The Highlander's Pirate Lass (Brothers of Wolf Isle)

by McCollum, Heather

  Muriel smiled. “Brawny bunch of men. They train all the time as if they expect other clans to come war on our isle, trying to take it. I think they’ve learned a lot about being civil from Lark these last two years. All they talk about is repopulating the isle and the Macquarie curse. Ye know about the curse, don’t ye?”

  “That no bastards can be born to the Macquarie brothers and no one can chop down this tree or they can’t father any children. That curse?” Eliza asked, her gaze sliding over to where Beck was speaking to Cecilia. Eliza couldn’t see his face, but Cecilia glanced her way, her eyes wide, before turning her back and walking away with Gavin.

  “Aye,” Muriel said. “A sad story about a lass with a bastard growing in her belly, the sin of the Macquarie chief at the time. She hanged herself, and her mother cut the bairn free, raising the wee lass to hate them all.”

  Eliza turned back to stare at the woman. “Did she kill the chief?”

  Muriel shook her head. “Nay, but she cursed the clan.” She pointed at the blade in the tree. “Thrust that in the tree, still wet with her daughter’s blood.”

  “And the tree remains dead,” Eliza whispered.

  “But there are little green buds on it.” Muriel pointed. “They never open up. Even in the dead of winter they sit there as if waiting for the other brothers to learn to love. ’Tis romantic.”

  Eliza’s face whipped back to her. “Learn to love?”

  “Aye. ’Twill break the curse fully, and the Macquaries and Wolf Isle will flourish once more.” Eliza just stared at her, and Muriel shook her head. “Ye really didn’t know much about the curse.” She shrugged. “They don’t like to talk about it.”

  I cannot father a bastard. No matter how often Beck and she would come together like they did last night, he would spill his seed outside her. Did that matter? No. At least she didn’t think so. But he would need to marry and learn about the elusive emotion called love, something she believed to be more tale than truth. Her chest squeezed tight, and she rubbed her hand over it, feeling her mother’s brooch press there under her smock.

  “I better get back with little Lark to our cottages before the sun goes down,” Muriel said. “’Tis nice to meet ye. Ye should come out to our home to see Grissell.”

  “Aye,” Eliza said absently. What would a child made by Beck possibly look like? It would have blond hair and a mischievous smile. She walked with Muriel out of the gate and turned toward the tall masts of the Calypso tethered at the end of the long dock.

  The ship seemed to call to her as her mind tumbled around everything. No one was around. Alice had followed the children and dogs down the path to watch the crow waltz her fluffy arse off the isle. Beck had walked with Callum that way too.

  “Tsk,” she said and gathered her rumpled petticoats to stride down the wooden length toward the unguarded ship. “Anyone could untie you and sail away.” She patted the gunwale as she climbed aboard. I have touched every part of her. I love her more than any person except my brothers and Adam’s family. Beck’s words surfaced in her mind. What would he do if someone captured the Calypso?

  Eliza walked to the far side, needing to feel the familiar shift of water under her again, and looked out at the calm surface. The sun began to set off to the right, casting an orange glow over the sea as if the orb itself had sunk into it, dissolving into a thin layer to stretch across the top. She inhaled, smelling the mix of salt and land, the seaweed and fresh breeze off the water. She felt pressure behind her eyes for a moment and shook her head. Damn, she missed her family, the crew of the Devil’s Blood and Captain John. They had replaced her mother, father, and baby brother. Was that love? Had she already lost her heart to them all?

  The crew was often dirty and crass, but they were loyal and brave and would never harm a child or rape. They stole and brought down ships, so some would call them pirates, but others would call them saviors. Eliza certainly did.

  “I will talk with him again.” Adam’s voice drifted toward her from the path, the sound carrying over the flat water.

  Eliza padded over in the slippers Lark had lent her and peeked around the side of the quarterdeck to see Drostan and Adam walking the path toward the ferry dock.

  “He’s apparently tupping her,” Drostan said, “and she has no desire to wed. If he gets her with child, our whole clan is doomed.”

  “He knows to pull out,” Adam said.

  Drostan snorted. “That’s not foolproof. Any other lass, if he got her with child, would marry him, but Eliza is not any other lass.”

  “Nay, she is not,” Adam said, his voice gruff.

  What did that mean? That she wouldn’t dress in fancy gowns and preen her curls like Cecilia? And I won’t marry him. Eliza felt her cheeks grow warm.

  “He seemed amenable to breaking it off when I talked with him this morning,” Adam said.

  Breaking it off? Beck was going to stop giving her tupping lessons? Kissing her? Helping her? Breaking what off? Blasted foking hell.

  The two men walked until she couldn’t hear them anymore. She turned, swatting at her rumpled dress. “Bloody petticoats,” she said, feeling the tightness in her throat as she leaned against the boards at her back. One word from his brother, and Beck was cutting her off.

  “Son of a jackal,” she whispered. She traipsed toward the captain’s cabin, going first to the private jakes, feeling the need to be somewhere small. I’m not hiding. I just have to pee, she told herself.

  To fit in the room, she lifted her skirts up high so that they surrounded her. “Stupid costume,” she said, half falling out of the stall, her hands swatting viciously at the raised layers of fabric. Men wrapped women up in stays and skirts to imprison them.

  Break things off! Squeezing the stupid layers out of the privy, Eliza strode to the wooden chest at the end of the broad bed to find stacks of trews, tunics, and woolen hose, and a leather captain’s coat. The coat was heavy and smelled of Beck: clean man, fresh sea air, leather. “Damn Scotsman.” She ignored the warm sensation that trickled through her like a waterfall thawing in the spring.

  He must be furious about what she said in front of his family. Ashamed of her. Eliza’s face burned. She had no idea that Adam had warned him off of her. Damn meddling brother. What happened between her and Beck was their business only. Except when you tell everyone in the great hall about it.

  She pressed cool palms to her cheeks. “Nay,” she said out loud as if the word could stop remorse from settling in. She would never let someone pile more shame on her, not Adam or Drostan or Beck, and especially not a waspish, tactless woman like Cecilia. Eliza had enough regret about her character as it was. Reckless, unthinking, selfish, and oh so stupid when she got mad.

  She pulled out a set of trews and a tunic. In minutes, she had tugged off her petticoats, bodice, stays, and smock. After donning the trews, she found a rope that could hold them up around her narrow waist. And the tunic was wide enough to accommodate Beck’s broad shoulders and chest, so she tied the extra fabric in two places to keep it closed.

  Eliza headed out the door to the main mast. As on the Devil’s Blood, with each push against the iron rung to lift her higher, she felt like she was rising above the chaos and pain in the world. Higher and higher she climbed, feeling the sway of the ship enhanced by the height. She inhaled the sea breeze like it was clear, cold water and she was dying of thirst. The cool air was a balm to her flushed face.

  The enclosed topcastle was perched near the very tip of the soaring mast. She climbed within and leaned back against the encircling side, her legs straddling the opening around the mast. Gaze stretching out over the glossy water, she felt the pressure of loss again and pinched the brooch through her linen tunic. “What should I do, Mama?” she whispered. There were so many problems. What to do if she couldn’t find John. What to do about Beck and his family. Lark had said she could stay on Wolf Isle, but Adam wouldn�
�t want her here unless she married his brother. And if Beck wanted to stay away from her, she’d just shown his entire family how stupid she was.

  “I will travel on to surrounding isles looking for Captain John,” she said to the sky. Should she return to Eilean Mòr and wait? She’d left a note for John there, scratched into the wall of the chapel, pointing him to Mull.

  Eliza scanned the entire horizon that she could see from her perch, leaning around the thick mast. “Damn you, John,” she whispered. “You left me landlocked.” Landlocked with a brawny, enticing Scotsman who was planning to break things off. The thought pressed on her heart. I won’t give him a chance.

  “Eliza?” Beck’s voice shot up to her, and she ducked. “Are ye hiding?”

  Bloody hell. I don’t hide anymore.

  She straightened, her fingers curling around the taut sail lines. “What do you want, Captain Macquarie?”

  “To know what ye are doing up there.”

  “Finding some peace.”

  “Are ye wearing my clothes?” She could tell from his voice that he was standing directly below.

  “I cannot climb up here in petticoats. No fretting. I will return them. I’m not a thief.”

  He cursed. “I don’t believe anything Cecilia insinuated,” he said, his voice gruff, making her look down the sturdy pine trunk that had been polished and planted in the center of the Calypso. His head was tipped back, and she studied the pinched lines on his tanned face.

  “The crow said I was a thief?”

  “Crow?”

  “Overbearing, preened black feathers, always squawking, and easily attracted by sparkly things.”

  He snorted. “Cecilia is jealous of ye and not a very nice person to begin with.”

  So she had accused her. Another flame of anger licked up inside Eliza. Apart from helping Captain John acquire items for the children and women captured at sea, she did not steal.

  Below her, Beck gripped the iron rungs and began to climb. “Before she left, I told her that she’d end up with her hair cut off or herself stabbed if ye heard that she was repeating anything ye just said inside.”

  She could feel the mast shake under Beck’s weight the higher he climbed. Should she let him know what she’d overheard? “You don’t want people to know you are teaching me about tupping?”

  He came level with the bottom of the small topcastle where she stood, ducking to poke his head up through the hole where the mast soared. “Do ye?” he asked, his one brow raised high.

  Looking down, she shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. I won’t be seeing them.” Nonchalance was her best defense.

  He frowned and tried to climb higher, but his broad shoulders would have to squeeze together for him to make it through. “Why don’t ye come down?”

  “I will when I’m ready,” she answered. “Did you like the tarts?”

  He blinked, pausing at her switch in topics. “Aye, very much.” A slight grin grew over his frown. “Especially if ye made them for me more than the others.”

  She looked back out at the sea. “I told you that I like to learn things. Throwing daggers, how to swive or tup or whatever you call it when on land, and…” She looked back down at him. “How to bake tarts.” She swallowed as they stared at one another, the fading light making his gray eyes look dark and roguish. “I doubt very much you would take money for your lessons, so I decided to pay you in your favorite tarts.”

  “Bloody hell, I would never take money from ye for tupping.” He looked so angry at the thought that her stomach relaxed a bit.

  “Like I said… I will pay you in tarts.”

  His hand reached up and wrapped around her bare ankle. She’d left the useless slippers below, using her toes to help steady her on the climb. “Ye won’t pay me in anything, Eliza. Now come down.” The rough skin of his hand slid around her ankle in something of a caress. How could a simple touch of skin on skin and a few words spoken in his burbling northern accent send warmth through her?

  Eliza looked away, shaking her foot free. “I don’t think your future wife would like you teaching me to tup. Perhaps we should…not have more lessons.”

  “Oh,” he said, his tone even. “But a wife is quite far off in my future.”

  She stared down at him, her brows pinched, the anger curling tighter inside. “Your brothers certainly expect you to wed soon. To help them break the curse of Wolf Isle.”

  “Damn,” he murmured, his lips pinching. “That has nothing to do with us right now.”

  She could no longer play this farce. “Didn’t Adam tell you to stop whatever this is with me?” Her voice exploded. “Because he knows I won’t wed one of his brothers and start breeding to populate the isle?” Her arm flipped around to encompass Wolf Isle as if she were depositing squalling babes everywhere.

  “Bloody hell, Eliza,” he said, his teeth clenched together. “Did he say that to ye?”

  Her hands gripped tighter to the wall of the topcastle. “I just figured I’d save you the trouble of breaking things off with me.”

  “Come down.”

  “I’m fine right here.” It was a place he could not reach her, and she could not reach him. For if she could, she might do something dreadful. Like kiss him. It might be the last time. She looked back out over the water so that she wouldn’t keep noticing his generous mouth and remembering what it could do to her. “You need no advantage, Beck Macquarie. You have a mission to marry and breed, and I am a troublesome woman who might condemn your isle.”

  “Dammit, Eliza.” The mast began to shake, and she looked down to see him pressing upward.

  “What are you doing?” she yelled. “You can’t fit up here.”

  “The hell I can’t,” he said, pushing one arm up through the hole until his shoulder appeared squashed against his head. The second shoulder and arm followed, and he shifted his large body upward until it engulfed the small space.

  Eliza pressed her back against the curved barrier. There was nowhere to retreat with his muscular body pressed against her. It was all she could do to arch her back so as not to smash her face into him.

  “Eliza, look at me.”

  She kept her fierce frown but met his gaze.

  “What did Adam say to ye?” he asked.

  The heat from his body permeated the tunic she wore. It drew her like the damn sun on a winter’s day. She swallowed, staring him in the eyes. “I overheard him and Drostan talking. Adam said that he’d talked sense into you this morning.” While I was stupidly baking tarts. “If I had known that you’d been amenable to his warning, I wouldn’t have…” She flapped a hand toward the castle. “I would have found a different way to shut the crow’s mouth.”

  “Eliza.” Beck’s hands came up and gently rested on her stiff shoulders. Damn his strong, warm hands. She fought not to turn her cheek into one. For a moment she closed her eyes until she remembered that she’d sworn never to close them again when cornered.

  She snapped hers open to meet his beautiful gray eyes. “What?”

  “I did not agree with Adam this morning. I listened to his concerns.”

  “Then what did you tell him?”

  He frowned. “Nothing.”

  “So he thinks you agreed with him,” she said.

  Beck looked to the side. “I’ll talk to Adam and Drostan.”

  “And what will you say? Your brothers apparently believe in this curse, and you are sworn to help end it.” She shook her head. “I will not agree to marry any man, and your wife, whether it be haughty Cecilia or Anna or some other—”

  “I’m not wedding anyone anytime soon,” he shouted.

  “Aye, you are,” she shouted back and smacked her open hand on his chest.

  “Nay, I’m not!”

  “Your brothers say otherwise.”

  “I don’t foking care what my broth
ers say. I’m not marrying anyone.”

  “Aye, you are.”

  “Stop saying that,” he said, his gritted teeth coming closer to her.

  “You cannot stop me from—”

  Beck’s mouth crushed against her lips, completely stopping her from speaking. For a moment she pushed back angrily, wanting to punish him. But then her arms wrapped around to the back of his head, holding him to her, and their lips slanted eagerly against each other. Smashed together in the topcastle there was no space between them, but still Eliza pressed into Beck as if they could become one being. I want him always. The thought surfaced like a buoy to grasp in an angry sea. Even if she lied to herself, in that moment the thought was so intense that it was truth.

  Beck’s mouth moved to her ear. “I want no one else,” he whispered. Did he, too, lie to himself in that moment? Eliza didn’t care. It sounded like truth, and she clung to it, her hands sliding along his broad shoulders. She tried to reach under his tunic.

  “I need more room,” she said, breathless, her face tipped to the darkening sky as he kissed along her exposed neck, plucking a line down to the core of her. The wind blew, making the mast sway.

  “Come down,” he said, the words deep and full of promise. She nodded, and he slid down her body; the stroke from her neck to her legs left her breathless. Her toes grasped around the rungs as she descended right behind him.

  As soon as he leaped to the deck, he grabbed her around the waist, lifting her down and into his arms. He kept her against him as they moved to the side facing the sea, twilight growing the shadows there.

  Wildness erupted between them, hands and mouths touching. Within minutes their tunics were off, and her ridiculously loose trews were pooled at her feet. Only the wrapping around Beck’s hips and his boots remained. She shivered, and he pulled her into him. “We can go to my cabin,” he whispered as he trailed warm kisses down her neck, his hand cupping her full breast.

  “Nay,” she said, “I want you here.” She moaned as he found the ache between her legs. The sound of the lapping water drew her gaze, the last glow of sun fading below the horizon. She turned toward it, backing into Beck so his two hands could find her easily.