Wicked at Heart (8 page)

Heaven help her,
she thought, overcome by a hot flush.  Thinking of his body did her no good,
either.

She forced
herself to look away, her gaze settling upon the crumpled note, now no more
than a white dot as it bounced and bobbed in
Kestrel
's wake, growing
further and further astern before finally sinking out of sight.  It was no
use.  Connor was heading for the hatch, his stride jaunty and confident as he
approached, and she had no choice but to look up at him.

"Another
rescue, Con?" she ventured, straightening up and leaving the line neatly
coiled on the deck.

He stopped and
leaned against the gunwale beside her, dangerously, temptingly, close.  He was
pale and gaunt from his recent stay aboard the prison hulk, and hell-bent on
rescuing his compatriots still incarcerated there, but the experience had not
left him bitter as it might have left a lesser man, nor had it broken him.  But
then, he was a Merrick, she thought, with wry admiration.  Merricks didn't
break — they merely bent, like saplings in a storm, making the best of
situations and growing stronger in spite of their adversities.

"Another
rescue indeed.  Tomorrow at midnight the Black Wolf strikes again."  He
closed his eyes and turned his face skyward, smiling as he relished the joyous
thrum of the wind through stays and shrouds, the leap and pulse of the ship
beneath him.  The empty mug dangled lazily from one finger, and the breeze
played havoc with his curling auburn hair.  "My God, I cannot tell you how
damned
good
this feels, to be out in the sunlight, with the breeze on my
face once again.  I thought I'd never get off that confounded hulk."

"Had your
sister known you were on it, I'm sure you would've been off it much sooner."

"How could
she know, being off in the Caribbean as she was with her admiral husband?  I'm
only glad that he's back here in England on leave.  I was ever so fortunate to
escape that damned hulk and find none other than our own little
Kestrel
sitting pretty-as-you-please in Portsmouth Harbor right next to his
flagship!"

"This
little schooner holds fond memories for you."

"Aye, she
sure does, Orla."  He gazed blissfully up at the taut mainsail which
caught the wind above his head.  "Remember when we were all tiny, and my
father used to take us out on her, teaching us how to sail?  I used to sit
right there, on that very gun, when it was Maeve's turn at the tiller."

"How could
I forget?"

He ran a hand
affectionately along the gunwale.  "Five and thirty years, is this old
lady, yet she's still as sound as a spring filly, and just as frisky, God love
her.  You'd think she's bloody immortal!"

"Sir Graham
made sure she enjoyed every dockyard benefit that his own ships did," Orla
explained.  "New sails, new rigging, carpentry work, a fresh coat of paint
— whatever she needed, the admiral saw that she got it."

"Yes, but
you can't overlook Grandpa Ephraim's influence on her, either.  She was his
masterpiece — and no one could build a ship the way he could."

"No
one," Orla agreed, a bit sadly.

Waves broke and
hissed along
Kestrel
's bow and hull.

"Poor
Grandpa is probably cackling with glee in his grave, knowing his life's
masterpiece is pitted once again against the British . . ."

They were both
silent, only the sounds of wind and sea intruding upon their thoughts as they
remembered old Ephraim Merrick.  Blustery, eccentric, and cantankerous 'til the
end, he had made light of the illness that steadily had been eating away at his
insides, until one day he had gone missing — and so had the tiny sailboat he'd
kept moored in the river's mouth.  Maybe he hadn't known about the nor'easter
that had howled in over the coast that night; in all likelihood, he had.  Five
days later, a few pieces of his little boat had washed up on a deserted Plum Island
beach, and no one had ever seen the old man again.

Orla looked
down, her dark hair blowing about her face.

Connor cleared
his throat.

"Well!"
he finally said, mustering a note of cheer.  "Are you ready for that
rescue, then?"

"Aye,"
she replied, her smile wan.  "Child's play, Con.  At midnight, I take it?"

"Midnight.  Though what we're supposed to do with ourselves in the interim, the devil only
knows."

"Are you
bored?" she teased, with a little smile.

"That, my
dear Orla, is an understatement.  A salmon trapped in a bucket couldn't be more
bored
."

"I suppose
that once the admiral learns who stole his wife's ship, you'll have excitement
enough to keep you busy."

"His wife's
ship, you say!  Never forget, Orla, that Maeve stole her from our father, and
while the rest of us all love our sister, she was never granted exclusive
rights to
Kestrel
.  She had her turn with her; now it's mine.  Besides,
my father designed
Kestrel
as a warship, not a training vessel for
Maeve's children."  He slanted her an inquisitive look, and his teasing
smile made her heart jump.  "Surely, you're not having second doubts about
leaving Maeve and coming along with me, are you?"

"Be
serious, Connor."  She laughed and kicked idly at a deck seam, hoping he
hadn't seen the desire in her eyes.  "While I'm quite happy that your
sister and Admiral Falconer have managed to sustain their newly wedded bliss, I
must admit that my own life has not seen this much excitement since he forced
us to give up piracy.  I have not felt this — this
alive
, in
years."

"Doubtless,
neither has our lovely
Kestrel
."  Connor straightened up. 
"Well, I'm off," he said and, still swinging his coffee cup, headed
below.  "Holler if you need me."

Orla watched his
head disappear beneath the coaming and her smile faded, as weighty as her
heart.  Maybe if he hadn't known her for so long, things would be different. 
Maybe if she hadn't had such a notorious past, he might show some interest in
her.  Maybe if those tiny wrinkles weren't starting to frame her eyes, and
those scattered strands of gray to thread her hair, he might find her lovely. 
But she was in her third decade now, and well past her first blush, and Orla
knew in her heart of hearts that Connor Merrick was not apt to pay her any more
notice than would any other decent, God-fearing man.

A despairing
thought, when she considered that all she really wanted was a husband who loved
her, fine children, and a home of her own.

The same things
that Maeve had.

The same things
that all of the ex-pirates of
Kestrel
's crew now had.

There'd been
that brief thing with Maeve's English cousin Captain Colin Lord, but the
shipwreck had changed all that, and there had been no one since.  And so, for
the past eight years, Orla had made her home with the Falconers, remaining by
her friend's side as one year led into another.  Maybe she'd stayed because
many had predicted that the fiery pirate queen wouldn't last a year with Sir
Graham, and Orla had wanted to make sure that everything worked out all right
between them.  But Maeve had made a commendable, if not formidable, admiral's
wife, obviously channeling her piratical ways to the bedroom — a fact evidenced
by the admiral's excitable and precocious brood of three.  The years had passed,
but while Maeve had taken well to settling down, life had become meaningless
and dull for Orla.  She had begun to yearn for the days when she and
Kestrel
's
crew of lady pirates had ruled the Caribbean.  She had begun to ache inside
whenever she saw a young couple in love, holding hands and gazing deeply into
each other's eyes, and to ache even more if they had a child tagging along with
them.

Life had to
contain more than it did.

She began to
pray, something she hadn't done in a long, long, time, for something.

Anything.

And then Sir
Graham had announced he had business in London, and that it was time to leave
the West Indies and go home for a while.  The ocean crossing had been dull, as
had the weather.  The days had stretched into tedious regularity, and when the
great flagship, accompanied by Maeve's schooner,
Kestrel
, had finally
put into Portsmouth, Orla had decided that she simply could not bear to be
dragged from one place to the next, meeting Falconer relatives who meant
nothing to her and putting on a smile when she was miserable inside.  She would
stay aboard
Kestrel
while the family was away.  Portsmouth had to be
more interesting.

And it was.

She had been
quietly pacing the darkened deck the night the four escapees from the prison
hulk
Surrey
had come up over the side like boarding pirates.  Her
instincts were as sharp as they'd ever been, and as they'd burst onto the deck,
they'd found themselves staring into the mouth of her blunderbuss.  Even now
she smiled in amazement.  Who could've known that, of all people, the man at the
other end of her gun would be her old childhood friend Connor Merrick?

Oh, her prayers
had been answered all right.  She'd wanted excitement, and mother of God, she
was going to get it.

Orla looked out
to sea, sighing.  Maeve was going to be furious at finding her ship gone.  Her
husband, the admiral, would no doubt put to sea immediately in hopes of
retrieving the vessel before his wife saw to it herself.

And Connor
Merrick, hot-blooded and passionate, would have no intention of giving that
vessel back.

Orla
straightened up and headed for the hatch, the galley, and her own breakfast. 
Wise move or not, one thing was certain:  life with the Merricks would never be
boring.

~~~~

Lady Gwyneth
Evans Simms had no shortage of ideas on just how to make Lord Morninghall's
life hell, and she wasted no time at all in putting those ideas into action.

The day after
her confrontation with that prince of darkness, she rose at dawn and, with
Mattie slumbering at her feet and the sunlight streaming in over her writing desk,
went to work.  She spent the morning composing a letter to her brother-in-law,
the new Lord Simms, in the Transport Office, skillfully playing upon his own
inflated sense of importance in order to further her desires:  a second, more comprehensive
visit to the prison ship
Surrey
.  By noon she'd written to one of
William's friends in Parliament, sent a note off to another in the Admiralty,
and penned a third to Maeve, Lady Falconer, whom she had met and befriended two
years before when Maeve's husband, Sir Graham, had come to London on official
business.  Hopefully the American woman's seafaring past — and high-ranking
admiral of a husband — would be of help to Gwyneth in her efforts.  By teatime
she was describing the conditions she'd glimpsed aboard the hulk to a circle of
genteel and horrified acquaintances who promptly declared themselves the
Ladies' Committee on Prisoner Welfare, and by seven o'clock she was rewarding
herself for her hard work with a well-deserved immersion in her favorite hobby,
gardening, wishing that each head she chopped from the fading daffodils was
Lord Morninghall's own.

I'll show
that scoundrel I mean business
, she vowed, hurling the wilted blossoms into
a bucket.  By tomorrow, all hell was going to break loose.

So involved was
she in her thoughts, her work, that she never realized twilight had fallen, and
Rhiannon, standing in the doorway holding a book, had to call her twice.

Gwyneth's head
jerked up and she looked around, rubbing the small of her back.  Dear lord, it
had certainly grown late; the blackbirds were calling, as if to usher in the
coming night, and the sky was fading fast from mauve to indigo.  She looked at
her sister, silhouetted in the doorway, and smiled guiltily.  "Forgive me,
Rhia.  I didn't hear you."

"Thinking
of Lord Lucifer again, sis?"

She grinned. 
"I am plotting his destruction."

"I still
want to know what it felt like when he kissed you.  Do you
really
see
fireworks when a devastatingly gorgeous man ravishes you?"

"I knew I
should have kept that detail of our encounter to myself!  Besides, I told you,
silly, he did not
ravish
me."

"Well, what
was his kiss like?"

"Rhia . .
."

Clutching the
book, her sister folded her arms across her bosom and eyed her with high
humor.  A blackbird skimmed over Gwyneth's head and landed in a clipped
conifer, causing the fringed branches to bounce and swing.  How she loved their
musical warbles, their bright-eyed stare —

"Well?"
Rhiannon repeated, her eyes mischievous.

"You are
ever the romantic, Rhiannon.  Stop reading those frivolous novels and dreaming
about knights in shining armor, would you?"

"It is
healthy to dream, Gwyn.  You should try it yourself some time."

"I am too
busy to dream, and if I did, it would not be about knights in shining armor.  And
especially not Lord Morninghall."

"Appearances
can be deceiving, Gwyn.  He may not be all bad."

"For heaven's
sake, Rhiannon, he's in charge of a
prison hulk
.  You are most welcome
to accompany me on the morrow, to see for yourself what hideous places that
ship and others like her, are.  A disgrace to Britain, if you ask me, a living
hell for those whose only crime was to be caught fighting on the opposite
side."

As Gwyneth
returned her attention to her daffodils, Rhiannon tapped a finger against the
book's spine and watched her older sister shrewdly.  Gwyneth did her best to
present a militaristic and severe demeanor to the rest of the world, but she
had never been able to fool Rhiannon. 
Be strong,
Gwyn often advised
;
even if you don't feel strong, at least deceive the world into believing that
you are, and it will be yours on a platter.