Chapter Eight #2
“Ah, there’s me lad!” her father said brightly when he saw Drustan.
“We brought you food,” Drustan said.
Lottie closed the door, then made herself glance at her captive.
He returned her look with such cool rancor that her pulse fluttered madly.
He had a way of looking at her as if he could see her thoughts, her organs, her heart beating like a bloody drum.
As if he could see her foolhardy regard for him.
She looked away from those piercing blue eyes and went to her father’s bed, juggling the ale and food, and together with Drustan, served him some biscuits and fish.
Her father ate heartily. He licked his fingers as Mathais came in, banging into a pair of chairs in his haste to see his father and knocking one chair into the captain’s foot without notice.
Mathais was eager to relate his fishing tale, and launched into it so loudly and without preamble that no one could squeeze in a word while Morven mixed something in a wooden bowl.
Lottie moved away from her father and handed the captain a biscuit. When he reached to take it, she noticed that the skin of his wrists looked much worse today. Raw, open wounds.
“Aye, and how did you know to fish the starboard side?” her father asked, interrupting Mathais before the lad succumbed from lack of breath.
“Och, Fader, I had a feeling, I did,” Mathais said, hooking his thumbs in the waist of his pantaloons. “I had the idea from the wind, and I said to the man in charge—Beaty is his name—that I should think there is some fish on this side of the ship, aye?”
“Morven?” Lottie called quietly as Mathais carried on. She motioned the healer forward. She pointed to the captain’s wrists. Morven frowned at them.
“Can we remove the ropes?” she asked.
“Aye, if we donna, he’ll suffer worse,” Morven said grimly and reached for the captain’s wrists. He untied the rope and let it fall. Palpable relief instantly washed over the captain’s face; he closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Canna leave it,” Morven said. “I’ll see if I’ve got something to make a salve. I’ll change Bernt’s bandaging then tend to his wrists.”
As Morven moved away, the captain gave Lottie a slight smile of triumph.
“Lottie? Lottie, where are you, pusling?” her father called to her. “We’ve much to discuss. Where is Gilroy?”
“Ah...” Lottie reluctantly moved away from Mackenzie and his freed hands, but took the rope and anything else he might reach and use against her. “Gilroy is at the helm, he is.”
“We’ve to prepare for the landing on the morrow,” her father said, and slapped Morven’s hand away from the bandaging around his torso. “Leave it, man.”
“I ought to have a look, Bernt.”
“Look at my appetite, lad, if you want something to look at, aye? I’m fit as they come.
I’ve long enjoyed excellent health, have I no’, lads?
Aye, then, Lottie, Gilroy, he’ll accompany you on the morrow.
You’ll need to bring along the Mackenzie captain, too,” her father continued, as if it were a trifling matter.
So trifling, in fact, that he paused to drink from the flagon of ale.
“Pardon?” said Lottie at the same moment the captain said, “No’ bloody likely.”
“You canna leave him here—we’ve no’ enough men to guard him and the crew, have we?” her father pointed out. “His crew will no’ act while we have him, trust me on this. They’ll do as we say.”
“They’ll do as I say, and I’ll no’ go ashore,” the captain said firmly.
“Och, but you will, Captain, you will. We’ll hold your Beaty under threat of harm if you donna.”
The captain suddenly surged to his feet with surprising agility. “You would add to your crimes by threatening my first mate?”
“Fader!” Lottie exclaimed. “How can we possibly command him if he is no’ bound? I can hardly walk through the streets of Aalborg with a bound man at my side.”
“Gilroy will keep him under control,” her father said.
“I’ll go,” said Mathais. “I’m verra good with a sword.” He made a thrusting motion.
“No, Mats, no’ you. You must remain here to help guard the first mate.”
Mathais perked up at that.
“No!” Lottie insisted. She could imagine it—Mathais would get it into his head that he ought to use his sword at the slightest hint of provocation.
“Now, pusling, you canna go dressed as you are,” Her father said. “What would our Mr. Iversen think of you then? Can you imagine, Morven, our Mr. Iversen having a look at his long-lost love dressed as she is?”
Morven’s jaw tightened.
Lottie could feel her face turn an appalling shade of red. It was bad enough that everyone on the island knew of her love affair. It was humiliating to be reminded of it at every turn. “I am no’ his long-lost love and I hardly care what he thinks.”
“Of course you do, leannan. Why, he’s the reason you suggested Aalborg, is it no’?”
Morven, she noticed, avoided her gaze. And the captain, well...she could feel his eyes boring through her back. He was probably imagining all sorts of scenarios just now, and probably all of them very near true.
“Our Mr. Iversen will be pleased to lend us a hand,” her father blithely continued. “You were clever to think of it, pusling.”
“Will you no’ refer to him as our Mr. Iversen? And I donna intend to see him more than a moment to ask if we might use his name. I’ve enough to do as it is.”
“No? Well, I suppose it is time you put that unfortunate acquaintance behind you. Canna remain at my side all your life, can you, lass? No’ good for a woman to be without a man.”
“Fader!” She wished a hole would open in this ship and suck her into the sea’s depths. What was more dismaying—that her father was speaking so carelessly of a painful time in her life? Or that Morven and worse, Captain Mackenzie, were on hand to hear it?
Her father said, “Look at her, then, the lass can scarcely bear to think of it. Aye, well, no man on the island can bear to think of it either, for it’s ruined you for anyone else, mo chridhe.”
“That is quite enough!” Lottie snapped. What was the matter with him? He was never so careless with her feelings and yet seemed almost oblivious to them now.
What he said was true. Since Anders Iversen had come to Lismore and ruined her idea of anyone else, and worse, since Anders had left Lismore, she’d been the object of great speculation.
He’d come in the spring from Denmark, a distant cousin of the family.
He’d come when the meadows were full of wildflowers like those she’d dreamed about, and the sun bright but not too hot, and he’d swept Lottie off her feet with his dazzling smile and quick laugh and touches to her hand and face.
After years of caring for her brothers and her father, of having no prospects that excited her, of being the object of desire of every male on that island, no matter their age or occupation or other entanglements, Anders had made her heart leap, and she’d fallen head over heels into infatuation.
Her infatuation strayed beyond moral decency into a more physical realm. She’d convinced herself that God had sent her the man she was destined to marry, that her lack of virtue was expected, given their mutual feelings.
Diah, she’d been so unforgivably na?ve.
Anders revealed himself to be a bloody arse.
What sort of man would turn his back on a woman after sharing such a profoundly intimate experience?
What sort of man would not then offer to take the woman to wife, especially after giving her every reason to believe that he would?
And yet, Anders had seemed surprised she’d even thought it.
He’d taken her hands in his and said with grave earnestness, “Lottie, s?de, I’m bound for home at the end of the month.
I’m to take over my father’s affairs. You know this. ”
Well yes, he’d said that in the beginning. But as passion between them had grown and swelled she had assumed things had changed. She’d always fancied herself too clever to be manipulated by a charming libertine. She was not very clever at all, as it turned out.
“You’ll come with me,” Anders had said, knowing full well she would not.
Aye, he knew her better than she knew herself, for that was the first time Lottie’s idea of herself veered sharply away from who she really was.
All her life, she’d wanted to step out into the world, to leave that island with its too many rabbits and too few people and live.
Really live. To see the world, to fall in love, to have a happy, healthy family.
But when it came down to a choice to be made, the painful realization had set it.
She couldn’t leave her father or her brothers, not really.
They all needed her. They all depended on her.
She knew it, and Anders, damn him, had known it all along.
She could recall the way his smile had faded into dismay when he’d understood that she’d given herself to him because she loved him.
It had not been a lark for her as it obviously had been for him.
Now, a year later, she knew the whisper on everyone’s lips: what would happen to Lottie Livingstone?
Should she not be married now, should she not be providing some man his blessed heirs and warming his bed and washing his linens and cooking his meals?
Why was it that men were the only ones entitled to their desires in this world?
She looked up; her father was watching her with eyes so bright and glittering that they startled her. “Och, donna be downtrodden, lass,” her father said. “Put your hair up and pinch your cheeks, don your gown, and you’ll be as bonny as ever. He’ll rue the day he left you behind.”
“He didna leave me behind,” she said, trying to salvage at least a piece of her dignity. “And my gown is ruined. It is torn and stained with blood.”
“You’ll find something on this ship to mend it, mark me. They mend sails, do they no’? A bit of soap ought to remove the blood—oof, Morven, must you prod so?” her father complained as Morven tried to look under the bandage.
“It needs changing, Bernt.”
“I’ll need something for the pain, then,” her father said. “Burns like the devil, it does.”
“Fader?” Drustan said nervously.
“Donna pay me any heed, lad,” her father said to Drustan. “Tell you what—go ask Gilroy if you can be of any use. Go with him, Mats. Find the lad an occupation. Lottie, go along as well, and find a way to mend your gown. ’Twas your mother’s favorite, and mine, too.”
Lottie gladly quit the cabin and the shrewd eyes of the captain. She followed her brothers to the door.
“Lottie,” her father said, stopping her before she could make her escape.
“You’ll need to have the captain shined and polished as well, aye?
Canna have him accompany you looking like a pauper.
No’ especially if you mean to see Anders.
Now there was a handsome lad if I ever I saw one. Was he no’, Morven?”
“Donna recall,” Morven muttered.
“Well I do. Bonny as a man can be, I’ll say that for him.”
Lottie opened the door and walked out, shutting it firmly behind her.
Unfortunately, she had no place to go and lick her wounds, so she settled on top of a whisky cask and watched the Mackenzie men up on the rigging changing the sails, chattering back and forth while the Livingstones guarded them from below.
They all seemed rather friendly, and she couldn’t help wonder if they hadn’t hatched some sort of plan, if this wasn’t the calm before the storm of revenge they meant to launch.
“Lottie.”
She jerked around at the sound of Morven’s voice.
His brown hair stood nearly on end, and his beard was beginning to look unkempt.
“You best find a physician when we reach Aalborg,” he said grimly.
“Bernt’s wound, it doesna look good. I’ve given him the laudanum tincture for the pain so he’ll sleep. But he needs proper attention.”
“But you—”
Morven shook his head before she could finish her thought. “I’m no’ a physician, Lottie. He needs a proper one. I’ve done all I can do, aye? I’ll make a salve for the captain’s wrists.” He moved to leave her.
“Morven!” she said. “How will I do as my father says I must? I canna take Mackenzie with me! He’ll escape, he’ll seek authorities straightaway.”
“Aye, you can,” Morven said. “These men will wait for their pay and their captain, but if they have only one of those things, they’ll no’ wait long, do you see? You need to take him with you for our sake.”
“And then what?” she asked. “If they wait patiently while we sell the whisky, and then again while we wait for someone to unload it from this ship, will they merrily make sail without us? How will we all return to Scotland?”
“You were right to offer them pay, you were. Coin is a powerful lure. I suspect they’ll go along, aye. As for us, we’ll be rich, Lottie. We can hire the best ship to return us home.”
Rich! They would have enough to pay their rents to Campbell and a wee bit more to pay this crew. No one would be rich!
“I’ll make the salve now, aye?” Morven said. He smiled kindly and patted her arm, then walked away.
Did any of them truly believe the Mackenzies would so easily forget what the Livingstones had done to them, even if they were paid?
And what of the captain? She couldn’t imagine that he’d forget a single moment.
She saw the way he looked at her—he would delight putting the noose around her neck himself.
She shivered in the bright sunlight at the very thought of it. Until they had sold that blasted whisky, they were stuck. Lottie had no other viable option that she could see. She got off her barrel and went in search of something to darn her gown.