Master of My Dreams (38 page)

There was no sound but the closing of the
door.

Roddy shut his eyes. “What is it tonight,
laddie? Boiled beef and hard tack? Dried peas and hard tack? Cheese
and hard tack?”

“Leg of lamb,” a voice said quietly.

The Irish Pirate’s eyes shot open. His head
turned on the pillow and he sat up, staring at the man who stood
there, a tray in one hand, a lantern in the other.

“Christ Almighty!”

The English captain gave a tired smile. “No.
Merely Captain Lord, come to bring you your last meal.”

Roddy’s jaw hardened and he clenched his
fists, feeling the chains biting into his skin. “Are ye mockin’ me,
Brit?”

The gray eyes regarded him steadily, taking
in Roddy’s filthy shirt and breeches, his unkempt hair, his angry
purple eyes that were so much like those of the girl Christian
loved. “Nay, my good fellow, not at all. I merely thought you might
appreciate something a bit more bracing than our normal fare.”

He set the tray down on the deck flooring,
because there was no table in the tiny room. Roddy’s mouth watered.
On a fine plate of what had to be the captain’s china was a juicy,
sizzling, slab of roast lamb, glazed with mint and sprinkled with
an assortment of fragrant herbs. A wreath of boiled potatoes
surrounded it, and there was a steaming chunk of fresh bread that
looked suspiciously like the type he used to enjoy back home in
Ireland, so many years ago.

“Is this some sort o’ joke?” Roddy snarled,
his Irish temper flaring as he saw the bottle of fine wine set on
the tray.

The English officer reached into his pocket
and drew out a key. He moved slowly across the small space between
them, the lantern picking out the gold in the lace of his coat, the
thick waves of his hair. He grasped Roddy’s chains, fitted the key
into the lock, and snapped it free. “No joke, my dear fellow,” he
said quietly. “As I said, this is your last supper aboard
Marauder
. Sentence has been passed upon you . . . tomorrow
it shall be carried out.”

“Hangin’?” Roddy asked nonchalantly, lifting
a proud chin that was now heavy with beard.

“I am afraid so.”

Roddy swallowed, a cold prickle of terror
shooting up his spine. He eyed the plate of hot food. The English
captain eased himself to the decking, leaning his broad back
against the bulwark and letting his hands dangle over his bent
knees. “Pray, eat it before it grows cold,” he said, motioning for
Roddy to sit down as well. “My cook went to considerable effort to
prepare this for you.”

Warily, Roddy slunk down from the bunk and
lowered himself to the decking across from his nemesis. His stomach
growling, he picked up the fork and knife and sawed into the juicy
slab of lamb. “Looks like the fare my mama used to make back home,”
he muttered, brushing his errant, dirty hair off his brow with the
inside of his elbow.

“I am glad.”

Roddy took a bite of meat and shut his eyes
in bliss. “It’s been many a year since I’ve been in the Navy, but I
know this isn’t customary, a king’s captain goin’ to all this
trouble on behalf of a prisoner.”

“’Tis a humane thing to do, I should think.
And my methods have never been regarded as . . . customary.”

Roddy sawed off another piece of lamb. He
raised his gaze to the other man’s, and found the gray eyes
regarding him steadily. Between swallows, Roddy said, “I’m not
goin’ to waste time in pleasantries, seein’s how I don’t have very
much of it left to waste. But the two of us go back a long ways,
and I’ve had a good many hours down here t’ think about things. I
hated ye, truly I did, for every one of these past thirteen years.
I lived for the day I could cross swords with ye, and run my blade
through yer heart.” He took a bite of bread and washed it down with
a long swallow of the wine. It was an expensive wine, and had no
doubt come from the English captain’s private stores. “But now I
find I’ve lost all me taste for revenge.”

The gray eyes regarded him quietly.

“I know, too, that ye have yer eye on my
sister,” Roddy said, waving his fork. “She’s a fine lass, a bit on
the sentimental side but a warmhearted girl who’ll make ye proud.”
He cut a piece of potato and put it into his mouth. “If ye give me
yer word ye’ll treat her as a lady, and honor her for the rest of
yer days, I’ll be consentin’ to let ye have her hand in
marriage.”

The Englishman smiled a sad, private smile.
“Thank you, Captain O’Devir. That is most generous of you.”

“I mean it. I told ye I hated ye, but I don’t
any longer. Besides, any lad who can outwit and outsmart the Irish
Pirate deserves to win the hand of his sister.”

For some reason, the innocent remark seemed
to distress the other captain. He looked away, and for the first
time, Roddy noted the deep lines of strain and sorrow etched into
the austere, handsome features.

Long moments went by. In the awkward silence,
neither man spoke, and Roddy returned his attention to the food,
his mind a thousand miles away.

Abruptly, the Englishman said, “I have
allowed all of my crew a well-deserved shore leave.”

No wonder the ship was so quiet tonight. “All
of ’em?”

Captain Lord began to pluck at the gold
insignia on his sleeve. “Yes, all of them.”

“Never heard of such a thing, a captain
lettin’ his entire company go.”

The gray eyes lifted to regard Roddy. “Again,
Captain O’ Devir, my actions have never been considered
customary
.”

Roddy stared at him. If he didn’t know
better, he would swear the Englishman was trying to tell him
something, but damn him if he knew what it was . . .

“Yes, Captain O’Devir, I let them all go,
with the orders that they are to be back by midnight. It does a
crew good, to have time away from their ship, would you not agree?”
He continued to be markedly interested in his sleeve. “Of course,
that leaves just the two of us aboard.”

Roddy took another bite of lamb.

The Englishman did not look up, frowning now,
as he smoothed a bit of thread on his sleeve. “Just you and me . .
. Roddy. Two captains with none but the other for company.” He
glanced at the shackles, now lying slack across the bunk. “Why, you
could rise up, knock me in the head, and be away from here with no
one the wiser for it.”

Roddy stopped chewing. Slowly, he put his
fork down and wiped greasy fingers on his breeches. “Aye . . . that
I could.”

“Of course, you would have to make neat work
of it. My admiral would not take kindly to the fact that the Irish
Pirate has escaped. Nor, for that matter, would General Gage.” He
gave a heavy sigh and continued to pick at his sleeve, his hair
glinting in the lantern light, his pale lashes throwing shadows
across his cheeks as he took a marked interest in what he was
doing. ‘To overpower me and render me senseless would be the only
faintly acceptable excuse, I should suppose . . . but I am talking
nonsense, am I not?” He looked up then at Roddy and grinned, and
the simple gesture transformed his face—the face of a man who had
known much pain and suffering in his own right—into that of a
youthful lad on the eve of discovering something wild and
forbidden.

“Aye, you are indeed,” Roddy agreed
gravely.

“But still, ’twould be an easy matter,” the
Englishman mused. “We are of like height and build, and therefore a
fair match of strength. Why, you would only have to get in a lucky
blow in order to make your escape . . . Of course, I would have the
devil of a time explaining the incident to my admiral, but then, I
have had difficult times explaining worse things to both him
and
other superiors.”

Their gazes met, deep purple against flinty
gray. Roddy picked up the bottle of wine, drank long and hard from
it, and passed it to the other captain. He did the same, and passed
it back to Roddy, until it was empty.

Again their gazes met.

The unspoken bargain was sealed.

The sins of the past had been forgiven.

Captain Lord got to his feet, tall and
strikingly handsome. He reached up and removed his fancy cocked
hat, baring his hair to the shimmering glow of the lantern. Then he
looked at Roddy, and the shadow of a smile touched his hard
mouth.

“And, of course, not a soul shall ever know
the truth,” he warned.

He turned, presenting his proud shoulders,
his broad back, and moved toward the door.

The Irish Pirate wasted no time. Raising the
bottle, he brought it crashing down on the back of the fair head
and caught the English captain under his arms as he fell, gently
lowering his heavy, sprawling body to the deck.

He knelt there for a moment, looking down at
the unconscious officer and silently thanking him for giving him
back his life. “God love ye, Cap’n Lord,” he said, then, without
further pause, was on his feet and racing topside.

Chapter 32

War broke out two days later.

On the previous Friday, a warship from
England had arrived in Boston, carrying orders from Lord Dartmouth,
Secretary of State for the Colonies, to General Gage, directing him
to waste no further time in breaking up the rebel network. Gage,
fearing for his position as military governor, was quick to act.
Intending to arrest Adams and Hancock, and to seize the stores the
rebels had reportedly secreted in Concord, he chose the fateful
night of April 18 to make his move.

Though he took every possible pain to keep
his plan secret, telling no one but his wife and Hugh, Lord Percy,
of the impending march on Concord, Gage had unwittingly alerted the
watchful eyes of the rebels during the preceding days by activities
that were suspiciously suggestive of an impending military activity
on the grandest of scales. Spies, mounted messengers, and intuition
on the part of the rebels guaranteed advance knowledge of Gage’s
plans, and days before the British troops began their fateful
march, the patriots had already transferred their arms stores in
Concord to other secret sites. They hid sacks of bullets in nearby
swamps, melted their pewter plates down into musket balls, and
devised a set of signals so that, when the king’s troops made their
move, the information could be quickly passed on to Concord and
other outlying towns.

By the time Gage’s select troops of
grenadiers and light infantrymen, numbering some eight hundred,
stole quietly out of Boston on the night of April 18 under the
command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, and were ferried in
the warships’ boats across the Charles River to begin the
sixteen-mile march to Concord, rebel messengers were already
galloping from Boston to spread the midnight alarm.

The American War of Independence had
begun.

###

Deirdre was awake and sitting at her window,
staring out into the crisp, moonlit night, when Paul Revere
galloped through Menotomy, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“The regulars are out! The regulars are
out!”

The hoofbeats rose in crescendo, growing
louder and louder, peaking, and then fading away into the distance.
In their aftermath, she saw lanterns being lit in the windows of
the neighboring houses, the tavern across the road. People began to
wander outside, staring off toward where Revere had gone and
milling about in confusion.

It was finally happening.

Deirdre shut her eyes, bent her head, and,
with the cross clasped between her hands and its chain wrapped
around her fingers like the beads of the rosary, prayed.

For the safety of Roddy, whom she had not
seen or heard from since that rainy afternoon when he’d left on his
final mission as the Irish Pirate, and who, according to Jared
Foley, was hiding at the Boston home of Dr. Joseph Warren following
the brief scuffle with the captain of HMS
Bold Marauder
during which he’d made his escape.

For the safety of her adopted family, who had
spent the night preparing for war, cleaning, oiling, and rolling
cartridges for their two muskets, and maintaining a state of
watchfulness.

And most of all, for Christian, whom she
missed with every beat of her lonely, aching heart. If only he had
released Roddy, and honored his promise to her. But how could she
have expected him to forsake the values and traditions by which he
had lived the past twenty years of his life, turning his back on
his own principles of what was just and right?

He was a king’s officer.

Sadness weighed heavily in her heart, and she
pressed her lips to the spot on her finger where his ring had
rested for so brief a time. How stricken he’d looked when she’d
taken it off and laid it on his desk, then turned her back and left
him. Anguish filled her. At least he would be safe behind the
frigate’s mighty guns should the worst happen.

She raised her head and looked out into the
night. Figures moved in the darkness, their voices hushed and
excited. More and more people, alerted by the night messenger, were
trickling from their houses and standing in the road, some staring
fearfully toward the east, whence the regulars would soon be
coming.

Deirdre shut her eyes once more. Her lips
moved against the hard edges of the cross, and she suddenly felt
cold all over.

“Please, God, watch over all those I love,
and those I do not love, those I know, and those I do not know.
Please, dear Father, keep everyone safe, especially Roddy, wherever
he may be, and my beloved Christian. I love him, Father, I love him
so very much—even if he
did
put duty before me. And please,
oh, Father, don’t let the minutemen have to take up arms against
the regulars, for there are good and decent men on both sides.”

She paused, shivering in the night air that
wafted in through the open window. The scent of wood smoke hung in
the air, and a faint breeze rustled the trees. It was early
springtime, and soon, everyone said, the leaves would be on the
trees, just like they were back home in Connemara. She saw the
grass shining silver in the moonlight, and felt a pang inside at
the memory of Christian’s promise, for that grass—so brown and dead
and ugly when she had first arrived in America—was now growing
every bit as green as any field back in Ireland.