Chapter Eighteen #2
Lottie’s heart began to beat erratically.
The ship suddenly rose up on a wave, then crashed down again, and he caught her waist to steady her.
But Lottie could not be steadied and neither, apparently, could he.
The cold hard truth of their situation had seeped into their membranes and was mixing with the desire in their veins. Esteem and thievery did not mix.
There was only one thing she could do, and that was to free him. “You know what to do,” she said. “There is only one thing you can do, Aulay. I know it. I expect it.”
Aulay blinked. His hand dropped from her waist.
“Give me leave to speak with my clan,” she said quickly before he could say something to dissuade her. “We can help you, we can relieve your men, we can give you all an opportunity to rest, aye? It’s the least we can do after all the trouble we’ve caused.”
He pressed his lips together, exchanged a look with Beaty, then nodded.
Lottie didn’t linger. She found it painful to see him so conflicted over the grief she’d caused him.
Diah, but they were sailing home on an ocean of grief, all of them, all of them full of sorrow for so many reasons. It was heart-crushing.
* * *
THE LIVINGSTONES CHEERED when she appeared around the crates. They were all in their shirtsleeves, unwashed, boasting scraggly beards. “Aye, I knew she’d come to save us!” Norval shouted.
“Give us our freedom, Lottie,” Morven said. “They’ve no right to treat us in this manner. ’Tis no’ gentlemen’s rules.”
“They are angry with us,” she reminded him. “And they treat us as we treated them.”
“Aye, and we’re angry, too, we are! They’ve thrown our whisky overboard!” shouted Gilroy from somewhere near the back.
“Have you forgotten that we threw their wool off to make room for the whisky?” Lottie reminded them. “And what good is the whisky to us now? It’s caused more trouble than it ever might have been worth.”
“What? Why?” asked Mark Livingstone.
Lottie stepped up onto a crate. “Lads, you know the Campbells will be as thick as a pack of wolves waiting for it, aye? And if no’ the Campbells, then the crown. The Mackenzies must hand us over or be accused of collusion. We’ll be caught one way or another, and then what?”
“We worked hard to make that whisky, Lottie!” insisted Mark. “Harder than we’ve worked at augh’ else!”
“We did, aye we did,” she agreed. “But it was always a risk, was it no’? We knew it could bring us trouble before we ever built the first still, aye?”
“We might have sold it yet!” Morven said. “The fault was in sailing to Denmark. We’re no’ sailors, no’ one of us, save Gilroy.”
Lottie winced with the painful truth in that. “That is my fault—”
“No, Lottie, the fault belongs to all of us,” Mr. MacLean said. “Our choice was to sail to Denmark or lose the whisky ere we had a chance to sell it. All of you know it is true—we met and said these things ere we ever put a foot on Gilroy’s ship. Have you forgotten?”
Mark looked as if he intended to argue, but Mr. MacLean held up a hand. “It hardly matters now, does it, then?” he implored them. “We are Livingstones. We care for our own. We must think ahead, not about the past.”
“We ought to help them,” Lottie said. “The Mackenzies are exhausted.” There was grumbling, but Lottie was quick to put an end to it.
“They have no’ tossed us into the sea when they had every right!
They’ve shared their provisions with us, and there are more of us than them!
If you canna find it in your heart to help those who have helped us, then so be it—but I have given my word,” Lottie said.
“Aye, we’ll help,” Mr. MacLean said, eying anyone who would disagree. “But I would know what we’ll do when we return to Lismore. We’ve still the matter of rents to be paid.”
“Lottie, will you marry MacColl, then?” Norval asked her bluntly.
The question twisted like a knife in her gut. She looked around at the men standing before her. None of them seemed surprised by the question. “You all know of that?”
Norval shrugged. “He’s made no secret of his esteem.”
“You save us all if you wed him, Lottie,” Morven said.
Well, then, they were back to the beginning, were they?
She should have known that there had never been any escape from her being the price to be paid to save all the Livingstones.
She’d been na?ve to think that she could avoide it.
“We canna speak of what will come next if we never reach Scotland, can we? At present, we need to help the Mackenzies. Set aside your pride at having lost and be grateful we’ve not been walked off a plank. ”
“Aye, release us from this hold before we all go mad,” Mark said.
“Give me your word that you’ll work, and work hard,” she said. “Swear it!”
“Aye, we will,” Morven said, and looked around at his clan. “We will,” he said, sounding as if he meant to convince the others.
“Dress, then, and I’ll see you on deck.”
She would marry MacColl, then. If, by some miracle, she escaped the gallows, she would give up her dream of seeing the world, perhaps of having children, and for the sake of her clan, she would marry him.
It was, she thought, what her father would have wanted her to do.
Perhaps she owed him that. To hang, or look at the walls of a cell, or marry an old man.
..none of it seemed better or worse than the other.