She curled into him. Her delicate hand reached up and wrapped around his thigh. She gave it a squeeze. “I imagine you’d eventually get hungry, aye?”
His laugh was sharp, pleased. Iain let the wanting steal over him. It was a powerful thing, his desire for her, and he kept it at bay, hidden close, like the blood that pumped just beneath his skin. He let that darker thing sound now in his voice. “There are other ways a man can sate his hunger.”
He shifted, adjusting the slightest bit. He’d stiffened like a beast in heat, and he’d not startle her with his relentless, insistent body. That was his secret to keep.
Until they wed.
He traced her face, fighting the urge to meld his hand lower along her body.
“Oh, indeed?” Her voice trembled and her cheeks flushed hot pink.
Such a lovely innocent, his Cassie was. He treasured her. He’d take it slowly, savoring every moment . . .
He opened his eyes. His head was buried in his hand. His other hand lay clenched in his lap.
“But which?” The words came to him through a tunnel, reverberating like the clang of a bell. “Sir?”
“Which did he say?” Another man had spoken.
“Orkney. Sure as eggs is eggs, ’twill be Stromness Harbor.”
The voices came from a distance. His mind fought them. They’d been discussing their course. He’d put head in hand to think.
It was ships and harbors.
Not courtship, nor heather, nor the sweet, silken feel of Cassie in his arms.
He felt the thin wisp of fabric wadded in his fist. A delicate handkerchief bearing the letter C.
Though it rose from the depths of his soul, the sound he made was slight, like the creak of ship’s timber. It was anguish.
“Captain had too much whisky last night,” a man ventured. The others laughed merrily.
“Sir?”
“What?” His voice was a jagged snarl.
He raised his head. There was the ship’s mate, two sailors, the cabin boy. All stared, confident in him and waiting for orders.
How long had he been lost in thought? A heartbeat? Two? It had felt like a lifetime.
“Will we be docking off Orkney?” a sailor asked.
MacNab could only muster a blank stare.
“The boys, sir. We need to drop the boys,” the first mate said. The other sailors called the man Patch, though MacNab had never understood why. His mate was neat as a pin, in possession of both eyes, and with nary a stitch out of place. “But Morrison’s men, they’re blackguards one and all. They’ll fetch a tidy bounty. As for the schooner—”
“Aye,” MacNab said, remembering. They’d captured the schooner. That prize alone would fetch a lavish sum. He’d installed a skeleton crew, and the two ships were sailing in tandem. His men would be paid well when they pulled into port. “Aye, to the Orkney Islands. To Stromness. As for the boys, we’ll use a portion of my purse to get them back home to Glasgow.”
MacNab jammed the handkerchief back where he kept it forever in his sporran. He held his hand before him. Studied it, fisting and opening his fingers. He eyed the patch of tight, grizzled skin, black like charcoal.
He stood and caught his reflection wavering in the glass of the porthole. A matching scar darkened his brow and temple, like the shadow of his memories.
Abruptly, he grabbed a bottle of whisky. The sea rolled and the Charon pitched, and the amber liquid hit the side of his tankard as he poured. It spilled into a small puddle on the table.
He’d avenged Cassie. His life was no longer of use to him. But he had men who depended on him. His eyes went to his first mate. MacNab had failed Cassie. But he could make it so that another could build the life that’d been denied him.
“Go above deck,” he ordered Patch. “Set a course for Orkney.”
Ten
“I said, will you have the purse in gold or men?”
The first mate was staring at him, and MacNab realized he’d been asked a question. He pushed away from the rail, studied the leaden sky and scowled. “Gold,” he answered, distracted.
“Good on you,” Patch said quickly, nodding. He waited for some response from his captain, then clarified, “For getting these slavers, Black John. Good on you. Morrison was a bad man.”
“We’re all bad men,” MacNab muttered darkly.
He spun on his heel. A group of sailors were congregated on the foc’sle. He called to them.
“Aye, sir,” they answered in unison, springing to their feet. A silver flask was quickly pocketed. It didn’t escape MacNab’s notice.
“Lazy dogs,” he growled. “Drink on your own time. Snap to. The wind’s down. Hoist the yard. Let out the sails.” His eyes flicked from the uniform gray of the sky to the limp sheets of canvas overhead. “Unfurl the bloody lot of them. We need to catch the wind or we’ll be dead men pulling into Stromness Harbor.”
“Speak not of dead men,” a voice grumbled from behind.
MacNab turned. Sailors were a superstitious lot, and Haddie, the cook, was the worst of them. He was a benign old sort, so named for what felt like the only food he ever prepared. Haddock chowder, haddie pie, smoked haddock . . .
“You’ll call the reaper himself to the ship,” the old man warned again.
MacNab registered his words, but he couldn’t muster a care. The reaper himself? His muscles clenched. ’Twould just bring relief. “Shut it, Haddie. Save your tripe for the mess table.”
“I hear you can buy wind on Orkney,” the ship’s boy said.
“Aye, ’tis true,” a sailor chimed in. “I’ve seen it myself. The wind seller. She sells it, tied in knots upon a thread.”
“Och, lads,” Haddie grumbled. “ ’ Tis the Lewis witches who are the most powerful of their kind.”
“Shut it,” MacNab ordered. The only thing that tried his patience more than foolish superstitions was the mention of his home isle. “Shut the devil up, the lot of you.”
“Black John,” Haddie hissed, frantically shaking his head. He made a warding sign with his fingers. “Speak not of . . . him. You can’t call on him, that way.”
“What the dev—”
Haddie hissed again. “You say his name, you call him to us. You say his name and seal our fate.”
“Superstitions,” he grumbled, then was distracted by a ruckus above. A man was tangled in the rigging, his leg stuck through the webbed net of the ratlines. “Bloody hell. ’Tis the bloody drunken sailor who seals the fate of any ship.
“You”—MacNab pointed at a gaping seaman—“up, now. Man the sails. We’re losing wind.”
The sound of birds cawing carried to them on the still air. All eyes looked up to see three gulls reeling overhead.
“Three gulls.” Haddie made the sign of the cross. “ ’ Tis death herself. A sign. Someone will die. I warned you, Black John. You called her to us.”
MacNab’s body stiffened. Three gulls. The memory cut him. He thought back to another day. Another death. “What did you say?” he asked the cook in a dangerously quiet voice.
Haddie stared, terrified. MacNab didn’t know whether it was the gulls or his own ire that scared the old cook more.
“Damn you and your gulls,” MacNab told him. “Damn it all to hell.”
Haddie flinched.
“I’ll not have the fears of fishwives spread on my boat.”
“You’ve sealed our fate,” Haddie whispered again.
“What did you say?” MacNab grabbed him by the collar. “Answer me.”
“Black John,” the first mate pleaded. “He’s just an old man, aye?”
“Do you all believe such foolishness?” MacNab pushed the cook away. He eyed his crew, all silent, frozen in place. “The lot of you. Are you all fools?”
MacNab stared, his blood running cold. He flexed his hand and then rubbed it over his sporran.
“You have the deck,” he snarled to Patch, then turned and stalked below to his cabin.
Eleven
She dug h
er delicate fingers into the neckline of her bodice.
Iain’s eyes widened. “Och, lass, whatever are you—”
She plucked her handkerchief from her corset and began to wipe at some bit of dirt on her hands.
“Ah.” Inhaling deeply, he gave a quick clearing shake to his head. “You’ll be the death of me, Cassiopeia MacLeod.”
Iain studied the bit of linen she held. “Ohh,” he said, “I remember this.” He took it gently from her fingers. Gave her a broad smile. “You wiped my face with it. On the first day we met.”
“Aye, and I had a time of it getting the stain out,” she snapped saucily. “Had I known you’d come to me every day smudged with some bit of bog on you, I’d have spared myself the trouble.”
“You sassy girl.” He grabbed her, growling and nuzzling at her neck.
She laughed, a lighthearted trill that thrilled him.
Cassie held the handkerchief out. “Well, would you like it?”
“Oh, I’d like it.” He cocked a brow, giving a more wicked meaning to his words than what she’d intended.
“Iain!” she gasped with mock outrage. “I meant my handkerchief. I’d like you to have it.”
“You would?”
She gave him a pert little nod. The look in her eyes was that of a cat who’d eaten all the cream.
“Why ever is that?”
She gave a quiet shrug. “I hate . . . I hate when we part. I’d like to think you had some reminder of me.”
“Cassie, love.” He grew serious. “How could you ever think I’d need any reminder? Don’t you know I think of you every moment? The sun reminds me of you. The moon in the sky, the wind off the sea. I could roam far, far from here, ’til the ends of the earth, and still I’d need no reminder of you.”
He groaned. There’d been knocking.
“Sir?” The first mate sounded tentative, calling into the cool dim of Black John’s small cabin.
MacNab smoothed the delicate square of linen along his thigh, tracing his finger gingerly along the faded C. He folded it, and folded it again, returning it to his sporran.
“Aye, come.” His voice was tired. He was tired.
“We can’t find the wind, sir.” Patch stood stiffly before him, respectful, waiting.
His mate wasn’t a bad man. An Irishman, MacNab believed. He wondered what unlucky whims of fate had brought him just there. To be the first mate on such a ship, working for such a man. Patch was neat and upright, with a head of smoothly combed black hair and sailors slops that were, though not crisp, kept remarkably clean. His shoulders were pulled back, hands clasped behind, and MacNab noted the bearing of youth—tensile, robust—still writ on the man’s bones.
MacNab wished for once to have the walls of formality down. He’d ask the mate what strange chain of events brought him to choose such a hard life. He’d advise him to leave, to take his portion of the Morrison’s bounty and build a cottage on a square of land somewhere. Find a wife to fill it with bairns.
His mind went to his own bairns, robbed from him on the day he lost Cassie, wee blond babes who’d never be.
“We can’t tack, sir,” Patch continued.
MacNab snapped back into the moment. He flexed his hand and scrubbed it over his brow and eyes. He could ill afford these daydreams. These musings and memories that plagued him.
He rose from his bench. “How far are we from the coast?” “Close now, and drifting closer,” Patch said. “A current pulls strong, into the firth. The helmsman worries we’ll run aground on the shoals.”
The air on deck was utterly still, and with it came an eerie quiet. There was no slapping of water, nor cawing of birds. The sails hung slack in their rigging. He looked to starboard. The sea was a smooth sheet of mercury, like a vast looking glass stretching clear to the horizon, where it seemed simply to curve and fade into a haze of white.
He turned a slow circle, sweeping his eyes across the distance. The schooner that’d been known as Morrison’s Pride sailed ahead of them, manned by what crew he could spare. And just beyond her, a ghostly mass wavered above the water. The Isles of Orkney. Their intention was to sail up along the eastern shores, circling around and back down to Stromness.
MacNab’s eyes narrowed. “What the devil?”
Leaning against the rail, he extended his spyglass. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Morrison’s stern had just jutted to the right, so sharp and so sudden it was as though the helmsman had spun the wheel, aiming them straight for the rocks.
“Why do they not tack starboard?” Patch asked, aghast.
“They can’t,” MacNab said simply. “There’s no wind to carry them.”
“But she’ll run aground.”
“Aye.” MacNab’s voice was grim. “She’ll run aground.”
Morrison’s Pride began a slow spin, moving lazily in the water, her bow pointing now to larboard, now to starboard, and back again, in a ghastly and languorous dance.
All hands stilled, watching in horror. They knew it was the Charon’s own fate they witnessed.
A great collective breath sucked in, so loud it was as though the wind had picked up once more. But it was simply his men bearing the sight of their prize schooner as she slammed into the rocky coast.
A terrible sound like felled trees carried to them across the still air. Rocks chewed into the Morrison’s hull, a great screeching and groaning, followed by the screams of her men. She’d pitched hard but hadn’t sank, and MacNab was grateful to see the crew scrabbling across the deck like crabs, clambering onto shore.
“We’ll never make it,” Patch muttered.
MacNab turned his back on his prize. The crew he’d installed on the schooner would live to see another day. He had his own crew to save now.
As though suddenly gripped by a giant hand from the deep, the Charon herself stuttered, tossing men stumbling on their feet. A horrible shuddering scrape thundered in the lifeless air. They’d drifted into one of the shoals.
“We’ll never make it,” Patch said, louder now.
“Aye. We’ll head through.”
“Sir?”
“Through,” MacNab said, turning to face his crew. Some strange charge stirred his blood. He felt alive for the first time in so long. Awakened by the prospect of facing his death. Eager for it? He shoved the thought quickly from his mind.
He needed to save his crew. They’d lost their prize, but he could save his men. “We sail through the Pentland Firth,” he told them. “Set a course for Stromness through the firth.”
Blank and frightened eyes met his.
“But, sir,” Patch murmured for MacNab’s ears alone. He’d not dissent before the other crewmen. “The firth—”
“I ken the stories.” The Pentland Firth was a narrow and treacherous channel. Unpredictable tidal swells spun whirlpools and wrenched towering waves from water that moments before might have appeared as smooth and still as polished stone. It was some of the most perilous sailing in the world, and none but a few sailors were mad enough to brave it.
“Step lively now,” he shouted. “All hands to the larboard rail. Patch, fetch the topsail.”
His mate stared for a moment, bewildered.
“We rig a sea anchor,” MacNab said. “Toss it over the larboard side.”
The first mate’s eyes grew wide. A buzz rose instantly, the still air humming to life. All sailors knew about sea anchors, but few had ever attempted one.
“A . . . a sea anchor?”
“Aye. The wind may be dead, but the current pulling into the firth is strong. We submerge the topsail. The current catches it . . .”
“And,” Patch finished, his understanding dawning, “you believe it’ll pull us from the rocks and shoals. Like a great underwater sail.”
“Aye, exactly that.”
Patch’s brow furrowed. “But even if we can hitch the current, it’ll drag straight into the firth.”
MacNab flexed his hand. He’d deal with that when it came. “One concern at a tim
e.”
He turned to stare over the rail, eyeing the deceptively glassy water. There was stillness at his back where there should’ve been an explosion of activity.
He spun his head, shooting a black gaze at his first mate. “You heard my order. Topsail. Now.”
Men scrambled to action, skittering up the rigging like spiders. Patch alone faltered. “We can’t do this,” the mate said quietly, emboldened by his fear. “I beg you. The Pentland Firth . . . it will mean our deaths.”
“You’d have us dash up along the rocks instead?” MacNab challenged. “ ’ Tis a cowardly course. If we wait, and drift, praying like a bunch of pious widows for a breath of air, we are only allowing the fates to decide.”
He shaded his eyes, looking toward the narrow channel between the Orkney Islands and the Scottish mainland. “Sailing through the firth is a gamble, but the prize is our lives. I’ll not just bob and float like a lame mallard to be pitched onto the shoals.”
His gaze went to the sailors clambering back down the rigging, topsail in hand. “And if a course of action means our death, then so be it.”
Patch gave him a single, stark nod. MacNab had known he would. Just as he hoped he was making the right decision and not sending this good man, this veritable stranger, this shipload of strangers, to a watery grave.
The Charon skidded again, and this time the groaning of timber was otherworldly. The boat pitched and heaved, and that great underwater hand was a fist now, punching at the hull, sending her in a sluggish spin, stern first, toward the rocks.
Sailors scrambled to him at the larboard rail, and MacNab led them, tying off ropes, making a great kite of the topsail.
“Now!” MacNab shouted, and they cast the sea anchor. “Pay her out slowly, now.”
The canvas dropped to the water like a dead weight, but its descent below the surface was maddeningly slow. It fluttered like a ghostly swath of kelp, drifting and sinking.
There was a sudden tug, a snapping of ropes, and the sail faded into black. His men shouted their excitement, their feet shuffling across the deck, holding desperately to the ropes as though to the leash of Cerberus himself, as the sea anchor dragged them to the railing.
Ladies Prefer Rogues: Four Novellas of Time-Travel Passion Page 21