Lord Of The Sea (26 page)

“Don’t pity me, Rhiannon.”

“I don’t pity you.” She took a step closer to him and slid her hand up his chest, gently stroking it through the shirt, trying to calm him. “How could I ever pity a man whose courage causes him to leap with joyful abandon into the unknown? Who is a master at chess, so much so that not a man of his acquaintance can best him? A man whose wiliness netted him two thirds of a rich convoy with none of them the wiser?”

He just looked away, his mouth a hard slash of pain in his face.

“Your shame is not my own, Connor,” she said. “I am proud of you. In awe of you.” She faced him squarely. “In
love
with you.”

“You’re only in
love
with me because you’re young and impressionable and I do reckless, daring things.”

“That’s bollocks, Connor.”

He gaped at her. “Where did you learn such a word?”

“From your crew, and I hope to learn a good deal more such words if I’m going to be a proper sea captain’s wife. Furthermore, it makes me angry that you think I love you because I’m a silly eighteen-year-old girl who’s only interested in daring deeds and displays of manly courage. Well, I’ll tell you something, Connor Merrick. I’m in love with the man who cares enough about others to continuously risk his own life to save theirs. The man who is good and gentle and kind and caring. The man who got his own stuffy cousin to learn how to have fun, the man whose crew adores him and would follow him to the ends of the earth, the man who, at great risk and sacrifice to himself, took the time to give a little boy he loves a parting gift so that that little boy won’t be so sad after he’s gone. That’s the man who’s stolen my heart, Connor. Not the daredevil, the show-off, or the cocky privateer captain.”

He just looked at her, confused, and Rhiannon saw the exact moment when he began to dare to believe her words. A softening in his stiffened stance. A relaxing of the hard, poised muscles beneath her fingers.

“It doesn’t matter if you can’t read,” she continued. “You have Nathan to help you with what you need aboard ship, and you have me to help you everywhere else. The only person ashamed by this is you, because I couldn’t care less. We’re husband and wife now. Two who have become one, and your strengths are now mine, just as mine are now yours. Together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”

He looked away. “I can’t see the letters right,” he muttered. “They face all different directions. Sometimes they’re upside down. And when I try too hard to make sense of them, my head hurts and I feel like I’m going to vomit. Honestly, I don’t know how any of you can put up with such torment just for the sake of being able to read.”

Most of us don’t
, she almost said. But he didn’t need to be told he was different. He already knew that he was. The sadness came from the fact that his idea of “different” was, in his own eyes, “inferior.”

“My teacher tried to beat it into me,” he said, turning and untying the boat from the large chunk of driftwood to which he’d secured it. “He said I was unteachable and maybe I was, because I was more interested in looking out the window than at my hornbook or worse, that damnable New England Primer. Never could make much sense of either of them and never cared to, either.”

She nodded toward his hand with its little crooked finger. “Was it that same teacher who broke your pinkie?”

“Aye. I was daydreaming, and he wanted to get my attention. I daresay he did . . . though he was never able to get my mind to stop wandering. Nobody has. I can’t read. I can’t rein in my thoughts. I can’t think of more than one thing at a time without getting confused and frustrated and ultimately, angry.”

She caught his arm as he began to push the boat out into the water. “Think of the things you are, Connor, and the things you
can
do. The gifts you’ve given to others. You’re a man who knows how to live life to the fullest and whose enthusiasm for it is infectious. And I’m just one of many whose life is much the richer for your presence in it. You’ve opened my heart and soul to a whole new world. You taught me how to swim. You taught me how to jump out into the unknown with faith and joy. Maybe someday, you’ll even teach me how to take a few steps aloft.” She smiled. “But just a few. Because we all have our shame, Connor, and mine is my fear of heights.”

He finally paused, took a deep, bracing breath and looked down at her, overwhelmed at what she had just said.

“You’re an amazing woman, Rhiannon Evans Merrick.”

“And you, Connor Merrick, are an amazing man.”

He reached down and drew her up against him, folding her against his chest, his strong, hard arms going around her and all but crushing her to himself. She felt him lay his cheek against the top of her head; then he gently pulled back, raised her face to his own and, looking deeply into her eyes, said the words she’d longed, with all her heart, to hear.

“I love you.”

Tears filled her eyes as he bent his head to kiss her, and as his lips claimed hers with hunger and gratitude she thought of Connor as a little boy, abused and mistreated so terribly by those who did not understand him, who didn’t try to understand him, who tried to make him be exactly like everyone else. Now she knew why he was so driven to prove himself. Why he took the risks that he did, why he had made his father’s long ago exploits a benchmark by which to measure and define his own successes.

Connor Merrick might be able to outsmart the British and play a superior game of chess, but underneath the recklessness and the swagger was a little boy who still believed that he was stupid, worthless, and was desperate to prove himself.

And for Rhiannon, it all suddenly made sense.

*     *     *

“Honestly, Brendan, I’m quite capable of boarding our old friend
Kestrel
here, myself,” Mira said as she ignored his offered hand and came aboard the schooner the following morning. “I’m gonna be fine. Stop yer worryin’.”

Her, Brendan’s, and Liam’s trunks and belongings had all been brought aboard earlier, the schooner hastily provisioned, and goodbyes already said to the Falconers and Kieran, who was staying behind for a longer visit with his sister and her family. The youngest Merrick stood now aboard the deck of his sloop
Sandpiper
, watching them as they prepared to get underway. Gulls wheeled over Carlisle Bay and Connor’s fingers were drumming in agitation as he eyed his mother and sent his scanty crew forward.

“Let’s haul in the hook and get the hell out of here,” he said to Nathan. “I want to clear Barbados well before any of Sir Graham’s frigate captains decide to take matters into their own hands where
certain Yankee schooners
are concerned.” He shot a glance at his father, but Brendan had paused to help Mira, who looked pale and waxen as she went to lean against the old cannon that someone, long ago, had dubbed
Freedom
. “Mother, you are ill. Let
Dadaí
take you below.”

“I don’t want to go below. I want fresh air.”

Liam reached his great bear paw of a hand down to her. “Come, Mira. Con said ye can have your old cabin, just like old times.”

“I said, I’m quite happy to stay here on deck, damn it!”

“Damnation,” Connor swore, and stalked off across the deck. “Can’t reason with a female no matter what. Get the jib and mainsail on her, Nathan.” And then, lowering his voice for his cousin’s ears alone, “Did you get a chance to study the charts? I’d hate like hell to hit a reef or some other godforsaken obstruction as we round the island.”

“Aye, Con. No worries.”

Connor nodded. His secret was safe with his cousin but nevertheless he went to the helm, pretended to engross himself in studying the charts laid out there—charts whose numbers were back and forth and upside-down—and saw Rhiannon, garbed in a lemon-yellow muslin gown with tiny white flowers dancing around the hem, bringing a glass of cold lemonade to his mother.

His heart warmed at his wife’s simple gesture of kindness. He’d bet his eyeteeth that Rhiannon would find a way to get his mother to go below and rest, even if he and his father could not.

Sure enough, his mother, wiping her brow with the back of one hand, nodded at something Rhiannon said and a moment later, was following her below.

“She’s a good lass, that one,” Brendan said, joining Connor at the helm. “It does my old heart good that you married such a kind and caring woman.”

“What, no jokes about working on grandchildren?”

“Not today, lad. Not today.”

“Is Mother all right?”

Brendan looked away. “She’ll be better once she’s home.”

Forward, several men were at the windlass, working to bring the anchor in while Toby leaned out over the bows, watching its progress.

“Anchor’s hove short, Con!”

“Bring it in and let’s go home.”

A rousing chorus swept through the ship. “Three cheers for home!”

“Three cheers for our captain!”

“Three cheers for the captain’s father, who brought this ship to glory in times of old!”

“Hip hip, huzzah!”

Brendan touched his old black tricorne to them, his smile pained and fleeting.

“See, Dad? You’re a legend.”

“’Twas a long time ago, Con. And legends, like snowballs, have a way of getting bigger and bigger the longer they roll and the farther they travel. Unless you have anything you’d like me to do up here on deck, I’m going below to be with your mother.”

“I’ve got it all under control.”

Brendan watched the men haul in the dripping anchor and secure it to the cathead, and beneath their feet the schooner began to move, her long, stately jib-boom swinging slowly around as the trade winds filled her jib and his son’s hand confidently guided the old ship out of Carlisle Bay. He waved a final time to Kieran and his youngest son waved back, and something tugged at Brendan’s Irish heart. A premonition, perhaps, not unlike something his daughter might have felt. A lament for days gone by, a deep, intuitive concern that Connor, in his never-ending quest to prove himself, was going to push
Kestrel
beyond her limits.

A sense of impending disaster.

For Brendan knew that his beloved schooner, like himself, was feeling her age.

And he knew that he wasn’t wrong about the rot beneath her planking, and within her very bones themselves.

But he had other matters that worried him far more, and leaving the schooner in the care of his son, headed below.

Chapter 28

The wind filled in from the east and cooled the baking deck, and with all her canvas set hard against it,
Kestrel
was soon charging along on a beam reach with the log registering nine knots. Flying fish leaped up and over the driving jib-boom, and the two cats came running as one occasionally landed, flapping, on the deck. The bright green dome that was Barbados fell steadily astern, and Nathan charted a course that would take them past the tiny island of Bequia, then St. Thomas and through the beautiful blue-green waters of the Sir Francis Drake Channel. They made good time.

A day after they left Barbados, Rhiannon found Connor at the tiller and studying the distant horizon. Clouds were thick in the sky but to the north, far beyond the plunging jib-boom, the horizon showed bright blue and the wind remained steady out of the east.

“Glad to be headed home?” she asked, curving her arm around his waist. He was barefoot and garbed in his usual cut-off pantaloons, but the wind was brisk this morning and the snug, double-breasted pea coat showed off his powerful shoulders and lean physique.

“Always glad to be headed home. I just wish we’d been able to find more men to sign aboard back in Barbados. I hate being so short-handed.”

“Seems to me you have enough to work the sails and stand the watches.”

“Aye, but not to fight the ship if need be.”

“Why would we need to fight? Didn’t you have enough of adventure and riches with that convoy?”

“I have no way of knowing how many of those ships actually made it to Mobile without being recaptured or lost. And I’m a privateer, Rhiannon. If I see something that looks like a worthy prize, I’m not going to just steer clear of it.”

Rhiannon sighed in despair. Her husband seemed even more restless and tense since they’d left Barbados; was it because of worries about being short-handed when it came to crew? Or was it the fact that his father was aboard that had him desperate to prove himself?

It would not do, Rhiannon knew, to ask.

“How is my mother this morning?”

“I just visited with her. I brought her some refreshment, but she declined it and said she just wanted to stay in bed. I’m worried about her, Connor. She’s cold one minute, and hot and sweating the next.”

“Where’s my Da?”

“With her, of course.”

Connor nodded. He felt a faint stirring of unease which he quickly tamped down. His mother would be fine. She was his mother, for God’s sake. One of his parents. Parents were infallible. They were there for you from the moment you came bawling out of the womb, there to soothe childhood hurts and youthful broken hearts, there to advise and listen and love; they were there for you every moment of your conscious life, as constant as the stars in the sky or the tides in the sea.

Nothing to worry about.

He dismissed his unease and turned his bright smile on his wife, who looked particularly fetching this morning in a pale yellow gown with little blue ribbons decorating the open sleeves. She had borrowed one of his straw hats and her hair, not quite red, not quite gold, was caught in a strip of leather and tumbled down her back.

Desire stirred in his loins. Though his parents occupied
Kestrel
’s main cabin, there were other places on the ship that he wouldn’t mind taking his wife. Leaning his thigh against the big tiller to keep the schooner steady on her course, he bent down and brushed his lips over Rhiannon’s temple; then, enjoying her fresh, lemony scent, he recklessly licked the skin behind her ear.

“Really, Connor, not here!”

“Why not? You’re gorgeous and I can’t help myself. Besides, it’s just a kiss, Rhiannon.” He grinned, his eyes warming with a teasing light. “Live a little.”

And then, before she could say anything more, he pulled her close, pushed a hand beneath her hair and loosened it to fly free in the wind. There. that was better. Rhiannon, just the way he liked her, unfettered, happy, enjoying the elements. His put a finger beneath her chin, tilted her face up to his, and claimed her lips in a long, searing kiss that left her heavy-lidded with desire and he with an erection that pressed painfully against his drop front.

“This is going to be a long passage,” he muttered, as a head came up above the hatch and he saw Toby’s bright red curls. “I want you, Rhiannon. Badly.”

“There’s always tonight underneath the stars if we’re quiet.”

“Jacques has the watch. And he’s a nosy old woman who doesn’t miss a trick.”

She sighed and moved into the protective circle of his arm, leaning her head against his collarbone and inhaling deeply of his salty, wind-cleansed scent. “You’re right. This
is
going to be a long passage.”

“How long will it take us to get to Newburyport?”

“Depending on the wind, about a week and a half.”

Rhiannon groaned. “Perhaps you should have someone other than Jacques stand the watch tonight.”

Her husband laughed and tipped his head back to check the pennants so high above, now streaming out to larboard in the wind coming over the beam.

“Ever sail a ship before, Rhiannon?”

“Oh no, surely, I couldn’t!”

“Of course you could. Here. Take the tiller.”

“I’m afraid! What if something happens?”

“What’s going to happen? I’m right here. It’s not hard. The sails are set and well trimmed, the wind is steady, our course hasn’t changed and all you have to do is hold the tiller and keep her on course.”

“How do I do that?”

“See the compass there, in its box? Look at where the needle points. See how the letters on the compass are there, with the N at the top, the S at the bottom, and our heading is right there between the N and the W?”

“Yes . . . .”

“Just keep it there. And you’ll do fine.”

“All right. I’ll give it a try. But don’t leave me here by myself!”

He laughed and passed her the thick, salt-encrusted rope that was attached to the tiller, put there to take some of the strain off the helmsman in rough seas and weather.

Her heart pounding with something that was more excitement than fear, Rhiannon stepped into her husband’s place, wrapped her hand around the tackle and put her other one on the smooth, varnished wood of the tiller.

And then he let go and stood back.

“Oh, my!” Rhiannon cried excitedly, as she felt the schooner come alive in her hands, felt the ship’s very soul entrusted so lovingly into her care. She thrilled at the feel of the rudder’s bite so far beneath and below her, thrilled to the feel of the beautiful ship cutting through each long, frothy swell, thrilled to the feel of all that power of the wind, from deck level to some ninety feet above, where the strong easterly made hard drums against the sails; all of it, that power, held in her hand; she had ridden horses, felt the strength of the animal through the reins, and this was no different. Suddenly she understood what sailors through the ages had always known. That ships had souls. And that
Kestrel
was not just a machine, an inanimate object of wind, wood, and canvas; in Rhiannon’s hand, she was a living, breathing being, alive, responsive and spirited.

She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Connor, this is wonderful!”

He grinned, and his eyes looked all the more green in the bright sunlight reflecting off the deep, foaming sea around them. “Well, what kind of captain’s lady would you be if you didn’t know how to steer a ship?”

“Teach me more! What happens if I push the tiller to larboard?”

“She’ll round up. Her nose will come into the wind and we’ll have to sheet in the sails.”

“What happens if I push the tiller to starboard?”

“She’ll fall off, and we’ll have to ease out.”

“How do you know where we’re going?”

“The compass and the charts.”

“Charts? Which one?” She saw a thick, yellowed paper, curled and water-stained at the edges laid out on the binnacle, its corners weighed down by bar shot. “That one?”

“Mind your ship, dearest. The foresail’s starting to luff. You’ve brought her a little too close to the wind, so let her fall off a bit.”

“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry. . . .”

He leaned down to kiss her. “No worries, my dear. It’s all part of learning.”

Nathan was coming up on deck now, his tawny hair blowing in the breeze. He looked aft, saw Rhiannon’s excited face as she steered the ship while her husband, standing protectively beside her with his arms crossed over his chest and his bare feet planted against the schooner’s roll, looked on. He grinned and, with the two cats following him, headed forward.

Connor saw Liam come topside. And there, that ridiculous old black tricorne also coming up through the hatch as his father appeared on deck.

Connor grinned. “Good morning, Da.”

Out of long habit his father glanced aloft, checking the direction of the wind and the set of the sails. “Good morning, you two. Is he trying to make a helmswoman out of you, Rhiannon?”

“Oh, Brendan, this is so much fun! I can
feel
her. She’s alive, isn’t she?”

Something changed in her father-in-law’s face; a recognition of a kindred spirit, a shared understanding, a new respect for her as she excitedly told him of her newfound joy. He smiled then, a warm, dazzling gesture that made her feel as though he knew what nobody else in the entire world could possibly describe and understand about what she was feeling as she stood there at the tiller and felt
Kestrel
’s very soul. He understood. Of course he did.

“Aye, lass. She is.”

Connor shook his head. “You two and your sentimental, romantic nonsense. She’s just a ship. How is mother this morning?”

His father wouldn’t meet his eye. “She’ll be all right.”

“Good. Because when you came up on deck just now you looked awfully worried, Da.”

Connor shouted an order to the men who had come topside, Rhiannon caught her errant hair and secured it once more with the strip of leather, and Brendan turned to go below. He was just about to descend the hatch when a cry from high above broke the early morning symphony of wind and sea and spray.

“On deck! Sail up ahead! Fine on the larboard bows, hull up!”

“Keep her on course,” Connor said to Rhiannon who stared at him, wide-eyed and suddenly nervous, as he stalked to the lee rail and, plucking a telescope from the rack, put it to his eye.

“Hmph,” he murmured, and grinning, handed the glass to his father.

Brendan looked at the distant ship, almost indiscernible from the horizon, for a long time before handing the glass back.

“Leave her be, Connor.”

“Leave her be? She’s big, wallowing, and probably unarmed. I bet we could take her with nothing more than a shot across the bows.”

“It’s your decision. But I would advise against it.”

“What are you, mad?”

“No, but I don’t think that ship is what she appears.”

“Your eyesight’s failing you as much as your knee if you think that’s anything but a fat British merchantman with probably less crew to sail her than we ourselves have.”

“And if she is that, and you do take her, how can you spare the crew to sail her?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Father. Your prudence is wearisome. Easy pickings, if she is indeed British.”

Two captains and only one ship between them. Not even a day out of Barbados and already he felt manacled, his ambitions neatly stifled, and he suddenly resented his Da for his caution when it went against everything he’d ever been told about him. Frustrated, he shot a glance at Rhiannon, still at the tiller and dutifully holding the schooner on course, then stalked away from his father. What the hell did his old man know, anyhow? Had he gone blind as well as soft in his dotage?

“Your orders, Captain?”

It was One-Eye, addressing his question to Connor but looking, as though for guidance, to Brendan who still stood at the rail.

The hero.

The legend.

And Connor was suddenly angry.

“Get the t’gallant on her and let’s keep to windward of our fat friend up there as we close in on her. She’s poorly handled. Isn’t even flying her topsails. And run the British flag up our gaff so she doesn’t know who we really are. We won’t attack, but if she’s going to be sailing the same course we are, I damn well want to hail her and find out who she is. I hate surprises.”

Connor glanced once more toward his father as he headed aft to take the tiller from Rhiannon but Brendan, still standing all alone at the rail, never saw. He remained there for a long time, then, his eyes troubled, went back below.