Overhead, the ropes creaked and the sails whined as though mourning with them. The sailors stood at the railing, Sarah’s body wrapped in canvas on a plank held between them.

“‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts,’” the captain went on, reading aloud in his strong baritone from the Book of Common Prayer. “‘Shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, thou most worthy Judge eternal. Suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee.’”

The Lord knew the secrets of their hearts.

Joseph shifted, his suit coat and cravat constricting him. He had half a mind to unbutton his coat, but what good would that do? He’d be just as uncomfortable. His secrets would still strangle him, the secrets that were bare before the Judge eternal.

Joseph had certainly done his best to conceal his indiscretion with Mercy from two days ago when he’d kissed her so shamelessly in his cabin. Hiding the deed from the other passengers had been easy enough. Even now, Mercy, standing on the main deck below with her arms around the girls from her cabin, hadn’t looked up at him as he stood next to the captain on the quarterdeck. They could be strangers to each other for all the interaction they’d had since she’d walked away from his cabin—since he’d let her walk away.

He could conceal the kiss and their shared passion from the rest of the ship, but he couldn’t hide it from himself. No matter how hard he tried not to think about kissing her, the moment of holding her and tasting her and wanting her refused to fade from his mind. If anything, his remembrance only fueled his need for her, the need to be with her again and kiss her without ceasing.

Even as he longed for her, he loathed his weak will, loathed the heat that speared him and the way his body betrayed him. He’d prided himself on being strong, a man of virtue and integrity, on possessing more self-control than other men.

And yet in the end he’d proven he wasn’t any stronger. He’d allowed his passion to overrule his good judgment. He’d given of his affection and his ardor when he should have saved it.

“‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God,’” said the captain, “‘in His wise providence to take out of this world the soul of our deceased sister, we therefore commit her body to the deep.’”