A Bound Heart by Laura Frantz

Author:Laura Frantz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance;Love stories;Christian fiction;FIC042030;FIC027050;FIC042040
ISBN: 9781493416622
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2018-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

23

The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.

Marcus Aurelius

It was laundry day on deck, the few hours save the Sabbath that the convict women were spared picking oakum. Fires smoked across the waist of the ship, overriding the stench of the ballast—countless boiling kettles overseen by all but Mrs. Ravenhill, who had other more refined tasks like mending and patching officers’ clothes.

By noon the deck bore a slippery, soapy sheen, the rails and rigging adorned with drying garments. Lark washed Larkin’s clouts in salt water while he napped in his box bed in the shade. Glad she was he’d not be walking till they landed. Would Osbourne’s plantation be fit for a baby? Would Larkin be counted an indenture same as she?

She went to the quarterdeck to judge the state of the bees, dismayed to find a few already dead or dying. Some flew about as if dazed, a worrisome sign. A dozen or so flowering pots from the plant cabin had been cloistered around the straw skeps. Was that even necessary? One skep seemed almost idle, another furiously active. Though they’d surely perish by too much handling and mismanagement, she wondered if they might be better below deck.

She replenished their water, unsure if doing so mattered, before returning to a sleeping Larkin and the plants. Surgeon Blackburn was there, writing in his journal. She’d not seen him since leaving the captain’s table abruptly with the laird the night before.

“Good day, Miss MacDougall.”

“Good day, sir.”

Avoiding his gaze, she checked on Larkin again and found him sweating beneath his awning, so she removed his cap. He dreamed on, his damp hair a riot of ginger wisps in the heat.

“Feels like the merciless Virginia sun,” he remarked, looking decidedly overwarm in his uniform.

She’d pushed back her own sleeves, her Quaker cap doing little to shield sunburn. The sea was blue glass, the sails mostly idle, little wind to cool them. Would they soon encounter the doldrums so hated by sailors, their ship becalmed for days, even weeks?

She felt Blackburn’s eyes on her, following her as she moved among the plants. A few needling words begged saying.

Tell me, sir, about yer wife and bairns.

Biting her tongue, she maneuvered around him, watering, pruning, even praying.

He looked up from his scribbling. “One of the tea trees is listless.”

“So I see,” she replied. And not only the tea tree. One too many plants bore curled or limp leaves and brown edges. Some seemed nearly scorched on deck after the cooler Scottish climate. The sweet gale was long past hope, so she tossed the deadened stalks overboard, saving the precious pot and dirt. Amid all the water, her whole being hungered for solid ground, much like these long-suffering plants.

“There’s a storm coming.”

She ceased watering, eyes on the flat sea.

“Ring around the sun, rain before day is done.”

“Ring around the moon, rain before noon.” She well knew a halo around the moon bespoke a storm. “Moonbroch.”

“Aye.” His perennially serious expression of late grew pained. “We’ll be in the teeth of a gale by dusk.

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