by Julia London
Diah, but Aulay had never had so many treacly thoughts or flowery metaphors in his mind. He’d had too much ale, that was what. He was not this utterly besotted fool.
When the dance came to an end, Aulay said, “Shall I bring you an ale?”
She was looking at his neckcloth. “No, thank you, then. Thank you for the dance, Captain.” She dropped her gaze and bobbed a curtsy, then turned about and headed back to her clan.
Many eyes followed her, Mackenzie and Livingstone alike as he stood stupidly in the middle of the room. When she reached her clan, all of them smiled, every man. The woman who had kicked him, had held a gun to his head, was the bright star among them, the light under which they all blossomed. Could she really be both women? More important, could Aulay be so wholly aroused by both of them? Damn her.
He returned to the dais and drank more ale, sullenly watching the dancing. Lottie didn’t dance again and, in fact, none of the Livingstones did. They remained huddled at the table, warily watching the Mackenzies around them.
Aulay’s mood turned blacker. What did they have to be so bloody gloomy about? They were being treated like kings.
The evening, like so many nights at Balhaire, began to draw to a close in the wee hours of the morning. There were only a few left in the hall when Aulay, swimming in his cups, stepped off the dais and walked to the Livingstone table. Lottie was still there, her head propped on a fist, her finger tracing a line around the rim of her cup.
She straightened when she saw him and put her hands demurely in her lap. Aulay was suddenly sick of ale and set his tankard aside. “Did you enjoy the evening, then?” he asked, aware that his tone was accusatory. That had not been his intent.
“As well as one might, under the circumstances, aye,” she said. “We are most grateful to you and your family for it.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment, but this evening had been planned in spite of his feelings about it.
She stood up. “I ought to retire, aye? I should have gone with the others, but I...I enjoyed the pipes, I did.”
The pipers had stopped playing a half hour ago, hadn’t they? Aulay couldn’t remember. “Where is your guard?” he asked, looking around the room.
“On my honor, I’ll go straightaway to my room.”
He flicked his gaze over her. “I’ll escort you,” he said. His sense of outrage had been sufficiently drowned for the evening.
“Are you certain? You’ve made it right clear that you canna bear the sight of me.”
He flinched inwardly. He could not recall all that he’d said that afternoon after the ship had sunk, only that his speech had been full of rage. “I am a gentleman,” he said, and bowed over his leg in an exaggeratedly drunken manner, then offered his arm. She did not take it, but clasped her hands at her back and walked beside him.
They stepped into a bailey awash in moonlight, the sort of night Aulay most loved on the sea, when the light of the moon illuminated the water’s surface and reminded him of just how vast the earth was.
“I think the way the night light shines on the surface of the sea is quite bonny, too,” she said.
Startled, Aulay looked at her. He was just drunk enough that he hadn’t realized he’d actually paused to look up. He took a moment to admire how the moonlight made her hair almost glow. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“You painted it. Several times.”
He looked at her mouth, her lips darkly plum in the moonlight. “You made a greater study of my paintings than I knew,” he said, and began to walk.
Lottie did, too. “I found them fascinating.”
“You found them empty,” he scoffed.
“I never said such a thing. I said there were no people in them. But they were no’ empty, Aulay. They were your view of the world and they were beautiful. You’re verra talented, that you are.”
Something in him shifted a wee bit off center. He’d assumed she couldn’t appreciate his view and he wasn’t entirely certain she did now. “Do you mean to flatter me, Lottie? It willna change anything.”
“Flatter you?” she stopped walking and turned around to face him, her hands on her hips. “That is the second time you’ve accused me of it. I have no need to flatter you, Aulay.”
“No need? Then tell me, madam, what was your intent on the day my ship sank when you began your speech about what a good man I am, aye? Did you no’ mean then to ingratiate yourself to me so that I’d no hold you responsible for it? Did you think me so utterly besotted that if you fawned I’d forgive you for the loss of my ship?”
She gaped at him. “I never believed for a moment you’d forgive me. I would no’ forgive me! I will go to my grave regretting it!”
“Then what was your point?” he snapped.
She sighed. Her shoulders sagged. “Do you think me so heartless that the days on your ship meant nothing to me, then? My point was to tell you that I esteemed you. That my regret was as deep and as wide as is the ocean of my regard for you. I’ve never known a man like you, Aulay Mackenzie. You have my complete, incandescent esteem.”
His drunken heart began to thrum in his chest. “Then you are mad, Lottie. I am the man who was taken by a lass, who couldna save his cargo, or his ship or his clan, aye? There is naugh’ to esteem.”
Her eyes widened. “Aulay,” she said, and touched his arm, her fingers sliding down to his wrist, and tangling with his fingers. “How wrong you are! How verra wrong you are. Aye, we caught you by surprise and we took your ship. But you bore that captivity with more grace than a dozen kings. You helped me, in spite of what I’d done, in spite of what you’d already lost. You were kind even when the worst had been done to you. You saved my life in Aalborg, when you were well justified to have left me to the wolves. You brought us back to Scotland, and when it looked as if all was lost, as if we’d all be caught and accused, you saved us all again. Aye, you lost your ship, and for that I am so verra sorry. But you saved us all, Aulay. You put those souls ahead of your own, and you are, you truly are the best man I have ever known, a remarkable, decent, kind man. All I wanted to say that day was I will always hold you in my heart.”
His heart began to spin. He was spinning. He had needed to hear those words more than he might have guessed. He tucked his arm under her elbow, drawing her forward. “I am furious,” he said.
“I know.”
He cupped her face with his palm, gazed at the smattering of freckles that had appeared in the last few days. At the long dark lashes and brows that contradicted the pale color of her hair. At the intense blue of her eyes. “I donna trust you.”
“Entirely reasonable, aye? But I’ve confessed it all, Aulay. It is out of your hands.”
His gaze fell to her mouth.
“Do you want to kiss me?” she whispered, lifting her face to his.
“Do you want to be kissed?”
“Desperately.”
He twisted her around and put her back against the wall of the gatehouse. He braced his hands on either side of her and leaned in, his lips only a whisper from hers. He felt restless, his body’s desires drowning all rational thought.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He bent his head and casually ran the tip of his tongue along her bottom lip. Lottie sighed softly. Aulay had hardly touched her, and yet it felt like the most sensual, decadent moment he’d ever experienced. He lifted his hand to her jaw and angled her head just so, catching her sigh of pleasure as it passed through her lips. He drew her bottom lip lightly between his teeth and teased her body forward by slipping an arm around the small of her back.
She opened her mouth to him and her hand found his waist, clutching at his coat as if she feared he might slip away. Aulay’s kiss was slow and thorough as his hand explored the shape of her body.
Lottie moaned into his mouth at the slow torture, fanning the fire that was smoldering in
him. Aulay was of a mind to carry her into that little room in the gatehouse and have her there, but the sound of footsteps began to filter through the carnal fog that had enveloped him, and he reluctantly, regrettably, lifted his head.
Her lips glistened in the moonlight, and she looked up at him with such desire and affection that it made him feel a wee bit dizzy. He stroked her cheek with his knuckle and unwillingly stepped away to open the door to the gatehouse. “Sleep well, leannan,” he murmured.
She slipped inside, but once in, she turned around, walking backward, her eyes fixed on his, her smile luminous, before she disappeared into the shadows.
Aulay returned to his rooms, and sent the sleepy lad who appeared to inquire as to his needs home to his bed. He didn’t bother to undress and collapsed onto his bed and pillowed his head with one arm, gazing out the window at the starry night. His thoughts were far from Balhaire, but for once, they were not on the sea. They were on a tiny island called Lismore.
He would be eight and thirty in a month, a confirmed bachelor, a man of the world...and for the first time in his life, he fancied he might be in love...with a woman he wasn’t certain he could trust and could not have.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WITH THE EXCEPTION of the first night when she’d fallen into bed and had collapsed into exhausted sleep, Lottie had spent every night since tossing and turning, awakened over and over again with the ache of missing her father, or worry of what would happen to her, or fear of what would become of her brothers, of the ways she might make this right, if given the opportunity.
But in the last few nights, she’d been awakened by an unsettling case of desire.
Now was not the time to indulge in a fantasy about Aulay Mackenzie, and yet, she did. Over and over. What was she to do? Sit in a corner and mope all day as she waited for the arrival of the justice of the peace? These could very well be the last days of her life, or at the very least, the last days of her freedom. By all that was holy, she would not end without having experienced love—real, raw, expansive love.
It was the best distraction she could hope for.
As the nights slowly gave way to day in the endless wait, the endless rumination, the endless review of all the possible scenarios, Lottie would wake, dress in one of two day gowns Catriona and Vivienne had loaned her, then go and tend to her clan.
They had settled in at Balhaire perhaps too well—Mr. MacLean missed his wife and children, and had made use of the library to write letters to them. He proclaimed he’d deliver them personally after they appeared before a judge, but just in case, he’d extracted a promise from Billy Botly that he would see them delivered if Mr. MacLean did not go home again.
Duff missed his wife and children, too, but he had discovered an unlikely friend in Iain the Red, who, as it turned out, had once thought of being an actor. One night at dinner, the Mackenzies and Livingstones were treated—or tortured, depending on one’s perspective—to a reading of a sonnet performed by those two.
Gilroy and Beaty spent quite a lot of time wandering about the bailey, arguing about various things. Ships. Winds. Whether or not the Jacobite rebellion had begun in the Hebrides or the Highlands. They were like an old married couple with nothing important to bicker about, but determined to bicker all the same.
There was another curious development that warmed Lottie’s heart—Lady Mackenzie had taken an interest in Drustan. There was something about the regal lady that soothed Drustan, and more than once, Lottie had found him wandering around after her, picking up a chair and moving it at her direction, or helping her draw open draperies.
“Drustan,” Lottie whispered one morning, and gestured for him to come away, fearing that he was bothering her.
“You will not take my helpmate from me, Miss Livingstone,” Lady Mackenzie had said, and smiled fondly at Drustan. “We’ve forged our acquaintance quite well on our own, thank you.”
“But he—”
“He is a help to me,” she’d said flatly, and made a shooing motion at Lottie. “Go. Walk on, now. Take in the sun, but leave us be.”
When Drustan wasn’t following Lady Mackenzie around, he was carving, and at last, Mathais had found something to admire about his brother. He eagerly showed the carvings to Lottie—a gull, a ship, and Drustan’s latest, a dog that looked exactly like one of the mutts that was constantly underfoot in the great hall. The most amazing thing about Drustan was that between Lady Mackenzie’s need of him and his newfound talent in carving, he was much less prone to fits of frustration. Her father had always said that Drustan was too simple to be of any help to anyone. Perhaps her father had been wrong about that, too.
Mathais and Morven had passed the time pretending swordplay in the bailey. Rabbie Mackenzie happened to see them and invited them to learn real swordplay. Apparently the Mackenzies had long been known for training Highland soldiers. Mathais was beside himself with glee, and every afternoon, he returned to the gatehouse, sweating and dirty, his eyes gleaming, speaking rapidly about all that he’d learned as he thrust his phantom sword here and there around the little room Lottie used.
Lottie herself had been taken under the wing of Catriona and her friend, Lizzie MacDonald, a frequent visitor to Balhaire. The two of them liked to gossip about all the gentlemen in and around the Highlands. Lottie guessed Catriona to be close to her thirtieth year and wondered why she’d not been married off. She was the daughter of a powerful laird, quite bonny and spirited. How had she avoided it? Catriona doted on her nieces and nephews and sighed with longing when one of the women from the village brought her newborn bairn around to be admired.
“One day, I should very much like a bairn,” Catriona said wistfully, then smiled at Lottie. “I’ve no’ given up hope. Have you?”
Lottie’s face must have fallen, for Catriona suddenly gasped with alarm, and her cheeks flooded pink. “I beg your pardon, Lottie! I do so beg your pardon,” she said again, mortified that she would mention a happy future in the face of a trial.
Lottie didn’t see Aulay as much as she would like. Apparently, he spent quite a lot of time with his father. “Examining the accounts,” Catriona said ominously. “We owe so much.”
One afternoon, however, Aulay sought Lottie out. He wanted to take her and Mathais down to a cove. “We’re no’ to leave the castle walls,” Lottie reminded him.
“What, then, have you lost your daring?” he asked, arching a brow.
No, she had not.
Aulay showed her and Mathais a path that went around the village, through a small forest, and down to the beach. The land jutted out into something that resembled a comma, providing a natural shelter in a cove that was large enough for ships. “Imagine it,” he said, sweeping his arm to the water. “We once had two ships moored here.” He dropped his arm and stared at the water, as if seeing those two ships, long gone now.
Lottie folded her arms around her belly. It never failed—every time his ships were mentioned, she felt a wee bit ill.
Aulay crouched down on the sand and pointed across the water. “There, do you see?” he asked. “A red mark, halfway up.”
Lottie squinted. She could see it—red markings that looked like writing.
“Our initials,” he said. “I swam there on a dare from my brother Cailean and climbed up with a bit of paint in my pocket.”
Mathais gasped. “How did you do it?”
“I was a good climber, aye?” Aulay said, and laughed.
“I was challenged like that once, to jump from a cliff into the sea,” Lottie said absently. “The cliff was ten feet high, perhaps a wee bit higher. But I didna account for my skirt. It came up around my head and verra nearly tumbled me upside down.”
“We had to pull her out of the water,” Mathais added. “It took four of us.”
Lottie laughed at the memory. Times had been hard on Lismore, but they’d also been blissfully free. How
odd that the freedom she’d had there had felt so confining. It didn’t seem so now.
They walked along the water’s edge, picking up shells. Mathais boasted that Rabbie Mackenzie had said he’d make a good soldier, and he’d be willing to train him when the time came. “That’s what I’ve long wanted to be, aye?” he said.
Lottie looked at him with surprise. “I’ve no’ heard you say so!”
“I rather thought you’d no’ approve and insist I am needed at home. But I must be me own man, Lottie. That’s what Rabbie says, aye? Every man stands on his own two feet and faces the world.” And then he promptly backed up over a rock and tripped, righting himself just before he would have tumbled to the ground.
“A lad canna face the world if he’s on his arse,” Lottie muttered out of Mathais’s hearing, but Aulay heard her, and had to turn his back to them to hide his laughter.
They strolled along the shore toward the path leading back to the castle, but once they began the steep climb, Lottie paused and glanced back at the cove. So did Aulay. “What will you do now?” she asked. “Will you have another ship?”
His jaw clenched. “Unlikely,” he said tightly. “What we have will go to pay the loss of cargo. There’ll be nothing left for a ship.”
Lottie said nothing. Her guilt choked all words of condolence from her. And she did not like to think about what was glaringly true—she’d done to Aulay what her father had done to his family. She’d lost his livelihood with foolish choices. But Lottie thought she might have divined a way to fix it, at least in part, should she be granted the opportunity. The opportunity, it seemed, would be the difficult part.
Whatever Aulay thought of her now, for the space of one idyllic afternoon, his anger had subsided. She tried to imagine them together like this always. She tried to make it into a dream she could hold and keep. But it was impossible. There was a cloud over that dream that was growing darker and darker as the date with the justice of the peace loomed.
* * *
ONE MORNING, LOTTIE woke up with a start, her heart pounding. She’d had a thought in the last minutes of her sleep, the sudden reminder that in three days time the justice of the peace was due to arrive to adjudicate her taking the Mackenzie ship. In practical terms, that meant any day now, really, as no one knew precisely when the judge would appear.
