What stretched before them now was disaster on a scale so vast, Lottie still couldn’t catch her breath. A sharp pain kept pulsing at her temples as she tried to sort through it all. How in God’s name had they lost one ship and stolen another all in the stretch of a day?
That had most certainly not been the plan.
She gazed down at her wounded father. They’d put him in the captain’s cabin for want of any other suitable place. The forecastle held two Mackenzie men and one Livingstone, all of them injured, but none of them mortally, thank the saints. Morven, the closest thing to healer the Livingstones had, was sure of it.
Her father, however, was not so fortunate. Lottie could scarcely look at his gray pallor without feeling bilious, and even more so when she looked at the blood that soaked the bandages they’d put around the gaping hole in his torso.
He was groaning now, reaching for Lottie’s hand. And everyone else? The men who were still on their feet and crowded around her? They were all offering their varied opinions about what they ought to do, then looking to her to choose. All of them but Gilroy, the captain of the Margit and her father’s friend of more than forty years. He stood at the porthole, watching his ship pitch and roll and drift away, its bow under water.
“What do we do now?” asked Norval Livingstone.
Diah, but Lottie’s head hurt. She wished everyone would stop looking to her to solve everything. Could they not see she’d made a mess of things thus far? The terror and panic that had shot through her when Gilroy shouted they’d taken a shot to the bow and were taking on water had blinded her to all common sense. They didn’t know who attacked them, they didn’t know why and had only one gun on board to fight the larger ship, one they scarcely knew how to fire. But fire it they had, and the cannon shot had hit something explosive on the other ship and had sent flames shooting into the air. All quite by accident—she thought it nothing short of magical that they’d hit the ship at all. Just as quickly as it had come upon them, that ship turned about and fled toward Scotland.
She should have done what Gilroy advised once the fighting had ended and the other ship had fled. She should have agreed to let the crew draw straws to see who would accompany her and her father back to Scotland on the jolly boat, while the others tried to sail the listing ship back to shore. But then someone had shouted another ship was approaching, and her father had begged her not to turn back and Lottie had come up with an impetuous, foolish, dangerous plan that she prayed would save them all.
It was so absurd that she still couldn’t believe it had worked.
“Aye, well then, Gilroy, what do you see?” asked Duff MacGuire. He was the resident thespian of the Livingstone clan and had played the part of spokesman on the jolly when the Mackenzie ship had come to their aid.
“It has begun to rain,” Gilroy said flatly. “And my ship has sunk.”
He turned his back to the porthole. There were lines on his face Lottie had never seen before. “We should no’ have sailed her,” he said morosely. “I said as much to Bernt, I did, but he convinced me ours was a noble endeavor. Diah, she’s gone now.”
“I’m so verra sorry, Gilroy,” Lottie muttered.
“I donna like it,” Drustan said, his voice full of panic. Lottie’s younger brother was rocking back and forth on his heels, but because he was so unusually large, he kept knocking into the table. She put her hand on his arm to calm him, but he was staring with horror at their father, a bead of perspiration sliding down his temple. He was confused. But then again, poor Drustan was always confused. He’d been born with the cord wrapped round his neck and had very nearly died. He’d never been quite right.
Lottie’s mother had always said Drustan was special in ways unlike anyone else. “Mark me, that lad has a brilliance in him. We’ve just no’ discovered it yet.”
“Donna worry about Fader,” Lottie said to Drustan. “He’s quite strong. You know that he is. He’s sleeping now because Morven gave him a sleeping draught so that he might heal, aye? You and Mats go with Gilroy now. There’s much work to be done.” She looked to Gilroy for confirmation, but the man was studying his feet, lost in thought.
Mathais, Lottie’s brash and youngest brother, moved to her side, his chest puffed like a fat pigeon. He’d only recently turned fourteen years to Drustan’s twenty years and her twenty-three. He had the heart of a warrior, but was still a child. He declared, “I’ll go, Lot. You need no’ send Drustan. He’ll only be in the way, he will.”
Lottie was too despondent to argue. “Aye, go,” she said, waving a hand at Mathais. “Take Drustan with you.”
Mathais rolled his eyes.
“Gilroy?”
“Hmm?” He glanced up.
“Should no’ someone sail the ship, then?” she asked gently.
His brow furrowed as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Do you mean to say no one is sailing her?”
“Well who would sail it, Gilroy?” Duff asked with exasperation.
“Bloody hell, have we all lost our minds?” Gilroy demanded sternly, and began to make his way out of the overstuffed cabin.
Mathais pivoted about to follow Gilroy and tripped over his own feet, which seemed to grow another inch each week. Drustan, who towered above them all, hurried behind Mats as if he was afraid he might lose him.
That left Duff and Robert MacLean with Lottie. Mr. MacLean was the one who kept the Livingstone books. In other words, he was the one who came round once a week to explain to Lottie and her father that their funds were dwindling. He was revered among the Livingstones for his creative accounting capabilities. “We should turn back, ere it’s too late,” she suggested to them.
“Nonsense!” Duff said. “We’re no’ three days from Denmark. Your father would no’ abide it if you turned back now, what with all we’ve done.”
“But his injury is severe,” Lottie said, swallowing down a swell of nausea, having seen the gaping wound in his belly. But she could not seem to swallow the bit of hysteria that followed.
“Morven is as good a healer as comes from the Highlands, aye?” said Mr. MacLean. “He canna have better care at Lismore. And besides, Lottie, Bernt wants you to carry on, does he no’?”
She didn’t want to be reminded of the horror of this morning, but nodded that yes, he had told her in no uncertain terms to carry on. “But we canna keep him here in the captain’s quarters.” All three of them glanced around to the figure in the corner of the room, the captain of the Reulag Balhaire, bound and gagged and shackled to a desk that had been built into the wall, and at present, very much unconscious. He’d sustained a few blows, but it was the tincture Morven had managed to pour down his throat that had stopped his shouting and cursing. “Me granny always said this would put a horse on his rump,” Morven had said, shaking his head at the vial he held, clearly in awe of its powers as the captain had sunk into the depths of oblivion.
“Leave him be, Lottie,” Duff said. “The forward cabin is full, it is. It’s either here, or below decks, which is currently occupied by angry men bound to each other and under guard. If you remove your father to the hold, he’ll rouse them all to a fever, mark me.”
“Donna fret for the captain, lass,” Mr. MacLean had said. “He canna cause you harm now.”
The three of them looked at the captain again. “Will he be all right?” Lottie asked.
“He’ll be right as rain,” Duff said with authority Lottie wasn’t sure he possessed. “I reckon the captain’s pride will suffer more than his body.”
Diah, his body. When Lottie had first laid eyes on him as that sea of ogling men had parted, she’d been struck by how devilishly handsome he was. There he’d stood, quite resplendent in his trousers, with no coat or waistcoat, but only a lawn shirt, open at the collar. She’d not expected such a virile man to be captain