Readying herself for more heart-wrenching pain and even more damage, she kicked her heels to the mare’s sides and took off towards the wreck. Perhaps it wasn’t so bad as it looked? Perhaps the masts had been dismantled to allow for the repairs?
But it was worse. So much worse.
She wasted no time sprinting up the plank but the side she’d seen from a distance was far better than the other. Darius hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said the captain had limped her there. She wasn’t seaworthy at all. She was barely liveable.
“Is it possible Amelia isn’t here?” Patrick asked, completely oblivious to her turmoil.
“It’s possible there isn’t anyone here,” she replied. But her father would never leave the vessel unmanned. Not even in her current state. The Aurora meant more than that to him. It was their home. Their way of life.
One step towards the stern and a barely muffled scream split the silence. It was long and loud and the pain it carried made Daniella wince and duck. Both she and Patrick drew their daggers at the same time. Daniella would have given almost anything to have a sword in her hand instead of the short unfamiliar blade.
“Wait,” she told Patrick as he looked for the stairs to go below. “I know this ship better than anybody. I’ll go first.”
Patrick shook his head and started tiptoeing across the deck. “Not likely, lass,” he whispered to her without a backwards glance.
He was going to get himself killed.
Another scream, this time lower in volume but not lacking in intensity. Daniella followed Patrick down the short narrow stairs into a darkened corridor. She waited for him to keep going but he seemed stuck fast.
“What are you waiting for?” she hissed.
“I can’t see a goddamned thing,” he hissed back, his frustration palpable.
Daniella pushed past him. “Follow me.” The pitch black didn’t bother her at all. The next scream did.
“Amelia?” Patrick bellowed down the passageway.
“Thank you very much,” Daniella said with a shake of her head. They may as well have announced their arrival with a brass band.
As men usually did, Patrick ignored her warning, her words, her, and pushed ahead into the dark.
Daniella went straight for the captain’s cabin. If the women were guests aboard the ship, it would make sense for them to share the largest space. Dagger at the ready, she pushed the door open and then sprang back into the shadow. Not a man seemed to notice her presence. Hurt and anger and pride kicked each other trying to get to the surface. Was she now invisible as well?
Finally one sailor turned his head but then turned back. He then seemed to come to his senses. “Dani?” he asked, breaking away from the group hovering about the bed.
“What the hell is going on, Hoste?” Why did seven of her father’s men cram their bulks into the small space leaving the decks unmanned? Leaving her ship completely defenceless?
Another scream and Daniella fought her way to the bed as the men stepped back almost as one.
Amelia. The young woman writhed on the bed, her dark honey hair plastered to her forehead with beads of sweat as she forced out one breath after another and then another. Tears slid down her face and onto the pillow as she cried out, her arms around her belly, her knees drawn in protectively.
Amelia’s eyes, when she managed to focus them on the newcomers, held shame and hopelessness and a fear so great Daniella also took a step away.
“Help me,” Amelia begged on a broken sob. “Make it stop.”
As though shot from a cannonball, Patrick exploded into the room, a curse on his tongue and a tension in his stance. When he saw Amelia, nothing else registered.
She shrank away as he approached the bed, the fear turning wild in her eyes as she appealed to the other men in the room for assistance. Shuffling back on the bed as far as she could until her body was flush with the wall, she once again covered her mountainous stomach with her hands. “Get out,” she said to him, the father of her child.
“Amelia, you cannot mean that,” he protested as he fell to his knees on the timbers. He reached for her; she tried to back away again.
“Get him out of here,” she cried as pain once again ripped through her and she doubled over with another scream.
Daniella gazed around at her family, her father’s sailors, the men she’d known all her life. Not a one made a move. They all looked to her for orders as though she had never left.
“Hoste, Lion and Woodhead, fetch linens, hot water and brandy. The rest of you get out. You’ll not want to see what happens next.” She’d watched the delivery of a baby just the once. She’d wanted to look away, to leave the room, but her father wouldn’t allow it. He’d wanted to her to assist, to hold the poor girl’s hand as she wailed into the night. Daniella had thought he kept her there on purpose, as a warning, such was the torment it had imprinted on her soul. Amelia’s screams bought it all back in an instant. They had to do something. The baby was coming whether she wanted to be there or not.
“How long ago did the pains start?” she asked as the room slowly cleared. She needed to know how long the woman had been fighting her body and her babe.
Before Amelia could answer, Farrar, her father’s bosun, stopped in the doorway and indicated Patrick. “He staying or going?”
“He’s staying,” Daniella said forcefully. “He can see where his actions have led.”
Jenson, the ship’s cook, also stayed. “I’ve been caring for the girl so far. I can help,” he offered, his serious gaze switching back and forth from Daniella to Amelia. “She’ll have a rough time of it.”
Patrick stood and turned on the spot, his arms out as if to ward them all off. “You’ll not touch her, none of you. I’m
