Captain of My Heart (44 page)

“Well, one day Brendan came back from an
appointment with the general and found a note from Julia, propped
up against the drafts.
Choose the ship or choose me
, the
note said. But Julia never gave him a choice. She left him, and
ended up marrying some army major not three months later.” Eveleen
ran her thumb over the back of her brother’s lax hand, and looked
up. “She broke his heart, Mira.”

The silence in the room grew oppressive. Mira
felt like something was standing on her chest and squeezing her
heart up through her throat. Quietly she said, “So that is why he
was always running from me.”

“Yes. That is why.” Eveleen gazed down into
her brother’s face. “You see, Mira, Brendan has been in love with
you, I think, from the moment he first met you. He came to me in
Portsmouth and told me about this girl he’d met who’d run him down
on a horse and went around dressed in breeches. And when I met you,
and saw you pounding the pudding out of that scruffy hooligan down
on the docks—and the admiration in my brother’s eyes as you were
doing it—I knew in my heart it was true. That he loved you. And
while he loved you, at first I hated you—not only because you were
thin and pretty when I wasn’t, but because I saw you as another
Julia. I love my brother, too, Mira. And I didn’t want his heart to
be broken again.”

Eveleen was the image of serenity as the
sunshine streamed in through the window and gilded her pale hair.
“You’ve always wondered why I didn’t tell Brendan who Mr. Starr
really
was, haven’t you? Well, it had nothing to do with
your promise to get Matthew interested in me, because honestly, I
had no faith that would ever really happen. No, I had a very
different reason for keeping your secret. That very first time you
defied your father and stole aboard
Kestrel,
I realized you
were night and day from Julia. I saw that you loved the sea and
loved ships, as much as Brendan did. That he could have with you
what he’d tried so hard to have with Julia. Love. Happiness.
Someone to share his passions with. And so I held my tongue. You
see, Mira, when Brendan loves a woman, be it a person or a ship—”
She smiled and folded his loose fingers in her own. “—he does so
with every bit of his heart. Every bit of his
Irish
heart,
Liam would say. And he loves
you
.”

Silence. Eveleen squeezed her brother’s hand
a final time, and gently placed it over the scar on his chest. She
looked at Mira and smiled. “He’s not going to die, Mira, because
you’re going to tell him how much you love him. Somehow, some way,
he’ll hear you. He’ll
know.
And death itself won’t be able
to hold him once he realizes that you’re here waiting for him.”

She rose, yanked up the loose shoulder of her
gown a final time, and turned toward the door.

“Eveleen, wait! We have to talk!”

But the other woman was eager to get back to
her own patient.

“Eveleen, please! I want to know more! About
Crichton. About Julia. About
Brendan!
I’ll even have Abigail
bring up a pot of tea and some of those cookies she baked
earlier—”

But Eveleen was shaking her head, smiling. As
she paused in the doorway, wrinkles fell from the silk at her
waist—wrinkles that hadn’t been there when Mira had last seen her
in the dress. “Know something, Mira?”

“Eveleen!”

“Between you and me, I’m glad Brendan’s here
with you and not aboard that schooner.” She winked, never looking
as much like her brother as she did in that moment. And then, from
behind the side of her hand: “I hate ships as much as Julia
did.”

###

Brit.

Damned Irishman!

She was shouting at him, swearing at him, her
voice ringing through his head, fading in and out on giant, rolling
combers of sound—

Bloody, stupid, gallant fool!

That hurt.

“Faith, lassie,” he said, but she didn’t seem
to hear him, only going on with that awful yelling.

His back hurt. His chest hurt. His head
hurt.

He
hurt.

And Eveleen . . . Was that her voice? What
was she doing on
Kestrel
? She hated ships. He was on
Kestrel,
wasn’t he? Yet that sounded like Ephraim’s big
Willard clock, and heaven help him if they’d dragged
that
aboard his schooner. And why was the ship rocking so? He hadn’t
designed her to wallow like a tub. Didn’t remember the bunk being
so soft. Didn’t think birds chirped out in the middle of the ocean.
He was in a bunk, wasn’t he? Or had they dragged a bed into his
cabin? But that didn’t explain the sparrows. They were sparrows,
weren’t they? Sparrow hawks?
Kestrels?
Good heavens—

“Faith,” he said, and opened his eyes.

Beyond his feet,
Kestrel
’s huge
red-and-white-striped flag, torn and blackened with shot, filled
his entire field of vision. There was a tabby cat nestled against
his ankle and staring at him in alarm.

He blinked, wondering what it was doing on
his ship.

The cat fled. He looked up.

And saw her.

A wall of thick, tumbledown hair that was in
desperate need of a combing. Green eyes, wet with tears, peeping
out between and beneath it. Freckles peppering an impish nose—and a
jaw that had come unhinged.

“
Moyrra
?”

Faith, why was she staring at him so?

“
Eveleen!”
she screamed.

And Eveleen, just coming into the room—faith,
had she actually lost weight?

She merely grinned and hurried away, heading
down a hall he recognized as Ashton’s, her steps in time with
clocks he knew were Ephraim’s, two cats in her wake he identified
as Mira’s.

And Mira?

“Brendan!” she was screaming, at the very top
of her lungs. “Oh God, Brendan!
Brendan!”

He shut his eyes. She was smothering him with
thick hair and the scent of roses. Silky locks and kisses, raining
over his face, his eyelids, his scarred chest. Arms that wound
beneath him and hauled her up against him, tears that wet his chest
and ran down the little grooves between his ribs and tickled his
armpits. She was squeezing the life out of him. Pain lanced through
his ribs.
Squeeze any harder, lassie, and I’m going to pass
out,
he thought.

She drew back only long enough to shout,
“You’re awake!
Awake!”
and then she was giggling and crying
and shouting all at once, her wall of hair suffocating him, her
kisses and laughter filling his soul as she rocked him from side to
side and told him over and over again how much she loved him.

“Mira! What the goddamned bleedin’
tarnation’s goin’ on in—”

She paused. Drew back. Swept her hair aside
and gave him an unhampered view of a doorway that was quickly
filling with people. Matt, staring sightlessly at the wall behind
him, but grinning as he leaned heavily against Eveleen; Abigail,
wiping floured hands on her skirts; Liam, John Keefe, Amos Reilly,
Abadiah Bobbs. Dalby, clutching his chest. Fergus, clutching his
crystal.

And at the forefront of that formidable pack,
Ephraim—clutching his watch.

“The British have invaded Maine,” the old sea
captain snapped.
“Kestrel
sits rotting in the harbor. And
yer
lyin’ here taking a goddamned nap!”

He snapped open the watch and shoved it in
Brendan’s face.

“It’s about bloody
TIME
ye woke
up!”

Chapter 27

Early the next morning, Eveleen climbed from
her bed and, from her window seat, watched the sun come up over the
harbor. Above the buildings of Market Square, she could see ships’
masts silhouetted against the pink and gold sky; the distinctive
backward rake of a pair of them marked them as Brendan’s schooner.
Mist rose from the river, and down in the harbor a cloud of
seagulls raised their raucous voices, no doubt fighting over some
fishy morsel washed up by the overnight tide.

Eveleen closed her eyes, treasuring these
early dawn moments before the rest of the household awakened.
Formerly a late riser, she’d never appreciated the beauty of the
sunrise, the songs of warblers, cardinals, and sparrows.

The birds would not have been enough to drag
Eveleen from her bed. But Matthew Ashton, who got up with the sun,
most certainly was. Now she awakened when the morning was still
gray and shadowy; now she perched herself here on the window seat
and eagerly waited for him to pass beneath her window as he took
his morning walk. She hugged herself. Oh, what would it be like to
be kissed by his handsome mouth, to be enfolded in his strong arms,
to lay her cheek against his leather vest and listen to the beat of
his heart?

She carefully pushed the curtain aside. He
was out there now, returning from his walk, his shoes leaving
darker trails through the silvery morning dew. Sunlight glinted off
the spectacles he no longer needed and turned his brilliant red
hair to flame. In his hand was a long stick, which he used to
carefully chart his course. But his steps were sure and confident.
She wondered if he’d lived his life as a privateer the same way:
daring, fearless, and unafraid to take risks.

Craning her neck, Eveleen strained to catch a
last glimpse of him as he passed beneath her window. She heard the
front door open, then slam shut, making the floor tremble beneath
her feet. Ephraim shouted something, Matt shouted something back.
And then every clock in the house chimed the hour in perfect
synchronicity and the door slammed again as Ephraim, clad in a
fashionable brown coat, left for his shipyard.

Downstairs, she heard Matt moving about, then
a loud crash as he walked into something. His good-natured curses
wafted up to her.
Oh, Matt,
she thought,
you’re so brave,
so noble, never complaining about your blindness, never bitter.
Yet how well he’d tried to hide his sorrow when the news about the
British invasion of Penobscot had swept Newburyport. The town had
been so eager to take part in the Expedition to rout the enemy that
some thirty sea captains had volunteered to go to Maine as common
seamen. But Eveleen had seen the raw, naked pain on Matt’s beloved
face that he couldn’t go, too. Not so long ago he’d been
Newburyport’s most celebrated hero. Now he was left behind, a
forgotten invalid, when his country needed him most.

A forgotten invalid. Just like her.

Except that Matt had never drowned himself in
self-pity, as she’d done. Matt had risen above it.

The stairs were creaking now as he came
upstairs. Eveleen’s heart began to race, and her stomach filled
with butterflies in anticipation. Soon Abigail would be sending a
servant up with a breakfast tray, and Eveleen, as she did every
morning, would be there to take it from the girl and bring it in to
Matt herself. Lately he’d been asking her to stay and talk to him
while he ate, listening with rapt attention while she’d relayed
developments about the Expedition and the war itself.

Tiptoeing across the room, she went to the
door and put her ear to the paneling. Matt had reached the top of
the stairs; she could hear him murmuring to Luff, and the happy
thump, thump, thump
of the dog’s tail.

Eveleen closed her eyes and smiled. She could
just picture Matt scratching the dog’s ears, perhaps offering him
something he’d filched from the kitchen earlier. Then the floor
creaked, and the door across from her banged shut.

She stood there, chewing her lip and leaning
against the wall, her heart thumping madly in her chest. Blind or
not, in her eyes he was perfect. Wonderful. But while he’d probably
ask her to stay and talk to him again, did he truly enjoy her
company as much as it appeared he did?

No one, aside from Brendan, had ever really
cared about her—but as she and Matt had gotten to know each other
during his convalescence, he’d begun to ask her questions,
encouraging her to talk about herself. He’d asked her what her life
had been like in England, and later, Ireland. Last night he’d
wanted to know what sort of pictures she used to paint, and why she
no longer painted. And when she’d told him, the unseen tears
slipping down her cheeks, that it was because of her crippled hand,
he’d merely taken a bite out of his cornbread and casually asked
why she just didn’t paint with the other one.

How easy he made it all seem. And how much he
cared, sensing her tears when he couldn’t see them. She could still
hear his quiet voice, soft with compassion and understanding as
she’d stood by the window last night and hugged that awful, ugly
thing
that used to be her hand to her breast.

“Tears, little Evvie?”

“Oh, Matthew, don’t pretend you’ve never
noticed my hand. You were just too polite to ever call attention to
it. I’m a
cripple.”

“So am I. We make a good pair, huh?”

“But my hand’s no longer good for anything,”
she whispered, shoving it as far down into her pocket as it would
go when he’d moved to stand behind her.

“Give it to me, Evvie.”

She’d panicked. “No, Matthew . . . I—I can’t.
It’s hideous! It’s awful—”

“It’s part of you. Give it to me, Evvie.”

His arms had gone around her, and she’d felt
the lanky, hard length of him pressing against her shoulders, her
spine, her bottom. Fearful tears had slid down her cheeks, tears
that, upon such close scrutiny, he’d find her disfigurement so
repellent, he’d turn away. Shivering, she’d bitten her lip to
contain the tears as he’d gently touched her shoulder and followed
the length of her arm, roving lower and lower until he’d found the
scarred, shattered hand at the end of her wrist and, ignoring her
struggles to pull away, brought it up to his lips.

He’d gently turned her around to face him
then, holding her gaze with a sightless one of his own. Then,
tenderly, lovingly, he’d kissed her hand again and told her how
beautiful she was. How brave she was for standing up to Crichton.
And then he’d brought her hand up to his cheek and closed his eyes,
and Eveleen had cried for all she was worth.