Ransome's Quest (34 page)

She pushed him away from her, and he offered no resistance, landing on his backside on the deck. He drew his knees up, crossed his arms over them, and hid his face in their circle.

“You
could
have been there to say goodbye. You deserted your family. Became a pirate. You stole from us, Michael! Traitor is too good a name for you.” All the years cut off Mama’s life because of her grief over the loss of her son. And in pining for her husband.

“I know. I do not deserve your forgiveness.”

“Papa was never the same after losing you.”

At this Michael’s head snapped up. “I suppose he was glad he no longer had to live with the shame of having a son like me.”

Julia wanted to slap him again. Instead she stood over him, fists planted on her hips. “He almost lost his commission by taking the two ships under his command out to search for you without permission. He was devastated when they did not find you. He entreated his admiral to let him stay here and continue searching for you.”

“Then why did he not pay the ransom?”

The pain in her side, along with the surprise at his question, made her straighten. “What ransom? We never received a ransom letter.”

Michael scrambled to his feet. “My captain waited six months. He told me how much gold he requested and that he sent the information to Tierra Dulce and to Father in care of the Admiralty in England. Father did not pay it because he never wanted me as a son.”

“Michael, there was no ransom demand. And Papa loved you—loves you still. He told me before I left England.” Searching his face, she began to see traces of the fourteen-year-old he’d been when last she saw him.

“What did he tell you?”

The boyish agony in her twin’s question, in the longing behind it, chipped away a little of Julia’s anger. “He grieved for you. For years he agonized over the hard way he had treated you, that he expected you to be his image, that he tried to force you into a career you never wanted and did not like. He is ashamed for continually comparing you to…someone else.”

“William Ransome.”

She nodded. And the memory of her own anger toward their father for how he treated Michael, for taunting Michael with William’s successes, eased her anger even more. “William Ransome. And he told me he greatly regretted trying to fill the void in his heart your loss left with William.”

Hope flashed in Michael’s dark eyes but then vanished. “But he does love William Ransome. I read the
Gazette,
I keep up with the rumor mill. He all but declared to the world that William was his son by treating him as such.”

Julia touched Michael’s cheek—the one she’d slapped moments ago. “William is his protégé. You are his son, his flesh and blood.”

“William
is
his son. He is your husband.”

Julia sighed and dropped her hand to her side.

Michael picked it up and kissed the back of it. “I knew from the voyage here that you would marry William Ransome someday.”

“How did you know? We had not yet reached our tenth birthday.”

Michael shrugged. “You are Father’s favorite, William is Father’s favorite. A perfect match.”

“Those are not perfect qualifications for a match. We could have hated each other.”

“No, you were meant to be together.” Michael stood, moved to the table, and poured tea for both of them. “Suresh does wonderful things with food. I am partial to this—an Indian tea blend sweetened with guava juice.”

“I wondered…” Julia took the cup he offered. She settled back on her chair and, after a sip, spread the raspberry preserves on another scone.

Michael pulled his chair closer before sitting. “Are you…I know you have a few physical injuries, but are you well?”

Julia set the scone down untasted. “I wish I could scrub my mind of these past days as easily as I did from my person. I have read novels with characters filled with insensate villainy, but I never imagined such evil could truly exist in a person without rendering him immobile from the weight of it. Shaw hurt us because it gave him pleasure.”

“Us?”

“He also captured William’s brother James. Though I wish James had not had to experience such agony, I do not know if I would have survived if he had not been there to encourage me, to give me a reason to keep resisting Shaw—in my mind and heart, if not in action.” The memory of James being pulled up by the rope—Julia fought her tears and tried to replace the image with something more pleasant. She focused on her brother’s face. “How could you turn pirate, Michael?”

“The captain…he treated me well. Like I was smart. Told me I pleased him with my work. That he was proud to have me as part of his crew.”

“Everything Papa never said to you.” Julia lifted her teacup and held it under her nose for a moment, breathing in the exotic aroma, imagining the steam cleansing her memories.

“He gave me a choice—death or piracy. I did not want to die. I always thought I would come back to you and Mama.” Michael circled the rim of his cup with his thumb.

“So once you were on your own, why did you not come back?” Julia picked up the scone, her hunger returning.

“By then I knew what I was, what I’d done. I did not think you would understand. I knew you would not forgive me. I learned what I could about you, about Tierra Dulce. I knew Mama had given up on life. I could see it—”

“See it? How?”

The half smile appeared. The one Michael wore whenever he had a secret. “I came to the plantation. Watched you and Mother. When I saw how frail she had become in just five years, I left, determining she would never know her son had joined a pirate’s crew. I thought that would kill her faster than her grief over losing me.”

“Why now? How did you come to be in the battle with Shaw’s ship?”

Michael set down his teacup and ran his fingers through his hair. “I learned you were coming back to Jamaica, married and without Father. I planned to reveal myself to you after your husband went back to sea. But then, after you were seen in Barbados, word spread throughout the region that you were coming back. Shaw—who was Arthur Winchester, the first mate of the pirate who took me when I first knew him—held a grudge against our family and the Ransomes. He tried to get me to join him when he took over command of that ship. I could see his penchant for savagery even then, so I broke with him and set out on my own.”

Could Shaw—Arthur Winchester—have orchestrated the events on the pirate ship to turn Michael against his family as part of the grudge?

“I remembered back to our campaign to convince Father to free Tierra Dulce’s slaves. How satisfying it was to secure other people their freedom. Their joy in receiving the news that they had been liberated from oppression. Thousands of slaves were still coming into the Caribbean then, so I decided I would do what I could to free them.”

Julia watched her brother’s face as he talked about becoming El Salvador de los Esclavos as a way to make up for the bad things he’d done aboard the other pirate’s ship, but also because he knew it was the right thing to do. About becoming a privateer for the United States—he laughed at her expression of distaste—and about meeting a wealthy abolitionist in Philadelphia, befriending his son, and falling in love with his daughter.

He stood and reached over the back of his desk and pulled one of the two framed pictures off the wall and handed it to her.

Julia angled it toward the stern windows, warmed by pink dawn light. A handsome woman with strong features smiled demurely at her. “She is lovely.”

“Serena and I are to be married as soon as I return to Philadelphia—which will be delayed now. As part of my agreement with your husband for leniency on the charges of piracy and kidnapping, I am to return to England with Captain Cochrane and Charlotte.”

Julia’s heart leaped. “Charlotte? What know you of her? Is she safe? Where is she?”

“Ah, yes. I was distracted from my telling. When I heard rumors Shaw had been heard bragging he was going to kidnap you, I needed to protect you. The only way I could think of was to take you away until your husband had dealt with Shaw. So after you returned home, I went to Tierra Dulce to abduct you. I planned to leave word in Kingston that Shaw had done it so William would go after him.”

The picture became clear. “But you got Charlotte instead.”

Michael stretched out a finger and touched it to Julia’s hand around the portrait frame. “Serena and her family are Quakers. They have been teaching me about God, about what it means to encounter Him personally, and that the greatest way to experience that encounter is through forgiveness. His forgiveness, and the forgiveness of those we’ve wronged.”

The conversation with James in the hold came back to her. She prayed he was safe and that he found the forgiveness he sought. She looked at her brother, whose brown eyes, almost as familiar to her as her own, implored her with the strength of his love.

“Julia, can you forgive me?”

The cabin door flew open and Suresh burst in. “I apologize for interrupting, Captain, but the other ships have arrived. Both of them are cleared for action.”

Michael stood. “Raise the parlay flag.” He turned to Julia. “Stay here until it is safe.”

“No, I will go with you.” She stopped him with a tug on his sleeve. “I can forgive you, Michael, but it may be receiving my husband’s forgiveness you should worry about.”

W
illiam stopped just short of ordering his crew to put a warning shot over the bow of
Vengeance
. They were already giving him odd looks for having ordered both ships to run out the guns as they approached the bay. Michael Witherington had crossed him once; he would not be allowed to do it again.

The bluffs blocked the light from the rising sun, blanketing
Vengeance
in deep shadows as
Alexandra
slipped through the mouth of the bay.

“By the mark, seven,” the leadsman called.

Shaw had used this bay as anchorage for both of his ships, and
Sister Elizabeth
, though of French rather than English design, was of a size with
Alexandra
. And the charts he’d taken from Shaw’s quarters showed plenty of draught room in the strait. But with barely forty feet of water below them, William worried at the wisdom of entering rather than anchoring outside of it and taking a launch in.

Lights flickered on the deck of
Vengeance
. William lifted his glass. A lantern, carried by Michael Witherington. Another figure moved behind him, followed by a third, also carrying a lantern. The diaphanous, undefined shape of the second figure—and given that Michael appeared about a head taller—gave William a tremor of joyful apprehension. It could be—

James snatched the spyglass from him. “Is it her?”

William took it back, glaring at his brother. “I cannot yet tell.” But he hoped.

“Why are your men taking the passage so slowly?” As a child James had had a penchant for whining, and William heard a distant echo of that in his brother’s raspy voice now.

“By the mark, six!” A note of anxiety laced the starboard leadsman’s voice.

“By the mark eight,” the larboard leadsman called.

William let his brother have that as his answer and hardly breathed as
Alexandra
passed through the narrowest part of the strait.

Light crept over the starboard bluff, slowly crawling across the water toward
Vengeance.
The two lantern carriers stood in the forecastle with the other figure between them.

The sun now moved across the water faster than
Alexandra.
A golden line moved across the frigate’s side and up onto its deck.

If William’s heart could direct the wind,
Alexandra
would have been pushed forward faster than she’d ever traveled, arriving at
Vengeance
’s side instantly. Between Michael and his steward stood Julia, dressed in a dark blue gown, right arm wrapped around her middle, left hand raised, waving.

“Signal
V
—
Serenity
to prepare to receive me.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore.” The midshipman of the forecastle bent to open the flag box.

William snapped his telescope closed and handed it to James, who waved back at Julia, and then returned to the quarterdeck. “Lieutenant Jackson, make ready a boat to take me to
Serenity.
Be certain to bring shackles.”

The young lieutenant blinked twice, unable to hide his surprise. “Aye, aye, Commodore.”

William stayed on deck while the boat was lowered and
Alexandra
continued to drift forward so
Audacious
could enter and take up position on
Serenity
’s other side.

Once they were in position he gave the order to drop anchor and then climbed down the side to the waiting boat. The shackle chains lay at the marine sergeant’s feet. William hoped he wouldn’t have to use them.

Julia moved from the forecastle to amidships and stood by the entry port, her right arm still pressed against her side and across her waist. He recognized her stance as one of pain, but none of it showed in the beatific smile gracing her face. He kept his own expression neutral. He could not afford to lose his authority with an emotional reaction to seeing his wife—lovely though she was. Her hair was pulled back in a single thick plait, but wispy ringlets fluttered about her cheeks and neck. The dark blue dress accentuated her ivory skin and offset the red tones in her brown hair.