Bound By The Heart

by Canham, Marsha

"Doan know, Cap-tan. Mebbe he have enough?"

  "Aye, and maybe it will snow in the islands next week."

  Mr. Monday pointed to where the Gyrfalcon was drawing up behind the Caledonia. Her cracked mainmast had been shot away, and the ship was moving sluggishly under the windage of two partially rigged masts. Bull had also seen the flag run down and was having difficulty holding position as he waited for a sign from Wade. He would have to either fire or fall away and circle around for another pass.

  It could be precisely what Winfield was hoping for.

  "Stand the gunners down, Mr. Monday. Mr. Cambridge!"

  "Aye, sir?" Michael stepped forward, his face and hands sooty with black powder.

  "Relay an order to the helm. Tell Mr. Phillips to signal Captain Treloggan to hold as long as he can."

  "Aye, sir!" He scampered away.

  Ten minutes later there was still no sign of movement on the decks of the Caledonia. The Gyrfalcon had gone too far ahead and had to turn away; Morgan estimated that during the next hour or more, he would be without support and vulnerable. His gun crews crouched by their cannons, waiting. His topmen perched on the shrouds and yardarms, ready to manipulate the sails on a moment's notice.

  Colored flags burst out suddenly on the mast of the Caledonia. It was a request for a parlay, for safe passage to the Chimera.

  "I'll be damned," Wade muttered. "The bastard wants to chat."

  A reply was run up the Chimera's main mast and minutes later, a small gig rowed out from behind the warship carrying four oarsmen and three uniformed officers.

  Morgan Wade stood on the quarterdeck, his hands on his hips, his blue eyes tracking the boat as well as the Gyrfalcon. Bull was making good use of the time to jury-rig more sail to his two remaining masts, hopefully buying back some ability to maneuver. Winfield's men were also working feverishly to lower damaged sails and spars, and to lash fresh canvas aloft.

  Mr. Phillips appeared at the foot of the ladderway. "Commodore Winfield is requesting permission to come aboard. He has two of his junior officers with him."

  "Invite them aboard, Jamie," Wade said with a nod. "This should be interesting."

  Bennett Winfield stood inside the main entry port, the plumes of his bicorne rifling smartly in the breeze. His face was without expression; his hands were held at ease behind his back. One booted foot was poised slightly ahead of the other, striking a posture of impatience and disdain. The pale eyes raked the length and breadth of the Chimera, noting damages, types of shot, formation of crews. He looked up, examining the condition of the sails and lines, his gaze skimming over the hostile faces of the men staring down from the yards, muskets in hand. Lastly, he noted the Chimera's captain striding across the deck, as battered and bruised as his ship, yet seeming to be just as impervious to defeat.

  "You have done a remarkable job of holding together," Winfield murmured. "Two battles in as many days. Decatur will be overjoyed."

  "My personal dealings have nothing to do with Captain Decatur. However, he has been known on occasion to smile for less."

  Bennett looked away. "I understand my wife is still on board. I should like to see her...alone if you don't mind."

  "That will depend a great deal on whether she wishes to see you or not," Morgan said, crossing his arms over his chest. "And it definitely won't be alone."

  "The penalty for kidnapping is severe, Wade."

  "She is not being held against her will...Winfield."

  "In that case you should have no objections to my offering her the opportunity of returning with me to Caledonia."

  "What makes you think she would want to go?"

  "What makes you believe she would choose to die on board this ship?"

  Morgan's eyes narrowed as he spoke quietly over his shoulder. "Mr. Cambridge?"

  Michael stepped boldly forward. "Aye, Captain?"

  "Would you be so kind as to ask your sister if she would care to join us in my cabin? Tell her Commodore Winfield requests her presence."

  Michael looked up and whispered. "Doe she have to?"

  Wade noted the spark of anger in Winfield's eyes and his smile widened. "Not if she doesn't want to, lad. Gentlemen—shall we conduct our business in more comfort? Mr. Monday, will you join us? Mr. Phillips, I'll want to know if anything on that ship moves."

  "Aye sir!"

  Once inside the brightly lit aftercabin, Wade offered seats to the Englishmen while he crossed over to his desk and settled into the now-dusty leather chair.

  Winfield spoke without further preamble. "I believe it has become apparent, Wade, that we have the destruction of your ships within our grasp."

  Morgan leaned back and smiled. "I was under the impression it was the other way around."

  Winfield looked amused. "Come now, Wade. You really don't think you or your ships are in any shape to continue the battle, do you? I've seen the condition of your deck. I've come aboard in good faith to offer amiable terms of surrender. End it now while you still have a crew able to take advantage of His Majesty's generosity."

  "I sampled your Majesty's generosity once before, and it didn't leave the sweetest taste in my mouth. As to my crew, I imagine they are in about the same condition as your own. My gunners estimate at least a third of your cannon are exhausted—so much for your fancy improvements—and you've barely enough sail aloft to hold her steady."

  "We are steady enough to finish you, Wade, and your pirate friend."

  Wade studied the flared nostrils, the pinched lips, the arrogant tilt to Winfield's chin and wished he could reach across the desk and choke him with his bare hands. "There is another alternative, you know."

  "I'm listening."

  "It's a little old-fashioned, to be sure," Wade said, "but we would save a hell of a lot of innocent lives. Just the two of, Winfield. Any method you choose."

  The commodore's gaze locked with Wade's. He was an expert swordsman, and his reputation as a marksman had earned the respect of his peers. He'd participated in four duels in the past, all to his credit. It would, indeed, be a pleasure to feel the blade of his sword pierce into Wade's flesh, to kill him slowly so that he might savor the memory for years to come... but then Wade would not have put forth the suggestion if he was not equally accomplished. To risk losing now, however remote the possibility, when the Caledonia was all but assured of victory...?

  The door to the cabin opened suddenly, and Summer stood there, her pale face surrounded by the wisps of hair that had worked loose from the long shiny braid. She was dressed in breeches and a shirt, having found a dress to be a nuisance and impractical. Her hands had been scrubbed hastily clean, but there was blood on her clothing and spattered on the incongruously dainty green satin slippers.

  Bennett's officers stood instantly to attention. The commodore rose leisurely and let his gaze move slowly down her body. "Summer. I give thanks to God that you are safe."

  "Bennett," she murmured. "Gentlemen... please sit down." She glanced nervously toward Morgan. "You wanted to see me?"

  Wade propped his boots on the corner of his desk and watched the play of expressions on the commodore's face. "Your husband made the request. He seems to think you are being held here against your will."

  "Madam," Bennett said, "I have come to take you back to the Caledonia. The child also, and your brother if he has a desire to come with us."

  Summer resisted the temptation to run to Morgan. Instead she walked over and stood behind him—quite proud of herself that she could do so without her knees buckling—and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  "No, thank you Bennett. We are happy where we are."

  "Happy? You call that—" he indicated the blood-splashed state of her clothing with a smirk— "cause to celebrate?"

  "I am content, Bennett," she repeated quietly. "Possibly for the first time in my life."

  Bennett's face turned ruddy and he snarled at his two officers. "Wait on deck for me."

  The men looked surprised, but they complied with a hasty shuffle of
chairs and boots and indirect glances at Summer and Morgan Wade.

  "I recall a woman seated in an English garden," Bennett continued when they had gone, "who once told me much the same thing with much the same degree of conviction. Then, of course, it was parties and jewels and happy flirtations that contented her, and she did not want to leave it all behind for what she referred to as some humid little island. If this is another of your whims, Summer, I guarantee the novelty will be brief."

  Summer held her anger in check. "I am not the same silly girl you met in England, Bennett. I have grown up a great deal since then."

  "Indeed you have. Breaking your marriage vows and taking a lover out of wedlock, having his bastard child, betraying your country, your family."

  "My family is here, on board this ship."

  "No one forced you to become my wife. If the thought was so abhorrent to you, you could have refused."

  "I was never your wife, Bennett. I was a convenience. You said yourself it was a marriage based on greed and ambition."

  "I also told you I had true feelings of affection for you, madam," he said archly. "Affections you chose not to return despite my efforts."

  Summer's gray eyes narrowed. "Efforts? Are you referring to the threats or the blackmail, or the disgusting things you force me to—" She bit off the words and clenched her fists tightly. "I'm sorry, Bennett. I prefer better things for myself and my baby."

  "And you think you can find them on a doomed ship in the middle of the Caribbean?"

  She unclenched one of her hands and touched the side of Morgan's neck, her eyes bright and shining. "I already have."

  A flush darkened the commodore's tan again. "Your wish to see me humiliated is excusable to a certain degree, but do you mean to stand by and see your father's career and reputation destroyed? They will be, you know. As soon as word reaches his enemies in political circles that his daughter has become a traitor and has run away with her Yankee lover."

  "My father has been governor for twelve years. In all that time he never once placed anyone else's concerns above his own. His choice to come to these islands was made so quickly and so selfishly that he could not delay the move from England one month so that my mother could be safely delivered of the child she was carrying. My marriage was arranged with his career in mind, and no doubt Michael's future was slated to aggrandize it as well. Fortunately I have come to realize that someone else's choices do not necessarily have to rule my own. Father is a survivor, he always has been. He will find a way to survive any scandal, I'm sure."

  "Whereas you will die on board this ship," Bennett said harshly.

  "By my decision, no one else's."

  "And the child? And your brother? Aren't you playing God a little yourself?"

  Summer's temper flared. "If I have nothing to go home to, Michael has even less, thanks to you and Father. You have managed to cheat him of his birthright. You have whipped him and berated him, and I do not believe for a moment you would treat any of us differently if we did return with you. Your only reason for making this profound gesture is, as far as I can guess, to save appearances. You're not worried about my life or Sarah's life or Michael's future... and certainly not Father's career! You're worried about your own reputation."

  Bennett stared at her for a long moment before he sat back in the chair and laughed unexpectedly. It was a smooth, calculated laugh, and she was familiar enough with the sound of it to feel the hackles rise across the back of her neck.

  "Indeed, I am, madam. Furthermore, I intend to do everything in my power to see that you and your lover add to it immensely today. I have extended my offers to you both. I strongly recommend you reconsider your answer before I return to the Caledonia. I will allow you your lives, the shell of one ship, and an escort back to Bridgetown as my prisoners."

  Morgan Wade spoke for the first time. "And if I tell you that you can take your offer and go straight to hell with it?"

  "You will gain a moment's verbal gratification and nothing more."

  Morgan nodded. "I'll settle for that."

  The commodore rose and tucked his bicorne under his arm, crushing the feathers. "You have heard my final offer. There will be no others forthcoming."

  He pushed his chair out of the way and strode to the door. Wade crooked his head for Mr. Monday to follow, then lowered his boots from the corner of the desk, turning quickly to stand and gather Summer into his arms and kiss her soundly enough to strip away whatever breath she had remaining.

  "You are quite a woman, you know. If I had the time..."

  "You don't," she said, forcing a shaky smile. "But keep that thought warm, sir. For I shall wish to hear more when this business is done."

  He grinned and kissed her again, hard and fast, before he left the cabin. Summer remained alone at the desk, needing several minutes to steady her quaking limbs enough to carry her back to her grisly work below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  While Commodore Winfield was aboard the Chimera, his men had repaired or replaced the damaged topsails and spliced the necessary rigging to give the warship back her steerage. The captains of the Chimera and the Gyrfalcon, expecting Winfield to engage again, were both caught off guard when the Caledonia turned with the wind and started streaking away from them. Within minutes, Bull Treloggan gave the order to crowd on more sail and was in hot pursuit, ignoring Wade's signal for caution. Seeing the Gyrfalcon pull further and further away, Wade barked orders for Mr. Phillips to add speed, but a sudden gust of wind tore loose a mainsail and the Chimera, for the first and possibly worst time in her vaunted career, floundered.

  When more than four leagues separated the two ships from the Chimera, the Caledonia veered sharply and came about, cutting a wide swath and coming up behind the Gyrfalcon. Winfield then presented his broadside and began pouring round after tremendous round into the privateer. His gunners aimed for the two remaining masts, which were blown apart, leaving the Gyrfalcon unable to move. Cannon were dismounted, the forecastle became a smoking crater of crushed timbers, and Bull Treloggan's roar was silenced as a solid ball of iron smashed through his chest. His body was hurled through the air, landing in a broken heap against one of his beloved carronades.

  While the frigate drifted helplessly, the Caledonia pulled around to her starboard beam and began firing into the stationary target with the deadly thirty-two-pounders. The lower gun ports were silenced one by one as a hail of grapeshot exploded with each direct hit, spraying the deck with fiery hot shards of shrapnel and driving the remaining crew below for safety.

  Once more the Caledonia wheeled about, keeping the Gyrfalcon between herself and the frantic efforts of the Chimera to move in to assist. Wade ordered his guns double-shotted and aimed high, but even the threat of losing her sails again did not deter the Caledonia from the kill. By now she was so close to the Gyrfalcon that some of Wade's shot began to pepper the deck of the privateer, but it made little difference. There was no one left alive on the upper deck, and those huddled below were too stunned to care.

  As the Gyrfalcon's guns fell mute, the British warship maneuvered within half-pistol-shot range and, on a triumphant signal from the bridge, fired a ferocious round from all three decks, hitting the crippled privateer with such force that the remaining timbers in her hull crumpled. Seawater poured into the gaping wounds and began to fill the lower decks. The bleeding, hunched figure of a man emerged from the rubble and stumbled up to what was left of the bridge, desperately waving a large white flag of surrender.

  Winfield raised his sword again. His gunners were momentarily shocked, by the reacted quickly as the sword came down and touched the smoldering fuses to the powder, blasting another round into the dying frigate.

  Morgan Wade's hands would have crushed the oak of the rail had his hatred been transformed into physical strength. He shouted for more sail and dangerously overtaxed his straining ship, caroming in before the wind as he saw Winfield raise his sword yet again for another devastating volley.

 
The Chimera's guns fired point-blank, obliterating the Caledonia's foremast, causing the huge ship to rise up in her bows. She was caught in the turbulence caused by her own recoils and swung around, slashing a deep gouge into the stern of the Gyrfalcon as she plunged into a deep trough and snagged the smaller ship onto the end of her bowsprit. The sound of oak tearing into oak screeched out across the water, and when the smoke cleared, it revealed the Gyrfalcon stuck fast, her stern raised up out of the water while the Caledonia's bow was angled down. Bull's men, trapped below, streamed up onto the deck and, having nowhere else to go, reached for grappling hooks and boarding pikes and began clawing their way across to the Caledonia.

  Wade's ship struck the panther from the other side, ramming her with enough forward momentum to send dozens of marine sharpshooters tumbling out of the spars and yards. The Chimera shuddered with the impact, but her timbers held, and Morgan Wade, cutlass and pistols in hand, was first to swing across on a grappling line, slashing and hacking his way onto the deck of the warship. He was followed by every able-bodied man in his crew, most of them half-mad with rage and a hunger for revenge. Sweat and blood gleamed as brilliantly as the steel blades of their swords and daggers; the air rang with the shrill of steel meeting steel.

  The crew from the Gyrfalcon, no longer faced with the prospect of dying with their backs pressed to the rails, cheered and surged forward with renewed energy to join forces with their mates.

  The British soldiers and crew reeled under the frenzied assault, falling back in droves as the privateers cut a great bloody path across the breadth of the Caledonia. They slid on gory planking and screamed for orders that did not come. Pockets of scarlet-clad marines threw their muskets down, while ordinary seamen ran below and sought refuge in the deepest, darkest bowels of the ship. The companionways and storerooms became clogged with the wounded and with those no longer able or willing to fight.

  Morgan spearheaded the assault along the length of the quarterdeck, fighting his way toward the bridge, a cutlass in each hand. Mr. Monday fought on his right, sending Englishmen cringing back in waves at each mighty and scything slash of his boarding pike. Mr. Phillips took a musket ball high in his shoulder, and the impact sent him crashing to his knees, but he pushed himself up again and resolutely plunged back into the fray. Two of the men flanking him peered up into the maze of twisted yards and rigging to locate the source of the gunfire and saw a lone marine frantically working to reload his musket. Both men set daggers between their teeth and swarmed up the shrouds, so terrifying the marine that he lost his grip on the musket, then on the spar, and fell thirty feet into the churning mass of humanity on the deck.