Peril and passion on enemy seas...

Lottie Livingstone bears the weight of an island on her shoulders. Under threat of losing their home, she and her clan take to the seas to sell a shipload of illegal whiskey. When an attack leaves them vulnerable, she transforms from a maiden daughter to a clever warrior. For survival, she orchestrates the siege of a rival’s ship and now holds the devilish Scottish captain Aulay Mackenzie under her command.

Tied, captive and forced to watch a stunning siren commandeer the Mackenzie ship, Aulay burns with the desire to seize control—of the ship and Lottie. He has resigned himself to a life of solitude on the open seas, but her beauty tantalizes him like nothing has before. As authorities and enemies close in, he is torn between surrendering her to justice and defending her from assailants. He’ll lose her forever, unless he’s willing to sacrifice the unimaginable...

Also By Julia London

The Cabot Sisters

The Trouble with Honor

The Devil Takes a Bride

The Scoundrel and the Debutante

The Highland Grooms

Wild Wicked Scot

Sinful Scottish Laird

Hard-Hearted Highlander

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Devil in Tartan

Julia London

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08236-5

DEVIL IN TARTAN

© 2018 Dinah Dinwiddie

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Praise for New York Times bestselling author Julia London

“Warm, witty and decidedly wicked—great entertainment.”

—#1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens on Hard-Hearted Highlander

“Julia London writes vibrant, emotional stories and sexy, richly drawn characters.”

—New York Times bestselling author Madeline Hunter

“An absorbing read from a novelist at the top of her game.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review, on Wild Wicked Scot

“Expert storytelling and believable characters make the romance [one that] readers will be sad to leave behind.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Wild Wicked Scot

“London is at the top of her game in this thrilling tale of political intrigue and second chances.”

—Booklist, starred review, on Wild Wicked Scot

“The fascinating love triangle, set amid the wilds of Scotland, creates a page-turning read that will resonate with fans of Highland romance.”

—Publishers Weekly on Hard-Hearted Highlander

For Ann Leslie Tuttle

Some writers spin gold with every word they write. Others (me) always need a second eye. I’ve had some good editors along the way, but Ann Leslie is one of the best. She helped me shape this series of books set in eighteenth-century Scotland with a lot of heart and wisdom, and I will always be grateful for her sharp editorial eye.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Family Tree

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

EPILOGUE

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

AUTHOR NOTE

CHAPTER ONE

Lismore Island, The Highlands, Scotland, 1752

THE CAMPBELL MEN landed on the north shore of the small Scottish island of Lismore in the light of the setting sun, fanning out along the narrow strip of sand and stepping between the rocks and the rabbits that had infested the island.

They were looking for stills.

They also were looking for a ship, perhaps tucked away in some hidden cove they’d not yet found. The stills and the ship were here, and they would find them.

Duncan Campbell, the new laird of Lismore, knew that his tenants—some two-hundred odd Livingstones—were gathered to celebrate Sankt Hans, or Midsummer’s Eve, a custom that harkened back to their Danish ancestors who had settled this small island.

The Livingstones, to the Campbell way of thinking, were laggards and generally far too idle...until recently, that was, when it had come to Duncan’s attention that this hapless clan had begun to distill whisky spirits without license. He’d heard it said in a roundabout way, in Oban, and in Port Appin. Livingstones were boastful, too, it would seem. Rumor had it that an old Danish ship had been outfitted to hold several casks and a few men.

Where the Livingstones lacked godly ambition, the Campbells fancied themselves a clan of superior moral character. They were Leaders of Scotland, Pillars of the Highlands, Ministers of Social Justice and they distilled whisky with a license and sold it for a tidy profit all very legally. They did not take kindly to illicit whisky that undercut their legitimate business. They were downright offended when someone traded cheap spirits against their superior brew. They disliked illegal competition so much that they took great pains to find it and destroy it by all means possible. Fire was a preferred method.

The Campbell men creeping along the beach could hear the Livingstone voices raised in song and laughter, the strains of a fiddle. When night fell, those heathens would be well into their cups and would light a bonfire and dance around it. Bloody drunkards. But alas, the Campbells did not make it more than a few dozen steps into their search when they heard the warning horn. It sounded so shrilly that it scattered rabbits here and there and, frankly, made Duncan’s heart leap. He hardly had a moment to collect himself before buckshot whizzed overhead.

Duncan sighed skyward. He looked at his escort, Mr. Edwin MacColl, whose clan inhabited the south end of Lismore, and who was diligent in paying his rents and not distilling whisky. Duncan had pressed the very reluctant Scotsman into service by threatening to raise his rents if he didn’t lend a hand. “That’s it, then, is it no’?” he asked MacColl as another shot rang out and sent up a spray of sand when it hit the bit of beach. “They’ve seen us and warned the others.”

“Aye,” MacColl agreed. “They keep a close eye on what is theirs. As any Scot would,” he added meaningfully.

Campbell recognized the subtle needling, but there was no opportunity to remind MacColl that illegal whisky was bad, very bad, because four riders appeared on the hill above them with long guns pointed at their chests. Naturally, Miss Lottie Livingstone, who, as daughter of the chief here, ran wild on this island, led them. If she were his daughter, Campbell would have taken her in hand and ended her feral behavior tout de suite.

“Laird Campbell!” she called cheerfully, and nudged her horse to walk down the grassy slope to the beach. “You’ve come again!”

Campbell groaned. “Must it be so bloody difficult to root out corruption and illegal deeds?” he muttered to MacColl. “Must the most beautiful lass in all of Scotland be the most unruly and untamed of them all?”

Apparently, Mr. MacColl had no answer to that, and in fact, he turned his head so that Duncan could not see his face. Duncan rolled his eyes and addressed the woman who lived like an undomesticated cat on this island. “Hold your fire, aye, Miss Livingstone? I am your laird after all!” As if that needed explaining.

“How can we help you, laird?” she asked.

“No’ you, lass. I’ll have a word with your father.”

Her eyes sparked, and above another glittering smile she said, “Oh, but he’ll be delighted, he will.”

The lass had a way of giggling sometimes when she spoke that made Duncan wonder if she was laughing at him or was just a wee bit off her head. He called in his men, and motioned for them to follow along as he and MacColl trudged up the hill toward the Livingstone manor.

If they couldn’t find the stills and Livingstone would not own to them, then by God, Campbell would inquire about the past due rents. He’d have something for his trouble.

CHAPTER TWO

Two weeks later

The North Sea

THE WIND OUT of the west was light, but brought with it heavy clouds. Nevertheless, the Reulag Balhaire was sailing along just as she ought to be, the sedative dip and rise of the ship’s bow into the rolling waves a steady reminder that all was right.

Captain Aulay Mackenzie listened to the sound of his crew calling out to each other as they manned the sails. He closed his eyes and felt the mist of the sea on his face, the wind ruffling the queue of his hair. It was days like this—well, he preferred those glorious, sun-filled days—days at sea, when he felt most himself. When he was most at home. He was in command of his ship, of his spirit, of his world. It was, perhaps, the only place in his life that was so.

It had been too long since he’d been at sea—a few months, but to him, a lifetime. Aulay chafed at life at his family’s home of Balhaire. He had lived his entire adult life at sea, and every day away from his ship was a day something was missing. He was useless at Balhaire. His father was chief of the Mackenzie clan. His older brother, Cailen, was his father’s agent, his face to the world. Rabbie, Aulay’s younger brother, managed the day-to-day business of the sprawling estate of Balhaire, along with his youngest sister, Catriona. His mother was engaged in the social aspects, as was his sister Vivienne. And Aulay? He had no useful purpose there. Nothing worthwhile to occupy his days. He was merely an observer on land.

His father had begun the Mackenzie sea trade when he was a young man, and it had flourished under his clever eye, and as his sons grew, with them as well. Their trade had suffered in the wake of the Battle of Culloden some seven years ago. After the brutal defeat of the Jacobite uprising, the Highlands had been decimated first by English forces, and then by economics. The new economy was moving the Highlands from small croft farms to wide-ranging sheep herding. Great numbers of Highlanders, having lost their livelihood, were leaving for greener fields in Glasgow and beyond.

The Mackenzies of Balhaire had not been involved in the conflict, but nonetheless, they’d lost half their clan to it, had seen their livestock and a second ship seized by the crown. Still, they’d hung on to this ship and with it, a dwindling trade. With the last round of repairs, his father had wanted to end their trade business altogether. “It’s no use,” he’d said. “It costs more to sail than we bring, aye? We’ve lost ground to the MacDonalds, we have.”

Aulay had panicked slightly at such talk. He didn’t know who he was without a ship. He didn’t know what he’d do.

But then a miracle had happened. Aulay, chafing at the loss of some trade, had gone in search of more. He’d struck an agreement with William Tremayne of Port Glasgow. William was an Englishman, but he was an agent with goods to trade and in need of a vessel to carry them. Aulay was a captain with an empty ship. It seemed a perfect match. And yet, his father and brothers had argued against the deal. It was too much risk, they said, to carry another man’s cargo. Aulay had assured them there was no risk. Was he not a fine captain? Had he not delivered and brought home countless holds full of goods? He had prevailed in the end, but his father’s skepticism was quite evident.

This was his maiden voyage for Tremayne. The ship was loaded with wool and salted beef, en route for Amsterdam, and then on to Cadiz where they would load cotton for the return.

The men aboard were in high spirits, as Mackenzie seafaring was their livelihood, and they needed the work. So was Aulay in a fine mood. He’d not been to Amsterdam in some time, and there was a wench there, a lass who had eyes like two obsidian rocks and a lush mouth upon whom he intended to call.

He was thinking about the way she moved beneath him when a boom startled him. It sounded a bit like thunder, but not quite that.

“Got a light on the starboard side, Captain!” one of the men up on the masts called down.

Aulay turned to the starboard side and was joined by his first mate, Beaty. It wasn’t a light, precisely, but a glow. “That’s fire, aye?” he asked Beaty, who was peering through a spyglass.

“Aye,” Beaty grunted.

“Wind is rising, too,” said Iain the Red, who had come to the railing to have a look. “They’ll be naugh’ they can do to stop the spread if it rises much more.”

“Och, she’s sailing toward land,” said the wizened old swab, Beaty. His looks were deceiving—he was thick and ruddy, but still as nimble as he’d been as a lad some forty years ago. He hiked himself up onto a batten of the main mast, one arm hooked around a thick rope in the shroud as he held the spyglass with the other to have another look. “She’s sailing at five, six knots if she’s moving one. She’ll make landfall ere it’s too late if the cap’n keeps his bloody head.”

“Is there a flag?” Aulay asked.

“Aye, a royal flag, Cap’n. Ship looks too small for navy, it does, but that’s the Union Jack she flies.”

Aulay gestured for the spyglass. He hopped upon the mast shroud with a sureness of foot that came from having spent his life at sea, and peered into the thickening gray of sky and ocean. He could make out men trimming sails to better catch the wind while others lowered buckets into the sea and threw water on the flames to douse them. Ships didn’t generally catch fire on their own, not without a strike of lightning or some such, and they’d not seen any hint of that. Aulay studied the horizon, casting the spyglass in the opposite direction of the burning ship’s course, trying to discern wave from sky—

“Aye, there she is, then,” he said. He’d marked another, smaller ship. It appeared that it had lost the top half of its main mast. He pointed and handed the spyglass to Beaty, then hopped down from the shroud.

“My guess is a fly boat,” Beaty said, peering at it.

“A fly boat!” Iain exclaimed, snorting at the idea of the small Dutch ship. “Ought no’ to be in open sea, no’ a fly boat. They’re for sailing the coast, they are.”

“We’re no’ so far from the coast,” said someone else. “Perhaps she’s adrift, aye?”

Aulay glanced around at his men, who had gathered round to have a look. It felt good to be on board with them again. It put him in good spirits, in need of a bit of adventure. “Shall we have a look, then?”

* * *

THE REULAG BALHAIRE was not in the business of saving other ships. It was generally considered unwise to approach another ship unless one was prepared to have a hull shattered by cannon fire. But their curiosity was aroused. The burning ship was just a spot in the distance now, so they’d set course for the starboard side of the smaller ship, a gun pointed at the forecastle in the event there was trouble.

Aulay watched the smaller ship slowly come into view, its outline muted against the darkening sky, the clouds weighing down on the masts. It wasn’t until they were almost on the ship that they could see it was listing.

Iain the Red was studying it as they approached. “No’ a fly boat, no,” he said. “A bilander.”

“A bilander!” Beaty blustered. “What nonsense!”

Whether a fly boat or bilander, neither were particularly well suited for the open seas. “Is there a flag?” he asked.

“No.” Iain the Red paused, then laughed. “Look at them now, trying to lower the sail.” He laughed again with great amusement. “They look like children romping around a bloody maypole! Look at them trying to untangle those shroud lines, aye? They’re twisted up every which way—oof, there went one, down on his arse!”

The men gathered at the railing to watch, and laughed at the blundering of the crew on the other ship as they tried to free a sail from a broken mast with what looked like a lot of pushing and shoving. “Aye, give it over, Iain, let’s have a look,” one said, and they began to pass the spyglass around, all of them doubling over with mirth.

The spyglass came back around to Iain, but when he held it up, he stopped laughing. “Diah, de an diabhal?” he exclaimed and lowered the instrument, turning a wide-eyed look to Aulay.

“What, then?” Aulay asked, feeling a mild tick of alarm, imagining a gun pointed at them, or a pirate’s flag being raised.

“A lady,” Iain said, as if he’d never seen one.

A lady? It was not unheard of for one to be on the high seas; wives of captains sometimes sailed with them. If it were anyone else, a lady of importance, she’d not be sailing on a rickety boat like that.

“In a proper gown and everything,” Iain said, his voice full of awe.

Aulay didn’t know what a proper gown meant to Iain, so he motioned for the spyglass to have a look. He could scarcely make her out, but it was definitely a woman standing at the railing, holding a white flag that almost matched the color of the hair that whipped long and unbound about her face. There were a few men beside her, all of them clinging to the railing, all of them looking rather desperately in the direction of his ship.

Aulay instructed Beaty to maneuver closer, and when there was nothing but a small bit of sea between the two ships, the men’s frantic attention to the sail on the other ship was forgotten in favor of lowering a jolly boat down the hull. There was more chaotic shoving among them until four men scrambled down a rope ladder into the boat and began to row with abandon toward the Reulag Balhaire. The woman remained behind on the ship’s deck with a few men, including one that was the size of a small mountain, towering a head above all the others.

When the smaller boat reached them, one of the men grabbed on to the rope ladder to steady them, and one rose to standing, bracing his legs apart to keep his balance. “Madainn mhath,” he called up, and with an affected swirl of his hand, he bowed low. And very nearly tipped over the side when a swell caught him unawares.

“Scots, then,” Beaty said. “That’s something, at least.”

“We are in need of your help, kind sirs!” the man called up, having managed to right himself. “We’ve been set upon by pirates, aye?” He spoke with a strange cadence, as if he were a town crier delivering this news to a crowded venue.

The men did not carry swords or guns that Aulay could see. It seemed all they could do to keep the jolly from tipping too far to one side. “That ship flew the colors of the king,” he called down.

The spokesman looked startled. He squatted down to consult the other men in his small boat. A flurry of shaking heads and talking over one another ensued, until the man stood up again and said, “She flew no such flag when she fired, on me word, sir! She fired with no provocation from us!” He pressed his hand to his chest quite earnestly.

“No’ bloody likely,” Iain muttered.

“Why do I feel as if I am watching a theatrical performance?” Aulay asked idly. “What do you think, then, Beaty? Could a freebooter put his hands on a royal flag?”

“More likely a privateer,” Beaty said, referring to those private ships holding a royal commission. “They’re no’ above a bit of pirating, are they? Might have nicked a flag, I suppose.”

Perhaps. It was hard to argue who’d advanced on whom when they’d not witnessed it. But it seemed unlikely that a privateer or pirate would have engaged this ship. It was too small to hold anything of quantity or value.

Aulay leaned over the railing. “What have you on board that invited attack?”

“Naugh’ but a lady, Captain!”

“Who is the lady, then?”

That question prompted more spirited discussion on the jolly boat.

“What, then, they donna know the lady?” Iain snorted.

Once again, the man straightened up, put his fist to his waist and called out, “Our Lady Larsen, sir! We are carrying her home to her ailing grandmamma!” He paused, put a hand to his throat and said, “’Tis a journey of great and intolerable sadness, as the lady’s grandmamma is no’ expected to live!”

Larson. Aulay did not know the name.

“An ailing grandmamma my arse,” Beaty muttered.

Aulay was likewise suspicious. These men seemed to have no idea what they were doing, who was on board, or even how to mount a sail and sally forth to dear old Grandmamma. Moreover, the man had the peculiar habit of speaking as if he were acting in a play. “Where is your destination?” Aulay called.

“Denmark, Captain. Her grandmamma is a Dane, she is, but we are Scots, like you.”

“Never knew a clever Dane,” Iain mused. “No’ a single one.”

“Aye, she has the look of an heiress,” said one of the crew, holding the spyglass to his eye. The man next to him punched him in the arm and grabbed the spyglass as if he’d been waiting too long for his turn and was cross about it.

Apparently, the men had been passing it around to view the woman while Aulay, Beaty and Iain focused on the men below.

“Been sailing long?” Beaty called down.

“A day,” the man said.

“No, lad, I mean, what sort of seaman are you, then?”

“Well that’s the interesting thing, sir, aye? We are no’ seaman. No’ a one of us a sailor, save our captain. We’re but Christian soldiers on an errand of mercy. Able-bodied, aye, willing to try. But no’, as such, sailors.”

“Bloody damn curious,” Beaty muttered, his thick brow furrowed.

“Agreed,” Aulay said.

Billy Botly, the youngest and smallest of the crew, was the last to receive the spyglass, and he had to fight for it. He was so slight that a good, strong wind would knock him overboard if he weren’t careful, and as he swung one leg over the edge of the hull to have a look, Aulay feared precisely that. “Aye, an heiress,” the lad said, a wee bit dreamily.

Aulay reached over Billy’s shoulder, took the spyglass from him and had a look himself. The lady was still standing there, still clutching the white flag against her chest, her hands crossed over it as if she feared she would lose it.

He lowered the spyglass again and peered down at the man. “Aye, and what do you want from me, then? I’ve no time to ferry anyone to her ailing grandmamma.”

His crew chuckled derisively in agreement.

“The ship, sir, she’s taking on water, that she is. We’ll no’ last through the night.”

“Should no’ have sailed in a ship no’ meant for open water, then,” Beaty called down. Apparently, Beaty was the only man aboard who was not moved by the sight of a comely lady in dire circumstances.

“Aye, but we’ve the miss and her father, wounded in the fight, he was. She’s no one to look after her.”

“You expect me to do the looking after?” Aulay asked and laughed roundly with his crew. He was bound for Amsterdam, and he’d not be late. This voyage was crucial for his family, and he firmly believed it had the potential to grow into something quite lucrative for the Mackenzies, in spite of his father’s misgivings. After years of scraping by, Aulay was resolved to prove they could restore their trade.

“Just need a port, sir, that’s it,” the man called up as he gripped the hem of his waistcoat in a nervous manner. They all seemed slightly agitated, each of them stealing looks at their damaged ship, as if they expected her to slip under the water while they had their backs turned.

“You’ll make landfall by night,” he called to them. “Go back the way you’ve come, aye? That’s what your attacker has done. You’ve two good sails yet and the wind will carry you if you trim them properly. Gun déid leat,” he said, wishing them the best of luck, and turned away from the railing, his intent to be done with this unusual event at sea.

“Captain, sir!” the man shouted frantically. “She’s taking on water too fast, can you no’ see with your own eyes? It’s a miracle of heaven that you’ve come at all, and we rejoice in our fortune! We were drawing straws to see who would take the lady and her father in the jolly and who among us would be doomed to drown! Will you turn your back on us now?”

“Aye, Cap’n, she’s sinking,” Billy said anxiously.

“What is the matter with him, then?” Iain asked curiously, eying the man in the boat. “Why does he speak in that fancy manner?”

Why indeed did he speak in that manner, and who set sail with no experienced hands? It all seemed rather odd, but as Aulay was mulling it over, they heard a groan of wood from the other ship. The winds were picking up, and a strong wave had rocked it, making it list even more. He lifted the spyglass. The woman was clutching the arm of the mountain of a man beside her.

Bloody hell. The ship was sinking.

“How many of you are there?”

“Ten!” the man said.

One of the other men punched his leg and spoke. They exchanged a few words and then he said, “I beg your pardon, only eight!”

“Are they so inept they canna count the souls on board?” Aulay muttered.

“Fools,” Beaty agreed.

Aulay debated. He was a man of the sea and he understood that sometimes, the sea won. All of them, to a man...well, with the exception of Billy, perhaps...understood the risks involved every time they made sail. The thrill of that risk drove them. But there was something about that woman clinging to the man across the way that tugged at Aulay’s conscience. An unwelcome and disturbing image of his younger sister, Catriona, popped into his head, and he inwardly shuddered at the thought of her standing in that lady’s shoes. “Verra well,” he said. “Bring the lady and your men, then. Bring what provisions you have, aye? I donna intend to feed the lot of you. And you can expect to work for your passage.”

“Of course. Thank you, Captain, thank you,” the man said, and quickly motioned for the men to row.

As they turned the small boat about, banging into the ship’s hull as they did, Beaty sighed loudly and gave Aulay a sidelong look.

“What, then, you’d have the lady drown?” Aulay asked.

“No!” Billy cried.

“No,” Beaty admitted reluctantly. “But there are too many of them, and one of them so large that he’ll be as much trouble as three, he will. Where will they sleep, then? Have we enough water for them all? And what of these fools?” he asked, gesturing to Aulay’s crew, all of them still at the railing, still chattering about the woman. “You’d think they’d never seen a lass.”

“We’ll put them in the hold with a night guard, aye?” Aulay said.

“Shall we arm ourselves?” Beaty asked.

Aulay glanced at the listing ship. “They are no threat to us.”

Beaty’s response was muttered under his breath.

It took two trips to bring all of them. When the first batch of men was delivered, along with a crate of food, Beaty demanded irritably, “Why’d you no’ bring the lady, then, if you’re so fearful of her drowning?”

“She willna come until her father can be brought,” said the man who had first spoken to them from the jolly.

They watched the second batch of men come, and when they were delivered safely on board, they stood with the first batch at the rail in an anxious cluster, their eyes on the jolly as two of them returned to the listing ship.

Not one of them looked like a sailor to Aulay. Most of them didn’t seem to have their sea legs, stumbling and banging into each other as the ship bobbed on the swells and they sought their balance. It was all very odd. He was impatient, too—the transfer was taking far too long. The Reulag Balhaire had to keep tacking around to keep from drifting too far from the smaller ship. Aulay watched the progress of the last few. The enormous man who had remained behind with the lady singlehandedly lowered a figure in a rope sling to the waiting boat. Next came the lady, climbing down the rope ladder with surprising agility. She leaped into the boat, foregoing any of the hands offered up, then turned her head up to direct the larger man. He began to make his way down, too, but much more clumsily—lumbering, really, appearing to have trouble fitting his feet into the slots along the ladder. When he at last made his way into the boat, the inhabitants had to fan out to both sides to keep the small boat steady and accommodate his girth, and the boat itself seemed to sit lower in the water as they began the laborious progress across.

As the small boat neared the Mackenzie ship, all the men strained to have a look at the woman. She kept her head down, her attention on the injured man. The only distinguishable thing about her was the unbound hair. Long hair that looked almost as white as snow, a beacon against the gray sky and sea.

When the boat came alongside the ship, Aulay’s men crowded around, each juggling to be the one to help the lady up, and if pushed aside, hanging over the railing to have a look. Two men came aboard first, and together, they lifted the injured man with a pair of ropes. There was quite a lot of commotion as that man was carried off to one of the cabins. Aulay’s men scarcely gave the injured man a look—they were clearly far more interested in the ascent of the woman, all of them craning their necks, and some of his crew swaggering about the railing like roosters as they called their encouragement to her.

Aulay saw the crown of her head as she hopped over the railing and onto the deck. “Madainn Mhath,” she said, as if she were greeting guests at a tea party. The men crowded closer.

“Och, let the lass breathe, then,” Iain the Red said crossly. “Billy, lad, give the lady room.”

“Are you all right, then?” asked Fingal MacDonald, one of Aulay’s crew.

“Verra well, thank you.” Her voice had a pleasing lilt to it. “If you please, sirs, might you step back a wee bit, then? I canna move.”

“Give way, give way!” Iain shouted at them.

There was a shuffling, but none of his men gave an inch to another. Iain shoved one man aside, and when he did, Aulay caught a glimpse of an elegant hand as the woman pushed hair from her temple.

“You’re unharmed, are you?” Beaty asked, and judging by the concern in his voice, Aulay guessed his disdain for this rescue had completely dissipated.

“Oh aye, thank you,” she said. “I’ve had quite a fright, that’s all.”

“You’ve quite a lot of blood on your gown,” Beaty said.

“Do I?”

Her lyrical voice was oddly accented, with a slight hint of a Scots brogue and a proper English accent. It reminded Aulay a wee bit of his mother, who was English by birth but had lived in Scotland for nearly forty years now, and had a similar accent.

“Aye, indeed I do,” she said, sounding surprised. “Never mind it—I fear more for my father.”

At that moment, the lumbering giant came over the railing, and it felt almost as if the ship tipped a wee bit. “What am I to do, Lottie?” he asked. “I donna recollect what I’m to do.”

The giant of a man sounded like a dullard.

“Stay close,” she said sweetly. “You’re all so verra kind,” she said to Aulay’s men in that lilting voice. “I should like to thank your captain, aye? Might you point him out?”

There was a lot of shuffling about, muttered pardons—a word, incidentally, Aulay had never heard his men use before. But these men, as rough and bawdy as any he’d ever known, seemed almost bashful now. They were stumbling over each other to allow the lady to pass.

When they’d cleared a path, Aulay instantly understood what held them in such thrall. The first thing he noticed about her was her hair, a thick wave of unbound silk, the blond of it so light that it reminded Aulay of the color of pearls. Next, her eyes, large orbs the same color as the warm coastal waters of the Caribbean Sea. Plump, rose-colored lips that could bedevil a man. Her almost angelic beauty was as surprising as it was incongruent next to the men in her company. This young woman was bòidheach. Beautiful. To his eye, a pulse-fluttering sight.

Something strong and strange waved through Aulay. He felt himself standing on the cusp of something quite big, as if part of him hung in the balance. He innately understood the feeling. It was something he’d experienced the first time he’d ever been on a ship and had known that would be his life. Or the first time he’d ever lain with a woman. Aulay just knew. He was not one to flatter unnecessarily, but he was bedeviled.

As she approached him, her warm blue eyes fixed on his, that strange feeling of intoxication waved through him again. Her cheeks were pinkened from the wind and from her scrambling about, and her hair, Diah, her hair—it was falling wildly about her face in ethereal wisps. She wore a gown of silver silk over a blue petticoat, the stomacher cinched so tightly that it scarcely contained plump breasts.

Beaty pointed at Aulay, apparently incapable of speech, and even Aulay, who had heretofore thought himself inured to the effects of beautiful women after spending his life in so many ports of call, was a wee bit tongue-tied.

“Captain,” she said, and dipped into a curtsy. “Thank you.”

Aulay slipped his hand under her elbow and lifted her up with the vague thought that she ought not to bow to anyone.

The ship pitched a little, and she caught his arm as if to steady herself, her fingers spreading over his coat and squeezing lightly. “You’ve my undying gratitude, you do,” she said. “I donna know what we might have done had you no’ come along to rescue us.” She smiled.

An invisible band tightened around Aulay’s chest and his breathing felt suddenly short. He realized that hers was not a perfect beauty, but taken altogether, she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

“You’d no’ believe what we’ve been made to endure this day,” she said, and pressed that slender, elegant hand to her heart. “On my word, I thought we’d perish. You’ve saved our lives, good sir!”

“Who have I the pleasure of saving, then?” Aulay asked as his gaze traveled over her face, to her décolletage, her trim waist.

“Oh dear me,” she said, and smiled sheepishly as his men closed in around them, straining to hear. “The ordeal has robbed me of my manners, it has. Larson, sir. Lady Larson.”

“Madam,” he said, and bowed his head. “Captain Mackenzie of Balhaire at your service.”

“Balhaire, of course!” she said delightedly. “No’ an angel from heaven then, but the Mackenzies are legend all the same.” She smiled again with sunny gratitude.

Aulay was confused by the notion of being called an angel and the idea she should know his name, but again, he felt strangely and uncharacteristically tongue-tied.

“Did you see them, then?” she asked, pushing more hair from her face. “The pirates?”

Her eyes, one slightly larger than the other, were unusually bright, sparkling like a clear spring day.

“Thieves, they were. They attacked us without reason.” She turned slightly, addressing all the men. “There we were, sailing without a care and getting on verra well, mind, as we’ve little experience at sea. Save our captain, of course,” she said, and gestured to a man with narrow shoulders and hips. He clasped his hands behind him and bowed gallantly. “When suddenly, out of the mist, a much larger ship appeared and was bearing down us.”

“How did they make contact?” Aulay asked curiously.

She turned those shining blue eyes to him again. “With a cannon!” she said dramatically. “We did naugh’ to deserve it! We had scarcely noticed them at all, and then, boom!” She threw her arms wide, and her breasts very nearly lifted from her bodice, and all the men swayed back, as if expecting them to launch. When they didn’t, his men quickly shifted closer.

“My poor father has been badly injured with a wound to his torso,” she added, her smile fading.

“And so have you,” Beaty said, pointing to a rip in the fabric of the skirt of her gown and the bloodstains around it.

She glanced down, to where he pointed. “Oh, aye, indeed. I’d forgotten it in all the confusion.”

“Ought to have a look at it, Miss Livingstone,” said one of her men, who stood somewhere behind the crowd of Aulay’s men. “Gangrene and the like.”

Gangrene. Aulay rolled his eyes.

“Gangrene!” she cried, alarmed.

“I think you need no’ worry of that,” Beaty said, glancing peevishly at whoever had said it.

Lady Larson suddenly leaned down, gathered the hem of her skirt, and lifted it to midcalf.

Aulay’s men surged forward like a wave of cocks and balls, their gazes riveted on her leg, and the little boots and stockings she wore. “I donna see it. I suppose it’s a wee bit higher still,” she said, and much to Aulay’s surprise, she lifted the hem to her knee.

He was completely devoid of thought in that moment. She lifted the gown higher still, past the top of her stocking, so that they could see her bare thigh, the flesh pale white and as smooth as milk. There was indeed a small gash there, but neither very deep or long, and certainly not one that could account for all the blood on her gown.

The lady glanced up at the men, and her gaze settled on Aulay. “Do you think it is verra bad?” she asked prettily, practically inviting him to have a closer look as she thrust her leg forward. “Can any of you see?”

Aulay never had the opportunity to answer. A sudden and loud explosion from the other ship startled them all—at which point, Aulay suddenly recalled that the difference between a bilander and a fly boat was that a bilander generally carried a small gun or two.

Before he could utter a word or a command, he was struck from behind with such force that he was thrown to the deck and his wits were knocked from him. He instantly tried to stand, but the ship felt as if it was spinning, and he couldn’t seem to move his legs properly. He managed to claw his way up to his knees, then looked up, saw the luminescent blue eyes of Lady Larson gazing down at him. She smiled ruefully and said, “I am so verra sorry,” and kicked her knee squarely into his jaw with the strength to send him backward.

Aulay grabbed for the railing to pull himself up. He found his footing, was reaching for her when he was struck on the head once more.

The last thing he could register before everything faded to black was that after all these years, he’d at last been felled at sea. Not by battle or storm, but by a woman.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN THE MARGIT had set sail from the shores of Lismore, it had never occurred to Lottie that a scant two days later, she would have somehow become a pirate—at least that’s what she thought she should be called after what she’d done.

The bedlam had settled, and the Livingstones had won the battle, such that it was. She and her clan had caught the unsuspecting Mackenzies so completely off their guard. What stretched before them now was disaster on a scale so vast, Lottie still couldn’t catch her breath. A sharp pain kept pulsing at her temples as she tried to sort through it all. How in God’s name had they lost one ship and stolen another all in the stretch of a day?

That had most certainly not been the plan.

She gazed down at her wounded father. They’d put him in the captain’s cabin for want of any other suitable place. The forecastle held two Mackenzie men and one Livingstone, all of them injured, but none of them mortally, thank the saints. Morven, the closest thing to healer the Livingstones had, was sure of it.

Her father, however, was not so fortunate. Lottie could scarcely look at his gray pallor without feeling bilious, and even more so when she looked at the blood that soaked the bandages they’d put around the gaping hole in his torso.

He was groaning now, reaching for Lottie’s hand. And everyone else? The men who were still on their feet and crowded around her? They were all offering their varied opinions about what they ought to do, then looking to her to choose. All of them but Gilroy, the captain of the Margit and her father’s friend of more than forty years. He stood at the porthole, watching his ship pitch and roll and drift away, its bow under water.

“What do we do now?” asked Norval Livingstone.

Diah, but Lottie’s head hurt. She wished everyone would stop looking to her to solve everything. Could they not see she’d made a mess of things thus far? The terror and panic that had shot through her when Gilroy shouted they’d taken a shot to the bow and were taking on water had blinded her to all common sense. They didn’t know who attacked them, they didn’t know why and had only one gun on board to fight the larger ship, one they scarcely knew how to fire. But fire it they had, and the cannon shot had hit something explosive on the other ship and had sent flames shooting into the air. All quite by accident—she thought it nothing short of magical that they’d hit the ship at all. Just as quickly as it had come upon them, that ship turned about and fled toward Scotland.

She should have done what Gilroy advised once the fighting had ended and the other ship had fled. She should have agreed to let the crew draw straws to see who would accompany her and her father back to Scotland on the jolly boat, while the others tried to sail the listing ship back to shore. But then someone had shouted another ship was approaching, and her father had begged her not to turn back and Lottie had come up with an impetuous, foolish, dangerous plan that she prayed would save them all.

It was so absurd that she still couldn’t believe it had worked.

“Aye, well then, Gilroy, what do you see?” asked Duff MacGuire. He was the resident thespian of the Livingstone clan and had played the part of spokesman on the jolly when the Mackenzie ship had come to their aid.

“It has begun to rain,” Gilroy said flatly. “And my ship has sunk.”

He turned his back to the porthole. There were lines on his face Lottie had never seen before. “We should no’ have sailed her,” he said morosely. “I said as much to Bernt, I did, but he convinced me ours was a noble endeavor. Diah, she’s gone now.”

“I’m so verra sorry, Gilroy,” Lottie muttered.

“I donna like it,” Drustan said, his voice full of panic. Lottie’s younger brother was rocking back and forth on his heels, but because he was so unusually large, he kept knocking into the table. She put her hand on his arm to calm him, but he was staring with horror at their father, a bead of perspiration sliding down his temple. He was confused. But then again, poor Drustan was always confused. He’d been born with the cord wrapped round his neck and had very nearly died. He’d never been quite right.

Lottie’s mother had always said Drustan was special in ways unlike anyone else. “Mark me, that lad has a brilliance in him. We’ve just no’ discovered it yet.”

“Donna worry about Fader,” Lottie said to Drustan. “He’s quite strong. You know that he is. He’s sleeping now because Morven gave him a sleeping draught so that he might heal, aye? You and Mats go with Gilroy now. There’s much work to be done.” She looked to Gilroy for confirmation, but the man was studying his feet, lost in thought.

Mathais, Lottie’s brash and youngest brother, moved to her side, his chest puffed like a fat pigeon. He’d only recently turned fourteen years to Drustan’s twenty years and her twenty-three. He had the heart of a warrior, but was still a child. He declared, “I’ll go, Lot. You need no’ send Drustan. He’ll only be in the way, he will.”

Lottie was too despondent to argue. “Aye, go,” she said, waving a hand at Mathais. “Take Drustan with you.”

Mathais rolled his eyes.

“Gilroy?”

“Hmm?” He glanced up.

“Should no’ someone sail the ship, then?” she asked gently.

His brow furrowed as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Do you mean to say no one is sailing her?”

“Well who would sail it, Gilroy?” Duff asked with exasperation.

“Bloody hell, have we all lost our minds?” Gilroy demanded sternly, and began to make his way out of the overstuffed cabin.

Mathais pivoted about to follow Gilroy and tripped over his own feet, which seemed to grow another inch each week. Drustan, who towered above them all, hurried behind Mats as if he was afraid he might lose him.

That left Duff and Robert MacLean with Lottie. Mr. MacLean was the one who kept the Livingstone books. In other words, he was the one who came round once a week to explain to Lottie and her father that their funds were dwindling. He was revered among the Livingstones for his creative accounting capabilities. “We should turn back, ere it’s too late,” she suggested to them.

“Nonsense!” Duff said. “We’re no’ three days from Denmark. Your father would no’ abide it if you turned back now, what with all we’ve done.”

“But his injury is severe,” Lottie said, swallowing down a swell of nausea, having seen the gaping wound in his belly. But she could not seem to swallow the bit of hysteria that followed.

“Morven is as good a healer as comes from the Highlands, aye?” said Mr. MacLean. “He canna have better care at Lismore. And besides, Lottie, Bernt wants you to carry on, does he no’?”

She didn’t want to be reminded of the horror of this morning, but nodded that yes, he had told her in no uncertain terms to carry on. “But we canna keep him here in the captain’s quarters.” All three of them glanced around to the figure in the corner of the room, the captain of the Reulag Balhaire, bound and gagged and shackled to a desk that had been built into the wall, and at present, very much unconscious. He’d sustained a few blows, but it was the tincture Morven had managed to pour down his throat that had stopped his shouting and cursing. “Me granny always said this would put a horse on his rump,” Morven had said, shaking his head at the vial he held, clearly in awe of its powers as the captain had sunk into the depths of oblivion.

“Leave him be, Lottie,” Duff said. “The forward cabin is full, it is. It’s either here, or below decks, which is currently occupied by angry men bound to each other and under guard. If you remove your father to the hold, he’ll rouse them all to a fever, mark me.”

“Donna fret for the captain, lass,” Mr. MacLean had said. “He canna cause you harm now.”

The three of them looked at the captain again. “Will he be all right?” Lottie asked.

“He’ll be right as rain,” Duff said with authority Lottie wasn’t sure he possessed. “I reckon the captain’s pride will suffer more than his body.”

Diah, his body. When Lottie had first laid eyes on him as that sea of ogling men had parted, she’d been struck by how devilishly handsome he was. There he’d stood, quite resplendent in his trousers, with no coat or waistcoat, but only a lawn shirt, open at the collar. She’d not expected such a virile man to be captain of this ship, but someone more like Gilroy—older and bonier. And yet it wasn’t his bonny looks that had made her heart leap so, but his eyes. It was the way he’d looked at her, with such heated contemplation that she could feel her skin blistering beneath his perusal.

“It’s heartless to bring him so low as this,” Lottie muttered, and turned away from the stunningly attractive man in chains, lest Duff and Robert see her guilt...or favorable regard. “’Tis crime enough that we’ve taken his ship without his consent. I’d no’ like to add injury or insult to it.”

“Och, the deed has been done, lass,” Duff said dismissively. “’Tis no’ a free society we’ve begun here, is it? He’ll do as he’s made to do, he will. What choice has he?”

Duff was right, of course, but that didn’t stop Lottie from feeling incredible remorse for what had happened. She didn’t want to do any more to the men of the Reulag Balhaire than what she and her men had already forced on them. Oh, but this voyage had been badly conceived! They were in the midst of a living nightmare.

“Well then, we ought to be about helping where needed,” Mr. MacLean said. “I donna trust Gilroy in his present state of mind.” He glanced at Lottie. “You’ll be all right, will you, lass?”

She looked at the unconscious captain, at her unconscious father, and shrugged. “Apparently so.”

“Verra well, then,” Mr. MacLean said, and opened the cabin door. “Someone will be just outside at all times,” he reminded Lottie. “You need only call, aye?”

She watched them go out.

Silence. Blissful, golden silence. Everything had happened so fast! If she’d only had a wee bit of time to consider all the possibilities. But she hadn’t, and not one man had disagreed with her plan. She needed time to think, to reassess, and thank heaven, for the first time since sailing from Lismore, Lottie was alone.

Well...not alone. But quiet.

She sank onto a chair, suddenly aware of the heaviness that pervaded every limb, exhaustion settling in. She crossed her arms on the table, lay her head down on them and closed her eyes...but visions of the day plagued her mind’s eye.

It was a catastrophe—there could be no other word that would adequately describe it. It had really begun a fortnight ago, in the early evening of Sankt Hans, the annual celebration of midsummer. The Livingstone clan had been preparing for a play, one written and produced by Duff. Duff fancied himself quite the actor, and he’d rallied a few members of the clan to join his theatrical troupe. There were six of them set to perform when they heard the warning horn from Old Donnie. He lived on the tip of the island just across the loch from Port Appin, and it was his job to sound the horn if anything or anyone should come to the island.

Everyone had frantically begun to gather up incriminating whisky jugs. “What of the play?” Duff had wailed unhappily.

It just so happened that Lottie’s horse, Stjerne, was still saddled from her participation in the pony races, and when she saw Norval and Bear Livingstone leap to their horses, she joined them. It was the way of things on Lismore—she was always in the thick of things.

She’d not been the least surprised to find Laird Campbell, his periwig tightly curled and overly powdered, skulking among the rabbits. It wasn’t his first attempt to find the stills. Naturally, Mr. Edwin MacColl, the chief of the clan who inhabited what the Livingstones considered to be the good side of their island, would accompany him.

Lottie had always liked Mr. MacColl as long as he stayed on his end of the island. He was a widower, his children grown and married with children of their own. He was older than Lottie’s father, but still had a broad chest and thick, snowy brows that slid up when he smiled wistfully at Lottie as he was wont to do.

But his visits to the north end had become all too frequent of late, and quite recently, he’d suggested to Bernt that Lottie might make him a good wife. “I’ve a nice house for her to keep, plenty of food for the table,” he’d suggested, apparently considering these two facts to be his better points of persuasion.

Lottie had not been surprised by the offer. Frankly, on an island where unmarried lassies were not plentiful, every man seemed to believe himself her perfect match, just as her mother had predicted, God rest her soul.

Her mother had warned Lottie of her allure to males. “You’re a beauty, lass, and men are drawn to beauty to their own detriment like moths to light, aye? You must no’ allow them to turn your head with bonny words and empty promises. You must be diligent in seeking the man who honors you for your heart and no’ your face, then, do you understand me? And beware your own father, lass—aye, he loves you, more than life, he does, but he’s easily persuaded by the promises of others.”

If her mother’s words hadn’t sufficiently cautioned her, Anders Iversen, her one and only lover, had driven her mother’s point home.

Anyway, when Lottie had discovered the laird sneaking about, she’d escorted him to her home and had winced when her father emerged from the house a bit crookedly, a signal that he’d had too much drink.

“Ah, Laird Campbell. Fàilte!” her father said with great congeniality. No matter what trouble, he was always a jolly, carefree man. Lottie had come off her horse and had started inside with the men, but the laird had turned abruptly and said, “If you would, Miss Livingstone, give the men an opportunity to speak plainly. This is no’ the sort of talk appropriate for your ears.”

Lottie had bristled and had opened her mouth to suggest that was for her and her father to determine, but her father had said, “Aye, of course, laird. Lottie, lass, go and...have a look at the celebration, aye?” he’d said, waving his hand rather dismissively at her as he’d seen the laird inside.

An interminable amount of time seemed to have passed before the laird and Mr. MacColl finally emerged from the house, bid her good day—Mr. MacColl with a sheepish smile—and had returned to their boat. Lottie, Duff and Mr. MacLean had gone to her father straightaway to hear the news.

Naturally, her father had been completely unruffled by the laird’s visit. “He came about the rents,” Lottie’s father informed them, then chuckled irreverently as he bent over and reached behind the sideboard and produced a flagon of whisky he’d hidden there.

“I said we donna have what’s owed, no’ yet, but, I says to him, this—” he paused and rapped his knuckles on his head “—is always about its work.”

“Diah,” Lottie groaned.

“And the laird, he said, well has it worked out precisely when the rents will be paid?” Her father laughed as he poured tots of whisky around for them all.

“And?” Lottie pressed him.

“I said we’d have them in a month.”

Lottie’s belly had sunk. A month was bloody well impossible.

Her father had waved his hand at her crestfallen expression. “Calm yourself, Lot. We’ll think of something. Anything will be a wee sight better than what Campbell suggested, aye?”

“What?” she asked. “What did he suggest, then?”

“Och, he believes I ought to consider MacColl’s offer to take my daughter to wife.”

Lottie had gasped. She’d felt a little faint.

“Well of course he did! I’ve the bonniest daughter in all the Highlands, I’ve heard it said more than once. Why, there’s no’ a lad on Lismore who’s no’ pined for her, eh, Robert?”

Mr. MacLean’s face had reddened at once and he’d turned his attention to his tot.

“But as I told the laird, while they’ve all pined for her, she pays none of them any heed at all, on account of her broken heart.”

“Fader!” Lottie exclaimed, and felt the heat of humiliation creeping into her neck. “My heart is no’ broken.”

“The laird insisted I ought to do as MacColl had offered, and give you over as his wife, and in exchange, MacColl would pay our rents and oversee the Livingstones and thereby solve a host of problems from one end of the island to the other.”

“That’s quite a lot of problems,” Duff mused.

“I feel rather ill,” Lottie had said, and had sunk onto the old settee.

“I am an admirer of Edwin MacColl, that I am,” her father had blithely continued. “He’s a right smart fellow, I’ve always said. But I’ve as good a plan as MacColl.” He’d downed his whisky.

The only problem was that when her father had a good plan, disaster almost always loomed. “What plan?” Lottie had asked weakly.

“I’m coming round to that,” he’d said, holding up his hand. “The laird was no’ yet done with me, no,” he’d continued as he poured more whisky for himself, clearly enjoying the retelling of his encounter. “He said I was bloody impractical.”

“He didna,” Mr. MacLean had said flatly, sounding quite offended in spite of the obvious truth in the laird’s statement.

“He mentioned the limestone kilns, and the flax weaving,” her father had said with an airy wave of his hand, as if dismissing those two disastrous endeavors that had each ended badly and at considerable cost to the Livingstones. Bernt Livingstone was a whimsical man, scattered in his thoughts, impractical, and was easily gulled into schemes that fleeced their coffers. Once, when Lottie was a girl, there had been some talk of a new chief. But in the end, the Livingstones revered the code of the clan—Bernt was the grandson of Vilhelm Livingstone, A Danish baron, who had fled Denmark during the war with Sweden with a sizable fortune. He was their undisputed founder, and therefore, Bernt the rightful heir and chief.

Lottie could still recall how her father had stood in their salon that afternoon, his legs braced apart, his eyes gleaming with his plan. She lifted her head from her arms and looked at him. He was sleeping deeply with Morven’s tincture, free from the pain of the hole in his abdomen for the moment. She adored her father, but if there was one thing that sent her into fits of madness, it was his impetuosity. He’d squandered his inheritance on fantastic plans that had never come to fruition.

It was times like these that Lottie missed her mother the most. She’d been good ballast for her husband. She’d been gone for more than ten years, alas, death taking her and the infant daughter she’d given birth to when Mathais had been but a wee bairn, and Lottie only thirteen years old herself. But her mother, Lottie had realized years later, had been prescient on her deathbed. She’d known she was dying, and in those final hours, she’d called Lottie to her, had clutched her hand with a strength that belied her frail state. “Your father will need you, leannan, as will the boys, aye? Heed me, lass—it will seem your life is no’ your own, but you must swear to me now you’ll no’ forget yourself, Lottie.”

“What?” Lottie had asked, grief-stricken and confused.

“Swear to me now you’ll no’ forget your true desires and what you want, aye? You deserve the best of life. It will seem impossible to you, it will seem as if there is no room for you, but you will have that life if you donna lose sight of what you want. Do you see, lass? Do you understand me?”

“Aye, Mor,” Lottie had said, but in truth, she hadn’t understood her mother at the time. She’d been overwrought with grief, had considered her mother’s plea a fevered one. But her mother was right—from the moment of her tragic death forward, Lottie had been mother, daughter and mistress to her family. She’d tried to be the ballast her mother had been to a father who desperately needed it, but God in his heaven, her father made it difficult.

And now? She was sitting at the table of a captain she didn’t know, in his private quarters on a ship she’d taken from him, all because of that damnable whisky, another of her father’s bad ideas.

On the day of Sankt Hans, the laird had accused her father of illegally distilling spirits.

“Naturally, I denied it,” her father had explained. “Aye, he was a bit of a bore, really, what with his talk of penalties and for avoiding the crown’s taxes and undercutting a legitimate trade. He claimed that his clan was the only lawful clan with the right to distill and sell whisky, and I best think on MacColl’s offer to save my bloody arse.”

That was the moment Lottie had assumed all hope was lost for her and she’d have to marry that sheepish old man.

“Aye, and what had you to say to that?” Duff asked.

“I said, good luck to you, then,” her father had said with a twinkle in his eye, and had laughed roundly.

No one else laughed.

“Och, look at you all now,” her father had said gruffly, disappointed in their reaction. “MacColl’s offer is no’ without merit, is it, leannan?” he’d asked curiously, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “He does indeed have a bonny house, finer than this. Twelve rooms, is it?”

“I donna care,” she had said, flustered. “Do you think I can be persuaded with a few rooms? He’s older than you, Fader. Would you have me give up the hope of children one day?”

“Donna fill your head with bees, pusling,” he’d said jovially. “I ask only if you might consider it. Were it up to me, I’d no’ give my one and only daughter, the bonniest woman in all of Scotland, to that old man unless she asked it of me. My plan is far superior.”

Her father had a plan, all right.

His idea was to sell their whisky, once it had matured, in Oban, just across the loch from Lismore. That was where he’d met a man who dabbled in whisky trade, and knew where illicit spirits could be sold for a tidy profit. Lottie had lost patience with her father then—it was one thing to include all of the Livingstones in their secret distillation and plans for the whisky, but it was quite another to speak of it to strangers. It was little wonder Campbell was so suspicious—someone had been talking.

“Naturally, the Scotsman will have a wee bit of the profit for having arranged it, which is only fair, aye?”

“What do you mean, a wee bit of the profit?” Lottie had demanded.

“A mere twenty percent.”

Lottie had gasped with alarm and outrage right alongside Duff and Mr. McLean. “Twenty percent?”

“’Tis an opportunity, Lottie.”

“’Tis robbery, Fader,” she’d said hotly. “For twenty percent of our profit he ought to arrange for us to dine with the king! And now there is a Scotsman wandering Oban who knows what we’re about!” She’d fallen back against the settee and had flung an arm over her eyes rather violently as her mind whirled with the conundrum in which her father had put them.

“We canna sell the whisky in Scotland,” Duff had said to Bernt. “There are Campbells everywhere, aye? They’ll hear of it and toss us in prison and leave us there to rot like dead fish.”

Her father looked properly chastised, and Lottie turned away from him. If they’d only put a bit of money into sheep, as she’d suggested, they’d have no need to distill illegal spirits!

“Lottie, pusling, donna be cross with me,” her father had pleaded. “I’ve many mouths to feed and rents to pay. What was I to do?”

Well. There was a host of other things he might have done, but he hadn’t, and once again, it was up to her to figure a way out of the disaster. She’d stood and had begun to pace, her mind wildly racing. “If we risk discovery by the Campbells if we sell the whisky in Scotland, then we must go somewhere else.”

“Aye?” her father asked, his eyes widening with hope. “Where? England?”

“No, no’ England,” Duff said. “Campbells there, too, mark me.”

Lottie could think of only one place she knew anything about at all, and that only from the tales of others, including the only lover she’d ever had. Lottie hadn’t thought of Anders Iversen in a quite a while, really, and generally preferred not to think of him—she’d managed to put that unfortunate summer behind her. But who would help them now? Who else could they turn to? “Anders Iversen is the bookkeeper for the Copenhagen Company in Aalborg, Denmark, aye? And his father, the exchequer there, remember? The company trades in spirits—he told me so. Perhaps, with Anders’s help, we might sell what we have to that company, aye?”

“Aye,” Duff said, nodding. “I remember, spirits and tobacco,” he said. “Diah, Lottie, you’ve come up with a bonny idea, you have. Half of us on this island hail from Aalborg.”

“Do you think Anders would help us, then?” she’d asked Duff.

“Why, of course he would,” Duff said with great certainty.

“Are you no’ forgetting a crucial detail?” Mr. MacLean asked. “How are we to get the whisky to Denmark?”

“We’ll go by ship,” Lottie had said. “On the Margit.”

“Gilroy Livingstone’s ship? That old tub?” Mr. MacLean said with a snort.

“Donna let Gilroy hear you say it,” her father had warned. “He’s as fine a captain as any to be found in Scotland, and that tub is his pride and joy. Lottie, ’tis a splendid idea, it is.”

It was not a splendid idea, it was a rash one, born of desperation. She’d never met Anders Iversen’s father—for all she knew, he might have died, or changed occupations. She’d had no contact with Anders at all since he’d left Lismore a year ago. “There’ll be some cost to sail across the sea, there will, but we’ll keep our twenty percent,” she said.

“What of Anders?” Duff asked.

“He should be delighted to make the introductions if Lottie asks,” Mr. MacLean said gruffly. “And if no’, we’ll impress on him that we need every cent.”

“What a bonny and bright lass you are, leannan,” her father had said. “No man on this island deserves you. We’ll all go, all of us, you and me and Mats and Drustan and a good crew.” He hesitated, waiting for her objection. When she made none, he said quickly, “We must keep this close, aye?” he said. “The fewer who know what we’re about, the less we must fret over wagging tongues.”

Out of care for her father’s feelings, Lottie had not pointed out how ironic it was that he should say that. At that time, she’d wanted to believe she could set another of her father’s bad decisions to rights.

But now?

Now, she was very sorry she’d ever uttered those words, that was what. She’d never once considered they’d be chased, or set upon, or whatever had happened today, and she’d certainly never considered the possibility of taking a man’s ship. She was full of remorse and guilt and terror.

She sighed and gazed at the man in the corner. He appeared so peaceful in his oblivion. Pity that she should meet a true sea captain in this way. She would like to have been properly dressed, engage him in conversation about his travels. To perhaps trifle with him a wee bit. A girlish wish, foolishly fantastic in light of everything.

Lottie lowered her head onto her arms, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, determined not to allow tears to fall and torture her more. She had to think. She had to determine how they would get themselves out of this predicament with their heads on their shoulders. But her thoughts were drowned out by her heart pounding hard against her ribs with waves of remorse and fear.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS THE rising swells that seeped into Aulay’s consciousness, the familiar pitch and roll of his ship as it was tossed about in a storm. The pressing instinct to change the sails woke him. He was disoriented and groggy at first, his throat parched, his head aching fiercely...but he was increasingly aware of heavy rain pummeling the ship and lashing against the portholes, the crashing sound of waves hitting the forecastle and the impact of the blow.

Who is at the helm?

He tried to rise but his wrists were bound. He remembered he was on the floor of his cabin, his ankle shackled to a desk that was bolted to the floor. He was gagged, too, the cloth biting into the flesh at his cheeks. He managed to push himself up to sitting and sagged against the wall of his quarters, attempting to shake off the feeling of wool covering his brain. His wrists ached and were bleeding where he’d apparently tried to twist them free of the binds. His thoughts were so hazy that he couldn’t recall how, precisely, he’d ended up here. He couldn’t recall anything but the woman who had kicked him in the chin.

He blinked back the fog and looked around his cabin. His paintings on the wall, his books stacked neatly on the small bedside table. Familiar things...and there, in the middle of those familiar things was the woman, her head pillowed on her arms at his table. That bloody bonny hair had been the siren’s call that had snared him like a slow sea turtle—that much, he recalled. Aye, he’d be pleased to attend her hanging, he would. He’d watch the lot of them swing for what they’d done if they made it to the gallows and not feel the slightest bit of unease about it. He preferred to kill them with his bare hands, particularly if even one of his men had been harmed. Where are the men?

He glared across the room at the lady, wondering how to navigate this predicament.

God’s teeth, but he ought to swing alongside these thieves for having been so bloody stupid. He was a grown man, not a lad, and yet he’d behaved like one, fixated on the woman the moment he’d caught sight of her. He’d been stunned stupid by her beauty and his common sense had walked off a damn plank. He’d been transfixed with the creamy skin of a shapely leg as that gown had slid up and up, oblivious to what was happening around him, and practically salivating like a lad. It was a naïve mistake and he despised himself for it.

The ship lurched to starboard. Bloody hell, he needed her to wake. Aulay tried to shout, but the sound of his voice was muffled by the gag and the winds howling around the ship. He spotted a pair of his boots tucked in next to the desk. He rolled onto his side, and with his free leg, kicked them. They toppled over, but the soft leather didn’t make enough noise to wake her. He looked up to the desk. There were several things there, including an octant and compass. Aulay slid his free leg beneath him and pushed up the wall to his feet. He hopped closer to the desk and with one swipe of his bound hands, he sent the instruments tumbling to the floor.

The lass’s head snapped up with her gasp of fright. She jerked around, her hair flying, and stared at him, blinking, as if she couldn’t quite place him. But she quickly gathered her wits and leaped to her feet and backed out of his reach.

The ship suddenly rose up on a wave and just as quickly sank again, heeling right, and she was knocked off balance, crashing into the wall just below the porthole before catching herself on the sideboard. They would capsize if the ship wasn’t sailed properly, and somehow, he needed her to understand that. He looked at his desk. He grabbed a quill in his fist, and fumbled with the lid of the ink pot, spilling some ink onto a map. He picked up a chart and wrote reef. He pushed it toward her.

She stared at him with those wide, Caribbean-blue eyes. She pushed a tangle of hair from her cheek, then craned her neck to try and see what he’d written from where she stood. Of course she couldn’t, and shrank against the wall. “I know what you must think,” she said.

What a ridiculous creature. She could not possibly fathom that he was imagining that slender neck in a noose just now.

“But this is no’ what it must seem to you.”

Not what it seems? What it seemed was piracy. Was he not bound? Were his men not lost to him? Had his ship and his cargo not been stolen? Aye, piracy was exactly what it seemed.

The ship heaved again and she stumbled, catching herself on the bunk. She put her hand to the forehead of the man who lay there, then pulled up the coverlet—Aulay’s coverlet, thank you. His bunk, his bed, his linens, his pillow.

“We donna mean to keep your ship, on my word.”

Aulay arched one very dubious brow above the other.

“Once we reach port, we’ll return the ship to you as we found it, aye? You have my word,” she said, and pressed a hand to her heart as if to pledge it before being tossed again by the ship’s heaving.

Bloody ignorant wench. If he’d been able to speak, Aulay would have cursed her. There was no time for her excuses. He glared at her and pointed to the chart.

But she moved away from the chart, putting the table where he often took his meals with Beaty between them. “You need no’ look at me in that manner,” she said. “I know you’re quite angry. On my honor, I canna convey how much I regret that it has come to this, aye? But we were taking on water, and we’ve a mission that canna be delayed. We were hopeless, and I’m afraid there was naugh’ to be done for it. But that in no way eases my deep remorse, Captain.”

Did she take him a fool? Aulay wanted to strangle her. Unfortunately, the more important issue was the matter of the ship.

“As you can see, my father is badly wounded,” she continued, ignoring his dark look. “They...they meant to draw straws to see who would drown and who would accompany us in the jolly, and I couldna bear the thought of it, aye? But then you appeared! Out of that gray mist, you suddenly appeared like an angel from heaven,” she said, her voice full of awe.

The ship rose up; she was very nearly tossed into a chair. “Your crew is to be commended, Captain. You didna see them as you were unconscious, but on my word, they put a good fight, they did. We were armed, so naturally, we had the advantage.”

He suddenly remembered Beaty asking if they ought to pick up arms and his nonchalance about it. Aye, he was going to kill her with his bare hands, limb by lovely limb. Aulay shouted through the gag, which was really more of a hoarse throttle, as the gag prevented the use of his tongue.

“Diah, of course, you want to speak,” she said sympathetically. She glanced back at the man on the bunk, then at him. “If I remove the gag, do you promise you’ll no’ scream? It willna matter if you do—there’s no one to hear you, really.”

His heart raced wildly at that—what did she mean, there was no one to hear? Where is my crew? Who is at the helm?

“Aye, all right,” she said, warily eyeing the ropes at his wrists and the blood on his cuffs, the shackle around his ankle. She winced at the sight of it. “How you must loathe us.”

Loathing was too good for the likes of her. But Aulay maintained his composure with the hope she’d free him of the goddamn gag.

She approached him cautiously. “Ah...you’re quite tall, are you no’? Will you bend your head, then?”

His glare only deepened, but he did as she asked, bowing at the waist like a bloody supplicant.

She worked at the knot of the cloth at the back of his head, her fingers brushing against his neck and tangling in his hair. The gag fell away from his mouth and he coughed when he was free of it.

She moved away from him, staring at him, eyes wide with what, fright? He was the one trussed up like a Christmas ham.

“Who is at the helm?” he asked hoarsely. “Is it my man, then?”

“Ah...no,” she said, then turned and hurried to the sideboard, twice pausing to steady herself when the ship pitched beneath her.

“Who then?” he asked impatiently. “Whoever is sailing the ship must reef the sails.”

“Pardon?” She’d reached the sideboard and was struggling to pour water from the ewer into a cup.

“If he’s no’ reefed the sails, he must do it now or we’ll capsize. If he doesna know how to sail in these winds, give him my first mate. Beaty is his name and he can sail through the worst of storms.”

She began the unsteady trek back to him, but with a sudden lift of the ship, she spilled quite a lot of the water onto the floor of the cabin. Another wave pitched her forward, and she caught herself on Aulay’s arm, then quickly yanked her hand away, as if he might burn her.

“Do you hear me, then?” he demanded loudly. “We’ll capsize if you donna do as I say.”

“Gilroy is a captain,” she said evenly, and tried to hold the cup to his lips.

Aulay jerked his head away from the cup, causing her to drop it. That distracted her, and he seized the moment and caught her by the throat. His wrists were bound, but he could still wrap his hands around her neck, could still squeeze the life from her.

She gasped, and tried to claw his grip free of her throat with one hand, her eyes bulging with fear. “I ought to snap your neck here and now, aye?” he breathed angrily. “Can you no’ feel that we’re tossing about like a child’s boat in the bath, lass? Your captain doesna know how to sail it, and if you donna wish to drown us all, then by Diah, put Beaty at the helm.”

Her eyes dropped to his mouth, and Aulay’s fool heart skipped a single beat, but then began to race as he felt the cold steel of a gun suddenly jab him in the neck. “Let me go,” she croaked, “or I’ll blow your bloody head from your shoulders.”

Aulay glared at her, and she glared back, her eyes an icy blue now, her cheeks flushed. Her lips had parted and she was choking. She was shaking. But she thrust the gun deeper into his skin.

“Do as she says, Captain,” came a hoarse voice from the bunk. “And we’ll fetch your first mate, we will.”

Neither he nor the woman moved. Her eyes narrowed, her brows dipping into a vee of determination. He slowly let go her neck, and she sagged backward, dropped the gun from his gullet. She clutched a small dueling pistol in one hand and pressed the other hand to her throat. She blinked and suddenly turned to the bunk. “Fader? How do you fare?”

“As poorly as a three-legged horse. Donna tend me, pusling, do as the captain says,” he told her. “Gilroy is a fine captain, that he is, but he’s no’ been a’sea in many years, and he’s no’ sailed a ship as fine as this, aye? Go, and see to your brothers while you’re out.”

She hesitated. She gave Aulay a dark look. But then she went, obedient, hurrying to the cabin door and yanking it open. A gale of wind and rain blew in as she went out, then was silenced when she pulled the door shut behind her.

Aulay fell back against the cabin wall, his breath short, his heart still beating rapidly.

“Donna blame her,” the man said from his bunk. “My daughter is no’ at fault for what has happened. The blame lies entirely with me.”

“It lies with all of you, and you’ll all hang for it,” Aulay said flatly. “All of you.”

The man said nothing more.

Aulay waited, pacing the wee bit of floor the shackle would allow him. He heard voices, but could not make them out, not with the wind howling and the ship groaning so loudly. But after an eternity, it seemed that the ship was pitching less. Perhaps the storm was weakening. Perhaps she’d given the helm to Beaty.

It seemed as if hours passed before she finally returned, bursting into the cabin and slamming it shut behind her in the face of a gale. She was soaked through to the skin, her hair was plastered to her head, and her gown so wet and heavy that it dragged the ground and clung to the voluptuous curves of her body. Her gun, he noted, was tucked into the waist of her petticoat.

She went straight to the bunk and leaned over the old man, stroking his head. “You’re warm,” she said.

“Aye, I feel as if that old Mrs. MacGuire has put her boot through me head,” he said.

“You’re bleeding again, Fader. I’ll fetch Morven, aye?”

“Leave him be, lass. He’s needed on deck and he canna do more than he’s done. If you’ve a wee bit more of the draught, however.”

She slipped a hand into the pocket of her gown and withdrew a brown vial. She shook the contents, then lifted the man’s head and helped him take the liquid. When he’d had enough, she held the brown glass vial up to the light from the porthole. “We’ve scarcely any of it left,” she said, the worry evident in her voice.

“Och, we Livingstones are made of sturdy stock. I’ll be quite all right,” the man said, but Aulay could tell from the roughness in his voice that he was not all right. That was just as well, then—one fewer to hang.

She sat on the edge of the bunk, shivering, periodically clutching the edge of it when the ship surged up or down or right or left. Aulay relaxed a wee bit—he was confident Beaty was now at the helm, as the ship was riding over the waves instead of crashing headlong into them.

He slid down onto his haunches, watching her, his gaze on her long, elegantly slender neck, the soft slope of her shoulders. Aye, she was bonny, that she was, as bonny as any woman he’d ever seen in his life. He had the sudden image of her silky hair covering her face as she twisted on the end of a rope.

He seethed with fury. With her. With himself. But he had to keep his wits about him if he had any hope of persuading her to remove the shackle and the binds at his wrists.

The old man was soon snoring. The lass—the Livingstone lass, apparently—stood and moved wearily to the table. She kicked off her boots, then wrung the water from her hair and tied it into a knot at her nape. And then, without compunction, she lifted her gown, put one foot onto a chair, and began to roll down a stocking.

Aulay was not happy to feel just as fascinated by this display of a shapely leg as he had been when she’d first come on board. God knew he’d known many audacious women, many of whom were closely related to him...but none like her. Not a single beautiful, gun-wielding, knee-kicking pirate. Not a single lass who could possibly steal a ship, press a gun into his neck and then brazenly undress before him.

What infuriated him most was that there was a part of his sorry self that was utterly aroused by it.

She seemed to sense his study of her. She turned her head and gave him a pointed look. Aulay shrugged. “What did you expect, then?”

“What did I expect? I expected this entire voyage to have gone quite a lot differently, that’s what,” she said crossly. She tossed one stocking down, then lifted the next leg and began to roll that stocking down.

Aulay tried not to look at her bare leg. Well. He didn’t try very hard, really, but he had it in his head he ought not to look. “Who sails?” he asked gruffly.

“Your man. Beaty,” she said with exasperation, and discarded the second stocking just as carelessly as the first. “He was quite at odds with the idea. He scolded me right harshly for having taken the ship, he did, and in front of all those men, too, aye? But when I explained that his very own captain had asked it of him—” she paused to look at Aulay “—after swearing on my mother’s grave that you were verra much alive,” she added, sounding miffed that Beaty would dare to question her on that front. “When I promised him that you lived, and you yourself had asked him to take the helm, he softened a wee bit and agreed to go on deck with Gilroy and the others.”

“And the rest of my men?”

“Your crew? They’re well, they are. Mad as hornets, but well enough.”

“No one hurt?” Aulay asked.

“Aye, well...three of them. Broken bones and the like. But we’re looking after them properly.” She yanked the fasteners of her gown and shrugged out of it, throwing it onto the back of the chair. Next came her stomacher. Astonishingly, she now stood barefoot in the middle of his cabin with nothing more than a petticoat, her stays and a chemise so sheer underneath that her breasts might as well have been exposed to him. She slipped her gun from her waist and laid it on the table.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” he asked incredulously. He’d never seen a woman disrobe without hesitation or conceit, unless for his pleasure. Certainly not in circumstances like this. This woman was utterly beyond redemption.

She clucked at him. “If I remain in soaked clothing, it will be the death of me, aye? I donna have a proper gown or a dressing room, do I?”

Aulay couldn’t help himself—he took in her figure. Slowly. Curve by delicious curve.

“Donna look at me like that,” she said.

“What, or you’ll shoot? What would you have me do, then? Fix my gaze on the wall?”

Her cheeks colored. She folded her arms over her body, which pronounced her perfect breasts to him even more, and shivered noticeably.

Aulay sighed. He was either a bloody fool or a great humanitarian, because he said, “My greatcoat is just there,” and nodded to a series of pegs on the wall that held his clothing.

She looked over her shoulder in the direction he indicated, but made no move to get the coat. “No, thank you.”

“Stubborn wench,” he said irritably. “Watching you shiver like a wee waif makes it feel bloody well cold in here. Take it.”

“That’s kind of you,” she said.

“’Tis no’ the least bit kind. I shall have you in good health so that I might see you hanged.”

The color in her cheeks darkened. “Hanged! I told you we’d return the ship to you! Think of it as borrowing—”

“Save your breath for your judge, lass.”

“Och,” she said with a flick of her wrist. “Your pride’s been wounded, that it has, and you’re angry now.” She took his coat from the wall and put it around her shoulders. “Thank you,” she muttered.

His pride had been more than wounded—it had been destroyed. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to relive his humiliation, but unfortunately, it was impossible to ignore.

He heard her moving about, the scrape of the chair against the wooden floor, and opened his eyes. She was not very big at all, he realized, smaller than average. “Where did you learn to kick like that, then?” he asked with irritable curiosity.

She sat on one of the chairs, her legs drawn to her. Only her toes were visible. “I didna know that I could,” she said with a slight shrug. “Fear makes warriors of us, I suppose.”

“Or fools,” he said. He moved his stiff jaw around, but it resulted in an annoying jab of pain through him, serving only to remind him that he’d been undone by a woman.

“Are these your paintings?” she asked.

Aulay stiffened. She had turned, was looking at the wall where he’d hung a pair of his canvasses. More paintings were stacked behind an easel in the corner of the room. For this voyage, he’d hung a painting of the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Cadiz, a view of the sea over the bow of his ship. The water there was as blue as the lass’s eyes. The other painting was of the Atlantic Ocean. Aulay had not ventured very far into that ocean, but he’d sailed it enough to have a memory of the setting sun.

His paintings were a private side of him. He didn’t like to talk about them, didn’t like to compare notes with artists he met from time to time. He rarely took his work ashore. He didn’t need anything else to separate him from his brothers. Cailean and Rabbie were both strong, virile men. When they were children, the two of them would stage battles and Aulay would draw. His father used to exhort him not to waste his time on endeavors best suited for the fairer sex, and to pick up arms, to be more like his brothers. “Learn to thrust a sword, no’ a paint brush, lad,” he would say.

“Our Aulay is a gentle soul, darling,” his mother would say, her intent to defend him. But she only made it worse. His father had no use for sons with gentle souls.

Aulay would not have said he had a gentle soul. All he knew was that the painting was something in him that needed to come out. It eased him. Still, his art was for him, and him alone.

He waited for the remarks he knew would come.

“There’s no’ a soul in them,” she said curiously, and stood up, moving to the wall to have a look.

“That’s because they are paintings of seas, aye?” he said defensively.

“You paint the same sea every time? Only the sea?”

Only the sea? What was the matter with her? They were obviously two different bodies of water. “They are no’ the same at all.”

“Aye, they are. One is blue, but they look the same.” She bent over and began to rummage through his other canvasses.

Aulay shifted uncomfortably. “Have a care!” he said sharply.

“More paintings of the sea,” she said, as if he didn’t know what he’d painted.

“The sea is never the same from one moment to the next, is it? It turns over on itself, it does. The changes are so vast that at times, they are almost imperceptible. But they are no’ the same, and you have no’ been invited to inspect my things.”

She lifted her hands in surrender. “But there are no people. No’ even a ship,” she said.

It was just his bloody luck to be humiliated by a woman who also happened to be an art critic. “Diah, you’re a thief with no appreciation for art,” he said dismissively.

“We’re no’ thieves,” she said as she resumed her seat. “Had it no’ been for our emergency, we’d no’ want your ship if you presented it to us with ribbons tied to the masts,” she said pertly.

Aulay snorted. “If you’re no’ thieves, then who are you?”

“It doesna matter—”

“Aye, on the contrary, it does indeed. You canna hide. I heard the giant call you Lottie when you came on board. The man there bragged of his Livingstone stock. You are Lottie Livingstone, no’ Lady Larson,” he said, spitting out the name. “Are you pirates, then? Is it my cargo you want?”

“Pirates!” She laughed, and her eyes sparkled with amusement. “If we are pirates, Captain, then we are the worst of all!”

“Then why have you stolen my ship?” he demanded. Why have you humiliated me? Why have you ruined this chance to save the life I love?

“We’ve no’...” She sighed and shook her head. “On my word, I tell you the truth, Captain Mackenzie. Please try and think of it as merely borrowing your ship, aye? I told you, we had no choice. You’ll leave us at port and then...then go about your business.”

She said it hopefully, as if she desperately wanted to believe that could happen. He was quick to disabuse her of that idea. “That’s absurd. You surely donna believe that I’ll no’ avenge the unlawful taking of my ship, aye?”

Her hopeful expression fell. She looked at the old man. “Then what should I do?”

“Pardon?”

She shifted her gaze to Aulay. “I could use your advice, aye?”

Aulay scoffed at the suggestion.

“I donna know what to do, Captain,” she said, sounding a wee bit desperate. “I can scarcely believe what I’ve done. Tell me what to do—you’re a man of great experience—”

“You honestly think I’ll advise you?” he asked incredulously.

“No,” she said, her brows furrowing. “But I hoped. I’m in water well over my head, I am, and I could use a wee bit of proper counsel. I’ve none, you might have noticed.”

Hardly proper counsel, seeing as he was the one bound. But it occurred to him he could perhaps use this opportunity to his advantage. “Where are you bound, then?”

“For Aalborg.”

Aulay’s heart seized. That was the wrong direction. “Denmark,” he said.

She nodded.

“Why there?”

“We’ve...we’ve something to sell,” she said hesitantly.

“Aye, and what is that? The contents of my hold?”

“No!” she said, affronted.

“What else would you have to sell, then? What could you possibly have that must be sold in some small port of Denmark, other than what is in my hold?” he pressed her. “I’m carrying wool and salted beef. My hold was full before you tricked us with your...” He almost said hair. “Tell me the truth, lass—do you mean to sell it?”

“For the love of all that is holy, your goods are where you put them, aye? At least in part.” She abruptly came to her feet.

“What do you mean, in part?” he demanded.

“There are crates yet,” she said, waving off his questions as she began to pace. “Some of it...mostly wool, I think...well, it was lost because...” She gestured with her hand in a manner of someone searching for a word.

“Because?”

“Because there was some confusion on board among my men about where we might put our cargo,” she said quickly. “I stopped them before they threw over more than a wee bit.”

Aulay stared at her, trying to make sense of it.

“I beg your pardon, but there was quite a lot of panic,” she said, and stole a quick glance at the man on the bed before moving closer to him to whisper, “Our ship was sinking. It sank.”

“You brought your cargo on board my ship?” he asked, pushing to his feet. “What cargo? What did you bring?”

“Shhh,” she cautioned him, pointing at the bunk.

“Slaves?”

She gasped with indignation. “Of course no’!”

“What, then?”

“Things! Sundry things.”

“Liar,” Aulay said coldly. “Sundry things that must be sold in a foreign port? Sundry things that have caused a flush to creep into your fair cheeks? Things that your dying father insists you carry on rather than return for help?”

“He is no’ dying!”

“What is it you mean to deliver to Aalborg?” he pressed.

“It has no bearing on you—”

“It has every bearing on me, you wee fool! I would know what I carry on my ship, aye? I would know if illegal whisky is in my hold! I know a ship running from the excise man when I see it. That was a royal ship you set on fire—”

“Entirely accidental! And they fired first!”

“You’d no’ be the first to run illegal whisky from Scotland’s shores. But damn you, you are the first to throw my cargo overboard to make room for it!”

Her eyes darkened. “No’ all of it. As I said, I stopped them. Most of what we brought is on your deck.”

“Mi Diah,” he muttered and sagged against the wall. Now he was carrying illegal goods in plain sight? Aulay seethed with indignation. His was not the indignation of the righteous, no—it wasn’t so long ago that his family had resorted to running goods around the royal navy and excise bounties the crown would impose on imports. They’d felt forced to do it, felt it was the only way they could provide for their clan in those years before the Jacobite rebellion, when the crown imposed a usurious tax their clan could ill afford on the most basic of necessities.

But they had not thrown over anyone’s legitimate goods to make room, and they’d not stacked illegal cargo on their bloody decks! Worse, much worse, if Aulay lost this cargo, if he failed to do what he’d promised William Tremayne and deliver it to Amsterdam, he couldn’t bear to think what might happen to his family’s livelihood. He couldn’t bear to think of the mix of anger and pity in his father’s eyes.

He turned a cold gaze to the woman who was pacing, the hem of his greatcoat dragging the floor behind her. Her brow was furrowed and she seemed lost in thought. Bloody whisky runners. His mind raced with the necessity to free himself, to salvage what he could before all was lost.

The lass stopped pacing. She turned to face him, and damn her if she didn’t look almost tearful. “Help me,” she said softly. “Tell me what to do!”

“Help you pirate my own ship?”

She groaned heavenward. “You’ll have your ship as soon as we are to Aalborg!”

He stared at her, his thoughts racing. “If we are to Aalborg, you’ll need my men to sail us there, aye? Best you bring Beaty in so that he might chart the course.” That was a lie—Beaty could navigate by the stars overhead, and it was almost impossible to chart a course when the day was as bleak as this. For all Aulay knew, Beaty might have already turned this ship about. But he hoped she would give Beaty entry into the cabin.

She considered his suggestion.

“Of course, you canna be certain I’ll no’ chart a course that turns us about and sends us back to Scotland and into the hands of the crown, can you, then?”

She shot him a suspicious look. “You’ll no’ do that. You’ll no’ risk putting your ship into the hands of the crown. They’ll no’ believe you’re innocent, no’ with whisky on board. You need me and mine off your ship, I should think.”

Clever and beautiful. But Aulay would see her brought to justice. And he would do it by taking full advantage of her naiveté.

“Aye, you’re right, you are.” He held up his hands. “Untie me, and I will help you.”

She blinked. She moved closer, so close that Aulay could see flecks of light gray in her pale blue eyes that, under different circumstances, would have tempted him. His gaze slid to her lips, succulent and pursed, and errant thoughts began to wander into places they ought not to have gone. This was the woman who had aggrieved him, had stolen his ship, had put his crew in peril. How could he imagine kissing her? He’d been addled by that blow to the head, clearly.

She seemed to know what he was thinking, because she smiled saucily and tilted her head back. He held up his hands to her so that she might release him. “I’ll no’ deny it, I need you, I do, Captain,” she said silkily, and a warm shiver ran down his spine. “But donna take me for a fool.” She abruptly put her hands on his chest and shoved him away, then stepped back.

She took the greatcoat from her shoulders, slid one arm into a sleeve, and then the other, then buttoned the coat up to her neck so that she looked as if she was wearing a priest’s robe. She picked up the gun from the table and slid it into the pocket before she shoved her feet into wet boots. “There are men to be fed, and my father needs a change of bandage.” She moved to the door.

He realized she meant to leave him. “If you want my help, bring me Beaty,” he said sternly.

She opened the door and went out. A moment later, he heard what sounded like a barrel or a crate being slid across the decking and shoved in front of the door.

All right, then, she was no fool.

Well, neither was he...all evidence to the contrary. He would help her, all right. He would help her right into the arms of the authorities.

CHAPTER FIVE

LOTTIE DIDN’T CARE that the rain was slashing across her face, making it difficult to see. She walked directly to the railing and gripped it tightly as she leaned over it, taking deep gulps of wet, salt-soaked air and, for a fleeting moment, toyed with the idea of lowering the jolly and putting herself in it and bobbing off and away from this catastrophe.

That man, her captive, had snatched the breath from her. She’d never looked into eyes so piercing or so shrewd, had never felt such restrained power in a man. There had been only a thin chain keeping him from flinging himself at her and strangling the breath out of her with one hand as he apparently wanted to do—she could see it in the way he’d glared at her. What in God’s name possessed her to stick her hand into the fire?

She thought of his hair, streaked blond by the sun, wild about his shoulders, having come free of its queue. She thought of the dark beginnings of his beard that framed a sensual mouth, even with his lips pressed together in an unforgiving line. She thought of the way he looked at her as if he meant to put her on a spit and roast her. Was it a sign of depravity that she wanted to be roasted by him? In spite of extraordinary and challenging circumstances, the thought caused her to shiver with a mix of thrill and fear. And perhaps the worst of it all was that she did need the counsel of someone like him.

“Lottie!”

She swayed backward from the railing and turned about as Drustan lumbered across the deck to her, his face twisted with worry.

“What is it, mo chridhe?” she asked.

Drustan slipped on the wet planking and grabbed awkwardly for the railing to keep from falling. “I donna know what to do,” he said. “Mats, he hasna told me what I’m to do, but I’m no’ to go up there.” He pointed to the masts.

Lottie looked up—Mats was several feet above her, helping with the sails. “Good Lord,” she murmured.

“I want to see Fader,” Drustan said.

“Aye, I know,” Lottie said soothingly. Drustan was not adept at finding his footing when circumstances changed. Frankly, none of them were. “We’ll see that all the men are fed, and then I’ll take you to see him.” She reached up and used the sleeve of the captain’s coat to wipe rain from Drustan’s face. “Come,” she said, and took his hand.

They made their way to the quarterdeck, where Norval Livingstone stood guard over Mr. Beaty. Even with the relentless rain, she could hear Gilroy and Beaty arguing.

“I tell you, ’tis no’ the way it’s done,” Gilroy said as Lottie and Drustan climbed the steps.

“Canna outrun a frigate without a gaff,” Beaty said gruffly.

“I beg your pardon,” Lottie said.

Both men had failed to notice her approach and jerked their gazes around to her, slinging water off their cocked hats and into her face. Lottie sputtered, wiping the rain from her face with her sleeve.

“You ought no’ to be on deck,” Gilroy said. “Look at you, soaked through.”

“Are we bound for Denmark?” she asked, ignoring Gilroy, her eyes locked on Beaty.

Beaty glowered at her. “Beggin’ your pardon, but do you think I canna find my way to Denmark?”

“Why should she trust you?” Gilroy demanded.

Beaty glared at him, too, cocked hat to cocked hat. “You’re the one who has stolen our ship, and I am no’ to be trusted, is that the way of it? I’m sailing her, am I no’? Sailing east, too, as anyone can plainly see.”

Lottie could not plainly see it. Gilroy was right—she didn’t trust Beaty. But neither did she trust her own instincts, and she was suspicious of Gilroy’s. How could he possibly know which direction he was sailing in the dark and the rain? She could only hope that she was right, and that these men would not return to Scotland with the whisky on board. They’d have nothing to show for their own cargo, and she knew very well how the crown’s authorities viewed Highlanders—all of them were suspect. They would seize them all. Privateers might do worse. If they were set upon by pirates or privateers, she’d have to give these men leave to take up their weapons, and she had no doubt what would happen to the Livingstones if it came to that.

All right, that was enough. She couldn’t bear standing in this rain another moment. She would have to trust her instincts, no matter how ignorant they were. “I’ll see to it that the men are fed,” she said, wiping rain from her face again. “After which, Mr. Beaty, your captain wishes to speak with you, aye?”

“What? Lottie, ’tis no’ wise—” Gilroy started, but she waved a hand at him.

“It’s all right, Gilroy,” she said calmly. “Come along, Dru,” she said, and left the quarterdeck.

She and Drustan went down into the hold where the Mackenzies had been forced. It was dank in the hold, and the faint smell of rotting fish assaulted her senses. It was poorly lit as well, and there didn’t appear to be any space that wasn’t taken up with salted beef, wool or casks of whisky. Lottie could hear the raised voices of men coming from the stern. They were shouting at each other, in English and Gaelic, with a bit of Danish thrown in for good measure. She followed Drustan around a stack of crates to an area they’d blocked off to hold their captives. When she stepped into the light of a single lantern, all shouting stopped. The men stared at her for a highly charged moment, and then as if signaled by some magical siren, they started shouting at once.

Lottie threw up her hands. “Uist!” she cried. “Silence!”

Duff MacGuire punctuated her shout with a sharp whistle that caused half of them to cover their ears. At least they stopped shouting.

Lottie took a breath. “We mean to feed you and give you what you need—”

“What I need is to have these binds undone!” shouted one man, lifting his hands up. “A man canna even piss!”

“By all that is holy, I’ll put me bloody fist into yer trap if you speak so in front of the lady again,” Morven threatened.

“Ye canna expect us to eat with our wrists bound,” complained another.

“You ate the bread we gave you well enough, aye?” Mr. MacLean snapped. The men began to shout again.

“Please!” Lottie cried. A sharp pain was once again throbbing at the base of her skull, but the men kept shouting and arguing with one another. Lottie took the gun from her pocket, cocked it and fired at the ceiling above them. The crack was deafening and splinters of wood and smoke rained down on them. Men ducked, their hands covering their heads.

After a moment of stunned silence, a Mackenzie said, “For the love of God, take the gun from her, ere she kills someone.”

“I’ll no’ do it,” Duff said. “She’s a better shot than any man here, she is.”

Lottie hopped up onto a crate so she could see them all. “Listen! I know you’re all verra angry, aye?” she said, breathless with anxiety. “All of us,” she said, gesturing to all the Livingstones around her, “are verra sorry for the situation that has brought us to this—”

“’Tis piracy!” The Mackenzie men began to shout again. “What have you done with Beaty? Where is Captain Mackenzie?”

“Let us see them!” someone shouted, which roused the rest of them to shout at her, too.

Duff held up both arms and whistled again. When they had quieted, he said grandly, “Say no more, miss. I’ve already told the devils what we’re about, that I have.”

“Why in the name of Hades do you speak like a king to his subjects?” groused a Mackenzie man.

“Perhaps because I’ve had the good fortune of receiving my theatrical training at the Goodman’s Fields Theatre in London!”

“The what?”

“The theatre!” Duff bellowed, always quite impatient with any poor soul who did not hold theatre in the same high regard as he.

“All right, thank you,” Lottie said, and moved in front of Duff before he commenced a sermon. “We’ll bring food to you now, and on my word, we’ll bring Beaty down so that you can look on him and know he is quite all right, aye?”

“And what of Captain Mackenzie?” someone demanded.

“Beaty will see him and he’ll vouch that he’s quite all right. But we must hold him close until we reach our destination. You’d do the same, would you no’?”

“We’d no’ steal another man’s ship!” said one crossly.

“Aye,” she said. A thought popped into her head—she’d never known a man who did not respond to money. “That’s why we mean to compensate you for your trouble.”

Duff and MacLean gasped at the same moment. “Lottie—”

“We will,” she said firmly. “’Tis only fair.”

“We lost six casks,” MacLean muttered behind her.

“Aye, and we might lose all if we donna have a care.”

“How much?” a Mackenzie asked.

“Five percent more than the wage your captain means to pay you.” Her gut dropped a wee bit the moment the words were out of her mouth. She hoped that was not extravagant. Perhaps it was, as her men were gaping at her. And the Mackenzies looked confused. She’d spoken too hastily, perhaps, but she had to make it sound worth their while. Except that she really had no idea how they would pay these men, and she could see from the concerned look on Mr. MacLean’s face that he didn’t, either. Diah, she was beginning to behave like her father, making promises she couldn’t possibly keep without thought. But the shouting had stopped and the men were looking around at each other, interested. It did seem only fair. It seemed the only way to convince the Mackenzies that they had not stolen their ship with ill intent. Well, she’d said it, and there was no pulling the words back into her mouth. If they didn’t make enough from the sale of the whisky, there was another way to compensate them. Mr. MacColl was still on Lismore, still pining for her.

Her stomach did a queer little flip, and she swallowed down that thought. She couldn’t think of that now and looked at Duff. “Have we something to feed these gentlemen?”

“Fish stew,” Duff said. “Yesterday’s catch.”

“Stew? How will we manage?” she asked.

“With our hands and one at a time,” said Duff. He reached up to put his hand on Drustan’s shoulder. “And we’ve a lad who might crush the head of any man who tries to keep us from it.”

“I donna want to crush heads!” Drustan exclaimed fearfully.

“Well I donna mean there will be an actual need, lad,” Duff said.

“Morven?” Lottie said. “The dressing on my father’s wound needs attention.”

“Aye, I’ll fetch a few things, then,” Morven said and started for the steps up to the main deck.

“Fear no’,” said Duff, bowing his head. “Drustan and MacLean and I will keep all in order.” He cast a stern look to his captives.

“Bloody Shakespeare is serving us fish, lads,” said a Mackenzie, and they laughed roundly as Lottie made her way out of the hold.

When she emerged on the deck, Lottie paused and adjusted the heavy greatcoat around her. The rain had turned to mist, but the coat she wore was soaked. What she wouldn’t give for a hot bath and her bed to chase away the chill and this horrible day, to perhaps ease the ache in her head. She wondered, as she trudged along to the quarterdeck, if she’d ever have a proper bath again, or if this voyage would be the end of her. All signs pointed to the latter.

Well, she wasn’t done yet. The day had been disastrous, but they were still alive, still had that damn whisky. As her mother always said, “One step before the next, and again.” So...one step before the next. She withdrew her gun from her pocket as she started up the steps to the quarterdeck.

Norval was still standing guard on the quarterdeck. Gilroy had taken over the wheel, and Beaty was squatting down beside a small brazier where he held a stick with pieces of fish over a small flame. He glanced up as Lottie neared him, and even in the dim light, she could see him blanch when he saw her gun. He slowly rose to his feet, his eyes fixed on it. “What’s that for, then?”

“Donna you mind it. Come with me, please.”

Beaty snorted. “You mean to escort me with a gun to me head?” He laughed with great derision.

Lottie lifted the gun and pointed it at his head. Behind him, Gilroy’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. “It’s no’ for your head, sir, but your captain’s. If I see any trickery, he’ll pay the price.”

Beaty looked at the gun in her hand. Was it possible for him to tell the gun was empty? She’d shot its only bit of lead into the ceiling above the Mackenzie crew. “I could take that wee gun and toss you over with one hand, lass,” he said darkly.

She knew that, quite obviously, but she called his bluff. She cocked the gun. “Try,” she said.

Gilroy recovered from his shock and slowly smiled. “Did I no’ say that you ought not to trifle with the Livingstones?” he asked proudly.

“I thought you were Larsons,” Beaty drawled. “Have you lost your mind, lass?” he asked. “Have you no’ put yourself in enough peril?”

“Aye, without a doubt, I have,” she agreed. “But I’ll no’ allow you to put me in more peril. Come,” she said, gesturing to the stairs.

Muttering beneath his breath, Beaty stalked toward the steps. She followed him to the captain’s cabin with the gun pointed at his back, but he wasn’t terribly intimidated, apparently, for he entered the quarters in something of a snit, striding inside and pausing in the middle, his legs braced apart, his hands on his hips, surveying the lay of the land.

“What the devil?” Bernt said from the bed, and tried to rise up on an elbow.

“Please donna tax yourself, Fader,” Lottie said with the pistol pointed at the captain. “We’ve a wee bit of business, that’s all.”

The captain was leaning casually against the wall and glanced insouciantly at her gun. “You’ve no’ been threatening my men with that wee gun, have you?”

“Aye, she has,” Beaty said. “Pointed it right at my head, she did.”

“Here he is,” she said to Mackenzie. “You asked for him. Now speak.”

“Where are your men?” he asked, undaunted, unhurried. “Surely one of them can come along to hold the gun for you, aye?”

“I donna need anyone to hold it. My men are feeding your men,” she said pertly.

“Put away the gun, lass,” he said. “Beaty will do as I say. Put the gun down.”

“Tell him, then. I donna know which direction he sails, so tell him,” she demanded.

“You can tell by the prevailing wind, aye?” Mackenzie said calmly, and lifted his bound hands. “East,” he said, pointing in one direction, then arcing his hands to the opposite direction, “to west.” And then he said something low and rapidly in Gaelic.

Had she been tricked? Lottie’s temper flared; she lifted the empty gun and sighted it between the captain’s eyes.

He didn’t as much as flinch. In fact, he arched a brow as if amused by her.

But Beaty flinched, throwing up his hands as if to stop her. “There’s no call for that!” he said anxiously. “You’d no’ shoot an unarmed man, lass!”

“She’ll no’ use it,” the captain said.

He was not the least bit afraid of her. He probably didn’t believe she knew how to use a gun properly. Men were always assuming things they shouldn’t. She knew how to fire a gun, for God’s sake. She was only missing a bullet.

“Put it down, Lottie,” he said calmly. “We’re wasting time, aye?”

“We’re to use given names now, are we? I’ll put it down when you explain to Mr. Beaty that we are to sail to Aalborg, and I can see with my own eyes that he’s no’ sailing us straight into the arms of the king’s navy.”

Again, the captain spoke quickly and softly in Gaelic. Whatever he said caused Beaty to give a slight shake of his head. Lottie panicked—her knowledge of Gaelic was limited to a few words and phrases. The Livingstones generally spoke English, except for the older clan members who spoke the language of the Danes. “English!” she said sharply. “You must speak English!”

Mackenzie looked almost amused. “English, then,” he said graciously.

“Do as she says, aye?” her father said roughly from the bunk. “My daughter is as fine a shot as she is bonny.”

The captain said something else in Gaelic; Lottie cocked the gun. The captain kept his gaze on her gun but leaned over and pointed to something on one of the maps.

“I’ll blast a hole in you, I swear I will,” Lottie said sharply.

“She looks a wee bit mad,” Beaty said nervously.

“Mad? I look mad?” Lottie said. What shreds of patience she might have been clinging to were lost. “I suppose were you the one holding the gun, you’d look perfectly reasonable! Why is it man’s unfailing belief that if a woman is anything less than demure and silent, she must be mad, but—”

“Lottie, lass...” her father said.

“Men think themselves so bloody superior,” she snapped. “Come, Beaty, before I demonstrate just how mad I am. What would you do, were you me? My father wounded, my men without knowledge of the sea—”

“You should no’ have pirated a ship, then!” Beaty said indignantly.

The captain said calmly, “There is no need to argue, aye? Have you paused to consider, then, miss, that if you blast a hole in me, there will be a heavy price to pay? My men will go along with your thievery as long as they know I’m your captive. But if I’m dead?”

If he were dead, they’d all be dead—no one needed to tell her so. Lottie could well imagine the carnage, beginning with Beaty, who would not hesitate to snap her neck. Mackenzie knew this. He knew that her gun was merely display and really no use to her at all in this circumstance. Diah, but her heart was pounding so hard she could scarcely hear her own thoughts. “You donna frighten me, sir.”

“Do I no’?” he asked congenially, as if they were playing a game. “Then shoot me.”

“Och, pusling, before you shoot him, the tincture Morven has given me has no’ dulled the pain. Might there be some brandy about?”

“Pardon, what?” She was so intent on the captain and the quicksand she found herself in, that at first her father’s question didn’t make sense.

“Brandy,” he said again. “I could use a wee dram, that I could.”

Lottie looked at Mackenzie.

He sighed at the imposition. “In the sideboard, below.”

Lottie moved backward, keeping her eye on Beaty, and bumping into the immovable table. Beaty looked terribly confused, his gaze swinging between her and his captain and her father. Lottie managed to keep the gun trained on Mackenzie as she dipped down and opened the cupboard beneath the sideboard. She took her eyes from him for a brief moment, reaching inside the cabinet for a half empty bottle of dark amber liquid. She noticed a neat stack of lawn shirts, trews and trousers. Lottie grabbed the bottle, closed the door and quickly stood.

Beaty leaned toward the captain and said something quite low.

“English!” Lottie shouted.

Beaty lifted his hands. “I need a wee bit of help setting a course for Aalborg, aye? ’Tis the cap’n’s head that can work out all the figures—no’ mine.”

“No,” she said as she skirted around the table with a bottle of brandy in one hand and the gun in the other. The throbbing had started up in her neck again, and her arm was beginning to burn from holding the gun aloft. She knew that it wobbled, and she could see the captain had noted it, too.

“Ah, there’s an angel. Thank you, pusling,” her father said, and with a shaking hand, took the bottle she held out to him.

“You ought to put the gun down, Lottie,” Mackenzie said. “You’ll lose all feeling in your arm if you donna. You’d no’ want to cause injury to yourself.”

“Uist,” Lottie said, warning him to be quiet.

He smiled wryly and asked, “What is the penalty for piracy, Beaty?”

“Hanging, sir.”

“We’re no’ pirates,” Lottie said irritably.

“What is the penalty for holding a captain with a gun against his will, Beaty?” he asked, his gaze on Lottie.

Beaty paused to consider it. He shrugged. “Hanging. Or walking a plank.”

The pain in Lottie’s head began to shift to her belly.

The captain made a tsk, tsk sound. “You should no’ have picked up the gun, then, aye?”

Her father, who had taken two healthy swigs of the brandy, suddenly chuckled. “Aye, he’s a clever one, Lottie, this captain. He means to unnerve you. He canna know that you’re no’ easily disheartened.”

Ironically, Lottie was feeling quite disheartened at the moment.

“Donna pay him any heed, pusling.” Her father paused to take another healthy swig of the brandy. “You have the gun and the ship, aye? If you so desired, you could shoot them both and toss them to the fish and the crew would be none the wiser.”

Lottie turned her head and stared at her father.

“By the bye, Captain, your brandy is excellent.”

“My intention is only to help,” the captain said. “As you’ve said, you’re in a wee bit over your head, aye? I’d no’ like to see you on a plank.”

“I’d rather hang, were it me,” Beaty opined.

Lottie swung the muzzle of the gun from the captain to Beaty now. “All right, then, you’ve seen your captain and now we’ll go below to tell your men he is very much alive, aye? Come now, before I find a plank for you.”

“Aye, go, Beaty, lest they deliver us into the depths of the sea,” the captain said. “And God help them find Aalborg if they do.” He smiled.

Bloody hell, but this man had her at sixes and sevens. Beaty started for the door, but paused to speak in Gaelic to Mackenzie.

“Now,” she said sternly.

Beaty opened a door, and Lottie fell in behind him. She glanced at the captain as she followed Beaty out, and the man had the audacity to smirk. Smirk.

That’s what she got for asking for help.

CHAPTER SIX

“MY DAUGHTER, she’s made of strong mettle, that one. Never known a woman like her. No’ even her mother, God rest her soul.”

She was a fool, and Aulay was on the verge of suggesting the old man was demented, but the door flung open and men began to stream into the room, led by the giant—the same one that had knocked the life from Aulay—who had to duck his head to enter. Two others followed him. They walked past Aulay without so much as a glance.

He wanted some explanation about who these people were, why they were crammed into his cabin, and what the bloody hell was wrong with the big one. He reminded Aulay of a bairn in a man’s body. He was rocking back and forth on his heels and moaning as he stared down at the man on the bed. The younger one stood with his back to the wall, his legs braced apart, his jaw set, as if he was determined not to show the least bit of emotion. Aulay recognized himself in the younger one—he’d been that lad many years ago. He had two warrior brothers who had commanded their father’s attention and respect with their physical prowess. He had two sisters who’d been the jewels of his father’s eye. And he, third of five, had gone unnoticed unless he was behind the wheel of a ship. It was strange to think of it now, but at that age, Aulay had struggled to find the attention and praise in his family or clan. He was the quiet one, the studious one, the lad who pursued painting. It was hard to be noticed by the others, and he’d felt entirely inconsequential in the world except when he was at sea.

The third man in his cabin, of middling age, was a physician or healer of some sort. He examined the old man’s wound.

The old man wanted a report of all that had gone on since they’d come aboard. The lad attempted to report, but the giant kept speaking over him, expressing his vociferous and sincere desire to go home. But when the physician removed the bandaging from the old man, the giant began a keening cry that startled Aulay...and no one else.

Moments later, the lass returned. The giant called her name, and she went to him, putting her arms around him, holding him close like a mother would hold a child.

“Drustan lad, calm yourself,” the injured man said, and groped for the giant’s hand as the healer finished removing the bandages from his torso. “It’s no’ but a bad gash, aye?”

Lottie leaned over the physician. Whatever she saw caused her to gasp aloud.

“Aye, what is it, then?” her father asked.

“What? Nothing!” she said, fooling no one.

“Now, now, donna the lot of you fret,” the old man said. “A wound always looks worse than it is. Is that no’ so, Morven.”

“That is no’ so,” the physician said.

“You know verra well what I mean,” said the old man. “Look at your long faces! I’ll be right as rain!” he said irritably. “Why, I scarcely feel a thing, thanks be to the captain’s fine brandy.”

Aulay suppressed a groan. That was expensive French brandy, the last of what he and his brother Cailean had smuggled into Balhaire a few years ago.

“Have you any more of it?” the healer asked.

“Aye, there’s a good lad, Mats, hand him the bottle.”

“I’ll need fresh water as well,” the physician said, and Lottie went at once to the sideboard to fetch it, returning with the ewer.

The physician poured water directly into the brandy bottle—so much that there would be no salvaging the brandy. He shook the bottle to mix the contents, then put his hand on the injured man’s leg. “Steady yourself, Bernt,” he said, and poured the diluted brandy onto the wound.

The old man howled with pain, which startled the giant, and he, in turn, shrieked like a banshee. When he did, the youngest of them threw his hands over his ears. “By all that is holy, Drustan, donna do that!” he shouted. “It hurts me bloody ears!”

“I’ve made a sleeping broth,” the physician said, nonplussed by all the shouting and screeching. “It ought to keep you from this world for a few hours, Bernt. You need to sleep, aye?”

“What if he dies?” the giant asked tearfully.

“I willna die,” the old man said sternly. “A small wound canna kill a Livingstone, lad.”

“We’ll need a clean bandage,” the physician said. All of them looked at Lottie.

“Aye,” she said, and without the slightest compunction, went to the cupboard beneath the sideboard and removed one of Aulay’s shirts.

“I beg your pardon—wait,” Aulay said, but of course she paid him no heed, and handed the shirt to the physician. He tore the shirt into strips, then employed the two younger men to help him bind the old man’s abdominal wound.

When the bandaging was done, the physician picked up a bowl. “This is the sleeping draught.” He held it up like a vicar would hold a cup of wine at communion.

“Aye, let’s have it, then,” said her father. “I’ve got an awful pain, that I do.”

Lottie lifted his head and the physician helped him drink from the bowl.

“All right, then, lads,” her father said with a sigh when he’d finished. “You heard Morven—I’m to sleep now. Do as Lottie says, aye? But go now, let your old father rest. I’ll be good as new when we reach Aalborg.”

“I donna like to be here,” the giant said to no one in particular. “I want to go home to Lismore.”

“We’ll be there soon enough, lad,” the physician said, but Aulay saw the man exchange a look with Lottie. He doubted his own words.

Lottie kissed first the giant, then the younger one. “Mind you do as Duff or Mr. MacLean tells you,” she said to them. “If they donna need you, find a place to sleep. We’ve a long voyage ahead of us and I’ll have you rested, aye?”

“But what of you, Lot?” the youngest one asked.

“I’ll stay here, with Fader.”

The young man glanced at Aulay and frowned. “What of him?”

All heads turned toward him. “We’ve no other place to put him,” Lottie said with a shrug.

“I donna like to be here,” the giant said again.

“Aye, I know,” she said soothingly, and rubbed his arm. “None of us do.”

“I do,” the younger one said as he bumped into a chair on his way out. “This is a bigger ship than Gilroy’s, and it’s much faster. I should like to be captain of this ship one day.”

“That post has been taken,” Aulay reminded the lad as he reached the door.

The young man shot him a wide-eyed look and disappeared out the door.

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