Wind Raven (Agents of the Crown)

by Regan Walker

  “Of course, I’m well enough,” he blustered. “Now don’t be coddling me. I’m feeling fine as a matter of fact.” With that, he rose and stepped forward, seeming the man he’d been before she’d left for London: tall, strong and, at times, forbidding.

  “Father, I have someone I’d like you to meet.”

  “Oh?” her father said and turned his focus on the one man in the room he wouldn’t recognize.

  “This is Nicholas Powell, captain of the Wind Raven,” she said. “It was his ship that brought me home from London. It’s berthed at our dock now.”

  “Thank you for bringing my daughter home, Captain Powell.”

  “It was my privilege to do so,” Nick said. Then extending his hand, “I am pleased to meet you, Captain McConnell. I’ve long admired your schooners.”

  Tara was glad to see her father accept Nicholas’s hand. It was a good sign. “Powell,” Sean McConnell said, mulling the name over. “Sounds familiar.”

  “It might be you saw it on an order for one of your ships. And from the look of the new three-masted schooner docked at your pier, I believe it may be mine.”

  “Ah yes, now I recall. The one we built for that English firm…Powell and Sons. That’d be you?”

  “Yes, I’m one of them, the eldest son.”

  “Well, she’s ready, just needs a name.”

  “I have an idea for the name, sir. But before I get to that, there is something more important I would like to discuss with you.”

  “Yes?” The puzzled expression that swept across her father’s face unveiled new wrinkles on his forehead.

  “Sir, as you know, the voyage from London lasted some time, in fact longer than I’d anticipated, as an errand for the Prince Regent delayed me from leaving the West Indies. During our time at sea, Tara and I became rather…well acquainted, and as a result, I have quite fallen in love with her. I’ve asked her to become my wife and she’s accepted. I am hoping for your blessing and your daughter’s hand in marriage.”

  Tara’s father turned to her, a disbelieving look on his face. “Tara, is this true?”

  Tara smiled at Nicholas, the English captain she had come to love. “Yes, Father.”

  “Well, it won’t do, missy. It won’t do at all. Need I remind you our family has fought two wars with England for America’s independence. I’ll not have my only daughter marry one of them. No siree!”

  Tara had expected this reaction and noticed her brother George nervously entwining his fingers while John stared down at the floor.

  “But Father—” Before she could say more, her father held up his palm, cutting her off.

  “Would it matter if I told you I’m not entirely English, sir?” asked Nick, seemingly undaunted by her father’s reaction to his suit.

  “Just what does that mean?” her father demanded, glowering at Nick.

  “I’m half French. My mother, Claire Donet, was raised in Paris. Her father was the younger son of a French comte.”

  “An English captain with a French mother of noble birth,” her father seemed to mull the words over in his mind. “Now it’s clear! My sister’s been at her matchmaking again. Damn me if she hasn’t!” Then turning to Tara, “This is all your aunt’s doing!”

  “Aunt Cornelia?” Tara couldn’t imagine what he was talking about.

  “She wrote me six months ago, saying she had some friend, a woman of an aristocratic French family married to a wealthy English merchantman. Told me her friend had a son who was a ship’s captain.” Shoving his index finger into Nick’s chest, her father bellowed, “I imagine that’d be you!”

  “Possibly,” Nick said calmly, his mouth twitching up on one side, “the mater has many friends.”

  “Your aunt,” her father directed his words at Tara, “wanted permission to introduce you to her friend’s son. I said no. Absolutely not. And now look at what she’s done!”

  “Aunt Cornelia wanted me to meet Captain Powell?” Tara was bewildered. She’d known she was to take the Wind Raven and no other ship, but she thought it was only to assure her safety. She’d had no idea that her aunt was playing matchmaker.

  “Why that’s—” Tara stammered.

  “Treachery!” her father exclaimed. “Ever since she married that baron and moved to London, she’s had peculiar ideas. I should have known something like this would happen. If I hadn’t been so desperate—”

  “But, Father, I love him.”

  “I’ll have none of yer cajoling, missy. You can just manage to love an American, by God. I’ll not have my grandchildren thinking they are part of the wretched British!”

  Tara glanced at Nicolas and was surprised to see amusement in his eyes. Rubbing his fingers over his chin as if pondering a tough negotiation, he said, “What if I promise you that Tara and I will spend part of each year here—with your grandchildren? And remember, I’m half French.”

  “That would be your best half,” her father insisted. “That would make my grandchildren…”

  “Part English, part French and half American. Not a bad blend,” offered Nick.

  Tara listened to the two men negotiating over her future children and thought it ridiculous. “These children the two of you are bargaining over have yet to be born!”

  “Yes, my love,” said Nicholas and then whispered into her ear, “but have you considered that one may already have been conceived?” Tara felt her cheeks heat at his words.

  “What was that?” her father demanded.

  “I was just agreeing with Tara, sir.” He shot her brother George a look that appeared to Tara to be a plea for help. It only served to remind Tara he shared in the knowledge of just how well she and the English captain knew each other. It was embarrassing.

  “Father,” George offered, “perhaps this isn’t such a bad idea. Tara does seem to want the man and he can well afford to keep her. Then, too, Aunt Cornelia has been looking after her this last year and remains in London to make certain Tara is well settled. After all, Captain Powell and we are in the same business. You could insist on a partnership—”

  “If you’ll allow me to interrupt this discussion of me as if I were just another ship, Nicholas and I have already talked about being partners together.” She looked at her fiancé, her eyes pleading for his support.

  “That’s true, sir,” Nick assured her father. “Tara and I both love the sea as well as each other. You’ll have Powell and Sons as a partner. We can buy your ships and then my family and yours—as well as the grandchildren Tara and I will give you—can sail them.”

  Tara studied her father. The sudden gleam in his eye told her he was considering the idea.

  “Are you certain you’ll not change your mind, Tara, me love?” her father asked. “You were none too fond of London, as I recall your letters.”

  “I wasn’t so fond of it,” she said. “But that is when I only had Aunt Cornelia and her friends in the ton for company. Being with Nick and his family and involved in their shipping firm will be different. I’ve met one of his brothers and his new wife and I like them very much. Besides, I could not imagine leaving Nicholas.” He squeezed her hand. “No, I will not change my mind, Father.”

  “You are in favor of this marriage?” her father asked his sons.

  “Under the circumstances, Father, I am,” said George, giving Nick a knowing look.

  “I agree,” said John.

  “Me as well,” echoed Tom.

  “Well, then, it appears I’m to have a bloody Englishman for a son-in-law.” Nick smiled at Tara and she returned his smile. “But, mind you,” chided her father, “I expect to see my grandchildren every year. I’m holding you to your promise, Powell.”

  * * *

  The wedding took place the next day in the small Fell’s Point Methodist Church. Nick had been amused to learn that the McConnells, like Nick’s parents, had a mixed marriage when it came to religion. Nick’s father had been a Protestant when he married the Catholic Claire Donet and swept her away to England, where she be
came a Methodist under the teachings of John Wesley; Tara’s father was an Irish Catholic who married a Methodist in Maryland. The result was that both Nick and Tara were Methodists. To Nick’s relief, the reverend who married them seemed to have no problem with his being English.

  The crew of the Wind Raven, wearing their best clothes, was in somber attendance as the vows were said, but the smiles that broke out on their faces following the pronouncement that he and Tara were man and wife told Nick they were pleased with their captain. Congratulations were said all around, with special words from Jake Johansson for Tara, and Peter for his captain. Nate bore the smile of the cat that ate the cream. Finally Nick had done something right in his eyes.

  After the wedding, the guests retired to Nick’s new, and as yet unnamed, schooner, where the McConnell family and friends and his crew crowded the deck. Even the gray cat had left the Wind Raven to join them on the new ship.

  “Ah, ’tis a fine day,” said Nate to the newlyweds where they stood drinking Champagne and greeting guests on the quarterdeck. “Yer mother and father will be pleased, Nick. Both their oldest sons are now married.”

  “Sure an’ ye had no choice,” chimed in McGinnes, who had become fast friends with Tara’s father. “Since ye gave yer heart to the leanan sídhe,” he explained, darting a glance at Tara, “ye be forever hers.”

  Russ looked at Nick and chuckled. “Perhaps you should name your ship after the Irish fairy,” he suggested with a wink.

  “I already have a name in mind,” said Nick with a wry smile toward his bride. “Don’t you know,” he said to Tara, as he tightened his arm around her waist and looked into her aquamarine eyes, “the men in my family name their ships after the women they love? My father has the Claire, my brother, the Sea Kitten, and I…I will have the Goddess of the Sea. I’m naming the ship for you, Tara.”

  Tara beamed her happiness at his choice, her eyes filling with tears. The men standing around them cheered, “Hear! Hear!”

  “You and I will sail her together,” he reminded her.

  His bride leaned in to give him a kiss. The crew cheered again more loudly. Even the McConnells smiled their approval.

  “And so we shall, husband,” Tara whispered into his ear. “And so we shall.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I chose to set my story on a schooner of the period because I love those ships and the “Baltimore clippers” Nick coveted, which helped America fight the War of 1812, a war that solidified the young country. The Baltimore clipper ships were the fast topsail schooners with narrow hulls and raked masts that enabled the American privateers to outrun the larger English ships. (The huge “clipper ships” we remember today are mostly from the Victorian era.)

  I based Tara’s family’s ships on the Chasseur, one of the most successful privateers built in Fell's Point in Baltimore. It had an amazing record of preying on British vessels during the War of 1812. Though schooners were used primarily for the coastal trade, larger ones were known to sail the high seas. Such was Nick’s ship, the Wind Raven.

  Some of you might think it unlikely a woman could serve as a member of the crew, even on her father’s and brothers’ ships, as Tara did, but that is not the case. In Suzanne Stark’s book Female Tars, she documents many cases in which women served on ships, assisting a ship’s surgeon in patching up wounded men or carrying powder to the guns of naval ships, a job shared with young boys called powder-monkeys. One of the earliest cases of a woman seaman was that of Anne Chamberlyne, a scholar’s daughter and member of the gentry, who at the age of twenty-three in 1690 declined offers of marriage to don a man’s clothing and join her brother’s ship to fight the French off Beachy Head. Thus, the fictional Tara McConnell had her real life precedents. And for Captain Nick Powell, only a courageous woman who loved her independence and the sea as Tara did could be his true love match.

  Bel Air, the magnificent home in Bermuda where Nick and Tara stayed, was built in 1816 by the Honourable Francis Albouy, a wealthy merchant and a real historical figure. The house, which still looks out over Hamilton Harbor, does have two guest cottages. And amazingly, long after I’d named my hero Nicholas Powell, I discovered that a ship under the command of a notorious pirate by the name of Powell ran aground on the main island of Bermuda, causing the pirate to be banished by the colonial governor to Ireland Island, where the dockyard stood in 1817, as my characters observed from the Albouys’ gallery.

  The guests entertained in the Albouys’ home that night along with the fictional Nick and Tara were guests were real historical people who lived in Bermuda at the time. I like to think such a dinner might actually have taken place, don’t you? If you want the recipe for the Bermuda rum swizzle or Bermuda syllabub, they are on my website (www.reaganwalkerauthor.com).

  With the end of the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic wars in 1815, an unprecedented wave of piracy swept the American seaboard and the Caribbean as some of the hundreds of captains who were privateers in the wars became outlaws of the sea, preying upon the growing numbers of merchant vessels. Although some of these pirates, like Jean Laffite, were American, the majority came from farther south and Latin America.

  The pirate Roberto Cofresí, “El Pirata Cofresí,” was one of them.

  Just as I have portrayed him, Cofresí was tall, blond and blue-eyed, being of Austrian extraction, notwithstanding the name his father adopted upon settling in Puerto Rico (then called Porto Rico, based upon an error in the Treaty of Paris). And he wore dangling silver and diamond earrings any woman would covet.

  In 1817, Cofresí was twenty-six, though he didn’t actually become a pirate until the following year, when he began attacking ships sailing under flags other than Royal Spain. Spain looked the other way—at least until 1824, when it gave into pressure from its allies. Cofresí was captured by the Americans and turned over to the Spanish, who executed him in 1825.

  While Cofresí sailed a schooner in his early years of pirating, it was not named the Retribución. During the time he was a pirate, he had two ships: the Ana, named after the woman he later married, Juana Creitoff (who was of Dutch extraction); and what may have been his first ship, a smaller one named El Mosquito.

  I have tried to be true to all we know of Cofresí. He was a complex character with both noble and brutal sides to his personality. Although Cofresí was famous for his generosity, sharing his booty with the poor, for which the Puerto Ricans admired and protected him, he could also be cruel to his enemies. There were reports he nailed hostages to the deck of El Mosquito. And the axe was, indeed, his favorite weapon. Contrasted with this, he was protective of children, often saving young ones taken from prize ships and giving them into the care of Catholic priests along with money for their expenses. Like Tara, he lost his mother at a young age.

  There are many legends about why Cofresí turned to piracy, as he was well educated and had older brothers who discouraged his maritime efforts. Some believe it was the evils of the colony under Spanish regime, some say his sister was raped by a group of sailors and others say he was slapped in the face by an English captain. Perhaps it was for all those reasons that Cofresí turned to piracy. I have chosen to include the story of his sister being raped by an English seaman as I can see how that would have led her younger brother to vengeance against the English merchantmen. It would also explain why he was protective toward women, as Cofresí was known to be. And I can see how such a heinous act, followed by a slap to his face when had he tried to seek retribution from the English sailors, could easily lead Cofresí to prey on the ships of England and her allies.

  Some biographers have said he was a revolutionary, a patriot and a pioneer of Puerto Rico’s independence movement. Perhaps it is so for he flew the flag of the Free Republic of Puerto Rico, not that of Spain. Today there is a monument to Cofresí in Cabo Rojo, his home on the southwest coast of Puerto Rico.

  Author Francisco Ortea wrote of Cofresí, “For his boldness and courage, he was worthy of a better occupation and fate.” I do agre
e.

  Lastly, I must include a note on sailing times. I have taken liberty with the time for the crossing of the Atlantic and the trip to Bermuda, Puerto Rico and Baltimore. More time might have been required than the few months I’ve allowed, given the limitations of the schooners of the early 19th century and their time spent in the Caribbean. But for the sake of my story, and Tara’s need to be in Baltimore, it could not take longer.

  I hope you enjoyed my seafaring, pirate Regency. Watch for the prequel to the Agents of the Crown Trilogy, the story of Nick and Martin’s parents: Captain Simon Powell, the young English privateer they called “the Golden Eagle,” and Claire Donet, the wild daughter of the French pirate, Jean Donet, Nick’s namesake, who was indeed the younger son of a French comte. It will be set in late 18th century France, England and aboard Simon’s ship, the Fairwinds. It’s a story of adventure, passion and love, for Simon knows if he is to possess Claire’s love, he must find a way To Tame the Wind.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  As a child Regan Walker loved to write, particularly about adventure-loving girls, but by the time she got to college more serious pursuits took priority. One of her professors thought her suited to the profession of law, and Regan realized it would be better to be a hammer than a nail. Years of serving clients in private practice, including a stint in government service, gave her a love of international travel and a feel for the demands of the “Crown” on its subjects. Hence her romance novels often involve a demanding Prince Regent who thinks of his subjects as his private talent pool.

  The Agents of the Crown Regency romance trilogy includes the three full-length novels Racing with the Wind, Against the Wind and Wind Raven. Regan has three related shorter works, The Holly & the Thistle, The Shamrock & the Rose, and The Twelfth Night Wager. You can keep up with her through her website, www.reganwalkerauthor.com.

  Regan lives in San Diego with her golden retriever, whom she says inspires her every day to relax and smell the roses.