Never Too Late For Love (Heroes Of The Sea Book 9)

by Danelle Harmon

  “And there we see a thousand men, as rich as Squire Da-vid, and what they wasted ev’ry day, I wish it could be sa-ved! Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle dan-dy...” She sucked in a great gulp of air and shouted to the treetops, “Mind the music and the step, and with the girls be han-dy!”

  Hers—like her father’s, her brother Matt’s, and Newburyport’s itself—was red-hot rebel’s blood. Yet Mira’s patriotism didn’t end with a mere song, nor the limitations of her sex, though she’d shunned English tea, donned native homespun, and worn her dark hair in thirteen braids, one to represent each colony, as the other women had. As she was a sea captain’s daughter who’d come into the world some one hundred forty leagues east of Newfoundland in the middle of a raging gale, with a pitching, yawing ship her cradle and a piece of sailcloth her first blanket, the role she took in the defense of liberty was a bit more ... active. But it was damned hard to man a cannon—and win a wager—if Matt kept sneaking off on Proud Mistress without her, which was the only reason she was standing here in the muddy field this morning and not beside him on the brig’s stout decks.

  “And there we see a whopping gun, as big as a log of ma-ple, mounted on a little cart, a load for father’s cattle! Yankee Doodle, keep it up....”

  She bawled out the rest of the verse, then hummed the next one through her nose, pacing the song to Rigel’s hoofbeats and plotting, as she’d been doing all morning, the best way to sneak the latest cat—Rescue Effort Number Thirty-One until further named—into the house without Father’s knowledge.

  She could hide him in the stable and wait till Father left for his shipyards, which he would do at precisely one o’clock. She could smuggle him in through the back door. Or she could simply put him in the front hall and hope he mingled well enough with the other Rescue Efforts that Father wouldn’t notice him.

  But whatever she did, she’d have to be careful, because Father was in one of his moods this morning, and with good cause.

  The client—not just another client, but the client, whose drafts for a fine new schooner would’ve pulled the Ashton Shipyards out of their slump and made Ephraim’s name famous—had never shown up last night. And it was no wonder he hadn’t shown up, because the gallant captain of the American privateer Annabel, who’d outfoxed a British frigate at the mouth of the river last night, had been swept overboard during the ensuing sea fight and was, by all reliable accounts, presumed dead.

  That captain was the client.

  So much for all their efforts to make a favorable impression on this naval architect whom only Matt had met, several months ago off Portsmouth. But these drafts of his had so impressed her brother that Ephraim, stopping to listen to him for once, had finally posted a letter to this unknown captain and invited him to Newburyport in the hopes of snaring his business.

  The preparations they’d gone through to make sure they got it! Abigail had cooked up a supper that could’ve fed the entire town. The rugs had been beaten, the table rubbed with beeswax, the silver polished till it shone. Mira had even donned a gown and put her hair up under a little lace mobcap, managing to look demure and ladylike enough to please even Father, who’d been just coming up from the cellar with several bottles of his finest Madeira when he’d spotted her uncharacteristic appearance and almost dropped them on his toe.

  But it had all been for naught. Just like Matt’s dire warnings to mind her behavior, now dancing through her head like singsong verses from a nursery rhyme, shaping themselves to the tune of “Yankee Doodle” and filling the morning with sound:

  “Don’t race El Nath down High Street, the client mi-ight see you! Stay at home and mind yourself, and please try to be go-od!” Laughing, she threw her head back, let the sun splash across her face, and belted out, “Mira Ashton, you’re a brat! Mira, you’re naught but trou-ble! All boldness and all brazenness, and don’t feed Luff beneath the table!”

  Hmm. That last phrase didn’t quite fit within the confines of the tune; she’d have to work on it a bit, then bawl it out on the fo’c’sle the next time Matt took Proud Mistress to sea. Nice and loud, loud enough to send the company into a fit of guffaws and Matt into teeth-gritting anger. She could already envision him going as red as his hair, his spectacles steaming up, his lips thinning out the way they always did when he was particularly annoyed about something....

  Her laughter, fresh as the sea wind that drove across the marshlands and dunes of nearby Plum Island, soared up to the hazy blue sky above, for the rest of his silly warnings didn’t have a prayer of fitting within the confines of “Yankee Doodle.”

  No climbing Mistress’s masts just to prove you can do it faster than anyone else!

  Watch your language, and don’t show up at the supper table wearing those trousers and smelling like horses!

  And for God’s sake, please find a place to hide that cat you snuck home off the docks! When Father finds out, he’s going to have a damned fit!

  Well, it wasn’t as though she kept all of the Rescue Efforts. She did place them in good homes after getting them back on their feet. So what if the number was up to thirty? It was a cumulative count, anyhow; there were actually only nine cats presently living at, in, and around the Ephraim Ashton household.

  Well, ten. She’d forgotten Rescue Effort Number Thirty-One, a scruffy ball of orange fur watching her from atop a fence post and wondering, no doubt, just how she intended to get him into the house and past Ephraim without all hell breaking loose. She’d planned it for yesterday; having this esteemed Captain Merrick around would certainly have diverted Father’s attention long enough for her to get the cat in and placed safely among the others roaming the house.

  She sighed and squinted up at the sun, just beginning to burn through the haze. Right about now, Father’d be reaching for his third muffin and hollering for his second pot of coffee, laced with a generous dose of rum to “wake him up.” And any time now, she predicted with that strange intuition that binds sibling to sibling, Matt would come home with another brave deed under his belt to make the ladies sigh, the young boys idolize him, and the other privateers go green with envy. His name would make the Essex Gazette, of course; Ephraim would have something more to brag about when he met with his cronies down at Davenport’s Wolfe Tavern on Saturday night; and perhaps he’d cool off about the loss of the client whose business he’d been so eager to land, a client whose loss had not been because of her this time....

  Just then she heard the distant, dull thump of a cannon down in the harbor as a ship was welcomed in from the ocean and into the Merrimack River. The report was followed by a steady succession of twelve more—thirteen in all, one for each colony. It was a jubilant salute, repeated by every vessel in the harbor and the great field battery guarding Newburyport at the tip of Plum Island. Finally the reverberations faded, leaving in its wake only the distant screams of gulls and wild cheering from the wharves and shipyards lining the riverfront.

  Matt was back, all right.

  She pictured him standing tall and proud on Mistress’s quarterdeck as the brig glided past the smoking field battery and up the river, his spectacles hazed with dried spray, his coattails flapping in the wind, his red hair whipping about his freckled face as he considered which woman to choose from among the throng waiting to pounce on him at the wharf. It would probably take about an hour for him to drop anchor, make that decision, claw through that throng, and find his way up High Street and back to the house in time for breakfast.

  Mira would be waiting for him, of course—but the greeting she planned for him would not be as sweet as the one he’d get down on the wharf.

  She continued working the horse. A mosquito bit through her trousers, and she reached down, slapped her leg, swore in a way that would’ve made Father proud had she been his son and not his daughter, and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her sleeve. Then she heard a commotion coming from the house. Was Matt home? Already?

  Mira could hear Luff’s insane barking, mingling with th
e frightened whinny of a horse. Above it all came the sound of male voices raised in greeting, or, as one of them was Father’s, more likely battle.

  Already.

  By the time Mira had cooled Rigel down and led him back to the stable, the argument was loud enough to be heard clear across the street, across the town, and across the river in Salisbury. Entering the house, she traced its progress as it moved at what sounded like dizzying speed, from the upstairs, the hall, the parlor, the dining room; Matt shouting at the top of his lungs; Father bellowing ferociously; Matt again, his voice suddenly muffled as he no doubt shoved one of Abigail’s muffins down his craw. Counting the seconds, Mira waited for the hollering to fade toward the back of the house before tearing the front door open. With Number Thirty-One tucked in the crook of her arm, she kicked off her muddy boots and darted across the thick carpet.

  “I’m telling you, Father, he’s not a Brit! How many blasted times do I have to repeat myself? He’s not a Brit! Not a Brit!” Something crashed violently against a wall. “For Christ’s sake, he was wearing an American privateer’s coat!”

  The argument was approaching the parlor now, fading behind wainscoted walls, rounding entranceways, and bouncing off high ceilings as Mira listened with amused curiosity.

  “That don’t make him American!” Ephraim bawled.

  “What about the missing client, huh? What about the drafts?”

  “What drafts? I ain’t seen no bloody drafts!”

  “That’s because they were destroyed by seawater, damn you!”

  Father’s gale-force roar made the walls shake. “Don’t gimme any of yer lip, Matt! I know a damned Englishman when I see one! Ye come to me with some cockamamie story about this captain surviving a sea fight with that British frigate, and then a night alone on the open ocean? Whaddye take me fer, a damned idiot? That rascal upstairs ain’t my client! Why, I’ll bet ye my eyeteeth he’s a British deserter off that same bleedin’ frigate! Christ! Now, get him outta here, damn you! Cart him down to Davenport’s tavern, let them take care of him! I want no part of him, ye hear?”

  “Damn you, he’s our responsibility, our client!”

  “My client died a gallant death aboard that sloop!”

  “Your client’ll die upstairs unless you show him some proper American compassion!”

  “He ain’t my client, and I ain’t showin’ nothing to no goddamned Brit!”

  “Damn you, get it through your thick skull he’s not—a—Brit!”

  Mira ducked behind the staircase, flattening herself against the fine paneling of Santo Domingo mahogany. She held her breath as the two stormed into view, Matt with so much steam on his spectacles, she wondered how he could see. Behind them the housekeeper, Abigail, trailed like bubbles in a warship’s wake, flour breezing from her skirts.

  “Christian charity, Ephraim!” she pleaded. “What if Matthew’s right and he is the captain of the American ship Annabel? And if not, what difference does it make? So what if he’s British? You can’t just abandon the poor fellow like so much garbage!”

  “All Brits are garbage!”

  “Dammit, Father!” Something else crashed against a wall.

  “Ephraim, please listen to your son—”

  “Abigail, you stay outta this! And, Matt, you throw one more thing and I’m gonna take a stick to yer hide! Don’t think I’m too old to do it! I’m still yer father, and what I say goes. Now, git that rascal outta here by the time I count to ten or you can damn well fergit ever making another cruise in that brig again, is that clear?”

  “You can’t threaten me, damn you!”

  “I’ll threaten all I like!”

  “Over my dead body!”

  Something else shattered.

  They were storming into the dining room now, Father’s silver-buckled shoes just disappearing behind the doorway. Thanking God for the argument, for it was the perfect chance to get Number Thirty-One safely inside, Mira darted out from behind the staircase.

  Matt turned—and saw her.

  She ran for the stairs.

  “Mira! You stay out of the east bedroom, you hear me? Mira!”

  He couldn’t have issued a better invitation. Taking the stairs three at a time, she careened around the landing, took the rest of the steps in two bounds, charged down the hall, and lunged for the closed, paneled door. Downstairs she heard Ephraim lighting into Matt once more.

  Her hand hit the latch. Without a second thought, she burst into the room.

  Chapter 2

  Behind her, the door swung shut with a click she never heard.

  A man lay asleep in the big four-poster tester bed—a handsome, nearly naked man with damp knee breeches pasted to his well-muscled thighs, long legs sprinkled with auburn hair, and bare feet that stuck out over the foot rail by a good ten inches. There was sensitivity in the shape of his face, elegance in the slant of his brows, artistry in the way his cheekbones stood above the faint hollows beneath them. It was a handsome face, even in sleep; the jaw firm, the lips sensual, the mouth and eyes framed by laugh lines that appeared to get much use. His hair, dark against the white pillowcase, tumbled rakishly over his brow and was the color of September chestnuts, rich and glossy and curling at the ends where it had begun to dry. He was by far the best-looking specimen of his gender Mira had ever seen.

  And, looking at his hands lying atop the counterpane, she knew immediately that Matt had spoken the truth.

  His weren’t the blunt, stubby, work-roughened fingers of a seafarer. They were the strong, graceful hands of an artist ... a naval architect.

  The client.

  Good God. She stepped closer, staring. Beneath swollen lids rimmed with long lashes, his eyes were moving slowly, as though he was caught in the throes of a dream. She saw his fingers twitch, heard his soft intake of breath, watched his head move slightly on the pillow.

  But he never knew she was there.

  # # #

  For Brendan, time had rolled back to the night before, and he was once again commanding Annabel’s desperate flight from the sea, the rebel town of Newburyport approaching off their bows, HMS Dismal in hot pursuit, and the schooner’s drafts spread out over his knee and fluttering in the breeze.

  “Brendan!”

  Liam’s voice, desperate and wild.

  “Bren-daaaaan!”

  Faith, where was their confidence in him?

  Sure enough, there was Liam, all two hundred strapping pounds of him, shoving his telescope into a seaman’s hand and hurtling toward him at breakneck speed. Blue eyes bulging, he slid into the deckhouse where Brendan was sitting, nearly tripping over a ringbolt as he grabbed desperately for his arm.

  Brendan barely glanced up. “Honestly, Liam, as an officer, you really should try to set a better example. Racing across the deck like that—”

  “God Almighty, Cap’n, it’s Crichton commandin’ that frigate!” Liam had his arm now, nearly ripping it from its socket; the drafts jumped in the wind, and Brendan grabbed them just in time. “D’ye hear me, Brendan? Crichton!”

  Astern, the British frigate drew closer, determined to prevent them from reaching the Merrimack River and the safety of Newburyport. Water thundered and creamed from her bows. Drums rolled ominously upon the wind. Pipes shrilled. Gunports were yawning open....

  While forward in Annabel’s bows, Dalby O’Hara crouched miserably, a gnarled hand clamped over his belly, and his face the color of oatmeal as he remembered his own treatment at the hands of that frigate’s captain, three years before.

  At his elbow, Fergus McDermott, an atheist who’d adopted religion thirty seconds earlier, recited the Twenty-third Psalm over and over in a mindless chant.

  Brendan held up the schooner’s drafts so that Liam could see them better. “Y’know, Liam, I’ve been thinking.... Maybe I ought to give the bows a bit more steeve. Other than that, I think she’s going to be perfect. Sharp in the topsides around the bow, lean in the stern, and lots of rake in both. Not only will our new privateer be a
s swift as the wind, she’ll sit so low in the water that her profile will be all but invisible from a distance! And with this hull shape, she’ll be perfect for windward sailing, and we’ll be able to carry a greater press of sail, even flying topsails and topgallants if we’ve a mind to—”

  “Brendan—”

  “Too little beam and she’d be fast but unstable. Too much and she’d be a laggard. Too fine at bow and stern and we’d sacrifice weight-carrying ability fore and aft. That means guns, Liam! And in a privateer, that won’t do, now, will it?” Beyond Annabel’s desperate bows the sunset smeared the sky in brilliant tones of red and purple, reflecting against the water as it changed from sea-chop to rippling cat’s paws of current. In the distance, Newburyport was coming into view. “Ah, Liam, if we had this schooner right now, we’d leave that beast back there lumbering in her own bow-wake. If we had the schooner—”

  “Dammit, Brendan, we’re not goin’ t’ have a schooner if ye don’t put down those bloody drafts and listen t’ me! It’s Crichton!”

  Brendan glanced up, his eyes alight with mirth, and his mouth set in that same quirky grin that was as reckless now as it had been when he and Liam had spent their childhoods exploring the rocky shores of Connaught. It was a grin that was sure to drive poor Liam mad. “So anyhow, I’ve decided that if I have this Ashton fellow build her exactly to my specifications, ninety feet on deck, with a beam of twenty-three feet—”

  Dead astern, the frigate’s sails shook and boomed as she leaned over onto a new tack, the guns that stabbed from her forecastle glinting blood-red in the setting sun.