For the Love of Livian

**Also available on iBooks and Kobo!**

Sequel to The Destiny of Jim Hawkins

In The Destiny of Jim Hawkins, Jim returns to England with his share of pirate gold, and a future filled with uncertainty, hope, and adventure. His graduation as a surgeon takes him aboard a British warship to the slave–dependent West Indies and to the pre-revolutionary, rebellious American colonies.

In For the Love of Livian, Dr. Jim Hawkins marries Livian, and accepts a position at Haslar Royal Naval Hospital. At Haslar, he fights to maintain his ideals as he works in a hospital run more like a prison, with ghosts, secrets, lies, treachery, deceit, and murder.

With his life threatened, danger is ever present as Jim struggles to discover a cure for his beautiful, hearing-impaired wife, expose the ugly secrets of his colleagues, and defy the culture of slavery that existed in 18th century England.
The multiple plots and intrigue in this action-adventure story never let up and will keep you riveted until the very end.

Excerpt from the book:

August 1772 Haslar Royal Naval Hospital, Gosport, England

It was the middle of the night when Buldark turned over on his side in his hospital bed and listened for any noises other than the alcohol-induced, hoarse snoring and grunting that he expected to be spewed from the hundred other patients on the ward. Satisfied that no one else was up and about, and that the night nurses were asleep as well, he reached under his bed, grabbed the pig’s bladder of rum that he would use to bribe the sentinel. Already dressed, he quietly pulled the coarse linen sheet away from his body, rose and crept carefully towards the rear door on A Block.

In the darkness, he could see nothing, but feeling his way slowly, he stopped at the third bed, firmly gripped the man’s mouth, and squeezed hard, covering it so that the man would not cry out when so rudely awakened. Cole’s eyes opened wide when his breathing was cut short and his arms thrashed under the blanket but were held down by Buldark’s full body weight.

Recognizing who it was that held him, Cole ceased his instinctive struggle and relaxed. Buldark released his hand and body weight from Cole to let him pull back his own covers and slowly get up from the bed.

Following their plan, they made their way in the dark to the last bed on the ward. Buldark repeated his previous actions and clasped his hand fully on the black man’s mouth while holding his blanket down to suppress any noise. Frightened out of his sleep, but aware of what was happening, the man nodded to Buldark that he was awake. Buldark released his iron-like grip, strengthened like a vise from his years pulling halyards at sea, and allowed the man known as Willy to rise.

The man known as Willy had been named William by the ship’s captain aboard the HMS Glasgow because he couldn’t pronounce Willy’s given African name. The captain had bought him in Jamaica as a present for his wife in Portsmouth but when Willy took ill with the fever, the captain dumped him at the hospital never to see him again.

Buldark, Cole and Willy knew the halls of Haslar Royal Naval Hospital well. All three had been residents for four months. They knew where to steal food and liquor and more importantly had learned where the stairs were that led them to the rear door opening to the back of the hospital.

The three of them crept carefully in their bare feet down the stairway and made their way out the unlocked rear door that opened to the wide expanse leading to the fence nearest the water’s edge. Willy followed Buldark as they passed the main entrance with Cole in the rear never losing sight of Willy. They walked with purpose but did not run.

The moonless night concealed them from being spotted by the sentinels as they scurried across the five hundred yards to where Buldark had arranged to meet Lemmings, the night sentinel assigned to this section of the huge 95-acre hospital complex. The bladder of rum was for Lemmings, who demanded it in return for letting the two patients bring their ‘friend’ to the water’s edge to transfer him to the slavers’ dinghy.

The two slavers had secured their boat on shore and were waiting out of sight near the sentinel, waiting for his signal, when Buldark, Willy, and Cole reached the fence.

Buldark had Cole and Willy wait twenty paces back, while he cautiously approached the ten-foot high fence and found Lemmings in the darkness.

“Lemmings.” said Buldark in a harsh whisper. “Is it you?”

“Aye, it is, and lucky it is for you I didn’t get assigned to some other post tonight,” responded Lemmings, unshouldering his musket and holding it cross ways ready to use it if necessary. He knew these so-called patients were ‘impressed’ men and one step from the gallows with nothing to lose.

“Do you have the rum?” Lemmings asked harshly. Like many of the sentinels, he had been drinking already this night, stultified by the boredom of shuffling along the fences of the hospital grounds.

“I do and it’s a full pig’s bladder worth.”

“Then pass it through the gate before I does another thing,” slurred Lemmings.

Buldark shoved the rum filled soft container through the fence bars where Lemmings grabbed it, hefted it and said in a voice loud enough for Cole and Willy to hear. “It seems to be the right size.”

Buldark said as quietly as he could. “Keep your voice low, will ya! Are the slavers here?”

“Don’t you be telling me what to say or how to say it.” Lemmings said loudly. “They’re down on the rocks waiting; been there for more than an hour. But I got to know something. How much are you selling the black slave for? A pretty penny, I’d bet.”

“Quiet down!” said Buldark. “Be quiet! You’ll ruin this!”

But the damage was already done. In the darkness of mid-summer, this half-drunken bellowing of Lemmings reached all the way back to Willy, where he was waiting behind a tree with Cole. The look on Willy’s face turned immediately from apprehension to outright fear and anger. He turned to Cole. “You told me I was a free man when the London court had its ruling in June. You told me you was taking me to a boat to escape this hospital prison. Now what did I hear? I hear that you two are selling me to slavers. The hell you will!”

With that Willy got up from his haunches, scrambled to his feet and started to run. Reacting quickly, Cole tripped him. When Willy fell, Cole jumped on him and tried to hold him down. The two rolled on the grass as each, in turn, struggled for an advantage. Willy kept trying to get up and Cole kept holding him.

“Buldark!” Cole yelled. “I need help!”

Buldark quickly ran back to help Cole subdue Willy. Buldark knew that his trick had been discovered and that Willy’s transfer to the men waiting on shore would not to be a peaceful one. He was determined that conscious or unconscious, Willy was going to be aboard that boat and they were going to pocket the slaver’s fee of £20.

Buldark jumped on Willy and smashed his jaw as hard as he could. But Willy took the blow and was still conscious and full of fight. He yelled “You bastards. You….lied to me!”

By now Lemmings could hear the men fighting and realized that if the loud noise and struggle attracted other sentries he would be out of his job and maybe imprisoned in a jail cell for aiding escapees.

Lemmings quickly unlocked the gate and came upon the three men with his musket at the ready.

Cole and Buldark were holding Willy and without so much as a moment to consider any other alternative, Lemmings aimed the butt end of his musket and with all his strength delivered a long, swift, and fatal stroke that smashed Willy’s forehead in. His head snapped back as Cole and Buldark let him slip to the ground, the life spirit gone from his body.

The three men stood and stared at Willy, knowing that he was dead. Buldark made sure by putting his ear next to Willy’s mouth but could detect nothing.

“Ya killed him, for sure, damn you!” rasped Buldark. “Now I got nothing.”

“What’ll we do now?” Cole said to no one in particular. The death of a black man, once a slave, meant nothing to him. But he was worried about being found out. It would mean the gallows in the short and efficient manner with which the British dealt with murderers.

Thinking quickly, Buldark gave commands to each of the men. “Lemmings, get back outside the fence. Tell the slavers this night is not for them and get them on their way as quietly as you can. Me and Cole will bury Willy. Now move! Cole, pick up his feet, I’ll grab him around his chest!”

Lemmings moved quickly to the gate and did as he was directed while Buldark and Cole lifted up Willy’s lifeless body and started carrying his dead weight in the direction of the Hospital’s graveyard.

Buldark and Cole had to carry their awkward load 100 yards to the graveyard at the rear of the hospital grounds. It was a difficult effort, and more than once, Cole lost his grip and dropped the body.

When they got to the graveyard, a place of unmarked graves where thousands of diseased sailors had been buried since the hospital’s opening, they laid the body down while Cole rested and Buldark went in search of a newly dug gravesite. He wanted to find a gravesite where the ground was soft and the dirt would be easy to remove. He wanted to bury Willy’s body on top of another, so he would not be found.

When he found a fresh grave, Buldark came back to where Cole was resting next to Willy’s body. They picked him up and laid him next to the gravesite. With nothing but their hands and tree branches as shovels, they clawed and scooped the loose dirt until they had made it two feet down. It took the better part of a half an hour and they stopped digging when they felt the linen wrapped corpse of the body beneath them.

“That’ll be enough dirt to cover him,” said Buldark.

“I hate this business,” said Cole. “Why did he have to hit him so hard?”

“It’s done. It is. We can’t take it back. What the hell else can we do?

They hauled Willy’s body for the last time and stretched him out in the shallow grave, face up. Buldark was just about to start shoveling dirt in when Cole stopped him. “Wait a minute,” said Cole.

He fished into Willy’s pockets and pulled out a coin and placed it over one of Willy’s eyes. Even in the darkness, Cole could read the inscription on the coin. He read it aloud and was visibly disturbed when it said “Am I not your brother, am I not a man?”

“Oh, my good god, we’ve killed a man!” Cole almost wept.

“Quit your crying and let’s finish the job,” barked Buldark. “We didn’t kill him, Lemmings did. If that makes you feel better! Now help me cover him up.”

“No. Wait.” Cole pulled a coin out of his own pocket and placed it over Willy’s other eye.

“What’s the second one for, ya superstitious heathen?”

“To give him some money to pay the ferryman at the River to the Netherworld.”

They quickly shoveled dirt over the body, ran back to the hospital, tip-toed up the stairs and went their way silently to their beds. Cole laid awake the rest of the night, his guilty heart beating at twice its normal rate while Buldark slept soundly.