Stormfire

by Christine Monson

  Sean's intent was diverted by a sudden, insistent pounding on the door. His pantherlike move from bed to knife was interrupted when the knock repeated itself knee-high, and the Irishman straightened with relief and exasperation.

  Catherine laughed softly. "Will you answer the door, Papa, or shall I?"

  "Might as well settle it now," her husband muttered. Pulling a towel off a rack near the washbasin, he tucked its skimpy length around his lean middle and opened the door.

  Familiar green eyes widened, then glared up into his, and a small foot leveled at his shin. Sweeping downward, Sean caught his son up in mid-kick, heaved the boy onto his hip, and let him yell as he closed the door. "You're not my father! You're not supposed to be in here! Go away or I'll kill you!" The boy struggled violently until he saw his mother, covered to her armpits, in the bed they had shared, then froze into stunned realization that this stranger had been in bed, naked, with his mother and she had not minded.

  Before he had time to start yelling at her, the stranger dumped him onto the bed and bellowed, "Pipe down! Whether you like it or not, I am your father and you'd better start getting used to it because I'm going to be around from now on!"

  Emerald eyes blazed mutinously into emerald. "I won't! I hate you!"

  "Go ahead, hate me, and I'll go on loving you. Where do you think you got your blasted stubbornness?" Sean's jaw nearly touched his son's outthrust chin as they glared at one another.

  The Irishman, first to break the standoff, hunkered down. "I'll tell you something. The task of a father and husband is to love, protect, and provide for his family, and up to now, you've had to take my place. You've done it well and I'm proud of you. But just as I can never be a boy again—however I might like it—you're not yet a man, however you might like it.

  "You love your mother, but I loved her first. She belongs to you, but first she belonged to me. And you've been sleeping in her bed, but I slept there long before you were born."

  Brendan longed to look at his mother for reassurance, but was too proud and too afraid. Maybe she would not want him now that this man had come. Why didn't she say something?

  Sean knew the fear running through his son's mind, but knew too they must come to a clear-cut understanding. "Just because you and I take our proper places in her life doesn't change the way your mother loves us."

  Catherine touched her son's shoulder. "Your father's telling you the truth, darling, and believe me, he loves you every bit as much as I do."

  Brendan twisted suspiciously to look at her. "Is he going to sleep in our bed with us?"

  "Parents sleep together, darling," she said softly. "Sons have beds of their own." His eyes filled with tears, though he tried to fight them back in the presence of another male.

  "That doesn't mean you cannot join us when you're invited," Sean said.

  Brendan watched his mother's hand in Sean's. "You want Maman. You don't want me."

  "Your father was once so badly hurt he wanted to die, Brendan," Catherine murmured, "but he fought to live, in a more terrible battle than any you've dreamed of, because he wanted so much to see you."

  The boy sat there stiffly, uncomfortable.

  "Would you care to come into bed with us for a while?" Catherine suggested. "I realize all this is sudden and you may want to talk a bit."

  "No," said Brendan, wrinkling his nose and starting to slide off the bed. "You're all smelly."

  A gentle but firm hand on his shoulder stopped his slide. "You haven't been properly dismissed yet."

  The boy flushed. "May I go, sir?"

  "Yes."

  After the door closed, Sean looked at Catherine. "He resents me as much as I resented his namesake. I never changed."

  She took his face in her hands and kissed him. "Thanks to you, your son's only a frightened little boy. He's never known the horrors you faced. You were forced into manhood by the time you met Brendan Senior." She grinned. "Besides, you didn't resent Brendan for kicking you out of your mother's bed, but her out of his. " Her eyes widened with mock ferocity. "And no one's going to pry me out of yours, even our son."

  "I'm surprised you didn't take his side when I was yelling at him."

  "You're on his side. How could I?"

  "I love you," he said huskily.

  "That's good," she murmured. "Now stop fretting and remind me how much."

  As the moon rose high over the fields, Brendan was tense with excitement over his first real venture outside the convent walls and a little frightened, especially after he saw the pistol and saber at his father's belt and his mother in an oriental tunic and trousers. She carried a pistol like his father's. Was he to have one, too? But no, after his father embraced Sister Marie Angelique right under Reverend Mother's nose, his parents led him to waiting horses: the huge one must be the famous Mephisto. His heart thudded. Then, unbelievably, his father swung him up onto the great horse's back. He clutched the pommel as the black's head snaked around.

  The Irishman kept an arm around his son and stroked the horse's nose. "Easy, boy." The black nuzzled his master's hand. Sean gave Brendan a lump of sugar. "Feed him this and he'll be your friend. Hold your hand out flat."

  Brendan eyed Mephisto and shakily held out his palm. When the great teeth showed briefly in a neat nip at the sweet, he squeezed his eyes shut.

  "Well done. You can pet him now,"

  The boy stroked awkwardly, then peered at his father. "Are you going to ride him with me?"

  "No, he has a sore fetlock. He won't be ably to carry a man for a few more days. I'll walk alongside while you grow accustomed to each other."

  As Sean eased Mephisto into a walk, Brendan stared back at his receding home. "Where are we going?" he asked tremulously.

  "To sea in a ship. She's waiting in a hidden channel."

  "A pirate ship?" breathed the boy.

  "Some would call her that."

  Brendan forgot his nervousness and prodded insistently, "Will you let me sail?"

  "Aye, but at first, you'll learn in a boat about twice as long as Mephisto."

  Shortly, Brendan nodded with each stride of the horse across moonlit fields and vineyards banded by woodland. He began to slide athwart the saddle into Sean's arms.

  Catherine took Mephisto's reins as Sean placed the boy in front of him on the sorrel.

  In sleep, the small body was warm and relaxed against him, and tentatively, he touched the boy's hair. The mouth seemed unfamiliar: William Fitzhugh's, perhaps. Had his own lips ever had that fine sensitivity? What a coldblooded, wary little bastard he had been. He knew now how Brendan Culhane and Lockland Fitzhugh must have felt, hoping for a response that had never come. Fitzhugh was the finest man he had ever known beside Brendan. He smiled, remembering Fitzhugh's indomitability; perhaps his own stubbornness did not stem from the O'Neill strain after all. If he could only hope for his son's respect, he would try to earn it and never let the boy see his pain.

  Then Catherine ruffled his hair, her face luminous With more than moonlight. "I love you with all my being," she said quietly, "yet I'm glad my love is no longer enough for you." She leaned over and touched his lips, so like her son's, then kissed them so sweetly his sadness passed.

  Abruptly, the moment was broken by a faint sound from a grove of trees ahead. Both reined their horses. "There it is again. A slapping," Catherine whispered.

  "Likely the wash against Sylvie's hull. I'll see. Take Brendan." Sean gave her the boy. "If you hear a shot, let Mephisto and the sorrel go, then run like hell. We have a son now. Promise."

  "I promise."

  Like a ghost of the moonlight, he was at her bridle one moment and gone the next. She waited, cold to the bone despite the mild evening air. Her grip tightened on Brendan and the reins as she breathed a silent prayer, "Not now, God. Not when he has a chance to be happy."

  Brendan stirred. "Where's Papa?"

  "He's making sure the ship is waiting."

  "Are you scared he won't come back?"

  "Are y
ou?"

  Sleepily, he considered. "Not if I tell God I like him. He's not as mean as he looks."

  And your heart is not the stubborn citadel it seems, my sweet, his mother silently noted as he calmly went back to sleep. Then, Sean was lifting Brendan down.. "The Sylvie's waiting and ready to weigh anchor. Hand me Mephisto's bridle. We'll tether the others."

  Moments later, with Mephisto clattering up the gangplank behind them, they boarded the schooner. Her decks and paint gleamed below gaff-rigged masts that stabbed upward through black shadows from trees overhanging the creek. Men moved quickly on the decks. After introducing Catherine to the awed Captain Shannon, Sean led her and Brendan to their cabin.

  "Brendan's great-grandfather couldn't step in a curragh without turning green," he drawled. "Let's hope he hasn't inherited that habit." He bit her ear and she yelped. "Likely he's a teasing imp, though. How am I to deal with a first officer so smitten with my wife he's liable to order his own head overboard as an anchor?"

  "Oh?Mr. Shannon struck me as quite sensible." Catherine ignored her husband's skeptical look.

  The cabin's white woodwork was set off by varnished mahogany bunk stanchions and brass fittings. Portholes opened to night air alive with cheeps and croaks from the creek. Catherine heard water slap the hull and a rhythmic rub of oarlocks. "We're already moving."

  "Aye, a longboat is towing us out of the creek." Sean strung a gear hammock, then added blanketsand tucked his son into it. "Has he a toy?"

  Catherine drew Brendan's battered monkey out of the makeshift sling on her shoulder. "Some of the teeth marks are mine from his delivery; the others are from his teething. It's still his favorite plaything, although he sleeps with this because it's softer." She produced a grubby stuffed rabbit.

  Sean fitted the rabbit into Brendan's arm, then ran his thumb over the monkey's dents. He pulled Catherine into his arms and held her tightly. "I have to go topside. Get some sleep. I'll be back as soon as I can."

  She hesitated. "I suppose women aren't allowed on the quarterdeck."

  "It's my quarterdeck." He kissed her lightly, then thoroughly until she was all soft in his arms. "That's to keep your powder dry."

  Her fingers brushed his groin and he caught his breath. "That's to keep you primed for firing," she murmured.

  As they mounted the quarterdeck, Sylvie cleared the creek mouth. The rocky coast of France spilled away on both sides of the stern, the sea molten silver below a lunar haze that faded the stars. The night was hardly prime for eluding coastal patrols. The longboat slacked alongside, unloaded, and was hauled aboard.

  Shannon saluted. "She's all yours, sir."

  "Thank you, Mr. Shannon." With an eye to the sails, Sean gave the wheel a twirl and dictated orders to the first mate. The man took off to quietly relay the number and order of sails to set. In virtual silence, the sails ran up on heavily greased capstans, bellied out with a dull rumble, then snapped taut. The Sylvie heeled to the wind, spray fanning over her bows.

  "Under full sail, she must be even faster than the Megan!" Catherine breathed in awe at his shoulder.

  "She has to be fast. We don't carry the guns to fight a pitched battle."

  Two men, each with a telescope strapped to his shoulder, scurried up the masts. While the lookouts scanned the horizon for ships, Sean and Shannon conferred over tidal changes in the local shoals, adjusting reckonings by the softly called depth soundings of a sailor -perched at the bowsprit. Finally they were clear, and Shannon relaxed slightly as Sean signaled all sail to be set. Once the treacherous shoals were passed, the crew settled into routine while, above them, the masts with their tiny human sil-, houettes spiked the dwindling moon. At last, the coast of France merged into the glittering wake behind them. At the wheel, Sean curled Catherine into the curve of his arms.

  "Now that you have your lady love," Catherine teased, "I wonder how you'll manage me. The convent was no cure; I'm still unruly."

  "I mean to be forthright, ma'am. The only way for a sensible man to have any peace with an independent female is to love her and be ready to catch her borrowed breeches when they drop."

  "Oh, you!" She tried to squirm out of his arms; then her lips began to curve in a slow, appreciative grin. "Kiss me, you cocky mick, while I filch your belt as well."