The Irish Bride

by Alexis Harrington

  As Noel spotted the tall masts of the Exeter, a burgeoning resolve grew along with his anger. He would find Aidan O’Rourke and Farrell Kirwan, even if it meant sailing to America himself.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Cardwell, but I’ve got cargo going to New York, and people there expecting it. I can’t be taking the Exeter on a pleasure jaunt to New Orleans.” Ship’s master Oliver Royce faced Noel over the worktable in his low-ceilinged quarters. The cabin was tidy and clean, and decorated with souvenirs from all over the world. Fragrant smoke from the pipe clamped between Royce’s teeth scented the air. The table was covered with a number of navigational charts and instruments. Royce unrolled a map of America’s eastern coastline and gestured with his pipe stem at the distance between his intended destination and Noel’s. “You can see it’s a hell of a trek out of the way. His lordship wouldn’t appreciate such a delay.”

  It had been easy to board the vessel once Noel identified himself to the watchman. The Cardwell name did open doors, he was pleased to note. But he resented the fact that Arthur Cardwell’s name carried far more weight with the master than did his own. Noel realized he might need to be a bit more persuasive to achieve his goal.

  He smiled blandly at the reference to his father. “This is not a ‘pleasure jaunt,’ Royce. It was Lord Cardwell who dispatched me on this errand.”

  Despite a full, neatly-trimmed beard, Royce was obviously a young man, perhaps even younger than Noel himself. In contrast with James McCorry’s derelict appearance and manner, Royce was sober and earnest-looking, with a dignified loyalty to his employer that irked Noel. “Well, I believe another ship, the Fortunate Maid, will be docking in Cork within the next week. She sails to New Orleans from here and you could be on your way.”

  Noel put both hands on the table and leaned forward slightly. “As I already explained, I’m searching for a man who has committed murder. He has a good day’s head start. I must find him, and every hour counts. I can’t wait a week for another vessel. I assure you, I can make it worth your while.” The ship’s master eyed him but didn’t respond. “Do you have a family? A wife, children perhaps?”

  His face brightened. “Aye, sir. Nell and my three lads.”

  “You must miss them when you’re gone. And of course they miss you. Maybe Mrs. Royce would like some small comforts for herself and the young ones. Something to make their lives easier in your absence?”

  The man smiled, more to himself. “Oh, she’s got it into her head that she’d like one of those fancy new machines that sews stitches. I made the mistake of telling her that I saw one in New York.”

  Noel straightened and held his hands open wide. “There you are, then. You can take me to the very place I need to go, and then go on to New York and bring your wife the gift she craves with the bonus I’ll pay you. Shall we say half again as much as you would earn this voyage?”

  The master appeared to think it over, then shook his head. “No sir, I can’t be doing it. His lordship wouldn’t like it at all.”

  Noel clenched his jaw. He might seem incorruptible, but if Noel’s experience at the gaming tables had taught him anything, it was that every man had a price. Or point of desperation.

  On the poop deck outside, brisk footfalls sounded, then faded beyond the closed door.

  “You might consider this option, then,” Noel went on in quiet, matter-of-fact tone. “I can put you off this ship right now and you will find yourself in want of a position. It would be a grave error on your part to underestimate my influence, or to assume that you know what my father wants. And if I put out a few words to the right ears, the only work you’ll find will be on a leaky whaler bound for Greenland. It’s dirty work, I hear. Dangerous as well.” The Exeter, a sleek, well-tended, well-trimmed ship, drifted gently against her moorings, as if in protest.

  Oliver Royce’s dark brows met briefly. “I don’t take kindly to threats, Mr. Cardwell.”

  “I don’t take kindly to being refused. Nor does my father.” Noel leaned a hip against the table. “If you no longer wish to captain this ship, I’ll have another master aboard and piloting me to New Orleans within twenty-four hours. Now what’s it to be, Royce? Will your wife get a nice gift from this voyage, or merely learn that her husband is out of work?”

  A tense, nearly palpable pause hung between them.

  “We’ll sail tomorrow night on the evening tide.” The man’s teeth clamped so tightly to his pipe, Noel heard his jaw pop. “For New Orleans.”

  Noel nodded. “Excellent. Now if you would be so good as to have someone show me to my quarters, I’ll settle in.”

  * * *

  On deck, Farrell’s eyes snapped open at the sound of gurgling screams, distant and yet so filled with terror, she was positive she had dreamed them. Yet she felt warm and comfortable for the first time since leaving home. So surely, she must have been dreaming.

  But she hadn’t been.

  “Man overboard! A man overboard!

  She realized that she was warm because she lay nestled against Aidan’s side with her head pillowed on his chest and his arm looped around her waist, a fact that made itself plain when he came awake with a start as well. Hastily, she moved away and sat up. Her skirt had wound itself around her legs and she freed them, then pulled her shawl closer to her shoulders.

  “What’re they saying, then?” Aidan asked, instantly alert. He was only a dark silhouette in the feeble light of the ship’s few lamps.

  She tried to see beyond his shape where crewmen scurried. “God above, I think someone has fallen into the sea.”

  “Jesus.” Instinctively, he crossed himself, then pushed his dark hair off his brow and stood. He held out his hand to help Farrell to her feet, and they went to the railing. But there was only a scrap of moon, and the stars were overlaid by a gauzy film of clouds. They didn’t provide enough light to see much. Another gurgling cry sounded, faint and indistinct.

  “Can ye see anything?” she asked, her fist at her chest. “Can you see the poor soul?” How much more fragile life seemed when cast into an immense expanse of black water.

  Closer to the bow, life buoys and a crate splashed into the water. Aidan still held her hand in his, a strong, warm hand that gave her odd comfort, and instinctively she squeezed it, her fear momentarily overriding her desire to keep her distance from him. Around them, the other passengers asleep on deck woke up, confused, asking questions, speculating.

  “Lord save us, someone’s gone into the ocean.”

  “A passenger?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s that poor old Paddy Hannigan. He’s been so seasick, he’s spent most of these past six days hanging over the railing and—”

  “Bring her up into the wind!” came an order shouted from the first mate, Mr. Quisenberry. He stood on the quarterdeck, barking commands over the frightened murmuring of other passengers. “Haul up the mainsail! Brace aback the after yards!”

  All the nautical talk sounded like a foreign language to Farrell, but replies of aye-aye were followed by the slap of feet running across the deck and ship’s hands scrambling up the rigging.

  With some adjustment of the sails, the ship began to slow her headway. Two crewmen clambered into a boat and were lowered to the ocean to pull the hapless victim aboard. Lantern light from the little rescue craft bobbed on the waves like a fairy’s magical glow over the peat bogs back home. A crewman held the lamp at arm’s length as they searched the swells.

  The men in the boat circled the ship several times and backtracked over its wake while passengers watched anxiously from the rail. Farrell never took her eyes off the little light. But after a half-hour, Mr. Quisenberry called the boat back in. “More than twenty minutes in that icy water would freeze the divil himself.”

  Captain McCorry had turned out at the first alarm, but Quisenberry was handling the matter. After a bit of investigating, it was determined that the ship’s cook, a kindly bulldog of a man from Liverpool known simply as Doctor, had gotte
n drunk and fallen from the fantail. He’d been generally well-liked, always ready with a joke or a smile.

  “Oh, no,” Farrell mourned, still clinging to Aidan’s hand. “Not Doctor. Please, God keep him.” For the moment, she was grateful that Aidan, solid and steadfast, stood with her, someone from whom to draw strength and courage.

  McCorry, who didn’t hold with the crew drinking at sea, declared that he would have keelhauled the man himself if he hadn’t drowned. “Aye, well, it’s one less mouth to feed. Let that be a lesson to any seaman who might be entertainin’ the notion of having a wee nip. The fishes’ll be havin’ him for tea.” He added tersely, “I’m back to my bunk, and I don’t mean to be disturbed again this night.”

  Quisenberry said nothing but when McCorry left the quarterdeck, his tight expression spoke for him.

  Those passengers who’d witnessed the proceedings huddled together by the gunwale amidships and grumbled among themselves about the captain’s attitude. He treated them as human cargo and this was just another example of his lack of feeling.

  “Will ye listen to that?” Farrell whispered to Aidan. “Could he not say a word for the poor man’s soul? You’d think he’s the Holy Trinity rolled into one to hear him talk so!” She clapped her hand to her mouth, aghast at her own blasphemy.

  Aidan lifted a brow. “I imagine you’ll feel the need to be sayin’ a few Our Fathers for that bit. But, aye, ye’re right about McCorry.” His face hardened in the low light, and the shadows around his eyes seemed to grow darker. “He’s no better than the landlords back home, working people like animals, without a single care for what happens to them. May they all rot in hell for their cruel ways.”

  An awkward silence fell between them. They had both made a point of avoiding the subject of Michael’s death since they left Skibbereen, but now it rose between them like a ghost.

  Farrell realized then that she was clutching his hand like a frightened child. When she tried to disengage her fingers, he tightened his grip. Her heart froze in her chest as their gazes locked. She was his wife, after all. If he was of a mind to touch her, had the right. She could object but would it do any good?

  At last, he shrugged and loosened his hold. “The first mate seems to be a decent enough man, at least.”

  While Alfred Quisenberry did indeed seem to be a gentleman, as did Charles Morton, the second mate, the ship’s master was as crude and rough as he’d first appeared during their meeting in The Rose and Anchor. He’d promised nothing fancy, and it was a promise he’d kept.

  They’d been at sea for six days, and so far had not seen another ship. The first night out, there had been music and dancing in steerage. Some of the men played jigs on pipes and fiddles, and another had produced a keg of good, stout porter. An air of hope and anticipation had radiated from the passengers. Yes, they were leaving Ireland, dear as she was, but they were bound for a new land, a new start, where it was said that every man had a chance to make something of himself.

  The merriment hadn’t lasted long. Seasickness had claimed nearly everyone, including Farrell. Aidan, on the other hand, had not been troubled at all by what one passenger called mal de mer. In fact, he’d been quite unruffled by the ordeal, but he’d been surprisingly attentive to her. Fortunately, she’d managed to get her sea legs after a day or two. Others were not so lucky, and many of them, already weakened by hunger and poor health, could do nothing but lie on their hard, narrow bunks and suffer.

  After almost a week at sea, the foul odors of illness, spilled slop buckets, and close-packed bodies made life unbearable in steerage. If they closed the hatches, the air became so thick and fetid, no one could breathe. But when left open in bad weather, rain and seawater washed across the deck and down into the hold, contributing to the wretchedness. The crew manned pumps but that only kept the quarters from flooding.

  So Farrell, Aidan, and the other passengers who were able, remained on the crowded deck rather than descend into the miserable conditions below. Unless rain prevented it, they slept outside, too.

  “Come on, lass. Let’s try to get more rest before the sun rises over us. There’s naught to do for that poor wretch now.”

  Farrell followed Aidan back to their blankets on deck with a heavy heart. When she lay down, she was careful to leave a foot of space between them.

  And tried to forget how nice it had felt to rest against him.

  * * *

  “Tell me, Mrs. O’Rourke, could ye be givin’ me a piece of bread for me wife? I know that the captain says as how we’re not allowed more than our ration, but it’s the seasickness she’s had for days now. The bread seems to help.” Ryan Dougherty spoke to Farrell in a low voice.

  Farrell stood at the ship’s stove in the galley, passing out today’s menu, boiled potatoes, from the galley doorway. Barely two weeks at sea and she’d found herself working as ship’s cook for a shilling and six pence. “The chamomile didn’t help, then?” She had made a tea for the ailing Mrs. Dougherty from supplies she found in the medicine chest, which was also kept in the galley.

  Dougherty’s face was typical of so many she’d left behind in Ireland. He could have been any age between thirty and sixty, but weather, worry, and hard times had seamed his features like a walnut shell. “Och, aye, some it did. But bread is all she can keep down.”

  She nodded, glanced at the passengers lined up behind Dougherty and searched for any crew members that might be loitering about. McCorry was strict about how much food was allotted each passenger. The captain and his mates, however, enjoyed chicken and salted beef and pork along with their potatoes and bread, and an occasional orange or lime to guard against scurvy. She tucked a piece of bread under the potatoes on the plate Dougherty had given her and handed it back to him. “Keep this to yourself,” she whispered. “I’ll come down to see how she’s faring later on.”

  “D’ye think your man might be having a word with Captain Stoneheart to let the ailing have a little extra? O’Rourke seems to get on with him a bit, though how I don’t know. St. Patrick himself couldn’t reason with that serpent’s get.”

  Her man. Farrell tightened her grip on the big cooking spoon. How odd that Aidan, whom she’d known only for fighting and flirting, had become the intermediary between the crew and the passengers. “I’ll ask him, Mr. Dougherty.”

  He nodded his thanks and Farrell went on spooning up potatoes to the hungry. The menu onboard offered no more than the one back home. Some days they had oatmeal, some days rice, which was barely enough to keep body and soul together. Most passengers had brought no other provisions with them and were forced to make do with what she dished out.

  After the cook drowned, McCorry had put a cabin boy to the task, but although the fare was exceedingly plain and simple to prepare, the youth managed to destroy every meal he touched. Since he also cooked for McCorry and the mates, the captain’s patience had quickly run thin. When the boy had nearly burned down the galley, he was sent back to his other duties. McCorry had no other hands to spare, so he recruited among the passengers for a cook, offering a shilling and sixpence, to be paid at the end of the voyage. Aidan suggested the job to Farrell, and when she agreed, he’d approached McCorry, insisting upon receiving the money in advance. Surprisingly, the master consented.

  “With a blackguard like him, it’s best to have the coin in hand—ye might say,” Aidan had told her with a sudden grin, after putting the money in the same hiding place as the rest of their cash. Dougherty was right, Aidan had managed to win McCorry’s grudging respect.

  Farrell, who came from a land where the fey people lurked in mists and shadows, had expected to feel the dead cook’s presence in his galley, and perhaps his objection to hers. But as she’d examined and handled the utensils and pots and stores, no ghost came calling or complaining. Perhaps Doctor had gone on peacefully to the next world. At least he didn’t seem to mind that she tread on the one he’d left behind.

  And she was glad for the work. The galley was warm and out of the s
lashing rain and wind. Cooking kept her busy and helped pass the time, which was filled with mind-numbing boredom and occasional queasiness from sickening ocean swells.

  What she couldn’t forget were worries about the people back home, and the questions rolled through her mind like an ever-turning wheel. Were the families safe? she wondered. Had Lord Cardwell given up his persecution when he realized that she and Aidan were gone? Had Noel returned to Greensward Manor after traveling to Cork?

  Did Liam miss her? Had he come to regret sending her away, or not coming with her?

  Although she would be able write to the family when they reached America, there would be no way to hear from them or learn their fate for many months, perhaps even years.

  Worst of all, when she wasn’t fretting over them, her thoughts turned to Aidan. She told herself it was only natural that he came to mind, considering the circumstances of their bond and her frequent contact with him. After all, there was no place to escape to, really. She had only to gaze over the passengers on deck and there he’d be, braw and a bit taller than anyone else, a wee more wide through the shoulders, with a straighter back and—

  Disgusted with herself, she flopped potatoes onto a tin plate passed to her by a wan, pregnant young woman named Deirdre Connagher. Those without proper dishes had brought along whatever they had at hand, since the Mary Fiona provided no eating utensils. She’d seen all manner of items pressed into service, including a barrel lid, a bodhrán, even handkerchiefs.

  Aidan’s dark-haired good looks rose in her mind again, and she tried in vain to push them away. Wasn’t he the reason they were here on this whittled out cork, bobbing along to an unknown land? Providing, God save them, that they weren’t swept overboard, or the ship wasn’t smashed to smithereens by a storm or one of the sea monsters she’d heard the sailors talking about. Because of Aidan O’Rourke, she might never see her home again.