Devil in Tartan

by Julia London

  “Can we escape them?” she asked.

  “If we remain vigilant, aye. We had a good start on them, we did.”

  Lottie closed her eyes a moment, gave a slight shake of her head. “So much has happened.”

  Aulay put the candle aside, picked up the beef, and handed it to her.

  She took a bite. “Do you think you must account for your life straightaway when you die, or is there a wee bit of time for grace?”

  “I donna know,” he said, taking a seat beside her.

  “Will you know the purpose of it all? Of this life? Will you know if it was worth the hardship?”

  The lass was clearly tormented. She was so young, at least fifteen years younger than Aulay, and perhaps had never contemplated these questions before. Did anyone ever really know their purpose on this earth?

  “Perhaps you ought no’ to think of these things if they upset you, aye?”

  “When I was a wee lass, only eight years, my father took me with him to Port Appin, and there we met a Scot with four ponies on a string, aye? I was quite taken with them, that I was, and particularly a black one. He had a wee star just between his eyes,” she said, gesturing absently to her forehead. “My father said, ‘Do you want the pony, Lottie?’” She laughed ruefully. “What lass of eight would say no, I ask you? So he turned to the man and said, we should like a pony, and he offered him a price. The man said, ‘Why these are Percheron ponies,’” she said, mimicking the man. “Spanish war horses, they are, the finest on a field of battle. My father didna question it, no’ for a moment. He said, ‘For my lass, only the finest pony. Percheron, you say? Spanish you say?’” She shook her head. “We returned home with that pony.”

  Aulay didn’t see the point of her story. “He was kind to you, then,” he said.

  “That night, my father and my mother had an awful row about it. I heard them through the walls, shouting at one another about my pony. I thought my mother meant to send the pony away, but I’d already named him Stjerne. He’s my horse to this day.” She glanced at Aulay. “But he’s no’ a war horse. He’s a Fell pony. An unremarkable Fell pony with a star between his eyes.” She leaned forward. “Was that his purpose, then, my father? To make his children happy, no matter the cost? My mother adored my father, but he was so bloody impetuous, so careless with his purse, that they argued often. His carelessness hurt us all, it did. But this? This?” she said, gesturing around them. “This was all my doing, Aulay. He was careless, but I committed the greater sin, did I no’? I was arrogant. I thought I knew how to save us from his very bad idea of distilling whisky without license, and it cost my father his life. I could have set it all to rights and married Mr. MacColl, but I would no’ hear of it.”

  Aulay blinked—he hadn’t realized there had been a marriage offer in the mix.

  “I thought him too old, and I was selfish—I didna want to be his wife, I didna want to live in his house. In the end, I behaved in the same way my father behaved all my life—without regard for the consequence.” She shook her head and turned her gaze away. “The worst of it is that I didna have the chance to apologize.” She put the rest of the biscuit and salted beef aside, and with a weary sigh, lay down on her side. “What is my purpose, then, I ask you?”

  “Donna weep,” he said.

  “I’ll no’ weep. I’ve wept all that I can, I have.”

  “Lottie...your father was a man, capable of deciding his own actions. You may have suggested this scheme, and no one could fault you for seeking a solution. But he took your idea. He knew the risks. He knew verra well what he did.”

  Her response was another sigh.

  “Come, take the air, then,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  He hooked his hand under her arm, drawing her up to a sitting position again. “You need air, and your men need a leader.”

  She snorted at that. “I’m no’ a leader.”

  “Aye, you are. They are the captives now, and they are restless. They need you.”

  “Have Duff lead them, or Mr. MacLean. Anyone but me.”

  “I didna know your father well, but I know he thought you better than all of them put together, aye? He would have wanted you to carry on, Lottie, and you must. Your brothers are wandering the deck like the dead. Your clan is drunk and belligerent. I’ve lost enough time and money as it is.” He caught her face with his hand and made her look at him. “Now is the time to be the man your father was no’. His purpose, whatever it might have been, is no’ yours. Your purpose might be much greater.”

  She blinked. She smiled softly. “How can you be so kind to me, after all the misery I’ve caused you?”

  It wasn’t kindness, it was expediency. He was nearly certain of it. “I need you if I am to see us all safely home to Scotland.”

  “Aye, and what is to become of us then?”

  It was a quandary of the highest order, and one Aulay hadn’t yet sorted out. He would think of it when they were safely at Balhaire. “We’ll decide when we reach Scotland, aye?”

  She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and closed them tightly. “Promise me, Aulay—promise me you’ll give me the blame. Only me.”

  She was asking him to hand her over to authorities and no one else. If he had any doubt of it, she added, “I’m responsible for all of it. Let the others go free and I will gladly surrender, on my honor I will.”

  Something hitched with a sharp pain in Aulay’s chest. He didn’t want that. He wanted justice, but he couldn’t bear to think of giving Lottie to the authorities. He stroked her cheek. “We’ll speak of it when we near Scotland—”

  “No.” She pulled his hand from her face and grasped his head between her hands. “I beg you, make me this promise now, Aulay. Give me your word!”

  Good God, this woman was remarkable. Who among them could make that sort of sacrifice? He peeled her right hand from his face and kissed her knuckles. He slipped a hand around the nape of her neck, and pulled her closer. Of all the women, of all the ones who might have snatched his heart, might have allowed him to see beyond the sea, it would be this one, this beautiful, doomed woman. He quite admired her in the moment, but blooming beside his admiration was grief. He knew very well what would happen to her if he agreed to it—she would likely hang; at the very least, she would be remanded to prison.

  Tears glistened in her eyes. “Promise me,” she whispered, and touched her mouth to his.

  That tender kiss aroused him more than any torrid kiss ever could. Her fingers fluttered around his ear, her arm went round his neck. She moved her mouth on his, teased him lightly with her tongue, and Aulay’s body, starved for a woman’s touch, instantly ached for more. He took the reins of that kiss and moved to her neck. Lottie dropped her head back with a gasp of pleasure, and everything in Aulay ignited with white-hot, desperate anticipation. He smoldered, his body slowly turning to ash. He cupped her face and held it tenderly, but at the same time, he pressed her down onto the bunk. Lottie arched into him and pushed her thigh between his legs, pressing against an erection that was suddenly and powerfully present.

  He paused to gaze down at her. Her pale blue eyes had gone dark with hunger he understood. What was he doing? Would he bed his prisoner? Diah, how deep this extraordinary esteem pulled between them.

  She was looking up at him with an expression he did not understand. “What?” he whispered breathlessly as he caressed her head, her cheek.

  Lottie put her hands on his chest and slid them up, to his shoulders, sank her fingers into his hair and answered, “Everything.”

  Aulay groaned. He kissed her cheek, her mouth. And then he reached for the hem of her shirt and untied it, slipping his hand onto her bare skin, over her ribs, to her breasts. He dipped down to press his mouth to the skin of her décolletage, kissing the swell of her breasts. Lottie sighed with pleasure, thrust her hands into his hair, and Aulay went spiral
ing into sensual havoc.

  He pushed the shirt up and took her breast into his mouth at the same time his hands slipped into the waist of the trews and between her legs.

  Lottie reached for the ties of the trews and pulled them free, pushing them down her hips, and Aulay abandoned himself. He was moving by instinct and sensation, his hands and mouth finding every place on her body that made her gasp with pleasure. He freed himself from his trousers almost desperately; his need to hold her and have her overtook every other thought. It was a need he’d never felt so sharply, had never experienced so deeply in his marrow. He hiked her leg up and pressed the tip of his cock against her on a moan of pleasure, sliding deeper, and then with torturous patience, completely into her, all the way to the hilt, before slowly sliding out again.

  He began to move in her, his mouth on her mouth, on her neck, his hands on her breasts. Lottie’s hands slid over him, her fingers digging into his flesh, urging him to move deeper into her. Wave after wave of sensual gratification rolled over him, spinning him like a top toward a release that was building to a ferocious crescendo. Lottie clung to him with one leg wrapped around his waist, her mouth on his skin. He was completely lost, more at sea than he’d ever been in his life, lost and clinging to the only thing that could save him—this woman, this astonishing woman. He could feel his deliverance mounting as she spread her arms and arched her neck, her eyes closed, letting him carry her along in his vortex of pleasure, washing this wretched week away from them. Nothing existed beyond the two of them, beyond her scent and the feel of her body around his.

  When the vortex sucked them under, Aulay collapsed on her. For several moments they both sought their breath. But when they had it, Lottie cupped his face in her hands and kissed him gently. Reverently.

  But the sound of one of the crew shouting up to another on the mast managed to slip into his consciousness, and Aulay remembered who and where he was. He suddenly broke the kiss and stood up, taking a step backward. Lottie caught herself on the bunk, breathing hard, her gaze fixed on him and filled with need.

  How could he have done it? How could he have taken her like this, after all that she’d done, knowing that he would hand her over to authorities in a few days? “Clean yourself up,” he said, his voice surprisingly hoarse. “Get some rest.”

  She didn’t move. She remained braced against that bare bunk, watching him like a cat. Wanting him. He could plainly see her desire, could feel it mirrored in him, and God help him, it ran just as deep in him.

  Righting his clothes, Aulay walked out of that cabin before he did something mad. His sorrow at what was to come was already closing in on him, squeezing him from all sides. Sorrow for her. For him. For what might have been before he’d had a chance to have it.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  COLD WAS SEEPING into Lottie’s joints. She groped for the woolen plaid she’d found tucked beneath the bunk bed in the captain’s cabin, pulling it tightly around her. It was as damp as everything else. With a sigh, she opened her eyes and blinked back her fatigue.

  Drustan was beside her, snoring like her father once had. Pain sharpened around her spine, reminding her of her loss. Not that she needed any reminding—she’d dreamed of him for the last two nights. In her dreams, she was trying to catch him, but he was always just ahead of her, disappearing before she could reach him.

  But there was one dream that stood out from the others—that was the dream where she caught up to her father, put her hand to his shoulder, and he turned with a smile and said, “I’m no’ dead, pusling. I’m here with you now, am I no’?”

  That dream had startled her awake.

  Lottie pushed herself up and looked at the mound that was her brother on the floor next to the bunk. They were in the forward cabin now, where she’d decamped that night after Aulay had left her. She turned her head to the porthole and looked out at the sea.

  She’d been completely undone by their coupling. He’d released her from misery, had shown her compassion and hope and a desire like she’d never felt in a moment she’d needed it the most...but that desire had faded away with the light of day.

  It seemed so long ago now. A lifetime. She hadn’t spoken to him since that night, and it surprised her that she should feel his absence so keenly. Perhaps as keenly as she felt her father’s absence, but in a different way. She mourned her father, dreamed about him, missed his smile. But she craved Aulay like water. When she wasn’t grieving her father’s death, she was obsessively thinking about those moments with Aulay on his bunk, escaping from her grief, swimming headlong into another sort of grief entirely. She was desperate to remember the way he’d felt inside her, and the way he’d held her so tightly and carefully...and just as desperate to forget it.

  Lottie was not an experienced woman—her brief affair with Anders not withstanding—but she knew instinctively that there was something quite profound about their frantic lovemaking. At the very least, it was much different than anything she’d experienced with Anders.

  It was funny how often she’d thought of Anders in the last year, but since she’d stepped foot on this ship, she’d scarcely thought of him at all. She wondered, as she gazed into a vast landscape of various shades of gray, what she might have done had she met Anders again in Aalborg. It hardly mattered to her any longer—with the perfidy she’d discovered in Aalborg, he had faded into nothing.

  What time is it? She hated not knowing time, but it was impossible to keep track when one was at sea, particularly when the skies looked the same as the surface of the water. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She felt oddly at peace. Fatigued, and full of longing. But the riot inside of her heart had calmed, the turmoil of having lost her father had begun to subside into acceptance. Her thoughts were turning to what lay ahead of them.

  She yawned, stretched her arms overhead, then climbed off the bunk and over the sleeping form of Drustan. Mathais was in the other bunk. After their father’s death, he had claimed to be made sick by the motion of the sea, but Lottie knew he was too proud to allow his grief to be seen. Yesterday, he’d gone out of the forward cabin and had made himself of use on deck, working hard until Duff had sent him staggering back into the cabin, where he’d fallen onto the bunk, exhausted, and into what Lottie hoped was a dreamless sleep.

  A Mackenzie had been kind enough to bring her an ewer with some water, and a small bowl for washing. The water was dingy now, and it wasn’t possible to change it, as the fresh water was being rationed. This, she understood from Duff, who fancied himself something of a seafarer now. He’d also explained to her that they had outrun the ship that had been following them.

  “Turned round and went back to port, I’d wager,” he’d said yesterday as they stood at the stern. “The Mackenzies are puffed up like dead bovines, what with their successful maneuvering, but Gilroy believes we might have tacked east to north and been quicker about it.”

  The ship suddenly rolled to the starboard side, and Lottie nearly lost her balance. The seas were rough and her sea legs, so sturdy in the first few days, were wobbly.

  She washed her face and combed her hair with her fingers, then bound it at her nape. She hoped she was afforded the luxury of a bath before her trial, and some decent clothes for it. That was something else she’d become numb to—the prospect of a trial and punishment. Hanging or prison, whatever would happen, seemed so far in the distance and so impossible to comprehend that she couldn’t feel anything for it. Just...nothing.

  She grabbed the plaid from the bunk and wrapped it around her shoulders, and quietly quit the cabin.

  The air was cold and wet, but a welcome departure from the hard sun and stiff wind they’d had for the last two days. More than once, she’d had to catch herself from being blown overboard. She would need to be vigilant today, too—the seas were rough and the ship was rolling and pitching with the swells.

  She saw Duff on th
e deck below, arguing with a Mackenzie. She had always had a soft spot for the big man, and she would love him always for the way he’d taken Drustan under his wing. He’d kept a close eye on him, and had confided in Lottie that Bernt had asked him to keep Drustan in his care in the event of his demise. Lottie didn’t know if that was true, or Duff’s acting out his own grief, but in her despair, she’d been quite grateful for the help.

  Duff had even cajoled Iain the Red into teaching Drustan how to whittle. Drustan was quite taken with it, worrying over a piece of the cask spine for hours on end. His distraction was a welcome relief to them all.

  She looked toward the bow and noticed one of the Mackenzie men leaning against the mast step, his eyes closed. He was sleeping standing up! Duff had explained to her how arduous it had been to sail against the wind and to keep pace enough to outrun the other ship. The Mackenzie crew had worked round the clock.

  As she moved cautiously across the deck, she was startled by the sound of pounding on the deck hatch that led to the hold below deck. Her men were held there, she knew, and, Duff said, quite restless.

  She made her way to Duff’s side. “What is that rumpus?” she asked.

  “Your clan, aye?” Duff said, and slanted her a look. “They’ve drunk all the whisky below, slept it off and now they want out.”

  “Can they no’ come out, then? A wee bit of air would help soothe them, aye? They canna escape.”

  “While we work around them?” the Mackenzie man said, and snorted. “We’ve had twice the work because of them, and no pay, and we’ll no’ have them underfoot.”

  “Can we no’ be of some service to you, then?” she asked.

  The man grunted.

  “Duff!”

  The three of them turned about. Aulay was standing just above them on the quarterdeck, his hands braced against the railing, glaring down at Duff. “Can you no’ control them?” he asked, gesturing to the hatch.