Captain of My Heart (46 page)

He could face the might of a man-of-war from
Kestrel’
s decks. He could face battle with a sketchpad in
his hands as the iron flew around and above his head. He could even
face Crichton’s calculated cruelties.

But he couldn’t face his own failure to save
Matt and his crew.

He sat there huddled on the floor, head
buried in his hands, his hair falling over his elbows as he tried
to block that awful sobbing.

In the end, he couldn’t take it anymore.
Without a word to anyone, he got up, tore the flag from the wall,
and very, very carefully, stumbled out the door and downstairs.

Sea-ready or not,
Kestrel
was leaving
Newburyport.

Chapter
28

“God Almighty, Brendan, ye can’t be serious!
What d’ye mean, ye want to go join the Penobscot Expedition? Are ye
out o’ yer bloody
mind?!”

Brendan swayed and braced his shoulder
against the wall, hoping that Liam wouldn’t notice how much
difficulty he was having just standing up. But the dizziness didn’t
go away. He was in Wolfe Tavern—or at least he thought he
was—though how he’d managed to get there, he didn’t know. He
remembered leaving the Ashton house, had recollections of lurching
drunkenly down the street. Dirt smudged his knee breeches, and his
palms were scuffed and angry. He must have fallen, though he didn’t
remember it.

“Out of my mind?” He managed a faint grin,
noting how Liam’s bright blue eyes were assessing him with blatant
disapproval. “I don’t think so. What’s wrong with wanting to lend
Kestrel
’s support to a patriotic cause, eh?”

“Patriotic me arse!” Liam snorted. “Ye took a
thirty-foot fall, fer God’s sake; ye can’t be expectin’ to go
commandin’ a warship. In fact, I wouldn’t be trustin’ ye to take
out a toy sailboat with the way yer lookin’ now!”

Brendan shut his eyes and leaned his head
back against the wall. If he looked as bad as he felt, it must be
terrible indeed. He had the shakes. He was sweating fiercely. His
legs felt like jelly, and the room was spinning around him. And
worst of all, the other patrons of the tavern were all staring at
him. He clawed at his stock, his fingers fumbling. A dark tunnel
began to snuff out his vision, and a roaring started in his ears.
Faith, he had to get out of here before he passed out—

“Easy there, lad.” He felt Liam’s hand
beneath his elbow, the strength of his massive arms holding him up.
“I’ve got ye.” Shakily, Brendan allowed Liam to ease him down into
a chair.

Faith.

He was aware of something hard and wet on his
forehead and realized he’d slumped forward, his brow resting in a
puddle of moisture from Liam’s mug. Cursing, Liam dragged him back
up. The chair pressed against his spine, and the room swayed
sickeningly as his head fell back over the top rung. He opened his
eyes and saw the weathered beams of the ceiling, spinning
above.

“Fer God’s sake, Brendan—”

“You all right, Captain Merrick?”

It was the tavern’s owner. “He’s fine,
Moses!” Liam declared, holding Brendan upright by his lapels. “Just
a bit too much t’ drink, eh, Cap’n?”

He shut his eyes, nodding weakly.

“Fetch him up a cup o’ hard cider,” Liam
said. “He’ll not be thankin’ me fer it in the mornin,’ but he could
sure use it now.”

The innkeeper hurried off, frowning, for he’d
never known Captain Merrick to be a drinking man.

“Now, ye listen to me.” Liam yanked him
forward, snapping his neck, until his blue eyes bored into his
captain’s hazy sienna ones. “I’ll not have ye makin’ a spectacle of
yerself. Yer not takin’
Kestrel
t’ Maine fer the sake o’
helpin’ the Americans drive the British out—yer runnin’ from
somethin’. What is it this time, huh? Or need I ask?”

He took a moment to answer. “Mira
Ashton.”

“God Almighty, when’re ye goin’ to stop
runnin,’ Brendan, and let the wee lassie catch ye? She loves ye,
she does, and the sooner you two tie the knot the better!”

“She’s angry with me, Liam, for wanting to go
up to Penobscot.”

“Well, I don’t blame ’er! She loves ye, can’t
ye get that through yer thick skull? The lassie stuck by yer bed
fer the entire time ye were lyin’ in it. She took care of ye,
bathed ye an’ washed yer hair, and fixed ye up real handsome-like
when ye had visitors—”

“
Visitors?”
he gasped, mortified.

“Aye, visitors! Some o’ the townsfolk dropped
by to pray fer yer recovery.”

Brendan made a dismissive motion with his
hand. “If they were dropping by, it was probably to see Matt. Poor,
blind Matt . . .” He shut his eyes, reliving the pain of
Proud
Mistress
’s death all over again.

“Poor blind Matt, eh? Huh! Well, let me tell
ye, Brendan, he can see well enough to note just how pretty yer
sister is of late! Those two have become thicker than peas in a pod
since ye brought him home. Maybe his eyesight’s a bit hampered, but
I bet he could take a ship t’ sea if he had to. But nooo! He’s too
busy feigning how blind he is so yer sister can dote on him! I’ve
seen the way his eyes follow her when her back is turned, and there
ain’t no trace o’ blindness a’tall. This mornin’ he asked her to
paint his picture, and unless I miss me guess, the next thing he’ll
be a-doin’ is askin’ ye to design a ship fer him with a figurehead
that looks like our Eveleen.”

“Faith,” Brendan murmured, stunned. He shook
his head, trying to clear it. Matthew? And
Eveleen?

“So if our fine Cap’n Ashton can let yer
sister get her claws into him, well, ye can let Miss Mira get hers
into you. Just marry the lass, Brendan, and be done with it. Ye
don’t need to go to Penobscot. Ye’ve got nothin’ left to
prove—ye’ve done enough.
More
than enough.”

Brendan looked away. “I
must
go to
Penobscot,” he insisted. “Massachusetts is calling on every
privateer . . . Newburyport has already sent four other ships, and
a wee bit of dizziness shan’t stop me from going, too. I’m an
American now, aren’t I?” He grinned. “Besides, Matthew tells me
that Paul Revere himself is up there, in charge of the artillery
for the land forces. I’ve always wanted to meet the lad.”

“Brendan—”

“It is an amphibious effort. Why, I could get
Kestrel
to Penobscot in less than two days. ...”

“Brendan—”

“Well, I’m not much good here, mopping the
table with my forehead!”

“Ye go to Maine and the Brits’ll be moppin’
you
up off o’
Kestrel
’s deck!”

Moses was coming back, carrying a tray with
two pewter mugs balanced on it. Liam quickly exchanged his empty
mug for Brendan’s full one, so that to all appearances his captain
had consumed the beverage. Then he gripped his sleeve and stared
desperately into his eyes. “Listen, Brendan. The Americans ’ave
been up there fer weeks and still haven’t made a move to rout the
British, thanks to some bloody impasse between the general in
charge o’ the land forces and the commodore commandin’ the sea
forces. That commodore is Dudley Saltonstall, Brendan, and ye know
as well as I do that ’e ain’t a pleasant person to serve under, let
alone deal with.”

“But, Liam, I have to go.” The dizziness was
returning. Desperately Brendan bent his head to his arms and
gripped the edge of the table. “Don’t you understand? I
have
to. To restore Mira’s faith in me. To restore this town’s faith in
me—”

“Fer God’s sake, Brendan—”

“
To restore my own faith in me!”

He stood up, staggered, and almost fell.

“Brendan!”

His knee hit the chair, toppled it. He reeled
off the table, drew the stares of a group of seamen. Two men looked
up from their game of backgammon, their brows raised.

“
Brendan!”

It took every bit of his strength to walk
through that smoky, crowded room, but he did it, pulling his
tricorne low over his eyes so no one would see how pale and sick he
really was.

And then he felt Liam’s hand on his arm.

“God Almighty, Brendan, ye can’t be goin’
off—”

Brendan raised his head, squared his
shoulders, and slowly turned. For a moment he once again
personified the hauteur of the British Royal Navy, from the braid
on his tricorne to the buckles on his shoes to the very way in
which he stood. “In future,
Mr.
Doherty, I’ll thank you to
remember yourself. I am your captain. Please address me as such!”
Then he pushed open the door and stumbled off into the night.

Wolfe Tavern was abuzz; to think that after a
nearly fatal injury, the Captain from Connaught could come in here,
drink with the rest of them, put the big, strapping lieutenant in
his place, and then saunter off to war, as right as rain!

Except that no one but Liam knew that his
captain
wasn’t
as right as rain.

No one but the captain himself knew that he
passed out three times on his way to the waterfront.

And no one but
Kestrel
knew that he
never made it to his cabin, but collapsed upon a neatly coiled pile
of rope on the foredeck, and there, spent the night.

###

The Penobscot Expedition.

It was on everyone’s minds, everyone’s
tongues. News filtered down from Maine, trickled up from Boston.
The redcoats had entrenched themselves on the little peninsula of
Bagaduce, and undaunted by the huge American fleet sent to rout
them from their stronghold, merely swapped their shovels and picks
for muskets and prepared to defend their little fort. Captain Henry
Mowat, that hated Briton who’d laid waste to Falmouth several years
past, had drawn his three sloops-of-war up around the fort to
protect it, and according to reports, the most action the Maine
woods had seen was some minimal gunfire between the British and the
American fleet. A bit of territory had been gained on nearby
Nautilus Island, assisted by fire from Newburyport’s own
Pallas,
but that was all. Despite the Americans’ superior
forces, the British were still in Maine.

And expecting reinforcements any day.

In Massachusetts, tempers were strained. In
the Ashton household, where those tempers usually ran rampant, the
explosion came as Mira went down to breakfast.

Unfortunately, it was set off by an
innocent-looking blueberry betty that she’d made in the hopes of
showing Brendan just how well she was learning to cook—and
therefore, keeping him home. But Brendan, unfortunately, was still
upstairs, and so it was Ephraim who had the misfortune to take the
first bite.

“Jesus—bloody—Christ!”

Pieces of blueberry, topping, and other
unspeakable ingredients shot across the table like grapeshot from a
cannon. Blackened dough hit Eveleen’s cheek. Cream spattered Matt’s
spectacles. Tears streamed down Ephraim’s face; and then, reddening
with fury, he picked up his plate and flung it, food and all,
across the room, where it smashed against the elegant wainscoted
wall and left a sticky, dripping mess of blueberries that slid in
great, ugly chunks toward the floor.

Luff, who’d been quietly begging two feet
away from where the plate hit, fled the room with his tail between
his legs.

“Tripes an’ guts, this godawful shit is gonna
put me in my grave! Man can’t eat a decent meal without it bein’
booby-trapped! What the bloody hell did ye put in it, Mira, a whole
goddamned lemon?!”

Mira slammed down her own fork. Across from
her, Matt, his lips twitching, removed his spectacles and wiped
them with his shirttails, smearing cream all over the lenses and
only making the mess worse. He put them back on, his kind brown
eyes blank and sightless as he stared at the wall and the shapeless
purple mess oozing down it. Beside him, Eveleen wordlessly dished
up a plate of fried eggs and ham and set it before him, her hand
lingering on his as she placed a fork in his hand and guided it to
the plate.

“As a matter of fact,” Mira snapped, hurt
that her father found fault with a treat that had taken her all
morning to make, “I put two lemons in it. And a cup of vinegar
and
a cup of sour milk,
and—”

“Sour
milk?!
You put sour milk in
it?!”

“I couldn’t find any butter!”

“What the hell does butter have to do with
sour milk?! Any woman worth her salt’d know not to put sour milk in
a blueberry betty, let alone two friggin’ lemons—”

“I thought the sugar would balance out the
sourness!”

“What sugar? There ain’t no sugar in this
crap!”

“I think she forgot to put it in,” Matt
speculated, trying not to laugh.

“I didn’t either! I just didn’t have enough,
so I substituted something else!”

“What?”

“The extra lemon!”

“I ain’t bloody surprised! Ye’ll never make a
good wife fer anyone, ye hear me? No man’ll have a woman who can’t
cook, can’t bake, an’ brings home enough bloody animals to start a
bleedin’ zoo! He won’t put up with it!
I
won’t put up with
it! Thank God ye’ll be getting married soon and I can git ye out of
my hair
and my kitchen!”

Mira lunged to her feet and flung her own
plate. Ephraim ducked just in time, but a shower of blackened crust
fell like rain into his snowy hair. Enraged, he, too jumped up.

“
Merrick!”
he roared, at the top of
his lungs.

Matt leaped up from his chair. “For God’s
sake, keep your voice down; the poor fellow’s sleeping!”

“He ain’t sleepin’ no more! I want him down
here and eatin’ and gainin’ his strength back so he can take that
cussed schooner up to Maine with the rest of the fleet!”

Matt slammed his fork down. “That’s what’s
really eating you, isn’t it?” he raged, his spectacles fogging up
behind flecks of cream and smeared blueberries. “The fact that you
have nothing to brag about to your old cronies down at
Davenport’s!”