“We’re bringing him up!”
“Matt!” Desperately she tried to get past Liam’s brawny arm. “Let me go, dammit! He’s my brother!”
“Stay back, lassie, till we get him aboard,” the big Irishman said, not wanting Ashton’s little sister to see the possible extent of Crichton’s cruelties firsthand.
As they hauled Matt over the rail, it took both Liam and Abadiah to restrain her, for the limp, lifeless form they laid out on Kestrel’s lantern-lit deck bore no resemblance to the brother she’d known and loved.
“Matt!” she shrieked.
He’d been harshly beaten, his face so battered, bruised, and swollen that she almost didn’t recognize him. By the lantern’s glow his freckles stood out on his pale cheeks like shot on parchment. Blood matted his hair and crusted his upper lip. Someone thrust the lantern closer, its soft glow falling over his face, and as he turned his head, she saw that his eyes were sightless, staring, and dead.
“Matt!”
“Mira? That you, Sis?”
“Catch her, she’s goin’ to fall,” Liam said tonelessly, his face like stone as he stared off beyond the black spiderweb of Kestrel’s shrouds to where Viper’s distant lights glowed upon the water. And Mira, taking her brother’s hand and sobbing over it, thought of the laughing man who’d gone to that devil-ship to trade himself for him.
Crichton had nothing against Matt, and look what he’d done to him.
But Crichton hated Brendan.
Liam’s words echoed over and over through her mind: “Crichton’ll kill him, ye know.”
“No!” She lunged to her feet and ran toward the rail, toward that distant ship, hearing her own screams coming from farther and farther away. Dalby caught her before she went over, and the sight of Viper’s lights was her last before her world went black.
###
The wind freshened and backed a few points during the night, and by the wee hours of the morning, waves were glinting white in the darkness and breaking over Kestrel’s plunging bows in great sheets of hissing spray.
High, high above the surging deck, standing in the crosstrees of the foremast, Mira turned her face into the teeth of the wind and stared off into the night, where Viper’s lights shone like a beacon as she tacked on a southwesterly course. By the faint glow of the moon Mira could just make out her yards braced hard around and hear the occasional voices of the men on her deck. And the only reason she could hear them was that Kestrel, in silent pursuit, glided as soundlessly as a nighthawk on the hunt.
Liam, of course, was right. Friends didn’t leave friends to bastards like Crichton.
She curled an arm around the mast. This time she felt no animosity from her jealous rival, just an overwhelming sense of camaraderie. They had made their peace. They were united, she and Kestrel. United in a single, desperate cause.
To save the man they both loved.
Far below, the crew conversed in hushed tones, and even the sea spoke in whispers as it creamed back from Kestrel’s sharp bows and fell away in a long, swirling wake of moonlight behind them.
The rain had held off all night; now low-hanging clouds raced past the masthead, letting the moon shine through here, a scattering of stars there. Looking up, it seemed that the tip of that lonely spire was all that held the storm clouds at bay. But now they were gathering in force, filing in from the west, snuffing out the stars and casting an eerie, blackened pall over the rising waves. The storm would be upon them soon, Dalby had predicted with his usual doom and gloom. But they were desperate men in a desperate ship, and Mira, thinking of her blind, semiconscious brother lying in Brendan’s cabin below, dared not imagine the fate of the man who had sacrificed so much to get him there.
When I see you, Brendan, I’ll tell you. She swallowed hard and she set her jaw, resolute and determined as she stared ahead. I’ll tell you all—beginning with how much I love you.
A gust of wind caught the pennant high above her head and snapped it like a whip-crack. Dauntless, Kestrel added another knot to her swift pace, driving her shoulder into the waves as she kept her plunging bowsprit trained on the frigate’s lights.
Her hand against the mast, Mira felt the schooner’s nose come up, heard the sea’s song rise in pitch as Kestrel’s speed increased and the wind drove her through the building seas.
Plunge and dip . . . plunge and dip . . . ever forward. Ever faster.
“Pray that we’re not too late,” she whispered.
Beneath her, Kestrel lifted her bows in answer and found more speed.
###
"Enemy in sight!"
Brendan, stumbling painfully out of Viper’s hold early the next morning under heavy guard, would never forget the glorious sight of his schooner rising up from the waves and filling the horizon behind them, stacking a mountain of sail that glowed white against black storm clouds, the sea parting beneath her bows, and her colors streaming in the wind.
And neither would the hastily-summoned Crichton. He took one look, dropped his telescope, and roared, “Man the braces! Stand by to wear ship! Wear ship!”
The British, staring in openmouthed awe at the magnificent vessel bearing down on them with her rail awash, were slow to react. When they did, there was only frantic activity, panic, and confusion.
And Kestrel, coming on like a glorious, winged angel of vengeance.
For Brendan, time and place slipped away. The horrors of the last hours faded . . . of seeing what Crichton had done to poor Matthew. Of Crichton stringing him up to the gratings and laying his back open with the whip in front of the frigate’s assembled company, then tearing him down and furiously kicking him in the ribs because he’d refused to cry out. Of the noose that had been strung from Viper’s foreyard sometime overnight, and which now swung ominously in the wind, waiting for him. There was only Kestrel—and nothing else. His heart sang, and despite the agony in his back and ribs, he laughed out loud—and gauged the distance between himself and the rail.
“Wear ship!” Crichton yelled, seizing the boatswain’s rattan and laying it across a seaman’s straining back.
Men ran to the braces, and slowly, ponderously, the frigate began to respond. And Brendan, left alone in the confusion, limped calmly to the gunwales, gave Crichton a mocking salute as he whirled around, and dove over the rail.
His bloodied back screaming in agony, he struck out through the icy seas, blinded by waves and choking on seawater so cold, it sapped his breath and left him numb and gasping. But his Irishman’s luck was with him. Or maybe one of Mira’s many cats had donated a life or two. One moment the waves were closing over his head; the next, Kestrel was coming on, faster and faster, passing—
He managed to grab a line that someone threw, and clung to it with all his strength. The bow wake thrust him down and back, but he held on, desperately. And then Liam was throwing the Jacob’s ladder down.
He caught it and clung there, the heavy seas battering him and breaking against his face. With the last of his strength he hauled himself upward, his hands bleeding, his limbs frozen, his back on fire and every rib blazing in pain. He was almost to the rail of his beloved schooner. Water rushed from his clothing. Hands seized his arms, grasped his shoulders, and hauled him aboard. Someone tore off his coat; someone else wrapped a blanket around him while cheers thundered in his ears. The rain began to hit the deck in fat, angry droplets. He heard himself shout a desperate order to shorten sail. And then he was running to take the tiller, hoping no one would see him stumble and almost fall as agony brought a blackness that came and went.
“Faith, these decks are slippery!” he managed, hoarsely, to cover his weakness.
His hand closed around the tiller, and the schooner’s life sang up through keel and rudder, suffusing him with its vitality, restoring him. The wind began to strengthen and back with the mad approach of the storm, and from the rigging came an ominous keening whistle—
"Get the topsails and fore in, now!"
Viper had completed her turn a
nd, with the wind behind her, was coming on like a charging bull.
“Sir, she’s runnin’ out her broadside!”
“Then run out ours, Mr. Wilbur! Starboard side, and be quick about it!”
Viper, approaching fast, gunfire already booming from her bow chasers. . . .
And Kestrel, bravely swooping in to meet her. . . .
“Stand by to come about!”
Bowsprits aligning, swinging around . . .
He shoved the tiller hard, hard, hard. Jib-booms crossed, passed, and nearly touched as Kestrel swung across Viper’s path and up her other, unprepared side. Musketfire began to rain down on them from the marines in her tops. Somewhere a cannon cracked out, then another, and the schooner yelped in surprise.
And then she was past, showing her heels to her enemy as the rain began a mad tattoo on the deck.
“Huzzah! Huzzah!”
“Three cheers for the Captain from Connaught!”
Aft, Viper was staggering, hauling her yards around, unwilling to give up.
“Mr. Keefe!” He had to get aloft, where Crichton could see him, where his men could see him. He coughed, the effort of yelling too much for him, and grabbed the speaking trumpet from Liam. “John, take the helm, now!”
He shed the blanket and leapt for the shrouds, the pain ripping a silent cry of agony from his throat, his feet finding a toehold, his hands pulling him aloft.
“Sir, are you all right?”
Higher and higher he climbed.
“Sir!”
The rain slashed against his face and the wind rose, thundering in his ears, keening in the rigging as he climbed higher . . . and higher. . . .
Thirty feet above the heeling deck he paused, the wind whipping his hair into his eyes, the rain lashing his cheeks. He saw Crichton standing angrily on his own deck. He saw that the frigate would never catch them. Laughing in triumph, he lifted the speaking trumpet to his lips.
“Mr. Doherty, run out Freedom and put Mr. Starr—”
The dizziness struck, dark speckles dancing across his vision as he swayed sideways and the speaking trumpet fell from his hand, down, down, down to the plunging deck so far below “—on it. . . .”
Blindly, Brendan grabbed for the shrouds—and found nothing but empty space.
He’d misjudged it. Misjudged his own ship.
The luck of the Irishman had finally run out.
And then he felt himself falling, heard the shouts of the men below, felt only empty space as he tumbled down and down and down. He heard a woman’s voice, screaming . . . and then he knew he was fading, because it sounded like Mira’s. . . .
Mercifully, he was out before he hit the deck some thirty feet below.
“Captain!”
“Jesus!”
“By God and Mary—”
Shouts, screams, cries—
“Here comes Crichton!”
And then the storm struck with savage wrath. Leaderless, Kestrel was left to face it—and Crichton—alone.
Chapter 26
Mira would never forget it. The crew fighting to shorten sail as the storm roared down on them in full fury; chaos, as she’d raced to the helm to get Kestrel out from beneath Viper’s guns after John Keefe took a ball to his thigh; Liam, sobbing as he’d picked up Brendan’s broken body and cradled it in his huge arms—and the long journey home.
They had outrun Crichton, but it had taken Kestrel a good three days to reach Newburyport. She’d had to beat against angry, shifting winds left over from the storm, her sails reefed and her bowsprit buried under foam. Giant combers had lifted her high, rolled beneath her keel, and left her staggering in the troughs, where she barely had time to catch her breath before having to lift her bows and crest the next mountain of water. Perhaps if her captain had been at the helm, they might’ve made the journey in two days; with a distraught Liam standing in his place, it was a wonder they even made it back to port at all. But Brendan had never regained consciousness after that terrible fall, and Kestrel’s escape from Viper without his leadership, her survival of the storm without him at the helm, had been nothing short of miraculous. Yet somehow, some way, she had done both, solemnly bringing both fallen warriors back home to Newburyport.
Dr. Plummer, a gruff, competent man who’d served the town well for years, came often. Matt would recover, the physician said, especially with such a capable and attentive nurse as Eveleen Merrick tending to his every need. Bruises faded, cuts mended, and swelling went down. And his eyesight? Only time would tell.
But Brendan was another story, and Dr. Plummer did not smile as he examined his inert body and straightened up from the big four-poster where he lay. “There’s nothing I can do for him, Miss Ashton,” he said sadly. “He is in God’s hands.”
And he was. God’s—and Mira Ashton’s.
She refused to accept that he was dying, that the likelihood of his regaining consciousness dwindled with every passing day, that his lilting, musical brogue would never put goose bumps on her arms, tingles up her spine, laughter in her heart, again. About the only thing she could accept was that it was her fault that he lay dying in this big bed.
All her fault.
If only you’d forgiven him—and told him who you really were . . . maybe you could’ve stopped him.
But she hadn’t. God help her, she hadn’t.
She shut her eyes in silent agony, remembering their horror as they’d stripped off his clothing after Liam had gently laid him out in his bunk. There, terrible to behold, had been the evidence of Crichton’s brutality. . . .
Now the bruises on his torso had faded, his bound and broken ribs were healing, and the angry lash-welts on his back no longer oozed blood.
But he had not woken.
A tear slipped from Mira’s eye. With laughter and a grin, he’d mustered his crew and got Kestrel to safety as best he could; yet the pain he’d silently suffered had been so intense, he’d misjudged the layout of a ship that he had designed. And now it was too late. If only she’d had faith in him. If only she’d believed in him.
If only she’d told him.
But no. She hadn’t. She’d allowed him to seek Crichton out, allowed him to go to his death thinking she hated him. He’d proclaimed his love for her and in return, she’d refused forgiveness and given him only rejection. What was there in this world for him to come back to, except a lonely schooner down in the harbor and a crew who thought he could walk on water?
That crew visited often. The people of Newburyport, however, stayed away, too ashamed over their earlier treatment of him to even make an appearance, though in his state, he would never have known whether they were there or not. One or two made brief visits to put their consciences at ease, and Abadiah Bobbs’s five-year-old daughter, eager to visit the tall captain who’d grinned, teased her, and given her a drawing of her father standing with Mr. Starr at Freedom, brought him a cluster of wildflowers; but when she approached his bed with them clenched in her little fist and he did not awaken, did not thank her for them—and did not laugh and grin and lift her up high—her face puckered and she began to cry, frightened and confused.
After that, she did not come again.
Mira spent her nights sleeping in the chair beside Brendan’s bed, where the heavy silence was broken only by his shallow breathing. She spent her days reading to him from naval books borrowed from Ephraim’s library. She held his hand and talked to him, praying that her words would get through to him—though he never moved a muscle, never made a sound, and his hand lay heavy and lifeless in her own. She cared for him, flexing his arms and legs so they wouldn’t stiffen, washing his face, and tenderly kissing the now-faded laugh lines around his lax mouth. She had Eveleen help her turn him on his side so his back could heal; she combed his hair and queued it with a neat black bow.
And one night when it grew too hard to hope, too hard to pretend to hope any longer, she went to the waterfront and boarded the silent Kestrel. There, she sobbed out her anguish to the schooner, who
listened quietly and shared her grief; there, she lifted her face to the stars perched above the dark, crossed yards and learned how to pray again; there, when she could cry no more, she lowered the huge, shot-torn, red-and-white striped American flag with her own hands and, with it filling her arms, brought it home and hung it on the wall so that if he awakened—when he awakened—that proud, glorious banner would be the first thing he’d see when he opened his eyes, and he would know he was a hero again.
But he didn’t awaken.
Days and nights passed, and became a week. Grass grew tall and sweet in the meadows, on the lawn, in Miss Mira Ashton’s School of Fine Horsemanship. Pink and red roses burst upon picket fences, wildflowers spread perfume to the sea wind, robins stole the hair that Eveleen combed from Shaula’s mane and tail and threaded it through their nests.
Down in the harbor, the weed began to grow on Kestrel’s tallowed bottom.
Up in Maine, the British invaded a little peninsula called Bagaduce.
And in a quiet bedroom in a morgue-silent house, the Captain from Connaught lay silent and still.
###
Guilt and tension took its toll on everyone. Purple shadows bloomed beneath Mira’s haunted eyes and she stopped eating. Abigail, who’d taken Eveleen under her wing when Mira had sneaked off aboard Kestrel, got into a squall with the girl over who would cook and care for Matt, a squall that Eveleen eventually won—and only by the persistence and loyalty she’d shown in nursing her patient. Ephraim, with his son laid up, his daughter a ghost of her old self, and no one to fight with, grew so bored and irritable that he wound every clock in the house tighter and tighter until the big Willard piece in the front hall finally broke a spring and the clockmaker had to be hastily summoned to fix it.
Mira was indifferent to it all. In the room across the hall, Eveleen had set up her own vigil at Matt’s sickbed, and her brother seemed to be enjoying all the attention the girl heaped upon him. By the way that Eveleen blushed when Matt paid her a compliment, and the way Matt grinned and preened when Eveleen was near, it was obvious that things were finally heating up between the two. Maybe Matt didn’t need his eyesight to see that Brendan’s sister was a more beautiful person than any of the women who’d wanted him for his money and status alone. But Mira’s heart wasn’t into encouraging their relationship.
Captain Of My Heart Page 31