He looked back again at their pursuer and for the briefest of moments, a shadow crossed his face. “Ah, well, there might’ve been a time or two. But I’m over it, I am. No sense lookin’ back.”
“And no pretty girl in some distant American port waiting for you? No woman wearing a ring on her finger, praying for your safe return?”
“Not a one.”
They stood together for many moments, Nerissa looking down at the sea driving past below, wondering what it was about this man that encouraged her to lay bare her soul, to confide things in him that she would not have shared with the closest of her friends. She’d known him for less than a week and already she felt more comfortable in his presence than she ever had in Perry’s. He irritated her, he forced her to look deep inside her heart, he challenged her and humored her and rattled the base of the lofty pedestal on which she had spent her life, and she sensed an underlying loyalty in him that she guessed was utterly unshakeable.
“Ye’ve let yer man Perry go now, haven’t ye, lass?” he asked gently. “And ye’re feelin’ guilty about it.”
Sudden tears sprang up behind her eyelids and she swallowed the lump in her throat, looking down into the blue, blue sea.
“Am I right, Lady Nerissa?”
“Yes, Captain. I believe you probably are.”
“Why don’t ye just forget him?”
“I…think I have.”
“No ye haven’t. And ye certainly haven’t forgiven him.”
“I haven’t forgiven my brother.”
There. She’d said it. And now the tears were spilling over because no, she hadn’t forgiven Lucien. Not for his manipulations that had cost her Perry, not for his choking over-protectiveness, not for what—or whom—he most certainly had planned for her the minute she was back on English soil and under his protection once more.
Ruaidri O’ Devir seemed to read her mind. “Stop yer pinin’, lass. Maybe he did you a favor, this brother of yers. You can do a lot better than some sorry lad who doesn’t have conviction, who didn’t love ye enough to offer for ye the minute ye came of age.”
“Perhaps I can, but Lucien will waste no time in finding me a husband the moment I get back to England.” She wiped at a falling tear and willfully pulled herself together. “I will not love the man he picks out for me. I may not even like him. But that’s the bane of being a rich noblewoman, isn’t it? I am of no more value than a pedigreed broodmare. My worth is what lineage and dowry I can bring to another man’s family. I doubt I’ll have much choice in the matter, especially after…this.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the teasing smile had left his face and there was a penetrating sadness there.
“So that’s your world, then.”
“Not just my world. My cage.”
“Well, mo nimfeach mara beag…while it must be nice to have money and all its trappin’s, to have privilege and status and all the finer things in life, I must say I’d want no part of that kind of world.” He laid his hand over her own. “And I think the man who ends up with you is more blessed than the one who finds the pot o’ gold at the end of a rainbow, and I’m not talkin’ about any feckin’ dowry, either.”
She said nothing for a long moment. “There are times that I wish my life was different, too. That it offered more…freedom.”
He looked out over the sea. “I could give you that, ye know.”
Startled, she looked up at him. “What are you saying, Captain O’ Devir?”
“Stay here with me. Sail the seas, be free of balls and teas and social visits and expectations and the course yer brother will set for ye. Choose yer own path in life.”
“Stay here with you?”
“Why not?”
“Stop saying that?”
“Saying what?”
“Saying, ‘Why not!’”
He shrugged. “Well, it was just an idea.”
Her palms suddenly felt cold, even as her heart began to race with the thrill of possibility. “I can’t stay here with you and you know it.”
“Don’t see—” he grinned— “why not.”
“Ohhhh!”
“Think about it. We get on well. I want ye in my bed. If ye’re honest with yerself, ye want me in yours. Makin’ love to me wouldn’t be the trial it might be with someone who was suitable but repellent. Ye’d have no obligation to produce an heir. No obligations to an ancient family or a society that ye obviously ache to escape. Ye’d be loved and treasured and cared about, never set aside once yer purpose—whatever the divil that is—is fulfilled.”
“What are you saying, Captain O’ Devir?”
“That I’d marry ye, if I could. Give ye that freedom ye crave.”
Her mouth opened and shut, but nothing came out.
Nothing.
“If I could,” he said again.
Finally, she managed, “I can’t stay here with you. I don’t know anything about you, except that you’re Mrs. Lord’s brother.”
“What d’ye want to know?”
“Everything! Nothing! I can’t believe we are having this conversation!”
“No reason ye can’t stay. Ye just said yerself that there’s nothin’ to go back to.”
“I’m not—”
“Tell me what ye want to know about me.”
She tried to catch her breath. To collect her thoughts. Time was passing too fast, this situation rapidly escalating out of control.
“I can’t stay with you, certainly not as your mistress and you’re right, we could never marry. Besides, you…you have no p-prospects! No way to support a wife in the style to which she might be accustomed—”
“I’m an officer in the Continental Navy, Lady Nerissa, and a damned good one at that. I can assure ye that my prospects are actually quite good. Especially if I return home with that explosive.”
“It’s not a ‘real’ Navy!”
“Try tellin’ that to the people who are payin’ me to be here. Try tellin’ it to my men, who serve this ship and trust their lives to my skill and judgment. Try tellin’ it to that sack of shite trailin’ us back there if he decides to bring a fight to me. The fact that England doesn’t recognize her former colonies’ declaration of independence doesn’t negate its existence.”
She just looked at him. “How did you even end up in this…navy?”
He deliberately let his elbow touch hers as he leaned on the rail and followed her gaze down into the blue water swirling in their wake. “When I was but a lad in Connemara, I was press-ganged. I spent the next ten years of my life as little more than a prisoner, servin’ a king who’s not mine and fightin’ for a country I loathed.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, not knowing what else to say.
“Aye, well, it’s done and o’er with, now.”
“I suppose it’s too much to hope that, having once found yourself in a similar situation as you’ve put me in—that is, of being held against your will—you will be all the more sympathetic to my plight.”
“I’m fierce sympathetic,” he said, looking down at her, “and it pains me that these are the measures I’ve had to resort to. But, when opportunity comes a’ knockin’, one would be a fool not to answer the door.”
He glanced up at the trim of the sails and then forward, always the captain even in a moment of leisure. In the near distance, Lieutenant Morgan stood with young Cranton and the even younger Joey taking measurements with a nautical instrument of some sort. He must have seen something in Captain O’ Devir’s eyes, for he immediately left the two youngsters and approached, deliberately averting his gaze from Nerissa and saluting his superior.
“Mr. Morgan, ’tis time to tack. Please see to it.”
“Aye, sir.”
The officer moved smartly off to carry out the order.
“So, how did you escape?” Nerissa asked.
“Several years back, I jumped ship in Boston. I hung around for a bit, got the lay o’ the land, and convinced some backers to give me command of
a sloop. I did a bit of smugglin’, seein’ as how the English were starvin’ Boston into submission. Or tryin’ to.” He laughed. “Lads like me, we kept the city in food and drink. Ran arms, procured gunpowder. Probably saved a lot of lives.” He straightened up. “Come, let’s walk.”
He offered his arm and she took it, grateful for his strength as they headed forward.
They passed a sailor down on his knees repairing a large, salt-stained sail, who touched his fist to his forelock as they passed. “Good morning, sir!”
Captain O’ Devir nodded. “Mornin’, Sanderson.”
They continued on, past big, deadly-looking guns standing sentinel on deck, past a barrage of ropes and rigging that looked so complex Nerissa wondered how anyone could even remember their names, let alone their functions. “’Twas during that time that I fell in with Sam Adams, Dr. Warren, John Hancock and a group of prominent patriot leaders. Friendships were formed, trust earned, though I’ll be the first to confess that I started thinkin’ so highly of myself that I made what was nearly a fatal mistake.”
“Which was?”
He grinned. “I got caught.”
“By the British?”
“Not just the British, but my own brother-in-law, Deirdre’s husband. He outsmarted me. But I was soon free again, lickin’ me wounds and injured pride, takin’ stock of me life and thinkin’ about what I wanted out of it. I went back and forth between Boston and Ireland a few times since, but I keep going back to Boston and findin’ ways to make a nuisance of myself.” He grinned. “Better than starin’ at sheep back home.”
“Two of my sisters-in-law are from Boston. Another, originally from Salem.”
“Are they, now?”
“Yes.”
“And have they turned into fancy English snobs?”
She might have stiffened, if the teasing smile wasn’t back on his face. “No. They are wonderful, and I adore them.”
“Well, I suppose England owes us, then. Three American lasses for three rich Englishmen in exchange for one English lass for a poor, unsuitable Irishman.”
“I have not said I will stay here with you, Captain O’ Devir.”
“No, ye haven’t, but I’ll keep working on ye.”
“And what about you? Why aren’t you married?”
The teasing grin faded as quickly as if someone had stabbed him in the heart and his face, so open and carefree just a moment before, closed up, his eyes becoming guarded. “Ah, well, ’tis the sea I’m married to, Sunshine. And as to why it’s that and not another, that’s a conversation for another day.”
The space between them went suddenly cold. Nerissa felt him withdrawing from her, defenses being thrown up like walls around a castle, impenetrable, unbreachable. She felt suddenly bereft. Awkward. Angry at her inadvertent blunder.
“You did say I could ask you anything,” she reminded him, trying to regain what they’d had just a moment past, but the friendly openness between them was gone.
“Aye, so I did.”
She pushed back from the rail. “I think I need to get out of this ridiculous uniform and back into my gown.” she said, heading back to the stern cabin.
“Ye don’t want to get back into that. It’s filthy, now. Ruined.”
“Well, I can’t live in this.”
“No, ye can’t. You’re not an officer, not even crew.” He beckoned to the man who knelt on deck, mending the sail. “Sanderson!”
The man stood up, saluting. “Sir!”
“The lady needs clothes. Probably more than that sail needs mendin’. Fashion a jacket for her from one of the midshipmen’s dress coats and a skirt or petticoats or whatever the divil women wear out of some sailcloth, would ye?”
The man went bug-eyed with horror. “Well now, sir, that’s not something I’ve ever done before, and I—”
Captain O’ Devir shot him a hard glare and the man instantly quieted, his hand raising in a quick salute.
Nerissa, her head high, stalked off and Ruaidri O’ Devir watched her go. He could feel her indignation and he was sorry for it.
But there were some things he wasn’t prepared to discuss.
Some things he wasn’t prepared to remember.
Some things he wasn’t prepared to relive.
Chapter 16
The afternoon passed. Nerissa went back to the cabin, still garbed in Midshipman Cranton’s uniform. Ruaidri tapped into his men’s unspent and restless energy over what had nearly been a fight with the British ship and set them to drilling the guns, promising an extra measure of rum that night to the gun captain and crew who managed to fire, swab out, and reload his gun the fastest. He tried not to think about Lady Nerissa and how hurt she had looked when their conversation had reached its awkward end. He would have liked to have sought her out, made her laugh and kiss her senseless until she forgot both her innocent question and his own rather abrupt response to it. But he would not go chasing after her, not when he had a ship to run and the respect of fifty tough and hardened tars to maintain.
And so he stayed on deck for another hour, watching the British frigate fall farther and farther behind the closer they got to the French coast, finally turning tail and retreating when some sails off to the south proved to be French ones. Fuck Hadley. He was no coward but he was no fool, either, and Ruaidri knew they would meet again.
But not, he hoped, until Saturday, the day after next.
When the exchange would take place. When he would get the explosive and high-tail it back to Boston as he’d been sent here to do. Where he would say goodbye to little miss Sea Nymph, his nimfeach mara beag, and never see her again.
He should be feeling a sense of triumph, of accomplishment, at the thought.
Instead, it brought him only a desperate ache.
I don’t want her to go.
He wished he could marry her. It was impossible, of course—too much separated them when it came to culture and class. The very idea was ludicrous, though not so much that his mind didn’t keep flitting back to the idea despite his best efforts to direct it elsewhere. She was a gently-bred noblewoman who should never have been put into a position of being alone with a man. When he’d scooped her up off that London floor, he hadn’t thought that far ahead—an opportunity had presented itself and he had grabbed it. Now, he realized just how much he had taken from her and her family with that one impulsive action. The scandal would be tremendous, outrageous, forever damning. The world, the society papers, the people amongst whom she lived and breathed…all would think she’d been compromised. She could never be expected to make a decent match after this. She would be forced to live out her life as either a spinster or wife to a man who would not love her any more than that wanker Perry had, who would forever view her as damaged goods.
He could offer for her, but she would surely refuse him and he wouldn’t blame her one bit. And yet…he could love her. He was already half in love with her, and to fall the rest of the way wouldn’t take much. He sensed a free and wayward spirit beneath the trappings of breeding and convention that complemented his own, and he had seen her kindness in her concern over McGuire when he’d gone overboard, the careful way she treated the blushing Cranton, the gentleness in her manner, her thoughts, her very soul. He had ruined her—and he owed her, no doubt about it.
I should have waited, and taken the brother. The inventor. I did it all arseways, didn’t I?
He sighed and cast a last glance at the horizon. Hadley’s frigate was gone. The evening was settling in, the moon coming up in the east. Things were in motion, wheels would be turning, and Saturday’s exchange was well on its way.
The thought brought him no joy.
Another night spent sleeping outside his cabin, restlessly craving the woman who slept so innocently beyond the door.
That thought brought him no joy, either.
* * *
Captain Lawrence Hadley had beaten it back to London.
“You know damned well, Larry, that I don’t have the explo
sive and I certainly wouldn’t offer it to the enemy even if I did have it,” Lawrence Hadley the Third said to his son as they sat in the elder’s office early the next morning. “But the Duke of Blackheath and Lord Andrew are due to arrive within an hour. I’ve got a meeting with the First Lord of the Admiralty about this in less than fifteen minutes, Admiral Elliott Lord and his brother at noon. We’ve got to think of something to stall that Irish vermin.”
“Father, we don’t have time to waste. He struck her with his pistol. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“He struck her?”
Startled, both Hadleys turned toward the door, which had been left ajar to catch the breeze coming in down the hall…and through which the mighty Duke of Blackheath and his brother had just come, some forty minutes early for their appointment.
Admiral Hadley got to his feet. “Your Grace, Lord Andrew, I thought our meeting was for ten o’ clock—”
“He struck her?” the duke roared, and the walls themselves seemed to shrink from his fury.
“Your Grace, you have my full assurance that the Navy is putting every resource at its disposal toward bringing Lady Nerissa home safe and sound, with no expense or vessel spared—”
“No expense spared? What is this—this buffoon doing here in your office when he could be out rescuing my little sister? Is this the best the Royal Navy can bloody do?” The duke stalked towards the suddenly hapless younger Hadley, who knew that Blackheath was so well-connected that the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty himself was probably in his debt. “If you were in a position to see her, you were damn well in a position to save her! Why did you leave her?”
“With all due respect, Your Grace, I had O’ Devir in range of my guns,” Hadley said defensively. “I expected him to surrender to me; I had a king’s frigate under my command, I could have blasted him out of the water three times over. I would have, too, but he brought Lady Nerissa topside and made sure I could see her, knowing full well that if I fired on him the risk of her being injured was substantial.”
“Why did you leave her?”
“O’ Devir was adamant that he would not talk business unless we did so under the terms of his demand, which is to meet at the French port of Saint-Malo tomorrow afternoon to make the exchange.”
The Wayward One Page 15