Even the other man had paused to stare at Rhiannon. “Well, this certainly complicates matters, Connor,” he said, his brown eyes amused.
“Only if we let it.” And then, frowning: “What the blazes are you doing all the way out here? You’re a long way from England.”
“My friend Alannah here invited me to accompany her to Barbados, and since I wanted an adventure, I came along. Oh, I can’t wait to write to Gwyneth and tell her all about what you just did for us; you saved our lives, Captain Merrick! Thank you!” It was all Rhiannon could do not to fling her arms around his neck in relief and gratitude. “Oh, thank you!”
The American’s green eyes crinkled with humor.
And Alannah, seeing the unspoken connection between Rhiannon and this man who had so audaciously taken their ship, and was now looking just a little too long, and with a little too much interest—the wrong kind of interest—at the girl she was charged to protect, wasn’t so forgiving. Especially since there was something disturbingly familiar about him.
“I don’t care who you are, or what you did in Portsmouth, but I will say this,” she spat. “I demand that you return this ship to her rightful captain and allow us to continue on our way to Barbados. Because if you do not, I can guarantee you that this will be the last ship you and that—that piratical-looking vessel of yours out there will ever take as a prize.”
“Oh? And by what authority do you make such a threat, ma’m?”
“By the authority vested in my brother! Vice Admiral Sir Graham Falconer!”
If that proclamation was intended to intimidate, impress or cow the two men, it had a completely opposite effect. The Yankee privateer turned and looked at his companion, and suddenly both of them began laughing.
“Thought she looked familiar,” Captain Merrick said as an aside to his lieutenant, before the two started laughing all over again.
“You think this is funny, do you?!” Alannah cried, stamping one small foot. “When my brother hears of what you’ve done, he’ll string you up to his flagship’s yardarm and hang you by the neck until you’re dead!”
At this, Captain Merrick only laughed all the harder, until finally taking pity on the bristling Alannah.
“Sir Graham will do no such thing,” he said. “Your pretty young companion here recognized me without ever having seen me, but you, madam, met me eight years ago when your brother married my sister Maeve. I’m surprised you don’t remember me. Must be the hat, eh, Nathan?”
“Aye, Con. Must be the hat.”
Alannah’s mouth fell open and she paled in dawning realization and horror.
“Dear God in heaven,” she breathed, staring at him. “I thought your surname sounded familiar. My brother . . . your sister. . . .”
“Yes, and stringing me up to the yardarm with a noose ‘round my neck would, shall we say, complicate things in their marriage. Nathan? What do you think? Shall we make for Barbados and deliver these two ladies to the admiral in person? Pay Sir Graham and Lady Falconer a little social call?”
Alannah recovered herself. “You can’t just sail into Barbados, this is a Yankee privateer and our countries are at war!”
“So they are,” Captain Merrick said blithely. “And far be it from me to do anything but take full advantage of that fact, because wars like this make people like me, rich. Now, ladies, say goodbye to this leaky old tub. Your passage to Barbados is about to get a whole lot faster.”
Alannah just stood there, gaping and at a loss for words.
But Rhiannon’s eyes were sparkling with anticipation and delight. All her life, she had longed for adventure such as her sisters had had. She had watched as Morganna had found love in the arms of a handsome suitor, and then as Gwyneth got swept away by her dark and dangerous marquess. And now here she was, rescued in the nick of time from bloodthirsty pirates and about to be put aboard a Yankee privateer captained by none other than the most admired, elusive, talked-about, and yes, hunted man in Portsmouth–the audacious, recklessly brave, startlingly handsome Black Wolf. He’d outsmarted the Royal Navy and made the pulse of every woman in that city beat a little faster. And now he was making Rhiannon’s pulse beat a whole lot faster.
Nathan left to do his captain’s bidding, Alannah stormed out in a huff, and Rhiannon took a step and sucked in her breath in pain.
Captain Merrick’s easy smile faded, and his sharp green gaze went to her feet.
“What ails you, madam?”
“I fell going down the hatch,” Rhiannon said, her cheeks going hot. “Twisted my ankle.”
“I see.” Then, before she could protest, he stepped forward and swung her easily up into his arms, grinning as Alannah, marching back into the cabin to see what was taking Rhiannon so long, began to sputter.
“Put her down!” she snapped. “That is most ungentlemanly of you, sir!”
“On the contrary, ma’m, only a cad would make a lady walk on a twisted ankle. Now do make haste. We’ve got squalls out yonder, the seas are building beneath our feet and I’d like to get this business underway.” He shifted Rhiannon’s weight in his arms and began to walk with businesslike authority from the cabin, easily negotiating the growing pitch and roll of the ship. She could feel the solid strength of his chest against her arm, caught his scent of bay rum and salt spray, and thought, quite happily, that she had never experienced anything quite so heady and wonderful as the sensation of being carried in a handsome man’s arms as though she weighed no more than chaff on the wind. Oh, sweet Lord, this was going to be one exciting adventure indeed.
* * *
“Wind’s picking up, sir. More squalls approaching from the southeast.”
Captain Merrick, pressing her face against the hard wall of his chest so she wouldn’t see the carnage on the deck above, had carried her like some prize of war from the merchantman onto the low, racy deck of his privateer, hove to with sails banging and slatting against the wind, the man at the tiller looking nervously off at the dark clouds that boiled up on the horizon and cast an eerie green glow over the sea. Now, the schooner, its long bowsprit and jib-boom angling far up and out over the swells parading relentlessly toward them, swung into action as orders were hastily given and carried out.
“Reef the main right down, double lash the guns, and get another headsail on her,” Captain Merrick said, with a quick glance up at the pennant snapping like gunshots in the wind so far above. He set Rhiannon down. “We’ll stay on the sta’b’d tack and head northeast straight toward Barbados. I want to be well clear of that lee shore when this thing hits.”
“Aye, sir.”
Rhiannon, standing beside an uncharacteristically quiet Alannah, heard the low murmurs of the seamen around her.
“Barbados?”
“That’s a British naval port!”
“He’s crazy,” muttered a nearby sailor, with an admiring grin.
“Isn’t he always?”
“Aye, but ye can’t say it won’t be a fast passage.”
Captain Merrick ignored them all. “Toby, lad! Take these two ladies below and see that they’re comfortable. Mind Miss Evans’s ankle. Handily, now!”
Rhiannon clung to the weather shrouds as the deck began to buck like a horse beneath her. She looked at the merchantman that had brought them from England, already moving away under the command of the prize crew Captain Merrick had put aboard her. Farther off, the small boats carrying the pirates bobbed in the building seas as they sped back toward the safety of their lair, and Captain Merrick, who seemed to orchestrate the nervous chaos around him like some maestro in a Mozart symphony, was precise, calm, self-assured, and anything but worried as he glanced once more at the squall, coming in fast and hard.
Someone was tugging at Rhiannon’s elbow. Tearing her gaze from the captain, she saw a young lad standing there beside her. He had a face full of freckles, salt-smeared spectacles, and a shock of curling red hair blowing wildly from out beneath his round hat.
“Captain says you need to follow me,”
he yelled above the wind, now beginning to whistle and scream through lines and shrouds. “It’s safer below.”
Alannah found her voice. “It won’t be if we capsize!”
“We won’t capsize. My uncle Brendan designed this grand old lady, my grandpa built her, and the most competent and capable master in the world commands her. But the seas are already washing through the scuppers, ma’m, and none of us’ll be able to save you if ye get swept overboard.”
“Toby, damn you, make haste!” roared Captain Merrick.
“Aye, Captain!” The boy offered one elbow to Rhiannon, the other to an increasingly green-looking Alannah and, bracing himself against the schooner’s roll as she began to heel over hard in the wind, hurried them toward the nearest hatch, Rhiannon limping and holding on to the young man for dear life.
They managed to get below, and Toby guided them aft. An unlit tin lantern swung wildly from a hook bolted to the deck beams above, and the only illumination in the small, darkening cabin came from an overhead skylight and the stern windows, which the lad ran to double latch against the mountainous waves that reared and broke like things possessed just beyond.
“This is Con’s cabin,” the lad said. “You’ll be safe enough here, but we’ll be closing the hatches as soon as I’m back topside to prevent flooding below. Hang on tight, and I’ll be back as soon as we’re through the worst of it.”
He touched his hat to them and was gone.
And as the eerie, black-green squall began to fill the view of the windows behind them, Rhiannon, clinging once again to Alannah, had never felt more frightened in her life.
* * *
“I’m sorry, Rhiannon. Spared from slaughter, only to die in a storm at sea . . . I should never have invited you along with me to spend the winter in Barbados with my brother and his family, it was selfish of me, madness—”
“Oh, stop, Alannah, it’ll be an adventure.”
“How can you be so calm? We’re going to die. . . .”
“Captain Merrick is not going to let us die.”
“Captain Merrick might look and act like a Greek god, but he has no more power to command the wind and waves than you or I.”
“No, but he does command this ship, and I’m quite certain he knows what he’s doing up there.”
The other woman had made her unsteady way to the neatly-made-up bunk and there, sank to her knees on the deck flooring, her arms on the coverlet, her head buried in them as though in prayer. The schooner heeled over even further, shuddering as the full force of the wind slammed into her, and Rhiannon fought down an involuntary sense of panic as she heard shouted commands from the deck above. On the table nearby a pewter tankard began to slide, and she grabbed it before it could tumble off and hit the deck flooring.
“Besides, Alannah, if we were all going to die, I daresay Captain Merrick would look a lot more worried than he did when we last saw him. Did he look scared? Worried, alarmed, or upset? No, he looked like he was actually enjoying this, that it was a challenge to him.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him . . . we were both at that wedding between our siblings all those years ago . . . . Ohhhhh, I feel so sick. . . .”
Alannah was getting greener by the moment.
“Lie down, Alannah. Get in the bunk and close your eyes. Hold my hand. Think of someplace else . . . such as . . . such as how excited you’ll be when we reach Barbados and you get to see your little nephew and nieces!”
“We’ll never reach Barbados. . . .”
“Yes we will, just . . . faster than we expected.”
Alannah, pale and sweating, only moaned, and with Rhiannon’s help managed to get into the bunk. Quickly, Rhiannon cast her gaze around the storm-darkened cabin, looking for a bucket, a pail, anything, before her friend succumbed to the mal de mer brought on by the motion of the ship. She managed to grab a bowl and stagger back to Alannah just as the other woman sat up and began retching. Rhiannon sat beside her, rubbing her back, trying her best to soothe her in her misery.
“Fine admiral’s sister I make,” Alannah said weakly, lying back in the bunk.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Even Lord Nelson got seasick.”
“And how is it that you’re not, Rhiannon?”
“I don’t know. I guess some people are more vulnerable to it than others.” She took her friend’s cold, clammy hand. “I know you don’t think highly of him for capturing our ship, Alannah, but he did just save our lives.”
“Not yet he hasn’t. Besides, I don’t like the way he was looking at you.”
“Was he? Looking at me?”
Alannah made a noise of despair and put the back of her forearm over her eyes. “Lord Morninghall trusted me to watch over you until we can get to Barbados, where my brother can assume your guardianship . . . he’s not for you, Rhiannon. Forget what I just said.”
“But was he? Really looking at me?”
“Of course he was. But pay him no heed. Men like Captain Merrick are in the business of breaking hearts. He’ll take yours and snap it over his knee like there was no tomorrow.”
“You know nothing about him, Alannah!”
“I know what I see, and what I see is a charming rogue who knows very well how women react to him. He’ll ruin you, if you let him. And now, I don’t want to talk anymore . . . not about Captain Merrick, not about anything . . . dear God, Rhiannon, I think I’m going to be sick again.”
Rhiannon grabbed the bowl once more. Outside, the storm intensified, the noise of the wind now so loud that both women felt like they were in the very maelstrom of hell. The schooner rose on each towering crest, quivered beneath them as it bravely fought through wind and rain and furious seas, then smashed down into the troughs with an action that had Alannah soon huddled in a sweating, moaning, sobbing ball of misery on the bunk. Outside, rain slashed against the stern windows, and daring to look out, Rhiannon saw angry green seas beyond the glass in one instant, then black horizon in the next before it was obscured, once more, by the heaving swells.
The storm seemed to last for hours, though Rhiannon knew it couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes before they were through the worst of it. Eventually, the cabin seemed to lighten, and beyond the stern windows the sky began to show wedges of blue as the squall moved off. The heavy, laboring motion of the schooner began to ease, and Rhiannon realized that the unholy screaming of the wind through the rigging had lessened in pitch and now had subsided to a few strong, brief gusts.
She stroked her friend’s arm and let out a long, relieved breath. “I think it’s over.”
There was a discreet cough just outside the door before it was pushed hesitantly open. Young Toby stood there dripping rain or seawater or both, and blushing a bit as his gaze found Rhiannon. He bowed, trying hard to be gallant and gentlemanly despite his tender age.
“Captain’s respects, ladies, and he inquires about your welfare. The squall has passed.”
“We’re fine . . . a little shaken up, but fine.”
“He also says there’s something topside that he thought ye might enjoy seeing. If you’d both come with me?”
“You go,” Alannah said weakly. “I’m not quite recovered enough to go up on deck.”
The youngster looked at her appraisingly. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’m, but you might feel better with some fresh air and the sight of the horizon.”
“I’ll be up in a little while . . . for now, take Rhiannon.”
Rhiannon hesitantly tried her ankle, and though it still hurt, it was able to bear weight. Together, she and Toby ascended the hatch and emerged on a wet, still heeling deck under a sky that was blinding white with sunlight. After the darkness below, she stood blinking as rain dripped down from the rigging and sails above. Far off to leeward now, the squall was moving away; the horizon in all other directions was hard and bright and clear, the sea a deep cerulean blue.
“Miss Evans.” The captain came forward, looking wet and disheveled and virile, as though he
had enjoyed the life-or-death experience they’d just been through. “You survived.”
“Were we ever in any danger?”
“The business of any ship is to stay on that small bit of space between the sky and the bottom of the sea, otherwise known as the surface. The fact that we remain in that small bit of space is always cause for a prayer or two of thanksgiving.”
“So we were in danger.”
Grinning, he unbuttoned his pea coat. “If we were, we aren’t now.”
His warm gaze remained on her as he peeled the wet jacket from his body and tossed it over a nearby cannon—no, not cannon, Rhiannon thought; a cannon is called a gun when it’s aboard a ship—and Rhiannon, blushing, wondered if that same look was what Alannah had so objected to. Thank goodness her friend was below. It put a little quiver in her belly to have a man like Connor Merrick looking at her like that, and she felt a sudden, swift tingle in her breasts.
I could get used to having him look at me like that.
And then:
I wonder what it would be like to have him . . . kiss me.
She glanced down, afraid that he could read her thoughts, and found herself staring at his wet canvas trousers and bare feet. Bare feet! Had she ever seen a man’s bare feet before? Muscled thighs, strong ankles, and a sparse covering of hair from his knees on down drew her eye; her blood suddenly seemed too warm, and she realized that she was staring. She looked up and boldly met his smiling gaze. “You have something to show me, Captain?”
Besides your bare feet?
The corner of his mouth was twitching; he was obviously well aware that his bare legs had unsettled her. He offered his arm. “Aye. Come forward with me.”
As they moved past the schooner’s two sharply raked-back masts and up into the plunging bow of this sleek and beautiful craft, Rhiannon looked up and saw it—a rainbow, arcing clear across the zenith and filling the sky with dazzling bands of color. She clapped her hands in delight.
Lord Of The Sea Page 2
