Just like Phin. He took a spot shoulder-to-shoulder with his friends of a few months and stared at the flaming ship that seemed, in many ways, more familiar than the Sumter. Maybe he was still green. He had taken well to the military training Semmes had been instilling in them, but the point remained that he wasn’t a naval officer. Just a businessman who loved the sea. And this wasn’t the kind of business he was used to.
Across the water, a great snap split the air, and the mainmast of the Rocket came crashing down. The ship tilted. For now, the heat from the blaze still touched his face, heightening just slightly the temperature of the balmy Caribbean night. But soon enough it would slip under the concealing waves. Disappear, the heat along with the substance.
Commander Semmes turned from his spot at the rail. As always, his shoulders were squared, his chin level, his spine straight. “Yonder sinks the testament to our mission, men. May she be the first of many. And may her loss be a blow to all Yankee-doodledom.”
A chorus of muted agreement rippled through the gathered crowd. Phin whispered his “Hear, hear” along with the others and watched the ocean consume the flames. When the last tongue of orange disappeared beneath the waves, when darkness reigned on the sea once more, he turned and headed down to his hammock.
Lantern light cast a steady glow over their cramped quarters, the shadows sharp and deep. Phin settled into his hammock, tired but not ready to sleep. So instead he pulled out the book into which he’d placed the photographs he’d brought from home.
The first was of his parents. They looked staid and somber here, but Phin smiled at the memory of the pride in their eyes when they saw him off. His father had tried to talk him into gathering a regiment and staying near home, but hunkering down in the marshes held no appeal. Instead, he had let his mother pull all the strings her family’s connections gave her to secure this appointment aboard the Confederacy’s first commissioned cruiser.
The next photo revealed the face of his baby sister, Sassy—Saphrona might not be a baby anymore at seventeen, but she had certainly lived up to his nickname for her. Her parting instruction had been, “Go defeat some Yankees, Phin, and make me proud. I shall die if I have to claim a coward for a brother.”
He slid those two back into their spots and smiled at the third picture, the one that had come in the first packet of letters he received in New Orleans. The prettiest features in all the Low Country dimpled up from the paper. Even in a photo, her grin conveyed imagined mischief. Her eyes seemed to gleam with that laughing light that was pure Delia.
Spencer, in the hammock above his, leaned over and grabbed the picture from his hands. “Haven’t you memorized this by now?”
Phin clamped down on the urge to leap out of his hammock and instead folded his arms behind his head. “Spence, one of these days you’re going to snatch something from the wrong man’s hands and get a fist in your nose.”
Spencer chuckled, then sighed. “If Mabel looked like this, I’d have married her before I left. Still not sure why you didn’t at least put a ring on her finger.”
He would have, if he could. Cordelia Owens was everything he’d ever wanted in a wife, and more besides. He’d always liked her, had long considered her the best of his sister’s friends. But when she’d come home from finishing school so beautiful . . . well, every man in Savannah had been vying for her attention, and who was Phin to win it? Sure, their families were friends. The Dunns were respectable. They owned a beautiful house in the city and a plantation on Tybee Island off the coast.
But some of the other men seeking her favor owned far more—and Mr. Owens had made it quite clear that he intended to approve only the offers for his daughters that would be financially advantageous to him. With no sons to his name, Owens meant to parcel off his own holdings to his daughters, with the goal of their being able to add his land to their husbands’ lands and build an empire. Create some of the biggest, most successful plantations in Georgia.
Hence the quick marriage between Ginny and Charlie Worth before Charlie went off to war. His plantation in the hill country abutted the Owenses’ rice plantation. Every man in Georgia knew that Cordelia’s dowry would be the indigo plantation her mother had brought to the marriage, nearer to Atlanta. And Lacy would be left with the house in Savannah someday.
It was all he could do to force the smile to stay on his lips. “Frankly, I’m not sure her parents would have allowed it had I tried. When I asked permission to write to her, her father made it quite clear he didn’t intend to encourage her to wait for me.”
No, he’d rather gotten that hard glint in his eye and said, “I like you, Phineas. I like your family. But Tybee?” And he’d shaken his head.
All a man was to Reginald Owens was what he owned.
But Delia was Owens’s soft spot, and he hadn’t been able to deny her request to correspond with Phin. For whatever reason, she favored him, it seemed. Of all those other men . . . He didn’t know why. And he wasn’t about to question it too much. She favored him, which meant there was some hope she wouldn’t already be married to someone else by the time he got home. So, he’d just have to make sure her affections stayed strong—hence the letters sent home every time he could manage it.
“Are you joking?” Spencer’s face appeared again, upside down and incredulous. “Why wouldn’t he approve of you? You’re . . . you’re a Southern paragon, man.”
“Hardly.” The word emerged on a laugh. “The Dunn holdings are rather modest compared to Owens’s. He owns two enormous plantations, plus the house in Savannah.”
Either Spencer looked a bit troubled by this, or Phin was just no good at reading upside-down expressions. His friend handed the photograph back. “Maybe you should have stayed close to home, then. Raised a regiment like all your friends and cousins. You’d probably still be stationed in Savannah, or near it, and could see her once in a while.”
“And miss the chance to share a narrow little room with all these fine sailors and marines?” Grinning, he swept an arm out, encompassing the rows of hammocks three high and running the length of the room. “Never.”
Gleason looked up from his repose across from him. “Spencer has a point. Seems to me you’d have been more inclined to stay in your own territory, with your slaves to do the work for you.”
The suggestion grated. He was one of the few sailors aboard who even owned slaves, which made the others look at him in a certain way. He’d never tried to explain that it wasn’t a situation his family particularly liked, but there was nothing they could do about it, aside from sell everything off. Georgia law no longer allowed a man to free his slaves.
“That’s not what I was looking for in a war experience.” Phin pulled out pen and paper. If they did land in Cuba, he’d have a whole packet of letters ready to post. “Frankly, I would have taken up the call for privateers if it had seemed logical. But with the blockade, my uncle advised against it. Considered becoming a runner, but my mother begged me not to, to join up instead. So, this was the best alternative.”
“Even though it pulled you away from your ladylove.”
Ladylove. He shook his head, his fingers penning her name with care. Bachelorhood had treated him well thus far. Free to sail wherever he pleased, to take his tour of Europe. Ma said he had itchy feet, which was true as not.