Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(36)

She never finished her sentence. She simply walked out the cabin door.

He heard the cask roll in front of it once again, sealing him in here with a slumbering, dying, man.

*

THE DAY WORE on, a host of people in and out to see after the old man who, from Aulay’s observation, was not on the mend, but on the decline. He slept quite a lot, moaned in his sleep, but when awake, he would somehow rally and begin to talk.

Diah, did he talk. He asked about pirates, if they should have fear of them sailing around the horn of Denmark. He asked what a ship like this cost a man of Aulay’s stature? How long would salted beef keep? Did he know Victor Mackenzie of Oban? He was a fine fellow but missing an eye. His right one.

Aulay was allowed on deck thrice in the course of the day. It was a gorgeous day at sea. There wasn’t another ship about, nothing but bright sunlight and a good stiff western wind to send them on. Beaty was on the quarterdeck with the Livingstone captain. It seemed, from a distance, as if some arrangement between them had been struck.

On his second foray, those Mackenzies who had been freed to work the rigging leaped down and surrounded him. His guards seemed not to mind.

“How do you fare, Cap’n?” asked Billy Botly, whose arm had been set in a splint.

“Keep your heads,” he told them in Gaelic. “We’ll be in port soon enough.”

“No’ right, Cap’n,” said Geordie Willis. “No’ right at all.”

“No,” he agreed. “We’ll sort it all out, we will. But for now, you must do everything in your power to no’ lose the ship.”

Of course, they readily agreed. It was their only livelihood.

On the third outing, someone had been offended—he walked out to quite a lot of shouting about Scottish rogues and bastards in English and in Gaelic, and fisticuffs broke out between two men. But two Mackenzies pulled a third Mackenzie sailor back and chastised him for the fight.

That seemed odd to Aulay, but it wasn’t until he’d been returned to the cabin that he realized why. His men did not like to see him bound...but they didn’t attempt to do anything about it. They didn’t attempt to take him, they didn’t demand concessions. They didn’t even ask.

What in blazes was happening? Had she really charmed them all? She was an astoundingly beautiful woman, they were all painfully aware of that, but surely that did not rob all these men of righteousness.

Speaking of that women, Aulay had not seen her since he’d unthinkingly kissed her. The physician had come to reapply the salve, then had wrapped his wrists in what was left of Aulay’s shirt. Another man brought him food.

The sun had disappeared by the time Lottie returned to his cabin. She carried a bucket of fresh water, soap, and a soft rag. She didn’t speak to Aulay, but settled in next to her father and bathed his face.

Her father tried to push away her hand, but he was losing strength. She dabbed the water onto his forehead while the old man muttered something about a cow.

She glanced over her shoulder at Aulay only once, perhaps to assure herself she still had a captive, and didn’t look again until the physician appeared a quarter of an hour later carrying a cup, the contents of which smelled foul.

“What is it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

“A healing broth laced with laudanum.” He slipped his hand behind the old man’s head and held the cup to his mouth, forcing it in between his lips. The old man sputtered and tried to turn his head.

“Drink it, Fader,” Lottie said soothingly. “It will help you to feel better, aye?”

“Only a corpse would feel better after imbibing that,” he said coarsely. “Where are my sons? Bring my sons.”

“They’re needed below just now,” she said, and exchanged a look with Morven. “Please, Fader, donna speak now. Mr. Beaty says we ought to be in port by the morrow.”

“Aye, as I guessed,” the old man said, although it was impossible that he might have guessed anything in his current state. He shifted about on the bunk as if settling in for the night. “I’m lying here, useless to you all, but I can still sense how fast the wind moves us. Once a sailor, always a sailor.”

“You were never a sailor,” Lottie said sweetly.

“Aye, but I might have been,” he said through a yawn. “I verra well might have been.”

Lottie and the physician stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the old man for what seemed an eternity. Finally, they turned as one away from him.

“I’ve only so much laudanum, Lottie. He needs a proper physician.”

“Aye,” she agreed. “How will we pay?”

The physician shook his head. “I’ll ask around and see if there is any coin aboard this ship.”

He walked across the room to Aulay and went down on one knee to have a look at his wrists.

“There’s no’ a farthing in the pocket of any Livingstone,” she said. She removed her gown from a peg on the wall.

“Perhaps a Mackenzie then,” the physician suggested.

She snorted. “We’ve taken too much from them.”

“They donna have a choice,” the physician said. He rewrapped Aulay’s wrists. “Healing nicely, it is,” he said, standing up. “In a month, you’ll no’ recall it.”

“I will recall it,” Aulay assured him.