Free If I Wait For You by Jane Goodger Page A

whale chew?
Or simply swallow a man whole?” Sara shot a glance at West, and
smiled when she saw his look of disbelief. Mr. Mason
cackled.
    “ Well,” Mason said, rubbing
his beard. Bits of something escaped the frazzled whiskers with the
movement. “I imagine it’d chew a bit. Depends on the size of the
man, I suppose.”
    As if engaging in perfectly acceptable
dinner conversation, Sara nodded. Next to her, Zachary was trying
his best not to laugh aloud.
    Sara took a few delicate bites. “Do
you think, Mr. Mason, that a whale would eat a man for food? Or
only to exact revenge?”
    “ Miss Dawes.”
    Sara looked at West, her blue eyes
innocent. “Mrs. Mitchell,” she corrected sweetly.
    His jaw clenched and Sara supposed her
“husband” was getting miffed at her.
    “ Whales do not eat
men.”
    “ Well, I am very glad to
hear of it, Mr. Mitchell.”
    Sara did not know why she was teasing
the captain. Perhaps sheer malice drove her to do it. She could
remember similar conversations with her father, the two of them
purposefully trying to goad her ever-serious mother. And part of
her knew she was doing the exact same thing now; she wanted to
annoy this pretend husband of hers.
    “ You will hear many
fantastic stories,” he said, giving Mr. Mason a warning look. “Most
of which are false. I wouldn’t want you to worry needlessly.” He
gave her a tight smile.
    “ What stories?” Sara leaned
forward eagerly, and she could see the glint of amusement in Mr.
Mason’s eyes. She’d been right about him, she thought, he wasn’t
mean, simply ornery.
    “ A later time, Miss Dawes,”
West bit out. “Mrs. Mitchell,” he amended briskly.
    Sara’s face burned with embarrassment.
Next to her, she could sense Zachary stiffen and she turned to give
him a smile so that he’d know that Mr. Mitchell’s sharp words had
not affected her. The other two men gave their captain a searching
look before turning back to their food. Sara looked up at the
skylight, pretending all was well.
    “ Where are we,
exactly?”
    West finished chewing before answering
her. “About two hundred miles east of Long Island.” He spoke into
his plate.
    “ Truly? It seems as though
we should be much further.” Sara recalled reading accounts of ships
reaching Florida in a week, and here they’d been gone nearly that
and had barely left New England.
    “ This is not a clipper. And
we are sailing southeast, not a direct line to the Caribbean. In
fact, if we do not get a wind shift in a day or so, we shall sail
to the Azores for supplies. We are not trying to set a speed
record. We are hunting for whale.” He sounded like a tired teacher
explaining a concept for the tenth time to a dull
student.
    “ She don’t know, Captain.
She ain’t never been on a whaler.”
    Sara looked up to find Mr. Mason
scowling darkly at the captain, then he winked at her, and Sara’s
face split into a grin.
    “ That is true, Mr. Mason,”
Sara said, ignoring the tense man next to her. “And I never thought
I would be on a whaler, either. I thought I would only learn of
such an adventurous life from the tales my brother and father
spun.”
    Mr. Mason leaned back, seemingly
satisfied to have Sara smiling once again. “Yer pappy was a
whaler?”
    “ Oh, no. He was a carpenter
who built many of the interiors of the whaling ships. And other
ships, as well. But he heard plenty of yarns while he was working
on the ships, and he shared them all with us. I’m afraid he was
quite the storyteller, so you’ll be hard pressed to top some of the
yarns I’ve heard.”
    Sara looked at her brother, who smiled
his encouragement. It seemed everyone leaned forward to hear a tale
but the captain, who instead moved his thumb across the handle of
his spoon as if he were polishing it.
    “ Have you ever seen a giant
squid?” Sara asked, remembering just how her father had told the
story. She had never told a tale in her life, but suddenly found
herself drawing the officers in with