Captain of My Heart (34 page)

“Take that, ye bloody bunch o’ British
buggers!”

“Damn ye and yer prig-faced king!”

“Get a
real
ship! Ha, ha, ha!”

“Huzzah f’r
Kestrel!
Huzzah f’r
Kestrel!”

Their raucous voices drowned out the sounds
of cracking wood as the cutter’s mast teetered and came down in a
hopeless tangle of cordage and spars.

“Think he knows who we are now, Cap’n?”

“Aye, Liam, I think that gave him a good
idea.”

“But he ’asn’t struck t’ us yet!”

“Nor do I expect him to. That’s young Oliver
Heathmore who commands her.”

Brendan would know, of course, Liam thought.
He remembered his acquaintances from his Royal Navy days well. “Not
young Oliver Heathmore!” he said, jaw agape.

Brendan grinned. “An ambitious young pup if
ever there was one. Oh well, we shall try not to do him too grave
an injury. I want his dispatches and his money, not his ship.”

“She’d make a nice prize, though.”

“Not when Mr. Starr finishes with her!”

The little gunner and his team were already
swabbing out
Freedom
’s bore with a wet sheepskin sponge
attached to a flexible rammer. Seconds later, both charge and shot
were rammed home and the gun run swiftly out on a squeal of
tackle.

“As you bear!” Brendan called to each gun
crew.

Handspikes flashed, and
Kestrel,
now
running down the cutter’s beam and circling her stern, took dead
aim on her. The wind took her, leaning her over. Farther.

And farther.

“Fire!”

The cutter disappeared in a wreath of
smoke.

“Captain Heathmore! I invite you to strike
while you’re still afloat!” Brendan called, hanging out from the
shrouds by his elbow, the sea sweeping beneath his feet. “If you do
not, I shall sink you where you stand!”

The Briton’s voice came madly through the
trumpet. “Damn you to hell for this, you blasted rebel! I’ll see
you pay, so help me God!”

Brendan turned to Liam, his expression full
of mock hurt. “Did you hear that? He called me a blasted rebel!
Why, to think he doesn’t even recognize me!”

“If ’e did, he’d strike fer sure,” Liam
joked.

Gunfire was echoing across the water now as
somewhere off to starboard,
Proud Mistress
engaged the other
ship, a two-masted snow. Coughing and choking on the smoke, Mira
strained her ears for her captain’s next order. The smoke began to
clear, and she anxiously peered through it, seized by a momentary
panic that he’d been hit by the sporadic fire coming from the
cutter.

And then she saw him.

He was still clinging to the shrouds, his
speaking trumpet dangling from his wrist, his drawing pad balanced
on his arm. He was sketching wildly.

The man was insane.

At that moment he looked up. “Don’t just
stand there, Mr. Starr!”

She didn’t—and the last shot did it.
Dismasted and listing badly, the cutter was all but dead in the
water. On her deck, her young commander squinted through the acrid
haze and saw a handsome brig rounding up the two merchantmen who’d
fallen in with him the day before, as well as the defeated snow.
And then the smoke cleared, drifting away with the mists.

Captain Oliver Heathmore and his crew caught
a collective breath.

There stood the schooner.

She was like nothing they’d ever seen.
Graceful but deadly.
Beautifully
deadly, like a sultry woman
who knows her own power and wields it with ruthless purpose. She
wore her sails like a queen would her robes. Her two masts were
sharply raked, as though swept backward by the pass of a giant
hand. Her bows were keener than a butcher’s knife, her bowsprit
lean and long and haughty, her profile so low in the water, she
seemed to be born of it, rather than to it.

Heathmore looked at the sea reflecting along
her trim black sides, the giltwork picked out in red and gold at
her stern.

Kestrel,
he read. And beneath that,
Newburyport.

And then he looked up and saw a tall figure,
immaculate in the blue coat of an American privateer, standing near
the helm. He was holding up a book of some sort, his speaking
trumpet hung from his wrist, and he was grinning.

Bringing his telescope to his eye for a
better view, Captain Oliver Heathmore peered at that book and saw
that it was a drawing of a sea fight—and not just
any
sea
fight, but the one he’d just lost.

The man raised the speaking trumpet to his
lips. “Well, what d’you think, Ollie? Do you like it?”

And then Heathmore recognized the mirthful
eyes beneath the jaunty tricorne of the American.

There was no mistaking that weightless grin,
the Irish cadences in that lilting voice.

“The devil take me,” he swore silently.

The devil had.

Chapter
20

Marine News

On Sunday last, the privateers
Proud
Mistress
and
Kestrel
, Captains Ashton and Merrick, of
this port, returned from a very successful cruise against the Enemy
after sailing together in consort in the vicinity of Sandy
Hook.

From a reliable source we learn that the
schooner
Kestrel
, Merrick commanding, ran down and overtook
the fast-sailing Royal Mail packet
Sussex
, bound from London
to New York and carrying specie and dispatches to the Enemy which
is stationed there. In company with said packet were two
merchantmen, the one carrying sugar, cotton, molasses, and some
coffee, the other laden with 1,000 muskets and bayonets, 12 tons of
musket shot, 100 rounds of grape shot, and several barrels of
powder, all destined for His Majesty’s forces, and a snow carrying
12 guns and 10 swivels, which Ashton engaged, the firing, by all
accounts, lasting less than an hour. While the Royal Navy packet
certainly gave a good account of herself before striking her
colours to the schooner, her master hauling them down with his own
hand, we have been told that the damage she incurred was so grave
that Captains Merrick and Ashton deemed her unfit for sea and were
thus forced to sink her. To all accounts, Captains Merrick and
Ashton conducted themselves in a commendable, daring, but
gentlemanly manner with the merchantmen, the latter even returning
the private money and belongings of a lady passenger who was aboard
one of the merchantmen.

Ephraim Ashton cackled to himself and put
down the newspaper. He’d read the account eight times; certainly
enough to memorize it by now—which, of course, he’d done. From
across the breakfast table Eveleen Merrick watched him, but so
caught up was he in his private gloating, he was totally unaware of
her perusal. Shoving a one-eyed tabby cat off his lap, Ephraim
continued reading, his bushy eyebrows curling out over his
nose.

With their three prizes in tow, Captains
Merrick and Ashton, while in the latitude of the shoals of
Nantucket, but many miles to eastward of them, spied a large
British vessel having the appearance of a merchantman, and made
towards her; but to their astonishment found her to be a frigate
disguised. A light breeze prevailing, Captains Merrick and Ashton
hauled off in different directions—one only could be pursued—and
the frigate gained rapidly upon Merrick. Finding he could not run
away, the wind favoring the frigate’s square rig, Captain Merrick
had recourse to stratagem—on a sudden he hauled down every sail,
and had all hands on deck employed with setting poles, as if
shoving the schooner off a bank! The people on board the frigate
were amazed at the danger they had run, and to save themselves from
being grounded, immediately clawed off and left the clever and more
knowing Merrick “to make himself scarce,” as soon as darkness
rendered it prudent for him to hoist sail in a sea two hundred
fathoms deep!

Ephraim threw back his head and roared with
laughter.

Kestrel
and
Proud Mistress
were
welcomed into our port amid much celebration and rejoicing, the
both receiving a 13-gun salute by ships in our harbour and the
field guns on Plum Island. We have a fear that they have brought in
so many prizes that there is not room for them in the river. For
those who wish to view these two privateers who have done so much
to aid the cause of Liberty, they are tied up at the wharf of Capt.
Ephraim Ashton, where the gallant Captain Merrick informs us his
ship is open to any who wish to go aboard her and count the
shot-holes in her sails.

Ephraim slapped the paper down on the table
and whooped until the tears ran from his eyes. Tripes ’n’ bloody
guts, what more could he ask? A son who brought him more and more
glory every time he sailed, and now a future son-in-law whose
cleverness and daring eclipsed even Matt’s.

No sooner had that future son-in-law brought
his victorious
Kestrel
into port and fought his way through
the cheering throng than he’d shown up right here on the doorstep,
hat in hand, cheeks flushed with excitement, and looking every inch
the valiant young sea captain that he was. It had been the perfect
opportunity to force him down in a chair, force some good hot
cooking down his throat, and force him to relate every last,
glorious, delicious detail of the cruise.

There was no need for anyone to know, of
course, that the newspaper’s informant—that
reliable
source
—was none other than Ephraim himself.

Ephraim gave a private hoot of laughter. With
such triumphs, he could even overlook Matt’s philandering (his son
was presently holed up at Wolfe Tavern, paying court to that lady
passenger he’d found aboard the merchantman) and pretend it didn’t
exist. Merrick, at least, was no rake. In fact, Newburyport’s
newest hero was upstairs in the east room, where Ephraim had
dragged him following supper last night. That he was sleeping
soundly, he had no doubt; he hadn’t heard a sound from up there all
morning.

Still cackling over his own shrewdness,
Ephraim leaned back in his chair and folded his arms behind his
head. “Ah, Eveleen, that brother of yers is one helluva sea
officer, ain’t he? Never would’ve guessed it, that first day I met
him. Looked like somethin’ the cat brought in, by God.”

She glanced up from behind a plate of
johnnycakes, ham, and a slab of cheese that would’ve kept a nest of
mice in good spirits for a year. “Brendan learned to sail before he
could walk. At least, that was what our da always told us.”

“Yer papa must’ve been a seaman himself,
teaching his son such things when he was just a babe.”

“He was.” Eveleen stared down at her plate,
lips curved in a winsome smile that made her look almost pretty.
Especially since Ephraim had rarely seen her smile. She picked up a
corn muffin and pasted an inch-thick cap of butter and strawberry
jam atop it.

And then she put the muffin aside and looked
at Ephraim. The smile was gone, her eyes sad. “He was an admiral in
the Royal Navy when he was cut down on the decks of his own
flagship.”

Ephraim’s jaw dropped. “An admiral? Ye mean
to tell me yer daddy was an
admiral?
In the Royal Navy?”

“Yes.”

Ephraim’s throat worked. He was having a hard
time digesting this. “Holy hell!” he expostulated, rising to his
feet. “Don’t that beat all. Abigail!
Abigail!”
he roared,
his voice shaking the very timbers of the house. “C’mon in here; I
got something to tell ye!”

He couldn’t wait to spread
this
around!

Upstairs, it was still quiet. Obviously that
admiral’s son could sleep through anything.

Abigail bustled into the room, wiping her
hands on her apron. “Honestly, Ephraim, all that bellowing! You’re
going to wake the captain.”

He seized her by the shoulders. “Did you know
that Merrick’s papa was an
admiral?
An admiral, Ab! How the
Brits must be nettled to know that we have his son on our side
now!”

“They have always been nettled,” Eveleen
said, her eyes downcast. “Even when he was in their navy.”

“What?”

The girl was rising, her long golden hair
fanning out over her shoulders. “Jealousy,” she said quietly. “It
has brought down many a man. My father included—and my brother, if
he’d have allowed it.”

She turned on her heel and shuffled out of
the dining room, leaving Ephraim and Abigail to stare after her in
disbelief.

Their gazes met. The johnnycakes, the ham,
the cheese—and yes, even the muffin—were untouched.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ephraim said.

###

Things were quiet indeed up in the east room,
for Brendan wasn’t in it.

He’d allowed Ephraim to all but drag him in
there last night, but he hadn’t stayed long. Instead, he’d paced
the floor and finished up one of his sketches while he waited for
the old sea captain to retire, an event that had occurred at
precisely a quarter to one and not a second later, judging by the
loud snoring coming from that area of the house. Before the
nineteen clocks (it was up to that now) could finish tolling out
the hour, Brendan had pried open the frozen sill of his window,
hung out of it by his fingers, and dropped two stories into several
feet of snow.

It had taken only thirty minutes to make his
way back to
Kestrel.

He felt guilty about deceiving the old man,
but Mira had been in the next room, and he no longer trusted
himself around her. He’d seen the hungry looks she’d given him over
supper, felt her dainty foot rubbing up and down his leg beneath
the table, burning it even through his wool stockings. Thank God
for the tablecloth that had hidden the evidence of his desire for
her. If he’d stayed at the Ashton house last night, they would have
ended up in Mira’s bed or his. He had too much respect for the old
man to make love to his daughter right under his own roof . . .
even if they’d already announced their betrothal.