Chapter 6 #2
But Xavier considered himself a patriotic man.
He could not easily dismiss the president’s plea.
However, unlike other Americans and his fellow New Englanders, he had his own deep, abiding, personal reasons for accepting such a secret commission.
And he knew this commission was top secret.
“You don’t have to do this,” William interrupted with desperate intensity.
“Xavier, a second naval squadron has already left for the Mediterranean. In a few weeks it will arrive off Gibraltar. At least wait six months and see what our navy can accomplish. Please!”
“Commodore Morris is a buffoon,” Markham said with irritation. “An inept buffoon.”
Xavier laid his palm on his father’s shoulder. “Markham is correct. The commodore is not up to the task he has been given. Father, where is your patriotism?”
“My patriotism died last year,” William said heavily.
Xavier’s heart broke. “Unfortunately,” he said softly, “mine did not.”
William’s face crumpled. “You are my only son. Oh, God. Xavier!” He reached out, crushing the taller young man in his embrace.
Xavier pulled back and saw that his father was crying. Tears trickled down William’s seamed cheeks. Xavier felt an urge to cry as well, but refused to. “I must go,” he said roughly.
“I know,” William said. His eyes were filled with resignation and fear.
“So you will do it!” Markham cried joyously. His hand slapped Xavier’s back. “Will you accept this secret commission? Become the secret, lethal weapon of the United States?”
“Yes,” Xavier said, and his eyes turned black with determination. An iron will was stamped on his chiseled face. “I will do it. I will go.” His heart beat hard, fiercely—he was exultant now. “I will ready the Pearl today.”
William inhaled sharply.
This time Xavier could not meet his eyes. He wanted to reassure his father that he would succeed, but suddenly he could not make such a promise. Suddenly, mingled with his newfound impatience, with his excitement and anticipation, there was a strange sense of dread.
The hairs on Xavier’s nape rose.
The oddest feeling, a premonition perhaps, seized him.
He felt that his life was about to change irrevocably, forever. The sea had always been his greatest ally and his greatest mistress. Xavier was stricken by the notion that now she was about to betray him.
He paused before the upstairs bedroom door, gripping the knob, terribly reluctant to go inside. He had no choice.
Xavier rapped softly on the door once and then twice, and when there was no answer, he soundlessly opened it.
He did not have to glance at his pocket watch to know it was midafternoon.
He paused in the doorway, his hand shoved in the pockets of his breeches.
The interior of the pink and white bedroom was dark, the floral draperies drawn.
A pang pierced him. Would it always be this way?
Xavier crossed the red, white, and gold Aubusson carpet and drew open the curtains; the pink and white bedroom was flooded with bright spring sunlight.
He shoved open a window. A soft, warm breeze wafted inside, carrying with it the scent of freshly cut grass and freesia.
The chirping of a robin and the cheerful answering cry of a blue jay filled the room.
Xavier turned and regarded the still form lying underneath the dark pink velvet coverlet on the canopied bed.
A pale wrist lifted, a hand covering eyes. “Bettina?” she asked.
“No,” Xavier said, at once grim and sad, and worse, resigned. “It’s me.” He did not move any closer.
Slowly she sat up. A slender platinum-haired angel with big blue eyes.
She was clad in a pastel blue dressing gown and her chemise and drawers, he saw.
She blinked at him several times. Her face was heart shaped and pretty enough to take any man’s breath away, his included, even though he had known her since the day she was born.
“Are you ill?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“My migraine,” she said, and they both knew it was a lie.
He felt like weeping. But he had no tears left to shed.
All his tears had been shed at the funeral a year ago.
“Sarah, why don’t you get up and get dressed and come downstairs for tea?
Cook has made your favorite, lemon pound cake.
And Uncle Markham is here. He would love to see you before he returns to Washington. ”
She focused her huge eyes upon him for the very first time. There was something vacant and eternally innocent about them. “I am so tired,” she whispered.
Xavier finally approached her and sat carefully upon the bed by her feet.
No portion of his anatomy made contact with her.
“You must get up. I know you have already been up, because you are half-dressed, and that is a good thing. But surely you don’t want to waste the rest of this fine day? ” He forced a smile.
“I don’t care,” she said.
“I will take you for a walk. We will go to the beach.” He had much to do if he was to prepare the Pearl for action and leave within a few weeks, but he made the offer sincerely. It was always this way. Trying to entice her out of bed and out of doors, and when that failed, resorting to other means.
“I don’t feel like walking, but thank you, you are so kind.” Briefly she looked into his eyes.
This time he gave up. Perhaps too quickly. But he was tired, too, and he had grave matters on his mind. Matters of state, matters of life and death. “We must talk, Sarah.”
She seemed not to have heard him. “I don’t like Uncle Markham anyway. He frightens me,” she said softly.
He jerked. “Nonsense,” he said too sharply. “He is family; there is nothing to be frightened of.”
“He doesn’t like me,” she said. “He doesn’t like you, either, I think.”
“You are being imaginative.” He patted her knee through the dark pink coverlet somewhat awkwardly. “We must speak, Sarah.”
She regarded him without expectation. “Is something amiss?”
He hesitated. “I am shipping out.”
Her demeanor changed radically. She sat upright, blanching. Her gaze was fully cognizant now. “You are leaving me?” she cried.
“Yes.”
“No! You can’t! How can you do this?”
He was not a demonstrative man. Especially not with women. But she was like a child; he could not see her as a woman, although God knew he had tried. Xavier reached out and laid his hand on her fine, moon-colored hair. “I must go. I have no choice.”
She began to cry silently, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “You’re leaving me. What will I do? Who will take care of me? I am so afraid. Please don’t go!” She lifted her lashes, turning her glistening eyes upon him. They were beseeching.
“You will be fine,” he said roughly. “Father will be here, of course, to take care of you, and then there is Bettina. You know that Bettina would never let anything bad happen to you, Sarah. And Dr. Carraday will call on you every day, I promise you that.” He forced another smile.
“Tell him he must give me the laudanum when I ask for it,” she said, suddenly strident. “Tell him, Xavier, tell him that!”
He hesitated. “He and Father will decide together about the laudanum, Sarah. If they decide you truly need it, then you will have it.”
“No!” She punched the bed weakly. “You are leaving me—you told me you would never leave me, Xavier, you lied!”
He did not know what to say. He had insinuated that he would never leave her; perhaps he had even said such a thing, but he had meant that he would always be there for her.
That he would always take care of her. “I am leaving, Sarah, because Duty calls, but even though I am gone, I shall see that you are as well cared for as if I were here, personally attending you.” He stood up.
She met his gaze for a fraction of a second, saw that he was resolved, and she stared at her knees, sobbing. But she nodded.
“Come down for tea,” Xavier said. She was a tiny woman, and when he stood he towered over her, especially now, when she reclined in bed. He felt like a giant. She seemed like a dwarf.
Sarah made no response.
“I shall expect you downstairs in thirty minutes,” Xavier said softly. But it was a command and they both knew it.
She looked up, not resentful, merely pitifully resigned.
“It is not healthy for you to stay abed all day,” Xavier added gently.
She stared at him unhappily, and after a long moment, she nodded again.
Her acquiescence made him feel somewhat better. He turned, and when he was at the door she called out to him. “Xavier?”
He froze. He comprehended her question before it came, and he dreaded having to answer it.
“Where are you going?”
He did not want to tell her. He wanted to lie. The lie was there, on the tip of his tongue—the Indies, he would say. And he would promise her presents and pretty baubles. But as he hesitated, she guessed. For Sarah was as astute as children sometimes are. “No!” she gasped.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“No!” she cried again, rising up to her knees. “Not to Barbary!”
“Yes.”
She screamed.
“Sarah!” He had expected a violent reaction, but not this.
“You will never come back!”
When Dr. Carraday left, Sarah had been doused heavily with laudanum.
Teatime was long since gone. Xavier checked to make sure that his wife was sleeping soundly.
Bettina sitting by the bed, holding her hand, her big brown eyes sad, before striding downstairs.
His father was in the formal salon, standing by the grand piano that Sarah played so well—when she could be motivated to do so.
William looked at his face and moved to the sideboard. There he poured them both oversized snifters of brandy. “This has been a long day.”
It was not even suppertime. Xavier nodded, drinking, and soon a warmth began to unfurl the constriction in his abdomen, even lightening the heaviness in his chest. “Yes, a very long and trying day.”
“How is she?” William asked with concern.
“She is asleep.” Xavier’s face tightened. “I should not have admitted the truth.”
“Do not blame yourself. You always blame yourself. The world does not rest upon your shoulders, Xavier.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Xavier said, as lightly as he could. But he looked away from his father’s eyes. Because these days it felt like the entire world did rest upon his shoulders. And though he was young and strong, he was not that strong, no one was that strong, by God.
“You can’t treat her like a child for the rest of your lives.”
“But she is a child.”
“She is a woman of twenty-five. An invalid, perhaps, but a woman—not a child. I believe that she can and will get better—with time.”
Xavier wanted to believe that too. But he didn’t, not for a moment.
He had known Sarah since she was born, but he remembered her better as a toddler and a young girl.
Then she had been filled with laughter, but she had always been as fragile as the finest handblown glass.
Her laughter could vanish in an instant, chased away by black clouds no one else could see.
“I am worried about you now, not her,” William said.
Xavier’s jaw tensed. “I shall be careful. Very careful. And no one knows the sea better than I. The corsairs have no training, no discipline, and few good captains. I can outsail them, outfight them, and I shall.” His eyes blazed. “That is another promise I make to you, Father.”
“To me, or to Robert?” William asked.
Xavier turned away, his heart leaping. He set his drink down. Aware of a savage determination rising up in him, consuming him, now that the crisis with Sarah had passed. Now that the decision had been made. “To you both,” he said.
William bowed his head. Xavier knew that he prayed. But Xavier did not want prayers. He wanted blood. Moslem blood—the blood of the Barbary pirates.
And by God, he would have it—or die trying.