My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles)

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “I’d have gone into the British Navy?” She sounded tired, bewildered. “I’d have been a boy named David MacKenzie. Or maybe Daniel.”

  “Nonsense.” He spun on his heel. “You would have ended up fodder for their . . . entertainment, since you would never have passed as a boy.”

  She faced him and stood with her legs spread and hands in her pockets, chin jutting and shoulders back, the stance of a defiant youth. “I’ve passed as a boy in a hundred ports for twenty-two of my twenty-three years.”

  Kieran laughed. He let his gaze flick down her body, realizing she must bind her breasts somehow. What a waste for a woman to feel the need to deny her sex.

  He crossed the four feet from cupboard to table and leaned against a chair back for support. “I think every sailor in those ports need spectacles. You look like a woman to me.”

  She met his eyes for an instant, then ducked her head and slumped against the edge of the table, balanced with her palms flat on the surface. “I may look like one to you, but I’m terrible at acting like one.”

  “That missing year?” Gently, Kieran set the squat brandy decanter between the fiddle boards to hold it upright. “You said you have been playacting for twenty-two . . . Or was that your first year of life?”

  She shook her head. “I was born at sea. But after my mother died, my father—” She snapped her teeth together hard enough for Kieran to hear the click. Her lips clamped together into a firm line that would have been hard save for the fullness of her lips.

  Kieran lifted his hand and traced the line with a fingertip. “Keep talking. Your father what?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “I think it does, but we don’t need to talk more now.” He rounded the table, intending to draw out a chair for her, remembered it was bolted to the deck, and simply stood behind her. “Sit down. I will have someone inspect your cabin for weapons so you can be private there.”

  Aware she remained standing, curled forward over the table, he covered the distance to the companionway in a few long strides and climbed far enough to call for Heron to send someone trustworthy down.

  Heron himself appeared from what should have been the quarterdeck, but wasn’t raised above the main deck. “What is it, sir?”

  “I need to search Miss MacKenzie’s cabin for weapons before she can be allowed in there.” Sensing movement behind him, Kieran turned his head and saw her standing in the main cabin doorway. “And someone to keep an eye on her while it’s done.”

  “I’ll send down Teague.” Heron looked past Kieran. “Perhaps we should take her over to the Phoebe now.”

  Kieran gave Heron a cold look and returned to Miss MacKenzie. She blocked the doorway to the main cabin, her knuckles white from her grip on the frame. “Are you going to steal my personal effects?”

  “We are not thieves.”

  Before she cast him a look of contempt powerful enough to shrivel him, he knew that was a ridiculous claim on his part. To her, they looked like thieves. Thieves and murderers, however indirectly they had caused her father’s death.

  “We have a letter of marque from the Crown to take enemy ships.” He leaned against her cabin door, arms crossed over his chest, as though settling for a comfortable cose, when, in truth, he was trying to maintain his balance on the strengthening roll of the deck, a problem she didn’t appear to suffer. “That makes this taking an act of war, not thievery. Your country is doing the same.” He laughed. “You have to have privateers. You don’t have a navy.”

  “We wouldn’t need either if Great Britain would behave like the civilized country it boasts of being.” Her nostrils flared as though she smelled something foul—more unpleasant than any ship reeked, however well maintained. “I’ve seen the worn-out hulks you all place your French prisoners of war in. Will that be our fate?”

  “We are returning to England. Plymouth, to be precise. I expect that means Dartmoor.” The name of the prison built high on the barren lands in Devonshire tasted foul.

  Since the prison had been built three years earlier to house French prisoners, Kieran’s mother and sisters had assisted neighbors in organizing charity functions to purchase blankets and soap and other basic necessities for the men housed there probably for the duration of the war. The vicar and curate returned from making the deliveries with tales of how dank and dark the walled village of barracks appeared.

  “Your crew will be sent there.” He might as well be telling her that her crew was going to die a painful death. “You will be treated as a noncombatant prisoner of war and sent to live with a family approved by the Crown until you can be returned to America.”

  She jerked as though he had struck her. “Where? Near the prison?”

  “Possibly, but you could be sent anywhere in England.”

  Her face paled, and she pressed one hand to her mouth. Before Kieran could ask if she were about to be ill, Teague dropped down the ladder without benefit of the rungs.

  “What d’you want from me, sir?”

  “Keep Miss Mackenzie down here and everyone else up top.” Kieran opened the door behind him and swung himself inside.

  The space was so small he could reach everything without taking a step. Bunk, chest beneath, hanging shelf above, table large enough for one made up the furnishings. The porthole was too small for anyone larger than a child to fit through. A single drawer in the desk revealed plain paper, pens, and ink. He noticed nothing like the items he had seen in his sister’s desks—notebooks of friends’ directions, half-written correspondence, saved letters. The shelf above bunk and table offered a wide selection of books, a miniature of a woman who looked so much like Deirdre she was likely her mother, and a green jade carving of a dragon. The chest held clothes. Male clothing. Some of it was fine, intended for special occasions, including silver buckles for the pair of well-made shoes. But not so much as a ribbon for her hair lay amid the shirts, breeches, and waistcoats. Not so much as a flower pressed between the pages of a book suggested she bore, or had ever harbored, tender feelings for a man. Her life appeared too unnatural for Kieran to comprehend. She must even go so far as to tie her plait with a length from the ball of string in the chest.

  Kieran smiled at that. “Trying a little too hard not to be feminine, my girl.”

  Even he tied his hair back with a length of black velvet ribbon. But thinking of why she worked at minimizing her womanly appearance sobered him. Baffled and appalled that any man could allow his beautiful daughter to play the boy aboard a ship of men, isolating her from her sex, Kieran rose and removed the weapons from the bulkhead. With their jeweled handles, their value lay more in their cost than ability to attack anyone. He took them nonetheless. At the last minute, he also grabbed the dragon. It was heavy enough to smash in someone’s head. Likely his.

  As he had done in the main cabin, he looked for hidden compartments in search of the specie the ship was surely carrying, concealed drawers or a false bottom to the trunk. Again, his efforts proved fruitless. The trunk’s false bottom was empty.

  Defeated, wondering how he would explain a lack of gold or, at the least, silver coin to the prize board if he couldn’t find it, he left the cabin.

  Teague and Deirdre stood as Kieran had left them, still as statues, not looking at one another. Deirdre glanced from Kieran’s face to the items in his hands, then shrugged and focused on something behind him.

  “May I leave, sir?” Teague’s spaniel eyes pleaded for mercy.

  Kieran shook his head. “You will stand watch here until I arrange a schedule with Heron.” He turned to Deirdre. “I will set a guard before your door—”

  “Do you think I’m going to escape and jump overboard?” Her upper lip curled.

  “The guard,” Kieran continued as though she hadn’t interrupted him, “is for your protection, to keep others out and not you in.”

  “I’ve never needed a guard before.”

  “And you shouldn’t need one now, but yo
u are no longer the captain’s daughter.” Kieran stepped out of the doorway, giving her clear access to her cabin. “Someone will bring you supper in a while.”

  “I don’t want anything from you.” Without a backward glance, she stalked into her cabin and slammed the door.

  Kieran headed for what would now be his quarters. “I think you want a number of things from me—like your freedom and your ship back and your crew released.”

  In that moment, he wished he could give her what she wanted. Privateering was supposed to be enjoyable with its promises of riches that had nothing to do with his father’s wealth. A capture was supposed to make him feel successful, proud.

  He reached for a glass nested in a rack on the bulkhead and pulled the stopper from the brandy bottle. Drinking to excess was one vice he had never acquired, but this evening, he splashed a generous measure of the amber liquid into the crystal and raised it to his lips.

  “A toast to Captain MacKenzie and a cargo of China silk.”

  “How much have you had to drink?” Captain Heron appeared in the doorway.

  “None. Yet.” Kieran downed half the contents of the glass and gasped. “That’s terrible.”

  The liquor burned down his gullet and into his stomach, raw and tannic. The ship rolled in one direction and his stomach twisted in the other.

  “Not another storm.” He couldn’t stop the groan.

  Heron chuckled. “This is a moderate swell. Now what do you intend to do about this young lady?”

  “Guard her.” Kieran speared his fingers into the hair over his ears, felt the scar, and dropped his palms to his knees. “We want no one getting the wrong ideas about her, and we need to watch her. She’s acting calm, but she’s angry. Understandably. This ship was her home, her life. The crew is her family. And we have just taken it all away from her.”

  “You can’t think of it that way.” Heron poured himself a measure of brandy and sat. He merely sipped at his drink. “It’s war.”

  “I do not make war on women.” Restless, Kieran rose and prowled the cabin in the little space available. The breeze coming through the stern windows felt good this time of day, cooling in the evening. He sat on the green broadcloth cushions of an armchair, one knee drawn up. “I remembered from what we were told when receiving our letters of marque regarding prisoners, but I don’t know what sort of people take in noncombatant prisoners.”

  Heron shrugged. “Usually tradesmen. Someone the authorities trust.”

  “You would think they would use those of us with land, something to lose if we consort with the enemy.”

  Heron cleared his throat. “I suppose some have taken in noncombatants, but not an American for your family, not with your mother being a Yankee.”

  “After thirty years, they would question my mother’s loyalty to Britain?”

  Heron shifted, poured himself more brandy, though his glass wasn’t half empty. “Kieran, the loyalty of the prince of Wales has been questioned. Of course they’ll wonder about your mother’s loyalty now, regardless of her rank.”

  “I had no trouble getting this letter of marque using my father’s name.” Suddenly weary, Kieran covered his eyes with one hand. “We need to talk about splitting up the crew and the prisoners. I want Trenerry where I can keep an eye on him. That means here.”

  “On his own ship? That isn’t wise. Of course, you staying here isn’t—”

  “And Miss MacKenzie needs to keep her own cabin.”

  “Kieran, with you aboard . . . ahem . . .”

  Kieran lowered his hand to fix Heron with a glare. “I do not deserve my reputation with females.”

  But a six-month old-scar on his ear reminded him that no one believed him. On the contrary, his own family believed the worst of him.

  Because he had been so irresponsible in other ways.

  Even in the twilight, Heron’s flush showed. “From what your father told me before he set you aboard, leaving you here with Miss MacKenzie is . . . unadvisable.”

  Kieran gave a rude opinion of what his father said. Then he sighed. “He’s wrong, whatever you choose to believe. I’ve never dishonored a lady in my life.”

  “It’s the truth people believe that is the problem.”

  Kieran’s hand balled into a fist. He wished he could shove the words back down Heron’s throat. He wished the older man wasn’t right. He should return to the Phoebe to preserve what reputation Miss MacKenzie possessed. But leaving the prize meant someone else would stay in this cabin. Others would have access to search for the manifest and specie, one of which at the least must be aboard. Others might not be so honest about reporting its find. If coin did exist aboard and the prize court learned of it yet found none, Kieran and everyone aboard the Phoebe could be accused of trying to steal from the Crown. He didn’t want to know the consequences of trying to cheat the Crown from its full share of a prize, no doubt far worse than his supposed indiscretions.

  “I stay here.” Kieran spoke with the most certainty he had felt since their lookout spotted the merchantman.

  “Then Miss Mackenzie will come aboard the Phoebe.” Heron’s tone held steel.

  “She stays here.”

  After all, Kieran would bet anything she knew where her father’s ledgers and gold were hidden.

  “That’s an order,” he added for good measure.

  Heron glared at him, mouth grim. “Your father ordered me to keep you out of trouble. In this situation, that means keeping a single female as far away from you as possible.”

  Hurt piercing through him, Kieran wanted to lash out, break something, since he could never strike the older man. He wanted to curse everyone who doubted him. Most of all, he wanted to curse himself for allowing his reputation to go too far to save the good name of a lady who didn’t deserve his fealty.

  With a calm he did not feel, he rose and stared down at Heron. “You work for me.” He spoke at a measured pace with a quiet voice. “You do not work for my father.”

  “He hired me.” Heron stood, but was still half a head shorter than Kieran.

  Kieran smiled. “And the moment he learns that you have gone along with my privateering scheme, he will ensure you never work for anyone else. But this prize alone should give you the comfortable retirement you want, if we make no mistakes.”

  “And keeping Miss MacKenzie where you are wouldn’t be a mistake?” Heron glanced in the direction of the other cabin. “Her host family will never believe her fit for polite company once they learn where she’s been.”

  “I have my reasons for keeping her here.” He looked at Teague, stone-faced in the companionway. Even if Kieran closed the door, he had no doubt the young seaman would listen. Gossip picked up from an overheard conversation between the privateer’s owner and the captain would doubtless earn him extra tots of rum from his shipmates. Talk of a potential cache of gold coin could get them all murdered in their beds. With coin in hand, a man did not need to wait for the prize court before he was paid his share of the capture.

  “Let me think about this.” Kieran wanted space to walk, fresh air in which to think. With the way the ship rolled beneath him, he would probably fall on the deck like the landsman he still was.

  He perched on the bench seat beneath the stern windows instead. A fresh breeze blew across his face, smelling of salt water clean and crisp, and not bilge water, mildew, and bodies unable to bathe in more than a cursory fashion. He took several deep breaths to bring himself calm, to clear his head.

  He would never dishonor a female. He had two sisters he loved dearly and would kill anyone who dishonored one of them, so how could anyone think he would do so to another lady? But he liked women, their soft voices, their smooth skin, their sweet scents. He liked to hear them laugh and never minded when they cried, other than needing to comfort them. He appreciated the different way they viewed the world, how they cared about family and children and making the world around them comfortable. He appreciated intelligent women and never doubted their capabilities.r />
  In turn, women liked him. He was good-looking, from a fine family, and, when his father didn’t withhold his allowance, wealthy. He stood to inherit more. Some ladies might even care about him beneath his appearance and noble birth. Most considered him a prize to be won like a merchantman on the high seas. They went to great lengths in their attempts to capture him, including sneaking into his bed. He had safeguarded himself against such traps as best he could, but his reputation as a roué grew until his father insisted he marry.

  Miss Joanna Rutledge was perfect for his wife—or so he thought. She had turned out to be a perfect disaster for what was left of his good name. Thanks to her, association with him would ruin the reputation of any female caught in his presence except for his wife.

  His wife.

  No, he would not allow his mind to go there. He hadn’t exchanged more than a hundred words with Deirdre. For all he knew, her reputation did not deserve to be preserved. But neither did it deserve to be harmed further. Life as a noncombatant prisoner of war would be difficult, housed with strangers who were not always kind to their charges. With an ocean between their countries, she might be stranded in England until the end of the war. He had taken everything from her, including her father, however indirectly. Giving her a future was the least he could do to make up for his actions. Preserving, perhaps even restoring, some of his honor would help his family, his sisters’ matrimonial prospects, his mother’s standing in the community. His father might even forgive him for turning the Phoebe into a privateer and bringing home a rich prize that included a female crewman.

  He had really and truly lost his reason, and he saw no alternative.

  He shot to his feet and strode to the doorway.

  “Where are you going?” Heron asked.

  “To ask Miss MacKenzie to do me the honor of becoming my wife.”

  Chapter 4

  Alone in her cabin, Deirdre slumped on her bunk, her back to the bulkhead, her knees drawn to her chest. She hugged her legs and willed herself not to weep. If she started, she might never stop, or, worse, might begin to howl like a wounded wolf.