Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(82)

Mathais and Morven had passed the time pretending swordplay in the bailey. Rabbie Mackenzie happened to see them and invited them to learn real swordplay. Apparently the Mackenzies had long been known for training Highland soldiers. Mathais was beside himself with glee, and every afternoon, he returned to the gatehouse, sweating and dirty, his eyes gleaming, speaking rapidly about all that he’d learned as he thrust his phantom sword here and there around the little room Lottie used.

Lottie herself had been taken under the wing of Catriona and her friend, Lizzie MacDonald, a frequent visitor to Balhaire. The two of them liked to gossip about all the gentlemen in and around the Highlands. Lottie guessed Catriona to be close to her thirtieth year and wondered why she’d not been married off. She was the daughter of a powerful laird, quite bonny and spirited. How had she avoided it? Catriona doted on her nieces and nephews and sighed with longing when one of the women from the village brought her newborn bairn around to be admired.

“One day, I should very much like a bairn,” Catriona said wistfully, then smiled at Lottie. “I’ve no’ given up hope. Have you?”

Lottie’s face must have fallen, for Catriona suddenly gasped with alarm, and her cheeks flooded pink. “I beg your pardon, Lottie! I do so beg your pardon,” she said again, mortified that she would mention a happy future in the face of a trial.

Lottie didn’t see Aulay as much as she would like. Apparently, he spent quite a lot of time with his father. “Examining the accounts,” Catriona said ominously. “We owe so much.”

One afternoon, however, Aulay sought Lottie out. He wanted to take her and Mathais down to a cove. “We’re no’ to leave the castle walls,” Lottie reminded him.

“What, then, have you lost your daring?” he asked, arching a brow.

No, she had not.

Aulay showed her and Mathais a path that went around the village, through a small forest, and down to the beach. The land jutted out into something that resembled a comma, providing a natural shelter in a cove that was large enough for ships. “Imagine it,” he said, sweeping his arm to the water. “We once had two ships moored here.” He dropped his arm and stared at the water, as if seeing those two ships, long gone now.

Lottie folded her arms around her belly. It never failed—every time his ships were mentioned, she felt a wee bit ill.

Aulay crouched down on the sand and pointed across the water. “There, do you see?” he asked. “A red mark, halfway up.”

Lottie squinted. She could see it—red markings that looked like writing.

“Our initials,” he said. “I swam there on a dare from my brother Cailean and climbed up with a bit of paint in my pocket.”

Mathais gasped. “How did you do it?”

“I was a good climber, aye?” Aulay said, and laughed.

“I was challenged like that once, to jump from a cliff into the sea,” Lottie said absently. “The cliff was ten feet high, perhaps a wee bit higher. But I didna account for my skirt. It came up around my head and verra nearly tumbled me upside down.”

“We had to pull her out of the water,” Mathais added. “It took four of us.”

Lottie laughed at the memory. Times had been hard on Lismore, but they’d also been blissfully free. How odd that the freedom she’d had there had felt so confining. It didn’t seem so now.

They walked along the water’s edge, picking up shells. Mathais boasted that Rabbie Mackenzie had said he’d make a good soldier, and he’d be willing to train him when the time came. “That’s what I’ve long wanted to be, aye?” he said.

Lottie looked at him with surprise. “I’ve no’ heard you say so!”

“I rather thought you’d no’ approve and insist I am needed at home. But I must be me own man, Lottie. That’s what Rabbie says, aye? Every man stands on his own two feet and faces the world.” And then he promptly backed up over a rock and tripped, righting himself just before he would have tumbled to the ground.

“A lad canna face the world if he’s on his arse,” Lottie muttered out of Mathais’s hearing, but Aulay heard her, and had to turn his back to them to hide his laughter.

They strolled along the shore toward the path leading back to the castle, but once they began the steep climb, Lottie paused and glanced back at the cove. So did Aulay. “What will you do now?” she asked. “Will you have another ship?”

His jaw clenched. “Unlikely,” he said tightly. “What we have will go to pay the loss of cargo. There’ll be nothing left for a ship.”

Lottie said nothing. Her guilt choked all words of condolence from her. And she did not like to think about what was glaringly true—she’d done to Aulay what her father had done to his family. She’d lost his livelihood with foolish choices. But Lottie thought she might have divined a way to fix it, at least in part, should she be granted the opportunity. The opportunity, it seemed, would be the difficult part.

Whatever Aulay thought of her now, for the space of one idyllic afternoon, his anger had subsided. She tried to imagine them together like this always. She tried to make it into a dream she could hold and keep. But it was impossible. There was a cloud over that dream that was growing darker and darker as the date with the justice of the peace loomed.

*

ONE MORNING, LOTTIE woke up with a start, her heart pounding. She’d had a thought in the last minutes of her sleep, the sudden reminder that in three days time the justice of the peace was due to arrive to adjudicate her taking the Mackenzie ship. In practical terms, that meant any day now, really, as no one knew precisely when the judge would appear.