Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [115]
Except that wasn’t really the truth either. He’d had hope until he saw a redemptioner kissing her, and her not raising a hue and cry over the man’s insolence. He’d tried to win her back, but Dominick Cherrett had taken hold of her heart.
“She’s in love with someone else.” Oddly, the admission spoken aloud released some of the tension in his chest. “I just wish she’d remember me well.”
“Remember you?” Parks sounded confused. “She’ll see you when you get home, won’t she?”
“Parks, we aren’t going to get home. This is a British man-of-war. Once you’re aboard, it’s nearly impossible to get off again.”
“But we’re Americans. They can’t keep us. They can’t. They can’t.” His voice rose with each repetition, and he began to bang against the bulkhead. “Do you all hear me? You can’t keep me! I’m an American.”
“Shut up in there.” Someone pounded back. “We’re trying to sleep.”
“But it’s a mistake,” Parks bellowed. “I’m an American.”
“That’s what they all say.” Wood rasped against wood.
Light flooded into the chamber, and Raleigh moaned against the pain of the brilliance and the man behind the flame.
“This one ain’t a Yankee.” A booted foot slammed into Raleigh’s ribs. “He’s a subject of the king, and he’s a deserter.”
“Trower?” Donald Parks questioned. “Are you Raleigh Trower?”
“Yes.” Raleigh bowed his head. “And yes, I’m a deserter too.”
“But you’re an American,” Parks protested.
“He were born in Canada,” the British seaman said. “And we’ll put down on the muster book that you’re from Bermuda or someplace, so’s we can claim you ain’t no Yankee.”
“You can’t.” Parks lunged.
Raleigh tripped him, sending him sprawling on the deck before he could attack the seaman.
“He’s a bosun’s mate,” Raleigh said with a sigh. “If you strike him, they’ll flog you.”
“He can watch,” the bosun’s mate said. “’Cause they gonna flog you, or maybe hang you. Depends on the behavior of your friend here. If he’s good, you get flogged. If he don’t cooperate, you get hanged. You got till the captain’s dinner is over to think about what you want to do.”
He returned to the doorway, stepped over the coaming, and closed the hatch. Blackness fell around them like a blanket, like a shroud.
“Thank you for stopping me.” Parks shifted. “Can you tell me what’s afoot here, Trower?”
“I can tell you a tale that will make you mind your p’s and q’s.”
“I want a tale that will get me free.”
“That’s what I mean.” Raleigh leaned his head back and realized they’d been locked in the bread room, probably until the ship weighed anchor and neither of them could swim to shore or bribe a provisioning boat to take them home. “I deserted once. They caught me and gave me the option between hanging and going ashore to help sell Americans to the British. One captain in particular. Roscoe.” He pronounced the name like an epithet.
“You were involved in . . .” Raleigh sensed Parks moving away from him. “How could you?”
“I thought I could discover the man’s identity.” Raleigh sighed. “I couldn’t. He was too careful. And when I tried to stop you from being taken, he put me here too. Now I’ll be lucky if they only flog me half to death instead of hanging me outright for desertion.”
“Just for trying to stop them from taking me away?” Parks sounded appalled, bewildered.
“For deserting in the first place. I’m listed in the book as a Canadian. That makes me a British subject. And that means they’ll likely hang me for desertion.”
“Then we have to escape.”
“I can’t.” Raleigh held his aching head. “I can’t go back. I’ve been a traitor to my own country, to America. They’ll hang me too. Here I’ll have the chance to beg them just to flog me and somehow make up for everything I’ve done. Maybe . . .” He let his voice trail off while his thoughts raced ahead.
If he went back to Virginia without knowing who had been the ringleader of the abductions, he would not only die the death of a traitor, a shame to his family, but he would leave Tabitha thinking the worst of him. She might never love