Captain of My Heart (36 page)

“But by then my stomach’s going to be so
jarred and jostled, I won’t
want
pie.”

“Then post. Up and down, up and down. Let the
mare’s rhythm guide you. Watch her outside leg, and when it reaches
out, rise in your stirrups.” Caught up in the excitement of the
moment, Mira sent Rigel ahead to demonstrate, thrilling, as she
always did, to the raw, unleashed power of the colt beneath her.
“Like this.” Up and down, up and down. “Just a little, enough to
take the jostle out of it.”

“Like this?” Eveleen rose out of the saddle
so much that Mira could have flown a kite between her rump and the
cantle.

“Not so much. You’re working too hard. Let
the horse do it for you.”

They trotted side by side, instructor and
student, so involved in their mutual triumph that neither heard the
bang of guns down in the harbor as a ship was welcomed into the
river.

Not two ships, but one.

A privateer had returned.

Alone.

###

Mira heard the uproar all the way from Miss
Mira Ashton’s School of Fine Horsemanship and knew that Matt must
be back, for the late spring winds carried Ephraim’s angry
bellowing all the way across the paddocks, through the woods, and
into the field where she and Eveleen quietly walked their
horses.

Eveleen, her face going white, pulled her
mount up short. Obviously she’d never witnessed the stormy reunion
between father and son when Matt returned from a cruise. But Mira
knew what all that hollering was about! With a shout of glee, she
gathered her reins and drove her heels into Rigel’s flanks.
“Eveleen, c’mon! Matt’s home!
Brendan’s home!”

She sent Rigel tearing toward the house,
Shaula—with Eveleen clinging to her mane, the reins, and her
courage—right behind. And as the two tore out of the woods, raced
past the paddocks, and charged into the front yard, Mira’s joy
faded and apprehension swept in to take its place.

For there, filling the lawn, pouring up the
driveway, and racing in from the street, was an immense throng of
people. They were shouting. They were yelling. And where the women
were concerned, they were openly sobbing.

And on the doorstep stood Ephraim, his face
as white as his hair, his features so twisted with agony that Mira
felt the icy fingers of dread crawling up her spine before she’d
even thrown herself from Rigel’s back and raced toward him. Tears
streamed down his craggy cheeks, and behind him, Abigail slumped
against the doorframe, sobbing into her hands.

“Damn ye for a yellow-livered coward! How the
bloody hell could you let it happen? Traitor! Goddamned British
bastard!” Father’s anguished roar carried over the din of the
crowd. “I wish I’d never laid eyes on ye! I rue the day I met ye
and curse the day ye sailed into this town, ye miserable, rotten
coward!”

Mira came up short. Her chest tightened and
her heart stopped cold. She followed Father’s gaze, and the blood
drained from her face.

It wasn’t Matt who stood there, but
Brendan.

And he was alone.

He stood like a man on trial, the crowd
behind him the jury, Ephraim, before him, the judge. He had his
tricorne in his hands, and his eyes were filled with such anguish
that for a moment, Mira thought he was someone else, so different
did it make him look, so much did the absence of the good humor
that was so much a part of him rob him of who he was. Mira shook
her head.
No.
Surely Father wouldn’t be sobbing and raging
at
Brendan!
Surely there’d be mirth in those tragic, haunted
eyes if it truly were he—

And then it hit her like a savage kick in the
gut. Her brother was nowhere in sight. It
was
Brendan at
whom Father was raging.

Blind panic seized her.
Matt.
And
then, in a guttural scream of pure terror, his name was torn from
her throat.
“Matt!”

There was the thunder of hooves as Shaula
came galloping up behind them, Eveleen still clinging, white-faced,
to her back . . . Ephraim’s bellowing, going on and on and on . . .
the women crying, the young men shouting accusations, the angry
faces, the curses—

And Brendan.

At that moment he turned toward her, and
there was such a plea for understanding in his grief-stricken eyes
that her heart constricted painfully in her chest. She ran to him,
flung herself into his arms, and felt them go around her. Then she
drew back. “Brendan, where’s Matt?”

A muscle worked in his throat and he took a
deep, measured breath. His eyes had an odd sheen, and blinking, he
looked up at the clouds above. Then he took her hands in his own
and squeezed them so hard, she felt pain in her fingers. His hands
were freezing cold, as though the blood had ceased to move in his
veins.

“Brendan,
where’s my brother?
”

He looked down at her, and she saw tears in
his eyes. He took a deep, shaky breath and gently set her away from
him. And then he reached up to knuckle his eye. “
Moyrrra,
lassie—”

Panic seized her. “
Where is he?
”

“
Moyrrra
, he’s—”

Ephraim’s grief-stricken roar pierced the
din. “Dead! He’s dead, and it’s all the fault of this goddamned
cowardly son of a bitch I should never’ve trusted in the first
place!”

Brendan shut his eyes, and his fierce grip on
her hands tightened, but he did not lower his head.

“I knew I should never’ve trusted ye, ye
confounded spawn of the devil! Stinkin’ deceitful, yellow-bellied
traitor! The devil take ye, ye slinkin’ dog! Traitor! Bastard!
Brit!”

Mira reeled backward, overcome with
dizziness. From a great distance she heard the crowd’s angry din,
saw Brendan’s stricken face. And then Abigail’s keening wails began
to close in on her, louder and louder and—

She pressed her hands to her ears. “No! Stop
it,
stop it, all of you!”

“But it’s true. Oh, Lord, it’s
true,
Mira!” Abigail wailed, wringing a cloth covered with flour, dough,
and the stains of her own tears. “Every last bit of it! There was a
battle . . . they found the convoy from London . . . your brother
stayed to fight, and this—this—
snake
slunk off and left him
to do it
alone!”
Her sobs grew to hysteria, raising the hair
on Mira’s nape. Screaming, the housekeeper flung the wet cloth at
Brendan. It hit him squarely in the chest, but he didn’t move,
merely stood there with flour marring the handsome perfection of
his blue coat. “Alone, Mira! Your poor dead brother
alone,
all by himself, to face the might of the British navy while this
slinking dog crawled back here with not a scratch on his beloved,
cursed ship!
That cursed ship!
That’s what started it all in
the first place! Would that we’d sunk it by the might of our own
guns! Would that those drafts had never been resurrected!
Would
that her creator had died with them!
Oh, Matthew . . .
Oh,
my poor, sweet Matthew
....”

She collapsed, wailing, and someone managed
to get her into the house, where her hysterical cries flowed out
the open door, over the lawns, the increasing crowd, and Mira’s
heart, until it began to vibrate, to tremble, and then to rock
wildly within her breast.

“Not Matt ...” she whispered, never hearing
Rigel come up behind her to comfort her, as his kind had done for
centuries. And though Brendan reached out to steady her, it was
Rigel against whom she fell. “Not my brother ...” Hair tangled in
her suddenly wet lashes and she clawed it free, shaking her head in
denial and backing away from Brendan as he took a step toward her.
“He was a good captain . . . the best. He’s not dead, Brendan! I’d
know it if he was. He was my brother. He’s
not dead!
He’s
not!
It’s not true! It cannot be!”

Lucy Preble clawed her way to the front of
the crowd. “It
is
true, Mira. You go down to the river and
you’ll see only one ship—that cursed schooner!”

“With nary a mark on it!” someone
shouted.

“Hauled himself off and let our poor Matt do
the fighting! Didn’t want to see his precious schooner harmed!”

“Newburyport’s newest hero, eh?”

“Traitor!”

“Coward!”

“Judas!”

It became a chant. Louder. Stronger. Full of
hatred and betrayal and a thirst for vengeance.

“Judas! Judas!
Judas!”

An egg slammed through the air, just missing
Brendan’s shoulder and exploding against the side of the house.

“Judas! You
killed
him!”

And Brendan, just standing there, admitting
nothing, denying nothing, and no one ever considered that maybe he
couldn’t,
for his own throat was working and he was fighting
a losing battle to repress his own emotion. But the fact that he
didn’t defend himself condemned him in the eyes of the townspeople,
of Ephraim—and of the woman he loved.

She was looking at him as though he were a
stranger, the tears sliding down her cheeks, one thick spill of
hair tumbling over her eye. She pushed it away with a strange,
jerky motion, and when she spoke, her voice was barely a
whisper.

“Did you?” Her lip trembled, and she pushed a
hand against it. “You didn’t . . . didn’t leave him to die. . . .
Did you, B-Brendan?”

“
Moyrra—
”

“
Did you?
”

She didn’t see his throat working as he tried
to gain control. She didn’t see the agony in his eyes as he fought
to find the right words. And she never gave him the chance to
explain. All she felt was a horrible, choking lump in her
throat—and all she saw was
Kestrel,
glorious and proud and
dancing, flitting away while
Proud Mistress
fought a valiant
battle to her death. . . .

Sobbing, Mira turned blindly away from
Brendan and leaped on Rigel’s back, kicking him through the crowd
and thundering down High Street before anyone could stop her.
Seeking escape in the mad pounding of hooves and sleek muscles
beneath her, of wind in her face, her eyes, her head, her
heart.

Run away. Run far away. From the truth, from
the grief, from the reality, from—from—

“Matt!” she wailed, tears flooding her eyes
as she tried to hold, tried to banish, the memory of that freckled
face, that crimson hair, the spectacles that were always sliding
down his nose—

Oh, God, Matt.
“Please, God, not my
brother!”

And then Rigel’s thundering hooves hit a
depression in the road and he stumbled, his forelegs crumpling
beneath him. Mira pitched headlong over his neck, her body hurtling
through space until it was finally stopped by the Beacon Oak
itself, there to lie crumpled like a broken doll at its base.

It was Brendan who found her. And as he
picked her up, gently, reverently, his strong arms cradling her to
his shot-scarred chest, his own tears ran at last, flowing like
blood from the pieces of his own broken heart.

Chapter 22

Mira opened her eyes to silence as deep and
dark and ugly as the tomb. She was in her bed, the linsey-woolsey
counterpane drawn up to her chin, the fine lace canopy above
merging with the darkening ceiling. Twilight shone hauntingly
through the window; beyond it, night approached.

Silence.

There was something alien in it, something
strange, something not quite right. And then she realized what was
wrong. What was terribly wrong. Not a clock in the house was
ticking.

It was as though time itself had stopped.

Father? Father, forget to wind his
clocks?

She came awake with a start.

Matt.
Her choked whisper pierced the
still silence of the darkening room. “Oh, Matt ...” And then the
tears came, slipping soundlessly down her cheeks to dampen the
counterpane beneath her chin. She stared up at the familiar canopy
and felt them stream from the corners of her eyes. Down her face.
Tickling the hair at her temples, her ears, wetting the pillow
beneath her head.

“Oh . . . Oh, Matt . . .”

She was not alone. In a chair drawn up to the
bed, a man with eyes that no longer laughed had kept a silent,
tortured vigil, his long legs stiff and cramped from sitting there
for so many hours, his unshaven jaw dark with stubble. He heard her
anguished weeping and thanked the blessed God that she was awake,
that she would be all right; he heard her weeping grow louder and
reached for her hand in the darkness, never stopping to stretch his
aching legs, never thinking of his own pain, only hers. He was
there for her. He vowed he would always be there for her. And he
reached for her now as her sobs grew gut-wrenching and awful,
shaking her little body to the very depths of its being.

And Mira, feeling those arms go around her,
those hands stroking her hair, knew who that man was. “
Don’t
touch me!
” she cried, and viciously slammed her elbow into his
ribs, his grunt of pain bringing her a savage satisfaction as she
flung herself down and buried her face in the depths of the pillow,
the thick tumble of her own tangled hair, and the memories of a
brother she would never see again.

Yet still those hands, those damned artist’s
hands. Hands that drove beneath her shaking shoulders, hands that
pulled her up against a hard chest and a coat that was
uncharacteristically rumpled.

Newburyport’s newest hero.

Brendan.

She drove her palms against that chest and
shoved herself backward, out of the warmth of those caring arms,
away from the tortured heart that needed her as much as she needed
him.

“Judas!” she spat, her voice low and terrible
and ugly. “Get away from me.”

The room had grown too dark for her to see
the stricken pain on his face, the grief in his eyes, but it
wouldn’t have mattered if she had—for at that moment Mira had never
hated anyone more than she did Captain Brendan Jay Merrick.