The Wayward One

by Danelle Harmon

  Free.

  Alive.

  Captain O’ Devir still stood beside her, scanning the horizon beneath a hand to shade his unfairly gorgeous eyes. She sneaked a furtive glance at him. He caught her eye and grinned.

  “So who ye pinin’ for, lass?”

  She turned away and stared resolutely over the endless swells, loving the feel of the ship beneath her. It was almost like riding a spirited mare. Heady. Faintly dangerous. It gave her a sense of freedom.

  “You are irritatingly persistent.”

  “Aye, that I am. ’Tis why I was sent here.”

  “I thought it was because you were the most audacious, foolish, and downright reckless captain in your so-called Navy.”

  He simply shrugged and raised a brow, still wearing that faint little smile. He was ignoring her barb and refusing to give it a response. Waiting. Patient in his persistence.

  Damn him.

  She sighed, her gaze on the distant horizon. “I was just thinking about someone I miss,” she said, her pride losing out to the fact that she wanted his attention back after she’d so recently thrown it away. That she wanted him to care. Or that maybe she just needed to talk, to share a bit of her still-healing heart with someone who had pretended to care. Because of course, he didn’t care. He didn’t even know her.

  He leaned down and rested his elbows atop the rail beside her, his hands dangling over the bow-wake as the brig pushed through the seas. He stood closer than she would have liked, but to step away would give him the satisfaction of knowing he was rattling her. She would not give him that.

  He glanced over at her. “Did ye love him?”

  “For a long time.” She smeared her fingers, her delightfully bare fingers, through the fresh droplets of seawater dotting the varnished rail, quelling the urge to touch them to her mouth just to taste the salt. “But what does it matter, now? In the end, some people are not worth the time and heartache we put into even thinking about them, are they, Captain O’ Devir?”

  He remained looking out over the sea. “Indeed not.”

  “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. I vowed not to speak to you, and here we are conversing like old friends. I am determined to dislike you, no matter how charming you endeavor to be. You abducted me, for heaven’s sake.”

  “If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t in my original plans.”

  “No?”

  “I was actually plannin’ to abduct yer brother. The inventor one who made this innovative new explosive. But I tend to think on me feet and when ye fell, well… I figured ye were the far more advantageous hostage.”

  “You are very naive if you think that.”

  “And you are very naive if ye think otherwise. If yer family loves ye as much as ye claim, yer brother will give me the explosive with no questions asked if only to get ye back safe and sound. If he were here instead, he’d have no reason to. He could hold out as long as he felt like it. But rest assured, Sunshine, I’ll have ye back t’ yer family just as soon as my demands are met. The sooner I get what I crossed an ocean for, the sooner we both can get on with our lives.”

  “Your life won’t be worth living once my brother the duke catches up to you.” She relished the idea of that sweet eventuality. Or told herself she did. “That is, if there’s anything left of you.”

  “Ehm, right.” His lips were twitching. “The one who’s going to strangle me with me own entrails.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not taking me seriously.”

  “Is he a sailor, this fearsome brother of yours, with a ship able to catch this one?”

  “You think it’s funny, do you?”

  “Hilarious, actually.”

  “You won’t be laughing when you’re facing him from the sharp end of a sword. Lucien does not tolerate—”

  There was a sudden cry from above. Turning and looking up, Nerissa sank her fingers into Captain O’ Devir’s arm in horror. One of the men working so high aloft had lost his footing and was now tumbling, down, down, down toward the sea, screaming as he fell.

  “Man overboard!” cried the lookout, high above.

  Before the sailor even landed with a splash in the cresting blue swells, Captain O’ Devir was running to the side. “All men to stations! Hard down!” he roared.

  The floundering man, helpless, quickly fell astern. The captain grabbed a hammock lashed under the rail and flung it overboard, obviously intending it to float down on the drowning man.

  Chaos erupted as the crew rushed aft, anxious to help the man in the water.

  Captain O’ Devir’s voice pierced the confusion. “Silence fore and aft!”

  Lieutenant Morgan was gesturing wildly, grabbing a speaking trumpet to make his voice heard. “Ready about and stations for stays! Clear away the boat. Prepare to heave to!”

  And then it hit her. That man out there struggling in the heavy seas, crying out for help as he went under, reappeared, went under again, was going to die. He was going to die right here with her watching, with all of them watching, and there wasn’t a thing she could do but stand in helpless horror along with everyone else as the dark head that marked him fell further and further astern.

  Captain O’ Devir’s voice roared through her horror. “Square the mainyard and lower the boat!”

  Men ran to various lines. Orders were bawled. The brig was turning, coming around onto the other tack, retracing her course and closing the distance to the man in the water. He was now well off their larboard bow. Even Nerissa could see that there was no way the boat could be lowered in time, no way that it would reach the drowning man before it was too late.

  It was obvious the poor soul could not swim.

  Captain O’ Devir had long since reached the same conclusion. He had kicked off his boots, torn off his coat and waistcoat, and as the brig came up on the man, still well to windward of him, he climbed up on the rail and threw himself out into the sea.

  Nerissa stood frozen. She did not want to see the man who had fallen, drown. She did not want to see Captain O’ Devir fail in his attempt to save the poor fellow or, as much as she loathed him, succumb to the seas, himself. She did not like the fact that she cared about the fate of any of these American—and Irish—mariners who had had the audacity to take her from her family, right out from under her brother’s nose and the presence of the top echelons of the Royal Navy.

  But she did.

  She did care.

  Her heart in her throat, she watched as the captain swam with strong, steady strokes toward the man floundering in the water. The sailor was tiring, his desperate cries for help already fading as he tried futilely to reach the hammock, tossed up and down by the seas, some ten or fifteen feet away from him. But Captain O’ Devir had the hammock now and he was pushing it toward the drowning man as he swam, calling encouragement to him in a strong, authoritative voice that brooked no argument.

  “Hold tight, there, McGuire, ye clumsy gobshite. I’ve almost got ye.”

  As she stood frozen, she felt the motion of the brig changing. The ship nosed back into the wind and slowed, the great sails above thundering in protest; more shouted commands, men around her hauling on thick lines while she tried to stand out of the way, the hush of water beneath them stilling until there was only the lonely sound of the wind whistling through lines and flapping sails and a low murmur from the crew, watching anxiously from their stations.

  “We’ll let the wind carry us down on them,” said someone beside her, and tearing her gaze from the drama in the water ahead and off to larboard, Nerissa saw young Mr. Cranton. “He’ll be all right. Captain O’ Devir’s not going to let a man drown, I can tell you that.”

  Nerissa nodded, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she watched the drama unfold. The captain had reached the stricken man and hooking an arm across the hammock to anchor himself, was now pulling him up and over it, holding him there across it so he would not slip back into the seas that undulated like a live thing all around them. She marveled at
his strength. His courage. His selfless devotion to a subordinate.

  The brig continued to drift helplessly down on the pair, moving up and down, up and down on a vast expanse of hard blue water while her captain, one arm still locked around the motionless sailor on the hammock, kicked his way toward his waiting command.

  It was all done with orderly neatness; lines were thrown down to the men in the water, and first the sailor was hauled up, a dozen hands reaching for his lifeless body as he was quickly brought aboard and laid on the deck. A stooped, gaunt man came rushing up from below; she heard Cranton say he was the surgeon. He got on his knees beside McGuire, rolled him onto his stomach, and began to work on him until he coughed, vomited seawater, and weakly began to move. A great cheer went up from his shipmates and immediately, they picked the poor fellow up and carried him below, the doctor at his side.

  A few moments later, Captain O’ Devir was back aboard the ship with the aid of a rope thrown down for him to scale, his inky black hair streaming water down his broad back, the shirt plastered wetly to the skin beneath, his angular features and prominent cheekbones defined all the more with his hair soaked and flattened to his skull. Someone pressed a towel into his hand, and he scrubbed vigorously at his face and hair for a moment before looking up; at that moment, his intense, purple-violet gaze met Nerissa’s through those absurdly long black lashes and something tingled in her belly. Lodged itself in her heart. He had said nothing, and yet with that look, he had said everything.

  He winked roguishly at her. She flushed and dropped her gaze.

  “Back the tops’ls, bring her about and continue on our previous course,” he said to Lieutenant Morgan, and tossing the towel over the quarterdeck railing, turned and walked away.

  And Nerissa found herself staring after him, looking at his broad, tapered back through the drenched transparency of his shirt, the line of his powerful thighs and calves through the soaked white breeches, as he strode to the hatch and, following the procession bearing the hapless sailor, went below.

  Chapter 7

  Captain Christian Lord was just returning from an appointment at the Admiralty when, upon entering the ornate London townhouse he’d rented while awaiting his next command, he was given the news by a servant that the Duke of Blackheath was waiting for him in the parlor.

  He didn’t blink an eye. He knew, of course, why the duke was here.

  He had first met Lucien de Montforte many months before when he’d been selected by Admiralty to carry out a dangerous rescue mission to get the duke’s brother Charles, and family friend Lord Brookhampton, out of France. The mission had ended in success, a life-threatening injury to His Grace, and Christian’s vow that he would never again allow a member of the aristocracy aboard his command.

  Oh, yes, he knew what this was about.

  He gave his fancy gold laced hat to the servant and grim-faced, went to meet the duke.

  Lucien de Montforte, however, was already coming out of the parlor to meet him.

  “Captain Lord.”

  “Your Grace.”

  “You know why I’m here.”

  “I’d be a fool if I didn’t.”

  The two men returned to the parlor. Christian poured a glass of brandy for the duke, and another for himself. He was going to need it.

  Blackheath, his face lined with tension, wasted no time in getting straight to the point.

  “Tell me everything you know about your brother-in-law.”

  Christian sat down, wondering where to begin. Roddy. Brazen, reckless, proud, foolish, Roddy. Never in a million years would he think his wife’s older brother would have reason for or interest in harming Lady Nerissa. But Roddy was gone. Lady Nerissa was gone. And that brought him to only one conclusion, one that pained him to even think about because of the hurt it would bring to his wife. It couldn’t be Roddy. There was no rhyme or reason for it. But what other conclusion could any sane person reach? He had exhausted all possibilities and leads. He felt numb from trying to make sense of the senseless. It was easier to just answer the question than to keep letting his mind go round and round in an empty pursuit, to try and figure out why Lady Nerissa had disappeared from his own house—a mystery that he, Elliott and those to whom he was closest had been trying to solve since she’d gone missing after the demonstration last night.

  He took a long, bracing swallow of his drink.

  “Roddy O’ Devir,” he began, staring down into his glass. “Press-ganged by the Royal Navy back in ’62 from his native home in Connacht.” Christian pursed his lips. Did it matter that he himself had been the young lieutenant who’d led that press gang? “Disappeared in the Service for thirteen years, but managed to jump ship sometime before things got hot in Boston and set himself up as a successful smuggler calling himself the Irish Pirate. Got in tight with Adams, Warren and Hancock, and they had him smuggling arms into the Boston area. He was a local hero. A dangerous complication. I was sent to apprehend him by my brother Elliott, and did so under the command of Sir Geoffrey Lloyd.”

  The duke leveled his inscrutable black stare on him. “So there is good reason to believe he hates the Royal Navy, if not the English.”

  “He was press-ganged. His father was long dead, and that left his sister and mother to fend for themselves. Yes, he most certainly harbored a good deal of resentment toward us and that’s putting it mildly.”

  The duke gave a barely imperceptible nod, his hooded gaze intent. Hard. Penetrating. Christian noticed that he had not touched his drink.

  “He was a thorn in our side. The last thing General Gage in Boston needed was an armed populace, and O’ Devir was supplying them with not only arms, but food, supplies, everything that couldn’t be brought in through the closed port of Boston. He was making a laughingstock out of the Royal Navy. Someone figured I could get the job done.”

  “And did you?”

  “Yes.” But not without cost. “I did.”

  “Why wasn’t he hanged?”

  Christian swirled his drink. He would not disclose the truth, even to the duke. “He escaped. Went back to Ireland with his sister and that was the last I saw of him until he showed up here last week.”

  “Why was he not apprehended then?”

  Christian leveled his own gaze on the duke. “He is my wife’s brother. And I deemed him quite harmless.”

  “He’s still a traitor to his king.”

  Christian just took another sip of his brandy.

  The duke was persistent. “What was he doing in Ireland all this time? And was he even in Ireland?”

  “Damned if I know. He had a cottage near the sea. A small farm. I assume he was tending to it, trying to eke a living out of it. His father was a fisherman. Perhaps he was doing that. Once I went back and claimed Deirdre, I didn’t really know or care what happened to him.”

  “And you haven’t heard from him since?”

  “Not until he showed up here last week saying he wanted to met my son. Colin is his nephew. I didn’t think it all that unusual.” Christian shook his head. “Roddy O’ Devir is many things, Your Grace, but he’s not someone who would ever harm a woman, and I can’t think of a single reason why he’d have an interest in your sister. There’s no motive for him to abduct her. And yet….”

  Blackheath’s penetrating black stare was on him. “What?”

  “I sent him off before your brother demonstrated the explosive. He had no business being there—the explosive was secret, something that the fewer people outside the Navy knew about, the better. Besides, there was a chance, albeit slim, that one of the officers in attendance that night might’ve recognized him and dragged him right back into the Navy or worse, managed to get him hanged. He was a deserter. For his own good and the continuing happiness of my wife, he was best not being there. I asked him to leave, and he did.”

  “And where was my sister during this time?”

  “Lord Andrew was concerned for her well-being in case the explosive proved unstable or fiercer than he e
xpected it to be, so he sent her back into the house.”

  “And O’ Devir was gone by then?”

  “I saw him leave.”

  “And is there anyone here in London whom he might know, anyone with whom he might be staying?”

  Christian shook his head. “He’s Irish. There’s nothing and nobody here for him, except for us.”

  “And yet he has not come back. Neither has my sister. That tells you something, doesn’t it, Lord?”

  “It tells me that two people are missing and not just one.” He drained the last of his drink and set the glass wearily down. “And before you ask, yes, I’ve scoured London for him. He’s disappeared without a trace.”

  Blackheath pursed his lips, thinking. He had barely touched his brandy. He looked directly at Christian. “Are you’re sure he stayed in Ireland?”

  “At the moment, I’m not sure of anything.”

  “Because I’m wondering if he went right back to America and picked up where he left off.”

  “Well, even if he did, it doesn’t explain why Lady Nerissa is missing or what he could possibly want with her.” Christian sighed and kneaded his brow. “In any case, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since they both disappeared. He probably went out on the town and spent the day lying drunk in a gutter somewhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if he shows up for tea in another hour or so and has no idea that any of this is going on.”

  Blackheath steepled his fingers and leaned his brow against them. He said nothing, just thinking. After a long moment he picked up his glass and drained it. He put the vessel down, rubbed at his noble forehead with one elegant finger, and stood up. His eyes were fierce. As black and cold as a winter night.

  “Thank you, Captain Lord. It seems I have work to do. I will be staying at de Montforte House here in Town. Send word immediately to me should this brother-in-law of yours show up for tea or show up at all. I have a hunch that he will not.”

  Christian got up and walked him to the door. “I still don’t think he did it.”