My Enemy, My Heart (The Ashford Chronicles) Read online

  “Prisoners secured, Captain,” a carrot-haired youth with spots proclaimed in a voice that sounded as though it had recently broken.

  The man addressed as captain stepped forward and cleared his throat. “By the power vested in us, master, owner, and crew of the royal privateer vessel Phoebe, by His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent of England, we declare you prisoners of war of the sovereign . . .” His proclamation blurred into nonsense in Deirdre’s ears beneath the rush of confusion, then disbelief.

  Prisoners of war. Prisoners of England. This was a British privateer, not a pirate ship.

  The deck rolled beneath Deirdre’s feet. She braced herself against Ross’s sturdy arm, saw that his face displayed the same kind of astonishment she felt. She’d never in her life believed that President Madison would actually go to war with England. The United States didn’t have the ships, the equipment, or the men to fight the British Empire.

  “Where is your captain?” the Englishman concluded his proclamation.

  Deirdre didn’t dare answer for fear her voice would break if she spoke one word about her father. None of the rest of the Maid’s crew said a word either. Nor did any of them look at MacKenzie’s supine body a few yards away.

  The enemy captain looked annoyed. “I need to know who accepts our terms of your surrender.”

  A bubble of laughter rolled up Deirdre’s throat at the absurdity of this remark. As if any of them would accept their surrender willingly. A few of her crewmates even snorted.

  The Phoebe’s crew shifted, aligning their weapons as though preparing for a fight. Deirdre stared at the Phoebe’s crew. One by one, she memorized each countenance from the carrot-haired youth with spots, whose pistol looked less than steady in his hand, to the middle-aged man with silver hair referred to as captain, to . . . him.

  He was the true privateer, not a fighting man or even a sailor, but the mastermind behind the adventure. Deirdre knew it the instant he appeared on the bulwark of the Phoebe. Tall and lean-muscled, he posed against a backdrop of the two vessels’ bowsprits, one broken, one whole, and a flawless blue sky. His features were indistinct from that distance, but his straight posture and the angle of his head proclaimed “mine.”

  Deirdre feared if she didn’t look away, she would break past the nearest guard and fling herself at this man, her stiletto in hand. Yet she couldn’t stop staring—at the blue-black hair he wore in an old-fashioned queue, at the broad shoulders covered with a fine, white cambric shirt, at the long, muscled legs in buckskin breeches and Hessian boots.

  Those legs began to move. They carried him forward with the unhurried precision of a cat stalking its prey.

  No, not a cat. That produced images of something warm and cuddly. He was far more dangerous, a tiger ready for a feast. He passed the Phoebe’s crewmen as though they didn’t exist, all his attention focused on one goal. The closer he drew, the tighter Deirdre’s muscles grew. She sensed the tension of the men around her, as though all of them held their breath. The crew of the Phoebe watched him, their faces wary.

  He paused beside Daniel MacKenzie’s body. His face tightened. His nostrils pinched as though he smelled something more foul than a ship three months at sea.

  Deirdre’s body jerked. Her hand flew to her braid tucked beneath the neck of her loose cotton shirt.

  Ross caught hold of her arm and yanked it down to her side. “Don’t you dare.” His words were barely audible above the clamor of men taking over the Maid.

  The tiger must have heard him anyway. He raised his head and looked straight at Deirdre.

  Despite the blazing sun, a shiver rippled through her. She’d never seen eyes like his, topaz gold beneath thick, dark lashes and heavy lids that lent them a sleepy look. They gave nothing away as to his thoughts or feelings. Neither did his face display any expression. With its full-lipped mouth and straight, high-bridged nose, that flawless, sculptured countenance would have been too pretty for a man save for the strength of his chin and broad cheekbones.

  He broke eye contact first, addressing the Phoebe’s captain. “Why has this body been left here?”

  His voice jolted Deirdre. It was pure English aristocrat, the sort she had heard from the boxes at the theater during their one visit to London before the relationship between the two countries deteriorated. She had been happy then, released from the boarding school where she had been uncompromisingly miserable in dresses and gloves, and so little activity her muscles grew soft.

  A sob escaped her throat.

  Behind her, Wat laid a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “Steady there. He’s given you too much attention already.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked back tears. She would not grieve in front of these strangers, these enemies.

  “We thought to take care of the live ones first, Kier—Mr. Ashford,” the older man said. “We are looking to see if anyone is hiding below and inspect the cargo to see what—”

  “Later.” Ashford gestured to her father’s body. “Then take this poor man away and prepare him for burial.”

  They weren’t going to simply dump him overboard. Gratitude softened a crumb of Deirdre’s heart toward this man. Then he faced them once more, and she closed her eyes against the impact of his gaze.

  “Who is he?” Ashford demanded.

  None of the Maid’s crew responded.

  “I wish to give him a Christian burial.” The man’s voice held annoyance. “I cannot do that without knowing his name.”

  A nice ploy. Once he had her father’s name, he would look through the captain’s log and know he was the captain. He would then know that he had prisoners without a leader, without one of them deserving, by the laws of the sea, the respect of a cabin rather than the hold. Not one of them would be up top with a chance at freeing the others.

  Deirdre squeezed Ross’s arm. He was the first mate. He should claim the role of captain with her father . . . gone.

  He shook his head, the merest fraction of movement.

  It drew Ashford’s attention anyway. He fixed his gaze on Ross. “Who are you?”

  Ross drew back his broad shoulders, tilted his chin. “Ross Trenerry out of Charleston, South Carolina, first mate.”

  “And you?” Ashford shifted his gaze to Deirdre.

  “The dead man,” Ross said with more speed than usual, “is Daniel MacKenzie, our captain.”

  The tactic worked to draw the man’s attention away from Deirdre. Ashford looked back at Ross. “Thank you.” He turned to two of his crew. “Find a bit of sail and sew him up. We’ll bury him at sundown. Now get the prisoners below.” Pivoting on his heel, he stalked to the ladder that led to the Maid’s cabins.

  The clipper had two cabins. One belonged to the captain. The other should have gone to Ross, but Deirdre needed privacy, so received the privilege.

  She thanked the good Lord that she didn’t own anything female, not so much as a hair ribbon or piece of jewelry. Nothing would give away her sex to the English aristocrat turned privateer.

  Chapter 2

  Kieran Ashford reached the privacy of the captain’s cabin before his mask of indifference slipped. He had never seen the body of a man for whose death he was responsible.

  He hadn’t killed him. No one aboard the Phoebe had killed Daniel MacKenzie. The shock of being captured had apparently brought on some sort of seizure. Daniel MacKenzie hadn’t been a young man, unlike his crew.

  The first mate couldn’t be more than twenty-two or -three, and the tall, gangly youth beside him had barely reached his teen years. He had plenty of hair on his head though, wore it even longer than Kieran wore his, not unusual among sailors perhaps, and no longer the normal state of fashion.

  Kieran drummed his fingers on the edge of the teakwood table at one end of the cabin. “I wonder why he does that.”

  Not for the same reason Kieran chose to be so unfashionable. He’d bet this prize on it. Another possibility . . .

  But he couldn’t be right about that. Mer
ely wishful thinking or the onset of insanity from two months at sea brought that kind of notion into a man’s head.

  Curiosity and necessity driving him forward, Kieran began searching for the captain’s log. Lunacy or not, Kieran wanted to know who all the crew were so he could ease his mind and get messages to their families if they existed. He wanted to know where the odd little ship had been and what it was carrying. His crew expected prize money. Heron wanted to retire from the sea and could with a rich enough haul from an enemy merchantman.

  While the shouts of men and thud of tramping feet resounded through the deckhead, Kieran explored the captain’s cabin. He found the leather-bound log on a shelf above the desk straightaway. The drawers yielded some paperwork regarding an emancipated slave and ship’s stores purchased somewhere in South America. Deciding it would keep, he continued his explorations of cupboards stocked with preserves and tins of coffee, a trunk filled with neatly folded clothes, finely tailored and of high-quality fabrics, books ranging from mathematics to novels, a box on the desk complete with paper, ink, blotters, pens, and wax. Nowhere did he see a ledger. A quick scan of the log showed no columns of figures there either. Nor did Kieran find so much as a cashbox.

  Kieran stood in the center of the compact cabin and made a slow pivot, scanning the teakwood paneled walls. “You would not go to sea without specie for port calls. And investors would want an accounting. So where . . .” He tapped on first one panel, then another. They sounded too solid to house a secret compartment. But he’d swear one existed somewhere in that cabin.

  It could possibly be in the other chamber, yet Kieran didn’t think so. Not even the most trusting captain would put his gold in the hands of the first mate.

  Defeated for the moment, Kieran sat at the table and began skimming through the log. Most of the brief entries spoke in terms too nautical to make much sense to him. All that came clear was the date they sailed from Alexandria, Virginia—1 April, 1812—and the list of crew by surname and initial of Christian name. Albert, Carn, Devry, Drummond, Eider, Freeman—

  Captain Tom Heron knocked on the cabin door and entered. “You all right, lad?”

  Once a first lieutenant in the British Navy under Kieran’s father, Heron had the right to be so informal with Kieran, even if he was owner of the Phoebe now.

  Why would he not be all right? He had just captured a rich prize with little loss of life.

  “What is the cargo?” he asked.

  Heron narrowed his eyes at Kieran. “Tea and silk, sandalwood. Along with the ship itself, this will make you a wealthy man.”

  Kieran opened his mouth to point out that he was already a wealthy man by virtue of his birth, and the Phoebe’s crew could have the lion’s share of the spoils. Then he remembered that turning the merchantman Phoebe into a privateer would probably be the last straw to compel his father to disinherit him as much as the entail on the Ashford estates allowed.

  “Where do we collect this wealth?” Kieran asked. “Jamaica, Bermuda?”

  Heron drew the log toward him. “England.”

  “England? Dash it all, man, I do not want to go back there yet.”

  Or ever.

  “No choice.” Heron flipped pages in the log. “I wonder how long it took them to sail from China to here. I’ve heard these Baltimore clippers are fast.”

  “It looks like a child’s toy.”

  “They’re not very sturdy in a blow, it’s true. The draft is too—” Heron broke off on a whistle. “Sixty-eight days. Unbelievable.”

  Kieran rapped his knuckles on the table. “Why England?”

  “Hmm? Oh.” Heron raised his gaze from the log. “Prisoners.”

  “Prisoners.” Kieran speared his fingers into his hair, dislodging it from its ribbon. “I thought we could take them to one of our colonies here near North America.”

  Heron shrugged. “We could, if you want to consign them to a prison hulk.”

  Kieran grimaced. He had seen prison hulks full of Frenchmen in the Medway. They were little more than barely floating coffins, old ships beached to house men in conditions not fit for rats. Beneath a tropical sun, those hulks would turn into death traps.

  But England meant Dartmoor Prison. That it was on land and cold rather than hot were the only points that set it above the prison hulks.

  Suddenly, the heat inside the cabin suffocated Kieran. Head bent to avoid the low deck beams, he paced to the stern windows and levered them open. Too little breeze rippled the surface of the sea or drifted through the open porthole. Kieran inhaled deeply, smelled only the sourness of the bilges mixed with the sweetness of sandalwood, and queasiness roiled in his stomach.

  Of all the things he could forgive his father for doing to him, sending him out of England before the war broke out would not be one of them.

  Kieran swallowed. “Can we not simply beach them somewhere?”

  “If you want us all to hang for treason.”

  “No, thank you, I do not want that on my conscience, too.”

  Sending fifteen men to Dartmoor—if they were lucky—was bad enough atop all the reasons he stood inside a stranger’s cabin.

  A dead stranger’s cabin.

  “Kieran.” Heron’s voice was gentle. “You can’t capture enemy merchantmen without taking prisoners or killing them. You know that.”

  “I did not think.”

  “You never do.”

  Kieran winced. He wished he felt as though he had the right to tell Heron to stubble it or punish him for insubordination. But Heron had applied a rattan cane to Kieran’s backside a time or two in his youth, and the old habit of listening to the older man’s admonitions died hard.

  Heron cleared his throat. “We need to make some decisions about whether or not we’ll keep the cargo aboard this vessel, who will sail this one, where we’ll keep the prisoners.”

  A light breeze, briny, but fresher than the onboard odors, cooled Kieran’s face. He could answer Heron’s questions with authority. “We will hoist the cargo to the Phoebe and leave the crew aboard this paper boat.”

  “Is that wise?” Heron sounded dubious. “They know their ship—”

  “Which is why I want them here.” Kieran glanced around the cabin with its teakwood panels and brass fittings. “And I will stay here, too.”

  Heron shook his head. “I wouldn’t advise it, lad. If we run into a gale, you’ll be tossed around like a cork, and with your difficulty with mal de mer . . .” He returned his attention to the log.

  Kieran gave him a tight-lipped smile. “You mean I will be sicker than a dog.”

  Heron returned the thin smile. “I wouldn’t be so crude.”

  “Especially when you wonder how Garrett Ashford’s son could cast up his accounts over a three-foot swell.”

  “Your father was a born sailor.”

  “Who gave up the sea for love.” Kieran curled his upper lip. “Now I am at sea because of a lady, but not a sailor.”

  And Joanna had been no lady whatever her birth.

  “I stay here,” he said with finality.

  “If you insist.” Heron rose. “Do you wish me to preside over the funeral?”

  “You are the captain. It’s your place.”

  And Kieran needed his eyes free to watch the prisoners and find out which one was D. MacKenzie.

  “You’re the captain,” Zeb said to Deirdre. “Or as good as.”

  She stared at him through what little light filtered through the hatchway grating to their temporary prison—the hold of the Maid of Alexandria. “You’re mad. Of course I’m not the captain or even as good as. Ross—”

  “Is merely a hired hand,” Ross drawled.

  Deirdre snorted. “You have investments in this cargo.” She swept her arm around the bales of sandalwood scenting the air strongly enough to almost mask the stench of the bilges. “You’re losing as much as the rest of us.”

  Ross shifted on the oilskin-wrapped bales of silk they sat upon and laid his hand on her arm. “Not nearly
as much.” His voice was so gentle that tears pricked her eyes.

  “Don’t.” She swallowed hard. “I can’t think about . . . my father. If they see me cry at his funeral . . .”

  “They won’t let us go to his funeral,” Blaze growled. “He’ll be buried by strangers. English strangers.” He said “English” as though it were a foul curse. “Can’t afford to have us topside.”

  “When there’s fifty of them and fifteen of us?” Wat spat. “We’re not likely to mutiny.”

  “But we’ll get away,” Blaze said. “We have to. If they treat Americans like they treat the French prisoners . . .” He trailed off.

  Silence fell in the hold, emphasized by the clamor of hammering above deck. They were repairing the bowsprit. They’d have to sail her to—where?

  She didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Her crew had refused to fight to protect her, and now all of them faced a British hellhole of a prison.

  If only she’d gone below as her father commanded . . .

  She hugged her knees against her chest and laid her head on her knees. This imprisonment was her fault. The loss of revenue for men like Ross and Wat was her fault. Ross would never have a ship of his own now. Wat wouldn’t retire to the cottage he wanted by the sea on Virginia’s eastern shore. Zeb would never buy his wife and children out of slavery.

  “I’ll get you away,” Deirdre vowed.

  “Only if you reveal yourself as a female,” Ross said, “and I don’t want you to do that.”

  Deirdre straightened. “It might be the best course.”

  “They’ll find out in a prison anyway,” Wat added. “And what is likely to happen to her there . . .”

  “Is likely to happen to her here, too.” Ross’s face looked tight in the twilight dimness, the fine angles hard. “That man, the owner. Ashford. I didn’t like the look of him.”

  Neither had Deirdre. She thought an Indian tiger was likely less predatory than that man.

  “But there are rules of war or something, aren’t there?” she asked. “If he harms me—”

  “Who will stop him?” Ross sounded bitter. “This isn’t the navy. He doesn’t have to answer to superior officers. And his men won’t stop him from doing anything he pleases. He’s just made them rich without any of them getting a scratch.”