Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(27)

She picked up the bottle and leaned closer to him, unaware—or perhaps very much aware—that the vee of his shirt afforded him a tantalizing glimpse of her breasts. “There was every need.” She fit the bottle into his hands, then straightened up again.

“Tell me,” Aulay said, and drank. “I should like one day to tell my children of the day I was captured at sea by a beauty, and I would know why.”

“Donna call me that,” she said abruptly.

“Beauty?”

She glowered at him.

Aulay shrugged. “Verra well. When I tell the story, I’ll cast you as an old hag.”

She suddenly smiled, and it lit her face. It lit the cabin. “I would prefer that to beauty,” she said, as if the word offended her.

“You are the first woman I’ve ever met who did no’ care to be considered beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Tell me,” he urged her.

She yawned. “You’ll be disappointed, that I know, for you’re a man of the world. We are only peasants and our dilemma is verra simple, it is. We’ve had hard times, we have, and we canna let the whisky go. It’s all we have.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, returning the wine bottle to her.

“We’ve never been accused of refinement,” she said with a snort.

Aulay didn’t follow.

“There, you see? A man of your refinement canna understand. I refer to our circumstances at home.”

“Lismore Island,” he said. “The giant would that he were there now.”

“Aye,” she said, and rubbed her eyes. “Lismore Island, a wee spit of land on the western coast of Scotland, scarcely good for living at all. The south end is inhabited by the MacColl clan,” she said, holding a hand out. “Where the fishing is quite good and the land arable. We have the northern end,” she said, holding out her other hand, “good for naugh’ but a few sheep, a few cattle and perhaps a wee bit of linen, but for the rabbits that have overrun us and eat our crops and burrow under our houses.” She shifted her gaze to her father. “We donna earn enough to pay our rents, and our laird is quite unhappy.”

“Who is your laird?” Aulay asked curiously.

“Duncan Campbell.”

Aulay knew of Duncan Campbell. He’d become laird two springs ago when Jacobites who had not accepted the defeat of Prince Charlie had murdered his brother, Colin. Aulay also knew him to be an ambitious man, as most Campbells were. They aimed to be the only licensed distiller of whisky in the Highlands, an end that they aggressively pursued.

“My father is our chief, aye? He’s a wee bit starry-eyed.” Her expression softened as she gazed at the slumbering figure. “He means well,” she murmured and leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her abdomen. “But he’s quite careless.”

“So you are determined to sell whisky to afford the tenant rents,” Aulay said, filling in the pieces.

“’Tis our only hope.”

“Must you go to Aalborg?”

“How I wish I’d never said it!” she moaned. “But our laird, he suspects we were making spirits. He kept coming round, unannounced, to have a look. He inquired after us in Port Appin and Oban and he heard talk. We decided we had to sell what we had ere he found it and we lost all that we’d spent. But because he suspected it, and my father had recklessly talked of it around the island and in the nearest ports, we thought it no’ safe to attempt to sell in Scotland or England.” She dropped her gaze to her lap. “I was the one to suggest Aalborg, aye? My family and more of us on the island are descendants of Danes from Jutland.”

Her rationale was not surprising to Aulay. Entire clans had been dispersed by the retribution heaped on the Highlands after the Jacobite defeat, and those that remained survived by any means possible. Even clans that had not taken the side of the Jacobites were suspect, and any whisper of it was all the English forces needed to raid cattle and villages. Livelihoods had disappeared and every remaining man, woman or child worked to rebuild and move on from those bleak years.

“So we made sail,” she said. “There was no’ a soul about, and yet, no’ a day later, a ship flying the king’s colors had found us, a tiny wee dot in a vast gray of sea against a vast sky of gray.” She turned her gaze to Aulay. “Who was it?”

“Campbell, lass,” Aulay said. He’d thought it a royal ship, but now, he had a different idea. “I’d wager he had someone watching you.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. “’Tis my fault, all of it.”

Aulay felt a twinge of sympathy. He’d been chased a time or two, particularly in the years before the rebellion when he and his brother, Cailean, had smuggled in French goods. He knew how fear gripped a belly when a bigger, stronger ship gained on you. It was only because of his intimate knowledge of the Scottish coastline and his crew’s ability to trim sails faster than most that he’d escaped when he had. “Your ship was too small, Lottie. The naval ship, its masts were taller, its sails fuller. You could no’ have outrun it.”

“Aye, so we discovered.”

“They fired first?” Aulay asked.

She didn’t answer right away, her gaze on her father. “He was concerned for me,” she said softly, and drew her knees to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. “He was fearful they would catch us, and...well, the spoils of war, aye?”