“He wouldn’t dare.”
“Don’t underestimate him. You’ve put him in a ticklish spot, with his duty and his men’s expectations on one side and his wife’s family on the other. I don’t envy the man.”
“When did he learn of this . . . Yankee schooner?”
“He got a dispatch this morning—and a formal request for his help in finding and apprehending certain said schooner. You try his patience, Connor, and this time you’ve gone too far.”
“Nothing like an angry British admiral.”
“Your father here isn’t too happy about it, either.”
“Yes, right, I’d forgotten. You sided with the Federalists. You were against this war from the beginning, you who made your fortune during the last one and would deny me the chance to do the same. You’d probably be just as happy to see New England secede and join the British, wouldn’t you?”
“Easy, Con,” Nathan said, putting a hand on his cousin’s arm.
But Brendan did not rise to Connor’s tightly-voiced taunt. Instead, he turned and smiled as Rhiannon, garbed in a mint green muslin gown and wearing a bonnet to protect her face from the sun, came up from below.
“Good morning, lass!”
“Hello, Brendan,” she said, and instead of offering her hand, happily allowed herself to be swept up in his strong, wiry arms. But something wasn’t right here; she could see it in Connor’s tense stance and tight mouth, and in her father-in-law’s troubled eyes, normally so carefree and laughing.
“Is everything all right?”
“We’ll be weighing anchor tomorrow and heading home to New England,” Connor snapped. “Mother is not feeling well, and Sir Graham would like my head on a pike to parade through the streets. I’ll send you back with my father and Ned so you can collect your things from the house and make your farewells.”
“But this is so sudden. . . .”
At that moment there was an excited squeal as Ned pulled a fish up over the transom with Toby’s help. Holding the wriggling creature in his bare hands, the boy came running toward them, his face glowing. “Grandpa! Uncle Connor and Aunt Rhiannon! Look what we caught!”
As Rhiannon exclaimed over the boy’s catch and Connor proclaimed it bigger than any fish he’d ever seen, Brendan knelt down and examined the animal. Its gills were desperately opening and closing. “That’s a fine fish you have there, Ned. And now, unless you intend to eat him for supper tonight, I think you should let him go before he dies.”
“Of course, Grandpa. I don’t want him to die.” Carefully carrying the fish, the boy hurried back to the side, leaning far out over the rail so as to lessen the drop to the water as he released it.
“Little lad’s got a good heart,” said Brendan, his eyes fond as he watched his grandson.
“Aye, he sure does.”
“Well, I’m off now to go check on your mother. Will we see you at dinner tonight?”
“Nay, I’ve work to do here. Give everyone my farewells.”
“You’ll be missed, Son.”
Connor just shrugged.
“I know that you and Maeve don’t always see eye-to-eye, and Sir Graham is in a tough spot with wondering how to deal with you, but think of how it’ll affect the twins if you don’t come to say goodbye.” He glanced at his grandson, waiting eagerly by the rail. “And little Ned.”
Connor’s gaze slid helplessly to his nephew, and he sighed in despair.
“Aye, Da. I’ll be there.”
* * *
Their last meal on Barbados was one of stuffed fowl, shellfish, hot bread with guava jelly, rum, and a sugar cake that was much the better for the fact that Mira Merrick, who had skipped the meal and kept to her room with a headache, had had nothing to do with its creation.
Tension hung in the air. Sir Graham purposely avoided making conversation or eye contact with Connor. Connor’s smile was tight, his manner flippant, his foot beating a relentless tap-tap-tap beneath the table until Rhiannon finally squeezed his hand and managed to quiet him. Alannah Cox made an excuse to leave the uncomfortable atmosphere as soon as dessert was served and Delmore Lord followed suit a few moments later. Someone commented about the weather, which was unremarkable. Finally Brendan, his eyes dark with worry, excused himself to go be with his wife, and Ned, who had been uncharacteristically subdued all night, climbed up onto his uncle’s lap with a book in his hand.
“Do you all really have to leave tomorrow, Uncle Connor?”
“Aye, lad. We really have to leave. But perhaps Rhiannon and I will come back in the springtime. Or your mother and da will bring you north so you can spend the summer with us in Newburyport. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“I’m going to miss you,” the little boy said, his bottom lip quivering before he quickly looked down at his book to hide his unmanly display.
“I’m going to miss you too, Ned.” And then, to distract his nephew from his coming tears, “What’ve you got there, eh?”
“My favorite book, Robinson Crusoe. I was hoping you’d read to me before Mama sends me to bed.”
For a moment, there was silence.
“Well, this ought to be interesting,” Maeve said cryptically.
Connor shot her a glare. “Stow it, Maeve.”
The boy was oblivious to the tension between the two. “Will you read to me, Uncle Connor?”
“It’s getting rather late, lad,” Connor said, a little too quickly. “We’ve got to be up early. Perhaps Auntie Rhiannon can read to you . . . I’m not very smart, you know. She’s got a better voice for storytelling than I do, anyhow.”
The boy’s face fell.
“How about I tell you a story, instead? Once, there was this huge ship called—”
“I don’t really want a story, Uncle Connor. I just wanted to have a last memory with you and my favorite book so that after you leave tomorrow, I wouldn’t be so sad. But never mind. I understand.”
The boy slid down from his uncle’s lap.
Connor began to fidget.
And Rhiannon, frowning, exchanged a glance with the equally confused Sir Graham.
What’s going on, here?
Damned if I know.
Rhiannon saw the stricken look on her husband’s face as Ned headed quietly for the door.
“The least you could do, Connor, is read him his favorite story,” Sir Graham said reprovingly. “It’s not that much to ask, is it?”
Rhiannon had never seen fear in her husband’s eyes. But in that brief instant, she saw a sudden flash of panic before he suddenly seemed to collect himself.
“Ned, lad.”
The child paused at the door and turned, the book still clutched in his hand.
“I’m sorry. I guess I can read to you.”
The boy ran back to his uncle and clambered up into his lap. Connor mustered a fleeting grin, cleared his throat and, taking a long time to open the faded, well-worn cover, finally put it on the table before him.
“Thank you, Uncle Connor. I know the story by heart . . . but I just wanted to hear it told in your voice.”
Rhiannon saw her husband take a deep breath and turn a page, then turn it back again and draw his brows close as he stared down at the print, little Ned snuggling comfortably against his shoulder.
Rhiannon smiled, anticipating the familiar words and wanting, like the child, to hear the beloved old tale in her husband’s deep, comforting voice:
I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen. . . .
But Connor had not started reading. Instead he was biting his lip, peering down at the page in what appeared to be deep concentration, and doing everything he could to buy time.
“Uncle Connor?”
Connor Merrick began to read.
“I was . . . dorn in the year 1326, in the York of C-City, of— of a doog f-family—” he flushed, his face going crimson with humiliation—“th-though ton of th-that tunkrey. . . .”
; A deep, awful, embarrassed hush fell over the room as the sudden realization sank in.
Connor slammed the book shut and glared up at the open-mouthed faces, the looks of astonishment and dawning pity all directed at him.
“So I never learned to read,” he said flippantly, but in his eyes Rhiannon saw his deep and abiding shame. “Is that such a crime?”
Sir Graham cleared his throat and looked away. Maeve stared morosely down at the floor and little Ned, still lying against Connor’s chest and shoulder, reached out and found his uncle’s hand.
“I don’t care if you can’t read, Uncle Connor. I love you just the same.”
Rhiannon wanted only to save her husband from further humiliation. “I think we should take our leave, Connor,” she said quietly. “We need to catch the tide first thing.”
But Sir Graham was staring at his brother-in-law. “If you can’t read, how the hell can you look at a chart and plot a ship’s course? Read manifests? A compass? What the devil kind of captain are you?”
“One who’s lucky enough to have a cousin named Nathan who does those things for me,” Connor shot back. “Never did guess, did you? None of you did. And now you know my shame. Now you know why I am the way I am, why I’ve spent my life trying to prove myself to be something I’m not, and what I’m not is smart. But I am smart enough not to stay here and have you all look at me with pity, and if you have nothing more to say about it, then neither do I.” He hugged the boy and gently set him down as he got to his feet. “Good evening. I’ll see you all in the morning.”
Back stiff with pride, he stalked to the door.
Rhiannon ran after him and caught up with him out in the hall.
“Connor, wait.”
He turned then, his eyes hard with humiliation and anger. “You married an idiot, Rhiannon. I’m sorry.”
Never slowing his pace, he continued toward the door and outside, wanting only to put as much distance as he could between himself and everyone back in that room who’d witnessed his ultimate humiliation. Ned, who idolized him. Sir Graham and Maeve. And his wife, who would never look at him with the same infatuated awe ever again, and in whose eyes and estimation he’d surely just plummeted. His wife, who now knew him to be less than a man. She, who liked to read books. She who wasn’t stupid, she who was all the things that he was not and could never be.
Oh, the mortification.
“Connor.”
He was nearly to the beach where the little boat, drawn up on the sand away from the tide, waited. Hands fisted, he turned, thankful for the darkness that hid the shame in his eyes.
“Don’t pity me, Rhiannon.”
“I don’t pity you.” She took a step closer to him and slid her hand up his chest, gently stroking it through the shirt, trying to calm him. “How could I ever pity a man whose courage causes him to leap with joyful abandon into the unknown? Who is a master at chess, so much so that not a man of his acquaintance can best him? A man whose wiliness netted him two thirds of a rich convoy with none of them the wiser?”
He just looked away, his mouth a hard slash of pain in his face.
“Your shame is not my own, Connor,” she said. “I am proud of you. In awe of you.” She faced him squarely. “In love with you.”
“You’re only in love with me because you’re young and impressionable and I do reckless, daring things.”
“That’s bollocks, Connor.”
He gaped at her. “Where did you learn such a word?”
“From your crew, and I hope to learn a good deal more such words if I’m going to be a proper sea captain’s wife. Furthermore, it makes me angry that you think I love you because I’m a silly eighteen-year-old girl who’s only interested in daring deeds and displays of manly courage. Well, I’ll tell you something, Connor Merrick. I’m in love with the man who cares enough about others to continuously risk his own life to save theirs. The man who is good and gentle and kind and caring. The man who got his own stuffy cousin to learn how to have fun, the man whose crew adores him and would follow him to the ends of the earth, the man who, at great risk and sacrifice to himself, took the time to give a little boy he loves a parting gift so that that little boy won’t be so sad after he’s gone. That’s the man who’s stolen my heart, Connor. Not the daredevil, the show-off, or the cocky privateer captain.”
He just looked at her, confused, and Rhiannon saw the exact moment when he began to dare to believe her words. A softening in his stiffened stance. A relaxing of the hard, poised muscles beneath her fingers.
“It doesn’t matter if you can’t read,” she continued. “You have Nathan to help you with what you need aboard ship, and you have me to help you everywhere else. The only person ashamed by this is you, because I couldn’t care less. We’re husband and wife now. Two who have become one, and your strengths are now mine, just as mine are now yours. Together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”
He looked away. “I can’t see the letters right,” he muttered. “They face all different directions. Sometimes they’re upside down. And when I try too hard to make sense of them, my head hurts and I feel like I’m going to vomit. Honestly, I don’t know how any of you can put up with such torment just for the sake of being able to read.”
Most of us don’t, she almost said. But he didn’t need to be told he was different. He already knew that he was. The sadness came from the fact that his idea of “different” was, in his own eyes, “inferior.”
“My teacher tried to beat it into me,” he said, turning and untying the boat from the large chunk of driftwood to which he’d secured it. “He said I was unteachable and maybe I was, because I was more interested in looking out the window than at my hornbook or worse, that damnable New England Primer. Never could make much sense of either of them and never cared to, either.”
She nodded toward his hand with its little crooked finger. “Was it that same teacher who broke your pinkie?”
“Aye. I was daydreaming, and he wanted to get my attention. I daresay he did . . . though he was never able to get my mind to stop wandering. Nobody has. I can’t read. I can’t rein in my thoughts. I can’t think of more than one thing at a time without getting confused and frustrated and ultimately, angry.”
She caught his arm as he began to push the boat out into the water. “Think of the things you are, Connor, and the things you can do. The gifts you’ve given to others. You’re a man who knows how to live life to the fullest and whose enthusiasm for it is infectious. And I’m just one of many whose life is much the richer for your presence in it. You’ve opened my heart and soul to a whole new world. You taught me how to swim. You taught me how to jump out into the unknown with faith and joy. Maybe someday, you’ll even teach me how to take a few steps aloft.” She smiled. “But just a few. Because we all have our shame, Connor, and mine is my fear of heights.”
He finally paused, took a deep, bracing breath and looked down at her, overwhelmed at what she had just said.
“You’re an amazing woman, Rhiannon Evans Merrick.”
“And you, Connor Merrick, are an amazing man.”
He reached down and drew her up against him, folding her against his chest, his strong, hard arms going around her and all but crushing her to himself. She felt him lay his cheek against the top of her head; then he gently pulled back, raised her face to his own and, looking deeply into her eyes, said the words she’d longed, with all her heart, to hear.
“I love you.”
Tears filled her eyes as he bent his head to kiss her, and as his lips claimed hers with hunger and gratitude she thought of Connor as a little boy, abused and mistreated so terribly by those who did not understand him, who didn’t try to understand him, who tried to make him be exactly like everyone else. Now she knew why he was so driven to prove himself. Why he took the risks that he did, why he had made his father’s long ago exploits a benchmark by which to measure and define his own successes.
Connor Merrick might be able to outsmart the British and play a su
perior game of chess, but underneath the recklessness and the swagger was a little boy who still believed that he was stupid, worthless, and was desperate to prove himself.
And for Rhiannon, it all suddenly made sense.
* * *
“Honestly, Brendan, I’m quite capable of boarding our old friend Kestrel here, myself,” Mira said as she ignored his offered hand and came aboard the schooner the following morning. “I’m gonna be fine. Stop yer worryin’.”
Her, Brendan’s, and Liam’s trunks and belongings had all been brought aboard earlier, the schooner hastily provisioned, and goodbyes already said to the Falconers and Kieran, who was staying behind for a longer visit with his sister and her family. The youngest Merrick stood now aboard the deck of his sloop Sandpiper, watching them as they prepared to get underway. Gulls wheeled over Carlisle Bay and Connor’s fingers were drumming in agitation as he eyed his mother and sent his scanty crew forward.
“Let’s haul in the hook and get the hell out of here,” he said to Nathan. “I want to clear Barbados well before any of Sir Graham’s frigate captains decide to take matters into their own hands where certain Yankee schooners are concerned.” He shot a glance at his father, but Brendan had paused to help Mira, who looked pale and waxen as she went to lean against the old cannon that someone, long ago, had dubbed Freedom. “Mother, you are ill. Let Dadaí take you below.”
“I don’t want to go below. I want fresh air.”
Liam reached his great bear paw of a hand down to her. “Come, Mira. Con said ye can have your old cabin, just like old times.”
“I said, I’m quite happy to stay here on deck, damn it!”
“Damnation,” Connor swore, and stalked off across the deck. “Can’t reason with a female no matter what. Get the jib and mainsail on her, Nathan.” And then, lowering his voice for his cousin’s ears alone, “Did you get a chance to study the charts? I’d hate like hell to hit a reef or some other godforsaken obstruction as we round the island.”
“Aye, Con. No worries.”
Lord Of The Sea Page 27
