CHAPTER NINE
THE RAW SKIN of Aulay’s wrists burned with the slightest movement. His discomfort had been made worse by the incessant chatter of the old man, but thankfully, he’d finally fallen asleep under the weight of his many words.
His sons had left, too, thank the saints. Between the boasts of the young one, and the fear of the giant one, and the many words of the old one, it felt as if the Livingstones had consumed all the available breath.
With the twin portholes open to allow a flow of air, Aulay could hear the men outside. He recognized the voices of more than one of his crew up on the rigging. That gave him some ease, knowing that his men were at work, trimming sails as Beaty needed, and sailing these thieves on to Aalborg.
He and Beaty had discussed it very briefly in Gaelic when Beaty had entered this room. Aulay had told him the lives of the crew were the only thing that mattered to him; Beaty assured him he’d handle things on deck and see them safely to shore. Like him, Beaty was more concerned with the ship and their men than avenging what had happened. But some of the men were obviously free to work the sails, and Aulay could hope that meant there was something underfoot that would return his ship to him.
He felt utterly useless and increasingly frustrated by his impotence, an old, familiar feeling he’d often felt at home. A burden to them all, useful to no one.
The door opened, and the lass returned carrying the tools required for sail repair—a large needle, waxed thread, a brace to stretch the fabric. She also carried a small glass jar.
She put the things down on the table and with the glass jar in hand, she turned around to him. The gun, he noticed, was tucked into the trews she wore.
“Morven made this for your wrists,” she said, holding it out. “Will you allow me to tend to you without trouble?”
“What trouble could I give you, then?” he asked irritably. “I’m hobbled like a hog.” He waved her over, grateful for any relief she could give the burning skin around his wrists.
She placed the gun on the table and approached him warily, sinking down onto her knees beside him. She opened the jar, and a pungent smell made his eyes water. “What in the devil is that?” he complained, rearing away from it. “It smells bloody awful.”
“Morven said he used a wee bit of fish entails—”
Aulay unthinkingly jerked his hands back, but she caught one and dropped a dollop onto the raw part of his wrist. He was set to protest, but she began to rub the concoction into his skin, her touch feathery light, and the relief to his skin was instantaneous.
He relaxed.
He watched her fingers move gracefully on his wrist. She kept her eyes on the task, but she was so close, he could see the translucence of her skin, the slight shadow of a vein at her temple, a gentle pulse at her neck. Her hair, though tangled and knotted haphazardly at her nape, looked like silk. He wanted to touch it, to feel it between his fingers. He leaned forward, his desire to at least smell it—
She stilled. “What are you doing, then?”
He didn’t answer her. In spite of the harsh conditions, she smelled surprisingly nice.
She slowly continued working on his wrists, smearing more of the unguent on his flesh. She turned his hand over, and Aulay caught her fingers in his. Lottie arched a brow in silent question. He answered by tugging her forward until she was close enough to kiss. He wasn’t thinking—he was wrapped in a cloud of her feminine scent, and his actions were divorced from his thoughts. He touched his lips to hers. There was stillness in her—when everything around him moved every moment of the day, he noticed stillness. She was quiet calm.
He moved his lips on hers, touched his tongue to the seam of her lips.
Her lips parted beneath his, and he felt the touch of her tongue to his. But Lottie suddenly receded from him like water. “You’ve gone off your head, you have.”
On the contrary. This was the first he’d felt himself, a healthy, living breathing man, since she’d kicked him in the chin. But he eased back and took some pleasure in the pink blush of her cheeks. “Who is our Mr. Iversen, then?”
A blush deepened. “No one.” She turned his hand over, palm up.
“Shall I guess, then?”
“No.”
He cocked his head to one side to study the way her lashes seemed almost to brush against her cheeks as she worked on his wrist. “He treated you ill, did he?”
She clucked her tongue at him. “It hardly commands any thought at all to guess that, does it?”
“What happened?”
She returned one hand to his lap, dipped her fingers into the jar. “Why did you kiss me? ’Twas only yesterday that you wished to see me hang.”
“I still do,” he said. “I can admire a woman, can want her, and still believe she deserves to hang.” He smiled a little.
One corner of her mouth tipped up and she rolled her eyes, then started to attend his second wrist, her touch so damnably soft that it sent a sparkling little jolt up his arm.
“You deserve better, Lottie,” he said. “You deserve a man who will treat you well, aye?”
She suddenly stopped what she was doing and sighed heavenward. “Do you think me a fool, Captain? Do you think I donna know what you’re about?”
Surprised, he asked, “What?”
“Flattery.” She said it as if she was accusing him of violent assault. “I’ve heard quite a lot of it in my life, that I have, and I know its purpose.” She turned her attention to his wrist once more.
“For the life of me, I donna flatter you, lass, no’ now, no’ ever, aye? But I donna think you deserve to be treated ill.”
She shook her head.
He impulsively touched her face, and that stillness came over her again. “What happened?”
She moved her head from his touch. “Are you married, Captain Mackenzie?”
“Aye. To a ship.”
“Verra touching. But a ship canna keep you warm at night. Why have you no’ taken a wife?”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Ooh,” she said, her brows rising with amusement. “You must believe that as captain, you’re the only one who is allowed to ask questions of a highly intimate nature.”
He shrugged at the truth in that statement. “I believe I have a right to know who holds me captive and why.”
She puffed a thick strand of hair from her eyes and continued with her attention to his wrist. “Mr. Iversen has no bearing on why I am holding you captive, does he? Why have you no one here to keep your cabin tidy, then? Scores of captains are married and away at sea.”
“Scores,” he scoffed. “Most of the captains I know are as married to the sea as I.”
“You seem lonely, that’s all. A man as accomplished and capable as you, painting views of the sea with no one in it. Have you never longed for a wife? For children who will bear your name?” A smile shone in her eyes. “You obviously long for the sort of company only a woman can provide, aye?”
“You are bloody well brazen,” he said, a wee bit stung by her observation.
“Obviously so,” she said, and shrugged, still smiling. “I only wonder why there are no lassies about for the handsome captain.”
Why did he feel so defensive about her remarks? There was a time when he was a young man that it seemed every time he stepped off a ship, someone was inquiring about his intentions to wed. In the last few years, no one bothered to inquire at all. The only person who had thought there was even the slightest chance of it was the fragile little English flower, Avaline Kent, whom his brother Rabbie once had been engaged to wed. That lass had, inexplicably, fallen in love with Aulay while engaged to his brother, and had truly believed there was some chance he would return her affection. Ridiculous creature, she was.
He realized Lottie had finished tending to his wrists and was wiping her fingers, studying him. “You have a curious way of turning conversation around,” he said.
“Did I offend you, then? I beg your pardon. I only meant it’s odd that a man of forty years would no’ have sought the companionship—”
“Forty years! I’ve no’ reached my fortieth year,” he huffed. He had three years before that momentous occasion and planned to cling to every one of them. “And I have sought the companionship of women, but not in the prim way you undoubtedly imagine.”
She laughed, and the sound of it was like morning birds, cheerful and gay. “You might verra well be astonished by the things I imagine,” she said silkily. “Look at you, then—one moment you’re full of flattery for your captor, the next, you’re fuming over some slight. Fickle, you are.” She stood up.
Fickle? Aulay had been called many things in his life, but never fickle. “Now you must think me the fool, Lottie. Do you think I donna know that you are avoiding the subject of Mr. Iversen? Is the subject of him so verra painful, then, that you will avoid your answer by needling me?”
She lifted her head, looked him directly in the eye and said without emotion, “Aye, I suppose it is.” She shifted as if she meant to move away. But Aulay caught her wrist, his fingers sliding across her skin, then lacing his fingers with hers.
“What are you doing?”
“You’re no’ the only one who understands,” he said quietly.
She tried to yank her hand free.
“I understand you’re as brazen as a red buck. You’ve been disappointed, and you’ll no’ allow anyone close because you fear it will happen again.”
“You’re as absurd as you are lonely,” she said, and attempted to yank her hand free again. “I donna fear it—I know it will happen again. Men are, by their nature, disappointing.”
But Aulay held on. And he smiled. Her eyelids fluttered as if she’d seen something she couldn’t quite make out. Her hand relaxed in his, giving into him, and when she did, he released his grip of her. She slid her hand away, her fingers trailing over his palm and sending that alarming bit of sparkle up to his chest again. She took a step backward, tucked a bit of hair behind her braid. “Morven says I’m to let the unguent sit for an hour, then apply more,” she said to the wall. She turned around and walked back to the table, moved some things around without purpose, then dropped her hand. “I best go and...and...”
She never finished her sentence. She simply walked out the cabin door.
He heard the cask roll in front of it once again, sealing him in here with a slumbering, dying, man.
* * *
THE DAY WORE on, a host of people in and out to see after the old man who, from Aulay’s observation, was not on the mend, but on the decline. He slept quite a lot, moaned in his sleep, but when awake, he would somehow rally and begin to talk.
Diah, did he talk. He asked about pirates, if they should have fear of them sailing around the horn of Denmark. He asked what a ship like this cost a man of Aulay’s stature? How long would salted beef keep? Did he know Victor Mackenzie of Oban? He was a fine fellow but missing an eye. His right one.
Aulay was allowed on deck thrice in the course of the day. It was a gorgeous day at sea. There wasn’t another ship about, nothing but bright sunlight and a good stiff western wind to send them on. Beaty was on the quarterdeck with the Livingstone captain. It seemed, from a distance, as if some arrangement between them had been struck.
On his second foray, those Mackenzies who had been freed to work the rigging leaped down and surrounded him. His guards seemed not to mind.
“How do you fare, Cap’n?” asked Billy Botly, whose arm had been set in a splint.
“Keep your heads,” he told them in Gaelic. “We’ll be in port soon enough.”
“No’ right, Cap’n,” said Geordie Willis. “No’ right at all.”
“No,” he agreed. “We’ll sort it all out, we will. But for now, you must do everything in your power to no’ lose the ship.”
Of course, they readily agreed. It was their only livelihood.
On the third outing, someone had been offended—he walked out to quite a lot of shouting about Scottish rogues and bastards in English and in Gaelic, and fisticuffs broke out between two men. But two Mackenzies pulled a third Mackenzie sailor back and chastised him for the fight.
That seemed odd to Aulay, but it wasn’t until he’d been returned to the cabin that he realized why. His men did not like to see him bound...but they didn’t attempt to do anything about it. They didn’t attempt to take him, they didn’t demand concessions. They didn’t even ask.
What in blazes was happening? Had she really charmed them all? She was an astoundingly beautiful woman, they were all painfully aware of that, but surely that did not rob all these men of righteousness.
Speaking of that women, Aulay had not seen her since he’d unthinkingly kissed her. The physician had come to reapply the salve, then had wrapped his wrists in what was left of Aulay’s shirt. Another man brought him food.
The sun had disappeared by the time Lottie returned to his cabin. She carried a bucket of fresh water, soap, and a soft rag. She didn’t speak to Aulay, but settled in next to her father and bathed his face.
Her father tried to push away her hand, but he was losing strength. She dabbed the water onto his forehead while the old man muttered something about a cow.
She glanced over her shoulder at Aulay only once, perhaps to assure herself she still had a captive, and didn’t look again until the physician appeared a quarter of an hour later carrying a cup, the contents of which smelled foul.
“What is it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.
“A healing broth laced with laudanum.” He slipped his hand behind the old man’s head and held the cup to his mouth, forcing it in between his lips. The old man sputtered and tried to turn his head.
“Drink it, Fader,” Lottie said soothingly. “It will help you to feel better, aye?”
“Only a corpse would feel better after imbibing that,” he said coarsely. “Where are my sons? Bring my sons.”
“They’re needed below just now,” she said, and exchanged a look with Morven. “Please, Fader, donna speak now. Mr. Beaty says we ought to be in port by the morrow.”
“Aye, as I guessed,” the old man said, although it was impossible that he might have guessed anything in his current state. He shifted about on the bunk as if settling in for the night. “I’m lying here, useless to you all, but I can still sense how fast the wind moves us. Once a sailor, always a sailor.”
“You were never a sailor,” Lottie said sweetly.
“Aye, but I might have been,” he said through a yawn. “I verra well might have been.”
Lottie and the physician stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the old man for what seemed an eternity. Finally, they turned as one away from him.
“I’ve only so much laudanum, Lottie. He needs a proper physician.”
“Aye,” she agreed. “How will we pay?”
The physician shook his head. “I’ll ask around and see if there is any coin aboard this ship.”
He walked across the room to Aulay and went down on one knee to have a look at his wrists.
“There’s no’ a farthing in the pocket of any Livingstone,” she said. She removed her gown from a peg on the wall.
“Perhaps a Mackenzie then,” the physician suggested.
She snorted. “We’ve taken too much from them.”
“They donna have a choice,” the physician said. He rewrapped Aulay’s wrists. “Healing nicely, it is,” he said, standing up. “In a month, you’ll no’ recall it.”
“I will recall it,” Aulay assured him.
The physician stroked his chin as he stared down at Aulay. “Have you any coin, Captain?”
“Morven!” Lottie said.
“He’s bound to have a few crowns, aye?”
“No,” she said sternly. “We’ll no’ ask it of him.”
“I didna intend to ask,” the physician said with a shrug, and gathered his things. “Bernt ought to rest soundly until the morrow.”
He went out, and Lottie sank into a chair at the table. She picked up the heavy darning needle they used to repair sails. She threaded it and began to try and push the thick needle through the fabric of her gown.
Aulay watched her for several minutes. “I could go for a dram of whisky, I could.”
She paused and looked up. Then dropped her sewing to the table. “Aye. So could I. As it happens, one of the casks has been opened.” She put the things aside and went out the door.
Several minutes later she returned with two wooden cups. She slid down the wall to sit beside Aulay, leaning up against the wall next to him. She stretched her legs out beside his and handed him one of the cups.
Aulay took a long draught, relishing the familiar burn in his throat.
Lottie sipped.
“You’ve charmed my men into working by offering them the whisky, have you? That would explain the fraternity.”
“I didna charm them. I offered to pay them.”
Surprised, Aulay turned his head to her. “Pardon?”
“I mean to pay them,” she said, and sipped again.
“Pay them...with what, then?”
“With the proceeds of our sale.”
Aulay was shocked. No wonder there had been no attempt to free him. “What sum did you promise?”
She shrugged. “I donna know, exactly, but I promised to pay them more than your wage.”
Good God, she meant to steal his men, too.
She laughed lightly at his thunderous expression. “Donna fret so, Captain. They’re still verra loyal to you, on my word. They’ve called us every name they can think of in Gaelic and in English. Beaty put an end to it—he told them to keep their heads as you’d said, that we’d settle up in Aalborg on the morrow if pirates didna snatch us first.”
“Have you considered there is little to keep them from stealing your whisky when you weigh anchor in Aalborg?”
She frowned. “No, I have no’ considered it. But we’ll hold Beaty. And...we’ll have you.”
Aulay’s brows dipped. “No,” he said firmly, then drained the rest of the whisky. It burned unpleasantly in his belly. “Go and sell your bloody illegal whisky if you like, but leave me out of it.”
“I would if I could,” she said. “On my life, I canna think of much worse than to drag you along.”
“You canna think of worse?” he asked, incredulous. “I am astonished how you’ve come to view your thievery as just, and that I am somehow impeding your progress.”
“Well, you are,” she said matter of factly. “It will be a chore to have to watch you with one eye, dock thieves with the other and strike a deal with the Copenhagen Company all at the same time.” She smiled at him. “So please, then, donna give us trouble.”
“Ask all you like.” He tossed his empty cup aside.
She nudged him with her cup, handing it to him. He grudgingly took it. “Surely you realize that the sooner we are done with the sale of our whisky, the sooner you might have your ship and be on your way. You will sail on to Amsterdam, your men will have full purses, and this will all be but a distant memory.”
Aulay turned about so he could look her in the eye. “Lottie, lass...do you honestly believe that I will let you go?”
When she looked up at him, the low light of the candle made her eyes shimmer, distracting him from her ridiculous assumption that he would merely allow her to swan away in that torn gown of hers.
“I hope it,” she said softly.
He impulsively touched her cheek with his knuckle, stroking it. “I’ll no’ allow your thievery to stand without answer. I’ll be held responsible for the loss of my cargo, so you’ve left me no choice but to see you brought to justice.”
She glanced at her father. Aulay stroked her cheek again, and she leaned into his touch. How odd, this conversation, he thought. He was speaking of bringing her to justice for her crimes when all he could think of was kissing her. Something was terribly off balance in him, and he didn’t know how to right it.
“Take me, then,” she muttered. “Bring me to all the justice you like, but let the rest of them go home to their families. No one wanted this.”
Who was this woman? What woman offered herself up as the sacrificial lamb?
Lottie suddenly stood up. “You ought to rest, Captain. Come the morrow, you’ll have quite a lot to keep you occupied.” She walked back to the table, picked up her sewing, and began to struggle with a needle too big for her gown.
Aulay watched her from the shadows of his corner. The way she bent her head, the wisp of hair that fell over her eye, all of it filled him with longing. He imagined standing next to her, a man in control of his destiny and his movements. He imagined them together at the helm. At a dance. In his bed.
At an altar.
He must be teetering on the brink of insanity. He was bound, his ship under the control of his enemy, of this woman...and he was thinking of bedding her. Of more.
He downed the rest of her whisky and turned his back to her, unwilling to watch her any longer, unwilling to see one more disturbing image in his head that involved her, and struggling hard against the pull into her web.
He dozed off, but he was awakened by the sound of water. He opened his eyes, blinking against the dark. He was still in his cabin, still shackled. The only difference was that the light had grown dimmer and he could smell rain through the open porthole.
Aulay groggily turned his head, and when he did, his heart lurched in his chest. Lottie was at the table, bare from the waist up. She was partially turned away from him as she dipped a cloth into a bucket, then cleaned herself. She stretched one arm up and bent it over her head, and stroked the cloth on her skin, slowly sliding it down her side before dipping it in the bucket again.
The sight of her bathing was erotic and made Aulay instantly hard. He imagined bathing her. He imagined taking that cloth and tossing it aside, of putting his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her neck and the concave of her belly. He imagined her naked, those two pools of her eyes shining with pleasure and propelling him to drive into her until she cried out with release.
Lottie turned her head to the side and stilled, holding the cloth against her breast now. She stood like that for no more than a moment, then began to rub the cloth in a circular motion over her breast.
Did she know that he watched her? She never looked at him, never turned her head toward him, and yet she moved the cloth in a sensual path over her body.
He would swear she was aware of his attention.
When she finally doused the light, he was so hard he ached.