Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(80)

She straightened when she saw him and put her hands demurely in her lap. Aulay was suddenly sick of ale and set his tankard aside. “Did you enjoy the evening, then?” he asked, aware that his tone was accusatory. That had not been his intent.

“As well as one might, under the circumstances, aye,” she said. “We are most grateful to you and your family for it.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment, but this evening had been planned in spite of his feelings about it.

She stood up. “I ought to retire, aye? I should have gone with the others, but I...I enjoyed the pipes, I did.”

The pipers had stopped playing a half hour ago, hadn’t they? Aulay couldn’t remember. “Where is your guard?” he asked, looking around the room.

“On my honor, I’ll go straightaway to my room.”

He flicked his gaze over her. “I’ll escort you,” he said. His sense of outrage had been sufficiently drowned for the evening.

“Are you certain? You’ve made it right clear that you canna bear the sight of me.”

He flinched inwardly. He could not recall all that he’d said that afternoon after the ship had sunk, only that his speech had been full of rage. “I am a gentleman,” he said, and bowed over his leg in an exaggeratedly drunken manner, then offered his arm. She did not take it, but clasped her hands at her back and walked beside him.

They stepped into a bailey awash in moonlight, the sort of night Aulay most loved on the sea, when the light of the moon illuminated the water’s surface and reminded him of just how vast the earth was.

“I think the way the night light shines on the surface of the sea is quite bonny, too,” she said.

Startled, Aulay looked at her. He was just drunk enough that he hadn’t realized he’d actually paused to look up. He took a moment to admire how the moonlight made her hair almost glow. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

“You painted it. Several times.”

He looked at her mouth, her lips darkly plum in the moonlight. “You made a greater study of my paintings than I knew,” he said, and began to walk.

Lottie did, too. “I found them fascinating.”

“You found them empty,” he scoffed.

“I never said such a thing. I said there were no people in them. But they were no’ empty, Aulay. They were your view of the world and they were beautiful. You’re verra talented, that you are.”

Something in him shifted a wee bit off center. He’d assumed she couldn’t appreciate his view and he wasn’t entirely certain she did now. “Do you mean to flatter me, Lottie? It willna change anything.”

“Flatter you?” she stopped walking and turned around to face him, her hands on her hips. “That is the second time you’ve accused me of it. I have no need to flatter you, Aulay.”

“No need? Then tell me, madam, what was your intent on the day my ship sank when you began your speech about what a good man I am, aye? Did you no’ mean then to ingratiate yourself to me so that I’d no hold you responsible for it? Did you think me so utterly besotted that if you fawned I’d forgive you for the loss of my ship?”

She gaped at him. “I never believed for a moment you’d forgive me. I would no’ forgive me! I will go to my grave regretting it!”

“Then what was your point?” he snapped.

She sighed. Her shoulders sagged. “Do you think me so heartless that the days on your ship meant nothing to me, then? My point was to tell you that I esteemed you. That my regret was as deep and as wide as is the ocean of my regard for you. I’ve never known a man like you, Aulay Mackenzie. You have my complete, incandescent esteem.”

His drunken heart began to thrum in his chest. “Then you are mad, Lottie. I am the man who was taken by a lass, who couldna save his cargo, or his ship or his clan, aye? There is naugh’ to esteem.”

Her eyes widened. “Aulay,” she said, and touched his arm, her fingers sliding down to his wrist, and tangling with his fingers. “How wrong you are! How verra wrong you are. Aye, we caught you by surprise and we took your ship. But you bore that captivity with more grace than a dozen kings. You helped me, in spite of what I’d done, in spite of what you’d already lost. You were kind even when the worst had been done to you. You saved my life in Aalborg, when you were well justified to have left me to the wolves. You brought us back to Scotland, and when it looked as if all was lost, as if we’d all be caught and accused, you saved us all again. Aye, you lost your ship, and for that I am so verra sorry. But you saved us all, Aulay. You put those souls ahead of your own, and you are, you truly are the best man I have ever known, a remarkable, decent, kind man. All I wanted to say that day was I will always hold you in my heart.”

His heart began to spin. He was spinning. He had needed to hear those words more than he might have guessed. He tucked his arm under her elbow, drawing her forward. “I am furious,” he said.

“I know.”

He cupped her face with his palm, gazed at the smattering of freckles that had appeared in the last few days. At the long dark lashes and brows that contradicted the pale color of her hair. At the intense blue of her eyes. “I donna trust you.”

“Entirely reasonable, aye? But I’ve confessed it all, Aulay. It is out of your hands.”

His gaze fell to her mouth.