Never Too Late For Love (Heroes Of The Sea Book 9) Read online

  NEVER TOO LATE FOR LOVE

  By

  Danelle Harmon

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Windward Press

  Never Too Late For Love

  Copyright © 2019 by Danelle Harmon

  License Notes

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  Newburyport, Massachusetts

  November, 1814

  Chapter 1

  “If you could live your life over again, Uncle Liam, what would you do differently?”

  “Eh?”

  “What are your regrets?”

  The big Irishman pitched a stone into the hard blue waters of the Merrimack River and watched it skip over the swells of the incoming tide. The weather was cold and blustery, demanding a woolen cap and a quilted waistcoat under his double-breasted coat. In another few weeks, it would demand a hell of a lot more than that. An oak leaf, brown and mottled, cart-wheeled past his head, soared out over the water and fell, still twirling, into the current moving beneath his feet. Had it really been a year—a year to the day, you old fool—since he and Brendan had set off from this very pier, set out in that very ship there at the end of this very pier, looking to escape the coming winter by visiting loved ones in Barbados?

  How quickly that time had passed.

  How quickly everything passed when one got to be a man of years, and Liam could count them all. Six and a half decades on God’s green earth, and it seemed like just yesterday that he’d been a young boy in Connemara.

  “Liam?”

  “God almighty, Callie, ye talk as if I’m on my deathbed,” he said fondly to the young woman who sat beside him, her booted legs, like his, dangling out over the water below.

  Well you aren’t exactly a young man, Uncle Liam.”

  “And I’m not exactly a dead one, either.”

  “So are you going to answer the question?”

  “What question?”

  “Stop evading it. You know very well what I asked you.”

  Liam laughed. What would he do differently? What were his regrets?

  He’d spent the morning with Connor and his family in an attempt to assuage the ever-present loneliness. A morning spent watching Rhiannon bubbling with joy as she held tiny Brenna, the proud father making a mush of himself over little Siobhan on his knee. Twins, they were. Two more auburn-haired Merricks. Two more wee ones for Liam’s surrogate family, two more grandchildren for his best friend, Brendan. Unlike Liam though, Brendan was dead, and if the dead had no regrets, Liam reckoned the living shouldn’t have any, either.

  And yet the girl’s question had pricked him like a hook in a fisherman’s finger.

  What are your regrets?

  He shoved a hand into his pocket, found two pieces of wrapped candy, and offered one to her. He popped the other into his mouth and sucked hard on it, rolling it around on his tongue as he studied Kieran loading provisions onto Sandpiper at the end of the pier. Something pinched in his chest. Stirred his blood.

  Wanderlust?

  A longing?

  Annis.

  “Well now, lass,” he began, “one can’t live out their life without having a regret or two, now. can they?”

  “You just said that you’re not exactly dead. So that means your life isn’t lived out, and if you do have regrets, you should do something about them.” The girl leaned forward, toes pointed out over the retreating current, over that dead brown leaf now caught in an eddy at her feet. Her eyes danced above cheeks that were pink with cold. “Cousin Kieran told me about Mrs. Cutter down in Baltimore. I think you should go with him and Rosalie and spend Christmas there.”

  “What, to Baltimore?”

  “Why not? You should go.”

  “Connor and Rhiannon are new parents. I need to stick around.”

  “Why?”

  “Well—” again his gaze went to the black sloop, her one tall, raked mast and spars silhouetted against brooding grey cloud that was moving in from the sea. “Because they’re family, and I need to take care o’ them. All of you are. You and your brothers Toby and Nathan, your sister Cassie, your da and mother.” He cleared his throat. “Plus, I made a promise to your Uncle Brendan. A promise that I’d look after his three children and that,” he affirmed with a stubborn lift of his chin, “is what I plan to do.”

  “Maeve, Connor and Kieran are no longer children. They’re all married and have their own families now. That’s an excuse, Uncle Liam, and you know it.”

  He looked away, biting down on the candy. “Aye. Might be.”

  “So go to Baltimore with Kieran and Rosalie. Go see this Mrs. Cutter again.”

  Regrets.

  “Uncle Liam?”

  “I’m too old to go wandering the globe looking for love like some foolish young swain.” He turned a fond smile on the girl. “No, I’m staying right here in Newburyport.”

  “That’s silly.”

  “No, at my age, it’s practical.”

  The girl was leaning farther out, stubbornly doing her best to get into his line of sight. He tried to ignore her chiding grin, her sparkling eyes. Tried not to let her see that her cajoling was making him think about things; things like regrets and wanderlust and the feel of that sloop’s decks under his feet and the coppery glint of Mrs. Cutter’s hair—

  “Besides,” she persisted, “Kieran’s your kin, too. At least, in heart if not in blood. So you should go south with him. Watch over him to honor your promise to Uncle Brendan.” She cocked her head, her mouth twitching. “We’ll keep an eye on Connor here, and you can keep an eye on Kieran there.”

  “I see what ye’re trying to do, lass.”

  “Well, if Kieran’s going to Baltimore to visit his new family, you need to go.”

  “They’re his family, not mine.”

  “No, but they could be.”

  “Now Callie, lass, there’s nothing between Mrs. Cutter and me, nothing a’tall.”

  “And there never will be, if you stay here for the rest of your life. And don’t give me an excuse that you’re old and your rheumatism is acting up and that you don’t want to leave Connor and Rhiannon alone while they learn how to be parents. My mother and father are here to help them. So are Cassie and I. What are you going to do around here with all the cold and snow, anyhow, Uncle Liam? Kieran says it’s warmer in Baltimore.”

  A lot warmer, Liam thought.

  “Spring’s coming,” he said, though they had the winter to get through, first. “It won’t be cold forever.”

  “Another year is coming, too. And you won’t be alive forever.”

  “God almighty, lass—”

  “If my Uncle Brendan and Aunt Mira were here, I know what they’d say.”

  “Well, they’re not here.”

  “So are you going to go?”

  He chewed the inside of his cheek and stared down into the Merrimack as the tide pushed its way back upriver, swatches of dried marsh grass caught in the current and tangling around the pilings. Just below his dangling feet the brown, curling leaf still stared up at him, something poignant and urgent about it when he thought of his own life, caught in the flotsam, c
rushed by it, dead and disconnected.

  The leaf sank, and disappeared from view.

  “I suppose I could pack a ditty bag,” he ventured.

  “I think you should, Uncle Liam.”

  He pulled at his whiskers, savored the lingering taste of the candy on his tongue, and gazed thoughtfully at Sandpiper. Aye, he and Annis Cutter had hit it off like they’d known each other forever when he and Kieran had been in Baltimore this past summer. But despite the widow’s easy confidence and zest for life, despite an attraction that had pulled fiercely at them both, they’d shared nothing more than a few turns around a dance floor, a few glances across a dinner table, a walk in the moonlight.

  And a kiss.

  A few kisses, actually....

  “Uncle Liam?”

  He pushed himself to his feet. “You’re a persistent sort, Callie.”

  “Yes, and proud of it. Come, let’s go tell Kieran that you’ll be joining him and Rosalie.”

  She stood up, the stiff autumn wind already pulling her curly blond hair from its pins, her nose running a bit in the cold, her smile mischievous, excited, and triumphant.

  God almighty, Liam thought.

  “Remember, Uncle Liam,” the girl said over her shoulder as she all but ran ahead of him. “You’re not dead.”

  * * *

  Some four hundred miles to the south, the winter mix that would push its way into northeastern Massachusetts later that night had already found Baltimore. Sleet had turned to a cold dull rain, and the evening was dreary and raw as the McCormack family sat down to a meal of smoked ham and root vegetables.

  “Och, I’m a’missing that wee lassie o’ mine,” Angus McCormack said, plowing into a mound of mashed potatoes. “Seems quiet around here without my Rosalie.”

  Outside, the wind rattled the eaves and threw rain against the windows. A draft forced itself into the room and made the candles dance. Daylight was fading, earlier than yesterday, the nights getting shorter and shorter in the headlong rush toward winter.

  “When will they be here, Papa?” asked his youngest daughter.

  “Any day, Pepper.”

  “I hope they’ll be spending Christmas with us.”

  “Aye, lass. Winter’s dreary enough. Having yer big sister here will liven things up, tae be sure.”

  “I can’t wait,” put in Susannah McCormack, swirling her glass and staring wistfully down into its contents as though the wine might tell her the exact day and hour when her family would be reunited. “I miss my daughter. And maybe after they go back to Newburyport we should go visit them, see Rosalie’s new home, meet Kieran’s family.”

  “Ye think the freezin’ bowels of Massachusetts in the dead of winter is a bonnie place to spend February?” her husband asked, his thick red brows cinched tight in a way that implied he thought his wife had lost her mind.

  “I did not say we should go in the winter.”

  “We should go in the spring,” chirped Pepper. “I want to meet Kieran’s cousin. Rosalie writes to me about him all the time.” She sighed happily and turned a dreamy gaze towards the ceiling. “Says he’s of marriageable age, strong and manly and quite handsome.”

  “Is that all you think about?” muttered her brother Stephen, looking up from his ham.

  “I’ll be on the shelf soon. Of course it’s all I think about!”

  “You’re seventeen. Hardly on the shelf.”

  “When one considers the prospects here in Baltimore, even you have to admit that my future is bleak!”

  “Only because no man here has the courage to take you on. And I can’t say I blame them.”

  “That’s enough, both of you,” Susannah said sharply.

  The two siblings went silent, but not before exchanging promissory glances of picking up the argument later. Chastised but far from defeated, Pepper cast a glance at the one member of the family who had gone uncharacteristically silent over the last few moments. Her aunt had not said a word once the conversation had turned to Rosalie and Newburyport. Pepper’s eyes narrowed, and she watched her father’s sister push a piece of ham around her plate, leaving a track through its juices.

  “Aunt Annis? You’re awfully quiet. Are you well?”

  “Well enough.” Annis Cutter shrugged out of the light shawl that covered her shoulders, exposing bare arms to the drafty room. Beads of perspiration gleamed suddenly on her brow and she picked up her fan. “But I’ve no mind to visit Newburyport. Never was much for travel in the cold months.”

  “What? Last year you sailed to Montserrat to stay with Uncle Ian for the winter. And the year before that you went on a trip to South Carolina to visit your friend Mary. So you can’t say you don’t travel when it’s cold.”

  “Well, I don’t travel north.”

  “You should.”

  “And why’s that?”

  Pepper looked like a cat who’d found the cream. “Because Liam Doherty is there.”

  “Bah, ’tis all the more reason not to go.”

  Out of the corner of her eye Annis saw her sister-in-law pick up her wine glass and cast a piercing look in her direction. “I thought you two hit it off quite nicely when Lieutenant Doherty and Kieran visited here last summer.” Susannah said, watching her. “What is this?”

  “Aye, well, ’twas nothing,” Annis said mulishly, feeling all eyes suddenly upon her and damning heat building in her body. She wished she could turn the conversation back to the weather. To the winter. To anything but Liam Doherty. “He came, we had a bit of fun together, he left. And that is all.”

  Pepper was persistent. “But—”

  “Romance and love, that’s for you young ones,” Annis said brusquely, softening her words with a wink and a grin at her niece. “You go, Pepper. Go see that young man your sister writes about. What’s his name? Nathan?”

  “You know very well, Aunt Annis, that it’s Nathan. You don’t miss a trick. But I’m not going unless you go.”

  “I’m not going. ’Twould be awkward.” She looked down, pretending a sudden interest in her ham and quelling the urge to grab up her fan and send cool air pushing against her damp face in an attempt to find relief. “Besides, as I already told ye, New England this time of year is colder than a witch’s tit.”

  “You’ll regret it, I think.”

  “I regret nothing. But as for travel, I do fancy getting out of the cold. This evening only reminds me of what’s coming. Going back to Montserrat to see your Uncle Ian sounds like just the thing.” She smiled briskly. “Aye. That’s what I’ll do. In fact, I’ll start packing tomorrow.”

  She could feel Susannah’s eyes on her. Pepper’s too. Watching. Thinking. Annis poked at her ham, her heart doing strange little flutters in her chest, and had the sudden and unwelcome suspicion that the sensation had little to do with the fading away of her womanhood that every other physical symptom seemed to mark these days, but something very different indeed.

  Och, eat your ham, ye old fool, she thought.

  But it, too, had suddenly lost its taste.

  Chapter 2

  Two days later....

  There was a small vegetable garden outside the McCormack’s kitchen door in the back of the house and this time of year, the soil was resting, damp and smelling richly of earth. A few hardy herbs, unfazed by the coming winter, showed brave but defiant leaves to the chilly day. Basil. Rosemary. Sage. Annis picked through the plants, a small basket on the ground beside her, looking for the mint Susannah had told her was here. The doctor, diagnosing her with the hysteria he said all ladies of a certain age experienced, had recommended opium in an attempt to restore her to balance, but Annis was far more inclined to search for relief amongst the herbs than listen to some old coot who thought he knew more about how a woman’s body worked than she did, herself.

  Age! Bah! She had at least a score or two of years left to her, and she damn well intended to make good use of them.

  That doctor could go straight to the devil, and his quack ideas about women, too
.

  Sun peeped through the watery cloud above her head, brightened the rich dirt at her feet. Ah, there. Mint. That would do.

  She knelt down, her hem pooling on the damp soil as she snipped what she needed. She was just straightening up when the dogs set up a clamor back in the house. Annis froze, listening. Squeals of excitement. Laughter, loud and clear over Jack and Jill’s frenzied barking. Voices raised in joyous greeting, one of them familiar and quite beloved.

  Warmth filled her. Rosalie was home.

  Rosalie!

  She’d last seen her niece in June, when she and her handsome mariner-husband had visited following that terrible business with the pirates down in the Caribbean, Kieran nursing a gash on his cheek and Rosalie nursing Kieran; or rather, trying to. Like most young men of Annis’s acquaintance, Kieran wasn’t one to want to be fussed over. And given his attentions toward Rosalie, it was obvious he preferred to be the one doing the fussing.

  That suited Annis just fine.

  Rosalie deserved a fine young man who’d treat her like a princess and oh, she’d found one.

  She brushed her hands on the apron she’d tied over her skirts and hurried back into the house, her heart already leaping with anticipation at seeing her niece again.

  Even if it would be impossible to separate Rosalie from the memories of what, or rather who, had been with her and Kieran when they’d been here five months ago.

  Even if it would be difficult not to discreetly ask her niece how Liam Doherty was doing.

  No, she would not ask.

  And certainly not with both Pepper and Susannah waiting to leap on any mention of what they hoped would be the start of some great romance that had never got off the ground in the first place and never would.

  The clamor grew louder as Annis let herself back into the house and headed toward the source of it. Ahead, a pair of servant girls disappeared around the corner, all a-giggle with the hope of catching a glimpse of Rosalie’s husband. The voices grew louder, more distinct. Angus’s booming out his joy at seeing his daughter, Susan’s gushing chatter, Stephen’s “good to see you, Merrick, thanks for bringing our Rosalie home for a visit,” Rosalie’s happy babble as she was pulled in several directions at once: “Yes, Mama, I’m doing well, yes, Mama, I am quite happy in Newburyport, no, Mama, I am not famished just yet, and please, Mama, stop fussing over poor Kieran, you are overwhelming him!” Leave the poor lad alone, will ye, Susannah? Annis thought, for poor Kieran was rather a quiet, reflective sort and how well sweet Rosalie looked out for her man! The dogs still barking their heads off, more laughter, and then a voice that stopped Annis firmly in her tracks and caused her heart to leap with sudden excitement.