Beloved Counterfeit (40 page)

“We’ve a mutual friend,” Micah called as he rested his palm on the weapon lashed to his belt. “This precludes any need for invitation.” Micah turned to order the crew to stand their places. Drummond looked away and did not respond. “I’ll do this myself,” he told Clay. “Though I’d be obliged if you were to keep watch and see that my hide’s safe.”

“I’d be delighted,” he said, “but I’ll be going with you, so let’s get on with it.”

Arguing would take more time than ignoring the man, so Micah chose to turn his attention to Hawkins without comment. As his ropes landed on the enemy vessel, Micah noted that Hawkins’s men had neither ceased their merriment nor paid them much attention. Their only concession to the goings-on seemed to be their lack of singing. Rather, they stood—or lay—mute.

“Who might I say is my guest?” Their gazes met, and Thomas Hawkins had the audacity to grin as he looked away and took a long drink from the bottle.

“I’ve something you want, Hawkins,” Micah called as he felt for the knife lashed beneath his coat. “Four somethings. And you’ll never lay a hand on them.”

Again
, he almost said, though there was no proof. At least none that Micah wanted to explore.

Hawkins’s laugh floated over to Micah, along with the invitation, “Come down below and let’s discuss things,” as Micah reached for the rope coiled beside him.

“Don’t do it,” Drummond cautioned, but Micah ignored him and tossed the line over to where Hawkins now strolled the deck. A moment later he found himself face-to-face with the smuggler.

“Join me in my quarters for the evening meal,” the smuggler said as he gestured to a passageway that led into the ship. “I’ve a succulent dish awaiting me.”

Something in the way he said the words made Micah think the man referred to something other than food. The image that followed roiled in his belly, and he spat on the deck to shove it away.

“Thank you, no.” Micah’s palm found the pistol, and his fingers closed over it. He could kill the man now and likely scramble back to his ship untouched.

“I wonder if Ruby asks about me,” Hawkins said, oblivious to the danger he was about to face.

So Hawkins knew with whom he dealt. Good.

Micah looked about and found the deck populated with drunk men, who simply jeered and lifted their cups as if watching their captain’s defeat was quite the show. “Why would she?” Micah asked as he glanced back to see Drummond watching.

“You tell me.” Hawkins paused to wipe a grin from his face. “Oh, of course. She didn’t tell you about our night together.” He chuckled, an action that under other circumstances might have landed him sprawling across the deck. “No, I don’t suppose that’s something a woman tells her husband.”

White-hot anger engulfed him, but Micah held it in check. Barely. “I’ll not allow lies to be told about my wife,” he said through clenched jaw.

“Lies?” Hawkins laughed. “Tell me, Tate. Did your wife fail to come home one night, oh, might be some four months ago? Or maybe it was five.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll know when the baby comes.”

Micah hit him. Hard. When Hawkins scrambled to his feet again, Micah landed another blow. And then another. Such was his blind rage that none aboard the vessel would come near him. Rather, the drunken sailors had begun to jeer at their captain, seemingly placing lots on who might take his place.

With Drummond nearby and a shipload of men covering him with their weapons, Micah turned his attention back to Hawkins. It was all he could do not to spit in the now-bleeding face.

Hawkins smiled. “She was a tasty tart.”

Micah might have killed Hawkins if someone hadn’t held him back. “Vengeance isn’t yours to be had,” Drummond reminded him as he threw Micah aside and scraped what was left of Hawkins off the deck. “Now help me get this sorry excuse of a man to Cuba so the authorities can hang him for the pirate he is.”

Micah shoved Drummond away, and Hawkins stumbled then landed in a heap. As Micah watched the smuggler try and fail to gain his footing, the rage and hate boiled away, leaving only a mind-numbing exhaustion. His breath came in short gasps as he checked to see if Hawkins could still manage.

When Hawkins groaned, Micah rolled him onto his back. Drummond reached to help, but Micah shouldered him away. With one last look at the deck, which his men had cleared of anyone associated with Thomas Hawkins, he hefted the smuggler onto his shoulders and heaved him over onto the deck of his own vessel.

There the militiamen swarmed and then by degrees fell back to allow Micah into their midst. “I’ll do it myself.” Though everything in him wanted to kill the man, Micah stumbled into the hold with Thomas Hawkins and threw him behind a door that he bolted more to keep himself out than to keep Hawkins in.

“What now?” Drummond asked. “Home or Havana?”

Micah thought of Ruby, his baby in her belly, lying in the bed she’d not yet shared with him, and the temptation to go home hit him hard. Yet it wouldn’t do to leave the dispatch of this man to anyone else.

The job was his alone, and he’d not leave his post.

“Havana, but by the fastest means possible.”

His mission accomplished, Micah fell into a fitful sleep that night and awoke in Havana Bay to the sound of Clay Drummond singing. “Enough,” Micah said as he forced his eyes open. “Let’s get Hawkins off this tub before I change my mind.”

“Will we be staying to watch the hanging?” Clay asked as they left the courthouse some hours later.

Micah clamped his hand on Drummond’s shoulder. “I think I’d rather go home to my wife. What about you?”

Clay nodded. “There’s a certain appeal to that,” he said. “Though I’m not certain Viola’s ready to call herself my wife yet.”

Micah chuckled, though exhaustion tugged at the corners of his mind. “Maybe you should ask her.”

“Maybe so,” Drummond said. “But for now, what say I take the wheel? Like as not, you’ll want to be at your best when you explain to your wife where you’ve been since this time yesterday.”

Though he wasn’t at his best, Micah did appreciate the time he had to prepare for the moment when Ruby opened the parsonage door and let him in. To her credit, she didn’t ask why he’d not come home, nor did she seem to want to know.

Rather, she fussed over him and served him two helpings of conch chowder before setting an oversized slice of pie on his plate. “You’re spoiling me.” He caught her wrist as she tried to slip past. “Now go and put the girls to bed.”

She did as he asked then joined him in the parlor, where he’d been playing at planning Sunday’s sermon. No notes were necessary for this one. He already knew what God had put on his heart.

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

He rose to meet Ruby, struck by her beauty, and he prayed for the right words to come. “You should know Hawkins will no longer bother you or the girls.”

Ruby stopped short. “How can you know this?” She paused, her hand on her belly. “You killed him.”

“No. I delivered him to the authorities but elected not to stay for the hanging.” He took a deep breath. “I wonder if I might ask something of you,” he said. “Something important.”

“You’ve spoken to Hawkins.” She lifted her gaze to meet his, her expression tentative. “I want no further secrets between us. You see, I never knew how to tell you that the night I didn’t come home, I was—”

He silenced her with a kiss. “I know,” he whispered, “and there’s no need to say more.”

“You know?” she said as her eyes fell shut.

Micah refused to allow her tears. This was not an occasion for sorrow. “Do you love me, Ruby?”

“Love you,” she whispered. “Yes, I do love you.”

“Then nothing else matters,” he said as he swept her off her feet. Her squeal was quickly ended by yet another kiss. “I love you, too, Ruby, with all that I am.”

“Our baby,” she said as he cradled her against his chest. “It might be—”

“Hush, Ruby,” he said, unwilling to give thought to what he knew she was trying to say. “The child God gives us will be mine, and I’ll have no further discussion about it.”

Then he showed her how much he loved being her husband, and she responded as a wife who’d missed her man.

Very much.

Epilogue

“You can’t quit now, Ruby,” Viola said. “Just one more push.”

“I can’t,” was all Ruby could manage to say before falling back onto the pillows. How long she’d been at this, she couldn’t say, thought she knew she’d long since stopped caring about anything except whether the child she labored to bear would be healthy.

The silly fear that she might be giving birth to a baby who did not belong to the man she loved with all her heart was too cruel to consider for more than a moment. Another pain shot through her, and the thought evaporated.

“I truly cannot,” she cried in response to Viola’s urging.

“You can, and you will,” the midwife demanded, though the rest of her words disappeared when the pain returned.

“All right, now rest,” Viola finally said.

Ruby’s head fell back on the pillow. Silence. Then Micah’s voice. Soft. Gentle. Pleading with God to bring this baby into the world. She rested. Eyes closed. Safe in her husband’s embrace.

He said something about sand dollars. “Have I ever told you the story of the sand dollar, Ruby?” he asked as he pressed his palm against her damp cheek.

She managed to mouth a silent no.

From his pocket, Micah retrieved a perfect sand dollar. “For you,” he said, “though I warrant you’ll need me to hold it for you.”

When she did not respond, he frowned. “The story,” he said, “starts with the five points here around the edges. They represent the Easter story. You see. . .four nail holes from the crucifixion and a fifth one here. That’s the one made by the spear of the Roman soldier.”

She concentrated until the sand dollar came into focus. Indeed, as Micah said, there were the five holes.

“See, here’s the star that led the wise men.” He flipped the shell over. “And there’s the Christmas flower. Now watch this.” Micah grasped the sand dollar and cracked it in half.

“You broke it,” she said as little pieces littered the blanket.

“Five doves,” he said as he gathered the bird-shaped pieces into his palm. “Representing peace and goodwill.”

“Beautiful,” she managed as waves of exhaustion hit her.

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”

She looked up into eyes that held no guile. “Even now?”

His lips touched her forehead then her nose. “Especially now,” he said as his lips met hers.

Pain. Again it came without warning. Shuddering, screaming pain like nothing she’d ever known. Micah spoke again, but the words were blurred by the pain.

Viola’s voice joined Micah’s.

Something about breathing. Something else about biting the length of rawhide she’d brought.

None of it mattered.

There was only pain.

Horrendous pain.

Then—a baby’s cry. The pain ceased.

“You’ve a son,” Ruby heard someone say, and then came other voices. A man. She fought to open her eyes and found Micah crying.

Her lips formed a weak question: “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “We have a son, and he’s perfect. All his toes and fingers, and, well, he’s perfect.” The image of her husband faded then appeared again.

“Unless you’ve a better idea,” he said, “I’d like to call him Micah after his pa. ’Course we’d call him something to differentiate between the two of us. Mike, maybe. Or Mikey, though he’s going to grow out of that soon enough.”

Relief flooded her, along with the realization that she’d indeed given birth to Micah’s child. “Oh, Micah,” she managed, “a son. Our son.”

He moved close, touching her as if she were something rare and fragile. The pride on his face was unmistakable. “Yes,
our
son, and there’ll never be a doubt of it. Not now; not ever. Now rest. I’ll be here if you need me.”

She did until the baby’s lusty cry woke her. “I believe someone’s hungry,” Micah said as he helped Ruby sit up then lifted the baby from his cradle.

As Ruby watched her husband hold their crying son, she began to shed tears of her own. That God would bless her not only with a second chance but also with Micah Tate was more than she could fathom.

“Are you in pain?” he asked. “I sent Vi home with Clay, but I can fetch her if need be.”

“No, I’m fine.” She smiled as Micah settled the baby in her lap. “More than fine. Now let me get a look at my son.” She slipped the blanket from around her son.

Her fair-haired son.

Ruby froze.

“He’s hungry,” Micah urged. “There’ll be time enough later to examine him to see if all his fingers and toes are intact, though as I said, I have it on good authority they are.”

“But, Micah,” she said, her heart thudding to a stop. “He’s—”

“Ours,” her husband said with a look that told her he’d brook no further argument. “And no one will ever dispute it, least of all, me.”

Other books in
 

the

Fairweather Key

series

Beloved Castaway

Beloved Captive