Highland Lover: Book 3 Scottish Knights Trilogy (19 page)

“I dinna mind sitting up in the bow if Mace does,” Will said. “It be a fine night, and the sea be a-coming in and going out without a fuss.”

“The tide is turning, so ’tis is a good time to go,” Jake said. “Take my hand now, Allie. I’ll see you safely aboard.”

Swallowing hard but telling herself that he knew what he was doing and she was being foolish, she gripped his hand. Although she expected to feel the usual unnerving tingle when she did, she felt only its comforting warmth.

Jake urged her toward the boat and introduced her to the oarsmen.

They had beached it bow inward, and when she saw that the men expected her to get in first, she nearly balked. But Jake shifted his hand to her elbow, told the oarsmen and Mace to hold the boat, and stepped into it with her, steadying her as she stepped over the midthwart to stand uncertainly in the tipsy stern.

To her slight annoyance, despite the tilt of the boat on the shingle, and its stern still rocking in water, Jake made his way as steadily as he would on solid ground. Her boots wanted to slip on the polished wooden strakes.

She was wondering if she should sit on the stern seat while the boat remained atilt when, taking her bundle from Mace and handing it to her, Jake said, “Sit down low on this, lass. We’ll try to keep you dry this time.”

Will and Mace got in, and with Jake and Mace manning oars to help, the other two men shoved the boat into the waves, turned it bow outward, and leaped in. For a time, Alyson expected the waves to fling them right back onto the shingle, but they were soon well away from the shore.

Jake and Mace rowed until they were far enough out to exchange places with the other men. Then Jake took the tiller, and Mace moved forward with Will.

The moon was not up yet, and the sky was a blanket of stars that created a shimmering glaze on the sea. The night air was chilly, but Alyson’s cloak was warm and dry and her feet were snug in boots and woolen netherstocks.

The boat rocked up and down on the waves, but her fear was gone. Glancing at Jake, she caught him gazing at her.

“Feeling better?” he murmured.

“Aye, and foolish for showing my fear so readily.”

“Recognizing one’s fears and expressing them is
not
a bad thing.”

She smiled at him, warmed by his understanding. It was, she realized, the first time she had truly felt like smiling since the English ships had appeared. But as that thought flitted through her mind, she felt the unnerving sensation that she had felt so often with her cat, Pallie, shortly before his death.

The sensation vanished then, replaced by a chill that began at the base of her spine and shot upward, radiating through her as it did.

Suddenly frightened, fighting to control her expression so that Jake would not see her fear, and praying that it was too dark for him to note it in any other way, she realized that she was still staring at him and shifted her gaze. The strange sensation could not, she told herself fiercely, mean the same thing for Jake that it had eventually meant for Pallie.

That warning twinge meant nothing where Jake was concerned. It certainly could not mean that she cared too much about him, let alone loved him. That would be daft. She barely knew him, and she was a married woman.

Swallowing, she realized that in such an instance, the sensation might hold some lesser but distinctly similar warning—perhaps that, as a wife uncertain of her husband’s fate, she should not be thinking about Jake Maxwell at all, and certainly not in such disturbing ways.

Jake was just a man who had rescued her from a sinking ship. Feeling grateful to him was one thing. Letting her mind dwell on his character, his behavior, and…
and other things about him… might prove to be a grave mistake.

Jake wondered what the lass was thinking now. Thanks to the starlight and his excellent night vision, he could see her clearly enough to know something was amiss. Although he’d detected little more than a twitch of her lush lips and the fact that her serenity had not restored itself after her brief rebellion against the sea, he was aware that some new but equally disturbing emotion had surged through her.

Or else, he told himself dryly, he was a fool, trying to imagine he possessed that gift of hers himself. He wondered if it had occurred to her that what she thought was Second Sight might be no more than keener insight than most people had.

Her description of Davy Stewart’s death argued strongly against that, though. She had described it as if she
had
been there to watch—even, chillingly, as if Davy had spoken to her or she’d overheard his dying thoughts.

Likely, more news had escaped Lindores Abbey than he knew. Its Benedictine monks were not loose-lipped, but they were human, as were the people at Falkland. Perhaps she’d heard a whispered rumor here, another there, until her sensitive mind and keen intelligence put everything together to provide her with a nightmare that no innocent maiden should ever have endured.

She had still been a maiden at the time, too, because Davy had died the previous March, and she’d married Clyne after Christmas. To be thinking of her maidenhood
struck an odd note, so he dismissed the chain of thoughts as irrelevant.

The primary difficulty for him was that her description was so apt, filling gaps in what the monks had deduced from the state of Davy’s body. That she believed she had been aware of Davy’s dying thoughts made him shudder.

Her gaze was far away now and had shifted to a point beyond him. An impulse stirred in him to make her look his way again, but common sense intervened sharply to suppress it. It was one thing to do his duty by a lady but quite another to interest himself as much as he seemed to be doing.
That road
, murmured a voice deep inside,
can lead to nobbut trouble.
If, by some miracle of God, her husband
was
still alive, it would be bad enough. But if he were dead…

“Straight ahead, Cap’n,” Mace said.

“I see her, aye,” Jake said. Instinct or his mind had already noted the shape of the
Sea Wolf
ahead of them against the stars. He had already adjusted his course.

“She’s much smaller than the
Maryenknyght
,” Alyson said.

“She is,” Jake agreed. “But she is a stable craft and unlikely to draw interest from any pirates still lingering along this coast. If necessary, I have a Norse flag we can fly and another from the Hanse. Ships like her are common in the Isles, but most oared ships on this coast come from Norway.”

“How long will it take us to reach Perth?”

“We go to St. Andrews first, because I must let Wardlaw know what happened straightway. We’re about two hundred miles from there, so if the wind stays strongly behind us, we could do it in three or four days. But with
the wind against us and picking up each afternoon, as it has been, it could take a sennight—if it storms, longer still.”

“Have you enough provisions?”

“Aye, sure, we had enough to take us to France, after all. Although the
Sea Wolf
looks like a Highland galley, her design is more that of a birlinn.”

“I don’t know the difference.”

“Just that the
Sea Wolf
has a cargo hold. Ordinary Highland galleys don’t. Our hold has room to string hammocks for sleeping and for our towboat.”

“Will I have a hammock?”

“Nay, I’ll put you in the master’s cabin. You’ll have a bed much like yours on the
Maryenknyght
.” Recalling that she’d also had her attire woman on that ship, he added, “You’re going to miss Ciara, but young Will can help if you need him.”

Jake next remembered sharing with Will earlier his doubts that Ivor would accept one lad and two men as respectable protection for his cousin Alyson.

Nor, he realized now, would Ivor accept thirty-six oarsmen, a helmsman, and their captain as such, especially since Ivor, of all people, would know that Jake’s men would lie themselves into Hell for him if he asked them to. However, Ivor might accept the word of one ten-year-old boy whose character he knew. If Will were able to tell him honestly that Lady Alyson’s good reputation remained intact…

Jake could only hope. A mere whisper of impropriety could so easily damage or destroy a woman’s reputation. Although he’d taken care not to draw censure from anyone in England, simply to avoid unwanted attention, he’d
had no way—short of abducting Lizzie Thornwick—to provide Alyson with a respectable female companion for the voyage home.

It occurred to him that his mentor, Giff MacLennan, whose motto was “Reck not!” might well have abducted Lizzie under such circumstances. Jake liked to think that
he
was more practical.

If he could get Alyson quietly back to her family, she would be safe. But that meant he’d have to keep his distance as much as one could on the small ship. They would stop briefly at St. Andrews so he could report to Wardlaw, but there was no need to take her to the castle with him. It was, after all, an all-male establishment. However, if circumstances demanded that he ask Wardlaw to shelter her overnight, no one there would gossip about it.

Alyson watched with interest as the towboat approached the
Sea Wolf
. She had expected to hear men shouting orders, but the small boat skimmed in near silence up to the larger one, and their two oarsmen turned it deftly to bring the two vessels side by side. The
Sea Wolf
’s sail was down. No oars were visible although she could see the oar holes, so she decided the ship must be at anchor.

Rope ladders unfurled, and men climbed down to help secure the towboat. Others lowered ropes that Jake rigged into a net sling around Alyson, saying, “ ’Tis only a short way. But as they draw you up, sitting in this sling will protect your modesty and assure that you get aboard without falling into the sea. Since the alternative is for me to hoist you to the men on board and let them haul you over the railing, this will be more to your liking, I promise you.”

She believed him.

As two men aboard began to hoist her, Jake grabbed hold of a dangling rope and climbed up the side of the ship beside her.

He encouraged her as he did, talking quietly. Curious about his boat, she barely heeded his words, but the sound of his voice was soothing.

The galley’s sides stepped steeply upward at stem and stern, and the lower stretch of railing was much nearer the water than any railing on the
Maryenknyght
had been. The line of oar holes was even closer.

In moments, she was looking over the edge to the
Sea Wolf
’s deck.

Jake lifted her over the wale and undid the sling he’d created for her. Then he said, “Let me take your bundle from Mace, my lady. Then I’ll show you to your cabin. Will, lad, you come with us.”

“Aye, sure,” the boy replied. “This boat looks like the one ye had in the Firth o’ Tay last year. But it isna the same one, I’m thinking.”

“Nay, that was one of Orkney’s ships. This one’s mine.”

Moments later, he opened the stern cabin door for Alyson to enter.

“I can’t see a thing in there,” she said.

“Here, sir,” Coll said, stepping to Jake’s side with a shaded lantern, only one side of which showed light.