Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(28)

Aulay said nothing, the thought souring his appetite.

She told him about how the blast that had hit their ship had knocked her father across the deck, and he’d been impaled with a piece of wood from the hull. “I thought he was dead. I turned about to fetch Morven, but another explosion came, and the top half of the main mast fell and scarcely missed us. And then another explosion, louder and more violent, only farther away. I didna realize that we’d fired on the other ship.”

She was speaking quickly, as if to purge it all from her memory. She told him how bedlam had followed, of how barrels of whisky rolled into the sea from a hole in the side of the ship’s hull until her brother—Drustan, the giant, she said, threw himself across the hole and stopped them.

She told him that she’d turned her back on her father for only a moment, and he’d used that moment to yank free the piece of railing with his hands. She took another long drink of wine, then handed the bottle to Aulay.

“I tried to staunch the bleeding with my hands,” she said, and stacked her hands on top of one another to mimic what she’d done. The color in her cheeks was rising. “There was so much blood. Then someone was pulling me away and Morven was there with a blanket or perhaps a bit of that mangled sail, and my father, he was pleading with me, ‘Donna let go the whisky, Lottie.’ It was impossible to think. Everyone was shouting and the ship was roiling beneath my feet so that I could scarcely keep my balance, and my insides were being tossed about. I thought I would vomit.” She laid her hand against her throat and released a slow breath.

She was still terrified—Aulay could almost feel it filling the room. Many years ago, he’d been caught by a particularly bad storm and had lost control of the rudder. They’d tried to manage it with the sails, but in winds that high, it was no use. With every wave that crashed into the ship, he thought he would draw his last breath.

He had awakened on deck the next morning to bright sun and a battered ship. One of his crew had gone missing, no doubt blown overboard. It was only by the grace of God he’d lost only one man. It had been the most harrowing night of his life.

“It was madness,” she said. “My brother Drustan was quite upset, and as you’ve seen, he’s no’ right in his head. He can become...destructive,” she said carefully. “And Mats! Diah, he believes himself to be a man, but he’s no’ a man, he’s a lad still, and he canna save the world, no matter what he believes.” She hopped off the desk and began to pace, rubbing her nape with her hand. “Gilroy said our ship was taking on water. The other ship was on fire, and they pulled around and sailed in the direction of Scotland. My heart was in my throat—I believed all was lost, we’d all drown. My father was cursing, trying to rouse himself when he could no’ lift his head, and his face as gray as the sky.” She shook her head and turned away from Aulay. “My father, he took my hand, squeezing as tight as he might, and said that I must pay him heed.

“I didna want to heed him,” she said, clearly distressed. “I didna want to know how bad our circumstance. But he’d no’ let me go, he kept gripping my hand, squeezing it,” she said, shaking her hand. “He said, Lottie, donna lose the whisky, aye? If you lose the whisky, all is lost. There is no more money.”

She seemed to be speaking more to herself, her gaze on the middle distance, as if he were not present.

“I didna believe him—how could it all be gone? But he swore he was telling me the truth. All gone.”

She sank slowly onto a chair, her hands squeezed between her knees.

Aulay leaned forward. “Lottie, lass...”

She glanced up as if he’d startled her. “That was the moment we saw you,” she said. “Can you imagine? At first, we thought it was the other ship, come round to finish us off. But it was you. You flew the colors of Scotland. It was a miracle.”

Aulay frowned. “A miracle, was it? If you believed it so, then why did you deceive us?”

“Oh.” She glanced at her hands. “You willna care for the answer.”

“Tell me.”

“Well. I tried to think what to do, but my father, Diah, he kept shouting, ‘Save the whisky, Lottie, think of the Livingstones we left behind, Lottie, they’ll be sent from their homes if we donna pay the rents, Lottie.’”

Things were becoming a little clearer to Aulay now. She was not ruthless, but an inexperienced woman thrust into an untenable situation by her father and the men of her clan.

“And then it came to me—I knew how to save us all and the whisky. What we needed was another ship.”

“Obviously.”

She smiled ruefully. “Do you no’ agree that it was a miracle of heaven that you came along when you did, Captain?”

“No.”

“I suppose it must seem unfair to you. But we didna know if you were friend or foe, and as Duff pointed out, it hardly mattered either way, for if you were a friendly ship come to help, there’d be no room with your cargo and our whisky. And if you were pirates? Or worse, Campbells?” She turned her hands palm up and shrugged. “In either event, we had no choice but to take your ship. Would you no’ have done the same?”

“No,” he said. “Did it occur to you, then, that you might have accepted our offer of assistance and asked about your cargo? We might have taken some of it. You might have even offered a small share in your profit to transport it, aye? Or you might have taken what we could hold and sold it in Amsterdam.”