Master of My Dreams (32 page)

She stared up at the dark rafters above her
head, wondering if it had been a dream. But the house was quiet.
Hugging her arms around Christian’s shirt, Deirdre sighed, turned
over in bed, and let her eyes drift shut.

Again that reckless laughter.

Her eyes shot open.

It had been no dream.

She peeled back the heavy blankets and
shivering, rose from the bed. The floor was cold, even under her
socks, and she hugged her arms to herself as she padded silently to
the window. Outside, several horses stood tethered, dark shapes in
the gloom. Deirdre’s eyes widened, and this time, she knew the
voices downstairs were no dream—and neither was the one that was
hauntingly familiar, agonizingly unplaceable, and as Irish as hers
. . .

“He’s nothin’ but a buffoon, Foley! Christ
Almighty, ye think I’m afraid o’ some vain, out-for-glory,
trophy-huntin’ Englishman? Bah! Yer own wife just said he’s more
interested in this Irish guest o’ yers than he is in the business
of his bloody king!” A tankard banged boastfully down upon a table.
“And don’t ye be forgettin’, I’ve already tangled with him once and
showed him me heels. Our naval captain may have ’imself a swift and
powerful frigate, but that bumblin’ crew o’ his can barely figure
out a shroud from a sheet, let alone how t’ use her guns!”

Deirdre, her heart beginning to pound with
the feeling that she was about to stumble upon something that was
going to change her life, crept across the room and, reaching for
her robe, wrapped it around her. Slowly, she opened her door and
slipped quietly down the stairs, hearing the voices getting louder
and louder.

“Your swagger will be the death of you, man,”
she heard Mr. Foley say sharply. “Captain Lord is no buffoon, but
an officer of unqualified skill and tenacity, highly respected by
his admiral and his king. No doubt he has drilled that
bumbling
crew into one as smart as any in the king’s
Navy—”

“You mean there are some in the king’s Navy
that are smart?” another, mocking voice joked.

“Very funny, Hancock,” Foley snapped. “And
you, my fine Irish friend—you’d do well to cover your tracks and
have a care about becoming too cocky.”

Deirdre, just outside the parlor in which the
men were speaking, flattened herself against the wall, her fists
clenched in anger. How dare they talk about Christian like that!
And who was this Irishman who boasted so recklessly, whose voice
was so familiar, but whose face she could not place?

“Really, Papa,” came a woman’s voice, “you
are as skittish as Mama. Our Irish Pirate will run circles around
Captain Lord. Why, there is no comparison between their skills,
their intelligence, the quality of their crews. Besides, as I told
you, the good captain is, shall I say,
otherwise occupied
of
late—too much, in fact, to be placing much attention on his task of
apprehending the Irish Pirate . . .”

Deirdre’s eyes widened with shock.
Delight!
And if her friend had just called the speaker
“our”
Irish Pirate, then was the infamous smuggler, whose
rich, melodic voice evoked vivid images of home, right there in the
very next room?

She stood frozen, hardly daring to breathe.
No wonder Delight’s restlessness during supper . . . the pains
she’d taken over her appearance earlier . . . the renewed interest
in her
manuals
and her continued glances at the small shelf
clock on the mantel. Lord above, if Delight was in love with a
rebel, then wouldn’t it stand to reason that
she
was a
rebel, too?

Along with her whole family?

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Deirdre whispered,
suddenly terrified. It was all she could do not to flee the house
and run all the way back to Boston, to the protective safety of
Christian’s arms.

“I met Captain Lord some time ago,” came
another, steady voice, “and he did not strike me as a buffoon, but
a capable, clever, and unbending disciplinarian, entirely devoted
to his king, his duty, and his command. I would not pass him off so
lightly, my friend. Your English nemesis is not a man to be trifled
with.”

“Pshaw,” the Irishman said with reckless
laughter, “if ye’d only seen that frigate o’ his takin’ a beatin’
beneath the guns of a little French corvette, ye’d feel as I do!
‘Twas pitiful, I tell ye, to see a fine ship like that so poorly
fought and sailed! So quit yer worryin’, eh? The lovely Dolores Ann
here crossed the Atlantic aboard her. She knows her captain better
than any of ye! Tell ‘em, love! Would ye say the man is
single-minded and determined? Obsessed with bringin’ me down?”

“He is clever and tactical, but any
single-minded determination he possesses is not directed toward
capturing you, but winning the love of our guest. As long as he is
so . . .
occupied,
I do not think him to be a particular
threat.”

“Regardless,” Foley said harshly, “the man is
well decorated, highly respected, and dangerous.”

Another voice, thoughtful and educated, came
through the ajar door. “You seem to have an active dislike of
Captain Lord, my friend. Mind that such personal animosity does not
dull your own keen edge and land you within range of his guns.”

“Aye, you do seem to harbor a ripe hatred of
the fellow!” came the jovial voice of the man called Hancock. “Why
is that?”

“As Dr. Warren just said, my reasons are
personal, and none o’ yer concern.”
Oh, where had she heard that
voice?
Deirdre shut her eyes, trying to place it, and wishing
she dared to pry open the door and have a peek at her countryman’s
face. “But I tell you this. I’ll not enjoy a better revenge than
makin’ the king’s captain look like the fool he is. He’ll not catch
me, by Christ’s blood!”

“Enough, then.” came another voice, hard with
authority. “Let us get down to business. Our minutemen companies
have been drilling tirelessly, preparing for the worst. Captain
Locke here has done an exceptionally fine job with his Menotomy
lads, but all the training in the world is useless without more
guns.” A chair creaked, and there was the splash of liquid into a
glass. “My merchant friend in Philadelphia is sending us two
hundred French muskets, which we can expect by week’s end. Since
it’s too risky to try and bring the shipment into any of our nearby
harbors, my plan is to have our Irish Pirate here meet the vessel
off Marblehead under cover of darkness. The transfer must be done
quickly and efficiently. Not only is Captain Bishop’s
Lively
patrolling these waters, but now, so is the frigate
Halcyon
.”

This was getting worse by the minute, Deirdre
thought. And then she felt a high, itchy sensation in the back of
her nose.
Dear God, don’t let me sneeze now!
Panicking, she
pinched her nostrils shut.

“Child’s play,” the Irish Pirate boasted.

Adams continued. “Waste no time in
pleasantries. Land the guns in Salem, where they will be met by the
Sons of Liberty. Our men will transfer them to wagons, cover them
with hay and vegetables, and send them directly to Concord.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Delight said. “The
British have stepped up their patrols.”

“I don’t like it, either,” said Jared Foley.
“You get caught in that sloop under the guns of one of those
frigates and it will be all over for you.”

The Irish Pirate’s laughter rang out. “Bah,
I’ll not get caught. There are scores of small fishing and trading
vessels all up and down the coast. Mine is not so different as to
arouse any suspicion.”

“And we
could
use those muskets,”
Hancock proclaimed. “I say let’s do it.”

“Are you up to it, my fine Irish friend?”

“For the love o’ God, o’ course I am!”

“Very well, then. The Philadelphia ship is
due to arrive on Saturday night. She will flash two lanterns at her
bow, three times in succession. Your signal of acknowledgment is to
be the same.”

“Should he learn of it, Gage will move to
stop us,” came the steady voice of the one who’d been addressed as
Dr. Warren. “You may be sure of it.”

Deirdre’s nose was burning, and she felt the
sneeze building. She stepped backward, wondering if she’d have time
to make it back upstairs before it hit. Involuntarily, she sucked
in her breath—

“And when he does, we will be ready for him,
you may be sure!” A fist pounded against the table. “The time has
come to make a stand against tyranny, oppression, and the cruelties
imposed upon us by a dispassionate monarch grown fat on—”

At that moment, Deirdre sneezed.

It was not a small, feminine burst of sound.
It was a full-blown, silence-shattering roar that seemed to shake
the walls, the ceiling, the door that suddenly shot open to reveal
a room of shocked and staring faces.

In the space of a heartbeat she saw them.
Delight, sitting beside her parents and staring at Deirdre in
horror; several men, dressed in the decent clothes of merchants and
the well-to-do, some with powdered wigs, others with their hair
worn natural and clubbed at the nape; and, dominating the center of
the room, a tall, forbidding man with a wildly curling mane of
black hair that lay loosely about his broad and muscled shoulders.
He had a rogue’s smile, purple eyes like her own, and a face of
hard planes and sharp angles.

A face whose memory thirteen years could not
dim.

The blood drained from Deirdre’s face. She
swayed and clutched at the door for support. The occupants of the
room suddenly reacted, some cursing, some blanching with fear, some
looking to the one who was obviously their leader—this Sam
Adams—who stood, at a loss for words, beside the black-haired
Irishman.

“Oh, dear,” Delight murmured, finding her
voice.

And then Deirdre, frightened and shivering in
her nightshirt and robe, was dragged forcefully into the room.

She stood staring into the eyes of the
legendary sea smuggler. Her hands came up, purposely drawing out
from beneath the closure of her robe, the gleaming cross that had
belonged to another Irish pirate. She let it rest blatantly,
proudly, at her bosom, seeing the rebel smuggler’s eyes widen in
horrified shock as recognition swept the color from his ruddy
cheeks.

There were no secrets left.

Christian, unwittingly, had fulfilled his vow
to her after all.

“Roddy?” she whispered, the faces of everyone
else in the room dropping away into nothingness, until there were
only those darkly fringed violet eyes looking down at her. “Is it
really
you
?”

He stared at the cross, then up at her.

“Aye . . . ’tis me,” he murmured, still in
shock.

Foley leapt to his feet, white with fear.
“Tarnal hell, she knows your identity, man!”

But the Irish Pirate turned and laid a hand
on Foley’s arm. “Fear not that she’ll betray me to her fair-haired
Briton,” he said. He gazed down into Deirdre’s face, and reached
out to touch one long black curl.

“What do you mean, ‘fear not’? You’re as good
as dead!”

“Nay,” Roddy said quietly. “The lass is me
sister.”

###

Sitting cross-legged before the window,
Christian’s legs and feet had long since fallen asleep, but his
mind was alert, wide awake and sharp. He had not moved from his
position since sitting down, and the spyglass, trained with a
marksman’s aim at that single glowing square of light that was the
Foleys’ parlor, had not wavered so much as an inch over the past
hour.

He had seen it all. The first horse, its
rider in a dark jacket, materializing out of the night and turning
into the Foleys’ yard; another, and still another, until it was
clear that Gage’s suspicions about the whereabouts of the rebel
meeting were correct.

That these men were, indeed, the rebel
leaders, Christian had no doubt. He had viewed descriptions and
drawings provided by Sir Geoffrey and General Gage, and one or two
of them he had even seen on the streets of Boston—the outspoken Sam
Adams, and the tall, handsome Dr. Joseph Warren.

Adams’s face, at the moment, was dead-center
in the circular field of his spyglass.

Other faces came into view as the rebels
moved across the room. John Hancock, pompously dressed, wealthy,
much given to laughter. The silversmith Paul Revere, middle-aged
and a bit overweight. Jared Foley, with his ink-stained hands, and
his daughter, Delight. Her eyes had been following the black-haired
rogue whose face Christian did not need to scrutinize with his
glass to recognize.

The Irish Pirate.

His hand tightened around the spyglass. How
he wished he could go over there and arrest the bloody lot of them.
But no. With the exception of the Irish Pirate, the rebel leaders
were in Gage’s hands. His task was to apprehend the seafaring
smuggler—something he could not do until he caught the blackhearted
rascal at his game.

As for Jared Foley being a rebel, Christian
had all the proof he needed.

He lowered the glass, rubbed at his aching
eyes, and raised it once more. Suddenly, the breath caught in his
throat. A woman had come into the room. A slim, fair-skinned woman
with a spiral-curling mane of raven curls, a woman who, as he
watched, flung herself into the arms of the man he had been ordered
to apprehend.

It was Deirdre.

The spyglass fell from his hand. Shock tore
through him and he could only stare, blinking, at that square of
golden light, seeing the small figures within through the daze of
disbelief and denial.

No.

She was embracing him. Standing within his
arms and laughing up at him.

Kissing his cheek.

Christian stumbled to his feet, reeled
against the wall, and nearly went down. His hand flashed out and
grabbed the bedpost, gripping it so hard his knuckles went white.
This couldn’t be happening. This
wasn’t
happening. He put
the back of his hand to his brow and found it cold and clammy.