Master of My Dreams (3 page)

But no, Elliott had insisted, nay,
ordered
him to take command of the thirty-eight-gun warship,
with the excuse that he was the Admiralty’s last hope of bringing
law and order to a ship that everyone else in the Navy had all but
given up on.

Bloody hell.

In his arms the little white dog whimpered
and gently, very gently, he set her down, keeping a watchful eye on
her as she did her business so she wouldn’t run off. He had found
her rifling through a pile of frozen garbage some three streets
back and immediately taken pity on her. Now she reared up on her
hind legs and, whining, furiously licked the back of his hand,
grateful that he had not abandoned her as someone else had
obviously done.

The spaniel safely in his arms once more, he
resumed his quick pace. No doubt, giving him command of the
Hell-Ship was Rear Admiral Sir Elliott Lord’s twisted idea of
taking his mind off the Black Anniversary. But Christian was not
grateful. In fact, he’d been downright furious to find, upon his
arrival in Portsmouth yesterday, that his shrewd older brother had
obviously had the thing planned for some time, for HMS
Bold
Marauder
was already refitted and provisioned for sea.

Waiting for him—her new captain.

And there she was, distinctive,
well-designed, and, if he were to allow himself a moment of
romanticism long since blasted away by the realities of naval
command, rather beautiful. She was anchored well out beyond the
harbor, far away from the other vessels as though she carried the
plague.

As
indeed she does,
he thought,
blackly.

Her first captain, Richards, had been a lazy,
drunken lout who’d allowed his crew the free rein to do just about
anything they damn well pleased. Three men since the slovenly
Richards had tried to turn her company into a fighting pack the
king himself could be proud of. The first had come back insane, and
it had required three marines to drag him from the cabin; the
second had begged transfer to a seventy-four-gun ship of the line;
and the third had quit the Navy altogether.

Of course, the fact that the frigate’s
officers were a tightly knit pack of wastrels—some the sons of
peers of the realm, others the offspring of admirals ranked high on
the Navy list—guaranteed the granting of their fondest desire. And
that desire was that they were not to be separated and sent to
different ships—a solution, Christian thought wryly, that would
have solved the problem of HMS
Bold Marauder
immediately.

His eyes gleamed with determination. Well,
the crew was in for a big surprise if they thought they could pull
any nonsense on
him.
Cradling the spaniel in the crook of
his arm, he drew his telescope and, lifting it to his eye, studied
the frigate’s decks with a seemingly detached stare that belied
the steel in his frosty gray gaze. Sleet hit the glass lens,
streaking the circular field, the frigate’s dark form. He moved
the glass, bringing it slowly down the length of the ship, his keen
eyes seeing all and missing nothing—not even the figurehead, a
brown-and-white bird dog crouched beneath the bowsprit, its foot
raised to its chest in a rigid point as though seeking elusive
game.

A hunter, Christian mused, but this
particular ship had never fulfilled such promise. He trained the
glass on her decks. What he saw only raised his ire all the more,
for even from this distance it was frightfully obvious that HMS
Bold Marauder
fell short of the high standards of spit and
polish that he, as an officer in the king’s Navy, demanded of the
vessels under his command.

He shut the telescope with a brisk snap.

A condition that would soon change, by
God!

Grim-faced, he continued on, his long
mariner’s stride conveying his ill temper. The streets were nearly
deserted, those who were wise, or able to afford it, taking shelter
in drier places and huddling next to crackling hearths. But still,
he was not alone. A group of seamen caught the glint in his cold
gray eyes and respectfully touched their hats as he passed; a thug
with a hang-gallows look saw the sword peeping dangerously beneath
his coattails and stepped aside; a pack of young boys, engaged in a
fistfight, paused, then fell reverently into step behind him,
trailing at a respectful distance, dodging into alleyways, hiding
behind trash heaps, and trying in vain to keep up with him. But the
captain paid them no heed. Straight to the quay he went—and came up
short, his features darkening with rage.

The boys fled.

Captain Lord had every right to be furious.
He had sent orders out to the frigate that its gig should be here,
waiting to bring him to his new command—but the boat was nowhere
in sight.

He was left embarrassingly stranded.

Either his orders had never been received or,
more likely, they had been blatantly ignored by the crew of
rebellious rascals whom it would soon be his duty to command.

“Troubles already, Captain Lord?”

A young lieutenant stood there, nervously
eyeing the tall and forbidding captain and correctly guessing the
reason for his anger.

“Aye, but not for long. Lieutenant
—not for
long!
”

His temper gone black, Captain Christian Lord
turned on his heel and stormed down the quay. He would find a way
out to the frigate, and when he stepped aboard her for the first
time, there would be all hell to pay.

Chapter 2

Captain Lord wasn’t the only one on his way
out to HMS
Bold Marauder.
While he was trying to procure
passage to his new command, another had already done so and was
waiting to be rowed out to the warship.

Deirdre O’Devir had arrived in Portsmouth
with nothing but her name, her pride, her meager life savings, and
a canvas bag containing everything in the world that was most
precious to her: a miniature of her dead mother; a tiny model of a
sailboat that Roddy had made when he was a lad; and an old sliver
of wood, part of Papa’s little boat, all that had washed ashore
after the sea storm in which the angels had taken him home so long
ago.

Had those been the only revered occupants of
Deirdre’s canvas bag, it would have been sadly empty. Carefully
wrapped in linen to guard against breakage was the vial of Irish
seawater she’d taken from the beach at Connemara the day she’d left
for England; a felt pouch containing sand and shells scooped from
that same shore; a pebble from the rocky pasture outside the little
cottage that had been her family’s home; a tuft of wool snipped
from a neighbor’s sheep; a tightly corked glass flagon, seemingly
empty, but full of Irish air, and, of course, the loaf of
bread—made of wheat flour grown on Irish pastures and milk gleaned
from Irish cows, and baked over the heat of a good, Irish peat
fire.

It didn’t matter that the bread had grown
stale during her journey to England, for it was not to be eaten.
Just as Deirdre O’Devir would never empty the water from the vial
or the sand and shells from the pouch, just as she would never
throw the pebble away or, God forbid, uncork the flagon of Irish
air and let it escape—she would never eat the bread. Nor, she
thought, reaching up to finger the ornate gold heirloom that hung
from the chain around her neck, would she ever take Grace’s cross
off.

She stepped closer to the edge of the quay.
Below, the old tar she had paid to take her out to the Boston-bound
frigate was busy clearing space for her in his boat. Taking
advantage of the moment, Deirdre raised a hand to shade her eyes
from the watery sun that had just broken through the clouds. She
peered across the water to the frigate. At the thought of her
impending voyage, her heart jumped with fear, but she hid it
well—just as she’d hidden the secret of her gender beneath a loose
linen shirt, woolen jacket, and seaman’s trousers. With her wildly
curling tresses stuffed beneath a cap, there was little to give
away the fact that the raw-boned lad with the fair complexion and
bold black brows was actually a female.

Her face, a striking contrast of beauty and
strength, denoted the courage of Celtic blood and showed none of
the frailty that was often associated with her sex. Her nose was
straight and bold, her lips full, her cheekbones high and proud.
Only her eyes, a deep, mysterious, purple, betrayed her fear and
grief, for even here her mama’s deathbed words, uttered not one
month before, haunted her . . .

“
Deirdre
. . .
Go t’ England and
find m
’
son. Go t’ England . . . go wherever ye have to,
girl. But go, find m’ lad . . . and bring him back home t' Ireland
so I can rest in peace
. . .”

Again she saw Mama, lying in bed with her
eyes, once as deep a violet as her children’s, faded like a piece
of fabric left out in the sun for too long. She’d been dying—but
then, Deirdre figured she’d been dying ever since the English
lieutenant had come with the press gang and taken Roddy away from
them.
I’ll find that scoundrel, Mama,
she’d promised as
she’d held her mother’s small hand and felt the life fading out of
her.
By all that's holy, I’ll find him and kill him, destroy him
like he did you and Roddy . . .

She had gone, first, to London to enlist her
cousin’s help, only to learn that Brendan, a captain in the Royal
Navy, had been sent to the American port of Boston. He and his
younger sister, Eveleen, were all the family Deirdre had left—and
Brendan with his naval connections was her only hope of finding
Roddy. She would follow him to America, then . . . even if the
thought of crossing the stormy Atlantic terrified her.

Again she reached up to touch the heavy cross
that hung from a chain of beaten gold around her neck. It had
belonged to her ancestress, the formidable Irish pirate queen
Granuaile, known to the English as Grace O’Malley. Granuaile had
lived during the time of Queen Elizabeth, and the cross had come
down to Deirdre through her mother’s people. To her, it not only
symbolized her beloved homeland—it
was
her homeland.

“Ye ready there, mate?”

The old seaman was waiting for her, reaching
up a gnarled hand to help her down into the boat. For a moment
Deirdre hesitated, the wind blowing cold and lonely off the Solent
and dragging a shiver of apprehension down her spine. But then she
felt the reassuring presence of her canvas bag, the neck of which
was clenched in her hand, and courage infused her again. As long as
she had her precious bits of home with her, she would never be
alone. No matter where she went, no matter what lay ahead, they
would always be with her, to sustain her, to strengthen her, to
remind her of who she was.

And what she was setting out to do.

One month ago, Deirdre had made a vow to her
dying mama to find Roddy and bring him home to Ireland. Thirteen
years ago she had made a vow to
herself
to find and kill the
fair-haired English lieutenant who had stolen him from them.

And now the time had come to fulfill those
vows.

Sustained by purpose, she crouched down and
allowed the old seaman to help her into the boat. She sat clutching
the boat’s damp gunwale, staring out at the countless lighters,
barges, and ships of every size and shape that clogged Portsmouth
Harbor and, beyond it, the white-ruffled anchorage of Spithead.

And then her gaze found the frigate.

A seaman would have immediately noted the
differences that set her apart from her neighbors. She was a
warship, designed for striking hard and fast, a far cry from the
bluff-bowed, tub-bodied vessels that surrounded her. A seaman’s
trained eye would have admired the sleek lines that marked her as a
fighter, the clean rake of her masts, the efficient and
businesslike design of her hull, the row of gunports that ran along
her sides. But Deirdre was oblivious of such details, for to her,
the ship would serve only one purpose—and that was to take her to
Boston and Brendan’s help.

The mist had parted, leaving low-hanging
clouds rolling across the leaden sky like giant white balls of
dust. It would be a fine day after all, even if it was cold, and
the seaman whistled as he rowed, his wizened eyes scanning the
harbor. He nodded at an acquaintance in a passing boat, then turned
and caught her eye.

“Ye sure ye be wantin’ to go out to
Marauder
?”

Deirdre shrugged. “Well, ye said she was
goin’ to Amerikay . . . to Boston, and that I could get by in her
without doin’ much work.”

“Aye, that ye can, lad.” He stared over his
shoulder, his eyes suddenly gleaming. “I reckon ye could certainly
do worse fer yer first ship. Why, every jack’s happy to serve on
that
frigate—most loosely run ship in the fleet!”

“But . . . isn’t she a king’s ship? A Royal
Navy vessel?”

“Aye, that she is,” the old man wheezed,
leaning on his oars, “but that don’t matter none. She’s the
Bold
Marauder
.”

The way he said the vessel’s name made it
sound as though
that
explained everything. Was the
Marauder's
reputation for laxity so well known that she,
Deirdre, was the only “sailor” on the wharves who was unaware of
it?

Frowning, she gazed out across the rough
Solent to the distant hump of the Isle of Wight—

—and nearly dropped her precious canvas bag
in shock. Not a stone’s throw away, a boat was ferrying a group of
grinning, gaping tars out to
Bold Marauder,
and in their
midst sat a painted, yellow-haired doxy whose breasts were the size
of ale jugs. Deirdre’s eyes bulged. Sweet Jesus, not only were they
huge,
they were shockingly exposed, the creamy flesh
swelling above the low neckline of her gown, only the nipples
hidden by the fabric. As Deirdre stared, gaping and appalled, the
woman threw back her head with bawdy laughter, rested her hand on
the thigh of one of the sailors, and leaned into the arms of
another.