Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(60)

“What? Aye, yes—I will,” she promised, startled by his outburst.

Aulay pivoted about and resumed his place at the wheel beside Beaty.

“Well,” she said on a rush of breath.

“I’d take offense to that, I would,” Duff said. “But he’s no’ slept any more than the rest of them.”

Lottie yanked the blanket tightly around her shoulders. “I’ll have a word, then.”

“I’d no’ advise it, miss,” said the Mackenzie man, but Lottie was already moving.

Beaty was at the wheel, and Aulay stood with one arm braced against the mizzen, staring ahead into the sea. He cast a look over Lottie, sweeping all the way down to her toes, then up again before turning his attention to the sea before them.

Well then—the man who had made passionate love to her had gone missing, apparently. “Can we no’ help?” she asked.

“Aye, you can help by making them cease that ruckus,” he said curtly.

The man she’d captured had returned and was as surly as he had been the first day of his captivity. “I meant with the sails, or on deck.”

“No.”

“Your men are in need of rest—”

“I am well aware of it.”

Lottie’s gaze narrowed. She moved closer. “What is the matter with you, then? I know we’re a burden to you, but I—”

He suddenly spun around on her. “You’ve no idea what sort of burden you are, or how tall and wide your burden lies on my shoulders.”

He said it so violently that Lottie took a step backward, shocked.

Aulay glared at her a moment, and then sighed to the sky. “Bod an donais,” he muttered. “Lottie... I beg your pardon. I donna generally release my frustrations on the fairer sex, but Diah help me, I donna know what to do with you.”

He was confusing her. She didn’t know what he meant. “I’ve kept away.”

“That’s no’ what I mean,” he said, his eyes piercing hers. “We’ve eaten what was no’ ours to eat. We’re almost out of water. We return to Scotland like dogs with our tails between our legs, and by all rights, you ought to be hanging from the yardarm, aye?”

She flinched.

“But I donna know what to do with you and yours,” he said.

Lottie’s heart began to beat erratically. The ship suddenly rose up on a wave, then crashed down again, and he caught her waist to steady her. But Lottie could not be steadied and neither, apparently, could he. The cold hard truth of their situation had seeped into their membranes and was mixing with the desire in their veins. Esteem and thievery did not mix.

There was only one thing she could do, and that was to free him. “You know what to do,” she said. “There is only one thing you can do, Aulay. I know it. I expect it.”

Aulay blinked. His hand dropped from her waist.

“Give me leave to speak with my clan,” she said quickly before he could say something to dissuade her. “We can help you, we can relieve your men, we can give you all an opportunity to rest, aye? It’s the least we can do after all the trouble we’ve caused.”

He pressed his lips together, exchanged a look with Beaty, then nodded. Lottie didn’t linger. She found it painful to see him so conflicted over the grief she’d caused him. Diah, but they were sailing home on an ocean of grief, all of them, all of them full of sorrow for so many reasons. It was heart-crushing.

*

THE LIVINGSTONES CHEERED when she appeared around the crates. They were all in their shirtsleeves, unwashed, boasting scraggly beards. “Aye, I knew she’d come to save us!” Norval shouted.

“Give us our freedom, Lottie,” Morven said. “They’ve no right to treat us in this manner. ’Tis no’ gentlemen’s rules.”

“They are angry with us,” she reminded him. “And they treat us as we treated them.”

“Aye, and we’re angry, too, we are! They’ve thrown our whisky overboard!” shouted Gilroy from somewhere near the back.

“Have you forgotten that we threw their wool off to make room for the whisky?” Lottie reminded them. “And what good is the whisky to us now? It’s caused more trouble than it ever might have been worth.”

“What? Why?” asked Mark Livingstone.

Lottie stepped up onto a crate. “Lads, you know the Campbells will be as thick as a pack of wolves waiting for it, aye? And if no’ the Campbells, then the crown. The Mackenzies must hand us over or be accused of collusion. We’ll be caught one way or another, and then what?”

“We worked hard to make that whisky, Lottie!” insisted Mark. “Harder than we’ve worked at augh’ else!”

“We did, aye we did,” she agreed. “But it was always a risk, was it no’? We knew it could bring us trouble before we ever built the first still, aye?”

“We might have sold it yet!” Morven said. “The fault was in sailing to Denmark. We’re no’ sailors, no’ one of us, save Gilroy.”

Lottie winced with the painful truth in that. “That is my fault—”

“No, Lottie, the fault belongs to all of us,” Mr. MacLean said. “Our choice was to sail to Denmark or lose the whisky ere we had a chance to sell it. All of you know it is true—we met and said these things ere we ever put a foot on Gilroy’s ship. Have you forgotten?”