“But I’m confined down here for my safety, you’ve decided, so I may as well be comfortable.”
And make him uncomfortable.
He forced his gaze to her face, focused too intently on her mouth, and shifted to concentrate on the rippling blue silk of the sea. “Can I trust Trenerry?”
Deirdre shrugged. “He won’t do anything to compromise the Maid.”
“Even though he is not . . . acquiescent to his imprisonment.”
“What man would be? But he thinks he’s responsible for my safety, and I am your prisoner.”
“Interesting.” This time the twinge in Kieran’s innards stemmed from a sense of more wrong than Deirdre looking more female. “He as much as said the same thing.”
She shrugged. “We’ve worked together for a long time.” She did not meet his eyes. “How about that coffee. Will you join me?”
Kieran took the canister but stood motionless, studying her face. “You seem rather cheerful for someone imprisoned below deck.”
“I’m happy you’ve decided to be sensible about getting the ship underway is all.”
He didn’t believe for a moment that was all. Something was up, but for the life of him he didn’t know what. She couldn’t conceal a thing in the clothes she was wearing, especially without that bandeau around her chest. Still . . .
He took a step closer to her, caught the scent of ginger, so spicy for a lady to wear, yet appealing on her.
He rested his free hand on her shoulder and stroked the pulse in her throat with his thumb. “Can I trust you, Deirdre?”
She laughed and poked a forefinger in the center of his chest. “Of course you can’t. You’re English. I’m American. We’re natural enemies.”
He moved his hand from her shoulder to the side of her face and stroked her lips with the ball of his thumb. “Is anything about being enemies natural?”
She didn’t reply. She didn’t meet his eyes.
He felt like the one being distracted. Her smooth skin, her scent, her nearness . . .
“I want you to be my wife, not my enemy.” He kissed her then to remind her of his offer, and while he kissed her, he curved his hand around the back of her neck, then tangled his fingers in her braid.
A shudder ran through her. Her breath puffed out against his lips. She grasped his shoulders, responding, and Bermuda and a wedding felt a million miles and a hundred years away.
Unfortunately, the ship was not. A cough sounded down the companionway. Footfalls heavier than necessary followed.
Kieran released Deirdre, satisfied she carried nothing more than her stiletto concealed in her braid, dissatisfied at the interruption. A quick glimpse of her face before he confronted the intruder revealed that she looked as dazed as he felt.
He turned.
Troy stood in the companionway, his face the color of ripe strawberries. “Beg pardon, sir, but a few of the men are refusing to take orders from Trenerry.”
“No doubt.” He thrust the coffee canister into Troy’s hands. “Take this to Riley and tell him to prepare a pot for Miss MacKenzie.” He tossed Deirdre a stern look over his shoulder. “Stay.”
She screwed up her face. “Am I supposed to bark or wag my tail?”
Kieran grinned. He sure did . . . well, like her a great deal. Incorrigible. Indomitable . . .
“Whatever you wish, m’dear. Just make certain that it does not take you from the cabin.”
She turned her back on him and flipped open the pages of the ship’s log.
“Sir,” Troy said, rattling the coffee beans, “I think I should stay up top and make sure the men . . . Well, sir, they’re used to taking orders from Captain Heron or me. We know you’re the owner, but—” His face took on the same ripe berry hue it had worn after he caught Kieran kissing Deirdre.
Kieran sighed. He knew what Troy was saying without being impolite enough to be direct. We know you’re used to loungin’ about while the rest of us work. I even caught you kissing a lady while we was workin’.
Just another ne’er-do-well son of the nobility, the kind of person that had prompted the French peasants to rebel against their aristocrats. Purposeless indolence.
But he did have a purpose—make his own fortune in the world and protect Deirdre from the consequences of his first attempt to do so.
“They can learn to take orders from me.” He stalked up the companionway ladder.
“You’d better go with him,” Deirdre said behind him.
He knew he should stop and command Troy to stay guard over her, but he faced potential trouble on deck. Ross and Wat balanced in the rigging, while the Phoebe’s crew lounged about doing nothing save for Jones at the wheel. As Kieran paused at the top of the companionway ladder, Ross shouted something about the unsavory ancestry of lazy Englishmen and started to descend. “Come on, Wat, why should we help these laggards get us to prison faster? If they don’t care about their prize, why should we?”
“Because I will make them care.” Kieran shot a glare from Trenerry to the lazy Englishmen. “Get up there and help.”
“I ain’t taking no orders from no worthless Yank.” Teague spat into the scuppers.
Kieran grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him to the nearest shrouds. “You will go aloft and listen to him if I say you will. Understood?”
“Ye-yes, sir.” Teague grabbed a ratline.
“Very good.” Kieran showed his teeth in an unfriendly smile. “From now on, you can join the prisoners in the hold if you continue with this behavior. Any of you.”
“They’d kill us,” one man nearly sobbed.
“And if I or Troy tells you to listen to any one of the men from this ship, we mean for you to do so,” Kieran continued. “Understood?”
Shifting eyes, shuffling feet, a few grumbles came in response.
“I believe,” Kieran purred, “the appropriate response is, ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Or do you want to get friendly with the Yankees in the hold?”
The men straightened, touched their fingers to their brows.
“Good. Troy.” He spoke to the man he sensed standing close behind him like an upright mast. “Carry on. Ensure that these men obey my orders.” He plucked the coffee canister out of Troy’s hands and descended to the galley.
The scent of bean soup and salted pork mingled with the effluvium of the ship, and he swallowed, tried to remember how ginger smelled on Deirdre’s skin, and approached the cook.
Riley sweated over the enormous cooking pots, wielding a spoon that looked long enough for supping with the devil.
Kieran smiled at the allusion to the old saying about using a long spoon if one supped with the devil, and knocked on the bulkhead. “Riley?”
The man jumped, spraying soup broth across the stove, where it sizzled and stank. “My—Mr. Ashford, I never expected to see you down here.”
“Only a mission for a lady.” Kieran held out the canister. “She has a desire for coffee.”
“I can do that for her. Just finished roasting some beans.”
“Just finished roasting beans? But how, if this is the only coffee aboard?”
“We have bags of it in the stores.”
Yet Deirdre had been holding the canister when he found her, and claimed she wanted coffee.
Brows knit, he set his mouth in a thin line. “Then make a pot for Miss MacKenzie. I will wait.”
He would return her canister unopened and take coffee and full canister back to Deirdre for an explanation. That she needed to give him one he had no doubt.
Deirdre guessed she had five minutes between Ashford’s departure for the galley and his return to demand why she had sent her father’s canister of coffee. If Ross carried out his part, as she had explained in the slips of paper in the oatmeal, five minutes was all she needed.
Holding her breath, she watched and listened as he and Wat directed the Phoebe’s crew in how to lower the sail needing repair, and how to secure a new one. Wat he sent forward to help make more secure repairs to the bowsprit. The way wa
s clear.
With a speed born of long practice and many races among the crew, Deirdre sprang up the companionway ladder and leaped into the shrouds. Before anyone noticed what she was doing, she had scampered to the crosstrees and settled herself astride a spar in front of Ross. “Don’t talk. Listen.”
Ross nodded and handed her the end of a sheet. If someone forced her to let go of this one too quickly, it would create havoc with the sail. And someone would force her soon. Below, Troy was shouting and gesticulating, trying to get one of the Phoebe’s men to climb up after her. The ruckus would bring Ashford in a moment.
“Waistband. Back. Paper knife.” It wasn’t much, but it was what she could find in the cabin and hide in the log. “Get it.”
Ross hesitated.
“Now.”
He reached behind her and drew the small, but sharp, blade from her waistband. Odd how his touch did nothing to thrill her or make her forget what was important.
A glance to the deck told her that Ashford had emerged from the galley. He would come after her if no one else did.
“I got the key from the coffee canister,” she told Ross, speaking in a rush. “I’ll manage a chance to get into my father’s secret cache and smuggle gold to you all. When we get to Bermuda, I’ll help you all escape.”
Ross snorted. “On an island?”
“An island with a harbor full of merchant ships and fishing boats elsewhere this time of year. Someone will take you on.”
“They’ll hunt us down.”
“Deirdre,” Ashford called from the deck, “get down here now.”
Deirdre waved the end of the sheet at him and grinned. “They won’t come after you. I’ll promise Ashford that I’ll marry him if he leaves you all alone.”
“You’ll do what?”
“Marry him. He thinks he’s honor-bound—”
Ross clamped his hand on her arm. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
A fast idea? Ashford was heading up the shrouds, his face pale in the sunshine, but determined.
“You escape with us.”
“Then who will distract him?” Deirdre spoke through her teeth, feeling tension stiffening her muscles with every foot Ashford climbed.
In moments, he’d be close enough to hear their conversation.
“We won’t do it,” Ross said. “We won’t leave this ship without you.”
“But, Ross—”
“We would never abandon MacKenzie’s daughter to an Englishman, and I won’t let you marry one.”
Ashford glanced up at them. Had he heard that last?
Deirdre looked from his set face to Ross’s and wondered which of them was more stubborn. Ross’s tenacity she knew. Ashford’s was still an unknown quantity, though she guessed that he would come after her. He would be concerned about her safety.
Rightly so, she had to admit.
A compromise? A bluff?
“All right,” she snapped to Ross, “I’ll do it.”
Ashford paused just below her. “You’ll do what, Deirdre, m’dear?”
She gave him a sweet smile and handed Ross back the sheet so he could splice the end he’d deliberately shredded with a marlinespike. “Marry you, of course.”
Chapter 8
Laughing at the expression of astonishment on Ashford’s face, Deirdre swung off the crosstrees, dropped freefall into the futtock shrouds, then swung onto the backstay and slid to the deck. That was an exhilarating descent she hadn’t performed in years. From the purposeful way Ashford paced toward her across the deck after his conventional descent, she guessed she wouldn’t perform it again any time soon. He looked as though he intended to pick her up and toss her over the taffrail and into the frothy sea.
He did pick her up as though she weighed five stone rather than ten. But he didn’t toss her over the taffrail. He tossed her over his shoulder.
“Put me down, you English—” Her middle squeezed over his shoulder, cutting off her wind.
But not her hearing. The English crewmen were laughing as though she were one of the puppets in a Punch and Judy show. Her cheeks warm from more than her exertions or the subtropical day, she kept her head down so they didn’t see her face, her humiliation. She didn’t care if they saw her pummel his back with her balled fists.
Ashford didn’t speak. He stalked across the deck to the companionway, leaped down the short ladder, and pushed his way into her cabin. There he dropped her onto her bunk, then stepped back to the doorway.
“That,” he said through deep breaths—was she too heavy for him after all? “—was nothing less than a stupid, irresponsible, childish action. You could have been killed.”
“It wasn’t likely.”
Except that with inexperienced men manning the braces, Kieran was all too right that she could have been killed. With her father’s men in the rigging, she knew how the ship would perform in a sea like this one, but one line pulled too far or not far enough—
She shivered. “You’re right. I could have, since your men don’t know what they’re doing.”
“And what, may I ask,” Ashford purred, “were you doing?”
He lounged against the bulkhead as though he had all day.
Deirdre drew her knees up to her chest, wishing she hadn’t given in to the mischievous impulse to leave off her binding that day. “I went to visit Ross. We’re friends. I hadn’t talked to him—”
“So you sent me on a fool’s errand with the coffee.”
“Oh, well, that.” Deirdre realized that her braid had come loose. She began running her fingers through her tangled hair, combing it out so she could plait it again before she lost her stiletto. “I wanted to tell him not to do anything stupid.”
Ashford laughed. “Deirdre MacKenzie, I think I can throw you farther than I can trust you, and after carrying you down here, I don’t think I can throw you very far. But I give you credit for planning. And if Trenerry behaves . . . If Trenerry does not . . . uh . . . er . . . mutiny . . . Do you own a hairbrush?”
“On the table behind the fiddle board.” She glanced up at him. “Your hair is a mess from the wind, but you have your own. I saw it—”
“I’m not referring to my hair.” He caught up her hairbrush and knelt on the floor. “Turn around.”
She thought about refusing to do so. No one had ever brushed her hair for her since her mother died, and she didn’t intend to let him touch her long enough to do so. But the proximity of his face to hers, his eyes glowing like sun-warmed amber, compelled her to look away, turn away, present him with her back, as she sat cross-legged on her bunk. “Why would you want to brush my hair? It’s absurd.”
“It’s beautiful.” He lifted a handful of her hair and began to work the brush through it. “Like trapped fire.”
“It’s unlucky for a ship. Some men won’t”—she swallowed—“wouldn’t sail with my father because I’m a red-haired woman.”
“I do not believe in such nonsense.” He worked the brush through another strand, holding it so that he didn’t pull at the roots. “It is pure superstition and completely untrue.”
“Is it?” The brush and his fingers reached the nape of her neck, and she flinched away from her shiver of response to his touch. “We were captured. My father died.”
“You were captured by someone who has the best of intentions toward you.” He drew her hair back from her face, smoothing his fingertips across her brow and temples. She closed her eyes, fighting the urge to lean back against him, call on his strength. She wanted to believe his intentions were good, that she could get her men away in Bermuda and count on Ashford to do nothing that would harm them.
The brush slid through her hair in long, smooth strokes. She doubted Ashford’s words.
“If you had the best of intentions toward me,” she said through stiff lips, “you wouldn’t expect me to marry you. I mean, you’d at least make it a marriage in name only.”
“I’m a selfish brute on that o
ne.” She felt him gather her hair together at the back of her neck and begin to braid it, his fingers warm against her skin. “I think a ribbon would look much prettier here than that twine. Green to match your eyes. I will look for some on Bermuda. A dress as well?”
Deirdre jerked her braid from his hands and turned on him. “Why in the world would you want to waste your money on buying me a dress?”
He laid one hand on her cheek. “I am not marrying a female in breeches.”
“I’m not marrying you—” She caught herself in time. “If I have to wear a dress.”
He laughed, a low rumble in his chest. “We will see about that, m’dear.” He sat back on his heels. “Now, tell me about what you and Trenerry were discussing.”
Deirdre rose to fetch her twine from her sea chest so she had an excuse to keep her back to him as she responded. “I told him to behave himself is all. Oh, yes, and that you were insisting that I marry you.”
“He didn’t look like he took that well.”
“He wouldn’t.” Deirdre shrugged. “Will you cut this for me?”
“Of course.” He stood behind her and reached around, a knife flashing in the bright light from the porthole. He took his time cutting the thin rope, standing too close to her, laying his cheek alongside hers.
“Why do you not want to wear ribbons or a dress?”
“Females wear ribbons and dresses.”
“M’dear, you are very much a female.”
“Purely an accident of birth.”
And a curse at that moment with the way she was reacting to his nearness, wanting to lean against him, ask him to make all the bad things go away like some swooning heroine in one of the novels that turned up on the ship now and again.
“I should have been a boy.” She tried to pull away, but she had nowhere to move in the tiny cabin. “My twin brothers died and killed Momma. Papa didn’t deserve to lose both of his sons and get stranded with me. I wouldn’t be here now. He wouldn’t be dead . . .”
She would surely have the strength to prevent the sobs that rose in her throat, choked her until she had to let them out.
“Shh.” Kieran turned her in his arms and cradled her head against his shoulder. “It’s not your fault you are here and he is gone and your crew are prisoners. It’s the fault of the men who make wars and men like me who take advantage of wars to make our fortunes. You . . . Deirdre . . .”
My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles) Page 9