Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(61)

Mark looked as if he intended to argue, but Mr. MacLean held up a hand. “It hardly matters now, does it, then?” he implored them. “We are Livingstones. We care for our own. We must think ahead, not about the past.”

“We ought to help them,” Lottie said. “The Mackenzies are exhausted.” There was grumbling, but Lottie was quick to put an end to it. “They have no’ tossed us into the sea when they had every right! They’ve shared their provisions with us, and there are more of us than them! If you canna find it in your heart to help those who have helped us, then so be it—but I have given my word,” Lottie said.

“Aye, we’ll help,” Mr. MacLean said, eying anyone who would disagree. “But I would know what we’ll do when we return to Lismore. We’ve still the matter of rents to be paid.”

“Lottie, will you marry MacColl, then?” Norval asked her bluntly.

The question twisted like a knife in her gut. She looked around at the men standing before her. None of them seemed surprised by the question. “You all know of that?”

Norval shrugged. “He’s made no secret of his esteem.”

“You save us all if you wed him, Lottie,” Morven said.

Well, then, they were back to the beginning, were they? She should have known that there had never been any escape from her being the price to be paid to save all the Livingstones. She’d been na?ve to think that she could avoide it. “We canna speak of what will come next if we never reach Scotland, can we? At present, we need to help the Mackenzies. Set aside your pride at having lost and be grateful we’ve not been walked off a plank.”

“Aye, release us from this hold before we all go mad,” Mark said.

“Give me your word that you’ll work, and work hard,” she said. “Swear it!”

“Aye, we will,” Morven said, and looked around at his clan. “We will,” he said, sounding as if he meant to convince the others.

“Dress, then, and I’ll see you on deck.”

She would marry MacColl, then. If, by some miracle, she escaped the gallows, she would give up her dream of seeing the world, perhaps of having children, and for the sake of her clan, she would marry him. It was, she thought, what her father would have wanted her to do. Perhaps she owed him that. To hang, or look at the walls of a cell, or marry an old man...none of it seemed better or worse than the other.





CHAPTER NINETEEN

AULAY WAS PERCHED high above the ship, working to repair the top sail line that had whipped clean of its ties. Jack Mackenzie was Aulay’s best sail man—he had an amazing ability to shimmy up the masts to the very tops when needed. But his leg injury had left Aulay without a necessary sailor on deck, and he’d had to climb up the mast to do the repairs himself.

He watched the Livingstones below him. They were working under Beaty’s command, and in truth, it was a relief—his men were getting some much needed rest.

Yesterday had been cold and blustery, and today was bright and the wind calmer. Aulay worked for the better part of an hour, finishing the repair just as the sun began to slide into the horizon. He looked toward the setting sun and thought of painting it. A powder blue sky with streaks of gold, a muddy brown line that was the coast of Scotland. Home.

This was the sort of seascape he loved, a vast canvas of water shining gold in the early evening light. Aulay retrieved the spyglass at his waist and looked out over the vista to study it, to remember it, so that he might paint it one day. That thin brown line would grow out of the water as they neared it, rising into sheer cliffs and rocks. The surface of the water would turn an undulating deep, dark blue in the moonlight, and the sky a tapestry of stars on inky black.

He guessed they had a day and a half of sailing, no more, before they reached Balhaire. They would sail between the Orkney and Shetland islands before turning south, down the western coast of Scotland, where his return would be heralded. As they maneuvered into the private Balhaire cove, a bell would sound, signaling their arrival. Mackenzies would begin to appear, a few at first, then groups of them, all of them hurrying the half mile or so from the castle and village that surrounded it, all of them eager to greet loved ones returned from the sea and the world beyond.

Aulay’s father used to come out of the castle to greet him, but in the last few years, he had not—a bad leg ailed him and he seldom walked down to the cove now. No matter—his father always waited eagerly for Aulay in the great hall, his dogs at his feet, a fire in the hearth, a plate of food and a tankard of ale waiting for his son. His mother would be there, too. She had long ago accepted his love of the sea, although she never understood it. She was forever relieved when he walked into the hall, her beautiful smile illuminating the dark old castle.

His brother Rabbie and his wife, Bernadette, would have heard the bell, and would arrive just after him, coming from Arrandale with their children. His sister Vivienne, her husband, Marcas, and their brood would join the family in the hall, and his nieces and nephews would beg to know what he’d brought them. Catriona, Aulay’s youngest sister, would run down to the cove, too eager to see him and hear his tales. She would trek up to the castle with him, her arm linked through his, peppering him with questions.

Catriona would have liked to have been someone like Lottie Livingstone, an adventurer, but her parents would never have allowed it.

Sometimes, Aulay’s oldest brother, Cailean, and his wife, Daisy, would be in residence, having come for a month or so from England where they lived. They would greet him with their young daughter in Cailean’s arms, their son, Lord Chatwick, in tow.