“For heaven’s sake, Rhiannon, I’m under license from my country to attack, seize, harass, and make prizes of enemy shipping. That’s what a privateer does. At the moment, we’re at war with Britain and that’s a British convoy. I’d be insane not to attack it.”
“Flying the Union Jack is dishonest.”
“It’s the done thing. You want me to hoist the Stars and Stripes and go sashaying down on them like I’ve been invited to tea?”
“At least that would be honorable.”
Connor, fighting a losing war with his temper, raked a hand through his tousled curls. At the tiller, Nathan was trying hard not to smirk. Connor could feel the familiar confused buzzing starting up in his head.
“Deck there!” came the cry from high above.
“Report!”
“Three more ships now, Captain. Maybe four. One looks to be a frigate.”
First things first. Leaving Rhiannon standing there with stormy eyes, Connor hooked a hand in the shrouds, stepped up on the rail, and began to climb aloft.
He needed a clear head.
And she could never follow him there.
* * *
As Kestrel moved steadily toward the convoy that was now fully visible to the north, Connor came back down on deck, ordered the gun ports closed and the crew to lie low. For some time the frigate, capable of blasting them to kindling wood if her commander so chose, stayed close to the merchant ships like a shepherd guarding its sheep. Then, late in the afternoon, she wore ship and came storming down on them.
“Got our papers in order, Nathan?” Connor asked, grinning.
“Aye, sir. The British ones.”
“Good. Toby, lad! Send most of the crew below. If that frigate yonder sees so many in our company, they’ll know us for what we are. Especially with Kestrel’s design.”
Nathan scratched absently at the light brown stubble on his jaw. “What about the missus, Con?”
“Yes, Captain? What about me?”
Connor turned and found his wife leaning against one of the schooner’s guns, her arms crossed over her chest and her smile one of false sweetness. Oh, he couldn’t wait to get his hands around his mother’s neck for sneaking Rhiannon aboard. This was unacceptable. Totally, outrageously, unacceptable.
“Are you going to give me trouble, Rhiannon?”
“Already has, by the look of it,” Nathan mused.
“You can stay on deck unless things get hot. But if I say go below you’ll go, even if I have to bodily carry you myself.”
The frigate, heeled over with the sea foaming at her lee bows, was growing closer.
Connor watched its approach and bit off a hangnail. “They’ll be putting a shot across our bows right about—”
Boom!
“Now,” he finished, straightening up. “Time to heave to. Everyone below except you Nathan, as well as Toby, Bobbs, and whichever one of you lot are capable of carrying off a passable English accent.”
“What about me?” Rhiannon asked, watching the smoke drifting across the water from the frigate’s challenge.
Connor eyed her dubiously. “Your accent wouldn’t be false. But this is tricky business and I don’t want you saying a word. In fact, stand over there with Toby so they don’t notice you’re a woman and wonder why you’re aboard, and if I tell you to go below—”
“I know, I know. . . .”
“Good. I’m glad we understand each other,” he said firmly, and throwing her a last, meaningful look, returned to the business at hand. Moments later, most of the crew had gone below and Nathan was putting the helm down. Like a well-bred horse obeying her master, Kestrel turned her nose into the wind and came drifting to a stop, her great sails luffing.
Rhiannon went to stand next to Toby, shifting her weight to keep her balance as Kestrel fretted beneath them, the long ocean swells passing beneath her, lifting her, settling her down in each trough before lifting her up yet again. She looked at the British frigate, its gun ports wide open and the ugly black snouts of its huge guns all aimed squarely at them, now hove to and lying to windward several hundred feet away.
“That frigate looks huge up close,” she whispered to Toby. “I’m anxious for Connor.”
“He’s the best at what he does. Just like his father was.”
“Why does he feel such a need to prove himself, Toby? He’s so confident. Too confident. I worry so about him.”
“A captain needs confidence to inspire his men. Have faith in him, Rhiannon. He’s good at this.”
A boat put out from the frigate and was now heading toward them, several tars at the oars and a smartly clad officer in the stern.
“Prepare to receive boarders,” Connor muttered through a cheerful grin.
Rhiannon’s blood was running cold. “I can’t watch this. And yet I can’t not watch it. I wish I’d stayed in Barbados.”
Toby, who’d been watching his cousin and captain, turned to her in some alarm. “Want me to take you below?”
“No, I don’t want to go below. But I don’t want to see my husband shot down or hanged, either!”
Moments later the officer, accompanied by his coxswain, was standing on Kestrel’s deck and looking around with suspicious eyes. He was short, plump, and full of his own importance, with penetrating gray eyes, a stand-up collar that poked into the soft flesh around his jaw, and brown hair worn in fashionable spit curls.
“I am Lieutenant Treadwell of His Majesty’s frigate Diana,” he drawled. “Who are you and what is your business?”
Rhiannon could barely breathe. She watched in silence as her husband bowed deeply. “Mr. Merrick, sir, o’ the English schooner Kestrel.”
“English? Looks like one of those damned Baltimore privateers to me.”
“Indeed sir, she was that until me captain, an English privateer ‘imself, took her as a prize. I’m her prizemaster, that I am, tasked with sailing her back t’ London.”
“You Irish?”
“Aye.”
“Why sail her all the way back to England? Vice Admiral Sir Graham Falconer is in Bridgetown, surely you can have her condemned and sold at auction there.”
“Ah, but sir, ye know that th’ Royal Navy has nothing like these sharp-sailing, over-sparred American ships that can run circles around its fastest frigates. Admiralty in London is eager t’ get its hands on one o’ them so they can study and duplicate them.” Connor turned and gestured expansively to the schooner’s raked and towering masts. “Can ye blame ‘em? Look at her. Is she not a beauty?”
“Simmons, go below and fetch her papers,” the lieutenant snapped, but his mariner’s eyes had warmed in appreciation as he studied the schooner’s lean and predatory lines, her neat rows of guns, the sharp, backswept rake of her two masts and the jib-boom at her nose that seemed to angle out into forever.
“She is indeed,” he said, watching his coxswain head below. “What kind of sailor is she?”
“Fast. Wet.” Connor grinned. “Hard t’ handle, just like a woman.”
A faint smile curved the lieutenant’s stern mouth. Moments later his coxswain had reappeared, a leather packet in his hand. With a lingering look at Kestrel’s square topsail so high above, the officer took the packet, opened it, and studied the papers that granted Kestrel permission to harbor in Barbados.
“These are signed by Sir Graham himself!” the man said, a crease appearing between his heavy brows.
“Aye, sir. That they are.”
“Well then, since you are headed back to England all alone, and I’m sure those damned Yankees will lose no chance to reclaim such a singular ship as a prize, you will travel in convoy with us under the protection of His Majesty’s frigate Diana and the sloop-of-war Whippet.”
“Thank ye, sir. Much obliged.” Connor bowed deeply and shot Nathan a wicked, conspiring grin as the British lieutenant looked up at Kestrel’s sails in admiration. His eyes were twinkling with mischief. “Indeed, we would be most grateful, sir, to sail in convoy with ye. Most grateful
, indeed.”
* * *
“Fools,” Connor said under his breath, touching his hat and grinning as the Englishman and his crew went over Kestrel’s side and back down into the boat below. “That was easier than I thought.”
“Gotta hand it to you, Con. That was a clever way to get us right in the middle of the convoy without ‘em suspecting a thing. You’re as cunning as your Da. Loved the Irish accent.”
“All in a day’s work. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Good hunting tonight, I say.”
“Good hunting,” Nathan agreed.
Connor picked up one of the cats which had wandered up on deck and was now twining itself around his feet. “We’ll keep the crew lying low until dark. I don’t want that supercilious prig out there thinking we’re anything but short-handed and vulnerable.” He stroked the tabby’s sleek, shining fur. “Rhiannon, lass. What’s the matter?”
“You can drop the Irish accent now, Captain.”
“Sounded just like his father, didn’t he?” One-Eye said.
“I doubt his father would ever stoop to such deceit.”
Connor shrugged. “My father knew every ruse in the book and the ones he didn’t know, he invented. Just ask Bobbs, here. His Da sailed with mine back in the last war.”
“Tell her about the time Uncle Brendan snuck up on that British frigate in the dark and stole some of its crew for his own right out from under its captain’s nose!” Toby said eagerly.
“Or the time he fooled another British warship into thinking he’d gone aground when he was in seas that were unmeasurably deep!”
“How ‘bout the time he cleverly escaped the British admiral during the Battle of Penobscot?”
“I’m going below,” Rhiannon said, the fear and tension of watching the exchange between her husband and Lieutenant Treadwell leaving her suddenly exhausted.
“Oh, do stay,” Connor urged. He was in high spirits and eager, she could see, for the coming night’s work. “We’re about to have some fun.”
“Fun?”
“Aye.” Handing the cat to Rhiannon, he watched the English lieutenant scrambling up the frigate’s tumblehome and the British tars preparing to hoist the boat back aboard. “Time to carry out our ruse. Bobbs! Douse that mainsail, would you? We’ll pretend to limp along with just the jib and fore. Make sure her trim is sloppy. Let them think we don’t know how to sail this lovely lady, eh?”
“That will slow her down considerably, sir.”
“And that’s my intent. I don’t want to show our hand until it’s time to run, and there’s no sense letting our friends over there know how fast this thoroughbred really is.”
Rhiannon put the cat down and headed toward the hatch, assailed by confusion, despair, a grudging admiration for her husband’s cleverness, and worry. Deep worry. What would happen if the men on that frigate over there discovered who he really was and what he was up to? And what would Sir Graham do when he learned of such audacity?
“Rhiannon. A moment, please.”
She turned and saw that her husband had replaced Nathan at the helm. He stood with a hand on the tiller as Toby, Nathan and One-Eye went forward to back the jib and get the schooner out of irons.
“Come and join me,” he said, his smile spreading. “I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
She walked back to him, and allowed him to slide his arm around her waist. “I’m not angry with you, Connor. Just afraid of what will happen if they figure out your ruse.”
“You knew what I was when you agreed to marry me,” he said softly.
“I know. But seeing you in action, seeing how dangerous your work really is . . . I guess I was unprepared for how it would make me feel.”
The frigate Diana was moving off, heading back toward the convoy it had been tasked to protect. Beneath them, Kestrel leaned over on the larboard tack as wind filled her jib and foresail and water began to hiss along her sides.
“I’ve done this before, Rhiannon. Many times. Everything will be all right.”
“Only if Treadwell and his captain out there don’t hang you once they discover your deceit.”
“Rhiannon, I’m a privateer. The United States Navy is dangerously short on ships and cannot fight, let alone hope to win this war without the help of privately armed and financed vessels such as this one. Please, have faith in me.”
“Faith,” she murmured, unconvinced.
“Faith.”
She nodded, and suddenly too tired to think, headed below.
Chapter 22
The moon was already rising, the deep cobalt blue of the sea fading to grey as the sun sank into the west and night began to close in.
Sailing in loose formation with the rest of the convoy under jibs and foresail, Kestrel struggled to keep pace with the heavy, wallowing merchantmen as the ships, some thirty all told and helplessly strung out over several miles, beat to windward on a northerly course. Every man in her crew knew that the swift American schooner could sail circles around the convoy, and there was much sniggering and joking amongst her company as they deliberately held her back; in fact, even Kestrel herself seemed to be laughing, perhaps remembering distant times when her captain’s own father had also practiced a wily cunning and brought glory to her name so long ago. Slowly, she dropped back, falling farther and farther astern as the merchant ships began to hang lights in their rigging and the two guard ships, Diana and the sloop-of-war Whippet, tried in vain to round up stragglers before nightfall settled in.
Connor had since relinquished the helm to Bobbs, and now he began to restlessly pace the deck as the last of the light began to fade.
He was trying not to think about Rhiannon. Trying to keep his mind on one task only, which was the one at hand.
First things first.
“Which one will we start with, Captain?” Bobbs asked as Connor took a night glass from the rack and put it to his eye.
It was a moment before Connor answered, and only he knew that it was because the night glass, which provided him with an inverted image in its circular field, presented challenges all its own for his poor brain which, at times like this, led him to believe it really was stoo-pid, and was having trouble making sense of what he was looking at.
“That one,” he said, quickly shutting the glass and pointing out through the thickening gloom at a heavy merchantman that was laboring to keep up with the rest. She was a mile ahead of them, maybe more, but Connor had been studying her all day through a telescope that gave him far less trouble than the night glass. He had already discerned how many were in her crew, who commanded her, and the number of men who’d be needed to board her under cover of darkness, overpower her people, and sail her back to the closest port at which to condemn and sell her—probably Mobile, especially if they continued on this convenient northwesterly course.
“Who’ll you send over in the boarding party, Captain?”
“I’ll go myself with you and a dozen others and leave Nathan here in command. Let’s get the mainsail up and start making some progress now that it’s dark, Diana is back up in the vanguard and her consort is killing herself trying to keep the stragglers together.”
“Seems rather audacious, Connor,” said Nathan, from nearby.
“Just the way I like it.”
Quietly, the crew raised Kestrel’s giant mainsail. It was trimmed to perfection, and the schooner’s two huge wings glowed silver in the very last of the light as she eagerly began to gain speed.
“Douse the lanterns,” Connor said. “And get that damned Union Jack off of her and run up her proper colors.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Stars and Stripes.”
Kestrel found more speed and water began to hiss against her leeward shoulder, the long ocean swells breaking over the bowsprit now and running the length of her deck before pouring back into the sea.
“Toby, lad. Where is my wife?”
“Below, Con. Told me she was tired so I set her up with some supper . . . figured it would be bes
t to keep her out of trouble for the time being.”
“Trouble,” Jacques said, his ugly face looming in the nearby darkness, “Aren’t they all? You know, Capitaine, the best way to win a lady’s heart is to pay her a complement or two, even if you don’t really mean them.”
“I mean every complement I pay my wife, Jacques.”
“Have you told her, lately, how beautiful her hair is?”
Connor walked to the weapons chest and pulled out a cutlass.
“Have you told her how luscious her lips are, how soft and smooth her skin, how all the green of the forests can’t match the color of her eyes?”
Connor belted the cutlass and found a boarding pike.
“Jacques is right,” One-Eye said importantly from several feet away. “Women like to be flattered. Maybe we can find something nice for you to present her with from that ship we’re about to take. Some fine linens or silks, if we’re lucky.”
“Or maybe some exotic spices.”
“Aye, spices! Maybe we can get her to cook us something worth eating, rather than this swill that Lunt keeps poisoning us with.”
“Aye, good thinking, Bobbs. A woman’s place is in the kitchen. Or in this case, the galley.”
“I’ve got a tear in my shirt; if I’m real nice to her, think she might mend it for me?”
“I know women,” Jacques said importantly. “The best place for them is between the sheets—”
A second later, he found himself staring up at his captain’s broad shoulders from where he lay, flat on his back, on the schooner’s deck. He raised himself on one elbow, rubbing at his throbbing jaw and feeling the warm trickle of blood running from a new split in his lower lip.
“Capitaine, sir, no disrespect to Madame! Just trying to help!”
But Connor, armed with a cutlass and two pistols, was already stalking off into the darkness.
“Really, Jacques,” said young Toby from nearby. With a long-suffering sigh, he reached a hand down to help the Frenchman up. “I don’t think my cousin, of all people, needs any advice when it comes to women.”
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