Captain of My Heart (13 page)

And then he spoke, his voice soft,
mellifluous, and very close to her ear as he set the drawings on
his desk and, bending down beside her, pointed at the hull. “Kindly
take a second look at the depth of her draft, Miss Mira. Do you
honestly think she’ll not handle a fine press of sail? A wet boat
she may be, but a stable one.”

“I don’t question your designing abilities,”
she said, moving away from him in hopes of calming her racing
heart.

“Oh? Then do you question my sailing?”

“Captain Merrick, are you going to listen to
me or not?”

“Miss Ashton, are you going to offer me
something I can use or not?”

“Fine!” Her chin came up and she stormed
away, yanking out a chair and throwing herself into it with eyes
flashing. Wryly, he noticed that she didn’t perch birdlike on the
chair’s edge as a lady would’ve done; but then, he knew enough
about this wee sprite, this
bean sí,
to know that despite
the gown and the forced genteel demeanor, she still had the
manners—and the temper—of a dockside brawler. And now she was
leaning back, one arm thrown over the top rung of the chair and
winding that thick hair around her wrist again, and it was only as
she raised her leg as though intending to put her foot atop the
table that she caught his eye and seemed to remember herself.
Coughing discreetly to hide his amusement, Brendan watched her grin
somewhat sheepishly and put that tiny foot back down on the deck
where it belonged.

“I’ll be honest with you, Captain Merrick. I
have nothing to bargain with, really. Oh, I have cats, but you
don’t strike me as a man who’s terribly fond of them, and besides,
they don’t like you either. I can offer you breeding rights to a
fine Arabian stallion—” She ignored his shocked stare. “—but I have
the feeling you don’t care for horses very much, and after today, I
probably can’t blame you. And I have half ownership in the brig
Proud Mistress,
but what good would she be to you? She’s a
fine ship, swift and sturdy, but beside her, your schooner would
look like—like a kestrel beside a turkey vulture.”

“Kestrel,” he said softly, his eyes
thoughtful.

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing. Do go on.”

“So I guess what I’m trying to say is that
you simply have to give your business to Father.” She became
desperate when he looked away in amusement. “Captain Merrick,
please! I know you’ve had a . . . hard day, but you must understand
how a shipbuilder like my father would sell his soul to build a
vessel like your schooner. I’m prepared to beat any quotation that
Tracy, Cross, Greenleaf, or even Hackett offers you.”

She didn’t have that authority, but he didn’t
have to know that. Right now it was more important for him to see
the light. She could make Father see it later.

“Any? And what will you give me if I do so,
Miss Ashton?”

“Give you?”

Brendan held the quadrant up to the lantern,
squinting as though taking a measurement. “Aye, give me. I do
believe you came here with a proposal? A
bargain,
you called
it.”

“I just told you, I could lower the
price.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, looking unimpressed.

“Or we could better the delivery date, beat
whatever Tracy or anyone else offers you.”

The captain yawned, picked up the sandglass,
and flipped it over.

“There might be some way to get that copper
for you. I don’t know how just yet, but I’m sure I could think of
something.”

Brendan sighed and tossed the quadrant to the
desk. “I think it’s past my bedtime,” he said.

“But, Captain Merrick—”

“Miss Ashton, those offers are all well and
good, but they’re not enough to convince me that I should give my
business to your father.”

“Then what would convince you?”

He leaned against his desk and crossed his
arms. She saw his warm, laughing gaze drop to her bosom, move
slowly up her throat, linger on her mouth, and finally meet her
eyes. She suddenly knew what he was going to say before he even
opened his mouth.

“A kiss from a pretty lass—” He grinned, full
of roguish charm. “—may be all the convincing I need, Miss
Moyrrra
.”

“That’s . . . it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well then, I . . . I suppose that’s
fair.”

“More than fair,” he agreed, his grin as
weightless as a kite on a windy day. “Unless, of course, you’re
afraid.”

“Afraid?” She laughed, too loudly, and made a
dismissive motion with her hand. “I’m not afraid of a kiss.”

“Then come here, lass, and prove it.” His
honey-colored eyes were growing warmer.

“Why don’t you come over here?”

“With pleasure,” he said, and Mira felt
everything inside her stop as he straightened up from the desk and
came toward her. Her heart began to beat frantically against her
breastbone.

“Have you ever been kissed before, Miss
Moyrrra
?”

“By a man?”

“No, silly, by a tortoise. Of course, a man.
What do you think?”

He paused before her, and slowly, gently,
reached out to cup the side of her face with one of those hands
that she’d been admiring just moments before. She shivered as he
briefly caressed her cheekbone with his thumb, then slid his hand
along her jaw and pushed his fingers into the unbound mass of her
hair, forcing her to look up at him. For a moment, he just stood
there, gazing into her eyes, and something inside her began to
melt.

He bent his head so that his forehead rested
against hers. “Put your arms around my neck,” he murmured, so close
she could see the laughter in his eyes.

She reached up and did as he asked, and she
felt his other hand go around her waist, the fingers splaying
against her lower back and pulling her, unresistingly, closer to
him. His breath feathered against her brow, her lashes, warm and
smelling of sugared coffee.

“Are you ready to be kissed, Miss
Moyrrra?
”

“I’m ready. . . .”

“Then close your eyes.”

She closed them. Felt his lips touch her brow
. . . her nose . . . the corner of her mouth as he lifted her face
with gentle pressure beneath her jaw. Her heart began to pound, and
a thick, languorous sensation flooded her limbs. She pressed closer
to him, feeling the heat radiating from him like a furnace. His
thumb rubbed lightly over her cheek, pushing her hair aside; and
then—contact.

The kiss was all that she’d known it would
be, and more than she’d dreamed it could be.

Mira wilted against him, shamelessly pressing
herself against his body, pulling his head down to hers. She forgot
to breathe. Her senses swam. His mouth ground against hers, the
pressure forcing her lips apart, and she felt a strange, hot
dampness at the junction of her thighs as his tongue slipped out
and wickedly touched hers, warm and wet against her own. Colors
burst behind her eyes and time and place slipped away. Her head was
reeling. Spinning. Of their own accord, her hips pressed closer to
him, and she felt the firm, unyielding pressure of his arousal
against her belly.

He groaned, reached up to unhook her hands
from behind his neck and pulled back, breaking the kiss.

“Is that all?” Mira asked, confused. The kiss
had left her with a strange, unsatisfied longing for something she
didn’t understand. Her lips were on fire. Her breasts were
tingling, her lungs aching for want of air, and why did she feel so
hot and aching and strange down there in her womanly parts?

“Let’s do that again,” she said, unable to
keep her gaze from dropping toward the hard bulge beneath his
breeches.

He was no longer laughing. In fact, he was
breathing hard, the sound echoing in the stillness of the cabin,
and the look in his eyes was one of confusion and something like
panic. He swung away, as though in pain. “I think you should go,”
he said, his voice oddly strained.

“Why?”

“It is late, Miss Ashton.”

She could see him fighting to gain control of
himself. He was gripping the back of a chair, refusing to look at
her, and she saw that his knuckles were white. “But what about
finishing our kiss?” she asked, confused.

“Faith, lassie, you’re young enough that
you’ve no idea just what it is you’re offering—” He opened his eyes
and stared desperately at the deck planking above. “—and I’m old
enough to know better than to take it. Now, go, before I change my
mind and do something we’ll both regret.”

Mira stared at him, wondering if he found her
wanting. “I can’t see how we’d regret it.”

“I said
go,
Miss
Moyrrra!”

“I mean, you might regret it, but I won’t,”
she said, still reeling from the heady, wild sensations that
tingled through every nerve in her body. She moved closer to him,
pulled him away from the chair, and tried to wind her arms around
his neck once more.

Her hands never got past his shoulders. He
grabbed her wrists, thrust her away, and stood staring at her,
holding her at arm’s length. “For the love of God,
Moyrrra,
go! Faith, just
go!
I’ve already decided who shall build my
schooner, and nothing you can say or do will change that.”

If he’d slapped her across the face, he
couldn’t have hurt her more.

Mira’s volatile temper flared to life. “What
about our bargain? I gave you your kiss and it’s still not good
enough, huh? What kind of a bleedin’ bargain do you drive, anyhow,
Brit?
I held up my end of it!” Embarrassed and humiliated,
she picked up her skirts, holding them above the glass-strewn floor
as she stormed toward the door. “If that’s how you want it, then
fine. Take yer drafts to Tracy or Hackett or Greenleaf and let them
build the damned thing! See if I bloody well care!”

She grabbed for the latch.

“Miss Ashton?”

She whirled, her petticoats twining around
her legs, her hair flying over her shoulder.

“I really don’t think they could kiss as well
as you.”

“
Wha—
”

The total ridiculousness of his statement—and
the way the corners of his mouth were turning up once more—melted
her anger. For a moment she glared at him, trying to maintain it,
but she couldn’t. A sparkle had come into his eyes, and it was
impossible to be mad at him when he was looking at her like
that.

Especially when he was looking at her like
that.

“I told you I had already made my decision,”
he said. “And there is no changing my mind. I will call on your
father tomorrow to give him the drafts and sign any papers that
need signing.” His grin spread. “There was no need for you to worry
so, Miss Mira. There was never any question about who would build
my schooner.”

Chapter 7

Work began on the schooner without delay.

Her lines were lofted to Brendan’s drafts in
an empty room above Ephraim’s office, her keel scarfed and laid on
blocks a stone’s throw from the Merrimack, not far from where
Annabel,
stripped of her guns, fittings, and furnishings,
lay moldering in muck and marsh grass. Shipwrights, carpenters,
planking gangs, and caulkers; sailors, strong-armed men, young
boys, and old salts alike—they worked like hell to build her,
fitting stem and stern posts, hewing sleek ribs from massive white
oak, and finishing them with broad ax and adz.

By first frost, the cry of “Frame up!” was a
daily one, and beneath the shrewd and wintry eye of Ephraim Ashton,
all would drop what they were doing to heave and haul and hoist
each horseshoe-shaped rib up, up, up, until a lean and lovely
skeleton shaped itself beneath the matchless blue skies, and the
tales of its unique beauty drew crowds from as far away as Boston
to see it.

Dubbers’ adzes rang out in the crisp mornings
before the birds were even up; planking gangs swarmed over her,
managing to lay two, sometimes three, streaks of plank over her
ribs per day, and it wasn’t long before mallets were ringing
against hawsing irons and driving oakum and cotton beneath her skin
to make her watertight. Ports were cut along her sides in readiness
for the sharp four- and six-pounders she would carry; bulwarks were
strengthened, rails fashioned, woodwork sanded and varnished. Day
by day she grew, proud and lovely and strong, until at last she was
sealed with tar and kissed by the carpenter’s planes in readiness
for the paint that would protect her from the bite of salt
water.

Her builder dressed her in black, painted a
jaunty white stripe between her wales, and paid her bottom with a
formidable mixture of tallow, brimstone, and resin. Her deck was
varnished, her sleek and spartan stern counter left uncluttered by
excessive scrollwork; that which was there was picked out in
gold.

She was sleek, she was sultry—and she was the
pride of Newburyport.

Her launching day dawned as a frosty,
crisp-cold morning that promised frostier, crisper ones to come. It
would be many weeks before her masts were in place, her rigging
fitted, and she was ready for sea, but that special moment of
launching—when the new hull touched water for the very first
time—was always cause for a celebration. Giant crowds came from far
and wide, gathering along the riverbanks as the sun rose up from
the sea and through creamy pink skies filled with cottony puffballs
of clouds. The sweet fragrance of autumn leaves perfumed the air,
and grass made a last stand of color before winter’s brute
desolation would wipe the slate of the earth clean. But everyone
came, leaving pumpkins and squash dragging down the vines, apples
to be harvested, pies cooling on windowsills, tasks left undone or
put aside. Privateers returned early from the sea, their crews
toasting the new ship with grog and sweet cherry rum. Children were
lifted atop shoulders, adults craned their necks. Dockworkers and
deckhands, laborers, merchants, lawyers, and physicians—all crowded
into the Ashton Shipyards, pushing and shoving against one another
just for a glimpse of the ship that stood atop her ways looking
down at them like a queen at her coronation. People took boats out
into the harbor for a spot to see; others hung out of second-story
windows in a rapidly filling Market Square. Horses and carriages
clogged the streets, ships of every size and style filled the
harbor, apple cider ran like water, and hot chocolate steamed the
air.