and prepared to ride out the storm and his fever both.
She didn’t know which frightened her more. As the minutes stretched into hours, the depth of Michel’s illness terrified her. Only rarely did he shift or stir, and though she tried to cool his fever as best she could, it seemed to her that his skin only grew warmer to the touch. She could feel him slipping further and further away from her, and there wasn’t a blessed thing she could do to draw him back. She knew from her brothers’ stories that illnesses here in the Caribbean were different from those at home. Here the heat made wounds turn putrid in an hour’s time, and a single fever could kill the three hundred men of a frigate’s crew in a week.
But Michel wasn’t going to die, she told herself fiercely. He’d only eaten some fish that had turned in the sun. Surely even in the Caribbean people didn’t die from such a thing. Besides, they were less than a day from Bridgetown, and there, if he still were ill, she’d find all manner of physicians and surgeons.
Gently she traced the line of his jaw with one finger, feeling the bristles of his beard. He was a strong man, a man too proud to die like this without a fight. Any minute now his fever would break, he would roll over and smile and call her his dear Rusa, and he would be fine.
He would be fine. Right as rain.
“I love you, Michel,” she whispered sadly. “Whatever else happens, I want you to know that. I love you.”
But her words were lost in the earsplitting crack that came from the deck, like a tree splintered by lightning. The mainmast, thought Jerusa with horror, for the sound had come from midships. As wild as the brig’s movements had been before this, her motion took on a new unevenness without the largest sail and mast to steady her.
Over the roar of the wind she could hear the faint voices of the crew, shouting orders to one another, and she could picture the men working frantically against the storm to free the Swan of the wreckage of her broken mast. She’d heard stories enough of what damage that wreckage could do, trailing over the side of a ship and pulling her sideways into the deep trough of a wave until she broached to and capsized.
She was straining her ears so hard to hear the storm that she hadn’t noticed when Michel had begun to mutter, his head tossing uneasily against the pillow. Eagerly she put her ear near his lips, but all he said was fragmented and jumbled, and in French, as well. And her name: dear Lord, had she really heard it? Again he murmured it, this time clear enough for her to know she hadn’t dreamed it. Maybe somehow he knew she was here, knew she was trying to help him.
Oh, Michel, how much I love you!
Grinning foolishly with no one to see her, she tugged him up higher onto the pillow and trickled water between his lips. The fever still held him in its grip, but to her, even the garbled words were so much better than the awful stillness.
More shouts, more wind, the ringing thump of axes as the lines were hacked away. But the shouts seemed closer now, and she could hear heavy footsteps racing up and down the companionway beyond their cabin. Somehow the waves seemed louder over the creaks and groans of the ship’s timbers. Was she imagining it, or was the brig riding lower in the water now, far enough down that only the pine bulkheads and the oak timbers behind them separated her from the sea itself?
Someone ran directly past their door. Sweet Almighty, she had to know what was happening! Bracing herself in the doorway, she pulled the door open and gazed down the narrow passage to the steps. Seawater splashed over her feet and skirts, and she realized the whole deck was awash. The lantern that usually lit the passage was gone, but an eerie, otherworldly light filtered down the steps, bathing the figure of the man coming toward her now with a strange glow that she realized must be dawn.
“Please, can you tell me what is happening?” she shouted at the man. “No one has told us anything!”
The seaman shook his head with exhaustion as he peered at her. “Cap’n’s dead, ma’am,” he shouted back hoarsely to her. “Dead from th’ sickness. We’ve lost th’ mainmast whole an’ half th’ mizzen with it, an’ we’re takin’ water something awful. We’re workin’ every man at the pumps, ma’am. Every man.”
Before she could ask more, he staggered off, bound for the pumps himself. Her terror mounting by the second, Jerusa forced the door closed again and went to crouch beside Michel. She had thought he was improved, but Captain Barker had died. But not Michel; please, God, not Michel, too! She threaded her fingers through his as much to comfort herself as him, and was rewarded by him turning his face toward hers, the merest hint of a smile on his lips.
She listened to the sounds of the storm, her fingers tight around Michel’s. The night before her father or any of her brothers sailed, Mama had always made a ritual of saying special prayers for them at the supper table before grace, and the unspoken belief in the family was that that alone was the reason none of the Sparhawk men had ever been lost at sea. But what if she were the one who was drowned instead, if she were the one who never returned home, whose grave in the churchyard was empty beneath the headstone?
Accustomed as she’d become to the shrieking of the wind and sea, she still jumped and gasped when she heard the pounding on the cabin door.
“Open up, Mrs. Geary! It’s me, George Hay!” shouted the mate, his voice ragged from struggling to make his orders heard over the wind. “Open up now!”
She seized the pistol from where she’d left it on the bunk and stood close to the door. Storm or no, she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. “What is it you want, Mr. Hay?”
“Damnation, woman, I want to talk to you!” he roared. “Now will you open the door, or must I break the bloody thing down?”
She took a deep breath and opened the door, and immediately Hay lunged for her. But this time she darted backward, away from him. With her legs spread wide against the ship’s pitching and her back against the bunk for support, she held the pistol level with both hands and aimed it squarely at his chest.
“For God’s sake, put that down!” he ordered. “Haven’t we trouble enough without you waving a gun in my face?”
She raised her chin, shouting herself. “You tell me, Mr. Hay.”
Hay raised his hand toward her, but she shook her head vehemently and held her aim. His hat was gone, his clothes as wet as if he’d worn them swimming, his hair without its ribbon hanging lankly to his shoulders. He swore, wearily wiping his face with the soaked sleeve of his coat, and if he hadn’t threatened her earlier she would have pitied him.
“You’re coming with us, Jerusa Sparhawk. In the boat, with me. Now.”
Still she shook her head, refusing to believe him.
“Look, the Swan’s going down,” he explained heavily. “There’s nothing we can do to save her. We’ve ordered the boats, and we’re shoving off, and you’re coming with me.”
“No!” Wildly she glanced over her shoulder at Michel. “I’m not going anywhere with you, especially not without Michel!”
“For God’s sake, woman, if he’s not dead now, he will be soon. Barker went hours ago. You’ll die yourself if you stay here.”
“I don’t care!” cried Jerusa. “I’m not leaving Michel!”
“You bloody little fool,” growled Hay. “I’m not going to leave a fortune like
