Captain of My Heart (9 page)

“The nerve of him! We’ve been sitting here
for a bloody hour, and he comes in here, just like that, and draws
her in like a fish on a line.”

“Says a lot for your charms, Amos.”

“Be damned to ye, Fergus!”

The serving wench, blushing hotly and
giggling under the Yankee’s attention, nodded and pointed toward
their table. They all watched as he strode purposefully toward
them.

“Ahoy, there,” Liam drawled, leaning back in
his chair and setting his fiddle across his knees. “Have a seat an’
join us for a mug or two.”

Matthew Ashton perused this odd group, his
eyes lingering on the grumpy little man whose hand was pressed to
his gut as though he were ill. He wondered briefly what was wrong
with him to make him so silent and surly when his mates were
obviously well into their cups. “Much obliged,” he said, accepting
both the chair that the burly Irishman slid toward him and the ale
Belinda set beneath his nose. Calling for another round for those
around the table, Matt blew the foam from his ale and looked at
each of the strangers over the rim of his mug. They were all
staring at him. “You the crew from the sloop
Annabel
?”

“Part of it,” the big Irishman said,
extending a huge hand. “I’m Liam Doherty, first lieutenant. This
here’s Dalby O’Hara. He’s sick, so don’t mind him. Oh, don’t bother
movin’ away, ’tisn’t contagious. Dalby’s always got somethin’ wrong
with him, but it’s all in his head. This here’s John Keefe—”

“
Jack
Keefe, now!” Reilly cried.
“Don’t ye know that once a man’s coin’s all gone, he’s just Jack
again like the rest of us?”

Liam shrugged, his grin splitting his broad
and beamy face.
“Jack
Keefe, and this toothless cur by his
side with the purple jaw is Amos Reilly. Yonder’s George Saunders,
gunner, and Fergus McDermott, able seaman, who’ll need to be askin’
ye about the churches in town as he’s decided to join one after
yesterday—right, Ferg? And God only knows where the rest o’ the
crew is, though some are at the other tables, and others, I’d
wager, probably seekin’ a warm bed with room for two.” Dalby was
elbowing him again. “Oh, and our cap’n’s at sea,” he added, almost
as an afterthought. “We expect him back any time.”

“Oh?” Matt raised his red brows above the
rims of his spectacles.

“He is
not
at sea!” Dalby cried. “He’s
dead! Dead and drowned!”

“That makes him at sea, don’t it?” Reilly
cackled, and slapped the table as laughter erupted around them.

Matt eyed them all warily, thinking them a
strange bunch indeed. “I, uh, take it he was a hard master,” he
said slowly.

Dalby lunged to his feet, stomachache
forgotten. “He was the best master there ever was! Fair and just
and honest. Brave and laughing and unafraid, right down to the end.
And he knew everything there was to know about ships, everything!
He could design one as well as he could sail one—”

“Aye, ye should’ve seen those drafts he drew
up,” Keefe murmured, breaking an inch off his clay pipe.

Dalby was heading straight for apoplexy.
“Those drafts! Those stupid drafts! If it weren’t for them, he’d be
safe and sound right now! But no, he had to find the best man in
the colonies to build that ship for him. Said she’d need a good
dose of Yankee know-how, else she just wouldn’t do. And now look
what’s happened! If he’d just been content with
Annabel,
he’d be standing here right now—”

“Like hell he would, Dalb,” Liam said,
brushing bread crumbs from his shirt. “He’d have us out on some
salty deck givin’ the Brits what for. He isn’t one to waste time
ashore. Why, even when we made port, he’d stick aboard, workin’ on
those damned drafts, fantasizin’ about this an’ that, wonderin’ if
he should hang a tops’l above her mainmast or just let her go with
the one on her fore.”

“Oh?” Matt watched them over the rim of his
mug with sudden interest. “And what did he finally decide?”

“To put ’em on both.”

“And studders outside o’ that,” Keefe
added.

“Topgallants, too.”

“Good God.” Matt almost dropped his mug.
“Wouldn’t that make her unsteady, hard to handle?”

Dalby puffed his chest out like a banty
rooster. “Our captain could sail a ship to the moon and back if he
had to! If he wanted to string sails clear up to the stars, he
could handle her!”

Liam put a restraining hand on Dalby’s arm.
“She would’ve been deep-drafted enough to take all the sail the
cap’n asked of her,” he explained. “Brendan’s a wee bit reckless,
sometimes even to the point o’ seemin’ empty-headed, but he’s no
fool. He knows his business right enough when it comes to designin’
ships.”

“
Knew
it!” Dalby cried, perilously
close to tears. “Can’t you get it through your head he’s dead?”

Seeing the telltale moisture in the little
man’s eyes, Matt decided he’d let the game go on long enough. He
took a long swig of his ale, leaned back, and told them the reason
he’d come here—and who had sent him. By the time he’d finished,
Liam was grinning down into his ale as though his captain’s
survival had come as no surprise, and Dalby was all but sobbing in
relief.

Saunders shrugged. “Told ye he could
swim.”

“Praise the Lord,” Fergus said, without
looking up from his Bible.

“Think that serving maid’s got any more beef
and potatoes out in the kitchen?”

Yet Matt saw that they were all staring at
him—Keefe, digging a finger against his front teeth to dislodge a
string of meat; Saunders with a great gap where his own front teeth
had been, and Reilly, with no teeth at all. “Well, what’re we
waiting for?” Matt picked up the salt-stained hat he’d been vowing
to replace for the past eight months, knowing it would probably be
another eight before he got around to it. “While we’re sitting here
drinking the place dry, the finest schooner this town—nay, this
colony—has ever seen waits to be built.”

“But the drafts are gone.”

“Gone—but not forgotten.” Matt grinned,
removed his spectacles, blew on them, and wiped them with a corner
of his shirt. He put them back on, shoving them up the bridge of
his nose. “Your captain tells me he kept detailed notes. Perhaps he
can simply redraw those drafts.”

“Aye, that he could, if he
had
all
those notes and calculations. ...”

Matt grinned in triumph. “Which are, I’m
told, locked safely away in
Annabel’s
cabin.”

But the group went suddenly silent,
remembering that last terrible broadside that had smashed through
the stern. They’d be lucky to find part of the sea chest that
Brendan had kept those notes in, let alone the notes
themselves.

But Matt guessed their thoughts. “And what
was it you were saying about your captain’s Irish luck, Mr.
Doherty?”

They stared at him. And then, one by one,
they grinned, and then they laughed, slapping one another across
the back and drinking toasts to that same Irish luck until finally
Matt jumped to his feet and pulled the strapping lieutenant with
him, complete with fiddle, toward the door.

Outside, it was hot and muggy, and as a
heavily guarded cart went past, the horses that drew it kicking up
a cloud of dust, Matt never saw how Liam shuddered, paled, and made
the sign of the cross. In that cart were the officers of the
British frigate that Captain Merrick had tricked onto the sunken
piers last night, and the red-rimmed eyes of its captain sought
Liam out and remained on him long after the cart was just a speck
in the distance.

Had his vision not been hindered by the cloud
of fresh dust filming his lenses, Matt might have shuddered, too,
at the pure hatred in the British commander’s eyes.

Coughing and waving the dust aside with his
floppy hat, he poked his head back inside the tavern, managing to
catch the attention of the seamen once more. “Gentlemen!” They
looked up, their faces dim through the cloud of pipe smoke. “I
forgot to tell you. If you’d like to visit your captain, please
feel free to stop by our home on High Street. It’s the big white
Georgian with green shutters, dormered windows on the second floor,
and an anchor on the front lawn. Can’t miss it.”

“Why, thanks, Cap’n Ashton!”

“Any time after one o’clock’s fine.” He
paused, biting his lip. “Uh, better make that one-fifteen,
instead.”

“One-fifteen?”

“Aye, one-fifteen.” He touched his fingers to
his temple. “See you then.”

And with that, he clapped his hat atop his
red hair, yanked the floppy old brim down to shield his face from
the blazing sun, and together with Liam, sauntered off down the
street.

“Alive,” Dalby breathed, eyeing Fergus’s
Bible with some reverence.

“Did any of us ever doubt it?”

“We have to go see him.”

“Aye. But you heard Ashton. After
one-fifteen.”

Dalby stood up. “I’m not waiting for
one-fifteen. I want to go now.”

“You heard him. One-fifteen. An odd time, if
I do say so myself. Why not one o’clock? One-thirty? Or even
two?”

Keefe belched. “Damned if I know.”

But they were soon to find out. For one
o’clock was when Ephraim Ashton left that fine Georgian home,
climbed into his carriage, and drove himself through town to the
Ashton Shipyards on the waterfront, where he would remain until
precisely six o’clock and not a moment later.

One-ten was when his daughter went riding
down High Street.

And one-fifteen was when Matt estimated that
street to be safe for unwary passersby.

Chapter 5

Unfortunately for Brendan, he was unaware of
the Ashton schedule. By midmorning he was bored, frustrated, and
impatient enough to be roaming about the house, wondering why he
was having such a hard time thinking of the drafts he ought to be
redrawing, and such an easy time thinking of Miss Mira Ashton.

He told himself he couldn’t work on the
drafts until Ashton got back with his notes, but he knew, of
course, that that wasn’t quite true. His memory was excellent when
it came to the notes.

He peered out the window. The heat of the day
was building. Outside, milky haze clung to thick, grassy fields
that smelled sweetly of summer hay and wildflowers, and great,
purple-stained clouds were stacked like shelves in a
cornflower-blue sky. His gaze followed the haphazard trail of a
stone wall, choked with weeds and wildflowers of every color. The
fence led off into a stand of trees, and the bent grasses along its
border suggested that a horse had recently passed. Miss Mira’s,
perhaps?

Faith, why was he still thinking about the
shipbuilder’s daughter? She was one puzzle he wasn’t even going to
try to figure out. Better to concern himself with the drafts, and
the familiar challenges of a naval architect—challenges involving
length, beam, speed, stability, and living and storing space; sail
suits and mast heights, bow rake and stern design. Not hoydens with
smart mouths and impish grins and endearing little cat-wrinkles
fanning out from the sides of her nose when she grinned.

Faith, laddie, get to work.

He wandered back upstairs, hoping the
nautical décor of his room might stimulate him. He pushed the door
open. Someone had thoughtfully laid out some clean, dry clothes on
the bed for him. There was a cat curled up in them. It was not
asleep, but staring haughtily at him over the top of its tail, as
though annoyed that he dared interrupt its slumber. The tail
twitched as Brendan let the door sigh shut behind him and strode
across the room to the desk.

It was obvious his mind was not in the mood
to be productive this morning. Sighing, Brendan went to the window
and swung the telescope toward him, bending at the waist so that he
could peer through its long tube. Over the tops of the foreground
trees he could see the cluster of shops and brick houses in Market
Square, and a forest of masts stabbing skyward just beyond them. A
cutter was just filling her sails and coasting out with the tide,
the people on her decks scurrying to and fro like ants.

There was no sign of
Annabel.

The shelf clock on the mantel ticked softly:
twenty minutes to one.

At a quarter to one he coaxed his tousled
chestnut curls into a queue and tied them with a piece of black
ribbon at the nape. At ten to one he dressed, earning a look of
irritation as he removed the cat from the pile of clothes and
brushed its hairs from the formerly clean shirt.

He was just pulling on his shoes when every
timepiece in the house, led by the huge Willard case clock in the
entrance hall, struck one o’clock. Downstairs, the front door
slammed. Brendan moved to the window in time to see Ephraim
striding down the driveway, consulting his watch and growing so
engrossed in resetting it that he almost plowed into the waiting
groomsman and the horse that stood sweating beneath its harness in
the sun. And then Ephraim drove away, still fighting with the watch
and cursing loud enough to be clearly heard from two stories up as
he nearly sent the horse into what Matt had proudly pointed out as
the town’s “Liberty Tree” before gaining control of both animal and
carriage—and hopefully, watch—and disappearing from sight.

At five past one Brendan decided he’d had
enough of being housebound, especially in this strange mansion
where cats, clocks, and procrastination were about to drive him
mad. He might as well go down to the waterfront and inspect the
damage to
Annabel
.

Unseen eyes weighed heavily on him as he left
the room and made his way back down the huge, angled staircase. Not
just the Yankee sea captains staring from their portraits, nor the
dour gazes of their prim and proper wives, but cats. Hiding beneath
the mahogany washstand in his room. Curled in the pewter bowl that
sat atop it. Sitting on window seats in the parlor, draped along
the fireplace mantel, and lying behind a model of Matthew’s
Proud Mistress,
which held a special place between two
candlesticks on the gleaming surface of a fine pianoforte.