“Either way, we will settle this tomorrow.”
Deirdre blinked. “Settle what?”
“Your future.”
“My future is settled. I will be treated as a noncombatant prisoner.”
“Not if you are my wife.”
Broth splashed onto the sheet. “That blow to your head addled your wits. I nearly got you killed.”
“You saved my life at great cost to yourself. The least I can do is protect yours.” He levered himself up on one elbow. “So my offer of marriage still stands.”
Deirdre stared at him. “I would be as mad to accept your offer as you are to give it.”
“You could end up in prison for what you did.”
A possibility she hadn’t taken the time to consider.
“So I marry you to stay out of prison, and you marry me to pay a debt—”
“My life is worth a great deal to me.” He touched his right ear hidden beneath a swath of dark hair. “Especially after nearly losing it this second time.”
Deirdre seized the diversion from marriage talk. “I noticed it. What happened?”
“A farce of a duel where the seconds lied.” He waved one hand as though shooing off a fly. “It’s not important at present.”
“It is if it’s another reason for your loss of honor.”
“It is, but if I take home a bride, my father will see me and I can prove the truth—about that at the least.”
If not what had happened with his fiancée.
“Between you saving my life and giving me the entrée with my family,” he continued, “I will be eternally grateful to you.”
“I don’t know much about the subject, but I don’t think gratitude is a good basis for marriage.”
“I think we can find more to a union than gratitude.” He gave her a sleepy-eyed smile that curled her toes and sent tension coiling deep in her belly.
Needing to break the impulse to touch him, Deirdre backed to the window seat still clutching the cup of broth as though it were her good sense. “You don’t trust me.”
“Another reason why I would prefer to have you where I can keep an eye on you.” He dropped back onto his pillow. “To have to leave you to your own devices when I am responsible for capturing you is a frightening idea.”
Deirdre laughed with relief. “You aren’t serious.”
“I am perfectly serious. I expect an answer tomorrow by the time the Phoebe arrives or our repairs are effected and we sail.”
The next morning, when Troy descended to the cabin to inform her that the Phoebe had just limped into St. George’s Harbor, Deirdre had not yet made up her mind. She would be better off as Ashford’s wife, especially if otherwise she would end up in a prison. Yet marriage to him sounded like it would be just as confining as stone walls. She still might end up with a tradesman’s family to guard her, a situation she surely could escape now that she possessed money and the means to more. She would not escape Kieran Ashford again.
Nor, she feared, would she elude Captain Heron’s wrath. With Kieran still asleep, she followed Troy on deck to meet her next hurdle.
The Maid of Alexandria lay under a pall of unnatural silence as Captain Heron and two of the Phoebe’s boyish-looking seamen climbed aboard. All three of them appeared exhausted, with shadows beneath their eyes and hollow cheeks. Their clothes were crumpled and streaked with salt stains, and Heron sported a bandage around his left wrist.
Troy beside her, Deirdre stood at the top of the companionway and watched the Englishmen climb aboard.
Heron glanced around the too-quiet deck, then approached Deirdre and Troy. “Where’s Ashford?” His voice rasped as though he’d been shouting too much.
“Below, sir,” Troy said. “There was a bit of trouble three days ago and he’s . . . er . . . injured.”
“Injured?” Alarm crossed Heron’s face. “How? Where?”
“His head, sir.” Deirdre’s own voice came out raspy. “May I please explain after you’ve had some breakfast? We have eggs and fresh fruit and—”
“You will explain now,” Heron commanded, looking at Troy. “Why is she not locked in her cabin? She’s a prisoner.”
“She’s been helping me nurse Mr. Ashford, sir.”
“Why is that nursing necessary?” Heron glared at Deirdre. “Start with when you arrived here.”
“Three days and a night ago,” Deirdre said. “We had some damage from the storm—”
“Does Troy know what happened in those three days?” Heron interrupted.
“Yes, sir, I do,” Troy said.
“Then I want the report from an Englishman.”
Deirdre opened her mouth to protest, but shut it without saying a word. She didn’t need Heron’s reminder that she was not English, and therefore the enemy, to let her know that she stood in an untenable situation. A dangerous situation for her crew and herself.
Troy told his version of the incident that had culminated in two prisoners escaping and Kieran Ashford lying injured. The men from the Phoebe stood swaying, looking so fatigued they might fall over at any moment. And Deirdre stood with her legs braced apart, her arms crossed over her chest, expecting Heron to command her to be carried to the privateer and locked up somewhere, and her crew flogged.
She had only one option to spare them all if Heron chose the course he had wanted to before the storm separated the two vessels.
At the moment, his face remained impassive. He didn’t so much as flick a glance her way.
“Miss MacKenzie did save his life,” Troy concluded his story, bless him. “None of us could swim.”
“Huh.” Heron didn’t sound impressed.
“And some of my crew pulled us out of the water,” Deirdre added, “rather than escape as they could have.”
“Huh,” Heron said again. He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “Is Kieran awake?”
“He may be now,” Troy said.
“I’ll see.” Before either man could stop her, Deirdre leaped down the companionway and dashed into the cabin.
“So the Phoebe has arrived.” Kieran sat on the edge of the bunk, his shirt on and a sheet covering his lower half. The bandage glowed white against his dark hair, a stark reminder of the assault on his life. “Is all well?”
“Well enough.” Deirdre dropped to her knees beside him. “Ashford . . . Kieran . . .”
Before she gathered her scrambled wits to speak further than her first use of his Christian name, Heron stomped into the cabin.
“At least I don’t have to face your mother and tell her I couldn’t keep you alive.” His tone was gruff, but the look he cast Kieran was affectionate. “Of course, the report to your father—”
“What took you so long to get here?” Kieran broke in.
“Storm hit us hard.” Heron stepped over Deirdre’s legs as though she weren’t there and settled on the window seat. “We will need to hole up here for a bit and effect some repairs. The Phoebe lost a topmast and took some other damage in that blow. Looks as though you rode it out well enough.”
Kieran gave out a rusty laugh. “Not well, but we rode it out, thanks to Deirdre’s quick actions.”
“Yes, well—” Heron harrumphed. “She needs to be guarded strictly while we’re at sea and the authorities notified about her antics once we are on land, too. According to Troy, she is a menace to your safety.”
“She saved my life,” Kieran said.
“She would have been hanged if she had not.” Heron reached down and grasped Deirdre’s upper arm. “Troy, remove her—”
Kieran closed his hand around Heron’s wrist. “Let go of her, Heron. Under whose authority she will be here at sea or on land is not yet settled, is it, m’dear?”
Deirdre gulped and stared at the rumpled sheet covering his legs.
“Deirdre?” Kieran cupped his hand beneath her chin, gently compelling her to look at him.
Beneath his half-mast lids, his eyes held that sleepy look Deirdre now knew meant he was at his most intense. She b
raced herself.
“What is the answer to my question?” He spoke in a voice like a purr. “Are you going to marry me?” He brushed his thumb across her lower lip. “Speak the truth this time.”
PART II
Chapter 12
Devonshire, England
November 1812
England was cold. It was wet. It reeked of too many men packed in dark, dank quarters upon the half-dozen naval vessels anchored in Plymouth Harbor along with countless brigs, schooners, and single-masted pinnaces. Garbage floated on the murky water around which bung boats steered, selling wares ranging from fresh vegetables to doxies.
Though her only coat proved inadequate to the damp chill permeating to her bone marrow, Deirdre stood amidships in the tumbling rain and watched yet one more kind of boat draw away from the Maid of Alexandria—longboats. Rowed by men in the tarred hats, striped shirts, and white duck trousers of British sailors, the two craft carried her crew toward shore, toward prison.
Tears blending with the rain, icy on her face, she waved until the boats vanished around the looming hull of a seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line. They couldn’t wave back. Their hands and feet were shackled. Neither did they look at her.
Not one of them had looked at her in the six weeks since she had gone ashore with Kieran Ashford at St. George’s and returned two days later with his ring on her finger. She had tried to talk to Ross once.
“I did it for your sakes.” She had pleaded for Ross’s understanding.
Ross spat into the sea. “You’re lying with the enemy.”
“I’m his wife. He has a right to me.”
“And you look like you hate every minute of it.” He had walked away from her without a glance back.
With that, and with every head turned away from her, her heart had torn and her resolve to free them had hardened. All but two of them had given up their chance to escape there on Bermuda in order to rescue her and Kieran from the harbor waters. They had saved her and Kieran’s lives. Freeing them was the least she could do. Once she was settled, once she knew the lay of the land, she would get her men out of prison if it killed her. If the English didn’t hang her for treason, now that she was wed to one of their own, her conscience might.
Movement behind her drew her attention seconds before an arm slipped around her shoulders. Kieran, the cause of her divided conscience, drew her close to his side.
“Prisoners at Dartmoor can have visitors, you know. You will get to see them.”
“They don’t want to see me.” She hugged her arms across her chest and stared ahead as though she could see through the massive war ship. “They want nothing to do with me.”
The tightening of Kieran’s hold reminded her that he wanted her, and, the good Lord forgive her, she wanted him, too. By day, though she and Kieran clashed over their views on the war or toddled toward finding common ground in books they had read or in his interest in the places to which she had sailed and languages learned, each glimpse of her crew reminded her that she had married the enemy. Reminders that slipped an invisible barrier between her ever wanting to befriend her husband. Nighttime, however, found them together in her bunk, as physically close as two people could be, satisfying a soul-deep hunger she hadn’t known existed until her wedding night on Bermuda.
She slipped out of the curve of his arm. “At least I can provide them with some comforts. If you will allow it, of course.”
“Of course I will. I told you I will be generous with your pin money, and I intend to keep my word.” An edge crept into his voice.
Deirdre understood—she must keep her word as well.
She must be an exemplary wife and help restore him to the bosom of his family, English society, respectability. She must provide him with an heir and, for good measure, a second son, to continue the family line of Englishmen. More Englishmen to suppress and imprison Americans, if the United States could not win this war or, if they did, win the next, or the next. Just like the succession of wars between England and France, so would England and her former colonies proceed.
“I will keep my word.” She faced him. “I will not shame you in front of your friends and family as far as I am able to avoid doing so. I owe you that much.”
“You are capable in any way you need to be.” He cupped her elbow in his hand. “Come along. Let’s get ashore and into hot baths. And I’ll buy you a warm cloak. You’re freezing.”
“I am, and a hot bath is one of the few things I love about being on land.” She followed him down to the cabins.
Her sea chest was already aboard the cutter that would carry them ashore. Besides her clothes and a handful of favorite books, the only personal items she took were the two decorative daggers her father had given her as gifts, the jade dragon, and the family Bible. She had written in that Bible twice since the Phoebe captured the Maid—once for her father’s death and once for her marriage. The next time would be to record the birth of a child, if that day came.
She glanced around the chambers that had been her home since her father bought the schooner six months ago. They were little different from those in previous merchant vessels he had owned. Many of the furnishings were the same, moved from one vessel to the other, bigger or faster ones, but always just the one. Sailing vessels were the only home she had ever known, but by the end of the day, she would enter a home on land.
With one last glance at the bunk they had shared, she retraced her steps up the companionway ladder and back into the rain. “I have nothing else to bring.”
“I thought of this.” Kieran held up the coffee canister and shook it.
Nothing rattled. The beans were gone. The key to the strongbox was in his pocket. Inside the strongbox lay the specie recovered from the recaptured crew, and the fruit, all but what Deirdre had managed to hide.
She gave him a blank look. “Why would you save that?”
“A reminder to myself to pay attention to small matters.” He offered her his arm.
They strolled together to the entry port, where someone had rigged a bosun’s chair.
“For the lady,” one of the boatmen said in an accent as thick as Riley’s porridge.
Kieran and Deirdre laughed.
“I have never used a chair in my life.” Deirdre grabbed the chains, swung over the gunwale, and dropped down into the boat.
Six pairs of eyes stared at her with varying levels of astonishment and disapproval.
Kieran lowered himself beside her and directed the men to push off. Then he turned to Deirdre. “One last time.”
“Yes, sir.” Her stomach rolled at the idea that she might have descended from a merchantman in the fashion of a crewman for the last time. She did not want to leave that life behind. It was the only life she knew save for that year in a girls’ school, a year of despair and loneliness.
She twisted around and gazed at the beautiful, graceful Baltimore clipper with its steeply raked masts and clean lines that gave her so much speed. Deirdre would certainly never sail on the Maid again.
Her vision blurring, she turned her face toward shore and a future so uncertain she would not allow herself to think of it in any specific detail. She thought of only one step at a time.
“So we’ll go to an inn to make ourselves presentable?” She addressed their first actions on land and no further. “Will they have fresh bread and eggs as well?”
“Yes, and lemons, maybe even oranges.” Kieran clasped her hand. “We will not be able to tarry there too long. I would like to reach Bishops Cove before nightfall.”
“We have to go today?” The cutter was sailing beneath the bowsprit of the seventy-four, and she realized her fingers were crushing Kieran’s.
The United States didn’t own a single naval vessel that could fight something that big.
Kieran rubbed his thumb on the back of her hand. “If we do not leave here today, Tyne will come here, and I would rather meet him with Mama there.”
“Tyne?”
“My father.”
/> “You call him by his name?”
“I do now.”
“I only called my father captain when I was on duty.”
And she had disobeyed his last orders to her as her captain and as a father who wished to protect her.
“My father never became a captain, but I think there has been a time or two he would have liked to take a rattan cane to my backside as though I were a midshipman.”
“He wouldn’t dare do that.” Deirdre eyed the filthy harbor water, wondering about her chances of escape if she leaped into the murky depths. “You’re a grown man.”
“A grown man who is wholly dependent on his largess until the prize court comes through with the assessed value of the schooner and cargo and paid out.”
Paid out wealth at her expense.
“And you’re too much of an English gentleman to get a job.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t understand this expectation of laziness.”
“I am supposed to have work as . . . as my father’s heir and all that entails—” He broke off and laughed without humor. “He will change his mind now that I have decided to be a respectable married man.”
Deirdre was dubious about that, but not because she wouldn’t do her best to make the Ashfords happy with his choice. It was the devil’s bargain she had made with him.
The cutter swept past a bumboat laden with fresh fish. Despite the powerful stench, Deirdre realized she was starving. Earlier, she had been too distressed over her men being taken away to eat breakfast. She should be distressed now over the impending introduction to Kieran’s family. Yet all she could think of was some lovely warm bread, butter, eggs, and fish or beef or chicken, anything that hadn’t been preserved in brine for months.
“I need dinner and then a bath.” She needed sustenance to face the upcoming ordeal.
“I’ll order refreshments sent to your room. I sent Troy ahead to set everything up for us. The George is waiting for us.”
Another inn named for the king—or the previous king, or the one before that.
The cutter bumped against a flight of stone steps leading into the pier. Kieran leaped out first and held out his hand. Deirdre started to refuse for the sake of one last bit of independence, but with the seamen watching, with half a dozen females in sight, even if they were not the respectable sort, she took the proffered assistance and stepped onto English soil.
My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles) Page 14