Captain of My Heart (54 page)

“Captain Ashton, do you take this woman to be
your lawfully wedded wife?”

Matthew stuck out his chest and said in his
best quarterdeck voice, “I will.”

“Miss Merrick, would you please repeat after
me . . .”

From outside came the mad approach of flying
hooves.

The doors of the church burst open and a
horseman, breathless, tore off his hat and pressed it to his
heaving chest. “Come quick! Two ships’re just off the river’s
mouth! There’s gonna be one helluva battle off Plum Island, mark my
words!”

The pastor blanched at the horseman’s rough
language. In dismay, he watched as a sea captain grabbed his hat,
strode down the aisle, and breaking into a run, raced out through
the door. Another followed. Another.

“Gentlemen, this is a
wedding!”

But that didn’t seem to matter. The Tracys,
privateers and shipbuilders themselves, were hard on their heels.
One by one, and then as a mass exodus, every sea captain in the
church went running out of the church and out the door. Then the
seamen went, the fishermen, the fresh-faced boys, and finally the
women.

In moments, the big church was nearly
empty.

And then the Reverend Bass put down his Bible
and, with long robes trailing behind him, hurried down the aisle
and out the door, leaving just Mira, her brother, and Eveleen alone
in the church.

Matt took a deep breath, and, with a helpless
little smirk lifting the corners of his mouth, faced his
prospective bride. “Guess we’d better go watch as well, Eveleen. .
. . You don’t mind, do you? We can get married when everyone comes
back.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” she said,
linking her arm with his, and together, they left the church.

And Mira, sinking down into a pew, was
alone.

Then, and only then, did she finally allow
the tears to flow as off in the distance, some ship engaged
another, the thunder of distant cannon bringing back grief-filled
memories. On and on it went, each distant report tearing a little
piece of her heart out. A long time passed. And then the deep
reverberations stilled and from far off, probably down along the
riverfront, she heard a wild cheering.

She put her face in her hands and sobbed
wretchedly, her heart breaking. Whatever the identity of the
victorious ship down there, that glorious welcome should have been
Kestrel
’s.

Time passed. The cheering was getting louder
now. Closer. A carriage raced past in a clatter of wheels and
thunderous hooves, the driver yelling something she didn’t hear.
Mira sobbed harder. Strands of thick, heavy hair drooped from
beneath her mobcap and she pushed them off her damp cheeks. Damn
them all, why hadn’t they cheered Brendan when he’d gone off to
war, taken his little ship into battle and faced Crichton all
alone, sacrificed himself for Matt—

The cheering grew deafening, just outside the
church now. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the swelling
crowd, numbering in the hundreds, surge past the window, with a man
lifted to their shoulders. She heard their voices, raised in
excitement and glee. “Huzzah! Huzzah! Let’s make it a double
wedding!”

“Aye, a double wedding!”

“Where’s Reverend Bass?”

And Father: “Blast it all, ’bout time ye
showed up, and in the nick of time, too! Where the hell were ye?
Now, git in there an’ take yer place next to her, dammit! I’m
already gittin’ me a daughter-in-law, ’bout time I got a
son-in-law, too, and I ain’t waitin’ no longer, ye hear me?!”

“Marry her! Marry her! Marry her!” the people
cried.

It became a chant, growing louder —

“
Marry her!”

And louder—

“
Marry her!
”

And louder, until the doors exploded inward
and the wild chanting spilled into the church.

“
MARRY HER!
”

Late afternoon light streamed red-orange
across the varnished wood of the pew before her. It slanted through
the still-open doors and picked out striations in the wood. And
then that light was cut off.

Mira looked up, the sobs catching in her
throat. She turned.

There, framed in the doorway with the crowd
behind him and pushing him forward, was a tall, immaculately
dressed man with a jauntily set tricorne and a weightless grin.

He was holding a sketchpad up for her to
see.

On it was a drawing depicting a frigate with
a British flag at its masthead, and a beautiful schooner with
sharply raked masts.

The schooner, victorious, was firing on the
frigate. And the frigate was sinking.

He grinned, and their eyes met across fifty
feet of space.

“Mira,” he said.

And it came out,
Moyrrra.

Chapter
33

In the big four-poster tester bed in the east
bedroom of the Ashton house, a man lay sleeping.

He was tall and handsome and nearly naked,
with well-muscled thighs, long legs sprinkled with auburn hair, and
bare feet that stuck out over the foot rail by a good ten inches.
His was a handsome face, even in sleep; the jaw firm, the lips
sensual, the mouth and eyes framed by laugh lines that appeared to
get much use. His hair, dark against the white pillowcase, tumbled
rakishly over his brow and was the color of September chestnuts,
rich and glossy and curling at the ends.

He was her new husband, and he was, by far,
the best-looking specimen of his gender Mira had ever seen.

Dawn was breaking just outside. Her eyes
still heavy with sleep, Mira rested her cheek against the little
white scar on his chest and listened to the heart beating so
steadily beneath her ear. In all her life, she had never heard a
more precious sound. His arm came up to hold her close, and then
his fingers twitched and the arm grew heavy and she knew, by the
sudden change in his breathing, that he was dreaming. . . .

###

For Brendan, time had rolled back to the
evening before, and he was once again commanding
Kestrel
’s
desperate flight from the sea, the mighty mouth of the Merrimack
approaching off their bows, HMS
Viper
—having chased them all
the way from Maine—in hot pursuit, and his sketchbook spread out
over his knee and fluttering in the breeze. . . .

“Brendan!”

Liam’s voice, desperate and wild.

“Bren-
daaaaan
!”

Faith, where was their confidence in him?

Boom!
The frigate’s guns thundered
behind them, and overhead, a cannonball slapped through the
mainsail.

“You won’t be foolin’ Crichton a second time,
Brendan! He’ll be wise to you now, and he’ll know where those
sunken piers are!”

“Now Liam, I have no intention of leading him
into the river. A final reckoning this may be, but I can assure you
I have no wish to die this day. Not until I see and wed my wee
lassie. Now, prepare to come about; we’re close enough in, I
daresay.”

“Close enough in for what?”

“Why, to fight, Liam. What do you think?”

“God almighty, I wish I’d kept us all out to
sea a week or two longer after ye collapsed following our escape .
. . I ain’t ready for this!”

“Well, you’ll have to be, because I need you.
Crichton is running out his guns, and I didn’t get us safely out of
Penobscot only to lose
Kestrel
to him now and in plain sight
of Newburyport, as well. Where is my sword? Ah, thank you, Dalby. .
. .”

Astern,
Viper
was gaining on them, her
bowsprit growing larger and larger, her great guns coming, one by
one, to bear on them.

“Brendan—”

“D’you know, Liam, that when a river the size
and length of the Merrimack meets the sea, there will be sandbars,
sediment, and shoals for a good mile or so out? I really am glad I
had a look at those charts before I came topside.”

“What charts?”

“Why, the ones that say that we’re only in
about three fathoms of water, and shoaling fast.”

“Ye’re not leading him into the channel,
then?”

“Faith, of course not. We will clear the
shoals, and only just. But Crichton, with his deeper draft, will
not. Pity that he’s so intent on catching me that he’s thrown all
sense and caution to the wind. I expect him to regret his
recklessness just . . . about . . . now—”

With a sudden groan and a hideous swaying of
her three masts, the British frigate suddenly struck the plateau of
sand and sediment that the mighty Merrimack, with its origins in
the far distant mountains of New Hampshire, had deposited for a
mile out into the sea. One moment, she had been gaining rapidly on
them; the next, she had pitched to a sudden stop, her stern
swinging violently around with the force of her momentum and her
hull beginning to pitch dangerously over as her keel buried itself
deep into the sand beneath her bottom. With an awful shrieking
scream, her mainmast came down at the same time her guns banged
harmlessly out, and on her smoke-wreathed decks, Brendan could hear
the confusion and shouts of her crew.

“Shall we just leave her there, Brendan?”

“’Twouldn’t be very Christian, Liam, now
would it?”

“Nay, Brendan, I suppose it wouldn’t be. Holy
bleedin’ hell!” Liam ducked as some gunner aboard the stricken
frigate managed to bring his gun to bear on the schooner, and a
hail of iron went screaming overhead. “He’s not going to give
up.”

“No, I didn’t expect that he would.” Brendan
picked up his speaking trumpet and with an exasperated sigh,
yelled, “Ready about, Mr. Keefe! Larboard guns, load and run
out!”

Kestrel
came across the wind, her
great boom went over, and her sails were sheeted home. She
continued her turn and then ranged up alongside the frigate, safely
out of the range of her broadside, ineffective now with the sharp
angle at which the larger ship had impaled herself on the shoals.
The frigate’s marines had rallied, though, and now gunshots cracked
out from her listing decks, and metal began pinging off Kestrel’s
cannon, popping through her sails, and taking chunks out of her
railing.

Brendan raised his speaking trumpet. “Will
you strike, Crichton?”

“
Never!
”
came the enraged
bellow.

“Hull her,” Brendan said simply, already
twitching with impatience, for there was a certain lass in a
certain Georgian house with a certain anchor out front that he
hoped would be waiting for him, and he had better things to be
doing than sinking a ship that was already well into her death
throes.

Kestrel
’s guns roared, and great
plumes of water bloomed all along the frigate’s exposed underline
as the cannonballs found their mark.

“Again,” Brendan said.

Viper
was leaning further over now;
too far for her shrouds to support her remaining masts. Grimly,
Brendan watched as one by one those shrouds began to snap and the
masts, with loud
cracks!
that sounded like guns going off,
split from deep within the hull and tumbled into the sea, taking
sails and spars and rigging down with them. A deep rumbling issued
from the dying ship as her cannon broke loose from their moorings,
charged down the listing decks, and smashed through her bulwarks
and into the waves. A last gun cracked out somewhere forward in a
final show of fight, and then a lieutenant appeared, clinging to
the rail, holding up a white handkerchief because
Viper
’s
once proud colors had fallen into the sea along with her mizzen and
there was no flag left for him to lower.

There was no sign of Crichton.

“She’s striking, Brendan,” said Liam,
quietly.

“Heave to, and stand by to pick up
survivors.”

Viper
, dismasted now, was settling by
her bows and sinking deeper into the sea, her timbers making awful
groans as she began to break apart. Her sailors swarmed her rails,
and some began to leap overboard, floundering in the surf, their
screams rending the air.

Brendan had seen enough. As
Kestrel
turned into the wind, sails luffing as she stood helplessly by and
watched the death of her nemesis, he called for the boat and,
ignoring Liam’s admonitions not to go across to the stricken
frigate, climbed down into the little vessel and in moments, was
pulling himself up
Viper
’s sharply listing tumblehome.

Her decks were pure carnage. Planking had
buckled when the masts had fallen, guns were scattered, twisted
lines and shrouds and rigging were everywhere, and Brendan knew the
frigate didn’t have long.

The young officer who had waved his
handkerchief at him came forward, his face numb with disbelief that
his once proud ship had come to such an inglorious end. Introducing
himself as Lieutenant Stafford, he unbuckled his sword, and in
defeat, presented it to Brendan as an official surrender of the
ship.

“You outfoxed us once again, Captain
Merrick,” he said with a rueful smile. He took off his hat and
wiped an arm over his forehead. “I tried to warn Captain Crichton
that we drew too much water to continue the chase, that there were
shoals here, but he was so intent on capturing you that he didn’t
listen.” Beneath their feet, the decks gave a sudden lurch, and
both men caught at the wreckage of the mizzen to keep their feet.
“He never listened. He was blind to all but his own ambition.”

“And where
is
your commanding officer,
Lieutenant?”

For answer, Stafford merely turned, and,
picking his way across the sharply listing deck, the tangled
cordage, spars and overturned guns, led Brendan aft.

There, lying half-buried beneath the wreckage
of what had once been the mizzen’s gaff, was the man who had
haunted Brendan’s dreams for the past four years, who had shattered
his sister’s life, who had pursued him with a fervor that went
beyond fanatical. Only his legs and torso were visible from beneath
the sailcloth that had fallen over him when the mast went down, and
this was no longer white, but bright, bright red with spreading
blood.