Chapter Seven
A HALF HOUR or more passed before Lottie returned to Aulay’s quarters carrying a cloth bundle and in the company of two men. The men undid the chain at Aulay’s ankle, hauled him up between them, then escorted him out “to take the air.”
Aulay was relieved to be out of the cabin and breathed deeply of the salt air.
In the wake of the storm, a blistering array of stars and the full moon lit the deck.
He could see casks of whisky stacked haphazardly and tied loosely about the main deck.
He was surprised they’d not lost them in the storm.
At the stern, a man casually held a long gun and smoked a cheroot. Beaty was at the helm with two Livingstone men, in deep conversation that seemed, from a short distance, almost friendly.
When Aulay had dallied as long as he might, the men returned him to his cabin.
As they moved up the few steps to the forecastle, the Livingstone physician emerged from the forward cabin.
He backed out of it, really, and was laughing as he went.
But when he turned about and saw Aulay, he quickly sobered.
“Who is within?” Aulay demanded.
“Wounded men, Captain. One of ours, two of yours.” He scurried down the steps past Aulay and his guards.
It was too casual. There was no tension—it was as if everyone had settled into this arrangement and had no objection to it. What had she done, entreated them? Played to their sympathies? Seduced them with her bonny face and beseeching blue eyes? Were they all as weak as he?
In the cabin once more, Aulay simmered as they shackled him like an animal. Lottie watched with heavy eyelids, her head propped on her fist.
“Now what?” asked one of the men.
Lottie yawned. “Rest, aye? But go now—I’d no’ like Fader to wake.”
Judging by the snores coming from the bunk, there was no danger of that happening.
When the men had gone, Aulay lifted his bound hands. “Untie me.”
She sighed.
“How am I to eat, then?” he asked, gesturing to a hunk of bread, some cheese, and what looked like a cup of soup laid on top of his desk.
“Can you no’ manage it?”
“No, I canna manage it,” he said curtly.
She wearily lifted her head off her fist and stood, and seemed a little unsteady on her feet. She looked at Aulay, then the food. “At least you must sit, aye?” she said to him. “I’m at a disadvantage to try and help you, as tall as you are.”
She picked up one of the heavy wooden chairs at the table and clumsily maneuvered it across the floor, positioning it next to the desk. She pretended to dust it off, then bowed low, sweeping her hand over it. “Your seat, Captain.”
He sat heavily, his stomach growling. When she didn’t hand him anything to eat, he turned his head toward her.
Lottie was looking at his hands. She grimaced, then leaned over to have a better look. “Mi Diah,” She knelt beside him and touched her finger to a particularly raw spot on his wrist.
Aulay hissed with the burn of her touch.
“I should call Morven to have a look.”
“You ought to take them off,” Aulay snapped. “You’ve asked for my help, but keep me bound like an animal.”
“You know I canna do that.” She moved the food to the middle of the desk, carelessly pushing his papers and maps aside in the process, then dragged herself up to sit on it.
Her legs dangled, her ankles crossed, her feet bare.
She picked up the hunk of bread and tore two chunks from it, handing one to him, and popping the other in her mouth.
“Just how long do you intend to keep me bound, then?” Aulay asked before fitting the bite of bread into his mouth.
“Until we are to Aalborg.”
“We’re two days from Aalborg! I canna carry on like this. Leave me shackled if you must, but untie my hands.”
She broke a piece of cheese and handed it to him.
Aulay caught her wrist and locked his fingers around it. She looked up with surprise. “I donna like to see you bound, but if I untied you, I’d have a mutiny. You’re the only leverage we have, you are.”
“You donna seem to me to be a demure wee lass who does as others bid her. If you want to see my wrists freed, then think of how to do it that spares you a mutiny.”
She glanced away, but Aulay yanked her close. His gaze moved to her mouth. “Untie me, Lottie.”
“I thought we had an understanding,” she said.
“Whatever made you think we did?”
She leaned closer still, her face only an inch or so from his.
She glanced at his hand, wrapped tightly around her wrist. Long, dark lashes fanned against her cheeks.
“There are men just outside that door, aye?” she said softly.
She lifted her gaze and locked it with his.
“If I scream, they’ll be inside so quickly that you’ll no’ have time to blink.
” She leaned even closer, her mouth now beside his temple.
“I’ve brought fish stew. Will you eat a wee bit of it?
Or would you prefer to feel the butt of a gun crack against the back of your head? ”
Aulay turned his head, so that his cheek was against hers. The air around them seemed to crackle. A fire was brewing, and he couldn’t say which of them burned brighter. “I canna be seduced, lass. No’ with you, no’ with food, no’ with threats.”
“More’s the pity,” she whispered into his ear, and sent an arc of fire shimmering down his spine to land squarely in his groin. She slowly leaned back and with her free hand, she picked up the cup from the table and showed it to him. “I’ll need both hands if you’re to drink.”
Diah, but he was weak. Damnably weak. He reluctantly let go her wrist.
She put the cup to his lips, splaying her fingers across his jaw to hold it steady.
Aulay was too aware of her touch, of how light it felt against his skin, scarcely more than a whisper, yet hot at the same time.
He drank the contents of the cup eagerly, as he was famished.
A bit of it rolled down his chin, and she used the sleeve of his shirt she wore to blot it.
“You need a shave,” she observed.
“Do you propose to hold a razor to my throat?”
“No’ as yet,” she said, and a smile flashed across her face.
Her bonny eyes were making it impossible to keep Aulay’s rage billowing.
Captivity, he was discovering, was exhausting.
He felt himself on the verge of losing this battle of wills, of surrendering.
Since he’d been strong enough to control the wheel of a ship, he’d been in command.
He’d never not commanded the Reulag Balhaire, had never been at the mercy of another.
It left him feeling small. His strength came from his command of a ship, of men.
It came from the sea. It came from the smell of salt and the sound of the gulls and the constant roll as they pushed forward, and being denied access to those things weakened him.
He felt a child again, pushed to the margin by stronger, more vibrant siblings.
..only this time, a wee lass had done it.
He needed a drink of something strong. He watched Lottie pull more bread from the stale loaf. “Have you any whisky?” he asked.
She smiled lopsidedly. “Quite amusing.”
“Look there, in the chest next to the bed. There’s a bottle of wine there.”
“Oh?” She perked up. She slid off the desk and padded over to the chest and opened the lid. She retrieved a bottle and came back to the desk, uncorked it, fit it between Aulay’s hands, then shimmied up onto the desktop again.
He took a long swig of the wine, and another, then handed the bottle to her.
She did not hesitate to put the bottle to her lips and drink just as long as he had before setting it aside and tearing off more bread for him.
Lottie Livingstone was a contradiction in many ways—graceful and fragile in appearance, yet obviously fierce and brave.
She was the sort of raw beauty that real artists—artists better than him—would spend hours at their canvas perfecting.
She ought to be studied and admired...but where were her admirers?
What was she doing here instead of being held on a pedestal in some gentleman’s eye, adored, admired and pampered?
He watched her drink more, then put the bottle aside so that she could hand him cheese.
He’d never been the sort to place a woman on a pedestal, had never met one that had sparked that desire in him.
Had never been in one place long enough to feel that sort of desperate attraction.
There had been nights, in ports far-flung, where perhaps he’d felt it for the space of a few hours, but it had never lasted longer than that.
No, the sea was his love. The world and all her beauty is what called to him.
And yet, in a strange way, this woman called to him.
The truth, if he could admit it to himself, was that he admired her.
He was furious with what she’d done, but he admired her bravery.
Her willingness to at least try. He wanted to know how it had all come to this. He wanted to understand her.
He ate the cheese, washed it down with wine, then asked, “How is it that such a bonny lass has come to be in my cabin, in my clothes, in command of my ship? We offered to take you aboard. There was no need to attack us, aye?”
She picked up the bottle and leaned closer to him, unaware—or perhaps very much aware—that the vee of his shirt afforded him a tantalizing glimpse of her breasts. “There was every need.” She fit the bottle into his hands, then straightened up again.
“Tell me,” Aulay said, and drank. “I should like one day to tell my children of the day I was captured at sea by a beauty, and I would know why.”
“Donna call me that,” she said abruptly.
“Beauty?”
She glowered at him.
Aulay shrugged. “Verra well. When I tell the story, I’ll cast you as an old hag.”
She suddenly smiled, and it lit her face. It lit the cabin. “I would prefer that to beauty,” she said, as if the word offended her.
“You are the first woman I’ve ever met who did no’ care to be considered beautiful.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Tell me,” he urged her.