own bread. Her stomach would stop hurting once she ate something, and she loved plum preserves. These had come from her in-laws’ plantation. They would taste like ambrosia.
    They didn’t smell like ambrosia. Before bread and jam touched her lips, Phoebe’s nose wrinkled at the stench of rotten fruit.
    “This jam has gone bad.” She started to set the bread aside. “I’ll find some—”
    “It’s not bad. It’s delicious.” Belinda tore off another chunk of bread and doused it with more preserves. “If I had a spoon, I’d eat it right out of the jar.”
    Phoebe’s stomach clenched. She’d eaten little since she’d been forced aboard a tiny ship’s cutter, overcrowded with men, Belinda, and her, tossed about in the Chesapeake as they evaded other vessels and pretended to be innocent fishermen. Her stomach had hurt then too, outrage, apprehension, fear tearing at her insides. Not eating made it worse. She knew that. She must eat to think.
    She lifted her hunk of bread to her lips, took a bite. The sweet and tart flavor of the plum preserves burst on her tongue, burned in her throat. The bread tasted like glue smelled. She tried to swallow, gagged, raced for the stern windows to jerk back the latch, and slammed the panes aside.
    “Phoebe, what are you doing?”
    Phoebe gripped the sides of the window frame and leaned out as far as she dared. Sea spray slapped her face like icy palms. She gulped in cold, wet air, tried swallowing again. The bread remained stuck in her throat.
    “Phoebe, shut that window at once,” Belinda cried. “You’re getting soaked, and it’s cold.”
    The brig twisted itself into the trough of a wave. Phoebe’s stomach twisted in the opposite direction. She groaned. Involuntary tears spilled from her eyes, hot against her chilled cheeks.
    “I can’t be seasick. I can’t.”
    The stern slammed onto the water. The bread went down. Stayed. She wasn’t seasick. She inhaled the fresh air—and took in a mouthful of seawater. She coughed, choked, rather welcomed the frigid blast.
    Behind her, Belinda raged. Her words made no sense, but the tone was clear. She sounded like her deceased brother when he’d been in a temper, when he’d been thwarted, and Phoebe’s shoulders tensed, her back muscles rippling in anticipation of a blow, a kick, a pinch at the least.
    No, no, not Belinda. She threw tantrums like the spoiled child she too often still was, but she never inflicted pain. At least not with her fists. She preferred cutting words. Physical pain was Gideon, and he was dead, dead, dead. But if Belinda continued to rage, the captain would return.
    Phoebe started to draw back inside the cabin to tell Belinda to be quiet, let her enjoy the storm in peace. But the lavender and mildew combination in the cabin sent Phoebe’s stomach roiling again, and she leaned out of the window for tangy, briny air.
    But Belinda did grow quiet as though someone had shut her into a box and sat on the lid. Hands clamped on Phoebe’s waist. Belinda come to help? No, large hands held her, pulled her away from the sea, lifted her off the window seat.
    “Don’t.” Her voice sounded like a mewling kitten’s cry.
    “Do not what?” He sounded amused. “Do not let you tumble on your head into the sea? Do not let you catch your death soaked as you are?”
    “Don’t help me.” She kept her eyes closed so she didn’t have to look at him, see contempt or mockery for her weakness. “If you won’t let me off this brig, you’d better just let me die. I’ll likely hang anyway.”
    Belinda gasped from somewhere nearby. “Phoebe.”
    “I thought better of the great Phoebe Carter Lee.” His burr rolled over the R’s in her