Captain of My Heart (41 page)

A group of seamen waited in the boat below,
their faces long and solemn; as one, they took up the oars and
rowed him away. From his silent crew. From his ship, still fighting
the helmsman’s hand. From
her.

“God bless you,” she whispered brokenly as
she stood alone at the rail. The wind caught her braid and ruffled
the thick tuft at the end. “Oh, Godspeed, Brendan. . . . I—” Her
voice caught on a sob. “—
I love you.”

Liam joined her, his eyes hopeless and
haunted as he watched the little boat carry his friend and captain
farther and farther away. He reached out, silently took her hand,
and gripped it hard.

“Crichton’ll kill him, ye know,” he said
quietly, his throat working and his gaze fastened on the departing
boat. Brendan never looked back, and Mira swallowed hard to keep
from crying. Oh, God, why, oh why, hadn’t she apologized for the
way she’d doubted him? Treated him? Rejected him? Would she ever
feel those sinewy arms around her again, look up into those
laughing Irish eyes, hear sweet Gaelic endearments whispered in her
ear?

Would she ever see him alive again?

“Oh, Liam ...” She looked up at him, the
tears magnifying her eyes in her pale face. “Why is he doing this?”
She gripped his hand.
“Why?”

Above, a yard creaked in protest. The deck
moved restlessly beneath her feet. And the big Irishman just stared
once more at the now distant figure in the boat.

“Because yer brother was his friend, lassie.”
He turned then, looked down at her. “And friends don’t leave
friends to bastards like Crichton.”

She bit down hard on her lower lip, squeezed
her eyes shut, and turned her streaming face skyward. And then,
unable to hold back the emotion any longer, she buried her face in
her hands and sobbed brokenly.

Clouds rolled in from the west on a
freshening wind, promising rain by nightfall.
Kestrel,
restless and uneasy, began to drift toward a neighboring island as
though she sought to dash herself against the shoals that girded
it. With a curse, Liam ran aft, bawling orders to the boatswain. It
didn’t sound quite right to hear him doing it when it should have
been Brendan.

“Hands aloft to loose the tops’ls! Right
lively now, here comes the wind! Hold her steady, Mr. Keefe!”

Kestrel
moved uneasily, reluctantly
answering her helm and fighting them every step of the way.

“I said
steady,
John! God Almighty.
...”

Mira raised her head. She could almost sense
the schooner staring after her creator and captain like a faithful
dog, trying desperately to swing her bowsprit on the now distant
boat. She heard John Keefe swearing, then Liam, as he pounded
forward to take the tiller himself; she heard the angry slatting of
lines above, the protesting creak of spars and masts. Head bowed,
Mira gripped the rail in trembling hands, and felt her soul, her
own agony, traveling down through her fingers and merging with that
of the schooner.

And for the first time, she felt a strange
kinship with this other female of Brendan’s—this other female of
wood and canvas and wind. The tears stopped, and bewildered, she
closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel the presence, the soul,
of the ship around her.

His
ship.

“
Kestrel,”
she said softly. “Oh,
Kestrel. . . .
”

Above, the wind hummed, caught the topsails,
and sang a poem through lines, shrouds, and stays.

“We can’t let this happen,” she whispered,
staring off in the direction Brendan had gone. “You see, he’s . . .
my captain, too. And I . . . I love him.”

High overhead, the wind whined through stays
and shrouds.

But you deserted him. Were faithless when I
remained true.

Mira froze.

He’s going to his death. Not because of me.
Because of you. . . .

Because of you . . . you . . . you . . .

With a sob, Mira jerked her hands from the
rail and fled below.

###

The welcome that HMS
Viper
gave the
Royal Navy’s long-lost flag captain was a mocking one, and Brendan,
emerging through the entry port and stepping onto her deck as the
sun sank into the sea, knew it. Marines with immaculate red coats,
blue-and-white-clad officers, pigtailed seamen; all watched him
with awe, for he was something of a legend. The thought merely
increased his uneasiness. Through long habit he almost doffed his
hat to the quarterdeck, turned, and faced Captain Richard Crichton
as his old enemy came forward, his hard smile triumphant, his eyes
glowing with a strange light.

“Captain Merrick.” Crichton hadn’t changed
much over the past several years; he was a bit broader through the
waist, perhaps, but that was all. “How nice of you to join us.” His
eyes gleamed as he glanced off toward where
Kestrel
’s lights
glimmered on the waves. “And how bloody noble, too. Imagine,
sacrificing yourself to save a friend. My, my, what is this world
coming to?” Again that hard grin. “Myles! Please see to it that my
steward brings a pot of tea down to us in my cabin . . . My former
flag captain and I have
much
to discuss.”

“And Captain Ashton?” Brendan said tightly,
gripping his hands together behind his back.

“Oh, I’ll have him brought up shortly. He’s
been a spot of trouble, you know. Typical Yankee. Hotheaded and
quite difficult to handle. But I have my methods for dealing with
recalcitrants, Captain Merrick. Just as I have them for dealing
with
deserters
.”

Brendan tensed, but remained the picture of
calm.

“Myles? Please bring the Yankee up and send
him back to the schooner. Both of them, in fact. The old one isn’t
worth the time it takes to restrain him. Captain Merrick and I
shall be in my cabin. Please see that we’re not disturbed.”

With an elaborate flourish, Crichton swept
his hand before him. “After you,
sir
.” He gave a humorless
grin, and when Brendan hesitated, drove his pistol brutally into
his spine. “Oh, and Myles? One last thing. Please rig up a halter
to the foreyard, would you? I feel that a lesson in the punishment
of deserters is
long
overdue.”

Myles, ever protective of his captain’s image
in the admiral’s eyes, protested, “But, sir? I thought Sir Geoffrey
wanted Captain Merrick delivered to him alive.”

“Just do as I say, damn you. You know I don’t
like to be kept waiting.” He smiled coldly, eyes glinting beneath
the shadow of his hat, and turned to Brendan. “As
you
have
kept me waiting for four long years, Merrick.”

Wordlessly Brendan glanced a final time at
Kestrel,
anchored so close, yet so far. Desperate fear rose
up in him. Then Crichton’s pistol was jabbing into his spine again
and they were moving. Down the hatchway. Down into the depths of
the ship.

Down, he knew, into hell.

###

With grim resolution, Liam had carried out
his captain’s last order and brought the schooner to windward of
the anchored frigate, where her chances of escape were far greater
than if she’d lain helplessly to leeward of the swift
square-rigger. Not that Liam had any intention of fleeing if it
came down to a fight—and neither did
Kestrel,
who showed him
her sweet side as she glided to a new anchorage a quarter mile away
from the bigger ship and settled down for the night to wait.

But if a fight ensued, nothing short of
Brendan’s absent Irish luck would save them, for
Viper,
built of solid Sussex oak and boasting thirty-two guns on her deck
and twin nines mounted in her forecastle as chasers, was the
schooner’s superior in both stoutness and firepower.

But not spirit.

Dusk came, and the last light of the day
glowed red on the horizon. Waves slapped endlessly against the
hull, and timbers, masts, and yards creaked uneasily. Someone
started a chanty to try and raise the gloomy spirits, but one sharp
glance from Liam and the voice went dead.

And so the decks lay quiet, the glow from a
pipe here and there the only spot of light in the gloom. Another
hour passed. Two.

And still they waited.

The watch changed. Fergus carried a lantern
aloft and hung it in the shrouds; Liam ordered the gunports
silently opened and
Kestrel
’s armament run out. The schooner
fidgeted uneasily. Then, from across the water, they heard sounds.
Oars biting into waves, lifting, dripping, biting again. Grunts and
curses and voices. As one, the crew ran to the rail and stared out
into the darkness.

“Boat ahoy!” Liam called, his voice tight
with apprehension.

“
Kestrel!”
came the reply. “Stand by
for Captain Ashton!”

Mira collapsed against Abadiah Bobbs and
would have fallen if not for his steadying hand beneath her elbow.
“Matt,” she cried, the night wind cooling her wet cheeks.
“
Matt!
”

The Jacob’s ladder was lowered amid frantic
activity and excited voices. Muffled curses drifted up to them, and
groans as someone wrestled with a great weight down there by the
feeble glow of a lantern. Mira pressed her fingers to her mouth and
tried to see.

“We’re bringing him up!”

“Matt!” Desperately she tried to get past
Liam’s brawny arm. “Let me go, dammit! He’s my brother!”

“Stay back, lassie, till we get him aboard,”
the big Irishman said, not wanting Ashton’s little sister to see
the possible extent of Crichton’s cruelties firsthand.

As they hauled Matt over the rail, it took
both Liam and Abadiah to restrain her, for the limp, lifeless form
they laid out on
Kestrel
’s lantern-lit deck bore no
resemblance to the brother she’d known and loved.

“Matt!” she shrieked.

He’d been harshly beaten, his face so
battered, bruised, and swollen that she almost didn’t recognize
him. By the lantern’s glow his freckles stood out on his pale
cheeks like shot on parchment. Blood matted his hair and crusted
his upper lip. Someone thrust the lantern closer, its soft glow
falling over his face, and as he turned his head, she saw that his
eyes were sightless, staring, and dead.

“
Matt!”

“Mira? That you, Sis?”

“Catch her, she’s goin’ to fall,” Liam said
tonelessly, his face like stone as he stared off beyond the black
spiderweb of
Kestrel’
s shrouds to where
Viper
’s
distant lights glowed upon the water. And Mira, taking her
brother’s hand and sobbing over it, thought of the laughing man
who’d gone to that devil-ship to trade himself for him.

Crichton had nothing against Matt, and look
what he’d done to him.

But Crichton hated Brendan.

Liam’s words echoed over and over through her
mind:
“Crichton’ll kill him, ye know.”

“
No!”
She lunged to her feet and ran
toward the rail, toward that distant ship, hearing her own screams
coming from farther and farther away. Dalby caught her before she
went over, and the sight of
Viper
’s lights was her last
before her world went black.

###

The wind freshened and backed a few points
during the night, and by the wee hours of the morning, waves were
glinting white in the darkness and breaking over
Kestrel
’s
plunging bows in great sheets of hissing spray.

High, high above the surging deck, standing
in the crosstrees of the foremast, Mira turned her face into the
teeth of the wind and stared off into the night, where
Viper
’
s
lights shone like a beacon as she tacked on a
southwesterly course. By the faint glow of the moon Mira could just
make out her yards braced hard around and hear the occasional
voices of the men on her deck. And the only reason she could hear
them was that
Kestrel,
in silent pursuit, glided as
soundlessly as a nighthawk on the hunt.

Liam, of course, was right. Friends didn’t
leave friends to bastards like Crichton.

She curled an arm around the mast. This time
she felt no animosity from her jealous rival, just an overwhelming
sense of camaraderie. They had made their peace. They were united,
she and
Kestrel.
United in a single, desperate cause.

To save the man they both loved.

Far below, the crew conversed in hushed
tones, and even the sea spoke in whispers as it creamed back from
Kestrel
’s sharp bows and fell away in a long, swirling wake
of moonlight behind them.

The rain had held off all night; now
low-hanging clouds raced past the masthead, letting the moon shine
through here, a scattering of stars there. Looking up, it seemed
that the tip of that lonely spire was all that held the storm
clouds at bay. But now they were gathering in force, filing in from
the west, snuffing out the stars and casting an eerie, blackened
pall over the rising waves. The storm would be upon them soon,
Dalby had predicted with his usual doom and gloom. But they were
desperate men in a desperate ship, and Mira, thinking of her blind,
semiconscious brother lying in Brendan’s cabin below, dared not
imagine the fate of the man who had sacrificed so much to get him
there.

When I see you, Brendan, I’ll tell
you.
She swallowed hard and she set her jaw, resolute and
determined as she stared ahead.
I’ll tell you all—beginning with
how much I love you.

A gust of wind caught the pennant high above
her head and snapped it like a whip-crack. Dauntless,
Kestrel
added another knot to her swift pace, driving her
shoulder into the waves as she kept her plunging bowsprit trained
on the frigate’s lights.

Her hand against the mast, Mira felt the
schooner’s nose come up, heard the sea’s song rise in pitch as
Kestrel
’s speed increased and the wind drove her through the
building seas.