Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(2)

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?”