The Wayward One (The De Montforte Brothers Book 5) (25 page)

His was the finest and best-trained Navy in the world, and Hadley had spent many months drilling his men until they could load and run out in half the time it took any of his peers. One moment, the French frigate looked to be the victor in a well-crafted ambush; the next, a broadside was flashing all down the British ship’s side, tongues of flame and choking smoke throwing death and destruction on the other ship, caught by surprise and now trying desperately to come about.

“Load up and hit her again, lads!” he shouted, hearing screams through the smoke as an answering roar from the French guns found its target. And there, from off in the smoke, the smaller American brig was still barking out her own impudent reply, some unfortunate junior officer trying to rally his men and pull order out of chaos following the death of that blasted rascal he called a captain.

Hadley took off his hat, wiped his brow and smiled as he saw Lieutenant Dewhurst and Lord Andrew, followed by the boat crew, scrambling back aboard to safety before his attention was claimed once more by the matter at hand.

“Fire!” he shouted hoarsely, eyes stinging as the French ship’s masts poked above the black, acrid smoke and tongues of fire pierced the gloom. Beside him, Midshipman Rawlins suddenly clasped his chest, coughed, and fell to his knees, blood bubbling from his mouth; the pop of musketfire and the roar of the frigate’s guns deafened him and desperately, he found time to hope that Lady Nerissa had managed to get below even as he ordered his carronades into position. “The smashers,” the big, blunt-nosed guns were named, and they did their work with cruel ruthlessness; within moments, the French ship was turning tail and running, just as Hadley expected it would do once it got a taste of His Majesty’s finest.

“Cease firing!”

The French ship was piling on sail, its cowardly captain wasting no time in making his escape. Grim-faced, Hadley looked at the dim outline of the American brig through the clearing smoke and saw that his work was far from done, here.

“Ram and board them,” he said with savage triumph. Adjusting his sword belt, he went to the rail, intending to be one of the first onto the American’s decks.

“
Prepare to ram!
”

The jib and topsails filled. The helm was put up, the sleek frigate turned her long jib-boom away from the wind and slid down on the American brig, its shots, coming frantically now, doing little damage as she gathered way and came at them, bows on.

“Fire the carronades, sir?” asked Lieutenant McPhee, eyeing the big guns with hope.

“No, I don’t want carnage and can’t risk the lady being hurt. We will board and take her that way.”

“Aye, sir.”

Men ran to the weapons chests, girding themselves with pistols, cutlasses, boarding axes and pikes, and still the frigate moved down on the brig, oblivious to the smaller vessel which continued firing to no avail. With a crashing groan,
Happenstance
impaled her long jib-boom in the American ship’s rigging and held fast.

“Boarders away!”

The Yanks might have had a smaller ship but as Hadley ran across the forecastle, up and onto the hopelessly tangled bowsprit and dropped lithely down onto the brig’s decks, the Americans came at him and his men like a mob of howling Indians. Steel clashed against steel, pierced flesh, sprayed blood across the decks. In the tops above, Hadley heard mustketfire as his Marines fired down, trying to pick off the Americans; a giant, gap-toothed seaman came at him with cutlass swinging and a blow from McPhee’s own sword countered it, saving his life a moment before a hole bloomed on the giant’s chest from a well-placed shot from Tom Crosby, still firing down on the deck from the main top. The man pitched forward, dead before he even hit the deck.

“Strike, damn you!” he heard McPhee yelling, “Strike you filthy rebels!”

He fought his way to the lieutenant’s side, his coxswain at his back, his eyes stinging from sweat and smoke and his brain dimly registering the fact that someone on the brig was still firing. And now the rebels were being beaten back, shaken by the loss of their captain and unable to match the ferocity of the British seamen who outnumbered them three to one.

“Strike, damn you!”

A shout ended on a gurgle of blood nearby as one of the rebels went down under McPhee’s sword. Hadley tripped over a ring bolt and ripping his pistol from his belt, fired at a smoke-smeared form that came at him, knife raised. The firing was more sporadic now, the heart going out of the bastards, and finally, almost desperately through the melee and smoke came the hoarse voice that would end the slaughter.

“We’re striking!”

Hadley looked up and saw the American colors being lowered from the brig’s gaff. His ears ringing, his chest heaving and a muscle twitching with fatigue somewhere in his shoulder, he blinked the smoke out of his eyes, took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve.

The young ginger-haired officer, his coat sleeve ripped and oozing blood, came toward him, holding out his sword in both hands. His face was as white as the belly of a mackerel as he picked his way over broken spars, bits of cordage and debris, an upended gun, and bodies…of the helmsman…of two pigtailed rebel sailors…of O’ Devir himself, lying motionless on the deck where Crosby’s well-placed shot had brought him down.

“Lieutenant John Morgan, sir.” His gaze cut soberly to the downed figure of his captain as, tightening his mouth, he presented his sword to Hadley with sober reluctance. “I’m in command of the American brig
Tigershark
. The ship is yours.”

* * *

As the world had exploded in smoke and flame around them, the quick-thinking Midshipman Cranton had grabbed Nerissa’s elbow, dragged her below at a dead run, and locked her in the hold to keep her safe. There she had spent the battle alone and in the dark, the minutes dragging by like hours.

Every thunderous crash of the guns, every thud of the frigate’s iron striking their hull, every scream from above amidst the clang of steel as men fought hand-to-hand for their lives, had pierced her soul until she could do nothing but huddle in the dark, her head buried in her arms, trying to block out the sounds of carnage above. She heard Lieutenant Morgan shouting orders, Cranton repeating them, even as her heart had prayed and her ears had strained to hear a dear voice, an Irish voice, to no avail.
Oh God, oh, God, why don’t I hear his voice?
Musketfire, thuds, the screams of dying men. Nerissa shut her eyes and rocked back and forth, unable to make herself any smaller, unable to blot out the memory of the French frigate coming around the bend, betraying them in its captain’s eagerness to make a prize of his British counterpart…unable to blot out that last image of Ruaidri O’ Devir, desperately waving her back to keep her safe even as a shot had rang out from the British frigate and he’d gone down right in front of her a split-second before Cranton was tearing her away and toward the hatch.

It was a long moment before she realized that above, the fighting had stopped. She took a shaky breath and raised her head. Beneath the ringing in her ears, she could hear the mad pounding of her heart in the deafening, frightening silence.

Footsteps. Someone approaching from out of the gloom. It was Midshipman Cranton, his eyes downcast and blood oozing from his chin. Just behind him was a Royal Navy lieutenant with pistol trained on the boy to make sure he did exactly as he was told.

She should have been desperately relieved to see the familiar uniform of her countrymen.

Instead, she pushed a fist against her mouth to quell her rising panic. “Captain O’ Devir,” she managed, reaching for Cranton’s arm as if it were an anchor. “Please, tell me how he fares.”

The youngster would not meet her eyes, and only glanced resentfully at his British counterpart as the other jabbed his pistol against his ribs in a silent order to get moving.

Cranton wordlessly offered his arm. Nerissa gripped it hard, willing her feet to move. She felt the heavy, uncertain motion of the brig beneath her as it rolled in the swells, saw Royal Navy officers striding past as they searched the ship. She concentrated on each breath she drew into her lungs, each step that brought her nearer and nearer to a truth she could not bear to face. A truth that awaited her topside. They emerged on deck and into hot, blinding sunlight. Carnage and unspeakable destruction met her gaze, and she could do nothing but stand there blinking in shock, unable to process the reality of what she was seeing with what her imagination had thrown at her during the endless horror of waiting below.

The Royal Navy frigate, looming over
Tigershark
’s decks and locked to her in a tangle of spars and rigging. Upended guns, some spattered with blood. The jib, its stay severed, flapping in the wind like a piece of laundry. Jagged pieces of spar and hull scattered across the deck, stains of blood, a severed arm. Nausea rose in her throat as a sinking numbness fought horror. And the dead and wounded from both sides lying in twisted agony where they had fallen, a few still moving, groaning, most silent and still in grotesque attitudes of death. The similarity of the uniforms, both sides in blue and white, made it hard to tell who was who, and pressing clammy knuckles to her mouth to quell her rising hysteria, Nerissa’s gaze roved the deck, searching for the one man she knew she would not find standing.

Cranton, already being led away by a Royal Navy officer, gave her a look that spoke volumes, then turned away.

Ruaidri
….

She felt his absence, his loss, immediately.

Knew that the vital force, the confident, larger-than-life energy that was Captain Ruaidri O’ Devir was no more.

A buzzing started in her ears and the numbness began to take over. A Royal Navy officer was talking to her but she never heard the words, only saw his mouth moving. Never in her life had she felt more suddenly
alone
, as if someone had reached into her chest, wrapped cold fingers around her heart, and ripped it, still beating, out of her chest. Bile rose in her throat and she began to shake.
Ruaidri? Ruaidri, where are you?
She didn’t want to look for him amongst the bodies; she could not
not
look for him. The English officer had moved to block her view as best he could. She tried to see around him. His mouth was still moving, his voice underwater, and he was saying something about keeping her gaze downcast so that she wouldn’t see things a lady should never have to see, something about being safe now that they were here, that they had come for her. A short distance away his captain was speaking with a grey-faced Lieutenant Morgan. His order to round up the rebels and start herding them below was the sound that finally penetrated Nerissa’s traumatized senses, and tears welled up in her eyes as the initial shock gave way to the sheer agony of reality.

The dead, needlessly cut down all because of her—and that wretched explosive that Andrew should never have invented. Men, good men, on both sides, men who were young and full of promise, men who should have lived to see tomorrow, men whose mothers would be grieving their losses for the rest of their lives.

Ruaidri…oh, Ruaidri….

She stood frozen, the vomit rising in her throat as she determined to be brave, to be strong, to be a de Montforte in the face of the carnage all around her…and there was the British captain, the business of surrender completed and now in the hands of his subordinates, striding with the confidence of the victor across the bloodied, littered decks toward her. She could see it was all he could do to contain his triumph. Was she supposed to be
grateful
?

He stopped and bowed before her. “Lady Nerissa?”

She stared at him, her mouth trying to find and form words, anything—

“Lady Nerissa, I am Captain Lawrence Hadley…are you all right?”

Coming up behind him and wearing civilian clothes was a beloved and familiar figure.

“
Andrew
,” Nerissa choked out on a broken sob, and as her brother sprinted the last few steps toward her, finally succumbed to the horror. She fell to her knees, weeping. She felt his arms go protectively around her, shielding her from the carnage, his dear voice close as he held her in his arms and the tears streamed down her cheeks in great, gulping sobs.

“She’s in shock,” she heard the British captain say above her head as though she wasn’t even there, and in that moment she hated him—for imposing himself into her world, for doing this to the dead and wounded lying all around her, for his air of self importance, for the barely-concealed triumph in his eyes, for the way he was acting so genteel and chivalrous when he had been the instrument of such unspeakable horror. She cried bitter tears into Andrew’s sleeve, her nose running helplessly, and then Hadley himself was kneeling down and filling her view, his gaze searching her form with too much familiarity.

“Lady Nerissa,” he said, more intently this time, “have you been harmed?”

She cried harder, burying her face against the inside of Andrew’s shoulder so she wouldn’t have to look at that hated face.

“Not now,” her brother said from above, his voice tight with authority. “You can see she’s been harmed, in spirit if not in body. No one of the fairer sex should have to see what she’s seen, heard what she’s heard, suffer what she’s suffered.” He held her close, his hand stroking the back of her head. “You’re safe now, Nerissa,” he murmured. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’re with me now, and no one will ever harm you again.”

I was safe with
him
, too…safer than I’d ever felt in my life.