Captain Of My Heart

by Danelle Harmon

  It wasn’t Matt who stood there, but Brendan.

  And he was alone.

  He stood like a man on trial, the crowd behind him the jury, Ephraim, before him, the judge. He had his tricorne in his hands, and his eyes were filled with such anguish that for a moment, Mira thought he was someone else, so different did it make him look, so much did the absence of the good humor that was so much a part of him rob him of who he was. Mira shook her head. No. Surely Father wouldn’t be sobbing and raging at Brendan! Surely there’d be mirth in those tragic, haunted eyes if it truly were he—

  And then it hit her like a savage kick in the gut. Her brother was nowhere in sight. It was Brendan at whom Father was raging.

  Blind panic seized her. Matt. And then, in a guttural scream of pure terror, his name was torn from her throat. “Matt!”

  There was the thunder of hooves as Shaula came galloping up behind them, Eveleen still clinging, white-faced, to her back . . . Ephraim’s bellowing, going on and on and on . . . the women crying, the young men shouting accusations, the angry faces, the curses—

  And Brendan.

  At that moment he turned toward her, and there was such a plea for understanding in his grief-stricken eyes that her heart constricted painfully in her chest. She ran to him, flung herself into his arms, and felt them go around her. Then she drew back. “Brendan, where’s Matt?”

  A muscle worked in his throat and he took a deep, measured breath. His eyes had an odd sheen, and blinking, he looked up at the clouds above. Then he took her hands in his own and squeezed them so hard, she felt pain in her fingers. His hands were freezing cold, as though the blood had ceased to move in his veins.

  “Brendan, where’s my brother?”

  He looked down at her, and she saw tears in his eyes. He took a deep, shaky breath and gently set her away from him. And then he reached up to knuckle his eye. “Moyrrra, lassie—”

  Panic seized her. “Where is he?”

  “Moyrrra, he’s—”

  Ephraim’s grief-stricken roar pierced the din. “Dead! He’s dead, and it’s all the fault of this goddamned cowardly son of a bitch I should never’ve trusted in the first place!”

  Brendan shut his eyes, and his fierce grip on her hands tightened, but he did not lower his head.

  “I knew I should never’ve trusted ye, ye confounded spawn of the devil! Stinkin’ deceitful, yellow-bellied traitor! The devil take ye, ye slinkin’ dog! Traitor! Bastard! Brit!”

  Mira reeled backward, overcome with dizziness. From a great distance she heard the crowd’s angry din, saw Brendan’s stricken face. And then Abigail’s keening wails began to close in on her, louder and louder and—

  She pressed her hands to her ears. “No! Stop it, stop it, all of you!”

  “But it’s true. Oh, Lord, it’s true, Mira!” Abigail wailed, wringing a cloth covered with flour, dough, and the stains of her own tears. “Every last bit of it! There was a battle . . . they found the convoy from London . . . your brother stayed to fight, and this—this—snake slunk off and left him to do it alone!” Her sobs grew to hysteria, raising the hair on Mira’s nape. Screaming, the housekeeper flung the wet cloth at Brendan. It hit him squarely in the chest, but he didn’t move, merely stood there with flour marring the handsome perfection of his blue coat. “Alone, Mira! Your poor dead brother alone, all by himself, to face the might of the British navy while this slinking dog crawled back here with not a scratch on his beloved, cursed ship! That cursed ship! That’s what started it all in the first place! Would that we’d sunk it by the might of our own guns! Would that those drafts had never been resurrected! Would that her creator had died with them! Oh, Matthew . . . Oh, my poor, sweet Matthew....”

  She collapsed, wailing, and someone managed to get her into the house, where her hysterical cries flowed out the open door, over the lawns, the increasing crowd, and Mira’s heart, until it began to vibrate, to tremble, and then to rock wildly within her breast.

  “Not Matt ...” she whispered, never hearing Rigel come up behind her to comfort her, as his kind had done for centuries. And though Brendan reached out to steady her, it was Rigel against whom she fell. “Not my brother ...” Hair tangled in her suddenly wet lashes and she clawed it free, shaking her head in denial and backing away from Brendan as he took a step toward her. “He was a good captain . . . the best. He’s not dead, Brendan! I’d know it if he was. He was my brother. He’s not dead! He’s not! It’s not true! It cannot be!”

  Lucy Preble clawed her way to the front of the crowd. “It is true, Mira. You go down to the river and you’ll see only one ship—that cursed schooner!”

  “With nary a mark on it!” someone shouted.

  “Hauled himself off and let our poor Matt do the fighting! Didn’t want to see his precious schooner harmed!”

  “Newburyport’s newest hero, eh?”

  “Traitor!”

  “Coward!”

  “Judas!”

  It became a chant. Louder. Stronger. Full of hatred and betrayal and a thirst for vengeance.

  “Judas! Judas! Judas!”

  An egg slammed through the air, just missing Brendan’s shoulder and exploding against the side of the house.

  “Judas! You killed him!”

  And Brendan, just standing there, admitting nothing, denying nothing, and no one ever considered that maybe he couldn’t, for his own throat was working and he was fighting a losing battle to repress his own emotion. But the fact that he didn’t defend himself condemned him in the eyes of the townspeople, of Ephraim—and of the woman he loved.

  She was looking at him as though he were a stranger, the tears sliding down her cheeks, one thick spill of hair tumbling over her eye. She pushed it away with a strange, jerky motion, and when she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.

  “Did you?” Her lip trembled, and she pushed a hand against it. “You didn’t . . . didn’t leave him to die. . . . Did you, B-Brendan?”

  “Moyrra—”

  “Did you?”

  She didn’t see his throat working as he tried to gain control. She didn’t see the agony in his eyes as he fought to find the right words. And she never gave him the chance to explain. All she felt was a horrible, choking lump in her throat—and all she saw was Kestrel, glorious and proud and dancing, flitting away while Proud Mistress fought a valiant battle to her death. . . .

  Sobbing, Mira turned blindly away from Brendan and leaped on Rigel’s back, kicking him through the crowd and thundering down High Street before anyone could stop her. Seeking escape in the mad pounding of hooves and sleek muscles beneath her, of wind in her face, her eyes, her head, her heart.

  Run away. Run far away. From the truth, from the grief, from the reality, from—from—

  “Matt!” she wailed, tears flooding her eyes as she tried to hold, tried to banish, the memory of that freckled face, that crimson hair, the spectacles that were always sliding down his nose—

  Oh, God, Matt. “Please, God, not my brother!”

  And then Rigel’s thundering hooves hit a depression in the road and he stumbled, his forelegs crumpling beneath him. Mira pitched headlong over his neck, her body hurtling through space until it was finally stopped by the Beacon Oak itself, there to lie crumpled like a broken doll at its base.

  It was Brendan who found her. And as he picked her up, gently, reverently, his strong arms cradling her to his shot-scarred chest, his own tears ran at last, flowing like blood from the pieces of his own broken heart.

  Chapter 22

  Mira opened her eyes to silence as deep and dark and ugly as the tomb. She was in her bed, the linsey-woolsey counterpane drawn up to her chin, the fine lace canopy above merging with the darkening ceiling. Twilight shone hauntingly through the window; beyond it, night approached.

  Silence.

  There was something alien in it, something strange, something not quite right. And then she realized what was wrong. What was terribly wrong. Not a clock in the house was ticking.

&nb
sp; It was as though time itself had stopped.

  Father? Father, forget to wind his clocks?

  She came awake with a start.

  Matt. Her choked whisper pierced the still silence of the darkening room. “Oh, Matt ...” And then the tears came, slipping soundlessly down her cheeks to dampen the counterpane beneath her chin. She stared up at the familiar canopy and felt them stream from the corners of her eyes. Down her face. Tickling the hair at her temples, her ears, wetting the pillow beneath her head.

  “Oh . . . Oh, Matt . . .”

  She was not alone. In a chair drawn up to the bed, a man with eyes that no longer laughed had kept a silent, tortured vigil, his long legs stiff and cramped from sitting there for so many hours, his unshaven jaw dark with stubble. He heard her anguished weeping and thanked the blessed God that she was awake, that she would be all right; he heard her weeping grow louder and reached for her hand in the darkness, never stopping to stretch his aching legs, never thinking of his own pain, only hers. He was there for her. He vowed he would always be there for her. And he reached for her now as her sobs grew gut-wrenching and awful, shaking her little body to the very depths of its being.

  And Mira, feeling those arms go around her, those hands stroking her hair, knew who that man was. “Don’t touch me!” she cried, and viciously slammed her elbow into his ribs, his grunt of pain bringing her a savage satisfaction as she flung herself down and buried her face in the depths of the pillow, the thick tumble of her own tangled hair, and the memories of a brother she would never see again.

  Yet still those hands, those damned artist’s hands. Hands that drove beneath her shaking shoulders, hands that pulled her up against a hard chest and a coat that was uncharacteristically rumpled.

  Newburyport’s newest hero.

  Brendan.

  She drove her palms against that chest and shoved herself backward, out of the warmth of those caring arms, away from the tortured heart that needed her as much as she needed him.

  “Judas!” she spat, her voice low and terrible and ugly. “Get away from me.”

  The room had grown too dark for her to see the stricken pain on his face, the grief in his eyes, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she had—for at that moment Mira had never hated anyone more than she did Captain Brendan Jay Merrick.

  He swallowed hard and tried to take her hand.

  “I said, get away from me!” She bit back the hysteria, shrinking away from him with great racking sobs rising in her chest. “Don’t touch me, you slime-sucking son of a bitch—”

  “Mira.”

  She lay rigidly on her back, staring up at him through the darkness. “Slinking coward, gutless, wretched—”

  “Moyrrra. “

  She clawed the hair out of her eyes, and sickened by the sight of him, turned her face into the pillow, its feathery down muffling her sobs. Her shoulders shook, and she drew her legs up to her chest, as though she could curl herself around her grief, her very heart, and hold herself together with it. The tears came, a horrible sound in the stillness of the room, choking her with their intensity, robbing her of breath.

  “Moyrrra, please . . . please listen to me.”

  “Where’s my father?” she sobbed, into the depths of the pillow. “I . . . want my . . . papa.”

  Brendan took a deep and bracing breath. And then he rose, went to the window, and stood gazing out over the street, the treetops, and toward the river. Ships drove their masts against a fading sunset sky. The ships of Newburyport. Except that one of them would never be coming home again.

  Outside, a robin called good night to its mate, the sound lonely and sad in the twilight.

  Quietly he said, “Your da is down at Wolfe Tavern, Moyrrra, where he has been for the past three and a half hours.”

  Father. Losing himself in tipple, just as he’d done when Mama had died. Oh, God, help me, she thought, huddling closer to herself, oh God, please help me . . . It hurts, God. It hurts so much . . . Please, God, make the pain go away . . . Make him go away. . . .

  But he would not, his words coming quietly from across the room. “Lassie, please . . . before you judge me, listen to me. I beg of you. Give me a fair trial, at least.”

  She sobbed harder into the pillow, gripping its corners in white-knuckled, fish-cold fists and squeezing it about her head as though it could muffle the pain and block out his voice.

  He stood by the window, his body silhouetted against the last of that lonely light. “We had a strategy, your brother and I,” he began, quietly, not wanting to tell her because of the pain it would cause, yet desperately needing to, just to relieve his own grief, his own guilt, unjustified though it might be. And as he began to speak, he reached into his coat pocket and drew something out, though Mira, her face buried in the pillow, never saw what it was.

  “It was a strategy we agreed to try upon the convoy from London.” Swallowing hard, he closed his fingers around the object in his hand. “I suppose I shall always wonder if maybe it was all planned. That maybe someone knew we would be there. You see, there were other American privateers waiting to pluck prizes out of that convoy, too. Yet none of them were touched. They wanted Matt, and they wanted me.”

  She sobbed something into the pillow, her voice incomprehensible.

  “What was that, mo stóirín?”

  “I said, I wish the bloody hell it had been you instead of my . . . instead of my . . . b-brother!”

  He turned back to the window. He looked down at the object in his hand, biting his lip, thankful that she couldn’t see the pain, the tears in his own eyes. But the lilting, musical tone of his voice was gone, like an instrument out of tune, and through her misery, she noticed it, and it broke her heart even more.

  “We found the convoy ten leagues off Sandy Hook—a huge convoy, Mira, of fat merchantmen and wallowing ships, ripe for the plucking—and pluck them we did. It was so easy. Too easy. We’d stand off during the day, and when it grew dark, we’d take turns. One of us would distract the guard ships, and the other would dash in and cut out a prize. Because it was dark, they dared not separate, and the guard ships couldn’t be everywhere at once. Oh, they tried to escape, but with so many ships and only a few to protect them, there were many stragglers. . . . We had our pick of them. It was so easy. . . .”

  He leaned his forehead against the sill of the window. The sunset was just a gray glimmer now. Fading.

  “We were fools. Too bold, too cocky, too confident—and too greedy. We took so many prizes, we barely had enough men to sail our own ships, let alone fight them. And still we didn’t stop. It went to our heads, lassie. We grew drunk on it. And you know that old tradition, about not returning to port until you have a prize to show for each of your guns. . . . And here Kestrel has ten, and Mistress had fourteen.” He didn’t tell her that returning to Newburyport with twenty-four prizes had been Matt’s determined goal, not his. “It was an insane thing to attempt, even for a couple of daredevils like us.” He looked down at the object in his hand, feeling his eyes burning with unshed tears. “On the third morning, we anchored in the lee of an island to wait out a squall—”

  He swallowed hard, steeling himself against the horrible memory, while his hands tightened around the fragile object. “We woke to fog and rain, and a frigate bearing down on us from around the point. A British frigate, with every sail set and a bone in her teeth. She caught us unprepared. I know now that she was waiting for us. Waiting until we didn’t have the men to properly crew our vessels, having sent them off in groups on our prizes. Waiting until success blurred our caution. Matt and I signaled to each other—we’d worked out an elaborate flag code—and he asked me to use Kestrel as a lure, to try to lead the frigate away from himself and the prizes.”

  He saw no need to tell her that the frigate had been HMS Viper and that its captain was a man named Richard Crichton. Instead, he told her how he’d tried to lead that frigate away, for he’d been so secure in the knowledge that Crichton had wanted him that he didn’t
believe his old enemy would give Matt a second thought.

  But no. It hadn’t happened that way. It was supposed to happen that way, but it hadn’t. And as he’d hauled off to leeward and sent Kestrel on a smooth run, her sails set wing and wing and the American colors streaming saucily from her gaff like a flag tempting an enraged bull, Viper had chased her only long enough to ensure she would be safely out of the fight and then dashed back toward the solitary brig and her covey of prizes, quickly overtaking them and brutally opening fire with every gun. Matt had fought valiantly, with everything he had. But Mistress had been undermanned, with an island at her back and no room to maneuver. And fast as Kestrel was, she hadn’t been able to tack back to her sister ship in time.

  “If only I’d known, lassie.” His voice was flat and dead and emotionless. She heard him take a great, tremulous sigh. “If only I’d known. And if only Matt had a gunner like my own Mr. Starr....”

  He winced as Mira curled herself up into a tighter ball and let out one long, keening cry of sheer agony.

  “But the frigate had a skilled gunner. Or maybe just a lucky one.” His hand tightened on the object in his hands. “His shot hit Mistress’s powder magazine, and she went up like a torch.”

  On the bed, Mira sobbed harder, the tears soaking into the very heart of the pillow, the pit of her soul. Horrible, wretched cries that showed no mercy, flooded the room with agony, caused Brendan to turn from the window and take a step toward her, two—

  She raised her head and screamed, “Don’t come near me! You should’ve been there for him! You should’ve stayed and fought! You bastard! Don’t you ever come near me again, do you hear me? I hate you! Hate you!”

  He stopped.

  “I don’t ever want to see you again! Ever!” She struck out, blindly, and her hand found something in the gathering gloom. A blue and white bowl, commemorating the launch of the fine topsail schooner Kestrel, kept on her bedside table where it would always be near when she woke up in her lonely bed in the depths of the night, when she opened her eyes in the morning—