Captain of My Heart (39 page)

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.