Master Of My Dreams (Heroes Of The Sea Series)

by Danelle Harmon

  Christian.

  He swallowed hard, several times, against the sudden sting of emotion.

  She called me by my name.

  He took a deep, shaky breath, his pain, and apprehension of what Elwin was about to do to him, suddenly forgotten. Skunk and Teach came forward, sliding their hands beneath his shoulders and lifting him up so that Rico could remove his blood-soaked uniform, waistcoat and shirt. He tried to move, and could not, and was alarmed at how weak he’d grown.

  Christian, she’d said.

  As they lowered him back to the table, he shut his eyes against the raw emotion. Then cool air swept against the exposed wound, and he didn’t have to hear Delight’s soft cry, or the collective gasps of dismay, to know how serious it was.

  Rolling his head, he looked up at the girl and managed a smile. “That bad, eh?”

  She was pure white. The fierce pressure of her fingers around his was answer enough.

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” the surgeon muttered, wiping his hands on his bloodied apron and picking up the needle-like metal probe once more. “And you’d be luckier still if you hadn’t woken up, because I can tell you right now, you’re going to feel this.”

  “I’m warnin’ ye, Elwin!” Teach snarled, pushing forward. “Ye make one slip and yer going to be eating steel and shittin’ bullets, you hear me?”

  Pushing past Teach and ignoring the crowd anxiously gathering in the cramped space, Elwin offered a mug of rum to Christian. “Drink this, sir,” he urged. “It’ll dull the pain somewhat.”

  “And have the men see me helpless beneath a haze of alcohol? Thank you, Mr. Boyd, but I happen to value my coherence.” He steeled himself for the inevitable. “Now get on with it, please.”

  Elwin gave a noncommittal shrug. “As you wish, sir.”

  Christian shut his eyes, and only the girl, fiercely holding his hand, felt the tension in his grip. Then she brought her other hand down to his lips, her fingers gently touching his mouth and coaxing him to take and bite down on a strip of leather. He gazed up into her eyes, knowing that he could endure anything as long as she looked at him like that. He saw apology in their depths, kindness, and yes, even forgiveness.

  Forgiveness.

  Beyond her, the three young midshipmen stood with the anxious crew. Christian gave them an encouraging smile. Then Elwin moved close, and he tensed in expectation of the first touch of cold steel against his flesh.

  Pulling the girl’s hand close, he pressed her fingers to his lips.

  “Don’t leave me,” he murmured.

  Her eyes were soft, luminous, and damp with tears. “’Tis a . . . a wonderful smile ye have,” she said, her voice breaking. “I wish I’d noticed it before.”

  The knife touched the raw edge of the wound and Christian shut his eyes.

  The girl bent close, her hair hanging over one shoulder and brushing his cheek. “And I’m sorry for everything I said to ye that day Tildy ate my bread,” she whispered, her lips moving against his temple. “Ye’re a good man, Christian, a fine man, and I think ye’re very brave an’ worthy.”

  Elwin was digging around in his wound now. Nausea flared in his stomach, and his shoulder throbbed with fresh agony, the pain radiating into his neck and down his back as the surgeon probed the wound in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the musket ball. Christian gripped the girl’s hand like a lifeline; from far away he felt her breath against his face, her soft hand stroking his cheek, his hair.

  “Damn,” the surgeon snapped, holding the edge of the wound aside with a two-pronged retractor as he dug and probed the hole. “I can’t find this godforsaken thing—”

  Christian sank his teeth into the leather, hearing the girl’s voice fading in and out, coming from a great distance away.

  “And I was wrong about Englishmen . . . some of ye can actually be quite nice . . .”

  The probe, deep in the wound now, scraped against raw bone, and his testicles seemed to shrivel in agony. The girl’s grip on his hand tightened. His molars grinding into the leather, Christian rasped, “I have not forgotten my promise, Miss O’ Devir . . . when we reach Boston, I shall do all in my power to . . . find your brother. So help me God.”

  Elwin was going deeper, and pain was exploding in great sheets of agony behind his eyes, throbbing in time with his pulse. Christian shuddered, felt the sweat breaking out along his brow and neck. He breathed deeply, trying not to faint as again, the probe scraped against the raw underside of his collarbone.

  “Let go,” the girl was saying, her lips close to his ear. “Let go, Christian. Succumb to the darkness . . . I’ll watch over ye . . .”

  But the surgeon straightened up, wiping bloody hands on his apron. “I can’t get it out,” he muttered, glaring at his gathered shipmates as though daring them to defy him. “I can’t even find the damned thing.”

  “You’ve got to get it out,” Ian insisted.

  “Now,” Teach threatened.

  “Ye heard what Elwin said! He’s going t’ bleed t’ death if ye don’t!”

  Elwin swept up the probe once more, and with his scalpel, opened the wound further. Fresh blood bubbled out, the captain went rigid and the Irish girl rounded on him. “Jesus, Joseph, an’ Mary, ye’re hurtin’ him, Elwin!”

  In a fit of temper, Elwin flung the scalpel down and raged, “What do you want? He won’t take rum, I can’t get the ball out, and there’s nothing else to do!”

  “Ye’d give up just like that? What kind o’ surgeon are ye?”

  Elwin ripped off his apron and flung it to the floor. “Fine, then—if you think you can do better, do it yourself!”

  He shoved past the stunned officers and crew, pushed through the marines, and slammed out.

  In the ensuing silence, only the deckhead lantern moved, swinging eerily in the gloom.

  Deirdre stood there, shocked, and for a startled moment, she could only stare at those around her. Her stricken gaze moved from Teach to Skunk to Ian to Hendricks to a pale and green-looking Hibbert, to the seamen and red-coated marines pressing against the doorway, and finally to Delight, standing quietly beside her.

  They were staring at her. Every last one of them.

  “It’s your decision, cherie,” Delight said softly.

  Deirdre looked down. The captain was fading fast, the blood, obscene and purple in the glare of the lantern light, pulsing down his chest with every beat of his heart. His eyes, glazed with pain, were half closed.

  “You can do it, foundling,” he murmured. Then he dragged his eyes open to gaze up at her face. “That is . . . if you want to.”

  The others looked at her, holding their breath.

  You can do it.

  She stared down at the raw, ominous hole just beneath the ridge of the captain’s collarbone, and swallowed hard.

  They were waiting. All of them.

  She glanced about, but there was no help to be found. The small space was suddenly too hot, the air too thick to breathe, her heart pounding too loudly in her ears. “I—I don’t know what to do . . .”

  “Just dig the thing out,” Skunk said. “Here, we’ll all hold him down. Get over here, lads—”

  “No,” the captain said quietly, his voice now so faint, that Deirdre had to bend down to catch his words. “There . . . there is no need. Just get on with it, girl.” He gave a strained smile. “I have a ship to run, you know.”

  Aware of every eye in the room, she nodded and, taking a deep, shaky breath, bent over the wound.

  Christian closed his eyes as he felt the heavy cross brushing, then resting upon, his bloody chest. Her fingers touched his shoulder. They were gentle, warm, perhaps, if he allowed his mind to drift, even loving. Slowly, he let out his breath on a long sigh, the tension leaving his body as she held his shoulder with one hand and gently slipped her fingers into the ragged hole of the wound.

  Her fingers.

  It came to him that she would not use the steel probe, the knife, or any of the other wicked instruments of t
orture in the surgeon’s collection.

  She would use her fingers.

  He studied her face as she worked, watching her lovely features tighten with concentration. Once, she glanced up at Hendricks as though for reassurance; he nodded, and Christian felt her fingers in his flesh once more. Pain began to throb up into his neck, down his back. He shut his eyes and bit down on the leather, the inside of his cheek, until he tasted blood.

  “Easy, Christian,” she whispered, her face so close to his shoulder he could feel the warmth of her breath against his skin, the torn flesh itself. Her fingers pushed in deeper, and he bit back a flood of nausea as she touched the raw edge of his collarbone.

  Deirdre, however, was nearing despair. She looked up and caught the anxious gazes of the crew. “I can’t find it.”

  “Go deeper,” Skunk commanded harshly, pressing closer and blocking the lantern light.

  Taking a deep breath, Deirdre pushed her forefinger back into the hole, feeling the warm embrace of muscle, sinew, and tissue.

  The captain moved beneath her, the sweat beginning to roll down his temples. “Keep going,” he rasped. “Deeper . . .”

  Hot blood pulsed over her fingers. She felt bone, muscle . . . and then something round and hard—

  “I found it—I think I have it!”

  But the ball was slippery, and eluded her.

  “Oh, dear God, sweet Mary—”

  She glanced down at the captain. Mercifully, he had fainted.

  “Quick, girl, get it now, while he can’t feel it!” Hendricks urged, shoving forward with the crowd.

  “And mind ye doona miss any pieces of his clothing that might be in there, too!”

  Her lips tight with concentration, Deirdre pushed her finger back into the hole. Fresh blood welled up and flooded over her knuckles. Holding her breath, she explored deeper—and found the musket ball.

  She gripped it between thumb and forefinger and pulled.

  “I lost it!”

  Teach was there, his hands against the captain’s powerful chest to hold him down. “Quick, Deirdre, he’s coming to—”

  Desperately, she gripped the slick ball once more and, with a cry of triumph, pulled it free.

  The room erupted in wild, deafening cheers as Teach grabbed the bloodied bullet and held it up for all to see. “She did it! The lass did it, by God!”

  “Three cheers for our Deirdre!”

  “Hip, hip, huzzah!”

  “Hip, hip, huzzah!”

  “Hip, hip, huzzah!”

  The pent up sobs came at last. She bent her head to the captain’s chest, uncaring that his blood was warm against her cheek and mixing with the tears she could no longer hold back. She felt his wet, wiry chest hair beneath her cheek, his hand resting weakly upon her head—and heard the beat of his heart beneath her ear.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  He was alive.

  And that was all that mattered.

  Chapter 18

  Through careful questioning of its captain, Lieutenants MacDuff and Rhodes learned that the French corvette and its consort, the sloop, had happened upon the lone English cutter while transferring arms . . . easy prey, they had both thought, until HMS Bold Marauder had come upon the scene. But even the combined menace of Arthur Teach, Ian MacDuff, Rico Hendricks, and Skunk could not convince the Frenchman to disclose the name of the sloop, which had promptly fled as the powerful English frigate had closed in.

  As for the corvette herself, she now lay far astern, her crew confined in her hold. With survivors from the cutter now manning her, they would sail her on to Boston, where the admiral there would decide her fate.

  Deirdre, however, was only concerned with her patient, whose side she had not left since she’d extracted the musket ball six days before. She had carefully packed and bandaged his shoulder, walked beside him as Teach and Hendricks had carried him back to his cabin, and held his hand until he had finally succumbed to a strong draught of laudanum. In the days since, she had maintained a faithful vigil beside his bed.

  Now, on this night nearly a week after the battle, she stood on deck, gripping the salt-sticky rail and gazing up at the panorama of stars twinkling in the vast sky above. The ocean merged with the night around her. Moonlight frosted the sails, the guns, the deck planking; a harsh wind gusted off the North Atlantic and drove through her clothes, chilling her to the bone.

  But she felt alive, exhilarated, and strangely . . . free.

  Beneath her feet, the frigate rose and plunged and rose again in a timeless rhythm that brought with it a sense of eternity. From around her came the sounds of masts creaking and groaning, the hiss of spray at the bows, waves breaking against the hull. She drew the sea air deeply into her lungs. Then she gazed out over the blackened waters, where the reflection of moon and stars coasted atop the restless wave crests.

  “Christian,” she said softly.

  She felt strange and new, as though her heart had been flushed clean of the bitterness, hatred, and need for revenge that it had carried for so long. and was now aching to be filled with something good, something joyous, something wonderful.

  Below, the sea fell away in great sheets of foam that glinted in the darkness as the frigate smashed down on each heavy swell. Above, the stars were so close she could reach up and touch them. “Christian,” she said again, her voice carried away by the breeze. “It doesn’t matter anymore that ye’re an Englishman, one of the enemy. I’m tired of fightin’ what I feel for ye in my heart. I know, now, that what ye did to me brother all those years ago was somethin’ ye didn’t want to be doin’. Ye was just followin’ orders. That’s what ye do. Ye’re an officer, who knows no other way of life but discipline and servin’ yer country.”

  The wind snapped the pennants high above.

  “It was the Navy’s fault, Christian. Not yers. And to think of all these years I hated you . . .”

  She didn’t hate him now . . . But just when had she begun to love him?

  Perhaps when he had discovered her aboard the frigate, intervened on her behalf, and carried her to safety in his powerful arms. Perhaps with that first, unforgettable meeting, thirteen long years ago. She did not know. She did not care. But the seeds had been sown, somewhere, sometime, and that love had grown with each act of kindness and patience he’d shown her, each time she’d watched him tending his little canine family, each instance he would have been justified in punishing his crew with the harsh and brutal discipline for which the Royal Navy was famous—but had instead reacted with compassion, inventiveness, and yes, humanity.

  Love.

  The final revelation had come during those terrible moments in the surgeon’s bay—when Teach had carried him down and she had thought him dead. When fate in the form of a Frenchman’s musket ball had placed him in her hands. When he had gazed up at her, his calm gray eyes reflecting trust and confidence that she, Deirdre O’Devir, could succeed where the surgeon had failed.

  When he had trusted her with his life.

  Love.

  Above, the stars grew brilliant, sparkling like chips of crystal in a vast and inky sky. The ocean took on a mysterious beauty, and the frigate’s lights spread searching fingers of gold across the waves, as though the ship was reaching out across forever toward her own destiny.

  But the frigate, all alone on the sea as she drove steadily on toward Boston, had no one but the lonely helmsman and the bow watch with whom to share the beauty of the night.

  The spot at the rail where Deirdre O’Devir had stood was empty.

  ###

  He had beautiful hair.

  With trembling fingers, she reached out and touched it.

  The Lord and Master was asleep, deeply so, thanks to a strong draught of laudanum that Hendricks had slipped into his tea. But it gave Deirdre the opportunity to study this enigmatic man without those cold gray eyes taking her measure. In sleep, and softened by the glow of the single lantern, his face wasn’t quite so austere and forbidding; in sleep,
it was handsome and youthful, the years dropping away, until he was once again the fair-haired lieutenant who’d bent down to calm and reassure a frightened little girl.

  Somewhere in a darkened corner of the cabin, she heard the sounds of the puppies in their box, of Tildy quietly licking their tiny bodies. Beside her, the captain’s steady, rhythmic breathing was the only other sound. Deirdre sighed, a warm, loving feeling suffusing her heart, and suddenly she wished that she had a family, too. A man to love her, care for her, cherish her . . .

  Christian.

  By the light of the lantern swinging gently from the beams above, she pulled up a chair and sat beside him. Carefully, she took his hand, letting her gaze move over his face. Yes, he had beautiful hair. It was thick and pale and wavy, the color of sunlight at the hottest part of the day, though in the soft light of the lantern, it was almost amber. Leaning forward, she reached out to touch it, and found it soft and springy to the touch.

  She looked at him, seeing him as though for the first time. At the haughty, well-shaped brows . . . the nose that was straight and proud; his lashes, thick and pale, bleached at the tips and lying heavily against high and prominent cheekbones. She’d never realized that a man could have such long lashes, that a man could have such beautiful hair; she’d never realized how handsome and vulnerable a man could look in sleep; and never, ever, in a thousand years had she thought to apply any of those words—handsome, beautiful, vulnerable—to the cold and enigmatic captain of His Majesty’s Ship Bold Marauder.

  The cabin seemed suddenly stuffy, the air cloying and still. Mesmerized, Deirdre let her fingers drift to the pale locks that swept back from his temple, and then the faded bruise just beneath. Her touch lingered there, feeling the fragile pulse that beat beneath her fingertips.

  Her eyes filled with gentle wonder.

  He was an Englishman. The enemy. Part of that hated race that had been tramping on the rights and land of her people for centuries. But enemies were supposed to be cold and alien, monstrous and inhuman—weren’t they? Yet this man’s skin was as warm as her own. His pulse beat just as strongly as hers did, his chest rose and fell with the same breath, and the blood that had flowed so freely from his shoulder was just as red as hers.