Lord of the Sea by Danelle Harmon

Author:Danelle Harmon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2014-06-16T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

“Don’t you two have a honeymoon to be off on?” asked Alannah, who looked up as Connor strode boldly onto Sir Graham’s verandah, his new wife in tow.

“We’re hungry.”

“And soaked. Did you two fall off the boat or something?” She peered at Rhiannon in horror. “What on earth are you wearing, Rhiannon?”

“Connor gave me a swimming lesson,” she chirped, and slid a coy, worshipful gaze toward her grinning husband. “It was fun.”

Maeve was sitting in a nearby chair. “Honestly, Connor, why you didn’t rent a room at one of the hotels in Bridgetown is beyond me.” She eyed her brother with disapproval. “You took her to Kestrel for your wedding night, didn’t you?”

“It was romantic,” Rhiannon piped up, coming to Connor’s defense. “The beauty of the night beneath the stars, the ship all to ourselves. . . .”

“Bah,” Maeve spat. She got up, her hand going to her belly and rubbing it absently. “He’ll be taking you privateering, next. Damn, how I wish this baby would come. He’s kicking a hole through my blasted gut.”

“Must’ve inherited the Merrick restlessness,” Connor said. “Is there any food around here, Sis?”

“Go pillage the kitchen. But Mother’s baking. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Connor visibly paled. “God help us.”

“Aye, isn’t that the truth.”

“She’s not expecting us to eat it, I hope.”

Rhiannon glanced from one sibling to the other. “Why such trepidation?”

Maeve was shaking her head. “We don’t eat Mother’s cooking.”

“Hazardous to one’s health, it is.”

“I should go change, first,” Rhiannon said. “I don’t want to face your mother wearing boy’s clothing and looking like a drowned rat.”

“You’re fine just the way you are,” Maeve said off-handedly.

“And I’m starving,” Connor said. “Let’s go see what’s in the kitchen.”

The smell of something burning grew stronger as they moved toward the back of the house, and by the time they entered the kitchen, a thick haze of smoke was wafting through the open door. Inside, they found Ned hastily fanning the smoke to try and chase it out the windows, and his grandmother at the hearth, struggling to close the great bake oven set into the bricks and cursing like a seasoned pirate while more smoke roiled out and around her.

“Mother, what are you doing?” Rushing forward, Connor gently pulled his petite mother out of harm’s way and slammed the iron door shut with a poker. “Honestly, you’re going to burn down the house.”

Grinning happily, she straightened up and passed the back of one hand across her soot-stained forehead. “Ned and I are makin’ molasses cookies.”

“Making them, or burning them?”

“Oh, you mean the smoke? That ain’t from the cookies. We tried to make a tart earlier, and I think I put too much fruit in it. It overflowed and got into the oven and now it’s the spill that’s burnin’.”

“So where’s the tart? I’m starving.”

“On the work table there.”

Connor glanced in the direction his mother indicated. Something unrecognizable sat smoking in a deep pan, with a blackened top that might once have been a pastry crust.

He sighed.

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