Free Captain of My Heart by Danelle Harmon Page B

captain’s
survival had come as no surprise, and Dalby was all but sobbing in
relief.
    Saunders shrugged. “Told ye he could
swim.”
    “Praise the Lord,” Fergus said, without
looking up from his Bible.
    “Think that serving maid’s got any more beef
and potatoes out in the kitchen?”
    Yet Matt saw that they were all staring at
him—Keefe, digging a finger against his front teeth to dislodge a
string of meat; Saunders with a great gap where his own front teeth
had been, and Reilly, with no teeth at all. “Well, what’re we
waiting for?” Matt picked up the salt-stained hat he’d been vowing
to replace for the past eight months, knowing it would probably be
another eight before he got around to it. “While we’re sitting here
drinking the place dry, the finest schooner this town—nay, this
colony—has ever seen waits to be built.”
    “But the drafts are gone.”
    “Gone—but not forgotten.” Matt grinned,
removed his spectacles, blew on them, and wiped them with a corner
of his shirt. He put them back on, shoving them up the bridge of
his nose. “Your captain tells me he kept detailed notes. Perhaps he
can simply redraw those drafts.”
    “Aye, that he could, if he had all
those notes and calculations. ...”
    Matt grinned in triumph. “Which are, I’m
told, locked safely away in Annabel’s cabin.”
    But the group went suddenly silent,
remembering that last terrible broadside that had smashed through
the stern. They’d be lucky to find part of the sea chest that
Brendan had kept those notes in, let alone the notes
themselves.
    But Matt guessed their thoughts. “And what
was it you were saying about your captain’s Irish luck, Mr.
Doherty?”
    They stared at him. And then, one by one,
they grinned, and then they laughed, slapping one another across
the back and drinking toasts to that same Irish luck until finally
Matt jumped to his feet and pulled the strapping lieutenant with
him, complete with fiddle, toward the door.
    Outside, it was hot and muggy, and as a
heavily guarded cart went past, the horses that drew it kicking up
a cloud of dust, Matt never saw how Liam shuddered, paled, and made
the sign of the cross. In that cart were the officers of the
British frigate that Captain Merrick had tricked onto the sunken
piers last night, and the red-rimmed eyes of its captain sought
Liam out and remained on him long after the cart was just a speck
in the distance.
    Had his vision not been hindered by the cloud
of fresh dust filming his lenses, Matt might have shuddered, too,
at the pure hatred in the British commander’s eyes.
    Coughing and waving the dust aside with his
floppy hat, he poked his head back inside the tavern, managing to
catch the attention of the seamen once more. “Gentlemen!” They
looked up, their faces dim through the cloud of pipe smoke. “I
forgot to tell you. If you’d like to visit your captain, please
feel free to stop by our home on High Street. It’s the big white
Georgian with green shutters, dormered windows on the second floor,
and an anchor on the front lawn. Can’t miss it.”
    “Why, thanks, Cap’n Ashton!”
    “Any time after one o’clock’s fine.” He
paused, biting his lip. “Uh, better make that one-fifteen,
instead.”
    “One-fifteen?”
    “Aye, one-fifteen.” He touched his fingers to
his temple. “See you then.”
    And with that, he clapped his hat atop his
red hair, yanked the floppy old brim down to shield his face from
the blazing sun, and together with Liam, sauntered off down the
street.
    “Alive,” Dalby breathed, eyeing Fergus’s
Bible with some reverence.
    “Did any of us ever doubt it?”
    “We have to go see him.”
    “Aye. But you heard Ashton. After
one-fifteen.”
    Dalby stood up. “I’m not waiting for
one-fifteen. I want to go now.”
    “You heard him. One-fifteen. An odd time, if
I do say so myself. Why not one o’clock? One-thirty? Or even
two?”
    Keefe belched. “Damned if I know.”
    But they were soon to find