“Why did Mr. Smith come to say good night and not Papa?” he asked. For the first time since Drew had sailed on the Yankee Heart, Brogan had not tucked him into bed or wished him pleasant dreams. Lorena ached for the child in his confusion.
She retrieved the doll off the floor, then removed her sandals and slipped her feet under the coverlet to join him in bed.
She patted the pillow and he laid his head down beside her.
“The captain needs time alone with God,” she said. “Like David did, when David ran into the wilderness to hide from Saul. Right now, the captain feels he is in the wilderness. A bit like the way I felt when I was aboard the Lady Julia, being carried farther and farther away from those I loved.”
She could see that the soft tone of her voice soothed him. Drew’s eyelids grew heavy.
“Why?” he whispered.
Lorena gave his nose a tweak. “Why does the captain feel God has deserted him? Because, Drew, he does not know the truth. All the while David was lamenting in his psalms, God had a plan that he be ordained king. Just as, all the while I despaired, there was a plan in motion to rescue me. And God has a plan for the captain, too. Only he doesn’t know it . . . yet.”
Something occurred to her with those words, and as Drew drifted off to sleep, Lorena lay in the darkness, thinking up a plan of her own.
Eventide had fallen like a dark curtain over the long day, and nothing, save a faint sliver of moonlight, dispelled the blackness of the great cabin.
Brogan welcomed the loneliness of the night, the darkness that engulfed him, as he listened to the rhythmic lapping of the sea against the Yankee Heart’s hull.
Grief had drained him. His tears were spent. Like so much dead weight, Brogan sat hunched in a wing chair, his ship’s Bible clutched in his hands. He’d taken neither food nor drink the entire day, and now the emptiness inside him extended to even the pit of his stomach.
Perhaps he never saw through Abigail’s trickery because he had not wanted to see. He’d wanted marriage and a family. Benjamin’s birth meant that at last he was related to someone by blood, and he’d been prepared to do everything in his power to love and protect his own.
All he had left was anger—a frustrated rage that consumed him the tighter he clutched the Bible, until Brogan felt the blood vessels in his hands might burst.
It was told the Bible’s message was one of love for God’s children. But what of children born outside the church? As early as memory served he had been taught that God would not listen to the prayers of a bad orphan like himself.
Jabez proclaimed different. The blessed Savior loved all sinners. And when Lorena Huntley entered his life, Brogan very nearly believed it was true. Her gentle spirit and kindness had seeped into his soul and opened his heart. All he’d ever wanted was to be part of a family. Lorena represented the steadfast core of her family. She was all goodness. The woman they looked to for direction and reassurance, Brogan included. He had believed that if she could love him, then he must be worthy. She’d made him feel so.
He mourned his love for her, for the life together he had hoped they’d share. No more, though. Everything had changed. All of it gone. Oh, how he wished he could open this Good Book and find comfort, but its words, its promises, had not been written for the likes of him.
Why had this happened to him? What had the lonely orphan boy ever done that the Almighty should punish him? What except long for family life with an ache that tore at his soul. As a man, had he been too confident in his abilities, too arrogant in his actions, that he had invited the wrath of a God who would put an end to everything precious in his life?
He was done . . . exhausted . . . finished.
Rising, Brogan flung the Bible across the room. It hit the doorframe, missing Jabez’s head by inches as the mate opened the door.
Jabez froze, his beefy torso illuminated behind the golden glow of a lantern. As he raised it higher, an eerie pattern of flickering light spilled across the Brussels carpet and furnishings to reveal the discarded Bible, lying facedown and opened.
Brogan squinted into the brightness and turned away. He didn’t want anyone looking upon his pain or seeing the humiliation on his face.
He felt as vulnerable now as he had as a runaway orphan. A boy of six years, hungry and filthy, huddled in a Boston dockside alley, alone and at the end of his wits.
“I told you I wanted to be left alone,” he barked.
Jabez stepped deeper inside the cabin. “Ye look like ye could use a friend.”
Some twenty years ago, the mate had uttered those very same words to him. The unexpected compassion had torn down Brogan’s defenses then and produced nearly the same effect now. “I need a moment to myself is all.”
“Yer moment has extended over an entire day.”
“Aye . . . well . . . so it has.”