Captain of My Heart (43 page)

Mira was indifferent to it all. In the room
across the hall, Eveleen had set up her own vigil at Matt’s
sickbed, and her brother seemed to be enjoying all the attention
the girl heaped upon him. By the way that Eveleen blushed when Matt
paid her a compliment, and the way Matt grinned and preened when
Eveleen was near, it was obvious that things were finally heating
up between the two. Maybe Matt didn’t need his eyesight to see that
Brendan’s sister was a more beautiful person than any of the women
who’d wanted him for his money and status alone. But Mira’s heart
wasn’t into encouraging their relationship.

It wasn’t into anything.

###

The mutual frustration and helplessness they
both felt as Brendan faded before their eyes, and Mira’s spirit
died with him, only strengthened the growing bond between Matt and
Eveleen, for it brought them together out of necessity, as well as
need.

On a day when Eveleen sat spooning clam
chowder into Matt as the two of them lamented the situation,
Eveleen finally decided she’d had enough of Mira’s self-pity and
despair. Her friend had pulled her out of the misery that had been
hers since Crichton had left her a cripple; now it was time to do
the same for her. Eveleen waited just long enough for Matt to
finish his supper, carried the bowl back to the kitchen, where,
oddly, she was able to pass by a plate of Abigail’s sugared almonds
without taking any, and marched back up the imposing mahogany
staircase and into Brendan’s room.

And there was Mira, still glued to the chair,
head bent, Brendan’s hand clenched in her own, and the
Essex
Gazette
spread across her lap. Her voice was muffled through
her thick hair, and her words were strained, hoarse, and
ragged.

Eveleen frowned.

Sunlight slanted through the window,
backlighting Mira’s rumpled muslin gown; her hair fell down over
her eyes and across the page from which she was reading. Doggedly
she put the newspaper down, shoved the hair over her shoulder, and
never relinquishing her hold on Brendan’s hand, continued on,
forcing a cheery note to her voice that, combined with the choking
brokenness of it, was absolutely pitiful to hear.

“‘Yesterday—’”
Sniff
. “‘— the
privateering sloop
Yankee Lady
defeated the British
brig-of-war
Worcester
in a brief but intense exchange in the
waters of Nantucket Sound, where the enemy hauled down his colors
to the sloop after losing his main topmast.’”
Sniff.
She
passed a knuckle under her eye, shoved her hair back again, and
turned the page. “‘By the intelligence of well-placed informants,
we learn of a plan by the British to fortify Penobscot Bay—’
Penobscot,
Brendan, that’s in Maine! ‘—and establish a haven
for loyalists who’ve been driven from their homes. It is feared
that the Enemy may construct a fort here, and talk abounds as to
the best way to drive them out before they do. . . .’” She paused,
for that was
not
good news, and she’d given the order
herself that nothing but good news must reach Brendan, whether he
appeared to hear it or not. Hastily she flipped to the front page.
“And here, Brendan, listen to this—‘Spain has now allied itself
with France, who’s agreeing to help her recover the Bay of
Honduras, Florida, Minorca, and Gibraltar from the Brits in return
for military and naval aid.’
Spain is in the war!
Now,
that’s
good news, isn’t it?”

He didn’t move.

She wiped another tear away, drying her
fingers against skirts that were already damp. Another tear
trickled down her cheek. Another.

The skirt grew damper.

“And here, something about General
Washington. And wait! Look at this, Brendan.” The page was
dog-eared and worn, for Ephraim had had the newspaper first. “This
is about you! It says, and I quote, ‘And the people of Newburyport
continue to pray for the brave and gallant Captain Brendan Merrick,
who was treated most shamefully at our hands before setting out to
rescue Captain Matthew Ashton from the hideous brutalities of
Captain Crichton of His Majesty’s Royal Navy.’” She paused, the
tears filling her eyes, her nose, her throat, and making it
impossible to read the blurry print. With a sob, she set the paper
across her lap and buried her face in her wet hands.

And then she jerked her head up and viciously
clawed the hair out of her eyes. “Dammit, Brendan, did you hear me?
I said they’ve forgiven you.”

He didn’t move.

Heartache swelled her chest, threatening to
burst it.
“Forgiven you!
What more do you want? Patrick
Tracy and Mr. Johnson were here this morning, and Michael Dalton’s
penning a letter to General Washington commending you, telling him
all you did—” She gulped back the tears, her voice catching on
sobs. “N-next thing you know, the general will be b-b-begging you
to lend
Kestrel
to the Continental navy—”
Sniff.
“Next thing you know, he’ll—”
Sob.
“—be asking you t-to give
up privateering and join the n-navy instead.”
Sniff. Sob.
Sniff.
“N-next thing you know, they’ll be making you a
c-commodore. A . . .
f-flag captain.”

Bursting into tears, she hurled the newspaper
to the floor and buried her face in her hands. She didn’t know if
the American navy had flag captains or not—but she did know that
Brendan would never be one.

And that he’d never be a commodore.

And that he’d never be a privateer again,
either, for he wasn’t going to be doing any more sailing. Not
today. Not tomorrow.

Maybe not ever.

In the open doorway, Eveleen, regal in pink
and gold silk, set her jaw and put her hands on her hips as Mira’s
voice, barely discernible through fingers, tears, and hair,
shattered the quiet of the room.

“Oh, Brendan . . . you never cared what
Newburyport thought, you only cared what
I
thought. If I’d
believed in you from the very start, maybe you’d still have set out
to rescue Matt, but at least you’d have done so knowing that I’d
forgiven you. That I
loved
you. But no, I was too busy
wallowing in my own grief, looking for someone to blame Matt’s
death on, never realizing that
you
carried more hurt and
pain than any of us because you had to bear our condemnation, our
accusations, our
hatred.”
Her voice broke and her anguished
sobs drowned out the chirps of baby sparrows just outside the open
window. “Oh, Brendan . . . I
know
you love Matt as a
brother! I
know
you’re not a coward, not a traitor, not a .
. . not a
Brit!”
She raised a red and puffy face, clawed the
tears from her cheeks, and screamed, “You’re a goddamned . . .
Irishman! You’re an American! You’re a cussed, bloody, stupid,
gallant
fool!”

Angrily she flung his hand back across his
chest, her muffled sobs wracking her body and making her chair
creak as she rocked miserably back and forth, her head in her
hands. “Stupid, bloody
fool!
You’ve had your revenge on us,
now,
wake up,
damn you . . . Damn, damn, damn. . . .

Huddled there with her arms wrapped around
her knees, she missed it: the twitch of his finger; the shift in
the rhythm of his breathing; the slight roll of his eyes beneath
lax lids.

And Eveleen, standing in the doorway.
“Really, Mira. You disappoint me.”

Mira raised her head, glared at her, and let
her face fall back to her wet palms again. “Go away.”

“He needs your fighting spirit right now. Not
your self-pity.”

“
Get out!”

Eveleen was not intimidated. With regal grace
she swept into the room, shoved the window open as wide as it would
go, and pulled up a chair, where she faced Mira from across the
bed. Their gazes clashed; calm gold against angry green. Serenity
against rage.

Faith against despair.

“Well?” Mira shouted, swiping at falling
tears and glaring at the other woman over Brendan’s blanketed
chest. “You came here to say something, so say it and then leave me
alone!”

Eveleen looked thoughtfully down at her
brother’s still face and adjusted her gown, which kept sliding down
her shoulder. She frowned and, forgoing hauteur, finally yanked it
back up and said something under her breath that sounded
suspiciously like a curse before facing Mira with an apologetic
smile. Mira did not smile back.

“When I first met you,” Eveleen began
quietly, “I admired you because you had everything I didn’t,
everything I wanted—and yet you never struck me as a selfish
person. But lately I’ve begun to wonder otherwise.”

Mira’s eyes hardened, and she clenched her
fists at the sides of her chair.

Dauntlessly Eveleen continued, “What gives
you
the right to sit here and hate yourself for what my
brother made the choice to do?” Reaching out, she brushed her
fingers against Brendan’s pale and sunken cheek. “Do you honestly
think he could have let what Crichton did to Matthew go unavenged?
What Crichton did to
me?”
She thrust her maimed hand toward
Mira for emphasis. “This has been going on for four years, Mira.
Four years.
And it isn’t finished yet. Oh, no, not by any
means. When my brother recovers, he’ll go back out there and he
won’t stop until he finds Crichton and puts an end to his
cruelties.”

Mira sniffed back angry sobs. “Your brother
isn’t going anywhere, Eveleen, except to a plot behind St. Paul’s
Church!”

“I beg to differ, Mira. And so does John
Keefe, and Fergus McDermott, and even Liam Doherty—”

“Liam Doherty!” Mira leapt to her feet,
slamming her tiny fist into the wall so hard that outside, the
sparrows stopped chirping. “What the bloody hell does he know? And
Fergus waving crystals around like a sachet of perfume every time
he comes here. He and Liam and the rest of those bloody Irishmen
are making me sick!
‘He’ll be just fine, Mira; you wait and
see,’”
she mimicked. “None of you can face reality! None of you
see him wasting away before your eyes as I do! Or maybe you don’t
bloody well care! Damn you, damn all of you,
he’s dying,
Eveleen!”

Shoulders shaking with the force of her
tears, she turned her damp face to the wall and beat against it
with tiny palms, making a pastel drawing of a brigantine tremble on
its hook. The artist’s signature mirrored the one affixed to
Kestrel
’s drafts, framed and hanging in a place of honor in
Ephraim’s library.

Brendan’s.

“Dying, Eveleen,” she sobbed, brokenly.
“Dying. . . .”

Eveleen shrugged and picked up her brother’s
hand. “I’ve seen him worse,” she said.

Mira whirled. “Any worse and he’d be dead.
Dead!”

“Mira, there are a few things you don’t know
about my brother. You see, he’s always tended to be rather . . .
accident prone. He’s also cursed with our mother’s Irish luck. I
say cursed, because there have been times he’s wished himself dead,
times he
should’ve
been dead—but no.” She leaned across the
bed, lifted the blanket, and gently drew it back from Brendan’s
chest. “Come here, please.”

Sniffling, her face pale and angry and wet,
Mira did.

“See this scar?” Eveleen indicated the circle
of toughened white skin. “Brendan got it the
first
time he
and Crichton came to blows. I know Liam told you about what
Crichton did to me, but I’ll bet neither he nor Brendan told you
about what Crichton did to my brother.” Eveleen looked up, her eyes
level, her voice hard. “Crichton shot him in the back when he was
trying to save an innocent man—Dalby, incidentally—from the
lash.”

Mira stared at her.

The silence hung heavily in the room.

Outside the window, the baby sparrows
shrilled as their parents returned with food.

“The ball passed through his body and out
through his chest, right here.” Eveleen ran her thumb over the
circular ridge of scar tissue. “It should have killed him—but it
didn’t. Another shot hit him here, driving him over the rail and
into the sea.
That
one should’ve killed him, but it didn’t.”
She gently drew the coverlet up, her eyes filled with the pain of
remembrance. “But I’ll tell you what almost did.”

Mira sniffled and wiped a tear from her
eye.

“Julia,” Eveleen said quietly.

“Julia?”

Eveleen gazed out the window, her eyes
distant. “She was the daughter of an American army officer in
Boston. She was also the one who found Brendan washed up in the
surf there after he fell overboard from
Halcyon.
A pretty
young thing, with dark hair like yours and violet eyes that looked
deceptively innocent. Like you, she cared for my brother and nursed
him back to health in her father’s own house. The Americans used to
come and go; it was somewhat of a gathering spot, and Brendan heard
enough of their political opinions, saw enough of their suffering,
that eventually he came to believe he’d been fighting for the wrong
side, the wrong cause—especially after he learned that his own navy
had declared him a deserter and a traitor. Crichton, you see, made
up a story that he’d incited a mutiny aboard
Halcyon
and,
supported by his officers, that story was widely accepted.” She
squeezed his limp hand. “Of course, my brother always
was
something of a rebel. Our mother’s Irish blood, Da used to say.
...”

The door swung open and shut in the breeze,
and Rescue Effort Number Twenty pattered in, glanced around, and
jumped up on the bed. Purring loudly, he rubbed himself against
Eveleen’s wrist and finally nestled against Brendan’s blanketed
ankle.

“In any case, to make a long story short,
Brendan fell in love with Julia, and he fell hard. They were going
to get married, and all the time, my brother was entertaining this
idea of designing a schooner to combine the best of American
craftsmanship and British standards of perfection. He was a gifted
naval architect, you know. But it never occurred to him that his
precious Julia couldn’t have cared less about his dreams, would
only see the ship as something to take his attention away from her
. . . something to
compete
with. He thought she’d love it as
much as he did. He thought she’d be proud of him, as he intended it
to be a privateer in the service of his newly adopted country. But
no. He didn’t see that Julia was nothing but a spoiled, selfish
little brat. Love is blind, they say. Julia wasn’t about to share
him with the sea, a navy, and certainly not a ship, no matter how
lovely it would be, no matter how heralded, no matter how much
General Washington himself praised its design. . . .