Free JoAnn Wendt by Beyond the Dawn Page A

prayer had deserted her weeks ago. There were only two thoughts, burning like candles, that kept her spirit from being totally extinguished.
    Garth.
    Baby Robert.
    In the past week she finally had come to terms with the fact that she would never see either of them again. But as long as she lived, she could send them her love with every breath she drew. Perhaps her fervent love thoughts could find their way across time and distance, blessing her beloved two.
    She knew she must never seek them out. The duke must never suspect what Garth had been to her. He must never suspect Garth had sired Robert. For if he did, she knew he would kill them both.
    She swallowed hard. Her heart ached. God, how it ached. Leaning back upon the gurgling water barrel, she raised her face heavenward and sought solace in the winter sky. Clouds galloped overhead like gray mares running free and unfettered. Cold raindrops spat down. She drew one last long breath of sweet air before turning toward the foul hold.
    “Let someone give my son the love I cannot give,” she whispered passionately. “Let someone give Garth—”
    No, no. It was all too much.
    Numb and beaten, Jane Brown turned and descended into the squalid darkness.
    * * * *
    Garth McNeil shucked boots and stockings and scrambled up the fore-rigging in the moonlight. There’d been an odd humming sound from the after-shrouds. A frayed rope? He had to find out. He was a careful sailor and tolerated no sloppy sailing or worn, weakening equipment.
    Hanging on in the wind with the Caroline bounding under him, he found nothing amiss in the after-shrouds or the futtock shrouds. He climbed up into the fore-topmast rigging, checking the foot ropes and the lower fore-topsail braces. All was well. He continued to climb up into the bright moonlight, up to the fore-topgallant mast. There he hung on in the wind and looked out at the sea. The sea was painted with moonlight, and the night was as light and bright as day.
    At sea a month now, McNeil had fallen to taking the night watch from eleven bells to three bells. It was a lonely watch and counterproductive to his efforts to forget Flavia. Still he persisted in the watch, perversely torturing himself in the quiet hours by thinking of her. At the end of the watch, he would go to Annette’s cabin. These days he went there with intense urgency. It wasn’t the urgency for simple animal release. It was the urgency to forget.
    But on Annette’s side, McNeil knew she interpreted his passion as increasing affection. She reveled in it. Annette was blooming like a girl in first love. McNeil knew he should set her straight in the matter, but he made no effort to do so. He wasn’t thinking of Annette. His head was full of Flavia.
    The Caroline leaped into a deep trough between waves, throwing him against the rigging. He shook his head to clear it, then called up to the man aloft and exchanged a few words.
    He scrambled down the rigging, jumped to the deck and pulled on stockings and boots. He began his usual night prowl of the sleeping ship, listening for any change in the hum of the rigging, alert to any discordant creaking of wood spars or ship’s hull. He took a lantern and went down into the cargo hold, checking for any sign of shifting among the lashed-down crates. All was as it should be.
    His prowl completed, he returned to the moonlit deck, checked the Jacob’s ladders at bow and stern, then had a few words with Harrington at the wheel. The ritual finished, he treated himself to a smoke.
    He’d not smoked half the cigar before his unwilling mind ran back to Flavia. He ached. Normally cynical about women and what they had to offer, McNeil was at a loss to explain his feelings for Flavia and why he should grieve so sorely. The cynic in him said that real love—if there was such a thing as real love—came gradually, if ever; “instant” love was merely lust masquerading in fine clothes. But the man within him denied it. What he’d felt for Flavia