by Julia London
He bent his head and kissed her.
Just like that, the world turned upside down. Lottie reacted with all the yearning she’d felt since the first time she’d laid eyes on him, the first time he’d kissed her, the first time she’d seen him standing tall, dressed like the man that he was, not the man she’d forced him to be. His lips were the only bit of warmth in that stable, the only hope in her heart. He was kissing her, and everything else, all her troubles, all her fears, seemed to blessedly fade away.
He spread his fingers across her face to hold her as he deepened his kiss. She invited his tongue into her mouth, tangled hers with his. Her hand was on his arm, her fingers wrapped as far around the thick muscles as she could possibly reach. This was utter madness—they were being hunted, her father was gravely ill, Aulay would bring her to justice, and yet, she had never desired anyone as violently as she wanted him, now, in this stable.
Lottie’s arousal was quickly scorching, burning in her blood, the tide of desire rising on a flood of emotions. She craved his touch, the strength of his body, the hard planes, the soft curves. She touched the corner of his mouth with her fingers, angled her head so that she could deepen this kiss between them, and pressed against him with her body. She could feel his hard arousal, could feel the tension of his desire, the restraint that radiated out of him. He slid his hand beneath her coat and around her waist, holding her tightly to him. Don’t let go, don’t let go.
But Aulay let go. He lifted his head and braced his hands against the wall on either side of her head. “We have to go, aye?” He sounded regretful as he brushed her hair from her face. “They are looking for us yet, so we must be quick now, leannan,” he said, using an old Gaelic term of endearment that glided down her spine.
Reality slowly pushed its way into her thoughts once more. She nodded and dipped down to retrieve her hat.
“What do we do now?” she asked as she fit it on her head and tucked her hair up underneath.
“Return to the ship. They’ll be searching the ships in the harbor if they’re no’ already.” He wrapped his hand securely around hers and smiled softly. “Ready, now?”
She was not ready. She would never be ready. She would be content to remain in this stable with him for the rest of her life. “Aye,” she whispered.
He wrapped his arm around her waist, and hurried her out of the stable and into the alley. The sun glared on the world just as they’d left it. Whatever had just happened between them, whatever they’d felt, remained behind, in the shadows of that stable. Out here, Lottie’s situation was just as dire as it had been a half hour ago.
Aulay’s sense of direction was quite good, and he successfully navigated the maze of alleyways to return to the quay. Norval was there, pacing the quay, the little jolly boat moored to a post.
He instantly began to unwrap the rope when he saw them.
“What of Dru and Duff?” Lottie asked, looking frantically about for any sign of them.
“They’re on board,” Norval said.
“What? So soon? With a physician, aye?”
Norval didn’t look at her, busy with his task of the boat. “A healer of sorts, aye,” he said. “Will you get in the boat, Lottie?”
Thank God that at least that part of their plan had gone right.
“Has anyone else come by?” Aulay asked as he helped Lottie down into the jolly, then leaped in behind her. “Any men?”
“Aye, four men,” Norval said, and pushed away from the quay, hopping into the stern of the boat and facing Lottie. He picked up a set of oars and in time with Aulay, began to row. “They look for a woman with white hair.”
Lottie blinked. She should never have removed her hat at the inn.
Norval’s gaze was penetrating. Did he fault her? “Aye, what is it, then?” she demanded. “I canna help the color of my hair.”
“Och, Lottie,” he said. “’Tis no’ your hair.” He suddenly pressed his lips together, as if couldn’t say more. His expression suddenly seemed strangely sorrowful.
“What is it Norval?” she demanded.
He shrugged, then glanced over his shoulder toward the ship and said no more.
But as they neared the ship, Lottie noticed that the men—her men, Livingstones—had gathered at the railing. They were watching them approach, which did not surprise her. But something seemed off. And then she realized there was no urgency in their movements. There were no shouts. No calls to them. They were silent, all of them, staring down at her.
She looked at Norval accusingly. “What has happened?” she demanded, although part of her knew. Part of her was melting into palpable pain and dread before words could even be spoken.
A familiar sound reached her ears and her dread swiftly turned to heartbreak. She knew that sound—it was Drustan, crying out in anguish.
No one had to tell Lottie that Bernt Livingstone had drawn his last breath.
She knew.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE LIVINGSTONES FELL apart at the death of their chief and their grief put a pall over Aulay’s deck. They stood about with expressions that were a mix of confusion and torment, talking in low voices and glancing furtively over their shoulders as if they expected death to sneak up and take them, too.
Some of them were positively bereft. The actor openly sobbed as he spoke to Iain the Red about the old man.
Aulay made his way to the quarterdeck, unchecked, unchallenged. There was no pretense of captives or captors any longer.
The door to his cabin was open. He could see a small group of Livingstones gathered there, all of them in tears, all of them with a hand clamped on the shoulder of the next, or an arm thrown loosely around the next person’s waist, their heads bowed.
Lottie was somewhere among them.
Aulay would never forget the sound she made when she realized what had happened. It wasn’t loud, it was quite soft. But it was anguish, pure anguish—the sound of a heart breaking. She’d said not a word, but had climbed up the rope ladder like a monkey and disappeared before Aulay and Norval could set the ropes to raise the boat and climb the ladder themselves. Before anyone could say aloud that the old man had died.
Norval trailed behind Aulay now, as if he wasn’t certain if he ought to guard Aulay or help him. Aulay caught Iain the Red’s eye and gestured for him to join him on the quarterdeck. When Iain reached him, Aulay said, “Prepare to make sail.”
“Pardon?” Norval said, looking between Iain and Aulay. Iain brushed past him to begin work. “On whose command?”
“On mine,” Aulay said. “Tell who you must, lad, but heed me—if anyone needs persuasion that we must make sail at once, tell them that your mistress’s scheme to sell your spirits has failed, and now, we’ve a group of thieves on our arse. We’ll be lucky to catch a good wind and outrun them, but we must be quick.”
“What is this about? What is he doing here?”
A man Aulay recognized joined them. MacLean was his name.
“He says we have thieves in pursuit,” Norval said.
“Thieves? Why?”
“Och, for the whisky, man,” Aulay said impatiently. “Did any of you truly believe you might casually sell it without question? Without an agent, without any knowledge but what someone had said in passing? I’d wager that now there’s no’ a man on shore who doesna know what is on this ship and that it is ripe for the picking.”
“This is a trick!” MacLean said hotly.
“A trick?” Aulay repeated angrily. “You think that I would trick my own men out of the pay your mistress promised them? Do you think with a gun pointed at my back that I would somehow manage to unload the whisky from my ship? No, sir—the trick was done to you long ago by a Dane. The Copenhagen Company doesna exist. But what does exist is a den of cutthroat thieves who wish to turn your whisky into their gain. I need every man on deck to set the sails and prep
are the guns.”
MacLean blinked with surprise. But then he looked at Norval and said, “Do as he says. We all heard the man say they were looking for Scots on shore.”
Aulay jerked around to MacLean. “What man?”
“The man who came for the physician Duff brought on board. It was too late, it was, as Bernt was gone...but the rower asked if we were Scotsmen and said they were looking for Scots.”
“Have you seen anyone else?” Aulay asked.
The man shook his head.
“Gather your men. Tell them we sail and I am captain and to surrender their arms, aye?”
MacLean hesitated.
“Think!” Aulay snapped. “They are stunned by their loss, you canna sell your whisky, and you need us to sail this ship out of harm’s way, aye? We can move ahead with speed, or we can tarry and engage in another fight, but this time, I assure you, we will win.”
MacLean considered that a moment, then sighed with defeat. “Aye.”
“Where is Beaty?” Aulay asked.
“I’ll take you to him,” MacLean said, and gestured for Aulay to follow him.
* * *
IT WAS A ridiculously easy feat to overtake the Livingstones. Their fight, so brilliantly displayed when they’d first boarded the ship, had gone out of them with the loss of their chief. More than one merely handed a gun to a Mackenzie and put up his hands. Those in the captain’s cabin didn’t seem to realize what was happening on deck, and none of them ventured out to have a look.
Beaty was in the forward cabin, seated at a table, cards spread before him, his beefy hands on his knees. He was playing a wagering game with Billy. Jack Mackenzie, who had been injured in the initial attack, tried to gain his feet when he saw Aulay, but the wound was to his leg and he fell back into his chair.
“Cap’n!” Beaty said jovially. “I’d greet you properly, that I would, but I’m bound to this bloody chair.”
“I see,” Aulay said, and signaled MacLean to free him.
“The old man has passed,” Aulay said as MacLean undid the chains. “The Livingstones have surrendered.”
“What is this? Where are they?”
The booming voice of the actor could be heard just outside, and a moment later, he burst into the smaller cabin, crashing against the doorframe and throwing his body into the room as if he thought he was entering a fight. But seeing none, he drew up short and looked around him, confused.
“Have you no’ heard?” MacLean asked. “There was trouble at port,” MacLean said. “We must make a play for open waters.”
“What trouble?” Duff demanded, his gaze swinging back to Aulay. “There was no trouble. We fetched a doctor quick as a hare, we did. I gave them the name of a buyer—”
“A thief,” Aulay said. “Men are looking for the whisky and they mean to take it.”
“Diah, you donna say,” Beaty said.
“I donna believe you,” Duff responded heatedly. “I spoke to the lad in the customs office myself, aye? He gave me a name.”
“He gave you a thieves’ den,” Aulay snapped. “If you find my account lacking, you might inquire of your mistress.”
The actor gasped. “I would no’ dare impose on her now,” he said with great indignation, as if Aulay had suggested bedding her.
He didn’t need this actor to tell him what sort of state she was in. He had been in close company with her and her father for three days and knew how much she loved him. But death was part of life—people passed, and sails still needed setting, skies still needed watching, tides still came and ebbed. Time would not accommodate them to properly mourn the old man.
“Have we the necessary provisions to reach Amsterdam?” Aulay asked Beaty.
Beaty shook his head as MacLean freed him from the shackle. “No’ with so many men aboard, aye? We’re already low on water.”
“Scotland?”
Beaty thought about it. “If we head north, and catch a good wind, then aye. But any trouble at sea, and we’ll find ourselves in a mare’s nest, we will.”
“Scotland, then,” Aulay said without hesitation.
“What of the pay?” Beaty demanded.
“There is no pay,” Aulay said impatiently.
“No pay!” Beaty echoed and stood, shaking out his legs. “And what are we to do with this sorry lot?” he asked, gesturing at the two Livingstones.
What, indeed. “We need them at present,” Aulay said. “We’ll need every able man, until we are certain no one follows.” He and Beaty could discuss how to present them to authorities later. Right now, he needed their cooperation.
“You can keep the whisky,” the actor offered. “Set us free in Scotland and keep the whisky.”
Aulay snorted. “I donna want your bloody whisky—it is as useless to me as it is to you.”
The actor winced. “Och, we’re done, Robert,” he said to MacLean. “We’re done.” He shifted his gaze to Aulay. “Unload the casks, then.”
“By all that is holy, Duff, what is the matter with you, then?” MacLean exclaimed. “You canna throw overboard all that we’ve worked for!”
“Aye, and all that hard work has brought us naugh’ but trouble, has it? First, with our laird, now with this captain and some Danish ruffians. Bernt was wrong,” he said, and put his hand on the other man’s arm. “Bernt was wrong and now he’s bloody well dead.”
MacLean closed his eyes a moment, then opened them with a sigh. “Aye,” he said. “Get rid of it, then. Most of it, that is—save a cask for the lads. We’ll need a few drams after the events of this wretched day.”
Aulay didn’t care to debate the fate of the whisky in that moment. “Make haste, lads, we weigh anchor within the hour.” He had very little hope that they would somehow emerge from this debacle unscathed, but he had not time to contemplate it. He had a ship to put to sail. And he had to convince Lottie that her father would be buried at sea.
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 shou
ld 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.
