CHAPTER TWO
The harbor smelled of salt, tar, fish-guts, and rain.
Grizel crouched behind a stack of weather-darkened crates and drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders, though it was not the cold that made her fingers stiff.
Oban Harbor swarmed before her in a confusion of shouting men, creaking ropes, gulls wheeling and crying overhead, and carts grinding through the mud with a wet, miserable sound.
The sea beyond was the color of beaten pewter, restless beneath a low sky, and every gust of wind flung brine into the air until it lay sharp on her lips.
She had found him.
That, at least, was something.
MacAulay’s ship rose at the dock not fifty yards from where she was hiding.
It was long, lean, and dark in the water, with red sails furled high above like folded wings.
Men moved briskly on the deck and gangplank with the easy confidence of those who belonged there.
Barrels were rolled aboard. Coils of rope were hauled into place.
Orders were called in rough, carrying voices.
There was purpose in every motion, and a kind of severe economy she found at once intimidating and promising.
Somewhere on that vessel was Laird Malcolm MacAulay… her last chance.
Grizel shifted her weight slightly, pressing one gloved hand to the crate beside her. The wood was rough, damp with sea mist and smelling faintly of apples long since removed. She peered around the edge again, careful not to let even a fold of her cloak betray her position.
She could not yet distinguish which of the men on the deck was MacAulay, if he was visible at all. Rumor had given him many shapes these past days: a pirate, a former privateer, a laird more loyal to survival than sentiment, a man who bent when needed and cut when forced.
In addition to all that, she had heard that the king’s decree had not spared him.
The pirate lairds were to marry Highland ladies within the year or face the slow strangling hand of the Crown.
A wife, then, was no longer merely a domestic ornament or private desire.
She was leverage, legitimacy and, protection.
And Grizel, could offer herself as means to meet that need.
The first problem stood across the harbor mouth in the shape of two broad-shouldered men who had not ceased haunting her steps since the outskirts of the town.
Drummond’s men did not wear his colors openly, but they had his look upon them.
One was leaning against a post near a fishmonger’s stall, speaking to no one and watching everything.
The other loitered nearer the quay, with his cap pulled low, his hands tucked in his belt, and his attention wandering with too much purpose to be mistaken for idleness.
The second problem was worse yet.
MacAulay did not seem to come ashore.
Since dawn she had watched, hidden where she could, shifting from alley to stacked cargo to the lee of a cooper’s shed, only to discover that the man she sought seemed to have no intention of setting foot on the dock at all.
Whatever business he had in Oban, he conducted it from the ship.
Men went to him, none summoned him down.
If she meant to speak with Laird Malcolm MacAulay, she had no choice but to board his vessel.
A gull landed atop the crates above her, gave a harsh, laughing cry, and flapped away again. Grizel closed her eyes for a moment.
This was madness. It had been madness in Calder. It had been madness on the road. It was madness here, in this reeking, noisy harbor at the edge of the sea. Yet there are moments when a lady’s alternatives are so poor that the only reasonable path is boldness in the face of chaos.
She looked again toward the ship. The tide had shifted. A longboat had just come in. Two sailors were arguing over a cask. The nearer of Drummond’s men had turned his head toward a cartload of herring being unloaded with much profanity and confusion.
And the ship was to depart within hours.
Now, then. If ever, now.
Grizel drew one careful breath, tasting salt and rain and the iron tang of fear at the back of her throat. Then she gathered her skirts in one hand, adjusted the satchel at her side, and slipped out from behind the crates.
At first, she moved with measured speed, keeping her head bowed, as though she were nothing more than another woman of the port with business of her own.
Her boots struck the slick boards of the quay with soft, quick sounds.
A rope brushed her ankle. A porter shouted behind her. She did not look left or right.
Ten yards… fifteen. The gangplank lay just ahead, crowded by two sailors lifting a chest between them.
Then someone barked. “There!”
Her blood turned to fire. Grizel ran.
Behind her came the unmistakable pound of heavy boots and a curse flung in the wind.
She darted past a stack of barrels, nearly collided with a boy carrying nets, and heard him yelp as he stumbled aside.
The harbor exploded into motion around her.
She could both hear and see men turning, voices rising, gulls shrieking upward in alarm.
Her cloak streamed behind her. Her breath tore in her chest. The wet boards slipped beneath her boots, and only desperation kept her from falling.
“Stop her!”
She reached the gangplank just as one of MacAulay’s sailors straightened in astonishment.
“What the devil?—”
That was all he managed to say before she brushed past him with all the dignity of a hunted fawn and flew onto the deck.
The ship seemed to lurch beneath her, though perhaps it was only her own panic. The boards were dark and damp, smelling of pitch, salt, and old storms. Voices raised around her in sudden confusion.
Two of Drummond’s men came up after her at once.
One caught her cloak from behind. The cloth jerked hard against her throat and nearly dragged her backwards.
Grizel twisted with a sound that was more fury than fear and tore herself half-free, leaving the clasp in his fist. He lunged again.
There was no room now for hesitation, and no safety in pleading.
She snatched the dagger from beneath her cloak and slashed blindly.
The blade caught his sleeve and opened skin beneath. He swore viciously and came at her harder.
Everything after that happened with a speed so bewildering that memory later rendered it in flashes: a hand grabbed for her wrist, then the sting of salt wind in her eyes, followed by a sailor shouting for arms, the ring of steel and finally, a body colliding with another body hard enough to rattle the deck.
MacAulay’s men were on them in an instant.
The ship, so orderly a breath before, erupted into a brutal storm of movement.
Sailors seized belaying pins and knives.
Someone drove a shoulder into one of Drummond’s men and sent him crashing into the rail.
Another caught the second by the collar and struck him across the jaw with enough force to spray blood across the boards.
Grizel tried to pull away from the fray, but one of Drummond’s men, maddened and red-faced, lunged toward her again.
She slashed with the dagger once more, but in the scramble her foot skidded on wet timber.
Pain shot hot and sharp through her leg as she struck the deck awkwardly on one knee.
The world flashed white for a moment. She bit back a cry.
When she looked up, half breathless and half blinded by the sting of it, she saw him.
He was fighting not ten feet away.
Impressive was too small a word for such a man.
He seemed cut from the same dark violence as the sea itself.
He was tall and broad through the shoulders, moving with a terrifying steadiness amid the chaos.
His coat was open to reveal a plain dark waistcoat beneath, and his dark hair, wind-tossed and too long at the collar to be fashionable, only sharpened the severity of his face.
There was nothing ornamental about him, as he fought with the clean, efficient force of a man who had done so often and disliked wasting time upon it.
One of Drummond’s men risked a swing at him.
He caught the blow, turned, and drove the man back with such brutal precision that Grizel heard the impact of body against rail even over the uproar of the deck.
The fellow doubled over. The man seized him by the coat and flung him bodily toward the gangplank, where two sailors finished the matter by throwing him off the ship amid a shower of curses.
Grizel had no leisure to marvel at it. Another of Drummond’s men had broken free of the sailors and lurched toward her.
His face was dark with fury, and his hand was closing hard about the hilt at his belt.
She tried to scramble back, but her injured leg failed beneath her, and the deck tilted horribly under her palm.
He was almost on her. She drew her breath to scream, but he reached her first. His hand clamped around her upper arm, cruel fingers biting through the sleeves of her gown, and he hauled her upright with enough force to wrench a cry from her throat.
Her bad leg buckled at once. For one sickening instant, she was hanging in his grip, helpless.
“Got ye,” he snarled.
That’s when the man, the one who had captured her attention, moved like a lightning bolt.
He crossed the space between them with startling speed, catching the attacker’s wrist before the blade could clear its sheath.
Then, he twisted. The man gave a strangled cry and released Grizel at once.
In the same motion, the stranger drove his shoulder into him and sent him staggering backward into two MacAulay sailors, who seized him at once.
The blade clattered across the planks and came to rest near Grizel’s skirt.
For one absurd instant, even through pain and terror, Grizel could only stare up at the man who had saved her.
He didn’t ask whether she was harmed. He didn’t even try to soothe her, nor waste a breath in gallantry.
He merely glanced down at her, as if taking measure of whether she would live long enough to become another difficulty.
Then rough hands closed about her arms.
“We’ve another!” cried one of the sailors. “Off with her too!”
“Nae!” She twisted, but her injured leg buckled as soon as she tried to stand. Pain went through her sharply enough to turn her voice thin. “Let me go!”
The sailor tightened his grip. “Ye came aboard with them.”
“I did nae!”
“A likely tale.”
“Please… I must speak tae yer laird.”
That earned her a bark of laughter from someone nearby. “Must ye indeed?”
She lifted her chin despite the breathlessness clawing at her lungs.
Her hair had come half-loose, and she could feel it whipping across her cheek in the wind.
Her palms stung, her knee throbbed, and the deck seemed to shake with the aftermath of violence.
But there are moments when a lady could save herself only by becoming more outrageous than anyone expected.
Her gaze moved, against her will, back to the man who had saved her.
He was watching her now with such unnerving attention that heat climbed into her face despite the fear still rattling through her bones.
He stood among the wreckage of the fight as though a storm had shaped him: hard, dark and impossible to look away from.
And though Grizel knew she ought to fear such a man, her foolish heart could only consider the fierce manner in which he had dispatched her attacker. She banished the thought and brought herself back to the present moment.
“Aye,” she urged. “At once.”
“And why,” asked the man holding her, “should our laird receive a creature who boards his ship with armed men at her heels?”
Grizel drew a breath. Dark, fathomless eyes narrowed, waiting for her answer, as if they already knew she was about to cause even more trouble.
“Because,” she told him clearly, “I am going tae marry him.”
The words fell into the sudden hush like a cannon shot.
For a heartbeat, the ship seemed to pause with them.
Several sailors stared outright. One made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh if he had dared let it free.
Another crossed his arms and looked delighted by the prospect of scandal.
Even the man holding her loosened his grip slightly in surprise.
And that’s when he stepped toward her.
Up close, he was more formidable still. His face was all hard lines and controlled strength.
His mouth was severe, his jaw shadowed by the day, and his eyes dark enough to seem nearly black beneath lowered brows.
There was sea-salt on his coat and a faint smear of blood across one knuckle that did not appear to be his own.
He had the look of a man long accustomed to command and less accustomed to being amused.
Yet, amused he was… only a little, but still dangerously.
“Marry him, ye say?” he asked.