And still the clocks remained unwound.
A week after Matt’s funeral, Eveleen, lying awake in her bed with a piece of molasses cake balanced on her chest and crumbs sprinkling the sheets, heard Mira’s muffled weeping coming from the big, empty room that had been her brother’s. Putting aside the cake—and her own misery—she’d scooped up the gray cat from her bed and silently deposited it just inside the door, hoping that the little creature could help ease Mira’s suffering.
Hoping for a miracle, she’d gone back to her room to wait for that wretched sobbing to stop.
It hadn’t.
Hours later, Eveleen had finally crawled out of bed, gone to the window, folded both good hand and crippled one beneath her chin as she knelt in the moonlight—and prayed with all her heart for Brendan to come back from the sea to which he’d retreated.
###
The fox wasn’t so easily found.
It took some weeks before Crichton’s note made its way to Kestrel, holed up in the privateering port of Salem, Massachusetts.
Almost as if in answer to her prayers, Liam and Dalby, toting that note, showed up at the Ashton house several days after Eveleen had knelt at her window. Brendan, knowing he was unwelcome, despised, even, had refused to leave his ship and go into Newburyport, but under the pretense that he’d left his fiddle at Wolfe Tavern, Liam had managed to coerce his captain into bringing Kestrel far enough into the river that he and Dalby, at least, could take a boat to the pier and from there, make their way into town.
Ephraim, who would have been furious had he known that Kestrel’s crewmen were in his house, was drinking the afternoon away at Wolfe Tavern when Liam and Dalby arrived. But the big lieutenant had not come to talk to the crusty old shipbuilder.
He’d come to talk to Mira. To beg her, if he had to, to make one last cruise aboard Kestrel so she could see for herself that Brendan was innocent.
Eveleen showed them into the parlor, read the note, discounted its contents as nothing but a ploy on Crichton’s part to draw out her brother, and told Liam that Mira was not at home, but out riding the barren beaches of Plum Island, which was about all she’d been doing lately.
“I’ll wait fer the lassie, then,” Liam vowed, adding that he’d stay here all day if he had to—even if he had to end up dragging Mira back aboard Kestrel in the guise of Mr. Starr.
“Why do you need her so badly, anyhow?” Eveleen asked, suspicious.
Liam eased his great body down onto the sofa. “Because we’re desperate,” he said, spreading his hands. “Yer brother’s hurtin’, lassie. He’s not ’imself. If he expects to go after Crichton, an’ deal with him without gettin’ himself killed in the process, he has to get his head on straight. And Miss Mira’s love and forgiveness is the only thing t’ do it.”
Eveleen’s own Irish temper flared. “What do you mean, go after Crichton?” She commanded the Ashtons’ parlor like a ruffled queen, her cloud of gold hair swirling about her shoulders, her eyes flashing, and a plate of gingerbread waiting on the tea table before her. “That boneheaded idiot! I wish he’d just straighten out Mira Ashton, not go chasing after Crichton! Doesn’t he realize there’s probably not a bit of truth to this note? Damn it all, sometimes I’d just like to strangle him!”
Liam spread his hands helplessly, grinned his great beamy grin, and glanced at Dalby, who sat in a fine Queen Anne style chair with his hand, as usual, clamped over his gut. A piece of half-eaten gingerbread was set before him.
“Well, what d’ye think, Dalb?” Liam asked, folding his big arms across his chest.
Dalby eyed the gingerbread distrustfully. “I think, Liam, that there’s something in that gingerbread that’s upset my stomach. “
“Nonsense. Miss Mira made it herself,” said Liam, who’d never eaten at the Ashtons’ house before. “Ferget about yer gut fer once, would ye, Dalb? ’Tis a serious matter.”
“So is my stomach. And my head, which is beginning to ache. I think I’m coming down with something. And I don’t think it’s a cold this time, Liam. I think it’s something far worse—”
“Dalby, if ye don’t shut up about yer ailments, I’m goin’ t’ remove both yer bloody gut and yer head and then we won’t have t’ be hearin’ ye complainin’ about either one of ’em!” His blue eyes narrowed as the little seaman pouted, fingering a strange ornament buried in the lacings of his shirt. “And what the bleedin’ hell is that ye’re wearin’ around yer neck?”
“A crystal,” Dalby said sullenly. “Rama said it’ll bring me good luck.”
Liam screwed up his face. “What?”
“Good luck. I brought it because I think we could all use some right now,” Dalby said, thinking of his captain’s disgrace, Kestrel’s fall from favor, and the spunky little Mira Ashton, whose skills at Freedom would be sorely missed if Kestrel made another cruise without her. And if Brendan went after Crichton without his most capable gunner, he’d be asking for suicide. They all would.
Liam made a snort of disgust. “I want ye t’ stop listenin’ to that Easterner, Dalby! He’s already made a disciple out o’ Fergus; the last thing we need is fer him to be makin’ one out o’ you!”
“But, Liam, it makes sense—Fergus told me just today that the reason my stomach always hurts is because I was shot in the belly in a former life—”
Liam lunged from his chair, his hands outstretched and going for Dalby’s scrawny neck.
“Gentlemen.” Eveleen raised her haughty head and glared at the two of them. “As much as I despise the fact that Brendan is going after Crichton, I suppose it’s inevitable. Therefore, I think that we should all be considering what Richard Crichton will be in his next life after my brother catches up to him.”
“Yer brother ain’t goin’ to catch up to him if he doesn’t get his head on straight and make peace with the lassie.”
“That’s for sure.” Eveleen took a bite of her gingerbread with regal elegance and just as quickly choked it out into her napkin.
“Well, ye know yer brother,” Liam said, frowning in puzzlement as she wrapped up the gingerbread in her napkin and put it down, her unmaimed hand, like Dalby’s, going to her stomach. “Brendan never does anythin’ by halves. And when it comes to lovin’ a woman, he does it with every shred of his soul, his heart, his bein’. As he does with Kestrel.” His voice grew hard. “As he did with Julia.”
The silence hung heavily between them.
“As he’s done with Mira,” Eveleen said quietly.
The silence deepened. Liam was right; not only did Kestrel need the skills of her best gunner if she was going to face HMS Viper, but her captain needed the love and forgiveness of Mira Ashton if he expected to be on his toes when it came to dealing with Crichton’s treachery. It didn’t matter if Mira revealed herself as Mr. Starr or not; what mattered was that she forgave Brendan as herself.
And if he couldn’t get the two of them together, that just wouldn’t happen.
Eveleen thought of her brother’s pain when the people of Newburyport had turned against him at Matt’s funeral. Not only had they turned against him—the man they’d hailed as their new hero—but also against the magnificent schooner they’d built with their own hands, sent off with their blessings and prayers, and welcomed back as a heroine, then a traitor. Pride had become shame. Admiration, disgust. No one in town mentioned the schooner’s name anymore; indeed, they went to great lengths not to. She was an embarrassment. She was anathema.
And, as Liam, Dalby, and everyone else had so vehemently declared, she was innocent.
It wasn’t fair.
As much as she disliked the ship for the attention Brendan lavished on it, Eveleen loved her brother too much to allow him to suffer such undeserved treatment. She was not alone in her defense of him; Kestrel’s faithful core crew of Irishmen was so incensed that the lot of them were planning to storm Wolfe Tavern with balled fists and fury on the morrow if apologies were not made to their captain.
God help the town if that
happened.
But there was still Crichton to be dealt with. Always Crichton, Eveleen thought bitterly. And who more capable of doing it than her own beloved brother? No Yankee knew Crichton as Brendan did. No American knew the British navy as he did. And no ship could run down Viper as Kestrel could.
Crichton must be dealt with.
And Mira Ashton must be in place on Freedom, must be made to believe the truth, must find it in her hot little heart to forgive Brendan so he could get his damned head on straight and get on with the business that had to be done.
In Liam’s hand was a missive, dirty and crumpled and stained from being passed through so many hands during its journey here from Viper.
A missive from Crichton, which some might’ve said was a ransom note—for a Yankee captain who was not dead at all—and an invitation for the Captain from Connaught to come and get him.
Chapter 24
Crichton was right. The British Royal Navy didn’t breed fools.
And it had bred Captain Brendan Jay Merrick.
The wily half-Irishman was not about to put much hope in the claim of his nemesis that Matt was alive, nor was he rash enough to endanger his ship and crew by honoring Crichton’s request to meet at a time scheduled by the Englishman at a small island off Machias, that lonely Maine outpost where the first naval engagement between Britain and her rebellious colonies had, ironically, taken place several years before.
If anyone was a fool, it was Crichton for believing that he would.
No, Brendan had shaken the proverbial dust of Newburyport from his shoes, buried his heartache over Mira Ashton beneath a vow to avenge her brother’s death, and gathering his surly Irish crew, had let the tide carry Kestrel downriver and into the Atlantic. With a warm breeze filling her sails, she’d leapt through racing seas with the spray hissing and breaking high over her beakhead, arriving silently in the waters off Machias a full day and a half before Crichton’s scheduled meeting.
Such a premature arrival was no coincidence, for Brendan was taking no chances and had no intention of letting himself be drawn into a trap. With keen-eyed Mr. Starr perched in the crosstrees, silhouetted against the clouds and ready to call the alarm should Viper, anchored unsuspectingly in the bay on the other side of the island, notice them, he’d again relied on the element of surprise. And surprise had been a mild word to describe the reaction of the British landing party as they came trudging out of the woods where they’d been foraging for fresh water and seen the rakish schooner sweeping around the island’s rocky headland.
Astonishment and awe were more like it. And terror, for Kestrel had effectively cut off their escape route back to the frigate.
They paled as they saw the schooner’s yawning gunports. A young lieutenant shouted and pointed. Seamen dropped their water casks and fled back into the woods. But Mira was oblivious to their panic, to Brendan’s triumphant grin, to the fact that she was some eighty feet or so above a rolling deck.
For there, standing on the beach and surrounded by a group of red-coated marines, were Jake Pillsbury and old Hezekiah Simmons, friends of hers since she’d been old enough to know how to coil a line.
She swayed and almost fell off her comfortable perch.
They had been part of Mistress’s crew—a crew that had all supposedly perished.
Their torn, soot-stained shirts were blackened with blood, their faces gaunt and unshaven, their eyes haunted. Yet when they looked up and saw Kestrel sweeping around the headland with the spray bursting from her bows and the sea foaming beneath her keel, the look in their eyes was worth every hour Mira had stayed up here in the biting wind, every doubt she’d had about letting Liam talk her into coming aboard Kestrel once again. She leaned her face against the mast and bit her suddenly trembling lip. And as her chest heaved in a single sob of relief, of hope that her brother might also live, she saw Brendan standing on the deck far, far below.
His lean form blurred behind sudden tears. To Jake and Hezekiah, he must look like a hero. At the moment he sure looked like one to her, achingly handsome in a tailored blue coat that spanned his shoulders and showed off his crimson waistcoat with its rows of gold buttons glittering in the sun. His hair was neatly queued with a black bow and hung beneath the shadow of his jaunty tricorne, his stock was pristine and white. And he was swinging his speaking trumpet by a lanyard looped around his wrist, grinning rakishly, and taking it all in with an air of humble triumph that made her sinuses burn with unshed emotion.
Single-handedly he was bringing his little schooner to face the might of one of the king’s frigates and the hatred of a man who, Liam insisted, was bent on killing him. Oh God, she thought, feeling something huge and painful welling up in her chest. Was I wrong about him? Did I, in my shock and grief, misjudge him after all? Was he truly innocent, as his crew, and even Eveleen, so vehemently proclaimed? Her throat constricted, her chest tightened. Was he?
She drove her hand into her pocket and touched Matt’s spectacles. She’d kept them close since finding them beside her bed that awful, ugly night. Now they were no longer cold, but warm with the heat of her body.
“Oh, Brendan . . .” she murmured. And then, oh, Matt. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, Matt, dare I hope that you’re alive, too?”
But Brendan, despite appearances, was far from relaxed or triumphant as Kestrel glided through the shallows with confident majesty, folded her wings, and turned her nose into the wind. He wore a grin, yes—but beneath it his jaw was clenched, his throat dry, his nerves shroud-tight. For bringing up the rear of the landing party was Lieutenant Andrew Myles, whose weaselly face Brendan remembered, and cared not to, from his sailing days with these very men—and Crichton himself.
Something twisted in his gut, and he recognized it for what it was. Fear.
He put the speaking trumpet to his lips to hide his strained grin. “Ahoy, Captain Crichton! Fine day to be at sea, isn’t it? I’m surprised that you’re not!”
The Englishman looked up. And then he saw Kestrel perched in her reflection, her great sails luffing in the wind, her gunports all open, and every one of her larboard guns run out and trained on him. His jaw hardened and his eyes went flinty.
“Please forgive me for being so early for our meeting, Crichton, but I do believe you denied me the opportunity to agree to a time that was convenient for me!”
“Damn you, Merrick!” Whirling, Crichton grabbed young Jake and drove his pistol into the youngster’s ribs.
The boy managed to scream, “Captain Merrick! You gotta help us! He’s got Cap—” before Crichton cuffed him sharply across the face.
“Shear off, Merrick! You’ll not make a mockery of me again!”
“God Almighty,” said Liam, standing faithfully beside his captain and gripping the rail. “Now what, Brendan?”
Brendan stared at the drama unfolding on the beach. He took a deep, steadying breath, and when he spoke, his voice was very quiet. “Liam, please call Mr. Starr down and put him on the swivel gun at the after rail.”
He felt his chest knotting, as though the old gunshot wound itself were aching, and unconsciously pressed his fingers to the scar hidden beneath his clothing. There was Crichton, angry, desperate, and yes, afraid. One blast from Kestrel’s guns and the nightmares would end. One blast and the evil in those translucent, milky eyes would be no more. He had Crichton right where he wanted him, right where he’d wanted him for the past four years, and his men were as eager as Kestrel herself to avenge Matthew Ashton, his crew, and the brig he’d been so proud of.
But Brendan could not fire. Not only would that one blast kill Crichton, it would kill the Yankees, too—and Crichton knew it as well as he did. Yanking Jake’s head back, Crichton jabbed his pistol into the underside of the boy’s jaw and faced Brendan across the short gulf of breaking waves. “Bring that ship in any closer and this brat’s a dead one, Merrick! Shear off now or I’ll shoot him where he stands!”
“He won’t do it.” Liam’s huge hands gripped the rai
l, his knuckles showing white. “He’s bluffin’, Brendan! The lad’s his insurance against us!”
But Brendan wasn’t so sure. “Faith,” he muttered, all but slamming the speaking trumpet against his lips. He felt the eyes of his crew weighing heavily on him, the restless surge of Kestrel beneath his feet. “Crichton!” he called genially. “Come aboard my schooner and let us discuss this like gentlemen! You’d like to see her up close, wouldn’t you?” He walked to the rail and stood there, shoulders thrown back and the wind lifting his coattails, his queue, the lace at his wrist. “Well, here’s your chance!”
High above him, Mira, already descending the shrouds, shut her eyes and took a deep and steadying breath. Wind sang in her ears, but her heart was hammering so loudly, she was aware of nothing else. She wondered if she was going to faint. If she did, they’d be scraping her off the deck with a shovel.
But the controlled rage in the British captain’s face steadied her. This was the man who’d commanded the frigate that Brendan had tricked onto the bars at the river’s mouth last summer. This was the man who seemed determined to avenge that humiliation. This was the man who, Liam had told her, had crippled Eveleen and tried to kill Brendan—and this was the man who had murdered her brother.
Yet Brendan was determined to face Crichton with nothing but his wits, his men, and the little Kestrel.
In that moment, Mira knew for sure that she had misjudged him.
The knowledge, raw and awful, robbed her of breath, and she had to pause in her descent as the horror of it nearly overcame her. She leaned her forehead against the tarry ropes, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears. Had her faith in Brendan been so shallow that she’d actually believed what the rest of Newburyport had? That the schooner had come out of her engagement with Crichton’s ship unscathed because Brendan didn’t want her to get marked up by an enemy’s guns?
Captain Of My Heart Page 29
