Authors: Danelle Harmon
Chapter 21
“Your orders, sir?”
Connor studied the sails of the distant convoy, so far off that he could barely pick out their royals and t’gallants from the haze and wispy clouds that lay heavily on the horizon.
His mind awhirl, he steadied himself against the rail and willed himself to take one thing at a time in order to try and reduce the confusion of thinking of too many things at once. Rhiannon. His mother’s mischief. The convoy.
Damn
. He was keenly aware of Rhiannon standing somewhere nearby, and he still didn’t know whether to be enraged or excited about her presence on the ship. She was one matter that must be dealt with. Then there was the convoy, beating to the north and presenting an opportunity that no self-respecting Yankee privateer could pass up—even if they
were
in Sir Graham’s waters. Another matter that must be dealt with.
He took a deep breath.
First things first.
“Run up British colors,” he said. “They don’t have to know who we are.
Yet
.”
Moments later the Union Jack streamed from
Kestrel
’s gaff, and Connor hoped the ruse would fool not only the convoy so that he could get in close, but the Royal Navy warships that would surely be guarding the long line of ships itself. A thrum of excitement began to course through his blood and he felt suddenly unfettered, excited, and
alive
.
All but rubbing his hands together in anticipation, he strode confidently to the helm. There, Nathan had the tiller.
“If we keep on this course we’ll close with them by nightfall,” he said, shading his eyes against the late afternoon sun. “Easy pickings, after that.”
Rhiannon was standing there too. “What are you planning on doing?”
Second things second.
Time to deal with his errant wife.
“Rhiannon, go below and wait for me in my cabin.”
“Why?”
“This is a warship. I don’t want you on deck.”
“You just said yourself that we won’t close with that convoy until nightfall. So what is the hurry?”
Nathan cleared his throat and pretended to be engrossed in studying the binnacle.
The merriment faded from Connor’s eyes. “Don’t question me, Rhiannon. I told you to go below.”
“Yes, but why?”
Because I can’t concentrate on two things at once and you’re a distraction, a huge distraction, that’s why.
Nathan didn’t look up. “Best not to question the captain’s orders,” he said matter-of-factly. “Always leads to trouble.”
“He’s not my captain, he’s my husband.”
“Then you have twice as much reason to obey me,” Connor said impatiently, taking her hand and steering her toward the hatch. There, out of earshot of his men, she stopped and planted her feet.
“
Obey
you?”
“How quickly you forget your marriage vows, my dear.”
“Marriage vows that were penned, no doubt, by a man. I’m staying here.”
“You can’t. I need to
think
, and I can’t think if you’re here distracting me.”
“Distracting you from what? Recklessly attacking an entire convoy? You’re insane!”
“And about to become very rich.”
“I’m worried about you! This is madness!”
“For heaven’s sake, Rhiannon, I’m under license from my country to attack, seize, harass, and make prizes of enemy shipping. That’s what a privateer does. At the moment, we’re at war with Britain and that’s a British convoy. I’d be insane
not
to attack it.”
“Flying the Union Jack is dishonest.”
“It’s the done thing. You want me to hoist the Stars and Stripes and go sashaying down on them like I’ve been invited to tea?”
“At least that would be honorable.”
Connor, fighting a losing war with his temper, raked a hand through his tousled curls. At the tiller, Nathan was trying hard not to smirk. Connor could feel the familiar confused buzzing starting up in his head.
“Deck there!” came the cry from high above.
“Report!”
“Three more ships now, Captain. Maybe four. One looks to be a frigate.”
First things first.
Leaving Rhiannon standing there with stormy eyes, Connor hooked a hand in the shrouds, stepped up on the rail, and began to climb aloft.
He needed a clear head.
And she could never follow him there.
* * *
As
Kestrel
moved steadily toward the convoy that was now fully visible to the north, Connor came back down on deck, ordered the gun ports closed and the crew to lie low. For some time the frigate, capable of blasting them to kindling wood if her commander so chose, stayed close to the merchant ships like a shepherd guarding its sheep. Then, late in the afternoon, she wore ship and came storming down on them.
“Got our papers in order, Nathan?” Connor asked, grinning.
“Aye, sir. The British ones.”
“Good. Toby, lad! Send most of the crew below. If that frigate yonder sees so many in our company, they’ll know us for what we are. Especially with
Kestrel
’s design.”
Nathan scratched absently at the light brown stubble on his jaw. “What about the missus, Con?”
“Yes, Captain? What about me?”
Connor turned and found his wife leaning against one of the schooner’s guns, her arms crossed over her chest and her smile one of false sweetness. Oh, he couldn’t wait to get his hands around his mother’s neck for sneaking Rhiannon aboard. This was unacceptable. Totally, outrageously, unacceptable.
“Are you going to give me trouble, Rhiannon?”
“Already has, by the look of it,” Nathan mused.
“You can stay on deck unless things get hot. But if I say go below you’ll go, even if I have to bodily carry you myself.”
The frigate, heeled over with the sea foaming at her lee bows, was growing closer.
Connor watched its approach and bit off a hangnail. “They’ll be putting a shot across our bows right about—”
Boom!
“Now,” he finished, straightening up. “Time to heave to. Everyone below except you Nathan, as well as Toby, Bobbs, and whichever one of you lot are capable of carrying off a passable English accent.”
“What about me?” Rhiannon asked, watching the smoke drifting across the water from the frigate’s challenge.
Connor eyed her dubiously. “Your accent wouldn’t be false. But this is tricky business and I don’t want you saying a word. In fact, stand over there with Toby so they don’t notice you’re a woman and wonder why you’re aboard, and if I tell you to go below—”
“I know, I know. . . .”
“Good. I’m glad we understand each other,” he said firmly, and throwing her a last, meaningful look, returned to the business at hand. Moments later, most of the crew had gone below and Nathan was putting the helm down. Like a well-bred horse obeying her master,
Kestrel
turned her nose into the wind and came drifting to a stop, her great sails luffing.
Rhiannon went to stand next to Toby, shifting her weight to keep her balance as
Kestrel
fretted beneath them, the long ocean swells passing beneath her, lifting her, settling her down in each trough before lifting her up yet again. She looked at the British frigate, its gun ports wide open and the ugly black snouts of its huge guns all aimed squarely at them, now hove to and lying to windward several hundred feet away.
“That frigate looks huge up close,” she whispered to Toby. “I’m anxious for Connor.”
“He’s the best at what he does. Just like his father was.”
“Why does he feel such a need to prove himself, Toby? He’s so confident. Too confident. I worry so about him.”
“A captain needs confidence to inspire his men. Have faith in him, Rhiannon. He’s good at this.”
A boat put out from the frigate and was now heading toward them, several tars at the oars and a smartly clad officer in the stern.
“Prepare to receive boarders,” Connor muttered through a cheerful grin.
Rhiannon’s blood was running cold. “I can’t watch this. And yet I can’t not watch it. I wish I’d stayed in Barbados.”
Toby, who’d been watching his cousin and captain, turned to her in some alarm. “Want me to take you below?”
“No, I don’t want to go below. But I don’t want to see my husband shot down or hanged, either!”
Moments later the officer, accompanied by his coxswain, was standing on
Kestrel
’s deck and looking around with suspicious eyes. He was short, plump, and full of his own importance, with penetrating gray eyes, a stand-up collar that poked into the soft flesh around his jaw, and brown hair worn in fashionable spit curls.
“I am Lieutenant Treadwell of His Majesty’s frigate
Diana
,” he drawled. “Who are you and what is your business?”
Rhiannon could barely breathe. She watched in silence as her husband bowed deeply. “Mr. Merrick, sir, o’ the English schooner
Kestrel
.”
“English? Looks like one of those damned Baltimore privateers to me.”
“Indeed sir, she was that until me captain, an English privateer ‘imself, took her as a prize. I’m her prizemaster, that I am, tasked with sailing her back t’ London.”
“You Irish?”
“Aye.”
“Why sail her all the way back to England? Vice Admiral Sir Graham Falconer is in Bridgetown, surely you can have her condemned and sold at auction there.”
“Ah, but sir, ye know that th’ Royal Navy has nothing like these sharp-sailing, over-sparred American ships that can run circles around its fastest frigates. Admiralty in London is eager t’ get its hands on one o’ them so they can study and duplicate them.” Connor turned and gestured expansively to the schooner’s raked and towering masts. “Can ye blame ‘em? Look at her. Is she not a beauty?”
“Simmons, go below and fetch her papers,” the lieutenant snapped, but his mariner’s eyes had warmed in appreciation as he studied the schooner’s lean and predatory lines, her neat rows of guns, the sharp, backswept rake of her two masts and the jib-boom at her nose that seemed to angle out into forever.
“She is indeed,” he said, watching his coxswain head below. “What kind of sailor is she?”
“Fast. Wet.” Connor grinned. “Hard t’ handle, just like a woman.”
A faint smile curved the lieutenant’s stern mouth. Moments later his coxswain had reappeared, a leather packet in his hand. With a lingering look at
Kestrel
’s square topsail so high above, the officer took the packet, opened it, and studied the papers that granted
Kestrel
permission to harbor in Barbados.
“These are signed by Sir Graham himself!” the man said, a crease appearing between his heavy brows.
“Aye, sir. That they are.”
“Well then, since you are headed back to England all alone, and I’m sure those damned Yankees will lose no chance to reclaim such a singular ship as a prize, you will travel in convoy with us under the protection of His Majesty’s frigate
Diana
and the sloop-of-war
Whippet
.”
“Thank ye, sir. Much obliged.” Connor bowed deeply and shot Nathan a wicked, conspiring grin as the British lieutenant looked up at
Kestrel
’s sails in admiration. His eyes were twinkling with mischief. “Indeed, we would be most grateful, sir, to sail in convoy with ye. Most grateful, indeed.”
* * *
“Fools,” Connor said under his breath, touching his hat and grinning as the Englishman and his crew went over
Kestrel
’s side and back down into the boat below. “That was easier than I thought.”
“Gotta hand it to you, Con. That was a clever way to get us right in the middle of the convoy without ‘em suspecting a thing. You’re as cunning as your Da. Loved the Irish accent.”
“All in a day’s work. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Good hunting tonight, I say.”
“Good hunting,” Nathan agreed.
Connor picked up one of the cats which had wandered up on deck and was now twining itself around his feet. “We’ll keep the crew lying low until dark. I don’t want that supercilious prig out there thinking we’re anything but short-handed and vulnerable.” He stroked the tabby’s sleek, shining fur. “Rhiannon, lass. What’s the matter?”
“You can drop the Irish accent now,
Captain.
”
“Sounded just like his father, didn’t he?” One-Eye said.
“I doubt his father would ever stoop to such deceit.”
Connor shrugged. “My father knew every ruse in the book and the ones he didn’t know, he invented. Just ask Bobbs, here. His Da sailed with mine back in the last war.”
“Tell her about the time Uncle Brendan snuck up on that British frigate in the dark and stole some of its crew for his own right out from under its captain’s nose!” Toby said eagerly.
“Or the time he fooled another British warship into thinking he’d gone aground when he was in seas that were unmeasurably deep!”
“How ‘bout the time he cleverly escaped the British admiral during the Battle of Penobscot?”
“I’m going below,” Rhiannon said, the fear and tension of watching the exchange between her husband and Lieutenant Treadwell leaving her suddenly exhausted.
“Oh, do stay,” Connor urged. He was in high spirits and eager, she could see, for the coming night’s work. “We’re about to have some fun.”
“Fun?”
“Aye.” Handing the cat to Rhiannon, he watched the English lieutenant scrambling up the frigate’s tumblehome and the British tars preparing to hoist the boat back aboard. “Time to carry out our ruse. Bobbs! Douse that mainsail, would you? We’ll pretend to limp along with just the jib and fore. Make sure her trim is sloppy. Let them think we don’t know how to sail this lovely lady, eh?”
“That will slow her down considerably, sir.”
“And that’s my intent. I don’t want to show our hand until it’s time to run, and there’s no sense letting our friends over there know how fast this thoroughbred really is.”
Rhiannon put the cat down and headed toward the hatch, assailed by confusion, despair, a grudging admiration for her husband’s cleverness, and worry. Deep worry. What would happen if the men on that frigate over there discovered who he really was and what he was up to? And what would Sir Graham do when he learned of such audacity?