Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Aye, but ’tis no worse than the tragedies that have befallen us before.”
“No’ true, laird!” someone shouted from the back. “The source of our tragedy dines at our table!”
“Och, Charlie, they are fellow Scotsmen, are they no’?
They’ve suffered as we have, and they did what they had to do.
Was it no’ so long ago, then, that we avoided the excise men?
Leave them be—they’ll pay the price for their crime, they will.
But we’ll no’ allow their foolishness to bring darkness to us. No’ us. We are Mackenzies!”
“Aye!” Iain the Red shouted.
“We are Mackenzies!” his father said again, only louder.
“Aye!” more men shouted.
“We are strong, and we persevere!”
“Aye! Aye! Aye!” The room began to shout their agreement, cups banging the tables. The Livingstones looked around them uneasily. Only Duff was smiling. The giant had covered his ears, and the young whelp Mathais had picked up a cup and was banging it, too, as if he were a Mackenzie.
“Music, Malcolm! Give us the pipes!” Aulay’s father bellowed, and resumed his seat. His wife beamed at him, her mission of this gathering clearly accomplished in her husband’s speech—rally the clan.
In the midst of the shouting, Aulay’s gaze met Lottie’s. She smiled uncertainly, then glanced away.
He sighed. His heart had dried up and cracked, a ship’s hull left too long for repair in the sun.
The music began and several Mackenzies were quick to dance a reel.
Aulay watched from the dais, drinking his ale in a vain wish to drown his thoughts, if only for the space of an evening.
But then Aulay noticed, through a haze of a wee bit too much ale, something that required his immediate intervention.
Men—Mackenzie men—were looking at Lottie.
And he could see that Iain the Red and Beaty were bating young Billy Botly to invite her to dance.
He could see Charlie, who had just spoken out against the Livingstones, eye her and very nearly lick his chops.
That would not be born. Aulay had his own issues with the Livingstones, and Lottie in particular.
But he’d be damned if any other Mackenzie would touch her.
He came to his feet and strode off the dais, tankard in hand, down to the table where the Livingstones were seated, staring down Billy Botly who dared to approach.
The lad turned about and scurried back to the laughter of Beaty and Iain.
Lottie glanced up, startled by the sight of Aulay suddenly looming over her. “Captain Mackenzie?”
Aulay was aware that everyone in the hall was watching him, whispering. Well then, he’d done it, and he’d come down from the dais. “Miss Livingstone, will you do me the honor of a dance?”
“Oh! Ah...” She glanced around her.
Good God, she’d not refuse him—
“Aye,” she said, sounding as if she were agreeing to stick her hand in a flame, and rose from her seat.
Aulay offered his hand; she hesitantly slid hers into it.
Her small, elegant hand. A memory of that hand caressing his face flashed across his mind’s eye, and he closed his fingers around hers as he led her to the area cleared for dancing.
They joined a reel. Lottie was a spirited, graceful dancer, but her movement seemed almost wooden. She didn’t smile, she scarcely even looked at him. He missed her smile, he realized. The brilliance of it, the way it radiated into his heart.
Diah, but Aulay had never had so many treacly thoughts or flowery metaphors in his mind. He’d had too much ale, that was what. He was not this utterly besotted fool.
When the dance came to an end, Aulay said, “Shall I bring you an ale?”
She was looking at his neckcloth. “No, thank you, then. Thank you for the dance, Captain.” She dropped her gaze and bobbed a curtsy, then turned about and headed back to her clan.
Many eyes followed her, Mackenzie and Livingstone alike as he stood stupidly in the middle of the room.
When she reached her clan, all of them smiled, every man.
The woman who had kicked him, had held a gun to his head, was the bright star among them, the light under which they all blossomed.
Could she really be both women? More important, could Aulay be so wholly aroused by both of them? Damn her.
He returned to the dais and drank more ale, sullenly watching the dancing. Lottie didn’t dance again and, in fact, none of the Livingstones did. They remained huddled at the table, warily watching the Mackenzies around them.
Aulay’s mood turned blacker. What did they have to be so bloody gloomy about? They were being treated like kings.
The evening, like so many nights at Balhaire, began to draw to a close in the wee hours of the morning.
There were only a few left in the hall when Aulay, swimming in his cups, stepped off the dais and walked to the Livingstone table.
Lottie was still there, her head propped on a fist, her finger tracing a line around the rim of her cup.
She straightened when she saw him and put her hands demurely in her lap. Aulay was suddenly sick of ale and set his tankard aside. “Did you enjoy the evening, then?” he asked, aware that his tone was accusatory. That had not been his intent.
“As well as one might, under the circumstances, aye,” she said. “We are most grateful to you and your family for it.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment, but this evening had been planned in spite of his feelings about it.
She stood up. “I ought to retire, aye? I should have gone with the others, but I...I enjoyed the pipes, I did.”
The pipers had stopped playing a half hour ago, hadn’t they? Aulay couldn’t remember. “Where is your guard?” he asked, looking around the room.
“On my honor, I’ll go straightaway to my room.”
He flicked his gaze over her. “I’ll escort you,” he said. His sense of outrage had been sufficiently drowned for the evening.
“Are you certain? You’ve made it right clear that you canna bear the sight of me.”
He flinched inwardly. He could not recall all that he’d said that afternoon after the ship had sunk, only that his speech had been full of rage.
“I am a gentleman,” he said, and bowed over his leg in an exaggeratedly drunken manner, then offered his arm.
She did not take it, but clasped her hands at her back and walked beside him.
They stepped into a bailey awash in moonlight, the sort of night Aulay most loved on the sea, when the light of the moon illuminated the water’s surface and reminded him of just how vast the earth was.
“I think the way the night light shines on the surface of the sea is quite bonny, too,” she said.
Startled, Aulay looked at her. He was just drunk enough that he hadn’t realized he’d actually paused to look up. He took a moment to admire how the moonlight made her hair almost glow. “How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“You painted it. Several times.”
He looked at her mouth, her lips darkly plum in the moonlight. “You made a greater study of my paintings than I knew,” he said, and began to walk.
Lottie did, too. “I found them fascinating.”
“You found them empty,” he scoffed.
“I never said such a thing. I said there were no people in them. But they were no’ empty, Aulay. They were your view of the world and they were beautiful. You’re verra talented, that you are.”
Something in him shifted a wee bit off center. He’d assumed she couldn’t appreciate his view and he wasn’t entirely certain she did now. “Do you mean to flatter me, Lottie? It willna change anything.”
“Flatter you?” she stopped walking and turned around to face him, her hands on her hips. “That is the second time you’ve accused me of it. I have no need to flatter you, Aulay.”
“No need? Then tell me, madam, what was your intent on the day my ship sank when you began your speech about what a good man I am, aye? Did you no’ mean then to ingratiate yourself to me so that I’d no hold you responsible for it?
Did you think me so utterly besotted that if you fawned I’d forgive you for the loss of my ship? ”
She gaped at him. “I never believed for a moment you’d forgive me. I would no’ forgive me! I will go to my grave regretting it!”
“Then what was your point?” he snapped.
She sighed. Her shoulders sagged. “Do you think me so heartless that the days on your ship meant nothing to me, then? My point was to tell you that I esteemed you. That my regret was as deep and as wide as is the ocean of my regard for you. I’ve never known a man like you, Aulay Mackenzie.
You have my complete, incandescent esteem. ”
His drunken heart began to thrum in his chest. “Then you are mad, Lottie. I am the man who was taken by a lass, who couldna save his cargo, or his ship or his clan, aye? There is naugh’ to esteem.”
Her eyes widened. “Aulay,” she said, and touched his arm, her fingers sliding down to his wrist, and tangling with his fingers.
“How wrong you are! How verra wrong you are. Aye, we caught you by surprise and we took your ship. But you bore that captivity with more grace than a dozen kings. You helped me, in spite of what I’d done, in spite of what you’d already lost. You were kind even when the worst had been done to you.
You saved my life in Aalborg, when you were well justified to have left me to the wolves.
You brought us back to Scotland, and when it looked as if all was lost, as if we’d all be caught and accused, you saved us all again.
Aye, you lost your ship, and for that I am so verra sorry.
But you saved us all, Aulay. You put those souls ahead of your own, and you are, you truly are the best man I have ever known, a remarkable, decent, kind man.
All I wanted to say that day was I will always hold you in my heart. ”
His heart began to spin. He was spinning. He had needed to hear those words more than he might have guessed. He tucked his arm under her elbow, drawing her forward. “I am furious,” he said.
“I know.”
He cupped her face with his palm, gazed at the smattering of freckles that had appeared in the last few days. At the long dark lashes and brows that contradicted the pale color of her hair. At the intense blue of her eyes. “I donna trust you.”
“Entirely reasonable, aye? But I’ve confessed it all, Aulay. It is out of your hands.”
His gaze fell to her mouth.
“Do you want to kiss me?” she whispered, lifting her face to his.
“Do you want to be kissed?”
“Desperately.”
He twisted her around and put her back against the wall of the gatehouse. He braced his hands on either side of her and leaned in, his lips only a whisper from hers. He felt restless, his body’s desires drowning all rational thought.
“Kiss me,” she said.
He bent his head and casually ran the tip of his tongue along her bottom lip.
Lottie sighed softly. Aulay had hardly touched her, and yet it felt like the most sensual, decadent moment he’d ever experienced.
He lifted his hand to her jaw and angled her head just so, catching her sigh of pleasure as it passed through her lips.
He drew her bottom lip lightly between his teeth and teased her body forward by slipping an arm around the small of her back.
She opened her mouth to him and her hand found his waist, clutching at his coat as if she feared he might slip away. Aulay’s kiss was slow and thorough as his hand explored the shape of her body.
Lottie moaned into his mouth at the slow torture, fanning the fire that was smoldering in him.
Aulay was of a mind to carry her into that little room in the gatehouse and have her there, but the sound of footsteps began to filter through the carnal fog that had enveloped him, and he reluctantly, regrettably, lifted his head.
Her lips glistened in the moonlight, and she looked up at him with such desire and affection that it made him feel a wee bit dizzy. He stroked her cheek with his knuckle and unwillingly stepped away to open the door to the gatehouse. “Sleep well, leannan,” he murmured.
She slipped inside, but once in, she turned around, walking backward, her eyes fixed on his, her smile luminous, before she disappeared into the shadows.
Aulay returned to his rooms, and sent the sleepy lad who appeared to inquire as to his needs home to his bed.
He didn’t bother to undress and collapsed onto his bed and pillowed his head with one arm, gazing out the window at the starry night.
His thoughts were far from Balhaire, but for once, they were not on the sea.
They were on a tiny island called Lismore.
He would be eight and thirty in a month, a confirmed bachelor, a man of the world...and for the first time in his life, he fancied he might be in love...with a woman he wasn’t certain he could trust and could not have.