Captain Of My Heart

by Danelle Harmon

  “No,” he said softly. He lowered his head and kissed her, so gently, so tenderly, she felt herself melting like spun sugar.

  “Were you serious about wanting to marry me?” she asked in a little voice.

  He kissed her forehead. “More serious than I’ve ever been about anything, mo stóirín.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible. I don’t want to wait. We’ll gather your family and Eveleen together and make the announcement as soon as you’re willing.”

  “I love you, Brendan. And I swear, I’ll be a good wife . . . I’ll learn how to cook, how to act like a lady, how to—”

  “Shhh,” he said, his lips against her temple, and against her hair, she felt his kisses, heard him murmuring strange Gaelic words that she didn’t understand and didn’t need to understand to know what he was saying. Outside, the wind howled. A log shifted in the little stove and sent up a shower of sparks, and the ship creaked gently around them. He slid his hands beneath her head, pillowing it against the decking, cupping the back of it in his palms and threading his fingers through her hair, and held her close. And when he became too heavy, he sensed it and reluctantly moved away, settling on his back on the thick fur pelts beside her.

  Moments passed. Long moments.

  “We should go now, Moyrrra.”

  She sidled closer and rested her head atop his chest. “We don’t have to.”

  “No, but you do.”

  “No, I don’t. I can stay here all night and no one will be the wiser.”

  “Your da—”

  “Doesn’t rise until five forty-five.”

  “Matthew—”

  “Is probably warming Alice Little’s bed.”

  He sat up, rubbing his eyes, his hair falling over his knuckles. “But think of what they’ll say when Rigel returns to the stable without the sleigh. . . .”

  “And his bridle.” She, too, sat up, leaned her back against the table leg, and pulled him close, coaxing him to lean heavily against her as she wrapped her arms around him. He closed his eyes, unprotesting. She brought the quilt up and covered him with it.

  “Without his bridle. . . . ?”

  She stroked his hair, loving its crisp softness between her fingers. “Yes. You see, when he returns to the barn without it, they’ll know I intentionally set him free.”

  A long moment went by before he answered, as though he was having trouble collecting his thoughts. She pulled her fingers through his hair, over and over again. He rested his brow against the cup of her shoulder, his head grew heavy, and within moments he fell still in her arms.

  Mira bent her cheek to his hair, watching the flames dance in the little stove, smiling as Kestrel gently rocked her captain to sleep.

  She was happier than she had ever been in her life.

  Chapter 18

  Brendan awoke very late the next morning, to the sound of water gurgling past the rudder and the feel of a hard deck beneath his back. He opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented. Above, the river’s reflection danced on the deckhead beams; at least the sun was shining today. But a chill permeated the room, for the little fire in the stove had long since gone out. He shivered, and pulled the heavy quilt up over his bare shoulders.

  Faith, what was he doing on the deck?

  And then he remembered. Mira.

  He sat up with a start, his body stiff and sore but filled with a languid satisfaction that could only have come from a night of lovemaking. Faith. Where was she? Had he actually fallen asleep in her arms?

  He grabbed his shirt, hopped into his breeches and boots, swept up his tricorne, and ran from the cabin.

  Topside, the deck was white with snow, catching the sun’s glare and reflecting it back with such blinding brightness, it hurt to look at it. Huge ice floes drifted down the river, sparkling in the sun. Brendan stood there, blinking, listening to the drip and trickle of running water as snow melted on shrouds and sheets, furled canvas and spars. Giant clumps of it slid down the masts, dropped from the lofty yards, left depressions in the pristine whiteness at his feet. There, a faint set of footprints led to the rail and stopped. They were hours old.

  Then he noticed that one of Kestrel’s boats was gone.

  Mira.

  Raw terror struck him. What if she’d slipped and fallen into the ice-choked river? She would have been swept out to sea with no one the wiser!

  Ten minutes later, Newburyport’s newest hero was racing headlong down High Street, coattails flapping behind him, legs pumping madly, and the demons of hell on his tail. From a tavern window Liam, wiping the frost from the panes with the heel of his big hand, looked out, saw his captain’s flying form, and threw back his head in hearty laughter.

  “You dare to laugh! I’m sitting here, coming down with something horrible this time—oh, Liam, it’s smallpox, I just know it is—and you have the gall to sit there and laugh!” Dalby, sitting miserably on his bed, had his hand clamped to its usual place over his gut. His face was wretched. “Come feel my forehead, Liam. I know I’ve caught something, and this time I just know it’s something bad—”

  Liam turned from the window. “I think, Dalby m’ friend, that our cap’n’s caught somethin’ far more deadly than the smallpox!”

  Dalby went white, his own imagined illness forgotten. “Oh, Liam. . . .”

  But the lieutenant was clutching his sides, his great peals of laughter booming out against the low-beamed ceiling. “Aye, he’s caught somethin’, all right! ’Tis called love, Dalby! An’ unless I miss me guess, the one who got him infected is none other than the Ashton lassie herself!”

  ###

  “Good heavens, Captain Brendan! Whatever on earth is wrong?”

  Abigail stood in her kitchen with her hands plunged wrist-deep in a bowl of bread dough, flour dusting her apron, and her cheeks as red as apples from the heat of the fire. Surrounding her was a collection of black iron stew pots, caldrons, and frying pans, some hanging on nails from the walls, others from cranes above the fire.

  Brendan yanked off his tricorne and clapped it to his chest. He was breathing hard, sweating as if it were mid-July, and his face, unshaven, was the color of Matt’s hair. “Mira! My God, where is she?”

  Never had Abigail seen the normally blithe, laughing Captain Brendan in such a wild-eyed panic. “Calm down, young man! Miss Mira’s just fine. Why, she’s off in the back pasture, giving your sister a riding lesson.”

  Brendan reeled back against the cupboard, flinging his arm over his eyes. “Thank God.”

  She eyed him curiously. “Captain?”

  “Thank God, thank God, thank God.”

  “Yes, I’m sure He heard you the first time. You all right, young man?”

  He let his arm fall to his side, tipped his head back, and sucked in great gulps of air before letting them out in bursts of hysterical laughter.

  “Sit down, Captain, before you collapse. How ’bout a slice of hot buttered toast? You have your breakfast yet?” He sank into a chair, wiping his brow with the back of his sleeve and shaking his head. But she was already cutting a chunk of freshly baked bread from the loaf cooling on the little drop-leaf table, putting it in a wire-framed toaster beside the hearth, and humming to herself as she placed jam, butter, and a knife before him. His mouth was watering by the time she added a slab of cheese, a steaming cup of black coffee, and a piece of ham the size of a dinner plate.

  “That’s it, eat up, young man!” she chirped happily. “We’ll get some meat on those bones of yours in no time!” But Brendan was wolfing the food down as fast as she could set it before him, oblivious to both her fond smile and the admiration in her bird-bright eyes. Abigail loved to cook; she loved to see a vigorous young man enjoying her fare even more. She refreshed his coffee, set a bowl of fried hasty pudding and maple syrup before him, and watching him approvingly, went back to kneading the bread.

  “I’ll wager you didn’t know you’re the talk of the town this morning, did you, young man?”

&n
bsp; He almost choked on the hasty pudding. Was it already common knowledge that he and Mira had been out last night, alone and unchaperoned? Good God, did everyone know she’d spent the better part of it aboard Kestrel?

  Or had she shared the news that he’d asked for her hand in marriage?

  Abigail’s bright eyes didn’t miss a thing. “You’re far too humble for your own good,” she scolded, mistaking the reason for his high color and clucking like a mother hen. “Look at you! Why, everyone’s talking about how you stole the crew right off that frigate. And all those prizes you brought in! Why, they just love to hear of such audacity, you know. Britain needs that haughty nose of hers tweaked, and fellows like you—”

  “More butter, please?”

  “—are the ones to do it! Imagine, eight prizes.” She put her hands on her hips and shook her head in admiration. “And on that schooner’s maiden voyage, too! Matt hasn’t stopped talking about it.” She flipped the dough over and punched it down, missing his expression of relief. “And of course, Ephraim was just beside himself with glee. Can’t wait to get down to Wolfe Tavern and do his share of bragging about you. He’s like that, whenever one of his ships does well for herself.” She dumped the dough onto a floured board. “In fact, he tells me that the man who captained this ship you, uh, robbed was none other than a fellow named Crichton.”

  He wiped the crumbs from his mouth with a linen napkin and reached for more hasty pudding.

  Abigail peered at him slyly. “This Crichton fellow wouldn’t happen to be the same one you tricked at the river’s mouth last year, would it?”

  “Could be,” he said, with a mirthful, crooked grin.

  Abigail wagged a flour-caked finger at him, her bright eyes shining. “I knew it! And I’ll bet he didn’t take kindly to your recruiting his men!”

  “Don’t know.” Brendan scraped the last of the crumbs off his plate. “I didn’t stop to ask him.”

  She managed to stop staring at him long enough to look down at his empty plate. “Gracious, Captain, you still hungry after all that?”

  He had the grace to look sheepish. It was amazing how much he could eat and still maintain that lean, sinewy form of his. Heavens, if she were thirty years younger. . . .

  “So how is Miss Mira this morning?” Brendan asked suddenly.

  Abigail grinned, and her eyes grew brighter than ever. So, she thought, the handsome young captain is taken with our little Mira, huh? She turned away to hide her pleasure, and decided against teasing him about it. “Why she’s as chipper as a spring robin. If she keeps up like this, who knows? Maybe she and that sister of yours might actually get along.”

  “Get along?”

  “Oh, they’ve been caterwauling all morning. I’ve never heard the like.”

  Brendan put down his fork. “What are they, er, caterwauling about?”

  “Heavens, you name it.” Abigail shaped the dough in smooth, precise movements. “The cat your sister found in her bed this morning. The riding lesson. The apple tart Eveleen had for breakfast—”

  “Apple tart?”

  “Most of the time they get along quite well . . . but Mira, you see, has a short fuse. It doesn’t take much to set her off.”

  That’s for sure, Brendan thought, with a wry grin.

  “Anyhow,” Abigail continued, sighing, “Mira figured your sister might like an apple tart with some fresh cream for breakfast this morning. Found her in the kitchen here before the sun was even up! Did it all by herself, too. Rolled out the dough and everything. Unfortunately, though, Miss Eveleen thought Mira deliberately left out the sugar.”

  “Did she?”

  “Leave out the sugar? Oh, probably, but I’m sure she didn’t mean to. Mira can be a real handful, but there’s not a mean bone in her body. And she doesn’t like being accused of something she didn’t do . . . Young man, now where are you going?”

  Brendan slapped his tricorne onto his head, pausing long enough to lean down and kiss her matronly, flour-scented cheek. She blushed like a schoolgirl. “Seems to me I hear some, er . . . caterwauling going on right now. Think it warrants some investigation?”

  “It most certainly does.” She saw the eagerness in his laughing eyes, and knew that he was just itching to get out there and see his little sweetheart. “You just mind yourself, though, and stay out of the line of fire. Those two aren’t likely to show mercy to anyone unlucky enough to get between them.”

  He went out the back door, landing knee-deep in snowdrifts and almost falling on his face. The sound of angry shouting drew him around the back of the house, through a stand of oak and maple and pine, and into a big field ringed by a fence, atop which sat no fewer than three cats in various stages of repose. One of them was eating something. He shut out the crunching sounds and tried not to imagine what it was—or had been.

  And then he looked toward the center of the field.

  There was Mira, sitting astride that wee gray colt, her back toward him, her impossibly thick, straight hair caught in a red ribbon and hanging all the way to Rigel’s back. She looked very small and very angry, her shoulders stiff and her crop thwacking repeatedly against her thigh in vexation. As he watched, she stood in her stirrups, her little rump shockingly revealed by a pair of breeches that fit her like a glove. Dropping her reins, she cupped her hands around her mouth and began hollering in a voice that would have had no trouble at all carrying the length of Kestrel’s decks in a raging gale.

  “I said, head up! Heels down! And for God’s sake, make her move! You ain’t gonna learn a damned thing just letting her stand there like that.”

  And there was Eveleen, glaring down at her instructor from her lofty perch atop the elegant white mare. She was splendidly garbed in a pink—faith, he wished she’d stop wearing that color—riding habit that did nothing to flatter her. Her golden hair was stuffed beneath a little hat, one hand clenching the reins and the other carefully hidden beneath the closure of her jacket. Although she was trying her best to look regal, Brendan knew her well enough to know she was terrified.

  Mira was pitiless, unwilling to let Eveleen back down no matter how scared she was. “For one thing,” she snapped, “the horse ain’t going to move if you just sit there like a bump on a log. For another thing, she is not bucking, she’s merely swishing her tail! You are not going to fall off by making her walk around the field, and if you do, there’s enough snow on the ground, you damn well won’t hurt yourself! Now, make her do it! I am not asking you to take that fence yonder, I am merely asking you to press your legs gently to her sides and make her walk!”

  Beneath the yards of voluminous pink skirts, it was impossible to tell if Eveleen moved her legs or not. Spellbound, his heart aching for his sister, and his desire for her instructor beginning to swell painfully against his breeches, Brendan watched. He tried not to think of his arousal, a condition that worsened every time she stood up in those stirrups and presented that little rump. Instead, he forced his mind to focus on the drama before him. Please, he thought, have patience with her, Mira.

  “Well?”

  Eveleen raised her fleshy chin. “I did. She doesn’t like me. She’s not going to do it and I want to get off. Now. My legs hurt and my back’s starting to ache—”

  “You can dismount after you make her walk around that field in one—full—circle!” The crop began to slap rhythmically against Mira’s thigh. Brendan swallowed tightly and drew his coat over the front of his breeches.

  Leaving the reins looped loosely atop Rigel’s dappled withers, Mira folded her arms. “Now try it again.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Do it, Eveleen.”

  “You’re just making me do it because you know I’m afraid! Because I’m fa—”

  “I’m making you do it because this mare is going to be yours, and you are going to learn how to care for, handle, and ride her! That means getting your hands dirty, taking a few falls, and shoveling manure! Now, press your calves to her sides, damn it, and try it again! She�
��s not going to respect you if you don’t make her do it!”

  Eveleen’s face was white beneath her hat brim. Her hand clenched the reins as though they were a lifeline. They came up a single inch, her body made a slight jerking motion, and the fabric below her knee rippled slightly. But Shaula, grinning if horses actually could, simply batted an ear, craned her elegant neck around to stare at Eveleen’s foot, and lowered her head to sniff at the snow. Eveleen shrieked and dropped the reins. Shaula’s head shot up, Eveleen screamed in terror, and vaulted to the ground with a speed and agility that Brendan wouldn’t have believed her capable of had he not seen it with his own eyes.

  Mira raised her face to the sky as though seeking help from above. Admittedly, Brendan couldn’t blame her.

  “You hate me!” Eveleen wailed at the top of her lungs. “You’ve hated me since the moment you first saw me, and I did nothing at all to deserve it! You hate me because you don’t want me to ride this horse! You hate me because I have jewels and you don’t! You hate me because I have my brother’s love and you don’t! You hate me because I’m fat—”

  “Get back on the horse. Or I’ll have your brother pick you up and put you on her, as he’s been standing there watching you for the past ten minutes!”

  Eveleen froze, her mouth a perfect O. Instantly her tears stopped, her face regained its composure, and she adopted that whining voice that so grated on Brendan’s nerves. “Brendan! Oh, thank goodness, I just knew you’d come. She’s trying to make me ride this smelly, horrible creature! She knows it’s going to buck and rear and end up killing me! Oh, Brendan, do make her stop! I don’t want to ride!”

  He bit his lip, glancing from his sister to Mira’s strained face. She’d stopped slapping her crop against her thigh, but her body was stiff with tension. She looked angry and fiery and beautiful, her eyes flashing and a determined set to her jaw. He thought of her thighs against the saddle, and remembered them against his own. Faith, he thought, and plunged his hands into his coat pockets, anchoring the coat over his breeches to keep his arousal well hidden.