Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(52)

Beaty was in the forward cabin, seated at a table, cards spread before him, his beefy hands on his knees. He was playing a wagering game with Billy. Jack Mackenzie, who had been injured in the initial attack, tried to gain his feet when he saw Aulay, but the wound was to his leg and he fell back into his chair.

“Cap’n!” Beaty said jovially. “I’d greet you properly, that I would, but I’m bound to this bloody chair.”

“I see,” Aulay said, and signaled MacLean to free him.

“The old man has passed,” Aulay said as MacLean undid the chains. “The Livingstones have surrendered.”

“What is this? Where are they?”

The booming voice of the actor could be heard just outside, and a moment later, he burst into the smaller cabin, crashing against the doorframe and throwing his body into the room as if he thought he was entering a fight. But seeing none, he drew up short and looked around him, confused.

“Have you no’ heard?” MacLean asked. “There was trouble at port,” MacLean said. “We must make a play for open waters.”

“What trouble?” Duff demanded, his gaze swinging back to Aulay. “There was no trouble. We fetched a doctor quick as a hare, we did. I gave them the name of a buyer—”

“A thief,” Aulay said. “Men are looking for the whisky and they mean to take it.”

“Diah, you donna say,” Beaty said.

“I donna believe you,” Duff responded heatedly. “I spoke to the lad in the customs office myself, aye? He gave me a name.”

“He gave you a thieves’ den,” Aulay snapped. “If you find my account lacking, you might inquire of your mistress.”

The actor gasped. “I would no’ dare impose on her now,” he said with great indignation, as if Aulay had suggested bedding her.

He didn’t need this actor to tell him what sort of state she was in. He had been in close company with her and her father for three days and knew how much she loved him. But death was part of life—people passed, and sails still needed setting, skies still needed watching, tides still came and ebbed. Time would not accommodate them to properly mourn the old man.

“Have we the necessary provisions to reach Amsterdam?” Aulay asked Beaty.

Beaty shook his head as MacLean freed him from the shackle. “No’ with so many men aboard, aye? We’re already low on water.”

“Scotland?”

Beaty thought about it. “If we head north, and catch a good wind, then aye. But any trouble at sea, and we’ll find ourselves in a mare’s nest, we will.”

“Scotland, then,” Aulay said without hesitation.

“What of the pay?” Beaty demanded.

“There is no pay,” Aulay said impatiently.

“No pay!” Beaty echoed and stood, shaking out his legs. “And what are we to do with this sorry lot?” he asked, gesturing at the two Livingstones.

What, indeed. “We need them at present,” Aulay said. “We’ll need every able man, until we are certain no one follows.” He and Beaty could discuss how to present them to authorities later. Right now, he needed their cooperation.

“You can keep the whisky,” the actor offered. “Set us free in Scotland and keep the whisky.”

Aulay snorted. “I donna want your bloody whisky—it is as useless to me as it is to you.”

The actor winced. “Och, we’re done, Robert,” he said to MacLean. “We’re done.” He shifted his gaze to Aulay. “Unload the casks, then.”

“By all that is holy, Duff, what is the matter with you, then?” MacLean exclaimed. “You canna throw overboard all that we’ve worked for!”

“Aye, and all that hard work has brought us naugh’ but trouble, has it? First, with our laird, now with this captain and some Danish ruffians. Bernt was wrong,” he said, and put his hand on the other man’s arm. “Bernt was wrong and now he’s bloody well dead.”

MacLean closed his eyes a moment, then opened them with a sigh. “Aye,” he said. “Get rid of it, then. Most of it, that is—save a cask for the lads. We’ll need a few drams after the events of this wretched day.”

Aulay didn’t care to debate the fate of the whisky in that moment. “Make haste, lads, we weigh anchor within the hour.” He had very little hope that they would somehow emerge from this debacle unscathed, but he had not time to contemplate it. He had a ship to put to sail. And he had to convince Lottie that her father would be buried at sea.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“WE’RE MOVING, AYE?” Mathais said, and stepped up to a porthole to look outside. “Aye, we’re sailing.”

“What?” Lottie found it a supreme effort to lift her head, which she had been resting against Drustan’s much larger one. The poor lad had been crying the last hour, unable to harness his emotions, unable to understand what had happened to his beloved father.

The only difference between her and Drustan was that she understood what had happened to their father. But she could no better curb her emotions than he could.

She remembered the grief that had followed her mother’s death, but she’d forgotten how wretched it had felt, how grief made her feel numb, as if there was no feeling in her limbs or her heart—all of it had been swallowed by her sadness. She’d been made deaf by it, too—she’d not heard a word of what anyone had said to her since returning from port, other than how he’d taken his last breaths with Mathais and MacLean at his side. There had been condolences, pats to her shoulder, kind words whispered in her deaf ears. Her spirit, her thoughts, her heart, had been utterly obliterated.