“YOUR GRAM,” PADDY had told Cassie one afternoon after she and Rosa quarreled and she’d spent the day sulking in silence, “she’s a lot like you. Stubborn. Says she don’t need nobody.” Paddy leaned back against the tree trunk they were sitting under and puffed on his pipe. “She’s a good liar. I’ll tell you that saved our skins more than once. But she’s still a liar.”
Cassie had held her breath, not wanting to disturb his reverie, knowing that there was a story coming. Paddy’s eyes grew distant as if he himself were traveling back half a century and thousands of miles to a time when ordinary people had to choose between the comfort of compliance and the risk of taking action to save others.
“Was my own damn fault,” he began. “Should’ve never have let her talk me into the tomfoolery to begin with. Stealing a ship loaded with six hundred refugees right from under the Nazis’ noses? While Marshal Petain, the leader of Vichy France, and all his troops were in town, to boot.”
He shook his head, tapped his pipe bowl. “But Rosa pulled it off. Saved me and my mates and other soldiers trapped in Marseilles at the same time. We overpowered the guards, skived off in the dead of night, the good Lord sending a nice blanket of mist and fog to cover our escape. It was so bold, so damned audacious, that the Vichy covered it up. One thing you can always count on with the French—their arrogance. No way Petain was gonna slink to his Nazi handlers and ask for help finding us, not after his own special troops had let the Sinaia escape—carrying six hundred people on the Nazi’s most-wanted list.
“I should have been thrilled as we sped toward Gibraltar and freedom. Here I was having survived shipwreck, encounters with the Vichy and Nazis, and this fisherman from Clifden, a lowly radio operator, enlisted man, was now the captain of a ship, responsible for saving six hundred civilians and thirty-two British soldiers and officers. But it didn’t feel right, not having Rosa by my side. And it didn’t feel right that I should want her there at all after how angry she made me....”
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PADDY HAD NEVER in his life thought to meet a woman so infuriating. Not even a woman. This lass was not yet eighteen, for all her airs of command. Girl thought she was a bloody queen, way she ordered him around! To hell with her. He didn’t care if she had saved his life—twice now. Didn’t care how many lives she had saved. He was better off without her, damned woman would be the death of him yet!
Rosa Costello would do as she damned well please, just as she always did. The sooner she was out of his life the better. Except it probably would have been easier if he hadn’t asked her to marry him—twice now. And if he hadn’t kissed her, made love to her. Or if he hadn’t fallen in love with her.
“Rosa, come with us, come with me,” he’d pleaded before they parted on the dock once he realized the diversion she’d planned meant she’d be staying behind. “For once, let someone else take the risk.”
She looked at him as if she no longer spoke English. “I don’t understand.”
“These people—you’ve done all you can for them. You know you’ll only get caught if you stay here. And they, they don’t—” He looked down at his scraped knuckles, unable to break her heart by telling her the truth of how the people she helped viewed her.
“They think I’m a dirty, gypsy whore looking to rob and cheat them.”
“You know? Then why? Why stay, put yourself in danger for bigots who are just as bad as the Nazis themselves?”
“They only treat me as gaje have always treated my people. The same as my people treat the gaje.” She shrugged a shoulder. “If I don’t save them, who will?”
“Please come with us. Save yourself.”
She frowned, seemed ready to trust him with some great secret. Instead, she unwrapped the heavy velvet quilt from around her shoulders and pressed it into his hands. “Take this. Keep it safe for me. There’s one more thing I need to do. But I’ll join you. Soon. I promise.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him. “I’ll find you, Padraic Hart. You can’t hide from me, Fisherman.”
The sound of dogs baying and men shouting had distracted him. The Vichy searching for the man—Rosa—who’d bombed the customs house. He turned to search the night, gauging how close they were. And dropped his hand from her arm. Just long enough for her to slip free from his embrace and vanish into the shadows.
Now Paddy paced the tiny confines of the Sinaia’s wheelhouse, cursing with each step. If he didn’t have six hundred-some lives depending on him, he would have dashed after Rosa, stopped her, hauled her back on board kicking and screaming if need be. Even knowing the consequences if he did go after her, he still found his hand on the hatch, had to force himself to step away, return to his post and wait for the signal that they were free of the mooring lines holding them at the dock.
The signal that might announce Rosa’s death. His stomach clutched at the thought and his anger fled. Rosa had out-maneuvered him—again. She’d known exactly what to say to get his temper boiling, to push him away from her exactly when she needed him most.
Not that she’d ever admit any such thing. Stubborn witch. Did he really want to spend the rest of his life with a woman who could make his blood sear, who could outwit him, and who might look like an angel, but who had killed more men in her short life than most of the soldiers on board the Senaia?
Alarms blared through the night as search lights cut through the velvet fog that cloaked Marseilles. Gunshots tore the air. Paddy cringed as if they’d slammed into his own flesh. He imagined a too-thin body hurtling to the ground, crimson gushes of blood marring her creamy skin, and blinked back tears.
Dex, looking imposing in his stolen prefecture uniform, appeared in the hatchway. “Lines are cut, we’re free.”
Paddy nodded, his hands closing over the ship’s wheel. “Raise the anchor.”
The three words tore through him as painful as bullets. He stared into the night, grateful for the cover of fog, but cursing his inability to see more than glimpses of light and movement on the docks below. The tide was with them; they wouldn’t be firing up the engines until they were out of earshot, but they needed Rosa’s diversion to last long enough for them to raise anchor—a noisy affair at the best of times.
She had to be alive, he told himself as the lights moved away from the docks and into the narrow alleyways beyond. They’re still chasing her. She’s alive—please Lord, let’s keep it that way?
The wheel shuddered beneath his hands as the Senaia slipped free from the docks, past the other ships, and out to sea. The fog closed about her and it was as if she never existed.
A ghost ship ferrying six hundred souls to freedom.