An Auctioned Bride (Highland Heartbeats #4)(60)

“Go down below!” he shouted. “It's not safe up here!”

“I want to stay with you!” she shouted back. “Agnarr is fine now. He's more comfortable, and he's all right!”

Fine? “How did you get—” He shook his head.

He supposed it didn't matter how she had gotten his spirited war horse to calm down. As long as Agnarr wasn't panicking, that was the important thing.

A cry from above startled Hugh, and he looked upward, toward the mast rising and swinging dizzily into the night. Someone was up there?

Derek shouted to the man Hugh could barely see, straddling a small wooden platform halfway up the mast. “Report! What do you see?”

Beside him, Dalla also looked upward, but then quickly down, holding her head in one hand, the other still tightly grasping his forearm. He knew immediately that she was unfamiliar with the deck of the heaving ship.

“Go below!” Hugh shouted down at her again, the wind howling, capturing his words and pulling them away after he barely got them out of his mouth.

She didn't respond, but merely shook her head, tightening her grip on his arm, standing so close to him, her arm was anchored around his bicep now.

He knew arguing with her at this juncture would be pointless, so he allowed her to press against him. He widened his stance a little more and tucked her body in front of his, protecting her, if only a little bit, against the surging force of the sea, the rocking ship, and the occasional spray of seawater. At intervals, the ship's deck dropped from beneath their feet, eliciting a gasp from both of them, but Derek seemed not to even notice.

“Ship following!”

A loud, extensive curse erupted from Derek's throat, and he turned to Hugh. “No one is crazy enough to go out into the storm without a good reason!” He turned his gaze to Dalla, salt water dripping from his hair, then looked back to Hugh. “They must want her quite badly.”

Dalla, eyes wide with fright, gazed between the two of them. “What are we going to do?”

Derek turned to look behind him, and so too did the others. It was then that Hugh saw dim lights, flickering on and off, as the other ship danced on the waves, coming around from the north side of the harbor, following their same tack.

Dalla's uncle Jorstad had either mightily bribed a sailor to take his boat into the sea in pursuit of Derek's, or merely commandeered it; Hugh wasn't sure. Perhaps it was her uncle’s own ship. How else would he have gotten from Norway to Scotland anyway? He quickly turned to look down at Dalla.

“Does your father or your uncle own a ship?”

She stared up at him, and he saw the moment that she realized what he was thinking. Her eyes widened still more, tendrils of hair plastered against the side of her pale cheeks by the salt spray. “Yes, they both do! But Hugh—”

He turned to Derek. “Can you tell what kind of craft they're sailing? Is it faster than yours?”

Derek turned to his brother with a scowl. “I may haul cargo, brother, but my ships are custom-designed, by me no less, to give me speed when I need speed!”

“But Derek—”

“Listen to me!” Dalla shouted over the wind, then ducked her head against Hugh's chest as a wave crashed over the bow of Derek's ship, pelting them with a wash of frigid, salty, foamy ocean spray. The moment it passed, she looked up, staring first at Hugh and then at Derek. They each have one or two cannons aboard!”

“What?” Hugh frowned.

“My father and my uncle both have a ship. They are mounted with cannons!”

“How many?” Derek shouted over the storm.

“One on each side and one in the bow!”

Suddenly, as if to assess the new danger in the pursuit, the three turned to look over their shoulders.

Hugh grumbled low in his throat as he saw the dark outline of a two-mastered ship in close pursuit. They were not that far behind. The ship must have been rounding the small peninsula, even as Derek had prepared his own.

A shout rose from the man sitting on the platform above. “They're closing distance!”

“Trim the sails!” Derek shouted to sailors, a small crew of maybe five.

Nevertheless, they scrambled to follow his orders, though Hugh wasn't sure why. Wouldn't trimming the sails slow them down rather than gain them the speed they needed to outrun the pursuing vessel?

He turned his brother and was about to ask that very question when Derek grinned at him.

“The shoals are just ahead. I know these currents like the back of my hand. With this wind, and the sloppy tide, we should just barely miss the northernmost rocks, but them?” He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “They likely don't know that those shoals are there. They're staying closer to shore than farther out to sea to avoid fighting the open winds. They won't be able to trim their sails in time to avoid them!”

As the sails were pulled in on Derek's ship, Hugh glanced behind and saw that the pursuing ship was gaining.

Then came a flash of orange, followed by a loud boom heard even over the crashing waves.

His heart leapt into his throat just seconds before a cannonball tore through the railing at the stern of Derek's ship.

Dalla screamed.

Derek cursed. “He'll pay for that!” He grabbed the thick, well-worn handles of his ship's wheel and turned it sharply to the right. The wind buffeted the ship, but seemed to, with the new direction, propel the boat forward at an alarming speed.