Read Online Wicked at Heart by Danelle Harmon - Free Book Online Page A

for trousers, it was easy to believe that his bones held
more flesh than starvation and abuse had afforded them.
    Heaven help her,
she thought, overcome by a hot flush.  Thinking of his body did her no good,
either.
    She forced
herself to look away, her gaze settling upon the crumpled note, now no more
than a white dot as it bounced and bobbed in Kestrel 's wake, growing
further and further astern before finally sinking out of sight.  It was no
use.  Connor was heading for the hatch, his stride jaunty and confident as he
approached, and she had no choice but to look up at him.
    "Another
rescue, Con?" she ventured, straightening up and leaving the line neatly
coiled on the deck.
    He stopped and
leaned against the gunwale beside her, dangerously, temptingly, close.  He was
pale and gaunt from his recent stay aboard the prison hulk, and hell-bent on
rescuing his compatriots still incarcerated there, but the experience had not
left him bitter as it might have left a lesser man, nor had it broken him.  But
then, he was a Merrick, she thought, with wry admiration.  Merricks didn't
break — they merely bent, like saplings in a storm, making the best of
situations and growing stronger in spite of their adversities.
    "Another
rescue indeed.  Tomorrow at midnight the Black Wolf strikes again."  He
closed his eyes and turned his face skyward, smiling as he relished the joyous
thrum of the wind through stays and shrouds, the leap and pulse of the ship
beneath him.  The empty mug dangled lazily from one finger, and the breeze
played havoc with his curling auburn hair.  "My God, I cannot tell you how
damned good this feels, to be out in the sunlight, with the breeze on my
face once again.  I thought I'd never get off that confounded hulk."
    "Had your
sister known you were on it, I'm sure you would've been off it much sooner."
    "How could
she know, being off in the Caribbean as she was with her admiral husband?  I'm
only glad that he's back here in England on leave.  I was ever so fortunate to
escape that damned hulk and find none other than our own little Kestrel sitting pretty-as-you-please in Portsmouth Harbor right next to his
flagship!"
    "This
little schooner holds fond memories for you."
    "Aye, she
sure does, Orla."  He gazed blissfully up at the taut mainsail which
caught the wind above his head.  "Remember when we were all tiny, and my
father used to take us out on her, teaching us how to sail?  I used to sit
right there, on that very gun, when it was Maeve's turn at the tiller."
    "How could
I forget?"
    He ran a hand
affectionately along the gunwale.  "Five and thirty years, is this old
lady, yet she's still as sound as a spring filly, and just as frisky, God love
her.  You'd think she's bloody immortal!"
    "Sir Graham
made sure she enjoyed every dockyard benefit that his own ships did," Orla
explained.  "New sails, new rigging, carpentry work, a fresh coat of paint
— whatever she needed, the admiral saw that she got it."
    "Yes, but
you can't overlook Grandpa Ephraim's influence on her, either.  She was his
masterpiece — and no one could build a ship the way he could."
    "No
one," Orla agreed, a bit sadly.
    Waves broke and
hissed along Kestrel 's bow and hull.
    "Poor
Grandpa is probably cackling with glee in his grave, knowing his life's
masterpiece is pitted once again against the British . . ."
    They were both
silent, only the sounds of wind and sea intruding upon their thoughts as they
remembered old Ephraim Merrick.  Blustery, eccentric, and cantankerous 'til the
end, he had made light of the illness that steadily had been eating away at his
insides, until one day he had gone missing — and so had the tiny sailboat he'd
kept moored in the river's mouth.  Maybe he hadn't known about the nor'easter
that had howled in over the coast that night; in all likelihood, he had.  Five
days later, a few pieces of his little boat had washed up on a deserted Plum Island
beach, and no one had ever seen the old man