Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(6)

There was a lot of shuffling about, muttered pardons—a word, incidentally, Aulay had never heard his men use before. But these men, as rough and bawdy as any he’d ever known, seemed almost bashful now. They were stumbling over each other to allow the lady to pass.

When they’d cleared a path, Aulay instantly understood what held them in such thrall. The first thing he noticed about her was her hair, a thick wave of unbound silk, the blond of it so light that it reminded Aulay of the color of pearls. Next, her eyes, large orbs the same color as the warm coastal waters of the Caribbean Sea. Plump, rose-colored lips that could bedevil a man. Her almost angelic beauty was as surprising as it was incongruent next to the men in her company. This young woman was bòidheach. Beautiful. To his eye, a pulse-fluttering sight.

Something strong and strange waved through Aulay. He felt himself standing on the cusp of something quite big, as if part of him hung in the balance. He innately understood the feeling. It was something he’d experienced the first time he’d ever been on a ship and had known that would be his life. Or the first time he’d ever lain with a woman. Aulay just knew. He was not one to flatter unnecessarily, but he was bedeviled.

As she approached him, her warm blue eyes fixed on his, that strange feeling of intoxication waved through him again. Her cheeks were pinkened from the wind and from her scrambling about, and her hair, Diah, her hair—it was falling wildly about her face in ethereal wisps. She wore a gown of silver silk over a blue petticoat, the stomacher cinched so tightly that it scarcely contained plump breasts.

Beaty pointed at Aulay, apparently incapable of speech, and even Aulay, who had heretofore thought himself inured to the effects of beautiful women after spending his life in so many ports of call, was a wee bit tongue-tied.

“Captain,” she said, and dipped into a curtsy. “Thank you.”

Aulay slipped his hand under her elbow and lifted her up with the vague thought that she ought not to bow to anyone.

The ship pitched a little, and she caught his arm as if to steady herself, her fingers spreading over his coat and squeezing lightly. “You’ve my undying gratitude, you do,” she said. “I donna know what we might have done had you no’ come along to rescue us.” She smiled.

An invisible band tightened around Aulay’s chest and his breathing felt suddenly short. He realized that hers was not a perfect beauty, but taken altogether, she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

“You’d no’ believe what we’ve been made to endure this day,” she said, and pressed that slender, elegant hand to her heart. “On my word, I thought we’d perish. You’ve saved our lives, good sir!”

“Who have I the pleasure of saving, then?” Aulay asked as his gaze traveled over her face, to her décolletage, her trim waist.

“Oh dear me,” she said, and smiled sheepishly as his men closed in around them, straining to hear. “The ordeal has robbed me of my manners, it has. Larson, sir. Lady Larson.”

“Madam,” he said, and bowed his head. “Captain Mackenzie of Balhaire at your service.”

“Balhaire, of course!” she said delightedly. “No’ an angel from heaven then, but the Mackenzies are legend all the same.” She smiled again with sunny gratitude.

Aulay was confused by the notion of being called an angel and the idea she should know his name, but again, he felt strangely and uncharacteristically tongue-tied.

“Did you see them, then?” she asked, pushing more hair from her face. “The pirates?”

Her eyes, one slightly larger than the other, were unusually bright, sparkling like a clear spring day.

“Thieves, they were. They attacked us without reason.” She turned slightly, addressing all the men. “There we were, sailing without a care and getting on verra well, mind, as we’ve little experience at sea. Save our captain, of course,” she said, and gestured to a man with narrow shoulders and hips. He clasped his hands behind him and bowed gallantly. “When suddenly, out of the mist, a much larger ship appeared and was bearing down us.”

“How did they make contact?” Aulay asked curiously.

She turned those shining blue eyes to him again. “With a cannon!” she said dramatically. “We did naugh’ to deserve it! We had scarcely noticed them at all, and then, boom!” She threw her arms wide, and her breasts very nearly lifted from her bodice, and all the men swayed back, as if expecting them to launch. When they didn’t, his men quickly shifted closer.

“My poor father has been badly injured with a wound to his torso,” she added, her smile fading.

“And so have you,” Beaty said, pointing to a rip in the fabric of the skirt of her gown and the bloodstains around it.

She glanced down, to where he pointed. “Oh, aye, indeed. I’d forgotten it in all the confusion.”

“Ought to have a look at it, Miss Livingstone,” said one of her men, who stood somewhere behind the crowd of Aulay’s men. “Gangrene and the like.”

Gangrene. Aulay rolled his eyes.

“Gangrene!” she cried, alarmed.

“I think you need no’ worry of that,” Beaty said, glancing peevishly at whoever had said it.

Lady Larson suddenly leaned down, gathered the hem of her skirt, and lifted it to midcalf.

Aulay’s men surged forward like a wave of cocks and balls, their gazes riveted on her leg, and the little boots and stockings she wore. “I donna see it. I suppose it’s a wee bit higher still,” she said, and much to Aulay’s surprise, she lifted the hem to her knee.