Read Enter The Brethren (The Brethren of the Coast) Online
Authors: Barbara Devlin
Making his way down the companion ladder, Lance crawled along the larboard rail. The ship bucked, as would an unbroken horse. When the bow rose, he held on to the railing. When it leveled, he moved forward as fast as possible. While it took him mere minutes to reach his first mate, it seemed an eternity.
The storm flared all around, and the waves tugged and pulled in a ferocious contest to sink the ship. The wind wailed and moaned, as mournful cries of a grieving widow.
Reaching out, Lance grasped the wrist of his first mate. Scottie stared at him, with an expression of relief and gratitude. With one powerful yank, using his bodyweight as a counterbalance, Lance fell backward on the deck as he hauled Scottie over the rail.
“Are you all right?”
“Aye, Cap’n.” With a balled fist, the first mate punched him in the arm. “I knew you would come for me.”
Lance wiped the rain from his eyes. “Let us tuck in that sail and get back to the helm.”
Moving in unison with the ship, they dragged in the slapping canvas. The laces had torn away from the yardarm at one end, causing the sail to arc wildly.
Scottie lunged for the wayward corner and managed to catch hold of it. He landed on his rear in the middle of the deck.
Lance laughed when he realized the first mate was uninjured. In a rush, he went about tucking the sail to the yardarm. A loud, unnatural crack snared his senses. An eerie premonition of
deja vu
nipped at his heels, and he peered up. Hanging over them like the sword of Damocles, the foremast yardarm had splintered in two, and it listed in the wind, back and forth, one end threatening to drop on them at any moment.
Lance waved his arms in warning. “Scottie, get out of the way.”
“What?” the seaman replied.
He pointed, but the first mate could not see past the stray sail.
And then it happened.
The yardarm broke free and came crashing down.
Without thought, he dove toward Scottie, shoving him out of the path of the splintered wood. Lance landed, face first, on the unforgiving planks of the main deck. The pain ratcheting through his body was not from his fall. It was from the crushing weight of the yardarm as it snapped the bone of his sprawled leg.
“Captain,” the first mate called in a panicked voice.
Lance flinched at the shout of alarm. It seemed as though a hundred fingers surveyed his body, and someone turned him over.
He blinked his eyes, traveling to another time and place, and found himself in his childhood room at Sandgate Manor, the Raynesford ancestral pile. Once again, the man was a boy. A single candle sat on a bedside table, and thick quilts were tucked to his chin.
A physician explained his condition to his aunt and uncle, the Marquess and Marchioness of Raynesford, who had cared for him since his father had passed.
He trained his ear as the marquess detailed how a schoolmaster spied Lance and Thomas running away from class. In the minutes it took the teacher to trail them, Thomas was dead, drowned in the icy pond. The schoolmaster pulled Lance, barely alive, from the frigid water and carried him back to school.
He shivered.
Thomas was dead.
Lance moaned and twisted beneath the mountain of bedcovers. The physician ushered his guardians into the hall so as not to disturb him. He fought sleep; afraid if he surrendered he might never wake, and was still lucid when the door to his bedchamber creaked.
A little girl entered the room and tiptoed to his bed. In the soft light from the candle, he recognized her face, could trace it from memory if required. He had known her since she was born and harbored a wicked crush on her for as long as he could remember.
Through half-open eyes, he gazed on her graceful form as she placed one of her wooden miniatures, a brightly painted green turtle, on the bedside table. She collected the quaint figurines, treasured them. He was surprised she would part with one of her gems.
She glanced over her shoulder and appeared to be checking to make sure no one was there, before leaning forward and setting her mouth to his in an unutterably tender, inexpressibly sweet token of affection.
It was his first kiss.
“Get well, Lance.” She pressed her palm, cool against his fevered skin, to his cheek. “You’re my hero.”
After that, he had slept.
Unspeakable pain rudely returned him to the present day.
“Easy, lads!”
The concern in Scottie’s words came to him through a fog.
As Lance slipped beneath the comforting blanket of unconsciousness, a name passed his lips. A bare whisper, it was lost in the blustery gale of the storm, and no one heard. But he said it just the same.
“Cara.”
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