* * *
Wrapped in the gentle embrace of his new bride, Connor Merrick lay dreaming.
As he drifted down through the tiers of sleep, his mind traveled back over the years and he was once again a boy, maybe Ned’s age, maybe a year or two older, standing with fists clenched and chin mutinous while the other boys circled him and called him names.
“You’re stupid!” taunted Jeremiah Lunt. “Stupid, stupid, stoo-pid!”
Connor took a swing at him.
“What’s seven times five, Connor?” piped up Tom Johnson, as he threw a ball over his head to Jeremiah. “Go ‘head, tell us what seven times five is!”
“He can’t,” jeered Jeremiah. “He’s stoo-pid.”
“You call me stupid once more and you’re going to be spitting out teeth,” Connor said, clenching his fists even harder.
“Oh? Then what year did Columbus discover America?”
“What’s a pronoun?”
“I’m still waiting for him to tell you what seven times five is.”
“He can’t, because he’s stoo-”
Connor’s temper exploded and he threw himself at Jeremiah, his fists flying. He may be stupid, but damn it all, he knew how to fight, and he’d teach Lunt a thing or two about calling people names—
‘Fight!” someone yelled, and then there was only his rage and Jeremiah trying to hit back, once, twice, before he panicked and tried to flee, but Connor ran him down and brought the other boy slamming to the ground, chin first, hitting him hard, harder—
“Connor Merrick!”
Someone was hauling him off Jeremiah, who lay crying in the dirt outside the little one-room schoolhouse. The red haze in front of his vision cleared and he found himself looking into the angry face of the teacher, Mr. Preble, whose hand had caught the fine linen of Connor’s shirt and now had it bunched in a choke-hold at his throat.
“Fighting again, Mr. Merrick?”
Connor struggled in the man’s grasp and around him the other boys started yelling.
“Connor started it!”
“Aye, Jem was just mindin’ his own business when Connor started swinging!”
Jeremiah, wiping at his bleeding nose, glared at Connor from sullen eyes. “Aye, he started it. Just because his boglander father went and made himself famous back in a stupid war that nobody cares about anymore—”
Connor lunged for the other boy. “Don’t you ever call my Da a boglander, he’s a hundred times the man your father ever was and ever will be!”
Mr. Preble grabbed him by the ear so hard that Connor expected to reach up and find blood. He dragged him away from the other boys and back into the cold schoolroom, but they followed him, their taunts ringing in his ears.
“Stoo-pid!”
Mr. Preble shoved him down into a chair, and he felt blistering pain as the teacher cracked him across the knuckles, hard, with a cane.
“You’ll never amount to anything, you worthless rapscallion,” the old man snarled. “You’re unteachable, you don’t pay attention, you’re as wild as your mother before you.”
“They called me stupid,” Connor said hotly. He massaged his knuckles, already turning red beneath the welts left by the cane.
Welts that joined those left from the last caning several days before.
“You are stupid, but it’s because you don’t pay attention! What is the matter with you? You spend your days looking out the window, starting trouble, failing tests, getting into fights. What do you think you have to prove, Mr. Merrick?”
Connor stood up.
“I’ll show you,” he said, meeting the teacher’s eyes. “I’m going to become a privateer just like my father. I’m going to make Newburyport proud, I’m going to make my family proud, and I’m going to be more famous than anyone this town has ever bred. You can take your damned primer and hornbook and stuff ‘em right up your arse!” And then, before the teacher could catch him he was off and running, not for home, because his own pride would never let him admit to his father and mother that Mr. Preble beat him on an almost daily basis, but toward the waterfront.
Where the seamen, the fishermen, the drunks, the troublemakers, and the old salts gathered.
Where nobody would ever call the son of Captain Brendan Jay Merrick stoo-pid.
Where he, Connor, felt right at home.
Chapter 16
Something was rubbing at her foot.
Rhiannon jerked it back and turned over. Light burned against her eyelids, and opening them, she saw that it was dawn.
The sun was on its way up, painting the eastern sky in bands of lemon, mango, and purple.
Again she felt something rubbing at her foot, and then, an impatient, “Meee-ow!”
Purring loudly, the cat padded up toward her face and began rubbing itself against Rhiannon’s nose. It was obviously hungry.
And its master was nowhere to be found.
Rhiannon sat up, groaning. She must look a sight. Her back was stiff from lying all night on the open deck. She felt sore between her legs, and her lips were tender and bruised from kissing.
“Meeeee-ow!”
She pulled the blanket around herself. Oh, God, the crew was surely going to come back soon, and she couldn’t think of a greater humiliation than to be seen in such a sorry state. She needed a bath, she needed a brush for her hair, she needed—
“Good morning, Rhiannon.”
It was her husband, coming up from the aft hatch and carrying a tray in his hands. He looked fresh and rested, the formal clothes from the previous evening long discarded in favor of his usual casual attire: canvas pantaloons cut off at the knee, an open shirt and the straw hat, through which the first rays of sun were already beginning to leave tiny checkers of light across one of his cheeks.
Oh, he looked delicious.
“Good morning, Connor.”
He came to sit beside her. The breeze, wafting over the water, picked at his open shirt and she longed to touch the tanned skin of his throat, to feel again the hard play of muscles underneath.
“I brought you some breakfast,” he said, and gently shoo-ing the cat aside, set the tray down on the deck. Delicious smells assailed her. Two mugs of strong black coffee, a pitcher of cream, cubes of sugar in a little pot, a spoon, and there, a chipped bowl of oatmeal. She picked up the bowl, its steam rising to fill her nose, its warmth delicious beneath her palms. It wasn’t just oatmeal but something more, something made with skill and care, thick and golden and liberally stuffed with big, plump raisins and chunks of exotic fruit.
“You made this?”
“I did.” He smiled disarmingly. “I’m not the smartest man to ever walk the earth, but I do know how to cook.”
“That’s a skill most sea captains probably don’t have,” she said, digging the spoon into the oatmeal. “Oh! This is good!”
“Aye, someone in the family had to learn how to cook,” he said, grinning. “God knows my mother never mastered the art.”
“Didn’t you have servants? A cook?”
“Oh, we did, but my mother enjoyed trying. Nearly poisoned us all whenever she’d set her mind to baking a pie or a cake.” He watched her tuck into the oatmeal, obviously delighted with her appetite. “I figured that if she couldn’t cook, maybe I could. Might come in useful some day.”
“It’s coming in useful right now. This is delicious.”
“I put mango in it, and papaya, too. And some spices we took off a recent prize bound for Europe.”
“Did you already eat?”
“I did. I’m an early riser, I confess.”
“Do you ever sit still, Connor Merrick?”
He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and perhaps he might have done more if it weren’t broad daylight with dozens of ships moored around them. “Not for long. Now finish up, because I have a surprise for you this morning.”
“A surprise?”
“Aye. Your next swimming lesson.”
* * *
What was she supposed
to wear?
He had found her an old black shirt that wouldn’t reveal too much when wet, a pair of cut-off canvas trousers that he said belonged to Toby and reached nearly to her ankles, and a straw hat, much like his own, to protect her fair face from the sun.
And then he began pacing the deck, back and forth, back and forth, as restless as ever as he waited for his crew to straggle back from a night of in-town carousing.
Nathan and Toby were the first to arrive. Toby blushed to the roots of his flaming red hair when he saw Rhiannon, and Nathan politely removed his hat to reveal his thick, sun-bleached locks. It didn’t take long for the rest of the crew to return, most of them sporting dark circles under their eyes, expressions of exhaustion and overindulgence, and the unmistakable signs of hangovers.
“And how was your wedding night, Capitaine?” asked Jacques, with a knowing grin. “Quite an outfit the missus has on there, eh?” He looked tipsy and a bit of drool followed the cleft of his split-scarred lip and clung to his chin, and it was surely only that which saved him from his captain’s ire as Connor turned irritably on him.
“My wedding night is none of your damned business, and have a care what you say around the new Mrs. Merrick or I’ll scald your arse in pig’s fat and feed you to the fishes.”
“Sorry, Capitaine. It’s the rum talking.”
Connor shook his head and gave him a good-natured shove. “Go to your hammock and sleep it off, you wretch.”
Jacques attempted to salute, turned green, and promptly vomited on the deck. Around him, laughter ensued.
Connor swore under his breath and relinquishing the deck to Nathan, took Rhiannon’s arm and guided her to the rail.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, glancing over his shoulder at Jacques, who was being given a mop and a bucket of seawater by an unsympathetic Nathan. “My crew are a bunch of ill-behaved rascals. Not good company for a lady, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll get used to them,” Rhiannon said cheerfully. “And really, Connor, I’m not so easily offended as all that.”
“Shall we head ashore then, for our lesson? I can rig a bosun’s chair if you like.”
Rhiannon gazed down at the clear, turquoise water below. “No. If I’m going to be the captain’s wife I need to learn how to be something of a sailor, and that means getting off a ship as well as getting on it.”
“What a brave girl you are!”
She laughed. She didn’t feel very brave. But she was determined, and that would have to do.
“I’ll go first,” he was saying. “Watch how I do it. Watch my hands, and where I put my feet. Watch how I hold this line in my hand.”
Nimbly, he put a leg over the rail and still holding her gaze, moved quickly down the side of the ship and into the boat that one of the returning crew had left bobbing in the water below.
It wasn’t that far down. Not really. Kestrel was a lean, trim vessel, and she sat low in the water. It wasn’t that far.
I can do this.
In the boat below, her husband looked up and gestured for her to take the line. The boat, as Kestrel herself was doing, moved in the water. Up and down. Up and down. “You can do it, Rhiannon. Toby’s right there. He’ll keep an eye on you, and I’m down here. Trust yourself.”
“Trust myself.”
He grinned then, his eyes twinkling. “Live a little.”
Rhiannon sensed someone near her shoulder and yes, there was Toby, ready to help if she needed it.
“Don’t help me,” she said. “I want to see if I can do this by myself.”
“As you please, ma’m.”
Keenly aware of the fact that she was wearing cut-off pantaloons—oh, how scandalous!—Rhiannon took the rope, put one leg over the side and with her toes, found the little wooden slats that served as footholds. She took a deep and steadying breath, aware of two dozen pair of eyes upon her and one very green, very handsome pair, below.
“Have faith in yourself,” her husband called up from the boat.
She couldn’t trust herself to speak. Taking a deep breath and clinging to the rope, she let herself down a little more. This wasn’t so bad now, was it? She was no delicate, simpering creature; she had arms that were strong, balance that was good, nerves that were standing up to what was quite a test, given her fear of heights.
She lowered herself further down and stopped for a moment, resting. Kestrel’s rail was level with her eyes now; she could smell the hot sunlight and dried salt against the varnish. She descended some more, searching for toe-holds, and then felt strong hands go around her waist. Her husband’s hands.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Well done.”
She let go of the rope, turned, and flung her arms around his neck.
Above her the crew let out a roaring cheer: “Hip hip, huzzah! Three times three for the captain’s lady!”
Rhiannon found herself blushing, and it was all she could do not to let out three cheers herself.
* * *
Connor settled Rhiannon on the thwart, took up the oars, and as she turned to wave happily at his crew aboard the schooner, shot them a gesture that his wife wasn’t meant to see and put his back to the rowing.
He was looking forward to their swim. One would have thought that the tender, intense lovemaking of the night before might have satisfied him for a time, might have cooled his ardor for this innocent but mischievous girl-woman he had married, but no; he’d had a taste of her, and now he wanted more.
Much more.
Thank God they weren’t in England. He couldn’t imagine trying to teach her to swim in one of those infernal bathing machines. No, here on Barbados he could clothe her in more functional attire, find some sheltered cove, and have all the privacy he could desire without fear that someone would spy on them and see his wife’s long, lean legs and high, firm breasts revealed by wet clothes.
He looked at her sitting opposite him, a smile on her face, her beautiful hair caught in the loose thong of leather he’d found for her and hanging down her back. Maeve, he recalled, had worn her hair much the same way during her Pirate Queen days, and perhaps some might have found the clothes, the hair, and the bare ankles shocking and unacceptable.
Connor thought they were perfectly wonderful.
He thought again of last night. Of how hot and tight and wet she had been when he had so carefully eased himself into her. He had not known what to expect, making love to a virgin, and his rather dim expectations of the act had been surpassed by the delicious reality. Yes, he had introduced her to the art of lovemaking and she was likely sore and tender this morning, but she had not complained, and the fresh, rosy glow to her cheeks, the lush color in her lips, the sparkle in her eye were all testimony to the fact that she had enjoyed it, enjoyed that “awful moment,” more than she had dreamed possible.
“What is so funny, dear husband?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about last night.”
She blushed, but her eyes brightened and the corner of her mouth turned up in a shared grin. “Ah. That awful moment.”
“Are you sore this morning, dearest?”
“I am, but it was worth it.”
“You won’t be sore, the next time.”
“When can we do it again, Connor?”
“When you’re feeling up to it.”
“What a considerate man I’ve married.”
Connor sincerely hoped she’d be “up to it” within the next hour, because he had some things in mind to top off their swimming lesson.
“I suppose I should write to my sister to let her know that I’m married now,” she said, reaching out to trail her fingers in the water as Connor’s powerful arms drove the boat at an ever-increasing speed toward the shore. “I wish I could see her face when she opens the letter!”
“I wish I could see Morninghall’s,” Connor returned wryly. “I’m sure he wanted more for his sister-in-law than a Yankee rogue with a price on his head.”
“Who cares? He’s not the one marrying you. I am.
” She reached out and laid her sweet little hand on his knee as the rowed. “And I am more than happy with my choice.”
Connor just smiled. He was used to idol worship from Toby and his little nephew Ned, but they were both young and didn’t know what a true cock-up he really was. They didn’t know, as his parents knew, as Nathan knew, that math and numbers and chart-reading came hard to him and that if he tried to read a book he might get three paragraphs into it before he realized that he had little recollection of what he’d read, and he’d have to go back and read it all over again and sometimes the words made no sense or made him get a headache, which only added to his frustration; even so, his mind would be thinking of something else, and in the end its wanderings would win out over the book. Mr. Preble, of course, had been right: he was unteachable, probably stupid, but as long as nobody except his parents and Nathan—who could plot a course and read a chart when the numbers were all a’jumble in Connor’s eyes—knew his shameful secret, he figured he could get by all right.
And if he couldn’t be smart, well, he could still beat Nathan at chess. And he could be brave. He could be lucky. And he could be a good husband to this woman who seemed to think he could walk on water, when it was all he could do to read a chart.
He had observed the way his father had treated his mother all these years and he would treat his own wife with the same gentle respect, kindness, and reverence. He was his father’s son, wasn’t he? He would take good care of Rhiannon. He would help her to let go of the limitations imposed on her by what the world expected of gently-bred young women—limitations that his own mother had flaunted—and together, they would have a good life. And in the meantime he would be the best privateer he could be and take as many prizes as he could before the war ended—as some day it surely would.
His father was a naval architect, good with figures, brilliant even, for he could design a ship and make minute calculations that would result in increased speed, stability, and gun-carrying ability. His father was a brilliant man and a brave one, and if there was anyone in the world that Connor wanted to emulate, it was him.
Lord Of The Sea Page 18
