CHAPTER EIGHT
LOTTIE WAS SURROUNDED by wildflowers—the bright gold of gorst, the brilliant purple of thistle and heather, the rare lilac bindweed. Flowers covered the meadow—which meadow, and where, she wasn’t sure—but her horse, Stjerne, trotted confidently along, shaking his mane now and again with his pleasure at being in bright sunlight.
Lottie glanced back over her shoulder. Anders was riding an inky black horse and she laughed—he’d been trying to catch her for miles, but could never reach her.
She came upon a stream and dismounted to let her horse drink. She heard the black horse approaching and stepped out from beneath the boughs of a tree that stretched over the stream. She leaned up against Stjerne’s side, his body warm and firm. Lottie watched the man ride into view, and realized, with an increasing race of her heart, that it wasn’t Anders at all, but Captain Mackenzie.
He was wet, soaked through. Wet and vexed, judging by his dark expression. His hard gaze slid from her face to her legs, and Lottie glanced down. When had she donned trews? She looked up, her pulse galloping, because his gaze was quite heated and locked on hers. She couldn’t move. Her feet were stones, unmovable. She had no feeling in one arm, and the other was as heavy as a dead man. He leaned closer still, and his lips touched hers so softly that Lottie’s heart stopped beating altogether. It aroused her, pooling warm in her groin, making her perspire in spite of the chill around her. But the kiss was rough and strangely tasteless, too, and something smelled like mildew...
Her eyes flew open. She blinked the morning blur away and slowly became aware of something at her back, something warm and firm. And against her mouth and cheek, the rough fiber of rope.
Rope? Lottie groggily pushed up onto her side and glanced over her shoulder. She suddenly recalled where she was, and worse, realized that she had rolled into the captain’s outstretched leg. Her mouth had touched the tail end of the rope that bound his hands. He sat with one leg bent at the knee, the other stretched in front of him and stared down at her with an expression that was quite smug.
Lottie banged her elbow in her haste to scramble away from him, rolling up onto her knees and pushing herself back. How on earth had she come as far as three feet to be resting against his leg like an old dog?
He glanced to his right; she followed his gaze. She saw instantly what had caught his attention: the gun. She must have kicked it or pushed it in her sleep. She dove for it, sliding across the wood floor and catching the butt of the gun just before him, managing somehow to roll to her side with it just out of his reach.
She came up on her knees again and whipped around. She was breathing hard with exertion and he...well, he was not. His expression had gone quite dark as he eased himself back against the wall. The smugness had turned into a wee bit of a smile, as if he was confident that while he’d lost this opportunity to have her gun, he would ultimately prevail.
How odd that part of her hoped he would. She had a sudden image of being taken in hand by this man, forced to atone for her crimes—
“Ah, there you, mo chridhe, my heart.”
The sound of her father’s voice startled Lottie; she clambered to her feet, her traitorous heart beating hard against her ribs. Her father was sitting up on the bed at an odd angle. He’d bled through his bandage, but at least the gray pallor had gone from his face. His eyes were shining brightly. Very brightly, as if he’d had too much to drink.
“The captain and I thought you’d never wake, aye? Sleeping like the dead, you were. He’s been out for a morning stroll, he has, and we’ve had a wee chat.”
Lottie blinked, disoriented. What time was it? How long had she slept? Sunshine was pouring in through the portholes, casting shadows around her father. The ship, she noticed, was scarcely rocking at all.
“Look here, lass, I’m good as new, what did I tell you, then?” her father said with some effort.
“Are you?” she asked, moving to his side and smoothing the hair from his brow. His skin was damp to her touch. She opened the porthole so that he might have some fresh air.
“A wee bit of pain, as one might expect, having taken a bit of railing to the gut, aye? But hungry, Lot. Quite hungry, I am. I should think our good captain is hungry as well.”
Lottie couldn’t look at Captain Mackenzie. If he was hungry, he didn’t volunteer it.
“I’ll go fetch food for you, Fader.”
“Aye, and bring Gilroy round. I’ll have a word with him.”
Lottie winced inwardly. She didn’t relish Gilroy reporting that she had offered to pay the Mackenzie crew. Her father would be livid with her, but what was she to do?
“Go now, aye? We’ve only a day before we reach Aalborg and plans must be made.” He thrust his finger into the air for emphasis, then winced with pain that it caused him.
“Fader, please, donna move,” Lottie begged him. She turned away from her father, and her gaze landed on Mackenzie. His expression, other than being quite intent on her, was as impenetrable as it was searing, scorching her all the way through to her bones.
She quickly pulled on her damp boots and went out, careful to shut the door behind her. She stepped over Norval Livingstone, who had been put at the cabin door to guard it through the night. “Norval,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder. “I need you now, aye? Find Morven to tend my father.”
Norval’s response was a grunt. She continued down the steps. “You! Miss Livingstone!” She turned around just as Beaty vaulted down the steps from the quarterdeck. “We need men,” he said curtly.
“Pardon?”
“Men,” he said again, as if she didn’t speak a word of English. “We’ve sails and rigging that need work. We canna carry on like a wee rowboat can we?”
“Use as many of our men as you—”
“No’ your men, madam! Do you no’ understand, then, that your men are addlepated? They could no’ raise or lower a sail if their life depended upon it.”
She wished she could feel proper indignation at his characterization of her clan, but she happened to catch sight of Duff and his brother Edward behind Mr. Beaty. They were trying to pry open one of the whisky barrels with no success, and arguing as they went about it.
“Well then?” Beaty demanded.
“I canna simply free your men after taking such care to tie them up!”
“Hold your guns to us, I donna care, but I bloody well need men up on the rigging now!” Beaty demanded, his face red.
“All right,” she said, throwing up a hand. “I need but a moment to—”
“Lottie? Lottie!”
She suppressed a groan and turned about as Drustan came barreling across the deck. “I want to go home now,” he said. “I donna like it, I want to go home.”
“I know, Dru, so do I,” she said soothingly. “We’ve a day or two to Aalborg, then quick as a fox, we’ll be on our way home.”
“I want to go now,” Drustan shouted, and slammed his fist down on a barrel of whisky so hard that the top of it cracked, causing both Lottie and Beaty to jump. At the sound of it, Duff and his brother turned about, abandoned the barrel they’d been trying to open, and hurried forward.
Drustan was prone to violent fits when he was confused or frustrated, and sometimes, those fits were impossible to contain. Judging by the way he huffed now, Lottie feared such a fit was imminent if she didn’t do something. “Would you like to see Fader?” she asked quickly to divert his attention.
Drustan jerked toward her with his fists clenched, blinking.
“We’ll bring him some food, aye? Will you help me, then, Dru?”
Her brother nodded as his breathing slowed.
“Cracked the lid, you did, Drustan,” Duff said, examining the top of the barrel. “Good on you, then—we’re in need of a tot or two to keep the Mackenzie men from revolting.”
“Whisky!” Beaty cried. “I need those men working, no’ in their bloody cups! Look here, I need men on the sails!”
Lottie could feel Drustan tensing beside her. “All right, all right!” she cried, and caught Duff’s arm to have his attention. “Let him have his men, Duff,” she said. “Remind them that they will be well paid.” She felt anxious, too—there was too much happening, too many things to think of, and the fear of what would happen once they reached Aalborg was beginning to ratchet in her thoughts. “Keep guard, but let them set the sails.”
“That is most unwise, madam,” Duff said majestically.
“Please, Duff. We’ve a calm sea—we must reach Aalborg by the morrow or risk more trouble.” She pulled Drustan around and made him move with her, leaving Duff’s complaints behind her.
Mathais was below deck with Mr. MacLean. He was wet from the waist down, his dark blond hair sweeping across one eye. He was assisting in the delivery of breakfast to both the Mackenzie and Livingstone men. “Look what we caught this morning, will you,” he said proudly, pointing to a fish that was at least as long as Lottie was tall. MacLean was hacking off chunks of it and throwing them onto a brazier. “I reeled it in myself.”
“With a wee bit of help,” MacLean wryly corrected.
“You ought to have seen me, Lot!” Mathais mimicked pulling in a line before taking a whack at the fish, slicing off a chunk of the meat, and tossing it onto the brazier.
The Mackenzie men, she noticed, seemed much more relaxed than the previous day. Quite congenial, really. Two of them were engaged in a lively discussion about the price of wool, of all things.
Lottie took some of the cooked fish and some ship’s biscuits, and two flagons of beer, and left Mathais to hack away at the fish.
Morven was already in the cabin, leaning over her father, when she and Drustan entered.
“Ah, there’s me lad!” her father said brightly when he saw Drustan.
“We brought you food,” Drustan said.
Lottie closed the door, then made herself glance at her captive. He returned her look with such cool rancor that her pulse fluttered madly. He had a way of looking at her as if he could see her thoughts, her organs, her heart beating like a bloody drum. As if he could see her foolhardy regard for him.
She looked away from those piercing blue eyes and went to her father’s bed, juggling the ale and food, and together with Drustan, served him some biscuits and fish.
Her father ate heartily. He licked his fingers as Mathais came in, banging into a pair of chairs in his haste to see his father and knocking one chair into the captain’s foot without notice.
Mathais was eager to relate his fishing tale, and launched into it so loudly and without preamble that no one could squeeze in a word while Morven mixed something in a wooden bowl.
Lottie moved away from her father and handed the captain a biscuit. When he reached to take it, she noticed that the skin of his wrists looked much worse today. Raw, open wounds.
“Aye, and how did you know to fish the starboard side?” her father asked, interrupting Mathais before the lad succumbed from lack of breath.
“Och, Fader, I had a feeling, I did,” Mathais said, hooking his thumbs in the waist of his pantaloons. “I had the idea from the wind, and I said to the man in charge—Beaty is his name—that I should think there is some fish on this side of the ship, aye?”
“Morven?” Lottie called quietly as Mathais carried on. She motioned the healer forward. She pointed to the captain’s wrists. Morven frowned at them.
“Can we remove the ropes?” she asked.
“Aye, if we donna, he’ll suffer worse,” Morven said grimly and reached for the captain’s wrists. He untied the rope and let it fall. Palpable relief instantly washed over the captain’s face; he closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Canna leave it,” Morven said. “I’ll see if I’ve got something to make a salve. I’ll change Bernt’s bandaging then tend to his wrists.”
As Morven moved away, the captain gave Lottie a slight smile of triumph.
“Lottie? Lottie, where are you, pusling?” her father called to her. “We’ve much to discuss. Where is Gilroy?”
“Ah...” Lottie reluctantly moved away from Mackenzie and his freed hands, but took the rope and anything else he might reach and use against her. “Gilroy is at the helm, he is.”
“We’ve to prepare for the landing on the morrow,” her father said, and slapped Morven’s hand away from the bandaging around his torso. “Leave it, man.”
“I ought to have a look, Bernt.”
“Look at my appetite, lad, if you want something to look at, aye? I’m fit as they come. I’ve long enjoyed excellent health, have I no’, lads? Aye, then, Lottie, Gilroy, he’ll accompany you on the morrow. You’ll need to bring along the Mackenzie captain, too,” her father continued, as if it were a trifling matter. So trifling, in fact, that he paused to drink from the flagon of ale.
“Pardon?” said Lottie at the same moment the captain said, “No’ bloody likely.”
“You canna leave him here—we’ve no’ enough men to guard him and the crew, have we?” her father pointed out. “His crew will no’ act while we have him, trust me on this. They’ll do as we say.”
“They’ll do as I say, and I’ll no’ go ashore,” the captain said firmly.
“Och, but you will, Captain, you will. We’ll hold your Beaty under threat of harm if you donna.”
The captain suddenly surged to his feet with surprising agility. “You would add to your crimes by threatening my first mate?”
“Fader!” Lottie exclaimed. “How can we possibly command him if he is no’ bound? I can hardly walk through the streets of Aalborg with a bound man at my side.”
“Gilroy will keep him under control,” her father said.
“I’ll go,” said Mathais. “I’m verra good with a sword.” He made a thrusting motion.
“No, Mats, no’ you. You must remain here to help guard the first mate.”
Mathais perked up at that.
“No!” Lottie insisted. She could imagine it—Mathais would get it into his head that he ought to use his sword at the slightest hint of provocation.
“Now, pusling, you canna go dressed as you are,” Her father said. “What would our Mr. Iversen think of you then? Can you imagine, Morven, our Mr. Iversen having a look at his long-lost love dressed as she is?”
Morven’s jaw tightened.
Lottie could feel her face turn an appalling shade of red. It was bad enough that everyone on the island knew of her love affair. It was humiliating to be reminded of it at every turn. “I am no’ his long-lost love and I hardly care what he thinks.”
“Of course you do, leannan. Why, he’s the reason you suggested Aalborg, is it no’?”
Morven, she noticed, avoided her gaze. And the captain, well...she could feel his eyes boring through her back. He was probably imagining all sorts of scenarios just now, and probably all of them very near true.
“Our Mr. Iversen will be pleased to lend us a hand,” her father blithely continued. “You were clever to think of it, pusling.”
“Will you no’ refer to him as our Mr. Iversen? And I donna intend to see him more than a moment to ask if we might use his name. I’ve enough to do as it is.”
“No? Well, I suppose it is time you put that unfortunate acquaintance behind you. Canna remain at my side all your life, can you, lass? No’ good for a woman to be without a man.”
“Fader!” She wished a hole would open in this ship and suck her into the sea’s depths. What was more dismaying—that her father was speaking so carelessly of a painful time in her life? Or that Morven and worse, Captain Mackenzie, were on hand to hear it?
Her father said, “Look at her, then, the lass can scarcely bear to think of it. Aye, well, no man on the island can bear to think of it either, for it’s ruined you for anyone else, mo chridhe.”
“That is quite enough!” Lottie snapped. What was the matter with him? He was never so careless with her feelings and yet seemed almost oblivious to them now.
What he said was true. Since Anders Iversen had come to Lismore and ruined her idea of anyone else, and worse, since Anders had left Lismore, she’d been the object of great speculation. He’d come in the spring from Denmark, a distant cousin of the family. He’d come when the meadows were full of wildflowers like those she’d dreamed about, and the sun bright but not too hot, and he’d swept Lottie off her feet with his dazzling smile and quick laugh and touches to her hand and face. After years of caring for her brothers and her father, of having no prospects that excited her, of being the object of desire of every male on that island, no matter their age or occupation or other entanglements, Anders had made her heart leap, and she’d fallen head over heels into infatuation.
Her infatuation strayed beyond moral decency into a more physical realm. She’d convinced herself that God had sent her the man she was destined to marry, that her lack of virtue was expected, given their mutual feelings.
Diah, she’d been so unforgivably naïve.
Anders revealed himself to be a bloody arse. What sort of man would turn his back on a woman after sharing such a profoundly intimate experience? What sort of man would not then offer to take the woman to wife, especially after giving her every reason to believe that he would? And yet, Anders had seemed surprised she’d even thought it. He’d taken her hands in his and said with grave earnestness, “Lottie, søde, I’m bound for home at the end of the month. I’m to take over my father’s affairs. You know this.”
Well yes, he’d said that in the beginning. But as passion between them had grown and swelled she had assumed things had changed. She’d always fancied herself too clever to be manipulated by a charming libertine. She was not very clever at all, as it turned out.
“You’ll come with me,” Anders had said, knowing full well she would not.
Aye, he knew her better than she knew herself, for that was the first time Lottie’s idea of herself veered sharply away from who she really was. All her life, she’d wanted to step out into the world, to leave that island with its too many rabbits and too few people and live. Really live. To see the world, to fall in love, to have a happy, healthy family. But when it came down to a choice to be made, the painful realization had set it. She couldn’t leave her father or her brothers, not really. They all needed her. They all depended on her. She knew it, and Anders, damn him, had known it all along. She could recall the way his smile had faded into dismay when he’d understood that she’d given herself to him because she loved him. It had not been a lark for her as it obviously had been for him.
Now, a year later, she knew the whisper on everyone’s lips: what would happen to Lottie Livingstone? Should she not be married now, should she not be providing some man his blessed heirs and warming his bed and washing his linens and cooking his meals? Why was it that men were the only ones entitled to their desires in this world?
She looked up; her father was watching her with eyes so bright and glittering that they startled her. “Och, donna be downtrodden, lass,” her father said. “Put your hair up and pinch your cheeks, don your gown, and you’ll be as bonny as ever. He’ll rue the day he left you behind.”
“He didna leave me behind,” she said, trying to salvage at least a piece of her dignity. “And my gown is ruined. It is torn and stained with blood.”
“You’ll find something on this ship to mend it, mark me. They mend sails, do they no’? A bit of soap ought to remove the blood—oof, Morven, must you prod so?” her father complained as Morven tried to look under the bandage.
“It needs changing, Bernt.”
“I’ll need something for the pain, then,” her father said. “Burns like the devil, it does.”
“Fader?” Drustan said nervously.
“Donna pay me any heed, lad,” her father said to Drustan. “Tell you what—go ask Gilroy if you can be of any use. Go with him, Mats. Find the lad an occupation. Lottie, go along as well, and find a way to mend your gown. ’Twas your mother’s favorite, and mine, too.”
Lottie gladly quit the cabin and the shrewd eyes of the captain. She followed her brothers to the door.
“Lottie,” her father said, stopping her before she could make her escape. “You’ll need to have the captain shined and polished as well, aye? Canna have him accompany you looking like a pauper. No’ especially if you mean to see Anders. Now there was a handsome lad if I ever I saw one. Was he no’, Morven?”
“Donna recall,” Morven muttered.
“Well I do. Bonny as a man can be, I’ll say that for him.”
Lottie opened the door and walked out, shutting it firmly behind her.
Unfortunately, she had no place to go and lick her wounds, so she settled on top of a whisky cask and watched the Mackenzie men up on the rigging changing the sails, chattering back and forth while the Livingstones guarded them from below. They all seemed rather friendly, and she couldn’t help wonder if they hadn’t hatched some sort of plan, if this wasn’t the calm before the storm of revenge they meant to launch.
“Lottie.”
She jerked around at the sound of Morven’s voice. His brown hair stood nearly on end, and his beard was beginning to look unkempt. “You best find a physician when we reach Aalborg,” he said grimly. “Bernt’s wound, it doesna look good. I’ve given him the laudanum tincture for the pain so he’ll sleep. But he needs proper attention.”
“But you—”
Morven shook his head before she could finish her thought. “I’m no’ a physician, Lottie. He needs a proper one. I’ve done all I can do, aye? I’ll make a salve for the captain’s wrists.” He moved to leave her.
“Morven!” she said. “How will I do as my father says I must? I canna take Mackenzie with me! He’ll escape, he’ll seek authorities straightaway.”
“Aye, you can,” Morven said. “These men will wait for their pay and their captain, but if they have only one of those things, they’ll no’ wait long, do you see? You need to take him with you for our sake.”
“And then what?” she asked. “If they wait patiently while we sell the whisky, and then again while we wait for someone to unload it from this ship, will they merrily make sail without us? How will we all return to Scotland?”
“You were right to offer them pay, you were. Coin is a powerful lure. I suspect they’ll go along, aye. As for us, we’ll be rich, Lottie. We can hire the best ship to return us home.”
Rich! They would have enough to pay their rents to Campbell and a wee bit more to pay this crew. No one would be rich!
“I’ll make the salve now, aye?” Morven said. He smiled kindly and patted her arm, then walked away.
Did any of them truly believe the Mackenzies would so easily forget what the Livingstones had done to them, even if they were paid? And what of the captain? She couldn’t imagine that he’d forget a single moment. She saw the way he looked at her—he would delight putting the noose around her neck himself.
She shivered in the bright sunlight at the very thought of it. Until they had sold that blasted whisky, they were stuck. Lottie had no other viable option that she could see. She got off her barrel and went in search of something to darn her gown.