Free Captain of My Heart by Danelle Harmon Page A

Irishman said,
extending a huge hand. “I’m Liam Doherty, first lieutenant. This
here’s Dalby O’Hara. He’s sick, so don’t mind him. Oh, don’t bother
movin’ away, ’tisn’t contagious. Dalby’s always got somethin’ wrong
with him, but it’s all in his head. This here’s John Keefe—”
    “ Jack Keefe, now!” Reilly cried.
“Don’t ye know that once a man’s coin’s all gone, he’s just Jack
again like the rest of us?”
    Liam shrugged, his grin splitting his broad
and beamy face. “Jack Keefe, and this toothless cur by his
side with the purple jaw is Amos Reilly. Yonder’s George Saunders,
gunner, and Fergus McDermott, able seaman, who’ll need to be askin’
ye about the churches in town as he’s decided to join one after
yesterday—right, Ferg? And God only knows where the rest o’ the
crew is, though some are at the other tables, and others, I’d
wager, probably seekin’ a warm bed with room for two.” Dalby was
elbowing him again. “Oh, and our cap’n’s at sea,” he added, almost
as an afterthought. “We expect him back any time.”
    “Oh?” Matt raised his red brows above the
rims of his spectacles.
    “He is not at sea!” Dalby cried. “He’s
dead! Dead and drowned!”
    “That makes him at sea, don’t it?” Reilly
cackled, and slapped the table as laughter erupted around them.
    Matt eyed them all warily, thinking them a
strange bunch indeed. “I, uh, take it he was a hard master,” he
said slowly.
    Dalby lunged to his feet, stomachache
forgotten. “He was the best master there ever was! Fair and just
and honest. Brave and laughing and unafraid, right down to the end.
And he knew everything there was to know about ships, everything!
He could design one as well as he could sail one—”
    “Aye, ye should’ve seen those drafts he drew
up,” Keefe murmured, breaking an inch off his clay pipe.
    Dalby was heading straight for apoplexy.
“Those drafts! Those stupid drafts! If it weren’t for them, he’d be
safe and sound right now! But no, he had to find the best man in
the colonies to build that ship for him. Said she’d need a good
dose of Yankee know-how, else she just wouldn’t do. And now look
what’s happened! If he’d just been content with Annabel, he’d be standing here right now—”
    “Like hell he would, Dalb,” Liam said,
brushing bread crumbs from his shirt. “He’d have us out on some
salty deck givin’ the Brits what for. He isn’t one to waste time
ashore. Why, even when we made port, he’d stick aboard, workin’ on
those damned drafts, fantasizin’ about this an’ that, wonderin’ if
he should hang a tops’l above her mainmast or just let her go with
the one on her fore.”
    “Oh?” Matt watched them over the rim of his
mug with sudden interest. “And what did he finally decide?”
    “To put ’em on both.”
    “And studders outside o’ that,” Keefe
added.
    “Topgallants, too.”
    “Good God.” Matt almost dropped his mug.
“Wouldn’t that make her unsteady, hard to handle?”
    Dalby puffed his chest out like a banty
rooster. “Our captain could sail a ship to the moon and back if he
had to! If he wanted to string sails clear up to the stars, he
could handle her!”
    Liam put a restraining hand on Dalby’s arm.
“She would’ve been deep-drafted enough to take all the sail the
cap’n asked of her,” he explained. “Brendan’s a wee bit reckless,
sometimes even to the point o’ seemin’ empty-headed, but he’s no
fool. He knows his business right enough when it comes to designin’
ships.”
    “ Knew it!” Dalby cried, perilously
close to tears. “Can’t you get it through your head he’s dead?”
    Seeing the telltale moisture in the little
man’s eyes, Matt decided he’d let the game go on long enough. He
took a long swig of his ale, leaned back, and told them the reason
he’d come here—and who had sent him. By the time he’d finished,
Liam was grinning down into his ale as though his