CHAPTER THREE
His voice was low and edged with a dryness that made mockery seem almost courteous.
Grizel met his gaze. “Aye.”
“How surprising.”
Something in his manner made the sailors around them step back without being told.
The wind tugged at the edge of his coat.
Somewhere below deck a rope struck rhythmically against wood.
Grizel, still caught between pain and sheer nerve, understood all at once that every man present took his measure from this one.
He was the laird then. He had to be. And she had just announced her intention of marrying him before half his crew.
A fine beginning to a courtship, if madness could be called courtship.
She scolded herself for the thought at once. This was no courtship. This was survival, and survival had no business noticing the breadth of a man’s shoulders or the steady strength of his command.
“How surprising,” he repeated, “that I was nae informed of it. Especially since I am Laird Malcolm MacAulay, and until this moment I have never set eyes upon ye in me life.”
Heat rose at once into her face.
Of all the mortifying turns…
But he had spoken without anger. There was, if anything, the faintest glint in his eye, as if the scene had departed so thoroughly from ordinary reason that he was curious to see how she meant to recover it.
Worse still, that faint glint suited him.
It warmed nothing in his face exactly, but it altered the severity of it just enough to make her foolishly wonder what he might look like if he ever truly smiled.
She had been chased, wounded, seized and nearly thrown off a ship. Clearly, chaos had disordered her mind.
Grizel straightened as much as her captor’s grasp and her protesting leg would allow. “Then I beg yer pardon, me laird. I ought tae have asked whether ye were engaged elsewhere before declaring meself.”
A ripple of laughter ran through the nearby men.
MacAulay’s mouth did not smile, but something altered in it. “Ye board me ship pursued by armed men, start a fight on me deck, stab one intruder, and then propose marriage. Is this yer usual method of introduction?”
She suppressed a smirk. “Only when driven tae it.”
“I see. And should I be flattered?”
“If ye so choose.”
One of the sailors barked a delighted laugh and then stifled it at a glance from his laird. Laird MacAulay looked her over then with a swift, assessing attention that was somehow more unsettling than open rudeness would have been. His gaze took in the strain in her posture as she favored one leg.
She felt that look like a touch and resented herself for it immediately. He was not admiring her. He was measuring damage, weakness and inconvenience. She would do well to remember that before her foolish body began mistaking scrutiny for interest.
“Ye are injured.”
“I have been worse.”
“That is nae an answer.”
“It is the only one I have tae spare at present.”
That nearly won a smile from him… nearly.
That was the dangerous part. Had he smiled outright, she might have dismissed him as charming and therefore, suspect. But this restrained fragment of amusement held behind discipline made him seem less a polished gallant and rather more a locked door with fire behind it.
Grizel, she thought sharply, ye are nae here tae wonder what opens him.
“Who are you?” he asked, bringing her back to the present moment.
Grizel hesitated only a beat. There was no use concealing it now. “Lady Grizel Calder.”
His expression changed, revealing recognition, then thought.
“Calder,” he mused. “The daughter.”
“Aye.”
His eyes narrowed. “The one Drummond means tae wed.”
“I dae nae belong tae him,” she snarled.
“Nae,” he said, glancing toward the harbor where Drummond’s men were still shouting from the dock below. “I see that.”
There was no pity in his voice, and she was grateful for it. Pity would have made her feel small. This man’s attention, however severe, did not reduce her. It placed her in danger, but it did not make her into nothing.
And heaven preserve her, after Drummond, even that felt perilously close to kindness.
She drew herself up again. “If ye will grant me the courtesy of hearing me before having me thrown overboard, I believe I can explain why both yer interests and mine may be served by allowing me tae remain exactly where I am.”
One dark brow lifted. “Ye speak as if ye are offering a trade treaty, nae a marriage.”
“Are they so very different?”
That did it. A short breath left him, not quite laughter but near enough to warm the edges of the moment. He studied her for another long second while the wind moved between them, carrying salt and cold and the reek of the busy harbor.
It occurred to her, most inconveniently, that if she were truly to marry him, this would be the face she had to learn by firelight and by morning, by anger and council, by silence and nearness.
The thought should have appalled her. Instead, it sent a strange, swift unease through her, not wholly made of fear. She immediately crushed it down. A woman running from one man’s claim had no right to embroider fantasies around another man’s face.
Then, he turned to the sailor still holding her. “Release her.”
“Me laird?—”
“I said release her.”
The hands fell away at once. Grizel nearly stumbled when left to her own balance, but she steadied herself before anyone could catch at her again. The pain in her leg pulsed upward with every heartbeat, hot and mean, but she would sooner have swallowed seawater than shown weakness now.
MacAulay’s gaze dropped briefly to the dagger in her hand.
“Now, will ye put that away, or shall I assume ye intend tae negotiate at knifepoint?”
She looked down as if surprised to find she still held it. “That depends somewhat upon the quality of yer manners.”
His eyes flicked back to hers. “Me manners are excellent.”
“I am relieved tae hear it.”
“But me patience,” he warned, “is nae.”
The words should have frightened her. Instead, absurdly, they steadied her.
Here at last was a man who spoke plainly, even when edged.
She had no leisure left for artifice masquerading as power.
And somehow, there was something in his dry restraint that made her treacherous imagination whisper that his hands, so brutal mere moments ago, might know gentleness if only he chose it.
Stop it, she scolded herself.
“Ye have managed,” he told her, “tae make yerself a disturbance of unusual scale in less than a minute aboard me ship.”
“I had tae be efficient.”
That time, unmistakably, amusement flickered.
Then it was gone, replaced by command. “Bring nae one tae me cabin,” he said to the men nearest him. “See that the deck is cleared. If Drummond sends another rat aboard, throw him farther.”
“Aye, me laird.”
He turned back to Grizel and stepped aside just enough to indicate the way below.
“Ye wished tae speak tae me, me lady… Come, then.”
Grizel tightened her grip on the dagger once, then finally slid it back beneath her cloak. Her leg protested sharply when she took her first step, and though she concealed the worst of it, she knew he noticed. He seemed the kind of man who missed nothing.
He did not offer his arm. She was oddly glad of it.
No, not glad… she was relieved. There was a difference.
Had he offered, she might have had to take it, and had she taken it, she would have felt the strength of the arm that had thrown a grown man across the deck.
She would have noticed the heat of him, the strength, the steadiness.
She would have been forced to remember that this stranger was not merely a bargain to be struck, but a man made of flesh and blood, a man she had just asked to marry.
Together, they crossed the deck, past sailors still pretending not to stare, past the smeared marks of the fight and the ropes humming in the wind, toward the stern where the entrance to his cabin stood half-shadowed beneath the quarterdeck.
He walked beside her rather than ahead, slowing his stride only enough that she would not be forced to limp openly. The courtesy was so subtle it might have been denied if named.
That made it worse. Open gallantry she could have mocked. It was this quiet consideration that unsettled her.
Dinnae soften, she ordered herself. A thoughtful wolf is still a wolf.
At the threshold he opened the door and waited for her to enter first. Grizel paused for just a beat.
The cabin beyond was dim compared to the washed grey light outside, smelling of cedarwood, leather, salt, and something faintly smoky she thought might cling to him as much as to the room.
It was the private chamber of a dangerous man, and she was about to step into it alone.
Shameful creature, she told herself. Have ye nae better sense than tae find danger handsome merely because it has dark eyes and holds a door?
But danger seemed to be her path at present. She could only choose which sort she preferred.
So, Grizel Calder lifted her head, ignored the ache in her leg, and walked into Laird Malcolm MacAulay’s cabin to bargain for her future.