CHAPTER SEVEN
A HALF HOUR or more passed before Lottie returned to Aulay’s quarters carrying a cloth bundle and in the company of two men. The men undid the chain at Aulay’s ankle, hauled him up between them, then escorted him out “to take the air.”
Aulay was relieved to be out of the cabin and breathed deeply of the salt air. In the wake of the storm, a blistering array of stars and the full moon lit the deck. He could see casks of whisky stacked haphazardly and tied loosely about the main deck. He was surprised they’d not lost them in the storm.
At the stern, a man casually held a long gun and smoked a cheroot. Beaty was at the helm with two Livingstone men, in deep conversation that seemed, from a short distance, almost friendly.
When Aulay had dallied as long as he might, the men returned him to his cabin. As they moved up the few steps to the forecastle, the Livingstone physician emerged from the forward cabin. He backed out of it, really, and was laughing as he went. But when he turned about and saw Aulay, he quickly sobered.
“Who is within?” Aulay demanded.
“Wounded men, Captain. One of ours, two of yours.” He scurried down the steps past Aulay and his guards.
It was too casual. There was no tension—it was as if everyone had settled into this arrangement and had no objection to it. What had she done, entreated them? Played to their sympathies? Seduced them with her bonny face and beseeching blue eyes? Were they all as weak as he?
In the cabin once more, Aulay simmered as they shackled him like an animal. Lottie watched with heavy eyelids, her head propped on her fist.
“Now what?” asked one of the men.
Lottie yawned. “Rest, aye? But go now—I’d no’ like Fader to wake.”
Judging by the snores coming from the bunk, there was no danger of that happening.
When the men had gone, Aulay lifted his bound hands. “Untie me.”
She sighed.
“How am I to eat, then?” he asked, gesturing to a hunk of bread, some cheese, and what looked like a cup of soup laid on top of his desk.
“Can you no’ manage it?”
“No, I canna manage it,” he said curtly.
She wearily lifted her head off her fist and stood, and seemed a little unsteady on her feet. She looked at Aulay, then the food. “At least you must sit, aye?” she said to him. “I’m at a disadvantage to try and help you, as tall as you are.”
She picked up one of the heavy wooden chairs at the table and clumsily maneuvered it across the floor, positioning it next to the desk. She pretended to dust it off, then bowed low, sweeping her hand over it. “Your seat, Captain.”
He sat heavily, his stomach growling. When she didn’t hand him anything to eat, he turned his head toward her.
Lottie was looking at his hands. She grimaced, then leaned over to have a better look. “Mi Diah,” She knelt beside him and touched her finger to a particularly raw spot on his wrist.
Aulay hissed with the burn of her touch.
“I should call Morven to have a look.”
“You ought to take them off,” Aulay snapped. “You’ve asked for my help, but keep me bound like an animal.”
“You know I canna do that.” She moved the food to the middle of the desk, carelessly pushing his papers and maps aside in the process, then dragged herself up to sit on it. Her legs dangled, her ankles crossed, her feet bare. She picked up the hunk of bread and tore two chunks from it, handing one to him, and popping the other in her mouth.
“Just how long do you intend to keep me bound, then?” Aulay asked before fitting the bite of bread into his mouth.
“Until we are to Aalborg.”
“We’re two days from Aalborg! I canna carry on like this. Leave me shackled if you must, but untie my hands.”
She broke a piece of cheese and handed it to him.
Aulay caught her wrist and locked his fingers around it. She looked up with surprise. “I donna like to see you bound, but if I untied you, I’d have a mutiny. You’re the only leverage we have, you are.”
“You donna seem to me to be a demure wee lass who does as others bid her. If you want to see my wrists freed, then think of how to do it that spares you a mutiny.”
She glanced away, but Aulay yanked her close. His gaze moved to her mouth. “Untie me, Lottie.”
“I thought we had an understanding,” she said.
“Whatever made you think we did?”
She leaned closer still, her face only an inch or so from his. She glanced at his hand, wrapped tightly around her wrist. Long, dark lashes fanned against her cheeks. “There are men just outside that door, aye?” she said softly. She lifted her gaze and locked it with his. “If I scream, they’ll be inside so quickly that you’ll no’ have time to blink.” She leaned even closer, her mouth now beside his temple. “I’ve brought fish stew. Will you eat a wee bit of it? Or would you prefer to feel the butt of a gun crack against the back of your head?”
Aulay turned his head, so that his cheek was against hers. The air around them seemed to crackle. A fire was brewing, and he couldn’t say which of them burned brighter. “I canna be seduced, lass. No’ with you, no’ with food, no’ with threats.”
“More’s the pity,” she whispered into his ear, and sent an arc of fire shimmering down his spine to land squarely in his groin. She slowly leaned back and with her free hand, she picked up the cup from the table and showed it to him. “I’ll need both hands if you’re to drink.”
Diah, but he was weak. Damnably weak. He reluctantly let go her wrist.
She put the cup to his lips, splaying her fingers across his jaw to hold it steady. Aulay was too aware of her touch, of how light it felt against his skin, scarcely more than a whisper, yet hot at the same time. He drank the contents of the cup eagerly, as he was famished. A bit of it rolled down his chin, and she used the sleeve of his shirt she wore to blot it.
“You need a shave,” she observed.
“Do you propose to hold a razor to my throat?”
“No’ as yet,” she said, and a smile flashed across her face.
Her bonny eyes were making it impossible to keep Aulay’s rage billowing. Captivity, he was discovering, was exhausting. He felt himself on the verge of losing this battle of wills, of surrendering. Since he’d been strong enough to control the wheel of a ship, he’d been in command. He’d never not commanded the Reulag Balhaire, had never been at the mercy of another. It left him feeling small. His strength came from his command of a ship, of men. It came from the sea. It came from the smell of salt and the sound of the gulls and the constant roll as they pushed forward, and being denied access to those things weakened him. He felt a child again, pushed to the margin by stronger, more vibrant siblings...only this time, a wee lass had done it.
He needed a drink of something strong. He watched Lottie pull more bread from the stale loaf. “Have you any whisky?” he asked.
She smiled lopsidedly. “Quite amusing.”
“Look there, in the chest next to the bed. There’s a bottle of wine there.”
“Oh?” She perked up. She slid off the desk and padded over to the chest and opened the lid. She retrieved a bottle and came back to the desk, uncorked it, fit it between Aulay’s hands, then shimmied up onto the desktop again.
He took a long swig of the wine, and another, then handed the bottle to her.
She did not hesitate to put the bottle to her lips and drink just as long as he had before setting it aside and tearing off more bread for him.
Lottie Livingstone was a contradiction in many ways—graceful and fragile in appearance, yet obviously fierce and brave. She was the sort of raw beauty that real artists—artists better than him—would spend hours at their canvas perfecting. She ought to be studied and admired...but where were her admirers? What was she doing here instead of being held on a pedestal in some gentleman’s eye, adored, admired and pampered?
He watched her drink more, then put the bottle aside so that she could hand him cheese.
He’d never been the sort to place a woman on a pedestal, had never met one that had sparked that desire in him. Had never been in one place long enough to feel that sort of desperate attraction. There had been nights, in ports far-flung, where perhaps he’d felt it for the space of a few hours, but it had never lasted longer than that.
No, the sea was his love. The world and all her beauty is what called to him. And yet, in a strange way, this woman called to him. The truth, if he could admit it to himself, was that he admired her. He was furious with what she’d done, but he admired her bravery. Her willingness to at least try. He wanted to know how it had all come to this. He wanted to understand her.
He ate the cheese, washed it down with wine, then asked, “How is it that such a bonny lass has come to be in my cabin, in my clothes, in command of my ship? We offered to take you aboard. There was no need to attack us, aye?”
She picked up the bottle and leaned closer to him, unaware—or perhaps very much aware—that the vee of his shirt afforded him a tantalizing glimpse of her breasts. “There was every need.” She fit the bottle into his hands, then straightened up again.
“Tell me,” Aulay said, and drank. “I should like one day to tell my children of the day I was captured at sea by a beauty, and I would know why.”
“Donna call me that,” she said abruptly.
“Beauty?”
She glowered at him.
Aulay shrugged. “Verra well. When I tell the story, I’ll cast you as an old hag.”
She suddenly smiled, and it lit her face. It lit the cabin. “I would prefer that to beauty,” she said, as if the word offended her.
“You are the first woman I’ve ever met who did no’ care to be considered beautiful.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Tell me,” he urged her.
She yawned. “You’ll be disappointed, that I know, for you’re a man of the world. We are only peasants and our dilemma is verra simple, it is. We’ve had hard times, we have, and we canna let the whisky go. It’s all we have.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, returning the wine bottle to her.
“We’ve never been accused of refinement,” she said with a snort.
Aulay didn’t follow.
“There, you see? A man of your refinement canna understand. I refer to our circumstances at home.”
“Lismore Island,” he said. “The giant would that he were there now.”
“Aye,” she said, and rubbed her eyes. “Lismore Island, a wee spit of land on the western coast of Scotland, scarcely good for living at all. The south end is inhabited by the MacColl clan,” she said, holding a hand out. “Where the fishing is quite good and the land arable. We have the northern end,” she said, holding out her other hand, “good for naugh’ but a few sheep, a few cattle and perhaps a wee bit of linen, but for the rabbits that have overrun us and eat our crops and burrow under our houses.” She shifted her gaze to her father. “We donna earn enough to pay our rents, and our laird is quite unhappy.”
“Who is your laird?” Aulay asked curiously.
“Duncan Campbell.”
Aulay knew of Duncan Campbell. He’d become laird two springs ago when Jacobites who had not accepted the defeat of Prince Charlie had murdered his brother, Colin. Aulay also knew him to be an ambitious man, as most Campbells were. They aimed to be the only licensed distiller of whisky in the Highlands, an end that they aggressively pursued.
“My father is our chief, aye? He’s a wee bit starry-eyed.” Her expression softened as she gazed at the slumbering figure. “He means well,” she murmured and leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her abdomen. “But he’s quite careless.”
“So you are determined to sell whisky to afford the tenant rents,” Aulay said, filling in the pieces.
“’Tis our only hope.”
“Must you go to Aalborg?”
“How I wish I’d never said it!” she moaned. “But our laird, he suspects we were making spirits. He kept coming round, unannounced, to have a look. He inquired after us in Port Appin and Oban and he heard talk. We decided we had to sell what we had ere he found it and we lost all that we’d spent. But because he suspected it, and my father had recklessly talked of it around the island and in the nearest ports, we thought it no’ safe to attempt to sell in Scotland or England.” She dropped her gaze to her lap. “I was the one to suggest Aalborg, aye? My family and more of us on the island are descendants of Danes from Jutland.”
Her rationale was not surprising to Aulay. Entire clans had been dispersed by the retribution heaped on the Highlands after the Jacobite defeat, and those that remained survived by any means possible. Even clans that had not taken the side of the Jacobites were suspect, and any whisper of it was all the English forces needed to raid cattle and villages. Livelihoods had disappeared and every remaining man, woman or child worked to rebuild and move on from those bleak years.
“So we made sail,” she said. “There was no’ a soul about, and yet, no’ a day later, a ship flying the king’s colors had found us, a tiny wee dot in a vast gray of sea against a vast sky of gray.” She turned her gaze to Aulay. “Who was it?”
“Campbell, lass,” Aulay said. He’d thought it a royal ship, but now, he had a different idea. “I’d wager he had someone watching you.”
She sighed and closed her eyes. “’Tis my fault, all of it.”
Aulay felt a twinge of sympathy. He’d been chased a time or two, particularly in the years before the rebellion when he and his brother, Cailean, had smuggled in French goods. He knew how fear gripped a belly when a bigger, stronger ship gained on you. It was only because of his intimate knowledge of the Scottish coastline and his crew’s ability to trim sails faster than most that he’d escaped when he had. “Your ship was too small, Lottie. The naval ship, its masts were taller, its sails fuller. You could no’ have outrun it.”
“Aye, so we discovered.”
“They fired first?” Aulay asked.
She didn’t answer right away, her gaze on her father. “He was concerned for me,” she said softly, and drew her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. “He was fearful they would catch us, and...well, the spoils of war, aye?”
Aulay said nothing, the thought souring his appetite.
She told him about how the blast that had hit their ship had knocked her father across the deck, and he’d been impaled with a piece of wood from the hull. “I thought he was dead. I turned about to fetch Morven, but another explosion came, and the top half of the main mast fell and scarcely missed us. And then another explosion, louder and more violent, only farther away. I didna realize that we’d fired on the other ship.”
She was speaking quickly, as if to purge it all from her memory. She told him how bedlam had followed, of how barrels of whisky rolled into the sea from a hole in the side of the ship’s hull until her brother—Drustan, the giant, she said, threw himself across the hole and stopped them.
She told him that she’d turned her back on her father for only a moment, and he’d used that moment to yank free the piece of railing with his hands. She took another long drink of wine, then handed the bottle to Aulay.
“I tried to staunch the bleeding with my hands,” she said, and stacked her hands on top of one another to mimic what she’d done. The color in her cheeks was rising. “There was so much blood. Then someone was pulling me away and Morven was there with a blanket or perhaps a bit of that mangled sail, and my father, he was pleading with me, ‘Donna let go the whisky, Lottie.’ It was impossible to think. Everyone was shouting and the ship was roiling beneath my feet so that I could scarcely keep my balance, and my insides were being tossed about. I thought I would vomit.” She laid her hand against her throat and released a slow breath.
She was still terrified—Aulay could almost feel it filling the room. Many years ago, he’d been caught by a particularly bad storm and had lost control of the rudder. They’d tried to manage it with the sails, but in winds that high, it was no use. With every wave that crashed into the ship, he thought he would draw his last breath.
He had awakened on deck the next morning to bright sun and a battered ship. One of his crew had gone missing, no doubt blown overboard. It was only by the grace of God he’d lost only one man. It had been the most harrowing night of his life.
“It was madness,” she said. “My brother Drustan was quite upset, and as you’ve seen, he’s no’ right in his head. He can become...destructive,” she said carefully. “And Mats! Diah, he believes himself to be a man, but he’s no’ a man, he’s a lad still, and he canna save the world, no matter what he believes.” She hopped off the desk and began to pace, rubbing her nape with her hand. “Gilroy said our ship was taking on water. The other ship was on fire, and they pulled around and sailed in the direction of Scotland. My heart was in my throat—I believed all was lost, we’d all drown. My father was cursing, trying to rouse himself when he could no’ lift his head, and his face as gray as the sky.” She shook her head and turned away from Aulay. “My father, he took my hand, squeezing as tight as he might, and said that I must pay him heed.
“I didna want to heed him,” she said, clearly distressed. “I didna want to know how bad our circumstance. But he’d no’ let me go, he kept gripping my hand, squeezing it,” she said, shaking her hand. “He said, Lottie, donna lose the whisky, aye? If you lose the whisky, all is lost. There is no more money.”
She seemed to be speaking more to herself, her gaze on the middle distance, as if he were not present.
“I didna believe him—how could it all be gone? But he swore he was telling me the truth. All gone.”
She sank slowly onto a chair, her hands squeezed between her knees.
Aulay leaned forward. “Lottie, lass...”
She glanced up as if he’d startled her. “That was the moment we saw you,” she said. “Can you imagine? At first, we thought it was the other ship, come round to finish us off. But it was you. You flew the colors of Scotland. It was a miracle.”
Aulay frowned. “A miracle, was it? If you believed it so, then why did you deceive us?”
“Oh.” She glanced at her hands. “You willna care for the answer.”
“Tell me.”
“Well. I tried to think what to do, but my father, Diah, he kept shouting, ‘Save the whisky, Lottie, think of the Livingstones we left behind, Lottie, they’ll be sent from their homes if we donna pay the rents, Lottie.’”
Things were becoming a little clearer to Aulay now. She was not ruthless, but an inexperienced woman thrust into an untenable situation by her father and the men of her clan.
“And then it came to me—I knew how to save us all and the whisky. What we needed was another ship.”
“Obviously.”
She smiled ruefully. “Do you no’ agree that it was a miracle of heaven that you came along when you did, Captain?”
“No.”
“I suppose it must seem unfair to you. But we didna know if you were friend or foe, and as Duff pointed out, it hardly mattered either way, for if you were a friendly ship come to help, there’d be no room with your cargo and our whisky. And if you were pirates? Or worse, Campbells?” She turned her hands palm up and shrugged. “In either event, we had no choice but to take your ship. Would you no’ have done the same?”
“No,” he said. “Did it occur to you, then, that you might have accepted our offer of assistance and asked about your cargo? We might have taken some of it. You might have even offered a small share in your profit to transport it, aye? Or you might have taken what we could hold and sold it in Amsterdam.”
She gave him a contrite smile. “I knew you’d know what to do. Pity I didna seek your advice.”
“Pity,” he said crossly.
She leaned back, stretching her legs before her and crossing them at the ankles, as if the telling of her ordeal had settled everything for her, had absolved her of the sin.
“You’ve no’ yet told me of your brilliant scheme to steal my ship. You didna appear to have any plan at all.”
“Aye, that was the plan.”
“Pardon?”
“I was to appear to be a damsel in distress, on a voyage with men who’d never been at sea, who didna know what to do. If you believed it to be true, which you did, we could board your ship without suspicion. Then, of course, the challenge was to surprise you. But as it was the only chance we had, I let down my hair.”
“You let down your hair?” he repeated incredulously.
She nodded. “My hair is what a shiny pebble is to a crow, Captain. It was Duff MacGuire’s idea that we all appear inept, which, frankly, we were. Duff is an actor—he told the men what they were to do.”
Aulay was incredulous that they had crafted such a ridiculous plan. More incredulous that it had worked. He closed his eyes with a groan of indignant shame. “You have added grave insult to my injury, madam.”
“It was Gilroy’s idea that I bear a cut on my leg in the event we could no’ surprise you straightaway. But we had no’ the slightest hope that it would work. It was far easier than we could have imagined,” she said, sounding perplexed by it. “None of you bore swords? Why did you no’ bear swords or guns? And your men! They wouldna turn away from me.”
Aulay felt utterly humiliated. His lack of foresight was astounding. Had he been away from the sea for so long he couldn’t think?
“Does it no’ seem utterly preposterous in the telling?” she asked curiously.
“Please, say no’ another word. No’ a single word.”
She smiled sympathetically. “I beg your pardon, Captain. But I do hope you understand that for us, it was either drown or...or borrow your ship. We had so much at stake.”
“So do we, Lottie, aye?” he said angrily. “Did you consider it for a moment? Did you bother to think that you were no’ the only one with so much at stake?” He shifted his gaze away from her, ashamed he’d been felled by a beautiful woman with a shapely leg.
“I regret the blow to your head the most,” she added quietly.
Aulay gave her a sidelong glance.
“You were the only one who looked at me askance. The others, they looked at me as men always look at me, but you seemed a wee bit suspicious. And, well...poor Drustan doesna know his own strength.”
“I beg to differ,” Aulay said. “He appears to know it verra well.” He wanted to murder something. His gaze traced over her body, down to her toes, and slowly up again. He had a fury rising in him that made him feel almost ill. He was a colossal fool, had made the mistake of a lifetime, and as he gazed at the very woman who had caused it to happen, his rage mixed with...desire. Lethal desire.
It was insanity to admire her for being so bloody audacious, for making a laughingstock of him, but that’s precisely what he did. Had he ever known a woman, or a man, for that matter, who could best him so? It was madness to imagine all the ways he would make her pay for what she’d done, and yet in the same thought imagine making love to her. But that was precisely what was in his head, imagining her without a stitch of clothing, how she would look beneath his body. How soft and warm and wet she would feel.
He’d lost his bloody mind.
He wished for sleep, to wake refreshed so that he might think again how to free himself of these goddamn binds. He stood up from the chair. “I’ll sleep now.”
She stood up, too, and watched him put himself down in the corner of his cabin and kick the chair away in frustration. He propped himself up against the wall and closed his eyes, unwilling to look at her bonny face another moment.
He heard her move the chairs around, heard her put herself on the floor next to her father’s bed.
When he opened his eyes later, he was struck by how graceful she looked, curled with a blanket wrapped around her, that ribbon of blond hair snaking out behind her, that laughably small dueling pistol beside her.
He thought of how she would look in the days to come, when the authorities caught up to her. No matter the mad thoughts roaming about his head, he would not allow her to escape her fate for this. That was impossible. Pirates paid for their piracy, and audacious beauties were no exception.