CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“WE’RE MOVING, AYE?” Mathais said, and stepped up to a porthole to look outside. “Aye, we’re sailing.”
“What?” Lottie found it a supreme effort to lift her head, which she had been resting against Drustan’s much larger one. The poor lad had been crying the last hour, unable to harness his emotions, unable to understand what had happened to his beloved father.
The only difference between her and Drustan was that she understood what had happened to their father. But she could no better curb her emotions than he could.
She remembered the grief that had followed her mother’s death, but she’d forgotten how wretched it had felt, how grief made her feel numb, as if there was no feeling in her limbs or her heart—all of it had been swallowed by her sadness. She’d been made deaf by it, too—she’d not heard a word of what anyone had said to her since returning from port, other than how he’d taken his last breaths with Mathais and MacLean at his side. There had been condolences, pats to her shoulder, kind words whispered in her deaf ears. Her spirit, her thoughts, her heart, had been utterly obliterated.
“We’re sailing away,” Mathais said again. “Where are we bound?”
Lottie didn’t care. It hardly mattered now. All she wanted was for her father to wake up, to tell them he had a new plan, to laugh at their tears and remind them that if the English and the Jacobites couldn’t kill him, neither could a piece of wood. “Come away from the window, Mats,” she said wearily.
But her father would never wake, and it was her fault. She could scarcely look at her brothers, she was so filled with guilt. She should never have mentioned Aalborg. She should never have played into her father’s grand scheme. She could have destroyed the stills, she could have agreed to marry MacColl—she could have done so many things. But she’d let a whisper of Anders Iversen enter her thoughts, had believed she had the answer. How easy it would be, she’d thought.
She should have known it would all end in colossal failure.
She shouldn’t have gone ashore this morning. She should have left the whisky to the men and stayed by her father’s side. Maybe she would have noticed him failing. If she had, she might have summoned Morven before it was too late, maybe kept him alive until the doctor had come.
An enormous, indefatigable force of exhaustion from grief and guilt was pushing her down and flattening her into nothing.
“What are we to do?” Drustan asked her. Again. His question repeated over and over, her answer not satisfying whatever it was he needed to hear from her.
“We’re going home,” she said.
“Is that where we’re sailing, then?” Mathais asked, turning from the porthole.
She didn’t know where they were sailing, she didn’t care, and could scarcely feel the gentle rock of the ship beneath her. Her mind was perfectly blank. The only thing she was truly aware of was the terrible ache in her head and her chest. Like a vice, squeezing the life from her. Let it.
The door swung open and startled the three of them. Aulay strode into the room. He had removed his coat and waistcoat and had rolled up his sleeves. He wore a sword at his side, and his hair, so perfectly groomed this morning, was wild about his shoulders. His gaze moved from Lottie to the lifeless body on the bunk. He swallowed. “Lottie...lads. I offer my deepest condolences,” he said, bowing his head a wee bit.
She pressed her lips together and nodded as another stream of tears fell from the corners of her eyes. It seemed impossible there was anything left, but here the tears came, unbidden, unwanted. She wished she could fall into his arms, she wished he would hold her while she sobbed away whatever was left of her spirit.
Her tears agitated Drustan—he suddenly stood up and went to his father’s body, which had been wrapped in a coverlet. Drustan kept trying to unwrap the body. Lottie leaped to her feet as he tried again. “Stop that. Stop that now,” she said harshly.
Her tone only increased his agitation, and Drustan began to wail.
“Diah, will you cease that wailing!” Mathais cried, slamming his hand against the wall.
“Dru!” Lottie said tearfully, and rose up on her toes, wrapping her arms around Drustan’s neck as sobs wracked his body again.
“Look away, now. Look away, mo chridhe.”
He buried his face in his hands and sank down to the floor, unable to cease his wailing.
“By all that is holy, make him stop!” Mathais shouted. “Is it no’ bad enough that he’s left us? Must we listen to that as well?”
“Mats, please,” Lottie said, but her voice sounded hollow, devoid of proper emotion. She couldn’t bear their grief, not this time. She couldn’t bear her own. “We all come to acceptance the best way we can,” she heard herself say as she caressed Drustan’s head.
“Well I have come to acceptance,” Mathais said, and moved so suddenly that he banged into a chair; it fell backward with a crash. Mathais was suddenly breathing hard, as if he’d run a great distance. Lottie sensed he was on the verge of exploding with rage and frustration. She let go of Drustan and put her arms around Mathais. The poor lad sagged, dropping his head onto her shoulder, his lanky arms loose around her waist, and fresh sobs racking his body.
Lottie squeezed her eyes shut and let him sob until he could no longer cry. He slipped away from her, falling raggedly into a chair at the table.
She braced her hands against the table and drew a deep breath. They were quite a trio, she and her brothers. She drew another deep breath...and slowly became aware of another in the room.
She’d forgotten Aulay. She pushed herself up and turned around.
His gaze was full of sympathy. “Are you all right, then?” he asked quietly.
No. She was at sixes and sevens and felt as if she were spinning out into darkness. She shrugged indifferently.
He took a step forward. “I would no’ intrude on your grief, Lottie, but I must speak with you.”
“Now?” she asked weakly. Whatever it was, she had no capacity to hear it.
“Aye, now.”
She sighed. “What is it, then?”
Aulay glanced at her brothers. “Privately, if you please.”
Privately. Lottie glanced around the room, looking for something. A cloak? A wrap? Anything to delay a private conversation she was certain she didn’t want to hear.
She glanced down at her rumpled gown and rubbed her damp palms against the soiled, torn skirt. What a fright she must look—her eyes were swollen from sobbing, her skin undoubtedly as splotchy red as poor Mathais’s. Her hair, a bird’s nest, was partially falling down her back. Had she looked such a fright in the stable? The stable. How long ago that seemed! Like a dream, a pretty little dream while her father was dying.
Tears welled in her eyes again, but she swallowed hard, rubbed her palms on her skirt again, then forced herself to move woodenly around the table. She paused to put her hand on Mathais’s shoulder. “I’ll return directly, aye? Stay with Dru.”
Mathais folded his arms across the table and laid his head on them.
Lottie brushed carelessly against Aulay as she moved past and out onto the landing. On deck, Mackenzie and Livingstone men were moving about, many of them up on the masts, shouting at each other as they rolled sails.
She folded her arms tightly across herself and made herself look at Aulay.
“Lottie, leannan, I’m so verra sorry—”
“No, donna say it, please,” she said, closing her eyes a moment. “I’ll fall to pieces if I hear one more condolence.”
Aulay said nothing.
“You could no’ have been surprised by it,” she said.
He scrutinized her face a moment, as if uncertain what she wanted from him. “No.”
She had not been surprised by the news, either. Shocked to her core, yes. Devastated beyond understanding, certainly. But not surprised. A part of her had known when she’d left her father this morning that it would come to this. Perhaps not as quickly as it had, but a part of her had known. She looked away, feeling the burn in her eyes again.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
She dabbed at one eye. “I could no’ possibly.”
“Drunk anything?”
“The ale at the inn,” she said weakly.
“Diah, Lottie, you’ll be no use to anyone if you donna mind yourself.”
“I was no use to my father even in the best of health, was I? One might argue that I brought this on him. On us. On all of us,” she said bitterly, and tightened her hold of herself. If she didn’t, all the misery frothing in her would spill out and contaminate everything and everyone on this ship.
“You’re no’ to blame,” he said quietly.
“I wish I could agree with you.”
“Ah, Lottie, lass,” he murmured, and caressed her arm. “Listen to me, aye? We must bury him.”
We. He was being kind. How could he be so kind to her after all she’d put him through? She gave him a tremulous smile. “Please donna trouble yourself, Aulay. I know we must. We’ve a place on the island, next to my mother.”
Aulay winced and shook his head. He wrapped his hand around her elbow and drew her closer. “I mean tonight.”
Tonight. How could she bury her father tonight? Would they be in another port? She’d not leave her father in some foreign port! She opened her mouth to tell him so, but then understanding dawned, and she gasped, rearing back, away from him, repulsed. Enraged. Horrified.
“You canna leave him as he is,” he said, his voice soft. “There is the issue of decay.”
She whirled away from him, appalled, fearing she might heave. “Donna say another word!” she begged him, and pressed her hands to her abdomen to contain her distress.
“You’ve born quite a lot in your life, and you’ll bear this, too.” He stepped up behind her, leaned his head over her shoulder and said softly, “Your father would no’ want to rot away before his children.”
A swell of nausea overcame her. She pressed her fists into her belly, swallowing it down. Hot tears clouded her vision again. She wanted to say things, to tell Aulay that her father was a good man, that he didn’t deserve this death. She wanted to say that she’d failed him, and for that, she would never forgive herself. But no words came out. She began to lean forward, as if pushed by an unseen force. She felt faint.
Aulay caught her with an arm around her waist and pulled her back into his chest, holding her upright. “Ah, leannan,” he said, caressing her head. “It will be all right,” he promised her. “On my word, it will be all right.”
He was wrong—it would never be all right. Lottie had failed to save her father and her clan and it would never be all right.
“We’ll have a proper ceremony, aye?” he said soothingly into her ear. “I’ll give you and your brothers a bit of time to prepare yourself.”
How did one prepare to toss her father’s body into the sea? She couldn’t do it. She wanted to lie down and close her eyes until the pain in her heart and head eased. Forever, in other words, for the pain in her heart would never ease. “Is that why we’ve sailed? To bury him?” she asked tearfully.
But Aulay never answered her, because someone below began to shout for him. He let go of her, the warmth and hard wall of his body disappearing from her back. “Go, now, and tell your brothers. I’ll send your actor up to help you.”
Emptiness surrounded Lottie as Aulay hurried down the steps and strode across the deck.
She watched him go. She could still feel his strength surrounding her, could still sense the small bit of comfort she’d felt with him firmly at her back. She thought of the way he’d held her in the stable—so tenderly, and at the same time, his hold unbreakable.
It felt like a dream. Everything felt like a sad, sweet dream.