Captain of My Heart (11 page)

Crossing his great, meaty arms over his
chest, Liam stopped. He planted himself like a well-rooted oak and
with an infuriating grin, drawled, “In what, pray tell?”

Brendan pushed him aside. “A damned rowboat,
for all I care! Find something!”

Behind him, the argument between father and
daughter had exploded into full-blown war. Liam set his jaw and
pounded after his captain. Brendan had put too much time into
choosing the right man to build his dream ship; he couldn’t just
let him walk away from it all. But God Almighty, for someone who’d
just spent a night on an open ocean and the last few minutes
sprawled on a bed of hard dirt, he was being surprisingly
difficult. No, not surprisingly, he corrected himself. Brendan was
a scrappy lad, and when he set his mind on something, there was no
stopping him. Not his best friend’s reasoning. Not the combined
might of the Ashtons. Not even dreams of the schooner—which would
be a dead dream if he allowed him to leave Newburyport.

Down High Street they stormed, Liam stepping
up his efforts to make his captain see reason, Brendan stepping up
both his pace and his determination to ignore him. Past the giant
Beacon Oak they went. Past the stately homes of seafarers,
shipbuilders, and shipmasters. Past the windmill, Frog Pond, the
powder house where they made saltpeter to aid the war effort, the
long rope walk, and a flock of sheep that stared at them curiously.
Down Fish Street, through Market Square, and to the riverfront. The
others had caught up to them now, breathless with exhaustion. Dalby
took up the rear, clutching his chest.

Everyone but Brendan came to an abrupt halt
when they reached the harbor. Lying in the pungent muck of low tide
was
Annabel—
or what was left of her. Without slowing his
stride, Brendan sloshed through mud and marsh grass alike, hauled
himself up and over her side by way of a severed line, and strode
across her tilted decks as though she heeled in nothing more than a
strong wind.

Peace. Solitude. And escape. He stormed down
the companionway, found the door to his cabin, and slammed it
behind him. Here, at least, there were no crew members, no cats—and
no Ashtons.

###

Supper that night was a delicious meal of
wild goose roasted on the clockjack till it was juicy and
golden-brown; peaches stuffed with mincemeat; cornbread and sweet,
creamy butter. Once again, Abigail had outdone herself—and once
again, it was all for naught.

The client was absent.

Mira sat staring into her fish chowder while
Ephraim glowered at her from the head of the table. Outside, a
steady rain fell, pattering gloomily against the gutters and
streaming down the many-paned windows. Only Matt, with one of his
lady friends beside him, seemed to have any appetite. The chair the
esteemed Captain Merrick should have occupied was empty.

It was most unfortunate, too, for Mira had
made the chowder—as well as dessert.

“Heard Merrick’s heading back to Portsmouth
tomorrow,” Ephraim muttered between mouthfuls of cornbread, to no
one in particular. “All my dreams, right out the window. Just like
that.”

Mira said nothing and stared down into her
chowder, wondering why it was such an odd grayish color and not
creamy and white as it was when Abigail made it. So much for trying
to make amends.

Matt took pity on her. “Oh, lay off, would
you? There’ll be other clients.” Turning to Miss Lucy Preble beside
him, he smeared strawberry jam on a piece of cornbread before
placing it on her plate. Matt, kind soul that he was, was treating
her with sickening gallantry, but Mira knew it would only be a
matter of time before Matt realized this woman was as selfish and
unpleasant as the rest of them, and dumped her for someone else. As
if to confirm her thoughts, Mira looked up and found the woman’s
haughty stare raking her with unconcealed disdain.

Mira straightened in her chair and smoothed
her skirts over her knees. What right did Her Bloody Highness have
to look so damned lofty? Did she think that just because she’d
powdered her hair, garbed herself in fine silks and velvet, and was
attached to the arm of Newburyport’s most eligible bachelor, she
could look down on someone else? Raising her chin, Mira shoved her
hair behind her ear and returned the stare with a defiant one of
her own. Miss Lucy Preble could be as lofty as she damn well
pleased, but she’d never lifted one of those white fingers in the
name of Liberty, never dirtied them making saltpeter down in the
powder house, never pricked them sewing uniforms for the
Continental army, or, heaven forbid, used them to defend the
bloodstained decks of a privateer!

But then, she’d never frightened off an
important client, nor run a person down on a horse, and there was
no way in hell she’d be caught dead in breeches. Mira swallowed
hard and looked down at her cold, gray chowder. Someone as perfect
as Miss Lucy Preble didn’t do those things. Someone like Miss
Preble didn’t bring disgrace upon her family name.

“Oh, there’ll be other clients, all right,”
Ephraim growled, glaring at his uncharacteristically silent
daughter from beneath his bushy white brows. Just because she was
all dolled up in her pretty gown and petticoats didn’t change the
fact that he’d raised a damned hoyden. “But none like Merrick.”

“I thought you hated him. After all, he
was
an Englishman,” Matt drawled with biting sarcasm.

“Irishman,” Ephraim snapped. “Besides, it
don’t matter where he was born an’ raised. He was privateerin’ fer
our side, and that’s all that matters.” He stared at his precious
Willard clock for a long moment, then slammed his spoon down so
hard that flecks of chowder leapt from his bowl and spattered his
white stock. “Cripes, did ye see those figures, those calculations?
That man ain’t just a naval architect, he’s a blasted engineer!
That schooner he wanted me to build would’ve been the finest ship
ever to slide down our ways. By God, Tracy, Greenleaf, Cross, and
even Hackett would’ve all been drooling with envy, ’cause there
ain’t no way in hell any of ’em could’ve ever dreamed up something
like that. Not even
Hancock
would’ve compared, and you know
what the damned Brits said about her when Greenleaf and Cross
turned her out back in seventy-seven. Finest and fastest frigate in
the world! But she weren’t nothin’ compared to what that schooner
would’ve been! And now—” Picking up his fork, he stabbed a peach
and shoved it into his mouth. “—Merrick’ll go and give his business
to someone else. And someone else’ll get the glory for building
that ship, not me!”

Lucy appeared unfazed by Ephraim’s tirade,
but then, everyone in Newburyport was well used to his ways. She
eyed Mira with cool disdain and said airily, “From what I’ve heard,
that man will be Tracy.”

“What?” Ephraim’s fork came down so hard, his
plate cracked.

She shrugged her shoulders and swayed
slightly toward Matt, who was beginning to look disgusted with her.
“Oh, yes. Nathaniel tells Papa that Merrick’s lieutenant came to
him just this evening with a proposal.”

“Of all the goddamned luck!” Ephraim’s fist
crashed down on the table, rattling china, upsetting the chowder
bowls, and making crumbs of cornbread jump like fleas on a cat.
“This is the first I’ve heard!”

“Oh, and I’m sure it won’t be the last,
Captain Ashton,” Lucy said sweetly, heedless of Matt’s growing
annoyance with her. “Why, it’s all over town.”

Mira shoved her hands between her clamped
knees before she could give in to the urge to haul off and give
Miss Lucy Preble a bloody nose.
Act like a lady,
she told
herself.
Just this once.
She smoothed her skirts—native
homespun skirts, not that frippery Lucy was wearing—and turned to
face her father, determined, for once, to please him. “I am sorry,
Father.”

“Sorry? You think being sorry’s gonna bring
Merrick back?”

“I said, I’m sorry.”

“Well, ye sure weren’t sorry after you ran
him down in the street! Why didn’t you think of saying ‘sorry’
then, huh? Cripes, maybe if you had, he’d be sitting there in that
cussed chair and I’d have an agreement right here—” He raised his
hand and shook an angry fist. “—to build that schooner. But no!
Thanks to you and yer damned shenanigans, Tracy’s gonna build it!
Why can’t ye be a daughter I can be proud of? Why can’t ye act like
a lady for once instead of a damned hoyden—”

“
I said I’m sorry!”

“—and why can’t ye be like Matt? Thank God I
have one offspring I can be proud of!”

Matt choked on his cornbread, and Mira stood
up so fast, her chair nearly went over backward. Tears blurred her
vision and she had to bite down hard on her lower lip to keep from
either losing her temper or crying in front of the other woman.
“I—” She swallowed, gulping. “I—”

“Father, I suggest you take this discussion
into the library,” Matt said firmly.

Ephraim threw down his fork. He sat there for
a long moment, his eyes hard, his lower lip quivering. “All my
life, I dreamed of gittin’ the chance to build a ship like that one
would’ve been,” he finally said, the bluster gone from his voice.
He looked at Mira, and she saw depths of pain in his eyes that
shook her to her soul. “I’m an old man, Mira. It ain’t much I asked
for. Just a little glory. Something that people would’ve remembered
me by when I’m gone.”

He put down his napkin, got to his feet, and
quietly left the room, leaving an awful silence in his wake.

Swallowing hard, Mira looked down at her
plate.

Her appetite gone, she took a deep and
steadying breath, aware of Matt’s sympathetic gaze upon her. As she
left the dining room her gaze fell upon the beautiful Delft punch
bowl that commemorated the launching of the ship
Temper.
Unless she found a way to get Captain Merrick’s business back,
there would be no such memento to honor his fine schooner.

The fine schooner that Tracy would build.

Chapter
6

The full moon rode high above Newburyport
Harbor, playing chase with lofty clouds that scudded across the
vast and purple heavens on their way toward the sea. On this quiet
night the river flowed like pale silk beneath it, and the shrouds
and masts of anchored ships climbed skyward as though paying
homage. Booms and yards were bathed in silver, sails glowed with
its heavenly light, and a gentle wind whispered over all, stirring
the marsh grass and filling the night with the rhythmic creak and
ease of settling timbers and swaying rigging. The tang of the sea
lay heavily in the air, ripe with salt and marshlands and the
promise of fresher winds on the morrow.

Just beyond the tide-swell, the little sloop
Annabel
rested. The moon had found her, too, making pewter
of her battered decks, throwing shadows across her forecastle,
softening the ragged edges of spars and torn planking, and dragging
ghostly fingers of light along the splintered boom of her mainsail.
To all appearances she was deserted, but at her shattered stern
windows a lantern shone, reflected upon the river’s shimmering
surface as it rolled past on its way to the sea.

By the light of a tired candle, now spitting
tallow and sending up a finger of smoke to tickle the deck beams
above his head, her master worked. But it was past the candle’s
bedtime as well as his, and now it shivered, faltered, flared once
more, and started to die. Brendan put his pencil down, rubbed his
eyes, and, digging through his splintered sea chest until he found
another, lit the wick from the dying remains of the first and stuck
it in the lantern.

His eyes ached with fatigue, but he’d spent
the night redrawing the drafts, and he’d be damned if he sought his
bed before he finished them. After his rash behavior this
afternoon, he’d have to swallow his pride and go crawling back to
Ephraim in the morn, hoping to God he didn’t get run down by a
horse, carriage, or pack of cats along the way. What a fool he’d
been for letting his humiliation over the accident dictate his
behavior; he should have just got up, brushed away the dust, and
laughed the whole thing off. At any other time he probably would
have. But oh, Miss Mira … how she had unsettled him.

She hugged me.

Now, he’d have to swallow the pride that Liam
insisted came from his stiff and proper English side. Well, damn
his English side! Always getting him into trouble and leaving it to
his Irish side’s luck to bail him out.

But could even his Irish side rescue him from
Miss Mira Ashton?

He bent his forehead into his hands and
rubbed his temples. How differently things might have turned out if
Crichton hadn’t stumbled upon
Annabel
twelve leagues east of
Cape Ann. Or if his arrival at Ashton’s had been dignified, instead
of one he didn’t even remember. Fine way to make an impression on a
man—and his daughter.

His daughter.

Groaning, Brendan went to the stern and
leaned his brow against the sill of the shattered windows. Why
should it matter what Miss Mira thought? He was a seafarer, a
privateer, with barely enough time for himself, let alone a pretty
lass. And Mira Ashton . . . well, she sure didn’t fit any
definition of “lass” he’d ever used. Lasses were supposed to be
delicate, charming wee confections who dressed in ribbons, lace,
and gowns. They were supposed to ride sidesaddle and spend their
time pursuing genteel things like sewing and reading and spinning.
They were not supposed to wear trousers. They were not supposed to
curse like seasoned tars in a king’s ship. And they were not
supposed to ride wild stallions and run innocent people down in the
street.

Liam’s words came back to taunt him.
What
are ye, afraid of her? A lassie? Ye sit there cool as frost on a
pumpkin when the ship’s gettin’ blown out from under us, yet ye run
from a mere lassie, and a wee one at that!