Her knees nearly buckled.All this time…she was the one who had written it.
“You do not like it?”Caleb asked, confused.
She opened it, running her hand over the blank pages.Smiling through tears, she hugged it to her chest.“I love it.”
“’Twill make a fine book for your stories,” he said, pride glowing in his eyes.
If he only knew.
♥
Caleb leaned back in his chair and let the warmth spread through him, watching the faces gathered at his table—men and friends he’d bled and laughed with, now brought together for a quiet celebration of a hard-won victory and a far sweeter conquest, his engagement to the most astonishing woman he had ever known.
Desi sat near the head, lit by the glittering candles that set her cheekbones aglow.When her blue eyes found his across the table, something in him melted as if the sea itself had stilled.She was telling the crew stories of a future none of them could imagine, painting a world of iron roads and bridged oceans, of strange fashions and impossible machines.The officers listened as if to a play, shocked, fascinated, unbelieving.
Brandt kept his nose in a thin volume between bouts of glower; every so often he’d grunt and glance back at the book as if it might somehow explain away what he’d heard.Liam snorted, the old Irish humor sharpening his disbelief into ribald commentary.
“’Tis a right fairy tale, that one,” Liam scoffed, rolling the phrase like a coin.“Saints preserve us, ye don’t expect me to swallow that,” he added, half laughing, half incredulous.
Alden, who had never been given to frivolity, grew solemn as Desi spoke of the broken world she’d left and the wickedness to come.
Shorty and Keg, who’d earned their reputations with mischief and cannon fire, took refuge in their cups and noisy mirth, letting the wine crowd out the strangeness of the hour.
Ayida swept into the cabin with a tray of steaming boiled pudding.The galley’s spices of cinnamon, nutmeg, and the heavy scent of boiled banana followed her, folding into the smoke of candles and the faint tang of the sea.When her eyes met Caleb’s she inclined her head and smiled.The hard flare that used to live in her gaze was softened now; the cursed bone jangles now at the bottom of the sea.Despite warnings from Alden and Liam about her past, Caleb sensed honesty in her bearing, repentance, perhaps, or simply the weariness of a woman who’d paid dearly for her choices.
“And God healed my sister,” Desi said, voice bright as she leaned forward.“She was at death’s door—just days from it—and I prayed over her, just as your captain prayed for his crew.She rose from that bed and came home that very day.”
Brandt’s spectacles slid down his nose; he pushed them back and stared, the book forgotten.The peevish doctor’s mouth opened and closed like a man tasting a new truth.
Liam rubbed his chin, softer now.“After what me eyes have seen with this God of yers, I believe ye, Miss.”
Alden’s face finally cracked into a smile.
Shorty and Keg topped their cups and sang a line of some old sea ditty that had nothing to do with miracles and everything to do with relief.
Brandt set his book aside with a long, reluctant breath.“I believe I shall have to look into this God of yours,” he admitted at last, the scholarly curiosity in him pricking through the sceptic’s skin.
Caleb’s chest swelled.He had prayed, argued, lectured, and recited Scripture to little avail.And in his years, he’d never seen Brandt’s cold reserve pierced so quickly.It had taken a woman from another age—her testimony, plain and whole—to crack the doctor’s armor.“Then, good doctor,” Caleb said, extending the invitation as if it were a salve, “come to my family home in Jamaica.Hear more tales like this one.You’ll find it…edifying.”
Ayida moved around the table, ladling pudding into bowls with a practiced hand.“Dis God of yours,” she observed in her Creole cadence, “He far more powerful dan de dark spirits.”
“That He is,” Caleb answered, voice steady.Pride and something softer—gratitude—wove through him.Perhaps, he thought, he had not lost the gift of persuasion after all.Perhaps the Lord still used him.
He took Desi’s hand then, closing the span between them with a warmth that needed no words.“You must meet my family,” he told her.“They will adore you.”
“Family?”she said, cheeks flushing, eyes wide, as if she’d not considered such a thing.Or perhaps it terrified her.
“What will you do with the Ring?”Alden asked, spoon poised, the question floating between the clink of cutlery and the low hum of conversation.
“What my father wished,” Caleb said simply, tasting the pudding, sweet, spiced, comforting, and letting the truth sit on his tongue.“Which is why we have not raised sail.”
Alden’s approval was a small, solid thing as he nodded and smiled.Liam swirled the last of his wine in his goblet and offered, half in jest, half in earnest.“I’m happy to take it off yer hands, Cap’n.Consider it as good as destroyed.”
Caleb chuckled.“Though I’m obliged for your offer, I wouldn’t give it to the devil himself for all the wealth in the world.Nay, the Ring and its evil power must be destroyed.”
The words settled like an anchor in his mind.The thought of the Ring lingering in the world made his skin prickle.The sooner it was gone, the better, for Desi, for the crew, for the fragile peace they were all learning to keep.
Outside, the sea murmured against the hull, a steady hymn to the small human joys gathered there tonight—food, fellowship, repentance, and the promise of a new life stitched across time.
