Lord Of The Sea (23 page)

“Sit down, Gray, and drink some rum,” Connor said impatiently.

“Aye, you’ll be no good to Maeve if you wear yourself out pacing a hole in the rug,” his father added. “What are you going to name the babe?”

Sir Graham gulped from the glass. “Damned if I know. Plenty of boy’s names to be had, but we’ve run out of names for a girl.”

“Run out of names?”

“Don’t forget, Da, they name their children after famous pirates,” Connor reminded his father.

“Why, there’ve been plenty of lady pirates,” Brendan said, foregoing the rum and pouring himself a glass of punch. “But you’ve got to look beyond the Caribbean. We’ve an ancestor from Ireland who was a lady pirate. Grace O’ Malley, her name was.”

“Grace! That’s a fine name,” Sir Graham said, draining and putting down his glass. He turned suddenly and nearly toppled over, only to be caught by Connor on one side and Brendan on the other.

It was to this scene, of the admiral flushed with drink and unable to stand, that Mira arrived a few moments later.

“Is she all right?” Sir Graham demanded, reeling.

Mira just looked at him, grinning. “Congratulations, Gray,” she said. “You have a baby girl.”

“And you and I,” said Brendan with delight, “have another grandchild to spoil.”

Chapter 24

They all took turns quietly filing in to see the baby and her exhausted mother, who hooked an arm around Sir Graham’s neck, pulled him down to kiss him and begged his forgiveness for anything she might have said to him during the agony of birth.

“It’s all right, Maeve. It’s forgotten.”

“Why Gray, you positively reek of rum,” she said, frowning.

“Your brother and father got me soused.”

“My father? Honestly, Da, for someone who doesn’t drink, himself, you’re shameless. . . . ”

Brendan just laughed, his infectious smile lighting up his whole face.

“Needed doing, Sis,” said Kieran who, having heard the news, had hurriedly left
Sandpiper
and come as fast as he could. “She’s a pretty little girl. Got the family hair.”

As indeed, young Grace did —a thick, soft, reddish cap of curling peach fuzz. She lay wide-eyed and comfortable in her mother’s arms as her big brother Ned and two sisters Mary and Anne were brought to meet her for the first time.

Rhiannon noticed Connor’s fingers drumming against a night table and knew he had reached the end of his patience for staying in one place. Moments later, her suspicions were confirmed.

“My mother and Da will be looking to us, next,” he murmured, leaning close to her ear.

“For what?”

“Another grandchild. What do you say we go and work on making one of our own?”

“You’re as shameless as your father!”

“More so. Come, let’s go take a walk.”

*     *     *

Captain Delmore Lord was working on some correspondence from the comfort and privacy of his great cabin aboard
Orion
when a midshipman brought him the news that the latest little Falconer had been born.

“Mother and child safe and well?” the captain asked, dabbing his sweating brow with a crisp white handkerchief and inwardly cursing the tropical heat.

“Well enough. But I heard some news down at the local tavern, sir. Seems an American privateer was found to be in company with that convoy heading for London. Plucked a sizeable number of ships right out from under their noses before showing a fleet pair of heels.”

“What kind of ship was this privateer, Mr. Pettingill?”

“A black schooner, sir. Or so it’s said.”

Delmore took a deep and weary sigh and kneaded his forehead with his hands.

“Just thought you’d like to know, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pettingill.”

“Are you going to tell the admiral?”

Delmore pushed his fingers through his thick black curls. Telling the admiral was, of course, the right thing to do. And the flag captain harbored no doubts about just who the American privateer was, especially given Connor Merrick’s absence over the past few days. But did he really want to spoil Sir Graham’s joy over the birth of his newest child by telling him of the raid on the convoy, and the likelihood that it was his American cousin who was responsible?

It is your duty to tell him.

“All in good time,” he said, his gray eyes showing more purple than usual as he picked up his quill, plunged it into the ink pot and continued his letter. “For now, let him enjoy the blessings this day has brought him.”

*     *     *

While Sir Graham was enjoying the blessings of his newest daughter, his errant brother-in-law was looking forward to enjoying the blessings of being a happily married man.

He and Rhiannon had gone back aboard
Kestrel
, deserted now with all but the scant watch—which consisted of a slumbering-in-the-sun Jacques—having gone ashore hours before. The heat seemed to bake the tar of the deck seams and even the guns, lashed tightly behind their closed ports, were hot to the touch when Rhiannon absently brushed her hand across the breech of one as they headed to Connor’s cabin.

“I don’t think I could live here in this climate,” she mused, all but panting in the heat. “I feel like I’m going to wilt.”

“Aye, these southern latitudes are too hot for me too, but at least one can cool off by jumping in the sea.”

“Where will we live, Connor?”

“Where do you want to live, Rhiannon?”

“I don’t know. It would be nice to be near my sister in England, but you’re a man of the sea, and Morninghall Abbey is rather far inland.” She smiled up at him. “To be honest, I really can’t see you settling down and living in England. I don’t think you’d be happy there.”

“Happiness is the home you make, not where you make it.”

“I know. And it’s whom you make it with.” She followed him down the hatch and below decks where it was noticeably cooler without the brutal tropical sun. “Where would
you
like to live?”

“I own a home in Newburyport. But I’d understand, Rhiannon, if that’s too far away from your loved ones.”

“You’re my loved one now, Connor.”

There, she’d said it.
Love.

For a long moment he said nothing. He looked briefly uncomfortable, as though he didn’t quite know how to respond to her words.

“Connor? What is it?”

With a pained smile, he took her hand and led her into the cabin. “You don’t want to fall in love with me, Rhiannon. I’ll just break your heart.”

“You’re my husband! Of course I’m going to fall in love with you. What a perfectly absurd thing to say.”

“I’m reckless and take risks. Too many of them, most people say, and I doubt my life is destined to be a long one.”

They were in his cabin now, and she took his hand and coaxed him to sit down on his bunk. He looked distressed, and gently, she reached out and pushed a tousled lock of hair from his forehead. “Why
do
you take so many risks, Connor?”

He shrugged. How could he explain the feeling of bees buzzing through his veins and making him unable to sit still? How could he explain how doing daring things made him feel invincible and gloriously alive? How could he explain that while some men might be addicted to the bottle or to opium or to cards, he was addicted to that wild, thrumming rush that only came when throwing himself at a dangerous situation and emerging the victor?

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ve just always been like this.”

He went to the stern windows, open to catch what breeze managed to skate over the bay, and stood there looking out over the harbor, drumming his fingers against the sill.

She came quietly up behind him and laid her hand on his arm. “You have nothing to prove, you know.”

“I have everything to prove.” His fingers beat a quickening tattoo on the sill. “My father was a legend during the last war. He had the love and admiration of his crew, the entire town of Newburyport, was commended by Washington himself, whereas I—”

He broke off.

Whereas I can barely read. And certainly not a chart.

“And you think you need to be your father in order to be appreciated and admired, yourself?”

“He’s a tough act to follow.”

“What’s wrong with being the man that you actually are, instead of the one who fathered you?”

“There are some things, Rhiannon, that you cannot understand.”

“Maybe not, but there are some things that I can certainly see, and it is this. Your crew adores you. You’re a natural, charismatic leader and your courage is infectious, so much so that I believe those men would follow you anywhere, do anything you ask of them. I don’t understand where this drive to prove yourself comes from.”

Connor turned abruptly from the window and began to pace once more. “I can’t have this conversation. We didn’t come here to have this conversation. We came here to make a baby, damn it, and I’m through talking.”

“But—”

He took her into his arms and kissed her before she could finish the thought, intending only to silence her and distract her from pursuing this subject that he found vastly uncomfortable. For a moment she resisted, stiff beneath the forceful pressure of his lips, his mouth against her own, and then, with a little groan of defeat, her arms came up to wend around his neck and her breasts were pressing against his chest.

He forced her backward to his bunk, his hands already going around the small of her back, cupping her buttocks through her thin muslin gown and pulling her close up against himself. Her pelvis pressed against his arousal and he drove his mouth relentlessly down against her own, feeling a need to possess her, to silence her, oh, yes, especially to silence her.

Her mouth opened to him, and he plunged his tongue inside the honeyed sweetness of it, his breath coming hard.

She had asked him what he had to prove. She had told him he had nothing to prove. And she had told him that she loved him.

Loved him.

He sucked her bottom lip into his mouth, biting it gently as his hands rucked up the hem of her gown, her shift, found the bare, satiny skin of her bottom and squeezed.

She tried to fall backward onto the bunk but he held her tight, opening her cleft from behind with his fingers, plunging them within her and beginning to stroke until she caught her breath and tensed and reached for his arousal. Then, and only then, did he allow them both to sink to the bunk, her hands already freeing him from the containment of his pantaloons and guiding him to that sweet, hot, delicious part of herself that was able to focus and contain his thoughts, to make them its own, in a way that nothing in Connor’s life had ever been able to do.

Their coupling was hard and fast and desperate. With a cry, she convulsed around him, sending him over the edge as well, and it was a long time before either of them talked.

That suited Connor very well indeed.

Chapter 25

By the time the afternoon sun was low in the sky, Captain Delmore Lord’s conscience had finally caught up with him.

He had long since finished his paperwork and now sat sweltering in his great cabin, his feet sweating in their buckled shoes, his white breeches all but glued onto his legs, a trickle of perspiration running down his back beneath shirt, waistcoat and coat, and the points of his stand-up collar stabbing into his cheeks.

He stood up, faint with heat, and decided he had no choice but to tell his admiral the news that had been brought to him earlier.

It pained him to do so. He respected his admiral, found him to be a fair commander and a good mentor. He appreciated the fact that Sir Graham was in a tough spot, being highly placed in the Royal Navy and yet married to an American whose brother was currently wreaking havoc on British shipping.

Delmore took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow.

He didn’t dislike Connor. What he did dislike was his own private envy of his American cousin’s sense of unfettered freedom, and his boldness in pursuing it.

He stalked moodily to the great stern windows of the man o’ war and looked out over the waters of Carlisle Bay. The dying sunlight painted the harbor in glittering white-orange diamonds where a puff of wind happened to move, and Delmore stood there for a moment, sweating, conflicted, and irritated.

They were at it again.

His irritation grew.

For there, several hundred feet away, that same American privateer schooner that had been the bane of his conscience all afternoon lay anchored, with the fools and idiots that made up his cousin’s crew once more playing at their ridiculous game of seeing who dared to jump the highest from the rigging.

The answer to his dilemma came then to Delmore. He would go over to the schooner, confront his cousin directly, and ask him point-blank if his was the schooner that had wreaked so much havoc on the convoy.

Connor Merrick was a daredevil, a show-off, and a swaggering fool.

If he was indeed the privateer who’d inflicted such damage, Delmore knew he wouldn’t waste the opportunity to confirm it.

*     *     *

“I’m scared!” Rhiannon said, laughing, as on wobbly knees, she climbed up onto
Kestrel
’s rail and crouched there, clutching desperately to her husband’s hand and afraid to move. Below her, the water looked awfully far down; farther than she knew it actually was.

“What are you scared of?”

“I only just learned how to swim, and now you have me jumping off the ship?”

“You’ll love it. It’s fun.”

“Yes, fun!” cried Toby, from nearby. He was minus his shirt and like Connor, clad in nothing but frayed canvas trousers. So was Rhiannon and the trousers she wore were Toby’s, but a shirt and a sleeveless waistcoat to protect her modesty had been procured for her as well and now she stood, watching the late sun sparkle on the water below her and her heart beating like a woodpecker in her chest as she crouched, poised, on the schooner’s rail.

Around her, the ship herself seemed to whisper,
I know you can do it. They’re quite right. It’s fun.

“Live a little,” Connor said, eyes twinkling.

“I’m afraid!”

He just smiled, and a second later joined her on the rail, his bare feet next to hers, her small hand gripped tightly in his own big, powerful one.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked. “You’ll lose your balance and we’ll both fall in!”

“Stand up,” he said cheerfully, and doing so himself, pulled her erect.

Rhiannon, standing there wobbling in terror, had no time to realize the fact that, standing up, the water was that much farther below her because suddenly her husband cried, “Jump!” and, still gripping her hand, they were plunging through space and down toward the harbor below.

She had no time to even scream. It was only a short drop from
Kestrel
’s rail to the water and they hit it together, her hand still tightly held in his as they plunged beneath the surface and the water closed over her head. Their descent stopped in a hiss of bubbles. Rhiannon opened her eyes and saw him right beside her, lips curved in appreciation of her courage, and then he let go of her hand and helped guide her back to the surface above with a hand against her ribs.

She broke the surface to a thunderous roar of applause from the schooner’s decks above.

“Three cheers for the captain’s lady!”

“Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah! Hip hip, huzzah!”

“Next thing ye know, Captain, she’ll be jumping from the gaff like the rest of us!”

Connor laughed, delighted, and looked across the several inches of water that separated him from his wife. Her hair was slicked back, showing the elegant shape of her head, making her large green eyes seem all the wider, her mouth all the fuller, and never had she looked more beautiful to him. Treading water, he moved close, and put his lips against her wet forehead.

“I’m proud of you,” he said. “That took a lot of courage.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, nearly pushing him under. “I’m proud of me too, Connor. And you were right. It was fun!”

He kissed her then, hard, passionately, and in full sight of his entire crew; or rather, what remained of it after putting so many men aboard the captured prizes, and there was more cheering and a few ribald comments.

They clambered back aboard the schooner with some help from a rope and Toby, Jacques and Nathan.

“Don’t just stand there, you wretches,” Connor said good-naturedly, with a glance at his dripping wife. “Fetch the lady a towel.”

Toby ran below to get one and One-Eye looked up at his captain, who was in higher spirits than usual.

“Hot evening, sir.” Gazing up at the rigging, he pulled at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll bet you ten dollars I can jump from a greater height than you.”

“Done.” Connor headed for the shrouds.

“Trouble coming from fine off the starboard bow,” Nathan said wryly.

One could almost hear the collective groan as the few men who remained aboard the schooner looked up and saw the Royal Navy boat, with the impeccably uniformed Captain Lord sitting stiffly in the sternsheets, heading toward them.

“Just when we were about to have some fun,” Jacques muttered.

One-Eye rolled his blue and brown eyes. “And he had to come along and spoil it.”

“He hasn’t spoiled anything, and the fun’s just beginning,” Connor said cheerfully, and headed aloft.

From the boat, a tight-lipped Delmore Lord watched his cousin deftly climbing the shrouds and wondered if he was going to make this interview even harder than he already expected it would be. On the schooner’s low, lean deck, he could see a few men watching him with derision, perhaps even hostility. He drew himself up a little straighter and held himself still as his smartly dressed crew hooked onto the schooner’s chains.

“Permission, Captain Merrick, to come aboard!” he demanded formally.

“As you please, Cuz,” called down the man who was now standing at the cross-trees high, high above.

Delmore’s lips thinned. He reached for a rope and climbed aboard the ship. There was young Toby Ashton, thin, gangly, and looking at him with some apprehension. Nathan, the dying sunlight gilding his tawny hair. Two crewmen he didn’t know and of course, the beautiful Rhiannon.

He bit down the pain he felt at sight of her.

She was never yours to have. Somewhere, there is a woman out there for you. But it’s not her.

“Del, my man!”

The British captain looked up. There was his foolish cousin still standing at the crosstrees, one arm hooked around a stay and looking down at him.

“Please come down so that I might speak to you privately, Connor.”

“If you want to speak privately, why don’t you come up here?”

Delmore groaned, inwardly.

“One-Eye and I have another contest going. Ten American dollars to the man who dares to jump the highest. I’ll raise it to fifty if you care to join in.”

“You’re out of your bloody mind.”

“Always am. So what do you say, Del? The view up here’s fine, and the water’s even nicer.”

Around him Delmore could hear the snickers of the American crew, and he felt Rhiannon’s expectant gaze upon him. His face reddened, and a muscle ticked in his cheek. He stood there for a moment, then walked to the rail and looked down at his men waiting in the boat below.

“You may return to
Orion
,” he snapped. “I’ll be along after I conduct my business with Captain Merrick.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

He watched the boat move off, oars rising and falling, rising and falling, and turned back to the schooner. Nobody had moved. They were all watching him. Waiting.

“Well?” Connor Merrick called down from high above. “Are you going to join me, Del? You representing Britain, me representing the United States, and not a shot needs to be fired.”

“I’m coming up there to talk with you, not to engage in your childish games.”

“Come on up then. How about sixty dollars?”

“You’re mad.”

“Seventy!”

“Bloody insane.”

But Delmore strode to the shrouds and removing his hat, tilted his head back. The sun was going down such that his cousin, so far above, was now nearly in silhouette.

Waiting.

Tight-lipped, Delmore placed his fancy over-large hat on the breech of a nearby gun and began to unbutton his coat.

The silence around him grew deafening.

The high, stand-up collar pressing into his jaw fell away and he felt a sense of relief and freedom. He shrugged out of the coat, and felt the sweat beginning to pour off him as though the heavy garment had kept it all contained. Carefully folding it, he laid it next to his hat.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man with a split, scarred lip elbowing Nathan and grinning madly. Ignoring them, his mouth a tight, hard line, Delmore bent down and removed his shoes and stockings.

I’m doing this just to make it easier to climb
, he told himself. But some wild, distant, previously unheeded part of himself knew differently.

He reached for the shrouds and began the ascent.

Below him, the scanty American crew began to clap in appreciation, and someone let out a cheer. His cheeks reddening, Delmore kept climbing.

And climbing.

He found his cousin sitting on the topsail yard, eyes crinkling with good humor, the water still trickling from his loose auburn curls and dripping down his neck and shoulders.

“A hundred dollars,” Connor said, grinning.

The tic in Delmore’s jaw twitched one last time before a faint, reluctant smile touched his hard mouth.

“Done.”

*     *     *

“Damned fools,” Sir Graham said irritably, watching the hi-jinks aboard the American schooner with a telescope pressed to his eye. He snapped it shut in irritation, for his head ached from the overindulgence of rum and it was hot enough to bake the burn right out of one of his mother-in-law’s ghastly, inedible cookies. “That son of yours is going to get himself killed.”

Behind him, Brendan Merrick was sitting in a chair reading a newspaper and trying, like Sir Graham, to find any whisper of breeze out here on the verandah. His knee was hurting tonight, and he wondered if it was going to rain.

“What are they doing now?”

“Jumping from that damned schooner’s rigging.”

“Good night for it,” Brendan said, and went back to reading the paper.

“He’s going to break his fool neck.” Sir Graham wiped his sweating, pounding brow. “I say, if I
ever
caught one of my men engaging in behavior like that, I’d have him bloody keelhauled.”

With a little sigh, Brendan put the paper down and joined his son-in-law at the railing. Together they watched two figures, tiny with distance, moving out along
Kestrel
’s fore topsail yard.

“Come now, Gray,” said Brendan. “Weren’t you young once?”

“A long time ago. Before I had children.”

“They age you, don’t they? You worry about them, you fear for their futures, you do the best you can by them and no matter how old they get to be, they’ll still be your children. But there comes a time when you have to just let go, and let them be the person the good Lord made them to be.”

Brendan picked up the telescope and put it to his eye. Into the circular field came masts, spars, water, and there, yes, his beloved schooner. He found the mainmast and brought the glass up, studying the two men so clearly revealed by the magnification.

It was Connor, all right.

And the other one, just peeling off his shirt and tossing it down, down, down to the deck, was—

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

He snapped the glass shut as his son threw himself off the yard and executed a perfect dive into the sea so far below.

“What is it?” Gray asked, reaching for the glass.

“Why don’t we go and check on Maeve and the baby. Maybe get something to eat.”

But Sir Graham had grabbed the glass and, as Brendan watched helplessly, was putting it to eye.

The admiral’s roar nearly shook the paint off the railing. “Holy Christ above, is that my
FLAG CAPTAIN?!
”

From somewhere on the other side of the mansion, the sudden wails of a infant permeated the air.

“You’ve gone and woken your baby daughter,” Brendan said, taking the glass from his son-in-law’s hand. “Maeve will have your head.”

“I’ll have
Delmore
’s head for this, by God! I thought he of all people was beyond the reach of Connor’s corruptive influence!”

“Faith, lad, the night is hot enough to melt the shadows off the sun. So they’re cooling off out there? ‘Tis about time he relaxed a little and learned to have fun.”

“Fun? He’s a damned captain in His Majesty’s Royal Navy, he can’t be jumping off yardarms like a damned fool!”

Sir Graham stormed toward the door, but was quickly caught by his father-in-law’s hand. “Gray,” he said, and his smile was wise, patient, and full of understanding. “Life is short, and just as we welcomed a little baby into the world today, none of us ever know when the good Lord is going to come and take one of us away. Let the lad enjoy himself while he can.” He clapped the admiral on the shoulder. “It’s good for him.”