Devil In Tartan

Not one of them looked like a sailor to Aulay. Most of them didn’t seem to have their sea legs, stumbling and banging into each other as the ship bobbed on the swells and they sought their balance. It was all very odd. He was impatient, too—the transfer was taking far too long. The Reulag Balhaire had to keep tacking around to keep from drifting too far from the smaller ship. Aulay watched the progress of the last few. The enormous man who had remained behind with the lady singlehandedly lowered a figure in a rope sling to the waiting boat. Next came the lady, climbing down the rope ladder with surprising agility. She leaped into the boat, foregoing any of the hands offered up, then turned her head up to direct the larger man. He began to make his way down, too, but much more clumsily—lumbering, really, appearing to have trouble fitting his feet into the slots along the ladder. When he at last made his way into the boat, the inhabitants had to fan out to both sides to keep the small boat steady and accommodate his girth, and the boat itself seemed to sit lower in the water as they began the laborious progress across.

As the small boat neared the Mackenzie ship, all the men strained to have a look at the woman. She kept her head down, her attention on the injured man. The only distinguishable thing about her was the unbound hair. Long hair that looked almost as white as snow, a beacon against the gray sky and sea.

When the boat came alongside the ship, Aulay’s men crowded around, each juggling to be the one to help the lady up, and if pushed aside, hanging over the railing to have a look. Two men came aboard first, and together, they lifted the injured man with a pair of ropes. There was quite a lot of commotion as that man was carried off to one of the cabins. Aulay’s men scarcely gave the injured man a look—they were clearly far more interested in the ascent of the woman, all of them craning their necks, and some of his crew swaggering about the railing like roosters as they called their encouragement to her.

Aulay saw the crown of her head as she hopped over the railing and onto the deck. “Madainn Mhath,” she said, as if she were greeting guests at a tea party. The men crowded closer.

“Och, let the lass breathe, then,” Iain the Red said crossly. “Billy, lad, give the lady room.”

“Are you all right, then?” asked Fingal MacDonald, one of Aulay’s crew.

“Verra well, thank you.” Her voice had a pleasing lilt to it. “If you please, sirs, might you step back a wee bit, then? I canna move.”

“Give way, give way!” Iain shouted at them.

There was a shuffling, but none of his men gave an inch to another. Iain shoved one man aside, and when he did, Aulay caught a glimpse of an elegant hand as the woman pushed hair from her temple.

“You’re unharmed, are you?” Beaty asked, and judging by the concern in his voice, Aulay guessed his disdain for this rescue had completely dissipated.

“Oh aye, thank you,” she said. “I’ve had quite a fright, that’s all.”

“You’ve quite a lot of blood on your gown,” Beaty said.

“Do I?”

Her lyrical voice was oddly accented, with a slight hint of a Scots brogue and a proper English accent. It reminded Aulay a wee bit of his mother, who was English by birth but had lived in Scotland for nearly forty years now, and had a similar accent.

“Aye, indeed I do,” she said, sounding surprised. “Never mind it—I fear more for my father.”

At that moment, the lumbering giant came over the railing, and it felt almost as if the ship tipped a wee bit. “What am I to do, Lottie?” he asked. “I donna recollect what I’m to do.”

The giant of a man sounded like a dullard.

“Stay close,” she said sweetly. “You’re all so verra kind,” she said to Aulay’s men in that lilting voice. “I should like to thank your captain, aye? Might you point him out?”

There was a lot of shuffling about, muttered pardons—a word, incidentally, Aulay had never heard his men use before. But these men, as rough and bawdy as any he’d ever known, seemed almost bashful now. They were stumbling over each other to allow the lady to pass.

When they’d cleared a path, Aulay instantly understood what held them in such thrall. The first thing he noticed about her was her hair, a thick wave of unbound silk, the blond of it so light that it reminded Aulay of the color of pearls. Next, her eyes, large orbs the same color as the warm coastal waters of the Caribbean Sea. Plump, rose-colored lips that could bedevil a man. Her almost angelic beauty was as surprising as it was incongruent next to the men in her company. This young woman was bòidheach. Beautiful. To his eye, a pulse-fluttering sight.

Something strong and strange waved through Aulay. He felt himself standing on the cusp of something quite big, as if part of him hung in the balance. He innately understood the feeling. It was something he’d experienced the first time he’d ever been on a ship and had known that would be his life. Or the first time he’d ever lain with a woman. Aulay just knew. He was not one to flatter unnecessarily, but he was bedeviled.

As she approached him, her warm blue eyes fixed on his, that strange feeling of intoxication waved through him again. Her cheeks were pinkened from the wind and from her scrambling about, and her hair, Diah, her hair—it was falling wildly about her face in ethereal wisps. She wore a gown of silver silk over a blue petticoat, the stomacher cinched so tightly that it scarcely contained plump breasts.

Beaty pointed at Aulay, apparently incapable of speech, and even Aulay, who had heretofore thought himself inured to the effects of beautiful women after spending his life in so many ports of call, was a wee bit tongue-tied.

“Captain,” she said, and dipped into a curtsy. “Thank you.”

Aulay slipped his hand under her elbow and lifted her up with the vague thought that she ought not to bow to anyone.

The ship pitched a little, and she caught his arm as if to steady herself, her fingers spreading over his coat and squeezing lightly. “You’ve my undying gratitude, you do,” she said. “I donna know what we might have done had you no’ come along to rescue us.” She smiled.

An invisible band tightened around Aulay’s chest and his breathing felt suddenly short. He realized that hers was not a perfect beauty, but taken altogether, she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

“You’d no’ believe what we’ve been made to endure this day,” she said, and pressed that slender, elegant hand to her heart. “On my word, I thought we’d perish. You’ve saved our lives, good sir!”

“Who have I the pleasure of saving, then?” Aulay asked as his gaze traveled over her face, to her décolletage, her trim waist.

“Oh dear me,” she said, and smiled sheepishly as his men closed in around them, straining to hear. “The ordeal has robbed me of my manners, it has. Larson, sir. Lady Larson.”

“Madam,” he said, and bowed his head. “Captain Mackenzie of Balhaire at your service.”

“Balhaire, of course!” she said delightedly. “No’ an angel from heaven then, but the Mackenzies are legend all the same.” She smiled again with sunny gratitude.

Aulay was confused by the notion of being called an angel and the idea she should know his name, but again, he felt strangely and uncharacteristically tongue-tied.

“Did you see them, then?” she asked, pushing more hair from her face. “The pirates?”

Her eyes, one slightly larger than the other, were unusually bright, sparkling like a clear spring day.

“Thieves, they were. They attacked us without reason.” She turned slightly, addressing all the men. “There we were, sailing without a care and getting on verra well, mind, as we’ve little experience at sea. Save our captain, of course,” she said, and gestured to a man with narrow shoulders and hips. He clasped his hands behind him and bowed gallantly. “When suddenly, out of the mist, a much larger ship appeared and was bearing down us.”

“How did they make contact?” Aulay asked curiously.

She turned those shining blue eyes to him again. “With a cannon!” she said dramatically. “We did naugh’ to deserve it! We had scarcely noticed them at all, and then, boom!” She threw her arms wide, and her breasts very nearly lifted from her bodice, and all the men swayed back, as if expecting them to launch. When they didn’t, his men quickly shifted closer.

“My poor father has been badly injured with a wound to his torso,” she added, her smile fading.

“And so have you,” Beaty said, pointing to a rip in the fabric of the skirt of her gown and the bloodstains around it.

She glanced down, to where he pointed. “Oh, aye, indeed. I’d forgotten it in all the confusion.”

“Ought to have a look at it, Miss Livingstone,” said one of her men, who stood somewhere behind the crowd of Aulay’s men. “Gangrene and the like.”

Gangrene. Aulay rolled his eyes.

“Gangrene!” she cried, alarmed.

“I think you need no’ worry of that,” Beaty said, glancing peevishly at whoever had said it.

Lady Larson suddenly leaned down, gathered the hem of her skirt, and lifted it to midcalf.

Aulay’s men surged forward like a wave of cocks and balls, their gazes riveted on her leg, and the little boots and stockings she wore. “I donna see it. I suppose it’s a wee bit higher still,” she said, and much to Aulay’s surprise, she lifted the hem to her knee.

He was completely devoid of thought in that moment. She lifted the gown higher still, past the top of her stocking, so that they could see her bare thigh, the flesh pale white and as smooth as milk. There was indeed a small gash there, but neither very deep or long, and certainly not one that could account for all the blood on her gown.

The lady glanced up at the men, and her gaze settled on Aulay. “Do you think it is verra bad?” she asked prettily, practically inviting him to have a closer look as she thrust her leg forward. “Can any of you see?”

Aulay never had the opportunity to answer. A sudden and loud explosion from the other ship startled them all—at which point, Aulay suddenly recalled that the difference between a bilander and a fly boat was that a bilander generally carried a small gun or two.

Before he could utter a word or a command, he was struck from behind with such force that he was thrown to the deck and his wits were knocked from him. He instantly tried to stand, but the ship felt as if it was spinning, and he couldn’t seem to move his legs properly. He managed to claw his way up to his knees, then looked up, saw the luminescent blue eyes of Lady Larson gazing down at him. She smiled ruefully and said, “I am so verra sorry,” and kicked her knee squarely into his jaw with the strength to send him backward.

Aulay grabbed for the railing to pull himself up. He found his footing, was reaching for her when he was struck on the head once more.

The last thing he could register before everything faded to black was that after all these years, he’d at last been felled at sea. Not by battle or storm, but by a woman.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN THE MARGIT had set sail from the shores of Lismore, it had never occurred to Lottie that a scant two days later, she would have somehow become a pirate—at least that’s what she thought she should be called after what she’d done.

The bedlam had settled, and the Livingstones had won the battle, such that it was. She and her clan had caught the unsuspecting Mackenzies so completely off their guard. 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 of this ship, but someone more like Gilroy—older and bonier. And yet it wasn’t his bonny looks that had made her heart leap so, but his eyes. It was the way he’d looked at her, with such heated contemplation that she could feel her skin blistering beneath his perusal.

“It’s heartless to bring him so low as this,” Lottie muttered, and turned away from the stunningly attractive man in chains, lest Duff and Robert see her guilt...or favorable regard. “’Tis crime enough that we’ve taken his ship without his consent. I’d no’ like to add injury or insult to it.”

“Och, the deed has been done, lass,” Duff said dismissively. “’Tis no’ a free society we’ve begun here, is it? He’ll do as he’s made to do, he will. What choice has he?”

Duff was right, of course, but that didn’t stop Lottie from feeling incredible remorse for what had happened. She didn’t want to do any more to the men of the Reulag Balhaire than what she and her men had already forced on them. Oh, but this voyage had been badly conceived! They were in the midst of a living nightmare.

“Well then, we ought to be about helping where needed,” Mr. MacLean said. “I donna trust Gilroy in his present state of mind.” He glanced at Lottie. “You’ll be all right, will you, lass?”

She looked at the unconscious captain, at her unconscious father, and shrugged. “Apparently so.”

“Verra well, then,” Mr. MacLean said, and opened the cabin door. “Someone will be just outside at all times,” he reminded Lottie. “You need only call, aye?”

She watched them go out.

Silence. Blissful, golden silence. Everything had happened so fast! If she’d only had a wee bit of time to consider all the possibilities. But she hadn’t, and not one man had disagreed with her plan. She needed time to think, to reassess, and thank heaven, for the first time since sailing from Lismore, Lottie was alone.

Well...not alone. But quiet.

She sank onto a chair, suddenly aware of the heaviness that pervaded every limb, exhaustion settling in. She crossed her arms on the table, lay her head down on them and closed her eyes...but visions of the day plagued her mind’s eye.

It was a catastrophe—there could be no other word that would adequately describe it. It had really begun a fortnight ago, in the early evening of Sankt Hans, the annual celebration of midsummer. The Livingstone clan had been preparing for a play, one written and produced by Duff. Duff fancied himself quite the actor, and he’d rallied a few members of the clan to join his theatrical troupe. There were six of them set to perform when they heard the warning horn from Old Donnie. He lived on the tip of the island just across the loch from Port Appin, and it was his job to sound the horn if anything or anyone should come to the island.

Everyone had frantically begun to gather up incriminating whisky jugs. “What of the play?” Duff had wailed unhappily.

It just so happened that Lottie’s horse, Stjerne, was still saddled from her participation in the pony races, and when she saw Norval and Bear Livingstone leap to their horses, she joined them. It was the way of things on Lismore—she was always in the thick of things.

She’d not been the least surprised to find Laird Campbell, his periwig tightly curled and overly powdered, skulking among the rabbits. It wasn’t his first attempt to find the stills. Naturally, Mr. Edwin MacColl, the chief of the clan who inhabited what the Livingstones considered to be the good side of their island, would accompany him.

Lottie had always liked Mr. MacColl as long as he stayed on his end of the island. He was a widower, his children grown and married with children of their own. He was older than Lottie’s father, but still had a broad chest and thick, snowy brows that slid up when he smiled wistfully at Lottie as he was wont to do.

But his visits to the north end had become all too frequent of late, and quite recently, he’d suggested to Bernt that Lottie might make him a good wife. “I’ve a nice house for her to keep, plenty of food for the table,” he’d suggested, apparently considering these two facts to be his better points of persuasion.

Lottie had not been surprised by the offer. Frankly, on an island where unmarried lassies were not plentiful, every man seemed to believe himself her perfect match, just as her mother had predicted, God rest her soul.

Her mother had warned Lottie of her allure to males. “You’re a beauty, lass, and men are drawn to beauty to their own detriment like moths to light, aye? You must no’ allow them to turn your head with bonny words and empty promises. You must be diligent in seeking the man who honors you for your heart and no’ your face, then, do you understand me? And beware your own father, lass—aye, he loves you, more than life, he does, but he’s easily persuaded by the promises of others.”

If her mother’s words hadn’t sufficiently cautioned her, Anders Iversen, her one and only lover, had driven her mother’s point home.

Anyway, when Lottie had discovered the laird sneaking about, she’d escorted him to her home and had winced when her father emerged from the house a bit crookedly, a signal that he’d had too much drink.

“Ah, Laird Campbell. Fàilte!” her father said with great congeniality. No matter what trouble, he was always a jolly, carefree man. Lottie had come off her horse and had started inside with the men, but the laird had turned abruptly and said, “If you would, Miss Livingstone, give the men an opportunity to speak plainly. This is no’ the sort of talk appropriate for your ears.”

Lottie had bristled and had opened her mouth to suggest that was for her and her father to determine, but her father had said, “Aye, of course, laird. Lottie, lass, go and...have a look at the celebration, aye?” he’d said, waving his hand rather dismissively at her as he’d seen the laird inside.

An interminable amount of time seemed to have passed before the laird and Mr. MacColl finally emerged from the house, bid her good day—Mr. MacColl with a sheepish smile—and had returned to their boat. Lottie, Duff and Mr. MacLean had gone to her father straightaway to hear the news.

Naturally, her father had been completely unruffled by the laird’s visit. “He came about the rents,” Lottie’s father informed them, then chuckled irreverently as he bent over and reached behind the sideboard and produced a flagon of whisky he’d hidden there.

“I said we donna have what’s owed, no’ yet, but, I says to him, this—” he paused and rapped his knuckles on his head “—is always about its work.”

“Diah,” Lottie groaned.

“And the laird, he said, well has it worked out precisely when the rents will be paid?” Her father laughed as he poured tots of whisky around for them all.

“And?” Lottie pressed him.

“I said we’d have them in a month.”

Lottie’s belly had sunk. A month was bloody well impossible.

Her father had waved his hand at her crestfallen expression. “Calm yourself, Lot. We’ll think of something. Anything will be a wee sight better than what Campbell suggested, aye?”

“What?” she asked. “What did he suggest, then?”

“Och, he believes I ought to consider MacColl’s offer to take my daughter to wife.”

Lottie had gasped. She’d felt a little faint.

“Well of course he did! I’ve the bonniest daughter in all the Highlands, I’ve heard it said more than once. Why, there’s no’ a lad on Lismore who’s no’ pined for her, eh, Robert?”

Mr. MacLean’s face had reddened at once and he’d turned his attention to his tot.

“But as I told the laird, while they’ve all pined for her, she pays none of them any heed at all, on account of her broken heart.”

“Fader!” Lottie exclaimed, and felt the heat of humiliation creeping into her neck. “My heart is no’ broken.”

“The laird insisted I ought to do as MacColl had offered, and give you over as his wife, and in exchange, MacColl would pay our rents and oversee the Livingstones and thereby solve a host of problems from one end of the island to the other.”

“That’s quite a lot of problems,” Duff mused.

“I feel rather ill,” Lottie had said, and had sunk onto the old settee.

“I am an admirer of Edwin MacColl, that I am,” her father had blithely continued. “He’s a right smart fellow, I’ve always said. But I’ve as good a plan as MacColl.” He’d downed his whisky.

The only problem was that when her father had a good plan, disaster almost always loomed. “What plan?” Lottie had asked weakly.

“I’m coming round to that,” he’d said, holding up his hand. “The laird was no’ yet done with me, no,” he’d continued as he poured more whisky for himself, clearly enjoying the retelling of his encounter. “He said I was bloody impractical.”

“He didna,” Mr. MacLean had said flatly, sounding quite offended in spite of the obvious truth in the laird’s statement.

“He mentioned the limestone kilns, and the flax weaving,” her father had said with an airy wave of his hand, as if dismissing those two disastrous endeavors that had each ended badly and at considerable cost to the Livingstones. Bernt Livingstone was a whimsical man, scattered in his thoughts, impractical, and was easily gulled into schemes that fleeced their coffers. Once, when Lottie was a girl, there had been some talk of a new chief. But in the end, the Livingstones revered the code of the clan—Bernt was the grandson of Vilhelm Livingstone, A Danish baron, who had fled Denmark during the war with Sweden with a sizable fortune. He was their undisputed founder, and therefore, Bernt the rightful heir and chief.

Lottie could still recall how her father had stood in their salon that afternoon, his legs braced apart, his eyes gleaming with his plan. She lifted her head from her arms and looked at him. He was sleeping deeply with Morven’s tincture, free from the pain of the hole in his abdomen for the moment. She adored her father, but if there was one thing that sent her into fits of madness, it was his impetuosity. He’d squandered his inheritance on fantastic plans that had never come to fruition.

It was times like these that Lottie missed her mother the most. She’d been good ballast for her husband. She’d been gone for more than ten years, alas, death taking her and the infant daughter she’d given birth to when Mathais had been but a wee bairn, and Lottie only thirteen years old herself. But her mother, Lottie had realized years later, had been prescient on her deathbed. She’d known she was dying, and in those final hours, she’d called Lottie to her, had clutched her hand with a strength that belied her frail state. “Your father will need you, leannan, as will the boys, aye? Heed me, lass—it will seem your life is no’ your own, but you must swear to me now you’ll no’ forget yourself, Lottie.”