Captain of My Heart (18 page)

Maybe Mira
could
work miracles. Maybe
she
could
teach her how to ride . . . but Eveleen doubted
it. For one thing, Mira had not demonstrated a great reserve of
patience. And more important, Eveleen had absolutely no desire to
learn. Besides, she was a cripple. Even if Brendan couldn’t face
that fact, she could.

And there was her body, still reflected in
the mirror, reminding her just how big and awkward it really was.
Grimacing, Eveleen poked the flesh circling her waist; or rather,
what used to be her waist. Like soft bread dough, it sprang slowly
back when she removed her finger. Fat. It hung from her upper arms,
rippled like ocean swells beneath fishy white skin, stole the space
that used to be between her thighs. It stuck out in front of her,
catching all the breadcrumbs and sauce and pieces of pie and
cookies that weren’t lucky enough to make it into her mouth.

Once, she’d been acclaimed a great beauty.
Now, men never looked at her, except with pity. Now they simply
acknowledged her presence with a polite nod, a tolerant greeting,
and that was it. It was as though she were invisible, now. As
though she didn’t count as a woman. As though she didn’t count as
anything.

If only she could still draw and paint. . .
.

They sure looked at Mira Ashton, though.
Every single one of them back on that wharf had been utterly taken
with her, and it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been wearing a
dirty sack and a bag over her head, they still would’ve looked at
her because Mira Ashton was bold, she was beautiful—and she was
thin.

Eveleen poked at a wrist that had once been
graceful and elegant. Now she couldn’t even see the bones that
defined it, although she could feel them if she pressed her fingers
into the flesh hard enough. This she did with cruel hatred, hard
enough to bring tears to her eyes. Her wrist and hand weren’t at
all like Mira Ashton’s, which seemed equally suited to pummel a
boy’s face or bake what had turned out to be a positively dreadful
pie. And speaking of food, Mira Ashton hadn’t made a glutton of
herself. Mira hadn’t had three helpings of pasty and roasted
partridge, two-thirds of the stuffed peaches, four pieces of bread,
and enough milk to feed a hungry calf. She hadn’t drowned herself
in a quart of syllabub buried under a froth of whipped egg white
and sweet, thick cream. And she hadn’t hidden in her napkin the
little pastries the housekeeper had brought out following the
failure of the pie, stuffed them in her pocket, and sneaked them
upstairs in case she got hungry between suppertime and
breakfast.

No, Mira had picked at this, picked at that,
and spent most of the evening staring at Brendan when he wasn’t
staring at her. Oh, if she could only be like her. Hot-tempered
without being vindictive. Soft and impish and slender. As at home
in the blue woolen gown and demure mobcap she’d worn to supper as
she was astride a galloping horse in a man’s breeches.

Oh, Mira Ashton could have any man she
wanted. She didn’t even have to try.

Eveleen’s days of having men hovering about
her, her dreams of marriage to a fine and handsome prince, were
long gone. Now there were only two males in this entire world who
cared that she existed: her beloved brother and that gray dockyard
cat, whose gender she’d discovered after finding it curled up on
her clean white coverlet.

The cat. There had been quite a violent scene
when Mr. Ashton discovered it during supper. Or rather, it had
discovered him. The cat had shown the bad sense to come into the
dining room while they were eating, of all things, rubbing itself
against the old sea captain’s bowed legs and setting off a yelling
match between him and his equally vocal daughter that had made the
blood drain from Eveleen’s face in terror for her life. From the
nature of the argument—and that was a mild word for the shouting
that had nearly left her deaf—the gray cat wasn’t the first stray
that Mira had brought home. Eveleen felt a twinge of shame for
secretly gloating when Ephraim had exploded with wrath against his
daughter. That gloating, however, had turned quickly to grudging
admiration when Mira had leaped to her feet and hollered back at
her father at the top of her lungs until her handsome brother,
Matthew, who had let the yelling go on for several minutes, finally
chilled the hot tempers by his tactful and timely mention of a
rigging detail of Brendan’s dumb schooner.

And Brendan? He’d taken it all in with that
patient, quirky grin of his, obviously accustomed to this family’s
strange ways and unwilling to let them spoil his own appetite—an
appetite that had been quite hearty until he’d come to Mira’s apple
pie. . . .

Despite herself, Eveleen grinned, then just
as quickly frowned. Mira Ashton could do anything; she was perfect.
She could probably bake a good pie, too, if it suited her to do so.
But tonight? Obviously she’d left out the sugar and replaced it
with salt in a deliberate attempt to be nasty to her, Eveleen,
because she was fat. Yes, that was it. But why, then, had Brendan
scrunched up his face and grabbed for his napkin? And why had
Ephraim and Matthew passed over the pie, as though they’d known
better than to try it, and gone for the cookies instead? Had they
known that Mira had deliberately sabotaged it? Ephraim, maybe, but
she couldn’t believe that Matthew would be a party to such.

Matthew.
Eveleen’s eyes went
dreamy.

Oh, he didn’t look like a sea captain at all,
with that flaming red hair and boyish freckles, those spectacles
that kept sliding down his nose and giving him more of a scholarly
appearance than a military one. But appearances were deceiving. She
had no trouble visualizing him commanding the deck of his ship, no
trouble envisioning him plucking her poor, half-dead brother from
the ocean and restoring him to life. Matthew was gentle and
attentive and kind—to the Ashtons’ staff, to Miss Mira, even to
her, Eveleen, as though he really cared about making her stay at
his home comfortable. And he had a charming Yankee twang to his
speech, a penchant for setting his easily ignited sister off, and
wonderful brown eyes that were made all the more wonderful and
brown behind the magnification of his spectacles.

Eveleen caught sight of herself in the mirror
once more . . . and her dreams of handsome princes fizzled out. She
turned away from the mirror, biting the inside of her lip to keep
from crying. The candle had burned low and was beginning to
flicker. Cold drafts chilled her ankles. Eveleen eyed the bed, its
fluted and carved posts supporting a lacy canopy, and its thick
patchwork quilt just waiting for her to snuggle under it.

If she retired now, breakfast would come that
much sooner.

Shivering, she crossed the cold room to the
fireplace, filled the bed warmer with hot coals, and passed it
quickly between the crisp sheets to warm them. Unthinkingly, she
reached for the coverlet with her right hand—and saw that horrible
thing that was attached to her wrist, that ugly, crippled, scarred,
and useless thing she kept hidden from the rest of the world.

Half of her thumb was gone . . . and where
her fore and middle fingers had been, there were only stumps.

Tears streaming quietly down her broad
cheeks, heavy breasts trembling with the effort it took to contain
the pent-up sobs so no one else would hear them, Eveleen dug her
nightgown out of her chest and yanked it over her head. Already it
was too tight beneath her arms, and the material cut into the soft
flesh. Angrily she started to slam the lid of the chest down, but
as she did, her gaze fell upon a gift that Brendan had given her
for her eighteenth birthday.

It was a box of pencils and some paper, now
yellow with age, peeking out from under the folded clothing.

She stared for a long time. The sobs caught
in her throat, and tremulously, she reached out and touched the
paper with the stub of her forefinger. How hopeful Brendan had been
when he’d given her that gift, how encouraging he’d been when he’d
urged her to try to draw, even if it meant using her left hand,
instead.

But she’d never had the courage.

Unbidden, Eveleen thought of Mira Ashton, who
could do anything. Mira had the full use of both hands . . . but if
she were a cripple, would she allow it to ruin her life?

No. Mira Ashton would’ve made herself
draw.

It was no wonder that Brendan was attracted
to her. Mira was strong, resourceful, brave. Perhaps she, Eveleen
could be brave, too. Maybe if she tried to help herself, the
handsome Captain Ashton might pay her a bit of attention. If
Brendan admired the trait in Mira, wouldn’t Matthew admire it in
her? And if she could turn out a drawing as fine as the ones she’d
been capable of before she lost the use of her hand, surely Matthew
would notice . . . and perhaps even admire her for it.

She may have lost her figure, but inside, she
was still a gifted artist . . . if only she had the means of
tapping that gift.

For the first time since Crichton’s shot had
taken off her fingers, Eveleen wanted to try.

The paper lay there, seeming to stare up at
her. Eveleen stared back. She started to withdraw her hand and
then, biting her lip, reached out a final time and awkwardly
grasped the paper. It had been years since she’d tried to sketch
anything, and just having the paper in her hand bolstered her
courage.

Shaking now, she placed it on the nearby desk
and reached out to pick up a pencil.

And dropped it.

A tear rolled from her eye, and angrily
Eveleen brushed it away. She would not give up. She wouldn’t!

The fire crackled. The pencil lay on the
floor. Eveleen choked back another sob, picked it up, and this time
managed to hold it between the crook of her half thumb and the stub
of her forefinger. It felt stiff . . . familiar . . .
terrifying.

Could she do it?
Oh, please God. . .
.

She bit down on her lower lip in
concentration and slowly, fearfully, touched the pencil to the
paper. A line appeared, shaky, uneven, faint—

So intent was she that she never heard Mira’s
soft knock.

Her brow, furrowed in concentration, became
beaded with sweat. Her breathing quickened and she moved her hand,
letting her arm do the work, hoping against hope that she could do
it, oh please, God, just do it—

The pencil fell from her grasp and rolled
away.

It was too much. Angrily Eveleen balled the
paper and hurled it across the room, crying bitterly as it slammed
against the wall and hit the floor. She never saw it lying there,
crumpled. She never saw Mira, who’d come to try to make amends
after their initial meeting, standing silently in the doorway with
sympathy darkening her eyes.

Throwing herself down on the bed, Eveleen
pressed her face into the pillow to muffle her sobs and wished with
all her heart she were dead.

Chapter 10

Eveleen wasn’t the only Merrick who had
trouble sleeping that night. Three hours later, Brendan lay awake
in his room in the Ashton home, watching moonlight glint off the
brass telescope at the window and listening to the ticking of all
sixteen—it was up to sixteen now; he’d actually counted—clocks that
Ephraim had set in strategic places throughout the house. He
listened to that ticking, that tocking, while his engineer’s mind
calculated how many ticks there were in every hour, if one assumed
the clocks—all sixteen of them, that is—ticked every second. Take
sixty, multiply it by sixty again, then by sixteen—

Faith, no wonder he couldn’t sleep.

He looked again at the telescope and
considered getting up. It had snowed a bit, earlier; now dark
clouds were filing out to sea and leaving stars, glittering like
chips of blue ice, in their place. His eyes were well adjusted to
the darkness, but moonlight would illuminate the distant river well
enough that he should be able to see
Kestrel
waiting down
there in the harbor.

Shivering, he got up and went to the window.
The great constellation of Orion the Hunter lay high over distant
Plum Island and the Atlantic, brandishing his shield at the starry
zenith.

Ah, Orion
. . . . In the crystalline
night, the Hunter’s stars had never seemed brighter: the fiery
Betelgeuse, glowing red at his right shoulder; Bellatrix at his
left; Saiph and the bluish Rigel at his feet.

Rigel.
Brendan grinned to himself.
Based on what he knew of the colt, the animal was too much for
Eveleen, and it was obvious his sister was terrified of him.
Earlier, Mira had suggested that the riding lessons be given on
Rigel’s dam, Shaula, whose temperament was quieter than that of
either Rigel or the black stallion, El Nath. Brendan hoped she was
right. That devil-horse was, at the moment, making one hell of a
racket down in his stall, slamming his hooves against the door over
and over again.

He wondered if there was a clock in the
stable. ’Twould explain the steed’s bad temper.

He sighed, then, shivering, crawled back into
bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. He was freezing, despite
the crackling flames in the big fireplace, the sheet-wrapped brick
snugged up against his toes, the coverlet, the wool blankets, and
the three thick, heavy quilts.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Something jumped up on the bed.
“
M-r-r-r-r-r-r-rrrrreow?
”

“Oh, go away!”

“
M-R-R-R-R-EEEE-O-O-O-O-OOOOW!
”

Faith, what a screech! Cursing, he grabbed
the animal and put it beneath the covers before it could wake up
the whole household, where it promptly curled itself against his
leg and set up a purring loud enough to drown out even the shelf
clock that ruled the mantel.

At least it was warm.

But as he lay there thinking of tomorrow and
counting off the moments—
tick, tock, tick, tock
—till
morning, when he would be rowed out to his new command to take her
on her first cruise, he knew why he couldn’t sleep.