Chapter 6
6
Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love; the shores of existence are strewn with them.
Madame de Sta?l
G LASGOW
Leaving Glasgow on the Thistle in September, Leith took a last, hard look at the city of his birth. Sharp as pointed fingers, the spires and towers of the tolbooth, the university and hospital, and the Tron Church vied for attention against the sullen sky. Today the Merchants Hall failed to boast its gilded weathervane of a ship in full sail, for haar crept in like a ghostly invader, hiding it and mirroring Leith’s mood.
He lingered longest on Glasgow Bridge, branded into memory ever since that racking November night Havilah fled their Virginia Street mansion. By then she’d moved far beyond his reach in her rapid descent from reality. It wasn’t long after the twins’ birth. She wasn’t well, her pallor stark white against the blackness all around them, the streetlamps illuminating her misery. He’d gone after her at a full run, but she’d been faster. Clad only in nightclothes, her feet bare, she’d fled their cocooned, coal-warmed home in an attempt to return to her Romany roots and the lass she’d once been.
If he’d hoped to set the clock forward as his ship left the Firth of Clyde and pulled away to the northwest, clear of the sea-lanes of French privateers, he’d been mistaken. Time seemed to tick backward, miring on that fatal moment. Havilah hovered like a specter on the windswept deck, her demise unrelenting. Haunting.
“Mr. Buchanan, sir.”
Leith looked up to find a cabin boy on the quarterdeck.
“The captain has invited you to dine in his cabin, sir.”
Glad for the distraction, Leith went below. Beef, pork, fowl, citrus, fruits, preserves, olives, capers, wines, and beer crowded the long table. Since it was his ship and the ill-named Captain Coffin and crew were first-rate, Leith was unstinting with provisions. He weathered an hour of conversation, a far cry from his last West Indies sailing when he’d kept mostly to his cabin, Caribbean rum his company.
“My swiftest cruise is five and twenty days,” Captain Coffin said, forking a bite of beef. “Glasgow to the Virginia Capes.”
Leith hoped this voyage bested that. He had no love for the sea and had never conquered seasickness. This journey was simply a miserable means to an end, revealing how desperate he was, a fact he hated. That he owned an entire fleet of ships hardly assuaged him, though it did earn him the respect of the crew instead of the ill-scrappit gossip of Glasgow. These sailors within their wooden world cared little about what happened on land.
“What was that book you mentioned bringing aboard?” Coffin asked him.
“ A General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson.” Leith managed a tight smile. “Not the best reading on a cruise, mayhap.”
“Hopefully not an omen.” Coffin grimaced. “Reminds me of the pirate carcass in chains at the mouth of the harbor in Port Royal, Jamaica.”
“The Pirates’ Republic, aye,” Leith replied, setting his knife and fork aside. “I remember those bleached bones.”
“What brought you there?”
“My father sent me to clerk his mercantile firm in Port Royal—rum and sugar—when I graduated university in Glasgow.”
“An ambitious undertaking. And you sailed home without incident?”
“You be the judge. On my return our brig was rammed by a whale then chased by French privateers.” Leith could hardly believe it in hindsight. It rivaled the book he was reading. “I doubt this cruise will be as entertaining.”
“I’d rather weather a gale than a whale,” the captain said with a chuckle. “Though privateers are wretched enough.”
In his cabin that night, Leith resumed reading Johnson’s book, a whistle of wind riffling the pages through the open doorway. Sunk in the story, he’d failed to note the weather’s shift till his stomach roiled with the ship’s next heave. He eyed a water bucket near the cabin door, wondering if he’d soon be retching in it instead of drinking from it. Tossing the book aside, he rummaged for the vial of peppermint oil Lyrica had insisted he bring as the ship gave another lurch.
Hurricane season. What had he been thinking?
Storm sails were aboard, though they often took hours, even a day, to raise. At the very least, Coffin would furl the sails till the wind died down. The hold was full of convicts as well as cargo—mostly Irish linens and portable goods—that steadied the ship lest it toss upon the waves like a cork.
But rough weather was the least of his concerns. Hemmed in like a convict aboard his own vessel, he found little to distract him, and now the pirates on the page didn’t hold him. The darkness was edging in again, worse than the nausea, and no tonic could relieve it. He fixed his gaze on the hanging lantern, willing the flame to hold as if his very soul depended on it. Images of Havilah and the bridge and her fear at his following amassed in the cabin’s shadows with cold, stark clarity. The darkness seemed to be widening, a pit ready for him to fall into, capable of extinguishing the sole flickering light—
God, help me.
The plea came unbidden, as did the sudden urge to retrieve the miniature. He gave in to the impulse and pulled it from his waistcoat pocket. Odd how the lantern light fell across it, pushing back a fragment of the darkness. The woman staring back at him was no conventional beauty—not the pale, porcelain-featured kind he found dull. This lass, if Copley’s brush hadn’t lied, was as ruddy-complected as a Scotswoman, her hair black as Newgate’s knocker though she’d likely not favor that description. And her eyes? An unquestionable gooseberry green. Mayhap she was tart as one too.
Yet Nathaniel Ravenal had sung her praises in a letter. And Colonel Catesby had sent him miniatures of both his daughters.
Something in Leith stirred to life, some feeling he couldn’t define. Could he be half in love with the indigo heiress though he’d not yet met her?
Mayhap she’d not want to be met.