Caution to the Wind (American Heroes)

by Mary Jean Adams

  Amanda didn’t close her parted lips when Will caressed them with his own. She stiffened, but just for a moment, when he pulled her to him. Then she melted in his arms, molding her body against his.

  He ran his hands up her arms and trailed his fingers across her neck before cupping her face in his hands. She rewarded him with a soft sound, half moan, half whimper, in the back of her throat.

  He would have stopped if she had shown the slightest resistance. She didn’t.

  Amanda kissed him back, inexpertly perhaps, but there could be no doubt about her intent.

  With a sigh, he pulled away before passion consumed them both and he lost all sense of duty. She wobbled for a moment then settled herself against the edge of his desk, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “When I get back, we’ll talk about how to return you to your family.” He snatched a key from his desk and left the room without looking back.

  Chapter Eight

  Amanda steadied herself against the hard edge of the captain’s desk. She brought hesitant fingertips to her tingling lips. The captain had kissed her. Why had he done that?

  The harsh click of a key in the lock brought her back to her senses, and anger swept away her confusion like a spring tide. The man had locked her in his quarters!

  “What the…!” she yelled at the heavy oak door.

  She still couldn’t bring herself to swear even after more than a month of living with sailors, but her mind easily filled in the missing words. She strode to the door and gave it a kick. Pain radiated through her toes and up her calf. She cursed her own impulsiveness, the door and the captain—all in a single breath. Toes still smarting, she turned to pace the limited space afforded by her makeshift prison.

  “I am just as much a part of this crew as any man aboard.” She advanced on one wall, spun on her heel, and hobbled the five paces that brought her up against the door. “More than some.” She shook her fist at it.

  She pivoted on her heel again, grinding the momentary shame she felt at such an uncharitable thought into the rough planks. “But I do two jobs,” she informed her own conscience and the captain’s empty chair.

  She spun and did another turn about the room. “Granted, I’m terrible at fighting, and I hate every minute of it,” she stopped and stared at his chair, seeing his implacable face instead of the chair’s slatted back, “but the doctor told me, more than once, how indispensable I’ve been to him.”

  She hobbled once more about the room.

  When she had completed the small circuit, she waggled a finger at the phantom captain. “And where would you be without my cooking? Probably dead at the bottom of the sea from burnt toast and charcoaled eggs. That’s where you’d be!”

  She covered an unladylike snort with the back of her hand. Scolding an empty chair would get her nowhere.

  “The captain and his stupid rules.” Amanda fell into his chair with a thump and crossed her arms over her chest.

  She hadn’t changed from the person she had been an hour ago. Just because he knew her secret didn’t make her any less competent, any less useful, any more female. The word reverberated in her skull. Never did she think she would come to despise who she was, but right now she would give anything to cast off the anchor that her own sex had become.

  She had been a valuable member of his crew, both as cook and the doctor’s assistant. She had! She let her head roll back and stared up at the ceiling. Men passed over her, preparing for battle, and slivers of daylight streaming in from the deck above flashed on and off, on and off, on and off.

  Why couldn’t he see he needed her?

  His parting words drifted back to her, and she stopped seeing the flashes of light and darkness, stopped hearing the running footsteps and excited shouts of the men. What did he mean by take her back to her family? She had no family to which to return. Did the captain think Neil had lied when he said their father was dead?

  The skin around her eyes tightened until she thought her eyeballs might sink into her skull, leaving her a soulless shell. Amanda took a few deep breaths and rubbed her temples. Focus. She needed to focus.

  She had been locked in his quarters, a virtual prisoner during a battle with an English ship off the bow no less! She set the side of her index finger against her lips. She had once heard Buck tell a young sailor to keep a close eye on a group of captives because, as he put it, “a prisoner’s primary duty is to escape.”

  “Well, then,” Amanda pushed herself out of the captain’s chair, “that shall be my first priority too.”

  After that, she would find a way to make the captain see her worth. But for now, she would fight one battle at a time.

  She strode to the oak door and rapped on it, her knuckles making a dull thump against the solid surface. With her light frame, it would be foolhardy to try to break it down. Perhaps if she knocked harder she might convince someone to open it for her. No. Before a battle, everyone would be on deck. No one would hear even if she pounded on the door until her fists were bloody.

  Except, perhaps, Doctor Miller.

  He would be busy, readying his equipment and preparing the common area for casualties. Amanda put her ear to the door in a futile attempt to detect sounds of activity beyond her prison. She might be able to yell loud enough for him to hear, but in all likelihood, the captain had already told the doctor she would not be attending him.

  What more had he taken the time to share?

  She straightened and rested her fists on her hips. Well then, if she couldn’t break the door down, nor enlist help from the outside, she would have to find a third avenue of escape.

  She studied the lock...copper, faint patina about the edges, familiar design. The room about her faded, replaced by the memory of an eleven-year-old Neil standing triumphant in the hallway outside his bedroom. She had threatened to lock him in his room. He dared her to try, claiming he didn’t need a key to unlock the door. When she told him she didn’t believe him, he proved it to her by showing her how to do it. It took a couple of tries, but with Neil’s teaching, she mastered it soon enough.

  “Thank you. Neil,” Amanda whispered, for once grateful for her brother’s antics.

  Amanda scanned the captain’s quarters for something long and thin but sturdy enough to do the job. Her gaze landed on the brown and white turkey quill in a silver stand at the edge of his desk. No, the hollow tip would break too easily and could jam in the lock. Although he deserved it, she’d hate to have to explain to Captain Stoakes how she had broken his lock and his favorite quill.

  Then she remembered a metal instrument—V-shaped and about the size of her hand—she’d often seen lying atop the pile of charts on his desk. One of its pointed arms might be thin enough to slide into the keyhole.

  Amanda strode to the desk and rummaged through chaotic stacks of charts, resisting the urge to tidy the captain’s belongings while she searched. She rifled through the papers a second time, still failing to turn up the mysterious device.

  “It’s got to be here somewhere!” She yanked open the flat middle drawer on his desk and shoved a stack of parchment to the side.

  “Ouch!” Amanda brought her finger to her lips and sucked at a spot of blood forming at the tip. “For a man who runs a tight ship, you could do with a little personal organization,” she mumbled, still sucking on her sore finger.

  She pulled out the item she had been seeking and held it up to the light streaming in from the high windows. The slim shape might do well, but would it be strong enough? She tugged at the tip of one metal arm.

  “I hope that was supposed to happen.” She scrunched her nose at the single arm that had come off in her hand.

  “Oh well, no hope for it now.” She shut the drawer and tucked the remains of the instrument into the waistband of her breeches.

  Kneeling before the door, she inserted the slender, metal arm into the keyhole. Her hands trembled, partly from the delicacy of the task, partly from residual anger, mostly, she admitted with some reluctance, from
the memory of his kiss.

  She probed into the dark recess. With her plan of escape in motion, her anger receded, leaving room for other more perplexing thoughts. Her lips tingled anew with the memory of the warmth of his mouth on hers.

  She had never been kissed by a man. Although some of her more adventurous friends had said it could be quite enjoyable, that didn’t even began to describe it. A picnic at the lake on a warm summer afternoon was enjoyable. Or a good book in front of the fire on a winter’s eve. Or…well, a million other mundane things, his kiss not included.

  Her hand stilled. His kiss was like the warmth of the sun on her face.

  Amanda pounded her fist against the door. Focus.

  Why had he kissed her? Kissed her and then told her they would talk about putting her ashore after the battle? He said he would return her to her family, but the only living relative she had was aboard this ship. But then he knew that, didn’t he?

  She scowled and rattled the pointed metal around in the darkened hollow of the keyhole. Perhaps he meant he would find a way to return her to the farm where she could waste away, scratching out a meager existence among her few remaining chickens. She stabbed at the inside of the lock. Maybe he thought she could marry one of her snaggle-toothed neighbors. Anything to get her, a woman, off his ship. He acted as though her sex posed a bigger threat than the English!

  Perhaps he had kissed her to remind her of her place in the world. Her jaw tightened and she stabbed again with the metal arm. His strategy had worked. His kiss had so knocked her off course that he had imprisoned her in his quarters before she regained her senses.

  Amanda shook her head, knocking a blonde curl in front of her eyes. She blew it away with a sharp puff and jiggled the metal arm, feeling for the lever that meant her freedom.

  Enough thinking about the captain. May he rot for all she cared!

  But why had he kissed her? The question poked and prodded her brain while she felt for the unseen lever that would release her.

  And she had kissed him back, without any attempt to protest his boldness. What had he thought of that? Had he expected her to withdraw from his advances, to play the frightened maid? Maid though she might be, and surely her inexperience in kissing had to be evident, how surprised he must have been when she didn’t resist. Instead, she had melted like butter against him. Heat pricked the tips of her ears.

  A boom shook the Amanda. A split-second later, the ship listed, throwing Amanda against the heavy door.

  She swore softly and pulled the metal arm out of the keyhole. She put her eye to the darkness, trying in vain to see the mechanism within. It had been years since she had last done this, and this lock had proven more difficult than those at the farm. She shoved the instrument inside the lock again. The battle overhead would not make her task any easier. She must free herself soon.

  At last, Amanda felt the little lever move inside the lock. She eased the latch in the mechanism upward with a satisfying click. One tug on the door handle freed her from her prison. Brushing sweaty palms against her tunic and breeches, she considered her next move. It had been some time since her swim in the sea and her clothes were nearly dry. No longer in need of a change of clothing, she might as well do as she normally did.

  Shutting the heavy oak door, she relocked it in one deft maneuver, surprised at how easy it was now that she had learned the lock’s secrets. She smiled with satisfaction, imaging Captain Stoakes returning to find the door still locked, but no prisoner inside. She stashed the metal arm in her waistband alongside the rest of the instrument. Let him stew on that one!

  Amanda found Doctor Miller, hands bloody, in the common area, examining a man with a jagged wound on his leg.

  “You know he’s going to be quite angry, don’t you?” Doctor Miller peered through his spectacles at the man’s injury, his eyes lacking their characteristic sparkle.

  So he had stopped to tell the doctor.

  “Not sure what you mean, Doctor.” She strode to the basin and poured water from a pitcher over her hands.

  “Amanda…” he began.

  She held her hands frozen in midair. “So he told you everything? Even my real name?”

  She watched a rivulet of water roll down the back of her hand and pool into a mirrored drop at her finger’s tip.

  “Told me?” Doctor Miller snorted. “I am the one who should have told him long ago.”

  She whirled to face him. “You knew?”

  “Well. Not your name perhaps, but that you were a woman? Yes. One would have to be blind not to see that.”

  “So what’s the captain’s excuse? He certainly sees well enough when he’s sighting the enemy.”

  “Yes, but he’s looking for the enemy. In a way, the captain is blind to you. Because he expects his men to be obey his rules without question, it never occurred to him that you might have broken them all on your own.”

  Doctor Miller waved her toward the man he had been examining. “Could you help Martin, dear?”

  Martin’s beaming face suggested he was more interested in the discussion than in the bloody gash across his shoulder.

  “Martin, you can’t tell anyone what you just heard. Please.” She threaded a thin needle.

  “Your secret is safe with me, Miss,” Martin said. “I won’t tell a soul that don’t already know.”

  Amanda wondered at his choice of words until Doctor Miller broke into her thoughts. “Amanda, don’t worry about the captain. He is more concerned for your safety than angry at you. In fact, if he’s angry at anyone, it is himself.”

  Amanda snorted. “He’s concerned for his ship. For some reason, I pose a danger to him and his men, although I can’t imagine what it would be.”

  “Can’t you?” The doctor’s eyes shone above his spectacles.

  “No, I can’t,” Amanda said, feeling contrite when Martin stiffened under the first jab of her needle. “It’s not like I’m in the way during a battle. I’m down here helping you. The rest of the time, I’m in the galley cooking just to feed his insatiable appetite.”

  “I think he understands your value,” the doctor replied, “even if he hasn’t admitted it to himself.”

  “He wants to put me ashore,” Amanda said, knowing she sounded miserable.

  “Did he say that?” the doctor asked.

  Even Martin’s face showed doubt.

  “Yes,” Amanda said. “He told me we would discuss it after the battle. Who is to say that I am in any more danger here than on land? For all we know, the British took Baltimore last week and burned my family’s farm to the ground.”

  “Perhaps…” The doctor shrugged. “But, on land, you would at least have had neighbors, female neighbors, to whom you could turn to for help. On the Amanda, you’ve been forced to bunk with sixty men.”

  “There were never sixty of them at once.” Amanda took another stitch. “My shift only had thirty-five.”

  Martin chuckled his appreciation of her humor.

  “I’m not in any danger,” she said, her tone turning serious. “The men of the Amanda are honorable.”

  Martin looked up from the needle poking halfway out of his shoulder to nod his head, a look of pride at her defense on his blunt features. She steadied him with her hand and resumed sewing.

  “Yes, they are, but at one time, the captain thought the rule necessary. Perhaps it still is for all but the most exceptional cases. Either way, the captain is, right now, at war with his rule about ‘no women on my ship.’” He did a poor impression of Captain Stoakes, and her hand shook from stifled laughter. “He’s only just discovered his rule has been broken and nothing dire has happened because of it. Perhaps we need to give him time to come to terms with that.”

  “He does love his rules, doesn’t he?”

  The doctor must have heard the doubt in her voice. “Amanda, you are as much a member of his crew as anyone else on this ship. If nothing else, you have been a godsend to me. I could have managed. I have before, but the men have definitely far
ed better under your ministrations.” He smiled thoughtfully. “Even old Joe seems to be recovering well. I had no idea chicken soup and lemon cake could help a man recover from a broken arm.”

  “Chicken soup cures everything,” she said, her mood, if not her hopes, lightened by the doctor’s praise.

  “Yes, well, the point is that every man on this ship, me included, will fight to make the captain see you have earned the right to be here.”

  Amanda frowned. “I hope so, but he is a stubborn man.”

  “That he is,” agreed the doctor. “And there’s always a chance that we won’t have the opportunity to come to your defense before he’s made up his mind.”

  Amanda glanced up, her frown deepening. Was he trying to cheer her up? If so, his approach needed refining.

  “But, mark my words,” the doctor continued. “I have known the captain for a long time. You won’t stay ashore for long. You’ve become a member of his crew. You’ve become a part of him too. You are one prize he will not be so willing to let go.”

  Amanda blushed at being compared to the captain’s quarry. She hoped the doctor was right, yet she did not quite share his confidence. She agreed the captain needed her, but perhaps he did not realize it yet.

  She knotted off the thread and clipped the end with the scissors.

  If she couldn’t convince him of her worth through the needle and his stomach, she would have to find another way.

  Chapter Nine

  The battle lasted well into the next day, the two ships circling each other like vultures waiting for death. Bright flashes of cannon fire rocked the moonlit night.

  Before a final volley brought down the main mast of the English ship, she battered the Amanda with everything she had. When she ran out of shot, her crew used the captain’s silver. Forks and knives tore through canvas like grape and sunk deep into the white pine of the Amanda’s main mast.

  A steady stream of wounded kept the doctor and Amanda busy. Above their heads, shot peppered the deck, shattering the ankle of one man. Amanda held his hand when the doctor forced a block of leather-covered wood between the poor man’s teeth. She tried not to flinch when he set his saw to the pulpy mass that had been the man’s bones. The soft thud of the dead foot falling onto the straw-covered floor would haunt her dreams.