The Wayward One

by Danelle Harmon

  There, in the darkness, was the hatch that led below. She knew the layout. A short companionway ladder, which she easily descended in breeches and coat. Lantern-light behind a cabin door.

  Andrew.

  She bit her lip, then reached into her pocket. Found a strip of her gown. Quietly, carefully tied the door shut against its neighboring latch so that he would be safe—and unable to interfere.

  Another hatch, and finally the hold, where McPhee would surely be on guard.

  The ship was pitch black. She paused for a moment to get her bearings. Around her, the quiet was eerie and frightening, the sound of the sea rushing past outside, muffled. She wished she had a candle, though the risk of carrying one and being discovered was too great. She would have to rely on her memory, and her senses.

  I’m coming, Ruaidri.

  I won’t let you down.

  Her palms moved along wooden bulkheads as she felt her way forward and steadied her balance. Great masts creaked in the heavy darkness. And there, a noise. Just below and somewhere in front of her; the sound of low voices and a man moaning in pain.

  She had found the hold.

  Which meant that McPhee was nearby.

  Her gaze plumbed the darkness, but to no avail. She took a deep, steadying breath and held it, straining to hear something, anything.

  And there, yes. Snoring.

  McPhee, it seemed, was asleep.

  She listened to the light, rhythmic sound of his slumber, trying to discern exactly where he was. She moved silently to her right. There, barely discernible in the pressing gloom, she could see a dim glow. Praying that the steady snores would continue, she crept toward it, the glow getting brighter as she moved around the base of the foremast, a bulkhead, and there, finally, the small space in which McPhee had crammed himself, his back molded to the curve of the hull, his cheek across his drawn-up knees and his feet resting on the hatch cover beneath which the American crew was imprisoned.

  A musket and a pistol lay near his heel.

  Nerissa swallowed hard and began to creep forward, bringing up the pistol she had taken from the sentry and training it on McPhee’s still form.

  He didn’t move.

  She crept closer, the agonized moaning coming from below that closed hatch causing her heart to beat a little faster. Was it Ruaidri? Or some other poor soul, desperately in need of medical attention and trapped like an animal in the darkness?

  Three more feet and she would be able to touch McPhee.

  She crept forward another few steps and holding her breath while keeping her gun trained on him, slowly reached down to retrieve his pistol.

  His eyes opened and he jerked up, staring at her.

  “Don’t move,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t betray her quaking nerves. “I don’t want to shoot you.”

  “Lady Nerissa?”

  “Open the hatch.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I can’t shoot you, either, but I will if I have to. Open the hatch.”

  “You’ll have to shoot me, then. And the moment you do, my men will be down here like a swarm of hornets.”

  “There are a dozen of you. And one less, if you make me shoot you. There are, if I guess correctly, some forty Americans and one nearly-dead Irishman locked in that hatch below your feet. While we both place great faith in the Royal Navy, Mr. McPhee, even you will acknowledge those are pretty long odds.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Indeed, I have thought it out most carefully.”

  “You’re the daughter of one of Britain’s noblest, oldest families, a family whose very history is interwoven with England’s itself. You are about to betray your country, your family, your navy!”

  “Open the hatch. Now.”

  He let out a deep sigh, unfolded himself from against the hull, and reached for the latch that kept the square wooden door firmly atop the space in which the prisoners were kept below. She did not expect him to give up without a fight, and indeed he did not; as he undid the latch, he swung around in a lightning move and made a grab for her pistol and everything happened at once.

  Her arm jerked up, the small weapon went off, and as the cover exploded off the hatch, a horde of Americans came bursting forth, intent on reclaiming their ship.

  “Huzzah for you, Lady Nerissa!” shouted Lieutenant Morgan as he clambered up and past, knocking a stunned McPhee onto his back while seizing the British lieutenant’s weapons. He went tearing out into the darkness, his shipmates, stinking of sweat and salt and blood, howling like Indians in his wake. One of them stopped to tackle McPhee, quickly binding his wrists with a piece of rope that Nerissa had found and now offered silently; the last strip from her gown secured his mouth, and then there was nothing but his eyes meeting hers from above the gag, the sounds of fighting from above, and down here in the darkness that was lit only by the dim glow of McPhee’s small lantern, the yawning black hole of the hatch.

  “Let this be a lesson to you, Mr. McPhee,” she said, her fingers tightening around the lantern, “to never go to sleep on the job.”

  He shut his eyes and let his head fall back against the curve of the hull, no doubt already envisioning his own court martial and dishonorable discharge from the Royal Navy.

  But Nerissa didn’t care.

  She was already climbing down the short ladder into this wretched small, hot space, already shining the light into what had been pitch blackness, already looking for him.

  “Nerissa, mo grá,” he said weakly, from where he had been dragged to a corner and propped up against someone’s jacket. “Mo cróga, bean laoch álainn.” He was still in the bloodied breeches, a clean band of linen wound just above one knee. “My brave, beautiful warrior woman.” His eyes, deep and bottomless in the lantern-lit darkness, looked up at her through their absurdly long lashes, and she reached a hand, still smelling of gunpowder, down to touch his bristled cheek. He closed his eyes and held it there, reluctant to ever let her go, and she reveling in the warmth of his skin beneath hers, the knowledge that his heart still pumped his lifeblood beneath her hand.

  “I could not let you die,” she breathed, kneeling down beside him and offering him the strength of her own slim, lithe body. His face was ghostly from loss of blood, and she could see that it was an effort for him to even keep his eyes open, let alone press her hand to his cheek.

  She sat down on the hard, blood-stained planking and gently gathered him in her arms, stroking his heavy curls as he rested his forehead against her shoulder.

  “Tá tú mo banlaoch,” he whispered. “My heroine. My savior….”

  “Sleep, Ruaidri. The ship is back in your men’s hands and you, my love, are safe in mine.” She threaded her fingers up through his hair and gently caressed his scalp, wincing at the hard swelling she found there. She did not want to think about how he must have received it. She did not want to think of him being hurt, she did not want to think of anything but how grateful she was that he was alive and safely in her arms.

  Hadley…the Royal Navy… Lucien.

  Strength and a hard, ruthless confidence filled her heart. She had come this far.

  She could deal with all of them.

  Ruaidri’s forehead grew heavy against her collarbone. He murmured something unintelligible and, with her hand still quietly caressing him, finally gave himself up to the demands of his body and slept.

  Two decks above, Lieutenant Morgan was in command of the American brig Tigershark, and her proper colors were once again flying proudly at her gaff. The dead—including Bates, who’d been taken down by a well-aimed shot to his groin from young Midshipman Cranton—were buried at sea and what remained of the British prize crew was rounded up and herded below to the same hold that had so recently imprisoned the Americans.

  When that British crew arrived, resentful and angry, they found Lieutenant McPhee bound and gagged, and in the hold itself, the boy that Captain O’ Devir had presumably buggered. He was holding the Irishman in his
arms, his lips buried in the thick, curling black hair that lay like a mantle over the wide span of his uniformed shoulders.

  The midshipman’s eyes lifted to regard the Royal Navy sailors and in that moment, to a man, they saw that it had been no boy that O’ Devir had presumably been buggering.

  It was Lady Nerissa de Montforte.

  She had returned the ship to the enemy. She had betrayed them all and committed treason against her king and country.

  For Nerissa, there was no going back.

  Chapter 23

  It was Lieutenant Morgan and two brawny seamen who personally came down into the hold and helped their very weak captain to his feet, up the short ladder, and topside. For Ruaidri, his head swimming, his vision going light and dark and darker still as he fought to stay conscious, it was a journey through the gauntlets of hell on a leg that was on fire beneath his left hip. But he’d be pickled in vinegar if he allowed either of the seamen to actually pick him up and carry him. Injured or not, he was in command here and he would not show weakness when there were others who were injured just as badly, who were fated to die, or who’d lost their lives this day.

  Nerissa stayed at his side, discreetly offering her arm so that he might steady himself. She knew. She knew, and he loved her for it.

  They reached the quarterdeck, dark beneath the stars. As they emerged on deck, cheering erupted all around. Cheers for the strength of their captain, who was on his feet. Cheers for the fact he was back in command. And mostly, cheers for the beautiful Lady Nerissa, whose bravery and sacrifice had saved them all from Mill Prison, the gallows, or both.

  If they were fond of her before, now she was their heroine and savior—just as she was his. She had won their hearts.

  “Three cheers for the captain’s lady!” They all but swarmed her. “Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah!”

  Ruaidri heard the cheering as though from a great distance. He had not been up here since before the battle and now he paused, surveying the damage in the darkness. Only Nerissa beside him knew how heavily he leaned against her as the men went back to repairing rigging, sails and planking, scrubbing blood-stained decks and upending a heavy gun that lay on its side.

  “Damage report, Mr. Morgan.”

  “Five dead, sir. Mr. Tackett, the carpenter’s mate Pettengill, and three able seamen. Sears, Moody, and McCafferty. Brits threw them all overboard.”

  Ruaidri nodded once, measuring his breathing in order to fill his dizzy brain with the air it needed to keep him on his feet and get him through this grim task.

  “Wounded?”

  “Twelve, sir. One not likely to make it.”

  “I wasn’t likely to make it either, but damn the eyes of anyone who says I won’t. And the ship, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Rigging cut up some, sir, but we’re working on it. The Brits weren’t aiming to damage her so things could have been a lot worse. They rammed and boarded us. Fought like tigers, our lads did, but we were outnumbered three to one.”

  “Outnumbered? What about Le Favre, that little maggot in command of the French frigate? Where was he durin’ all this?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Bolted as soon as things got hot.”

  “Bolted, did he? When I catch up to him he’s goin’ to wish his arse had been blistered in butter and set afire.”

  “Aye, if he hadn’t gotten greedy and tried to take the English frigate, things would’ve turned out a lot differently. He ruined it for everyone. At the end of the day though, we got what we came for.”

  Ruaidri regarded him keenly. “The explosive?”

  “Lord Andrew de Montforte, sir. He refused to leave his sister and she refused to leave us.” He quickly filled his captain in on what had happened. “Someone—” he cast a pointed look at Nerissa—“locked His Lordship in his cabin, but we freed him and brought him below. Figured he could help Dr. Jeffcote with the wounded while we tried to decide what to do with him.”

  Ruaidri just stared at him. Lord Andrew de Montforte? Here? Now?

  It was all he could do to contain his grin. “Well, now, things have just got a whole lot better, they have. Thank ye, Mr. Morgan. Time to beat it back to Boston, then.”

  “Boston?” He’d all but forgotten Nerissa standing quietly nearby. “We’re still going to Boston?”

  He looked at her as if she were daft. “Well of course we are, lass, what did ye think?”

  “I thought you would release Andrew, maybe in France or Jersey…that you’d let him go because he’s my brother—”

  Ruaidri just stared at her. Had he missed something here? Were they both reading the same page? Inhabiting the same earth? He bit back a wave of sudden nausea. Damn his dizzy brain for its inability to think. Damn his weakened body when the ship and the situation in which they found themselves needed everything he had to give. He was close to either puking or passing out or maybe both, and now this? Fire burning up his leg and the musket ball that Jeffcote had dug out of the back of his lower thigh now a grim souvenir in his waistcoat pocket, he straightened up, cursing the sudden look of dismay on Nerissa’s face as she realized her brother would not be spared, and certainly not released.

  “For the love o’ God, woman, I didn’t come three thousand miles just to feck around in the English Channel. I have what I was sent here to get, and my orders are to deliver him and his secrets to John Adams.”

  Her face had gone flat. “So you’ll go through with this, then. Take him away from his family, his wife and baby girl, and bring him to the rebels.”

  He felt suddenly wearier than he’d ever imagined he could be. “This is a discussion for another time, Nerissa.”

  Her mouth tightened. Her fingers dropped from his arm, and he was left to stand on his own, weaker than a newborn kitten and just as unsteady on his feet. The world swayed and his skin went clammy. Morgan was looking at him critically, and Ruaidri turned away to lean against the deckhouse, thankful for the darkness that hid his body’s violent shaking from the crew. What had Jeffcote said? That the ball had nicked a blood vessel which, if not for poor old Tackett and his quick thinking with an improvised tourniquet, would have killed him? Damned if he knew. He certainly didn’t remember anything between shouting for Nerissa to get below as the world had blown apart, and waking up on a bench in the surgeon’s quarters, a bandage around his thigh and the smell of death and suffering all around him. Thank the living Christ they hadn’t taken his leg.

  And now he’d upset the one person in the world for whom he’d have given that same leg if only to spare her a single ounce of pain.

  “Mr. Cranton,” he said, using all his strength to raise a hand and summon the midshipman. “Go get Lord Andrew and tell him I fancy a chat with him. Settle him in my cabin with some refreshments. I’ll be in to speak with him shortly.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  He bent his head, suddenly nauseous, the wind blowing hair that was damp with salt spray and probably blood, around his face. Gone was the ribbon with which he’d queued it when he rose this morning and in its place, a hard, painful, goose-egg. He rubbed distractedly at it and looked over at Nerissa, feeling the accusatory weight of her stare.

  He met that stare, unwilling to back down. Unable to back down.

  “What do you possibly have to say to my brother?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  She made a sound of angry disgust, turned and stalked off.

  A wave of vertigo caught him and he briefly shut his eyes, trying to keep what blood was left in his body in the places where it was most needed. His gaze lit on the compass, tried to make sense of it in the darkness, and failed. He glanced up at the trim of the sails, saw they were drawing well, and swaying drunkenly with sudden dizziness, caught himself before he could topple off to the side and end up as a sorry mess on the deck.

  He missed Nerissa’s strong, slim arm.

  But there was time to miss it later. They were not out of danger. Not by any stretch of a leprechaun’s luck.

>   Placating her was going to have to wait.

  “A night glass,” he said, and Morgan handed one to him.

  Ruaidri opened it, struggling to hold up the heavy instrument in arms that were failing him. Sweat dappled his forehead. Cranton was materializing from out of the darkness and impatiently, Ruaidri motioned to the young officer.

  “Yer help if ye please, Mr. Cranton.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Cranton turned and bent, and holding the instrument to his eye while balancing it against the youth’s shoulder, Ruaidri scanned the eastern horizon. Darkness lay heavily all around them, but he had the night vision of an owl and the glass, its image inverted, was almost redundant.

  Morgan pressed close. “Is he out there, Captain?”

  They all knew who ‘he’ was. In a few hours, dawn would be lighting up the sea and as the light strengthened, Hadley would see that his prize had gone missing—and he’d come looking for her with a vengeance.

  “I don’t see him, Morgan, but that doesn’t mean a thing.” He shut the glass, swaying on his feet. “We can’t linger here.”

  “Your orders, sir?”

  “Wind’s decent out of the east. Slap as much canvas on her as she’ll carry without rippin’ the sticks out of her and let’s get the hell out of Europe. ’Tis time to go home, lads. Time to go home.”

  Sudden cheering erupted all around. Weak, dizzy, and white with pain, Ruaidri pushed himself off the deckhouse, impatiently motioning for Morgan to help him to his cabin where Lord Andrew and his next battle surely awaited him.

  One skirmish won, he thought, the next about to begin.

  * * *

  Lord Andrew, slouching in Captain O’ Devir’s chair with a glass of Irish whiskey in his hand, stared morosely out the darkened stern windows and contemplated the absolute mess in which he and Nerissa now found themselves.

  The absolute mess that she had brought about.

  His wife Celsie back home at Rosebriar with little Laura and surely worried sick about him. Nerissa ruined, a traitor to England and now, God help them, in love with a rebel who was destined to die when his leg turned gangrenous, the Royal Navy returned, or Lucien caught up to him. Lucien. His brother wouldn’t give O’ Devir a chance to even explain himself before he executed him. Andrew raked a hand through his hair. A fortnight ago his life had been secure and orderly, full of hope and excitement as he’d planned for the explosive’s demonstration and finally, recognition for his achievements. Now the world was turned upside down.