Air whooshed past him. A cannon belted him across the shoulders, sky flashed beneath his shoes, a piece of railing shot by his face. He hit the deck on his back, careened across it on his coattails, and slammed into the truck of a gun so hard that his sword split in two. He lay there for a moment, stunned, the fact that he was too dazed to even wonder if he was dead assuring him that he was not. Smoke burned his throat, seared his lungs—and through it he saw the ghostly shapes of Crichton’s guns, running out once more.
He lurched to his knees, raised his half-sword, and choked out, “Fire!”
And then the deck itself seemed to open up and fall away. Grabbing frantically for a line, he was aware of someone yelling his name, and then nothing but weightlessness, space, and the dizzying rush of air against his face, his arms, his legs, before he hit the sea with a stunning slap.
Not again.
He clawed toward the surface, grabbing a piece of flotsam and fighting to stay afloat as the river’s mighty current swept him past the smoke-wreathed frigate, the point of Plum Island, and eventually, into the cold, open Atlantic. Powerless, he watched the thick black cloud that hung over the two ships diminish in size as he was carried further from his ship, saw a few stabs of orange as fire was exchanged. And then there was nothing but vast, empty space beneath his feet and a sea bottom that lay countless fathoms beneath him. And still the current, drawing him farther and farther out to sea.
Sunset came and went. Gloom snuffed out the smudge of land that was Plum Island, distant now and growing more so, until even the lights that marked it sank below the horizon. The flotsam was cold and slimy beneath his cheek, the constant slap of the waves filling his nose and mouth and sinuses with every rise and fall of the sea beneath him. Up and down . . . up and down. . . . The stars came out. The moon rose to stand guard over him, sheeting the ocean in silver and picking him out as a speck of life in a vast and starlit emptiness. He locked his arms around his float, laid his cheek atop the wet wood, and despite the biting chill of the ocean, fell asleep.
His Irish luck held. Dawn found him still alive, paralyzed with cold and barely able to open his swollen eyes when the first rays of sunlight poked over the horizon and nudged him out of his stupor. His waking thoughts were of neck of mutton and Indian pudding dripping with sweet maple syrup. Groaning, he dug at his eyes with a white and wrinkled fist. Sunlight lanced his pupils and sent a shaft of pain straight into the back of his skull. Spitting out seawater and squinting against the glare, he managed to focus on that blinding ribbon of sea that marked the eastern horizon.
He blinked, squinted, blinked again. For there, etched as dark squares against the white glare, were the sails of a fine and lovely ship, a ship that saluted the morning and heralded its arrival upon her proud pennants and the highest reaches of her sun-gilded masts. A curl of pink light sparkled at her bows, along her sides. Her canvas and shrouds sang in the wind.
She was glorious. She was beautiful.
And she was coming for him.
He wondered if he was dead and this was his just reward, for there was no feeling left in his limbs, no reasoning left in his brain. Just fogginess and a thick, swirling haze, pierced here and there by sounds; the protests of spars and canvas as the brig hove to, the keen of water dying beneath her bows. Frantic shouts above him, splashes nearby, the thunk of oars against a hollow hull. Gentle hands worked around and beneath him. Rope, swathed in sailcloth to lessen its bite, was passed beneath his arms and chest, tightening until the pressure between his shoulders and against his ribs became blinding pain. The sea sucked at his legs in a last desperate attempt to hold him as he was hauled free of it, and through the salt-swollen slits that were his eyes, he saw blue water, slowly revolving beneath him, sparkling, blinding, as he was hoisted higher and higher.
A rail brushed his knees. Hands supported and guided him as his feet touched a solid deck, his legs crumpled beneath him, and he was eased down to warm, dry planking that smelled pleasantly of sunlight and vinegar beneath his cheek. Dimly, he was aware of someone tugging at his stock, loosening it and tearing it free.
“Easy, now, careful with him. The poor fellow’s been through enough. Joey, fetch the surgeon, would ye? And Jake, stop gawking and go get me a bucket of fresh water from below. Blankets, too, while you’re at it, lots of ’em. Hurry, now!”
Brendan coughed, and tried to sit up.
“Easy, there, fellow,” came that Yankee drawl again. Firm hands pressed against his chest, pinning him against the sickeningly solid deck. Brendan saw a pair of boots three inches from his face, smelled their worn leather, and felt shadows cooling his cheeks as someone leaned over him. “Mr. Malvern’s on his way to see you now. Some hot gruel and a few warm blankets and you’ll be on your feet in no time, guaranteed.”
He tried to open his eyes, for there was something familiar about that voice . . . something very familiar. Something connected to the drafts.
It hit him with choking horror. The drafts. He’d never given them to Liam! They were still in his pocket, and he’d just spent the night in the open Atlantic—
He clawed upward into the blinding brightness. His fingers brushed a hat, knocked it awry. A rough cheek, someone’s nose, a light object of wire and glass.
“The drafts!” His eyelids parted like ripping cloth. Through a wall of pain he saw a reedy man in a slapdash, half-buttoned coat bending over him and blocking the sunlight, the proud pyramid of sails rising high above his head. Hair so red, it hurt his eyes to look at it. Dense patches of freckles sprinkled like cinnamon over a narrow nose down which a pair of spectacles was slowly sliding. The man raised his head, presenting the underside of his red-stubbled jaw, but Brendan had seen enough to know who he was.
“Ashton!” he gasped, lapsing into a fit of choking.
“That water, Jake, give it here!” the man yelled, reaching impatiently for the wooden pail.
Moisture trickled between Brendan’s teeth and across his swollen tongue, dragging pain down his throat and into his writhing stomach. The world tilted and swam. The water was coming too fast for him to swallow, most of it splashing down his chin and the rest of it making him cough and gag. Choking, he twisted away, willed himself not to be sick, and gasped, “Matthew Ashton!”
Instantly the water stopped coming.
“Nice . . . to meet you again, sir. I trust—” Brendan’s swollen lips cracked in a grin. “—you have the table all set?”
Ashton gaped at him. “What?”
“He’s out of his head,” a seaman muttered.
“And British, just as we thought,” another said darkly. “His Majesty’s finest. Told ye he was off that frigate.”
“British? Sounds Irish t’ me.”
“Idiot, he’s as British as tea an’ crumpets!”
“Irish, damn ye! And as full of blarney as a four-leaf clover.”
“’Bout as lucky, too.”
But Ashton was peering speculatively at him, his brown eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his spectacles. Didn’t he recognize him? Didn’t he remember their meeting off Portsmouth?
But no, the Yankee was already standing up, pushing his spectacles up his nose with one freckled finger. “I, uh, think we’d better take you below, good fellow. My surgeon is most competent, and perhaps some rest would do you good. You’ve obviously been through quite an ordeal.”
“No, please, you must understand! I am not . . . unhinged.” Brendan shut his eyes, too sick, too weak, to protest further. “I know fully well what I’m about . . . but I see that my delay in introducing myself has . . . led to some confusion about my identity.” He opened his eyes and stared desperately up into the Yankee’s freckled face. “You are Matthew Ashton, American privateer. Your father is Ephraim Ashton, shipbuilder—” He took a deep breath and tried to grin. “—and I am Captain Brendan Jay Merrick, late of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, late of the sloop Annabel, and late—very late, I’m afraid—for dinner.”
“Good God,” Ashton exp
ostulated, and dropped the water pail.
Someone wrapped a blanket around him. Hands drove beneath his shoulders, his arms, his legs, lifting him high. The deck fell away beneath him and he opened his eyes to the sight of Ashton’s face, spinning in a blurry mass of freckles, red hair, and spectacles. Didn’t the Yankee believe him? Did he look so bad he didn’t recognize him? Panicking, he began to struggle wildly.
“Hold still, ye bugger!” a seaman growled. “Ye wanna make us drop ye?”
“Won’t be no big loss, I tell ye.”
“Only t’ Georgie’s bloody navy. He’s lyin’, I tell ye. He ain’t no American.”
And then, Ashton’s quiet voice. “You drop him and you’ll be going to England in his place.”
“But, Cap’n, ’e’s a Brit!”
“I said, be easy with him!”
But one last look at Ashton’s uncertain face told Brendan the Yankee was unconvinced. And as his dripping blue coattails brushed the deck, and darkness began to dim his vision, he remembered.
The drafts.
He drove his hand beneath the wool blanket and into his pocket. His fingers found—and sank into—a sopping, squishy mess of pulp that instantly disintegrated between them. With something like a sob, he drew it out.
Motion stopped. The back of his head lurched against someone’s chest, slamming his teeth down hard upon his swollen tongue. He choked back the flood of nausea and let his head roll, until Ashton’s face appeared within the circle of his spinning, darkening vision. The Yankee still looked dubious, unsure, his kind brown eyes confused behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. And then he looked down and saw the sodden ball of pulp that dripped, in pieces, from Brendan’s fingers.
Brendan shut his eyes as Ashton reached out and took what remained of the sad lump, hearing his own voice coming from further and further away. “The drafts . . . for the schooner . . . your father was to have . . . built . . . for . . . me. . . .”
And then that freckled face faded, the darkness swept in, and the nightmares that had been his for three years now came surging back. Halcyon’s sunny deck. Crichton firing, the burst of agony in his chest. And Eveleen, oh God, Eveleen . . .
He struggled, knowing it was a dream, fighting to wake up but unable to.
The drafts.
Please God, no—
The drafts! For God’s sake, Ashton, don’t let Crichton get his hands on the drafts!
Panicking, he went wild, clawing desperately toward consciousness—wake up, wake up, WAKE UP! —and then his own screams jolted him rudely awake.
Wild-eyed, he threw off the dream and bolted upright in the bed.
Chapter 3
Dazed, it took him a moment to realize he was not on a ship, not in the sea, and certainly not drowning, but lying on a handsome Hepplewhite field bed whose tall posts rose majestically above him and supported a graceful canopy that looked like bleached fishnet.
He shut his eyes, his heart still pounding.
Opened them again.
The first thing he saw was a telescope pointing out an open window through which bars of bright sunlight streamed. A mild breeze, heavy with the scent of summer flowers and newly cut grass, stirred the gauzy curtains. As they wafted in and out, he saw trees, buildings, and in the hazy distance, marshes and glimpses of a silvery, mast-clogged river. An hourglass, a half-spent candle, and a fine model of a brigantine stood on a bedside table, and from its lofty perch atop a carved mantel, a shelf clock spoke steadily in a rhythmic tick, tock, tick. Brendan shut his eyes, his pounding heart beginning to return to its normal rhythm. Just outside, a songbird trilled from a nearby tree, and he heard carriages passing on a street below. He sank back in a thick stack of pillows, let the breeze cool his brow, his cheeks, his damp and naked chest—
“Nightmare?”
—and bolted upright in the bed.
Just beyond his toes a young lad stood, his baggy trousers belted with a piece of frayed rope, his stockings caked with mud, and his shirt, probably borrowed from his father, hanging off him like a slack sail. A scruffy orange cat was tucked in the crook of his arm, and both were staring at him intently, the cat’s eyes baleful and annoyed, the lad’s the color and coolness of fresh celery. Dirt smudged the hollow beneath one pale cheek, and above the questioning arch of fine dark brows, a floppy hat, also too big, covered his hair and cast most of his face in shadow.
The breeze bumped the door open and shut. Without taking that unnerving stare off him, the lad kicked it closed, let the latch fall into place, and casually tossed the cat to the foot of the bed, the movement of his arm stirring the thick, sultry air and sending a variety of scents wafting across the room. Horse sweat. Mud. And the harsher, cleaner one of lye soap and roses.
Roses?
“You could at least answer me,” the boy complained, the pitch of his voice that of a lad not yet into manhood, which, combined with his scanty height, told Brendan he couldn’t be more than twelve, maybe thirteen at the most. “Pretty rude of you to just lay there gaping, don’t you think?”
“I beg your pardon?” But Brendan, confused, was staring at the cat, now creeping, panther-like, toward his face, its yellow gaze fastened on his and its paws pressing against his legs, his thighs, his bare stomach. Tensing, he groped for the sheet, yanked it up, and spilled the animal from the bed and onto the floor. Flicking its tail in pique, the cat leapt to the window seat and sat glaring at him.
“I asked you if you were having a nightmare. By the way, who’s Eveleen? Your wife? Mistress?” The lad grinned slyly and cocked his head. “Lover?”
“What?”
“Eveleen. She your lover?”
“My lover?”
“Aye. You were hollering for her.”
“My lov— Oh, dear . ..” Brendan glanced about the room. It was a masculine chamber, with a chair rail running along its perimeter, and the woodwork beneath painted a deep, strong red the color of oxblood. The windows were recessed, and framed with small, hinged panels that were folded back, exposing window seats topped with embroidered cushions.
He had no idea where he was and no idea what had happened to him except that it had been something bad, something very bad. And as the young stablehand came forward and idly picked up the brigantine model, it suddenly all came flooding back to him.
Crichton. Annabel, trying desperately to make the river. Cannon fire and smoke, and Newburyport, where he was to meet the shipbuilder to discuss—
The drafts.
He bolted upright, terror draining the color from his face.
“The drafts!” he gasped.
The lad put the ship model down. “Huh?”
“The drafts!”
“Want me to close the window?”
“The win—? No, I don’t want you to close the window, I want to know where the drafts are!”
“Why, coming in through the window,” the lad said, jerking his thumb toward the sunny panes. “Can’t see how you’re cold, though, it being summertime and all.”
“Drafts, not drafts! Ship’s drafts. Plans!”
The lad stared at him for a long moment; then his eyes gleamed, a sly smile curved his mouth, and little wrinkles appeared on either side of his impudent nose, fanning out like the whiskers of a cat. “Oh . . . those kind.” Chuckling, he tipped his hat back with a grimy finger. “So Matt and I are right after all.”
“What?”
“About you being the client. Father doesn’t believe him, because the client was supposed to have drowned last night during that scuffle with the Brit ship. That’s what they’re arguing about. Father hates being lied to.”
As though punctuating his words, something broke somewhere with a horrible crash, and a chorus of shouting and yelling rose up from downstairs. But the lad seemed oblivious to the commotion, and wiping his grubby little hand on his trousers, held it out in greeting. “Fine job you did, tricking that British frigate onto the sunken piers last night. Whole town’s talking about it. In fact, they’
ve got its crew down in the jail now.” The hand was still there; Brendan slowly reached out and took it. It was tiny, even for a lad’s, the bones fragile and the skin as supple and smooth as a child’s. “By the way, my name’s Mira. Welcome to Newburyport, Captain.”
Brendan shook his head, trying to clear it. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t catch that.”
Downstairs the shouting grew louder, angrier. Something else broke.
“Mira,” the lad repeated, and then added proudly, “Spelled like the star in the constellation Cetus but pronounced Myra.”
“Oh. Mira.”
It came out Moyrrra, with a pleasant, lilting roll on the r’s that most would’ve recognized as an Irish brogue; but either the lad didn’t know his geography, disliked Irishmen, or found something in the way he said it that bothered him, for he frowned and regarded Brendan with the same baleful stare that the cat was still bestowing upon him. “Aye, Mira. You got a problem with my name, Brit?”
The shouting was getting louder, closer. Brendan pressed his fingers to his temples. He had dim memories of yesterday—or was it this morning? last week?—of floating, of being fished out of the sea and lying helpless on a sunny deck while a red-haired man bent over him. Ashton.
Faith, he hoped he hadn’t said or done anything stupid. His memory was terribly foggy where all that was concerned.
“No, I’ve no problem with it,” he heard himself saying. “What I seem to be having a problem with is remembering the events of my life during the past several hours, or perhaps days, for all I know.”
“Oh,” the boy said, relaxing. “The way you said it, I thought you were picking on my name. You weren’t, were you?”
“Weren’t what?”
“Picking on my name.”
“No, I was not picking on your name—”
“What’s yours?”
Captain Of My Heart Page 4