Lord Of The Sea (29 page)

He would look after his and Mira’s children until his dying day.

The boat was farther off now, its oars catching the dying sunlight. Above, a stray whisper of wind sang a sad dirge through the rigging and made the flag still there at the gaff snap once, twice, in the breeze.

The flag.

Nobody had ever taken down the Union Jack.

Quietly, Brendan went to the halyard, lowered the flag, and ran up the Stars and Stripes until the huge, bold American colors waved proudly in the afternoon sun. There. All was as it should be, now. He stood there for a moment, then went to the tiller, empty now of any hand to guide it. The light wind had pushed the schooner around to face the breeze, her fore and main luffing.

A course to nowhere.

He pushed the tiller hard over, and slowly, sluggishly,
Kestrel
’s nose began to come around. Water was now slicing up and over her bowsprit. Her jib-boom. Beginning to spill over her foredeck with each long, ancient swell.

A glance at the compass. Just a little more, now.

Kestrel
continued her slow, anguished turn, trying her best, until the very end, to answer her captain.

There. North-by-northwest.

Pointed toward home.

Brendan lashed the tiller for the little schooner’s final course, looked up at the set of the sails, and watched the boat, now tiny with distance, fading into the coming twilight. He took off the old black tricorne, held it in his hands for a long moment, and then placed it on the compass box, over the needle that now pointed steadily north-by-northwest.

He looked around the empty deck for the last time. Looked up at the valiant Stars and Stripes, the white bars glowing orange in the last of the setting sun, and touched his fingers to his temple in a tight and wordless salute.

When he went below, he found Mira unresponsive.

He shook her. He called brokenly to her, trying to rouse her. She lay unmoving.

I will never leave you.

He got up and shut the cabin door, knowing the water would be coming soon, and got into bed with his beloved wife. He wrapped his arms around her and lay there in the gathering gloom, trying to hold the life in her, telling himself that the coolness of her skin was only because the fever had finally broke.

I will never leave you.

Kestrel
gave a last sigh of anguish and her bowsprit slipped beneath the waves.

The water came.

*     *     *

Dawn.

Pastel pink skies, purple, salmon and gold, and a sea that was empty in all directions for as far as the eye could see.

A solitary gull skimmed over the waves, the light catching its feathers and painting them with the colors of morning. The bird wheeled as its sharp eye saw something drifting on the sea’s surface, and changing its course, went to investigate.

It was only an old black hat from another time and place, floating alone on a sea of emptiness.

The gull moved on.

Eventually, the hat became saturated, and finally sank beneath the waves.

Chapter 31

He heard groaning.

The sound of someone in deep pain, coming from far, far away.

Eventually, the groans grew louder, and Connor realized they were his own.

“He’s coming to,” someone murmured.

He struggled toward consciousness, clawing through waves of pain in his head, and dragged open eyes that felt weighted with lead. The room, if that’s what he was in, was spinning and Connor, weak and unable to do more than raise himself up on an elbow, turned and vomited over the side of the bed before shutting his eyes and falling back down against the hot, damp sheets beneath him.

Someone was bathing his chin, his mouth, his cheeks with cold water. He heard a rag being squeezed out and with all his strength, lifted his hand and caught the small, feminine one that now held the linen cloth to his aching, pounding skull.

“Rhiannon,” he murmured.

“I’m here. You’re going to be all right.”

“I’m going to be sick again,” he said, and just in time, she had a bowl for him.

The bed was moving, and opening his eyes once more he saw that they were not in a room at all, but aboard a ship, and a big one at that. High, gracefully arched deck beams above, painted white and sparkling in sunlight reflected off the water. Panoramic stern windows, most of which had the curtains drawn against the blazing Caribbean sun. A black and white diamond-checkered floor mat, elegant furniture, a feeling of grandeur, comfort and space.

“Where am I?” he asked, greatly confused.

“Sir Graham’s flagship,
Orion
.”

“. . . What?”

It was too much for Connor’s head and he lay back against the pillow, trying not to be sick again. He felt Rhiannon’s soft touch upon his forearm and tried to focus on it as he shut his eyes and lay there, trying to get his bearings, to make sense of things. Somewhere nearby, a door opened and he heard footsteps, authoritative and steady, coming toward him.

“How is he?”

A familiar English voice: “Awake, sir. Finally.”

Connor opened his eyes once more and turning his head on the pillow, saw his cousin’s curly black hair, its unruliness tamed with a short bit of leather at his nape. He’d been sitting there all along.

“Delmore?” He tried to grin, but it hurt too much. “Your shirt, man . . . it’s unbuttoned, you slacker. . . .”

“Yes, well, it’s hot in here. And I have you to thank for my new lax standards.”

Connor smiled, but Delmore was getting to his feet as his admiral approached. The flag captain looked warily at Sir Graham and shook his head and the admiral, who looked like he’d been about to say something, snapped his mouth shut in irritation.

Connor felt alarm sweep through him. “What is it?”

Sir Graham turned on him. “Go to sleep, Connor. You took a hit that nearly bashed the brains out of your damned skull. What little ones you have, in any case.”

But Connor wasn’t listening. There was a chapter of his life missing, something to do with
Kestrel
and the stolen, well-armed merchantman full of pirates, and he tried desperately to fill it in.

“Why am I here?”

“You’re here because your sister had a dream, and thanks to your damned foolhardiness, you—”

“Not now,” Rhiannon said firmly, locking her gaze with the admiral’s and shaking her head. “
Not now.
”

“If not now, when? Tomorrow? Next year? He’s got a lot to answer for, and he’s going to start immediately!”

“No, Sir Graham. You will let him rest. I forbid this conversation.”

Listen to her, standing up to one of the king’s most decorated admirals. And I’d once thought her
timid
?

“I have questions for him.” Sir Graham’s fist hit a table. “I want answers.”

“Then go ask Liam Doherty. Or Nathan Ashton. My husband has been badly hurt, he only just woke up, and you will
not
speak of what happened.
Not
.
Now
.”

“What
did
happen?” Connor managed, wishing he could put a gun to his head and make the pain stop. “I’m no callow youth . . . for God’s sake, don’t treat me like one.”

“I’ll tell you what happened, you reckless, proud, and utterly useless piece of—”

“Sir Graham,
enough
!” Rhiannon said sharply. “If you can’t drop this, then I must ask you to leave!”

Connor pushed himself backward in the bed and tried to sit up, but his head spun, and his stomach spun with it, and he shut his eyes against a renewed wave of pain that felt as if someone was pounding the sharp end of an axe blade into his skull. He felt Rhiannon’s hand supporting him. Sir Graham, it seemed, was furious. Not just furious but extremely upset, as though this was personal and not just about the fact that he, Connor, had only done what he, as an American privateer, was supposed to be doing by picking that convoy clean.

But maybe it wasn’t about the convoy.

Maybe there was something more.

He opened his mouth to ask, but the admiral had already turned his back and was stalking angrily toward the door. A moment later it slammed, and the great cabin was quiet once more.

“Well?” he asked, looking from his proper, stern-faced English cousin to the beautiful woman he had married. She, who had just set an admiral firmly in his place, protecting him, shielding him from something that they all seemed to know but which, for him, belonged in that strange and empty lost chunk of time between when he’d realized, too late, that he’d been fooled by the pirate ship’s disguise, and waking up aboard a British admiral’s flagship.

His wife and cousin exchanged glances. Something unspoken passed between them, and Connor was suddenly afraid.

“Tell me,” he said, gripping her hand. “I deserve to know.”

She glanced again at Delmore Lord, a look full of unspoken meaning, and the flag captain stood up, his mouth pained and his gray eyes almost purple with sorrow. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said quietly, and with a bow to Rhiannon, strode quietly from the cabin.

Silence.

Just the sunlight, sparkling like needles against the bulkhead, the inside of his skull, painting his wife’s classic profile in white. Sunlight that seemed serene and peaceful, but Connor knew in his suddenly fearful heart that there was a place where that sunlight would never reach, and he was about to be cast down into that place and that place was called hell.

“You took a terrible blow to the head,” Rhiannon said quietly. “You’ve been unconscious for almost two days. There is time enough, Connor, to talk about what happened and why you’re here. But I think you should rest first.”

“You know I can’t. You know I
won’t
.”

She took his hand. “Yes. I know that.” She lifted his hand to her cheek, pressed his knuckles to her mouth and closed her eyes, and it was then that he saw the sparkle of tears on her lashes, and a single, shimmering droplet beginning to track from out of the corner of her eye.

Hell beckoned, and he sensed its deep, yawning blackness, widening, waiting for him.

“I have . . . I have some terrible news for you, Connor. I don’t know how to tell you this—” the tear was sliding down her cheek now, and her eyes looked glassy and wet as she looked down at him, her bottom lip beginning to quiver.

“Tell me,” he said firmly, and took another step closer to that black, unending chasm.

“
Kestrel
is gone,” she choked out. “And your parents, with her.”

Connor just stared at her.

He could do no more.

And beneath his feet, hell opened.

*     *     *

Hell was hearing what had happened after he’d been thrown twenty feet, only to slam into the iron breech of a gun so that his father, his father whom he had belittled, insulted, and hurt, was left to clean up his mess. Hell was hearing how his mother had actually been dying of the fever down in
Kestrel
’s cabin and knowing that his father, probably coming topside that last time to tell him the awful truth, had nobody to share his anguish with. Hell was hearing how his father had taken command of
Kestrel
when they were about to get pounded to sawdust and instead of running upwind, as Connor had tried to do, had instead turned the valiant little ship straight toward her massive enemy and managed to cripple her enough that the fight was decided before it had ever begun. Except, the fight hadn’t been decided, then. It had been decided when he, Connor, had scoffed at his father’s wise advice to leave the bigger ship be. It had been decided when he, Connor, desperate to prove himself to his crew, to himself, and especially to his father, had sent a challenging shot across her bows. It had been decided long before that first deadly broadside, and
Kestrel
had not come out the winner.

Kestrel
, gone.

“Just a ship,” he’d said offhandedly, hurtfully, to his father.

His father. His father, whom, Rhiannon choked out through her tears, had picked him up in his arms and carried him like a baby to the rail, handed him into Liam Doherty’s care, and given up the place in the boat that might have been his. His father, who had quietly borne his derision, and those last, oh, God, those last terrible, terrible words that could never be taken back.

You’re an old man, a fake, and worst of all, you’re a damned coward.

And as his wife told him of those final moments when he, Connor, had been spared the agony of watching his father’s final sacrifice, something that seemed tragically unfair in itself, Connor felt the numbness that had wrapped itself around his heart, his soul, begin to dissipate, and a pain that was more intense than anything in his head pierced his heart, made its way up into his sinuses, and he began to weep.

You’re an old man, a fake, and worst of all, you’re a damned coward.

Words, hurtful, hateful words, that could never be taken back.

The last words he had said to his beloved
Dadaí
.

“Oh, God,” he cried brokenly, and then his head was in his hands and he was sobbing such that he couldn’t draw breath, rocking back and forth and crying great, unmanly tears and bawling like he hadn’t done since old Preble had slammed the cane across his fingers and Mother had taken him in her arms and wrapped and kissed his little finger and told him how special he was, and now Mother was dead, and
Dadaí
too, dead and drowned and forever entombed upon the ship that he, Connor, had sent to her death.

But he hadn’t sent just
Kestrel
to her death.

“I killed them, Rhiannon,” he choked out, feeling her arms go around his quaking shoulders. “By my need to prove myself,
I killed my parents
.”

“You did not kill them, Connor. Your mother was dying. Your father made the decision he did because he didn’t want to leave her.”

“No, you don’t understand, Rhiannon, you don’t know what was in my head, what drove me, why I insisted,
insisted
, that we hail that ship when I knew deep in my gut that I was making a mistake, but oh, no, I had to do it, and now I can never take it back and now they’re dead,
dead
, and it’s all b-because . . . of
me-e-e-e. . .
.”

He broke down into terrible keening sobs, and Rhiannon, holding his rocking, anguished body in her arms, cried right along with him.

“Connor, don’t do this to yourself,” she sobbed, trying to contain his pain within her own tight, unyielding embrace. “You didn’t make your mother get sick, you didn’t make her decide to go home when she did, this is not your fault. Please,
please
, don’t do this.”

“I told my father he was a . . . he was a
coward
.” The keening sobs were the most piercing sounds of anguish that Rhiannon had ever heard. “A coward. My l-last w-w-words to him. . . . Oh, oh,
God
.”

Rhiannon remembered that final, endearing image she had of Brendan Merrick. Of him standing on the schooner’s deck above them, the ship already listing beneath his feet, the last one still aboard, with his son, his beloved son, cradled in his arms in a final embrace. The kiss the father had left on the son’s forehead. A father’s forgiveness. A father’s love.

Unbreakable.

Infinite.

Forever.

“Fate was with us, Connor,” she was saying, feeling his hot tears soaking against her bosom, his fist, with its sad little broken finger, curling like a cold claw in the soft muslin of her sleeve. “We drifted in the boat all night . . . if there had been any sort of a sea, it would have swamped us. But it was glassy and calm . . . no waves to swamp us . . .  as though someone was looking out for us. The following morning, when the sun came up, we saw Sir Graham’s flagship far, far in the distance, coming toward us. . . Your sister had had a dream . . . begged him to go and look for us. She knew. She
knew
.”

“
Kestrel
—” His voice broke on a sob. “Was she gone by then?”

Rhiannon held him tightly. “The sea was empty, Connor. I’m sorry.”

Hell yawned open yet farther, tormenting him with what it must have been like aboard the little schooner in her final moments, tormenting him with what his father’s last thoughts must have been as
Kestrel
slid, forever, beneath the waves, and he wondered if drowning hurt and if they had suffered and how dark and cold and lonely and terrible it must have been as the schooner slipped down, down, down, heading for a final resting place so deep that no man had ever been able to chart it.

You’re an old man, a fake, and worst of all, you’re a damned coward.

“You were no coward, Da,” he choked out, on a fresh wave of tears. “Oh, God, you were no coward. . . .”

Rhiannon held him until he could cry no more, until the strange, keening wails coming from the back of his throat ceased, only for him to wake over and over again and start the bitter weeping all over. She stroked his hair, avoiding the crusted blood high above his ear, held him tightly to her breast and tried to absolve him of his sins.

But she was no priest, no savior, just his wife.

And for Connor, there was no salvation from hell.

And no absolution.