CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
COLD WAS SEEPING into Lottie’s joints. She groped for the woolen plaid she’d found tucked beneath the bunk bed in the captain’s cabin, pulling it tightly around her. It was as damp as everything else. With a sigh, she opened her eyes and blinked back her fatigue.
Drustan was beside her, snoring like her father once had. Pain sharpened around her spine, reminding her of her loss. Not that she needed any reminding—she’d dreamed of him for the last two nights. In her dreams, she was trying to catch him, but he was always just ahead of her, disappearing before she could reach him.
But there was one dream that stood out from the others—that was the dream where she caught up to her father, put her hand to his shoulder, and he turned with a smile and said, “I’m no’ dead, pusling. I’m here with you now, am I no’?”
That dream had startled her awake.
Lottie pushed herself up and looked at the mound that was her brother on the floor next to the bunk. They were in the forward cabin now, where she’d decamped that night after Aulay had left her. She turned her head to the porthole and looked out at the sea.
She’d been completely undone by their coupling. He’d released her from misery, had shown her compassion and hope and a desire like she’d never felt in a moment she’d needed it the most...but that desire had faded away with the light of day.
It seemed so long ago now. A lifetime. She hadn’t spoken to him since that night, and it surprised her that she should feel his absence so keenly. Perhaps as keenly as she felt her father’s absence, but in a different way. She mourned her father, dreamed about him, missed his smile. But she craved Aulay like water. When she wasn’t grieving her father’s death, she was obsessively thinking about those moments with Aulay on his bunk, escaping from her grief, swimming headlong into another sort of grief entirely. She was desperate to remember the way he’d felt inside her, and the way he’d held her so tightly and carefully...and just as desperate to forget it.
Lottie was not an experienced woman—her brief affair with Anders not withstanding—but she knew instinctively that there was something quite profound about their frantic lovemaking. At the very least, it was much different than anything she’d experienced with Anders.
It was funny how often she’d thought of Anders in the last year, but since she’d stepped foot on this ship, she’d scarcely thought of him at all. She wondered, as she gazed into a vast landscape of various shades of gray, what she might have done had she met Anders again in Aalborg. It hardly mattered to her any longer—with the perfidy she’d discovered in Aalborg, he had faded into nothing.
What time is it? She hated not knowing time, but it was impossible to keep track when one was at sea, particularly when the skies looked the same as the surface of the water. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She felt oddly at peace. Fatigued, and full of longing. But the riot inside of her heart had calmed, the turmoil of having lost her father had begun to subside into acceptance. Her thoughts were turning to what lay ahead of them.
She yawned, stretched her arms overhead, then climbed off the bunk and over the sleeping form of Drustan. Mathais was in the other bunk. After their father’s death, he had claimed to be made sick by the motion of the sea, but Lottie knew he was too proud to allow his grief to be seen. Yesterday, he’d gone out of the forward cabin and had made himself of use on deck, working hard until Duff had sent him staggering back into the cabin, where he’d fallen onto the bunk, exhausted, and into what Lottie hoped was a dreamless sleep.
A Mackenzie had been kind enough to bring her an ewer with some water, and a small bowl for washing. The water was dingy now, and it wasn’t possible to change it, as the fresh water was being rationed. This, she understood from Duff, who fancied himself something of a seafarer now. He’d also explained to her that they had outrun the ship that had been following them.
“Turned round and went back to port, I’d wager,” he’d said yesterday as they stood at the stern. “The Mackenzies are puffed up like dead bovines, what with their successful maneuvering, but Gilroy believes we might have tacked east to north and been quicker about it.”
The ship suddenly rolled to the starboard side, and Lottie nearly lost her balance. The seas were rough and her sea legs, so sturdy in the first few days, were wobbly.
She washed her face and combed her hair with her fingers, then bound it at her nape. She hoped she was afforded the luxury of a bath before her trial, and some decent clothes for it. That was something else she’d become numb to—the prospect of a trial and punishment. Hanging or prison, whatever would happen, seemed so far in the distance and so impossible to comprehend that she couldn’t feel anything for it. Just...nothing.
She grabbed the plaid from the bunk and wrapped it around her shoulders, and quietly quit the cabin.
The air was cold and wet, but a welcome departure from the hard sun and stiff wind they’d had for the last two days. More than once, she’d had to catch herself from being blown overboard. She would need to be vigilant today, too—the seas were rough and the ship was rolling and pitching with the swells.
She saw Duff on the deck below, arguing with a Mackenzie. She had always had a soft spot for the big man, and she would love him always for the way he’d taken Drustan under his wing. He’d kept a close eye on him, and had confided in Lottie that Bernt had asked him to keep Drustan in his care in the event of his demise. Lottie didn’t know if that was true, or Duff’s acting out his own grief, but in her despair, she’d been quite grateful for the help.
Duff had even cajoled Iain the Red into teaching Drustan how to whittle. Drustan was quite taken with it, worrying over a piece of the cask spine for hours on end. His distraction was a welcome relief to them all.
She looked toward the bow and noticed one of the Mackenzie men leaning against the mast step, his eyes closed. He was sleeping standing up! Duff had explained to her how arduous it had been to sail against the wind and to keep pace enough to outrun the other ship. The Mackenzie crew had worked round the clock.
As she moved cautiously across the deck, she was startled by the sound of pounding on the deck hatch that led to the hold below deck. Her men were held there, she knew, and, Duff said, quite restless.
She made her way to Duff’s side. “What is that rumpus?” she asked.
“Your clan, aye?” Duff said, and slanted her a look. “They’ve drunk all the whisky below, slept it off and now they want out.”
“Can they no’ come out, then? A wee bit of air would help soothe them, aye? They canna escape.”
“While we work around them?” the Mackenzie man said, and snorted. “We’ve had twice the work because of them, and no pay, and we’ll no’ have them underfoot.”
“Can we no’ be of some service to you, then?” she asked.
The man grunted.
“Duff!”
The three of them turned about. Aulay was standing just above them on the quarterdeck, his hands braced against the railing, glaring down at Duff. “Can you no’ control them?” he asked, gesturing to the hatch.
“What am I to do, then?” Duff shot back. “Our whisky is gone as are all our hopes, and they can find no joy in being locked away!”
Aulay turned his glare on Lottie. “Miss Livingstone,” he said, quite formally, “Will you have a word with your clan and ask them to kindly stop making such a bloody racket?”
“What? Aye, yes—I will,” she promised, startled by his outburst.
Aulay pivoted about and resumed his place at the wheel beside Beaty.
“Well,” she said on a rush of breath.
“I’d take offense to that, I would,” Duff said. “But he’s no’ slept any more than the rest of them.”
Lottie yanked the blanket tightly around her shoulders. “I’ll have a word, then.”
“I’d no’ advise it, miss,” said the Mackenzie man, but Lottie was already moving.
Beaty was at the wheel, and Aulay stood with one arm braced against the mizzen, staring ahead into the sea. He cast a look over Lottie, sweeping all the way down to her toes, then up again before turning his attention to the sea before them.
Well then—the man who had made passionate love to her had gone missing, apparently. “Can we no’ help?” she asked.
“Aye, you can help by making them cease that ruckus,” he said curtly.
The man she’d captured had returned and was as surly as he had been the first day of his captivity. “I meant with the sails, or on deck.”
“No.”
“Your men are in need of rest—”
“I am well aware of it.”
Lottie’s gaze narrowed. She moved closer. “What is the matter with you, then? I know we’re a burden to you, but I—”
He suddenly spun around on her. “You’ve no idea what sort of burden you are, or how tall and wide your burden lies on my shoulders.”
He said it so violently that Lottie took a step backward, shocked.
Aulay glared at her a moment, and then sighed to the sky. “Bod an donais,” he muttered. “Lottie... I beg your pardon. I donna generally release my frustrations on the fairer sex, but Diah help me, I donna know what to do with you.”
He was confusing her. She didn’t know what he meant. “I’ve kept away.”
“That’s no’ what I mean,” he said, his eyes piercing hers. “We’ve eaten what was no’ ours to eat. We’re almost out of water. We return to Scotland like dogs with our tails between our legs, and by all rights, you ought to be hanging from the yardarm, aye?”
She flinched.
“But I donna know what to do with you and yours,” he said.
Lottie’s heart began to beat erratically. The ship suddenly rose up on a wave, then crashed down again, and he caught her waist to steady her. But Lottie could not be steadied and neither, apparently, could he. The cold hard truth of their situation had seeped into their membranes and was mixing with the desire in their veins. Esteem and thievery did not mix.
There was only one thing she could do, and that was to free him. “You know what to do,” she said. “There is only one thing you can do, Aulay. I know it. I expect it.”
Aulay blinked. His hand dropped from her waist.
“Give me leave to speak with my clan,” she said quickly before he could say something to dissuade her. “We can help you, we can relieve your men, we can give you all an opportunity to rest, aye? It’s the least we can do after all the trouble we’ve caused.”
He pressed his lips together, exchanged a look with Beaty, then nodded. Lottie didn’t linger. She found it painful to see him so conflicted over the grief she’d caused him. Diah, but they were sailing home on an ocean of grief, all of them, all of them full of sorrow for so many reasons. It was heart-crushing.
* * *
THE LIVINGSTONES CHEERED when she appeared around the crates. They were all in their shirtsleeves, unwashed, boasting scraggly beards. “Aye, I knew she’d come to save us!” Norval shouted.
“Give us our freedom, Lottie,” Morven said. “They’ve no right to treat us in this manner. ’Tis no’ gentlemen’s rules.”
“They are angry with us,” she reminded him. “And they treat us as we treated them.”
“Aye, and we’re angry, too, we are! They’ve thrown our whisky overboard!” shouted Gilroy from somewhere near the back.
“Have you forgotten that we threw their wool off to make room for the whisky?” Lottie reminded them. “And what good is the whisky to us now? It’s caused more trouble than it ever might have been worth.”
“What? Why?” asked Mark Livingstone.
Lottie stepped up onto a crate. “Lads, you know the Campbells will be as thick as a pack of wolves waiting for it, aye? And if no’ the Campbells, then the crown. The Mackenzies must hand us over or be accused of collusion. We’ll be caught one way or another, and then what?”
“We worked hard to make that whisky, Lottie!” insisted Mark. “Harder than we’ve worked at augh’ else!”
“We did, aye we did,” she agreed. “But it was always a risk, was it no’? We knew it could bring us trouble before we ever built the first still, aye?”
“We might have sold it yet!” Morven said. “The fault was in sailing to Denmark. We’re no’ sailors, no’ one of us, save Gilroy.”
Lottie winced with the painful truth in that. “That is my fault—”
“No, Lottie, the fault belongs to all of us,” Mr. MacLean said. “Our choice was to sail to Denmark or lose the whisky ere we had a chance to sell it. All of you know it is true—we met and said these things ere we ever put a foot on Gilroy’s ship. Have you forgotten?”
Mark looked as if he intended to argue, but Mr. MacLean held up a hand. “It hardly matters now, does it, then?” he implored them. “We are Livingstones. We care for our own. We must think ahead, not about the past.”
“We ought to help them,” Lottie said. “The Mackenzies are exhausted.” There was grumbling, but Lottie was quick to put an end to it. “They have no’ tossed us into the sea when they had every right! They’ve shared their provisions with us, and there are more of us than them! If you canna find it in your heart to help those who have helped us, then so be it—but I have given my word,” Lottie said.
“Aye, we’ll help,” Mr. MacLean said, eying anyone who would disagree. “But I would know what we’ll do when we return to Lismore. We’ve still the matter of rents to be paid.”
“Lottie, will you marry MacColl, then?” Norval asked her bluntly.
The question twisted like a knife in her gut. She looked around at the men standing before her. None of them seemed surprised by the question. “You all know of that?”
Norval shrugged. “He’s made no secret of his esteem.”
“You save us all if you wed him, Lottie,” Morven said.
Well, then, they were back to the beginning, were they? She should have known that there had never been any escape from her being the price to be paid to save all the Livingstones. She’d been naïve to think that she could avoide it. “We canna speak of what will come next if we never reach Scotland, can we? At present, we need to help the Mackenzies. Set aside your pride at having lost and be grateful we’ve not been walked off a plank.”
“Aye, release us from this hold before we all go mad,” Mark said.
“Give me your word that you’ll work, and work hard,” she said. “Swear it!”
“Aye, we will,” Morven said, and looked around at his clan. “We will,” he said, sounding as if he meant to convince the others.
“Dress, then, and I’ll see you on deck.”
She would marry MacColl, then. If, by some miracle, she escaped the gallows, she would give up her dream of seeing the world, perhaps of having children, and for the sake of her clan, she would marry him. It was, she thought, what her father would have wanted her to do. Perhaps she owed him that. To hang, or look at the walls of a cell, or marry an old man...none of it seemed better or worse than the other.