Master of My Dreams (20 page)

The world exploded.

###

It was a scene from hell itself. Midshipmen
racing through the smoke to relay orders from quarterdeck to gun
deck; flashes of musket fire from the French ship as her marksmen
tried desperately to pick off
Bold Marauder
’s
blue-and-white-clad officers; iron shrieking overhead, spars and
pieces of burning rigging bouncing off the nettings spread above
the deck, guns belching death and destruction, and men falling,
only to be dragged, screaming, away to the surgeon’s knife
below.

And the Lord and Master, steady, aloof, and
unruffled, veteran of countless sea fights, and the one, the only,
force holding
Bold Marauder's
frightened crew together.

“Starboard broadside,
fire
!”

The big guns roared out, one by one, leaving
his ears ringing and thunder vibrating up through the deck and into
the soles of his shoes. It wasn’t a timed broadside; it wasn’t even
close.
By God, we have to do better, or we 're all done
for!

An answering boom roared through the smoke
from the French corvette, and a cannonball screamed across the
deck, smashed against one of the starboard guns, and exploded.
Several gunners, grimy with smoke and sweat, fell screaming, blood
streaming from their broken bodies and their legs kicking in
death.

Through the smoke and haze, Christian saw the
French ship’s yards turning as she abandoned the English cutter and
came about, the water glistening dully from her side, her ports
open and her guns poking their black snouts toward them—

“Reload and run out!” he shouted, gripping
his sword. “Give them a good drubbing, lads!”

Beside him, one of the helmsmen cried out
and, clutching his side, crumpled to his knees.

“
Fire!"

Guns belched smoke and flame, recoiling
against their tackle. The raw scent of sulfur singed the air.
Several feet away, Teach, cursing, stumbled back in horror as his
nine-pounder slammed inboard, nearly crushing him.

Christian shut his eyes, clenching his sword
hilt.

“For God’s sake, sir!” Hibbert raced back to
the quarterdeck. ‘They’re killing us!”

“We’ll nae win this fight, sir; they be too
strong for us!” Ian yelled desperately.

Christian turned on them, his eyes fierce.
“I’ll be damned if I lower my colors to a bloody
Frenchman!
Mr. Wenham!” Cupping his hands over his mouth, he yelled,
“Hard-a-lee, and prepare to ram . . .
now
!”

“R-ram, sir?”

“Yes, Wenham,
ram
!”

Several feet away, a pigtailed seaman,
slamming a fresh charge down one of the starboard guns, suddenly
threw his hand over his eyes and fell to the deck, a musket ball
buried in his brain. Guns roared from the corvette, and a nearby
pinrail exploded in a shower of wood. Then the helm went over, and
with slow, stately purpose,
Bold Marauder
drove her jib-boom
into the French ship’s rigging. The jarring smash of hull against
hull hurled men to their knees, the Lord and Master against the
wheel, guns onto their sides.

“Stand fast, lads, and prepare to repel
boarders!” Christian yelled, his voice raw with smoke as he fought
to pull himself up from the deck.

Slowly, the two vessels pivoted, locked nose
to shoulder as their guns pounded each other at close range with
vicious fury. The English cutter drifted away, her battered crew
trying to bring her under control. Then Ian grabbed his captain’s
arm and pointed at the stream of yelling, cutlass-wielding
Frenchmen leaping across to
Bold Marauder
’s deck.

“They’re boarding us, sir!”

Shot whined past, and Wenham gasped and
slumped over the wheel. From above came a high, terrified scream
and a marine fell, spiraling and kicking, to the deck. Somewhere
forward, one of
Bold Marauder
’s guns banged out, and
Christian heard the pop of muskets as his marines fired across at
the enemy.

“They’re onto us, sir!”

Thank God,
Christian thought insanely.
He took one look at his men—dirty, ragged, untrained, and
defiant—and in that fleeting instant, knew that his decision to ram
the other ship had been the right one, the only one. They were
inexperienced at fighting the guns of their frigate, yes; they were
quarrelsome and rebellious, yes; but they were English sailors, and
as such, there were none on God’s earth who would fight harder, nor
more fiercely, when it came to defending their home.

And
Bold Marauder
was their home.

Drawing his sword, he leaped down the
quarterdeck ladder and into their midst. “To me, lads!” he heard
himself shout, his blade coming up to clash with the steel of the
first wild-eyed intruders as they swarmed over the side like a
horde of angry wasps.

For one awful moment, the crew did not move,
stunned by the courage of the man they’d thought to be nothing but
an aristocratic fop.

Then they reacted.

“Holy hell,” Skunk cried, his eyes bulging as
the Lord and Master swung his sword against a Frenchman’s with a
ringing clash, and then disarmed the man with a mighty blow. Rico
Hendricks had already run toward his captain to help defend him and
now Ian, his claymore high, charged toward the pair, instinctively
placing his back to his captain’s as the three single-handedly took
on the yelling, screaming boarders.

And now more and more of the French devils
were leaping over
Bold Marauder
’s rails,
their
rails,
their swords slashing.

Bold Marauder's
crew began grabbing
pikes, pistols, and axes, and, yelling in fury, raced to join the
bosun and their two senior officers. Not to be left behind, Skunk
seized a cutlass and threw himself into the fray. And then, with a
wild, rushing roar, the rest of the men abandoned their guns and,
howling like Indians, charged into the melee, fighting as they
fought best—hand to hand, in bloody, ruthless combat.

Christian, parrying an enemy’s sword, saw
flashes of red streak past as his marines joined the fight, their
bayonets gleaming, thrusting, stabbing. A gun, then another, banged
out from forward as some levelheaded soul fired into the corvette’s
hull. He felt a brief swell of relief, but there was no time to
thank God that his plan had worked, that his men were finally
behind him. He knocked aside an attacker’s sword, chopped his own
blade into the man’s ribs and jerked it free, only to stumble over
a sprawled body. He fell heavily to the deck. A shadow filled his
vision, and, momentarily helpless, he stared up into the maniacal
eyes of a Frenchman leaping down at him from out of the smoke.

Christian saw his life flash before his eyes
as the Frenchman, his face wild and triumphant as he stood over the
fallen English captain, raised his sword with a wild yell—

Then Teach was there, bellowing with fury,
his massive arm knocking aside the Frenchman’s cutlass, his sword
impaling the man through the heart.

Christian’s eyes met his for the briefest of
seconds. “Well done, Mr. Teach—”

But Teach was gone, pounding across the deck
to take on another.

Dazed, Christian felt Skunk hauling him
roughly to his feet. “You all right, sir?”

“Hibbert . . .”

Swinging around, Skunk saw the young
midshipman raising his pitiful dirk against the charging might of a
boarder’s pike. With a howl of rage, Skunk knocked the pike aside.
The full weight of his big body was behind the impact, and as the
Frenchman fell to the deck, Skunk turned back to the Lord and
Master, only to see him flinch, drag off his hat, and clap it to
his shoulder.

“Bloody captain,” Skunk said, knocking aside
an enemy musket with the ease of a child fending off a stick. “Now
isn’t the time to stand on ceremony by doffin’ ‘is hat!”

“Shut up, Skunk. The
bloody captain
’s
the only hope we have of surviving this”—stab, thrust,
stab—
“massacre!”
Ian yelled, beating back a boarder with
vicious swings of his claymore.

But even Ian was too crazed with excitement
and bloodlust to notice the color draining from his captain’s face.
All he saw was that they were steadily driving the enemy back onto
its own decks as, whooping in triumph and glee,
Bold
Marauder
’s men, now joined by those from the English cutter,
leaped over the side and dropped from the jib-boom as they took the
fight to the French ship.

The tide had turned.

Tiring rapidly and still holding his hat to
his shoulder, Christian jumped for the gangway. Someone on the
corvette had already chopped away the spars and lines tangled in
Bold Marauder
’s bowsprit, and now the French ship, freed,
was beginning to draw away, her officers screaming encouragement to
the retreating sailors as the gap of blue sea between them grew
wider and wider. Gauging the expanding distance between the two
ships, Christian leapt, hearing Skunk, Ian, and Teach yelling in
triumph behind him.

Protecting my back,
he thought
dazedly.

His feet hit the enemy’s deck and he almost
went down. Shouting with excitement, their swords flashing, his men
rushed past him, nearly knocking him to his knees. Then Hendricks
was there, lifting him by his elbow, and he was carried forward on
the tide of English seamen.

His vision swam, and he pressed his hat to
his shoulder, not wanting his men to see the seriousness of the
wound and lose heart.

Pray God, let me hold out just a bit
longer,
he thought. Then he slashed and fought his way toward
the corvette’s quarterdeck even as its flag tumbled to the deck in
surrender.

A great cheer went up from
Bold
Marauder's
men as Skunk and Teach grabbed the corvette’s
commander and hauled him unceremoniously toward Christian.

“Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”

“Three cheers for our Lord and Master!”

“Here ye go, sir, the bleedin’ bastard
’imself!”

Dirty, cut, and bleeding, Christian wearily
accepted the other captain’s sword. Then, still holding his hat, he
lowered his arm and for the first time, his men saw the perfect,
round hole punched neatly below his shoulder and the spreading
blood that turned the blue coat around it to purple.

“Well done, lads,” he said, with a faint
smile. “Well done.”

Then his knees buckled and he fell heavily to
the deck.

Chapter 17

In the surgeon’s area, Deirdre choked back
nausea as the wounded were dragged below. Above, the guns boomed,
making conversation nearly impossible, making her ears ring with
pain, making her fear the very deck was going to come crashing down
atop them—

“The captain!” she cried, overcome by sudden
terror as a seaman dragged a moaning Wenham into the little room
and laid him on Elwin’s table beneath the swinging lantern.

“Huh?”

“The
captain
!” she shouted, trying to
be heard over the unholy roar of cannon.

Wenham shut his eyes. “Leading a boarding
party onto the enemy. Ain’t seen nothing like it . . .” He groaned
in pain as Elwin, aided by two assistants, positioned him on the
bloodied table and tore off his shirt.

“Nothing but a scratch,” snapped Elwin. He
slapped a needle and thread into Deirdre’s hand as another seaman
was dragged below, this one with a gash across his arm. “If you’re
going to stand there, then get busy, girl! Sew up that man’s arm
before he bleeds to death!”

From above came more firing, then a deafening
cheer.

“We must be beatin’ ’em, lads!” yelled the
injured man, sitting upright. “The Lord and Master must be driving
the bloody Frogs back onto their own ship!”

Christian,
Deirdre thought wildly, her
hands shaking as she tried desperately to thread the needle. Beside
her Delight, tight-lipped, washed the blood from the man’s wound
with a wet rag. Steeling herself, Deirdre pinched the ragged edges
of flesh together and slowly pushed the needle into the man’s
flesh. He went white with pain, and as the moments dragged on, the
only way Deirdre was able to hold her breakfast down was to imagine
the scene above, her lips moving in a desperate prayer for the
captain’s safety.

There was no use lying to herself anymore.
She, who had spent years dreaming of killing him in revenge, was
terrified for his safety, his welfare, his life—

Suddenly, through ringing ears, she realized
that the firing had stopped. Another cheer came from above, and
then Hibbert, breathless, came flying into the room, his face dirty
and streaked with sweat. “We saved the English cutter, the sloop
fled, and we took the Frenchie!” he gasped, swiping at his brow.
His eyes were wild with pride. “They surrendered to our captain! To
us
!”

Ian crowded the space behind him, his ruddy
face bleak. “Aye, but at what cost.” He met their gazes and, in the
sudden, awful hush said solemnly, “The Lord and Master’s down.”

Deirdre was dimly aware of Delight’s hand
upon her arm; then the blood faded from her face as she looked past
the midshipman, past Ian and the milling, silent, crew, and to the
huge man who suddenly filled the doorway.

It was Arthur Teach.

He was carrying the body of an officer in his
great, thewed arms. Blood darkened the officer’s shoulder, soaked
his sleeve, followed the curve of his lax fingers, and dripped
silently to the deck flooring.

Deirdre uttered a silent cry. She didn’t have
to see the man’s face to know just which officer he was.

###

Christian clawed his way up through the
darkness and opened his eyes to the sight of Rico Hendricks
standing protectively over him. Elwin Boyd stood at the big
Jamaican’s shoulder, his face, silhouetted by a swinging lantern,
strained. The pungent scents of blood and death lay thickly around
him, and Christian realized that he was laid out on a table in the
surgeon’s quarters, its surface hard beneath his spine.

With a gasp, he sat up.

“Don’t move, sir,” Elwin muttered, pushing
against his chest and trying to force him back down.

“Let me up, damn you, I’ve a ship to see to,
wounded to care for—”

“The Frogs’ve surrendered, sir, don’t ye
remember? And Ian and Rhodes are seeing to the ship.”

“How many dead?”

“Twelve. Now, lie back and relax. You’ve got
a musket ball in your shoulder, and if I don’t get it out, you’ll
be joining them before the day is out.”

Christian tried again to rise. “I don’t have
time for this—”

“Sir, I
must
insist!” Roughly, the
surgeon shoved him back down on the table.

A voice exploded above Christian’s head like
a cannon blast. “Ye be easy with him, Elwin, or I’ll have yer head
on a pike!”

“Look, just get the hell out of here, all of
ye!” Elwin spat, waving his bloodied hands to push away the group
of seamen that were clustered around the table. He picked up a rag
and doused it with vinegar. “How’s a man supposed to do his work if
ye’re all—”

Skunk lunged forward and grabbed the
surgeon’s wrist. “You put that on the cap’n’s wound and you’ll be
answering to me, ye hear me, Elwin?”

“For Christ’s sake, Skunk, I’m merely
cleaning my instruments in it—”

“What’s this?” Ian barged in, his Scottish
cap askew. “Is Elwin mistreating the captain? So help me God,
Elwin—”

“Damn you, damn all of you, just clear out
and let me do what needs to be done!” Elwin raged, angrily wiping
his bloodied hands on his apron. He snatched up a metal probe and,
waving it at them, snarled, “Pack of useless, good-for-nothing
loafers! Now,
get out
!”

Christian saw that long, wicked piece of
metal coming toward his shoulder and went stiff, bracing himself
for the pain. Fierce but gentle pressure tightened around his
fingers, and rolling his head sideways, he saw that someone was
standing on the other side of the table and holding his hand,
someone he now realized had been standing there and holding his
hand all along.

Deirdre O’ Devir.

Tears sparkled on her lashes, and her eyes
were huge pools of sorrow in a face that was pale and strained. She
squeezed his hand, and the moisture in her eyes spilled over and
traced a glittering track down her cheek.

He stared at her, confused. “Miss
O’Devir?”

“Teach carried ye down,” she whispered. She
bent her head, and he felt the brush of her hair against his face.
The heavy cross that hung from her neck dangled near his nose, and
he closed his eyes as she reached up and laid a soft hand against
his cheek. “The whole crew’s bragging about how ye led ’em to
victory and saved the ship.”

“Damn right he did!” Skunk snarled. “If it
weren’t for his bleedin’ Lordship, we’d all be at the bottom of the
sea!”

“Or at the mercy of those Frenchies!” Teach
thundered.

"Gentlemen
,” Elwin warned, lowering a
knife to the bullet hole in his patient’s coat and deftly thrusting
its tip beneath the bloody fabric, “if you don’t let me attend to
my business, your captain won’t live to see the next sunrise. That
ball is lodged in a vascular area, and if I don’t get it out . .
“

With a flick of his wrist, he jerked upward,
slicing through the blood-soaked uniform coat.

Christian turned his head to look, but the
girl loomed above, her eyes dark with compassion . . . and
something else. Her hand still cupped his jaw, and now she gently
coaxed him to look toward her so that he couldn’t see Elwin’s
ministrations. He closed his eyes, relaxing under her gentle touch
as the surgeon’s knife ripped through his coat. “Elwin’s right,”
she said quietly. ‘The ball has to come out. But I’ll be here,
holdin’ yer hand through it . . . Christian.”

Christian.

He swallowed hard, several times, against the
sudden sting of emotion.

She called me by my name.

He took a deep, shaky breath, his pain, and
apprehension of what Elwin was about to do to him, suddenly
forgotten. Skunk and Teach came forward, sliding their hands
beneath his shoulders and lifting him up so that Rico could remove
his blood-soaked uniform, waistcoat and shirt. He tried to move,
and could not, and was alarmed at how weak he’d grown.

Christian,
she’d said.

As they lowered him back to the table, he
shut his eyes against the raw emotion. Then cool air swept against
the exposed wound, and he didn’t have to hear Delight’s soft cry,
or the collective gasps of dismay, to know how serious it was.

Rolling his head, he looked up at the girl
and managed a smile. “That bad, eh?”

She was pure white. The fierce pressure of
her fingers around his was answer enough.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” the surgeon
muttered, wiping his hands on his bloodied apron and picking up the
needle-like metal probe once more. “And you’d be luckier still if
you hadn’t woken up, because I can tell you right now, you’re going
to feel this.”

“I’m warnin’ ye, Elwin!” Teach snarled,
pushing forward. “Ye make one slip and yer going to be eating steel
and shittin’ bullets, you hear me?”

Pushing past Teach and ignoring the crowd
anxiously gathering in the cramped space, Elwin offered a mug of
rum to Christian. “Drink this, sir,” he urged. “It’ll dull the pain
somewhat.”

“And have the men see me helpless beneath a
haze of alcohol? Thank you, Mr. Boyd, but I happen to value my
coherence.” He steeled himself for the inevitable. “Now get on with
it, please.”

Elwin gave a noncommittal shrug. “As you
wish, sir.”

Christian shut his eyes, and only the girl,
fiercely holding his hand, felt the tension in his grip. Then she
brought her other hand down to his lips, her fingers gently
touching his mouth and coaxing him to take and bite down on a strip
of leather. He gazed up into her eyes, knowing that he could endure
anything as long as she looked at him like that. He saw apology in
their depths, kindness, and yes, even forgiveness.

Forgiveness.

Beyond her, the three young midshipmen stood
with the anxious crew. Christian gave them an encouraging smile.
Then Elwin moved close, and he tensed in expectation of the first
touch of cold steel against his flesh.

Pulling the girl’s hand close, he pressed her
fingers to his lips.

“Don’t leave me,” he murmured.

Her eyes were soft, luminous, and damp with
tears. “’Tis a . . . a wonderful smile ye have,” she said, her
voice breaking. “I wish I’d noticed it before.”

The knife touched the raw edge of the wound
and Christian shut his eyes.

The girl bent close, her hair hanging over
one shoulder and brushing his cheek. “And I’m sorry for everything
I said to ye that day Tildy ate my bread,” she whispered, her lips
moving against his temple. “Ye’re a good man, Christian, a fine
man, and I think ye’re very brave an’ worthy.”

Elwin was digging around in his wound now.
Nausea flared in his stomach, and his shoulder throbbed with fresh
agony, the pain radiating into his neck and down his back as the
surgeon probed the wound in an unsuccessful attempt to locate the
musket ball. Christian gripped the girl’s hand like a lifeline;
from far away he felt her breath against his face, her soft hand
stroking his cheek, his hair.

“Damn,” the surgeon snapped, holding the edge
of the wound aside with a two-pronged retractor as he dug and
probed the hole. “I can’t find this godforsaken thing—”

Christian sank his teeth into the leather,
hearing the girl’s voice fading in and out, coming from a great
distance away.

“And I was wrong about Englishmen . . . some
of ye can actually be quite nice . . .”

The probe, deep in the wound now, scraped
against raw bone, and his testicles seemed to shrivel in agony. The
girl’s grip on his hand tightened. His molars grinding into the
leather, Christian rasped, “I have not forgotten my promise, Miss
O’ Devir . . . when we reach Boston, I shall do all in my power to
. . . find your brother. So help me God.”

Elwin was going deeper, and pain was
exploding in great sheets of agony behind his eyes, throbbing in
time with his pulse. Christian shuddered, felt the sweat breaking
out along his brow and neck. He breathed deeply, trying not to
faint as again, the probe scraped against the raw underside of his
collarbone.

“Let go,” the girl was saying, her lips close
to his ear. “Let go, Christian. Succumb to the darkness . . . I’ll
watch over ye . . .”

But the surgeon straightened up, wiping
bloody hands on his apron. “I can’t get it out,” he muttered,
glaring at his gathered shipmates as though daring them to defy
him. “I can’t even
find
the damned thing.”

“You’ve got to get it out,” Ian insisted.

“
Now,
” Teach threatened.

“Ye heard what Elwin said! He’s going t’
bleed t’ death if ye don’t!”

Elwin swept up the probe once more, and with
his scalpel, opened the wound further. Fresh blood bubbled out, the
captain went rigid and the Irish girl rounded on him. “Jesus,
Joseph, an’ Mary, ye’re
hurtin’
him, Elwin!”

In a fit of temper, Elwin flung the scalpel
down and raged, “What do you want? He won’t take rum, I can’t get
the ball out, and there’s nothing else to do!”

“Ye’d give up just like that? What kind o’
surgeon
are
ye?”

Elwin ripped off his apron and flung it to
the floor. “Fine, then—if you think you can do better, do it
yourself!”

He shoved past the stunned officers and crew,
pushed through the marines, and slammed out.

In the ensuing silence, only the deckhead
lantern moved, swinging eerily in the gloom.

Deirdre stood there, shocked, and for a
startled moment, she could only stare at those around her. Her
stricken gaze moved from Teach to Skunk to Ian to Hendricks to a
pale and green-looking Hibbert, to the seamen and red-coated
marines pressing against the doorway, and finally to Delight,
standing quietly beside her.

They were staring at her. Every last one of
them.

“It’s your decision,
cherie
,” Delight
said softly.

Deirdre looked down. The captain was fading
fast, the blood, obscene and purple in the glare of the lantern
light, pulsing down his chest with every beat of his heart. His
eyes, glazed with pain, were half closed.