Lord Of The Sea (7 page)

Far be it from her to break his dear heart. She extended her hand so that he might raise her from her seat on the step. “It would be my honor, Captain Falconer.”

Chapter 7

Maeve had not overestimated her son’s abilities.

Even so, it did little to soothe Rhiannon’s nervousness as she took off her shoes and, holding them in one hand and the hem of her gown in the other, waded a few feet into the gentle surf and following the boy’s direction while he held the bow steady, climbed into the little boat.

It was one thing to be out on the water with the size and security of an actual ship around her; it was quite another to be in a tiny, tippy boat with a seven-year-old when one didn’t know how to swim. Rhiannon sat stiffly on the thwart as the boy, with a staggering amount of self-confidence and competence in one so young, tossed his fishing gear into the boat, waded into the surf, pushed the craft backwards out into the water and with the agility of a monkey, leaped aboard. The boat tipped from side to side for one frightening moment, but Ned knew what he was about and, picking up the oars, fastened them in their locks and turned to face her.

“You look scared, Miss Evans.”

“I am, a little.”

“Mama’s right, you know. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I know you won’t, Ned,” she said, reaching out to pat his arm. “But you see, I cannot swim, and these little boats make me nervous.”

“You don’t need to know how to swim. We won’t capsize.” The boy’s azure eyes were bright beneath the shadow of the oversize hat. “Would you like to row? It might take your mind off your worries.”

But Rhiannon, who had lifted her head to gaze out over the peaceful sight of the ships in the anchorage, had just spied something that took her mind off her worries far more than any other distraction ever could.

The schooner
Kestrel
.

There she stood at anchor, the bright pinks and golds of the early morning sun casting her sharply backswept masts in silhouette. The pennant at her masthead floated in the breeze, appearing almost orange in the burnished light. Rhiannon could hear laughter and jeers coming from the sleek vessel as a group of men gathered on her deck and a few more clustered in the rigging of her mainmast.

“I wouldn’t mind rowing if you should wish me to be of service to you, Ned, but perhaps you might explain to me just what it is your Uncle Connor’s men are doing out there on their schooner so early in the morning?”

The boy twisted around to follow Rhiannon’s gaze and grinned. “Mama says not to be concerned with what Uncle Connor is up to. She’s worried that he’s going to make Papa cross by going privateering.” The boy’s eyes flashed to hers and took on a secretive gleam. “And if he does go, I’m going with him.”

“I don’t think your father would like that.”

“And do you know what
I
think?” Ned’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “I think that we should go find out what my uncle is doing.”

Yes,
Rhiannon thought. Watching Connor Merrick was far preferable to wondering how many feet of water lay beneath her feet planted on the seemingly fragile hull and the sandy, sparkling bottom so far below.

Grinning, the boy put his skinny arms to the task of rowing, and the little boat picked up speed as it knifed across the water toward the anchored schooner.

Rhiannon’s heart began to pound, and it had nothing to do with fear.

#     #     #

“Now
that
is one crazy bastard!”

The laughter and raucous shouts grew louder as Ned rowed them closer to the schooner, and shading her eyes, Rhiannon tried to discern just what was happening aboard Connor Merrick’s sleek and dangerous-looking vessel.

The voices grew louder as they approached.

“A dollar says he won’t do it.”

“A quarter-eagle says he will.”

“I’ll raise ye to a half-eagle. He’ll do it.”

“A half eagle? Is that all you think my courage is worth?” called a deep, familiar voice, and looking up as they drew closer to the schooner, Rhiannon saw its captain climbing the shrouds that supported
Kestrel
’s sharply raked mainmast. The schooner’s mainsail had been raised about halfway and now swung somewhat uncertainly out over the water in the light breeze, taking both gaff and long boom, which stuck out far astern of the trim little ship, with it.

Connor Merrick, barefoot, bare-chested, and garbed once more in his cut-off canvas pantaloons, was now walking with confident balance out along the gaff, that great spar that angled up and out from the mainmast and from which the schooner’s huge mainsail was hung.

Rhiannon’s heart caught in her throat.

Though the mainsail had only been raised about half the height she knew it was capable of attaining, it looked awfully high, up there out over the water. . . .

“Ned, what are they doing?” she asked urgently.

More laughter came from the ship.

“I don’t know, but it looks like fun. But then, it always is—fun, that is—where Uncle Connor’s concerned.”

The boy rowed them closer, and one or two of the seamen on the privateer’s decks gave them a cursory, dismissive glance before cranking their heads back once more to watch their commander, who had reached the peak of the gaff and now stood there holding on to a stay and grinning.

“Connor, you’re insane,” called up one of the men on deck, and Rhiannon recognized his cousin, Nathan. “If you end up killing yourself, don’t blame me.”

“Anyone want to up Jacques’s bet to an eagle?” returned their captain, from high above.

“Aye, I’ll do it!”

“Fifteen!”

More laughter—and at that moment,
Kestrel
’s captain let go of the stay, bent his knees, and threw himself out into space.

Rhiannon screamed.

#     #     #

Connor was fully aware of the woman in the little rowboat, though it wasn’t until she screamed and he saw, out of the corner of his eye as his body was plunging, knifelike and upside down toward the sparkling blue waters of the harbor, that that woman was none other than Miss Rhiannon Evans.

The rushing thrill of the fall, the
whoosh
of the wind past his ears, the delicious fear of the dive—it all paled in those seconds of free-fall beneath the excitement that
she
was here, that
she
was watching him, and that
he
had the opportunity to either make a complete idiot of himself, or, impress the stockings off her.

Connor knew he had his faults, not least of which was the fact that he was, as Nathan was so fond of reminding him, a show-off, but there were times when a man couldn’t help himself.

He ducked his head between his outthrust arms, drew his legs together, pointed his toes toward the sky and hit the water.

It was a heady way to start the morning and one that he enjoyed mightily; the warm waters and gentle breezes of the Caribbean were a far cry from New England’s cold Atlantic at this time of the year. Swimming easily, he angled his body up and broke the surface right next to Ned’s boat.

“Uncle Connor!” the boy cried in delight.

On the thwart behind him, Miss Rhiannon Evans was looking about as pale as a fillet of cod.

Despite himself, Connor gave her his most dazzling grin. “Mornin’, ma’m,” he said, treading water and wiping his wet hair out of his eyes. “Here for your swimming lesson?”

Her mouth opened, then shut, and then she seemed to straighten up a little bit and, despite the faint twitching at the corner of her mouth that betrayed a certain delight at the spectacle he’d just made of himself, looked him straight in the eye.

“Captain Merrick, you are shameless, and a show-off, beside.”

He laughed. “Just having fun, Miss Evans. Gotta live a little, you know. Why don’t you and young master Ned here hook on to our chains and come aboard to watch?”

“Oh, I couldn’t. . . .”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, it is hardly proper for me to come aboard a ship full of grinning, leering men, and without a chaperone at that.”

“I’ll chaperone you, Miss Evans!” cried Ned, happily.

“I still don’t think—”

“Oh, please, Miss Evans?” the boy begged, tugging at her arm. “Please? And you, Uncle Connor—just what is it you’re doing? Can I join you?”

Connor, still treading water and looking up at the pair, thought about resting his hands on the gunwale of the little boat, but everything about her stiffened posture, white knuckles, and inability to relax from her bird-perch on the thwart decided him against it. The poor girl was scared enough as it was without fearing that he’d capsize them all into the drink.

But giving her a swimming lesson? Though he’d only been in jest last night, the idea was looking more and more appealing. . . .

I really
must
leave
Barbados
.

Immediately.

“Uncle Connor?”

“Aye, lad?”

“I asked what you were doing. Are you going to tell me?”

“Well, Ned, what we’re doing is gambling, and you shouldn’t be a part of it. Your father would skin me alive.”

“He’s going to skin you alive anyhow, Uncle Connor, when you start taking prizes in the Caribbean.”

“Well, he’ll have to catch me at it, first,” Connor said blithely. He winked at his young nephew, let himself sink down below the surface and with a strong kick, propelled himself beneath the little boat and came back up on the other side. Rhiannon Evans gasped as he broke the surface. “So will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Come aboard.”

“Captain Merrick, you are a rogue. The idea of visiting your schooner without Alannah or Maeve as a suitable chaperone fills me with misgivings. If you knew anything about women, you’d know that I shouldn’t even consider it. ”

“On the contrary, Miss Evans.” He winked. “I know a lot about women.”

Her jaw came unhinged.

Damnation
, here he was doing it again, making her blush, making her eyes sparkle all the brighter, making her all the more infatuated with him.

He couldn’t seem to help himself.

Oh, the hell with it. Just . . . the hell with it.

“And I think you
should
consider it,” he said. “After all, didn’t you want an adventure?” He saw her gaze slide helplessly to his bare chest and upper arms as he tread water beside the boat. “You sure won’t find one in my brother-in-law’s mansion.”

“Please?” Ned cried in excitement. “Can we, Rhiannon?”

“Well . . . given that you’ve got the courage to be diving into the sea from the heights of your rigging, I suppose I should display equal bottom by accepting your kind offer, Captain Merrick. I will come aboard.”

Connor gave a wolfish grin.

His morning had just gotten a hell of a lot more interesting.

A hell of a lot more interesting, indeed.

#     #     #

I know this is wrong, I know I shouldn’t be doing this, I know I am courting trouble
, Rhiannon thought to herself as she allowed Ned to show her how to sit in the sling of ropes that was lowered to her from the deck of the schooner,
but I am going to do it, and that is that.

It was just as well that Gwyneth wasn’t here. Her older sister would not have approved of her going aboard a ship full of grinning tars.

And surely young Master Edward Horatio Falconer was, at seven years old, hardly an acceptable chaperone.

Chaperones be damned. She was going aboard.

She held onto that same youngster’s hand as she rose unsteadily in the boat, following his direction to stand in the middle, to hold this line, to not be afraid because he was watching out for her and so was his Uncle Connor and cousins Nathan and Toby, and nothing was going to happen to her.

“Just don’t look down,” called Captain Merrick, whose handsome grinning face had appeared at the schooner’s rail above her head. He was still dripping wet, and Rhiannon found it immensely reassuring that it was the American privateer’s strong hands—and even stronger-looking arms—that were holding the thick ropes of her perilous little “chair.” She settled herself into the rope contraption, gripped it in determined hands, and felt those very strong muscles she’d so recently been admiring begin to haul her up the schooner’s side.

No worries, Captain Merrick. I have no intention of looking down.

Not when looking
up
yielded such a spectacular view of wet, half-naked, male flesh.

With the schooner’s low freeboard it didn’t take long for its captain, whistling a sea chantey with each haul on the rope, to have her up the side. As she ascended, she glanced at the black hull-planking with its distinctive white stripe running from bow to stern and through which the sun-baked muzzles of several cannon—
guns
, she reminded herself—poked from their open ports, reminding her that
Kestrel
was no pleasure or merchant craft, that Connor Merrick was no friend to Britain, and that no matter what on earth its captain and crew had been doing up there in the rigging when she and Ned had happened upon the scene, this lithe and elegant vessel was a warship.

He took her hand as he brought her securely over the varnished rail. “Welcome aboard, Miss Evans,” he said, bowing over it with an elegance more suited to a London drawing room than the decks of a Yankee warship. She smiled and he held her hand for a moment longer, his lips warm against her knuckles, his clear green eyes looking up at her through long, dark lashes that were still wet from his swim. He turned to glance at his crew, all lined up behind him; many of them had quickly donned shirts and now doffed their hats at her appearance, though Captain Merrick did not seem inclined to do the same, and that suited Rhiannon, looking at the droplets of seawater poised on the hard, bulging muscles of his upper arms and shoulders, just fine.

You wanted an adventure, Rhiannon. In a few days he’s going to sail away and you’ll have forever lost your chance to have with this man what your sisters have found with theirs. He probably thinks you’re too young for him. And maybe you are. But he’s got that look in his eyes again, and that has got to mean something. You have the chance at love. Are you going to throw it all away?

No.

Her fingers itched to reach up and flick away those tantalizing drops of water that stood atop his shoulders, and especially, the one that was trickling down his cheek from out of the rich whorls of his wet hair.