When the Laird Returns (7 page)

“That isn’t the worst of it, I’m afraid,” he said, removing the warmed cloth.

Iseabal nodded, wishing that she could bear to speak. But each word felt nipped at its tail and held prisoner by a sudden overwhelming confusion. She was feeling strangely light-headed, as if the pain in her side were slipping away. Her fingers felt warm, as did her toes, and her teeth felt abrasive, like limestone against her suddenly sensitive tongue.

He set the cloth aside, reaching for one of the amber vials shaped in the form of a dragon, its back filled with sharp spikes, its mouth opened to reveal fearsome teeth. She could almost envision it writhing and curling, wrapping itself around the MacRae’s hand. He captured it with his fingers, taming it and transforming it once again into glass. Uncorking the dragon’s head, he tipped the vial until a creamy yellow lotion dribbled onto his outstretched fingers.

“What is that?” she gasped, her eyes watering at the stench of rotting meat and grass.

“I think it’s best if you don’t know,” he said, a faint smile playing over his lips as he began applying it to her skin. “It’s an old formula given me by a man versed in the Chinese healing arts.”

His fingertips smoothed the cream against her skin in slow and gentle circles from her waist to just below her arm. A not unpleasing sensation, Iseabal thought, drifting in the feeling.

When he finished, the MacRae opened the second container, this one in the shape of a reclining rabbit, pouring an even viler smelling lotion into his palm.

Each of his fingers felt like a tiny brazier against her skin. His thumb heated the curve of her breast, then just as quickly eased the sensation with a long, soothing stroke.

Closing her eyes, Iseabal wondered at the strength of his poppy juice. “Warm,” she said, the word languid and soft, as if having texture.

“It’s supposed to feel that way,” he reassured her, his voice low and lingering.
Your hands are warm
, she said in her mind.
Not the lotion
.

She blinked open her eyes to find him capping the vial. He placed it on the basket top before turning to her again.

“I cannot swim,” she said sluggishly, feeling the gentle sway of the ship beneath her. She’d meant to tell him before, but just now remembered.

“Most sailors cannot,” he replied reasonably. “But we’re not going to sink,” he added, “so it won’t matter.”

“Are you certain?” Why did her voice sound fuzzy?

“Imminently so,” he said, smiling.

Raising her right hand, she cupped her fingers around his jaw, a gesture that evidently surprised him. His eyes flickered to her chest, then back to her face. The chilled air against her heated nipples reminded her that she was half naked.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said, the truth needing to be spoken. “Are all the MacRaes beautiful?”

He removed her hand, placing her arm over her breasts again, shielding her from his sight.

“I’m the least handsome of the lot,” he said, a soft smile curving his lips. “My brother James is the handsome one.”

“No,” she said, wondering if her lips should truly be this numb.

“You will have to be wrapped, Iseabal,” he said, his face somber. “And for that you’ll have to sit up. Can you bear it?”

Iseabal nodded, thinking that she could bear anything at this moment, even her wedding night.

He began to tear a cloth into lengths, tying them together before folding them end over end. She watched his hands raptly, fascinated that a man’s hands could be so large and yet so dexterous.

He was so close that she could see the pattern of his buttons, a raised fist holding a sword. An insignia not so much of aggression as of protection.

“What is this?” she asked, brushing the fingers of her right hand against his chest.

“The emblem of the Clan MacRae,” he said, drawing her up to a sitting position.

She closed her eyes, the red mist threatening again, but warmth oddly seemed to replace the pain.

“What is your name?” she asked abruptly, obviously surprising him with her question. “What do your friends and family call you?”

“Alisdair,” he replied. “But surely you knew that. I spoke my vows not once but three times,” he added dryly.

Her gaze slipped sideways. “I was not paying much attention,” she confessed, warmth heating her cheeks.

“What were you thinking of, Iseabal?” he asked.

“You,” she said, leaning her forehead against his damp
coat.
You
, she whispered again in her mind. But nothing like the thoughts she was having now. He was parting the red haze with his fingers, his smile keeping the pain at bay, and she was almost desperately grateful to him.

Thank you
, she said silently, brushing her lips against his coat.

Beginning at her back, he wound the cloth around her side, lifting her left arm carefully as he did so. His knuckles brushed the underside of her breasts as he rolled the cloth across her stomach and around to her back again.

Pressing the flat of one hand against her back, he held her upright. His palm was growing heated, or she more chilled. But she didn’t feel cold. Instead, there was a warmth inside her, one that traveled from her nose to her navel and around to the backs of her heels to fly to her head.

Sighing, Iseabal breathed against him, finding the dampness of his clothing an irritation. She should take his clothes from him, place her hands upon his chest, and warm him, too.

Once again he raised her arm, his fingers brushing the inside of her elbow and lingering there.

A raindrop dangled precariously from his hair and Iseabal watched it in fascination, the sight of it filling her vision. Tinged blue and beautiful in the lantern light, it hung pendulous from one damp tendril before falling. She watched it float in the air for an eternity until it disappeared in a damp trail between her breasts.

Suddenly Iseabal was so tired that she could barely keep her head up. She pressed her face against his neck, breathed against his throat. He smelled of Gilmuir and himself.

Speech was beyond her, silence lingering and filling every nook in her mind.

His breath was warm against her chilled shoulder as he
bent to test the tightness of the wrapping. He glanced up at her and then away as quickly.

The procedure seemed to take an eternity and she reveled in it. A nearly inaudible voice from a far-off land whispered a tinny protest. She was not herself, but then she was. This woman whose lips were pressed against the MacRae’s, Alisdair’s, throat was not Iseabal Drummond, recently wed. Instead, this was a stranger, whose blood beat hot and whose skin shivered with a brush of his night beard against her arm.

The edge of his cuff touched her waist; the feel of the sodden cloth against her skin was too abrasive. How strange that she could feel so much.

As she watched him from beneath her lashes, her view of Alisdair was narrowed to his hands and his chest, but nothing more.

She was feeling exactly as she had when tumbling to the bottom of Gilmuir’s foundation, as if her stomach were hollow and her limbs weightless.

“I do not feel quite myself,” she said, her words slurred.

“It’s the effect of the poppy juice,” he said gently, tucking in the last strip of bandage. Tying it against her right side, he sat back to survey his handiwork.

“It is not, perhaps, as good a job as the physician could do,” he said finally. “But at least the wrapping will support you until your ribs heal.”

He stood, made his way to his chest, opened another of the doors to reveal a series of pegs on which his garments were stowed. Selecting one in a crimson color, he returned to the side of the bed.

Tossing the garment next to her, he bent and helped her stand. Her legs were suddenly so weak that she had to lean on him for support.

“You shouldn’t wear anything constrictive,” he was saying through the haze in her mind. “This should suit,” he added, bending and holding out a voluminous nightshirt to her.

She nodded, the movement of her head making the cabin careen around her. Or maybe the storm was still raging and she’d not sensed it until this moment. Leisurely, she looped her arms around his neck.

“It’s yours,” she said, feeling as if some protest were necessary. All she truly wanted was to lie down in the bunk and surrender to this delicious feeling of languor.

“I never wear a nightshirt,” he said, the words whispered against her temple. “This particular garment has only become a joke in my family. My mother weaves one for me every voyage in hopes that I will wear it.” Pulling back slightly, he gently removed her arms from his neck.

“And you don’t?” she asked, fingering a silver button.

“No,” he admitted. “But I always tell her I have, and she always pretends to believe me.”

He untied her petticoat, the fabric brushing her legs as it fell to the floor. The rest of her shift was next, the tattered linen drifting like a cloud away from her body.

Alisdair dropped the nightshirt over her head, helping her ease her left arm into the sleeve, and then her right. He said nothing when the heel of his hand brushed over the tip of her breast. She wanted to hold his fingers there, experience the sensation longer.

Kneeling at her feet, he slipped her shoes from her feet, and if he was surprised she’d not replaced her stockings, he said nothing. Censure would have been wasted on her at this moment.

He helped her sit again, lifting her legs until she was in the bunk. He covered her with the blanket, tucking it about her,
then smoothing it beneath her chin. “You’ll feel better soon enough,” he said, the sound of his voice almost ethereal.

She nodded, Iseabal thought, falling into a delicious sleep, accompanied by the vision of eyes filled with the blue of a summer sky.

D
espite the fact that it was summer, the wind seeping in from below the door was chilled. Nor had the teak flooring of his cabin been designed with sleep in mind.

The storm had subsided enough that Alisdair was no longer needed on deck, and the night watch promised to rouse him if the winds showed signs of increasing. Now they sat in the middle of the loch, near enough to Coneagh Firth that he could feel the currents of both bodies of water surging beneath him.

The slow, almost rhythmic creaking of the hull timbers, the whisper of the wind either ruffling the sails or, as now, swirling around the deck with a mournful moan, were all customary sounds of night aboard ship. Here in this room, however, almost too small to be a cabin, and certainly not designed to hold two occupants, Alisdair found sleep to be elusive.

He studied Iseabal in the darkness, wondering at the con
fusion and interest he felt. Not once had she mentioned her discomfort, but from the looks of the bruising, she must have been in agony.

What kind of woman wants a rock for a gift and yet remains silent and stoic when she might have sought aid?

Iseabal breathed softly, deeply, almost as if she dreamed, but every so often she would hold her breath, those moments betraying her wakefulness.

“You shouldn’t be awake so soon,” he said, propping himself up on his side. “Are you still in pain?”

“A little,” she confessed. “It’s as if I feel it, but it doesn’t consume me.”

“Another effect of the poppy juice,” he said, smiling at the wonder in her voice. “Some people like that feeling.”

“I can’t imagine why. It’s as if you’re walking about in a cloud. You hardly know what is real and what’s a dream.”

She’d pressed his hand against her breast, causing him to step quickly away. Did she remember that? Or of kissing his throat, her full lips pressed against his skin so fervently that she might have been a courtesan?

“Does the ship always seem to move so?” she asked.

Sitting up, he leaned against the door. “We’re between the firth and the loch, and the currents are mixing beneath us. But I’ve always thought the ocean alive,” he admitted. “As if there is a watery goddess spreading her arms beneath the waves. Sometimes the embrace is gentle, almost affectionate. But then she has moments of temper in which she crashes her fists against the hull.”

“Are you a poet?” she asked quietly.

He laughed, drawing up one leg and propping his wrist upon it. “My brother James is the man of words in our family.”

“Your brother?”

He nodded, then realized that she couldn’t see him. “Yes,” he said. “One of four.”

“Five boys?” she asked, her voice sounding amazed. “Do you have any sisters?”

“None,” he said. “At times there seems to be an army of us. It would be foolish to wish for more.”

After a moment of silence he spoke again. “What about you, Iseabal? Did you not wish for sisters and brothers?”

“Always,” she said, with a candor that surprised him.

He heard the sound of the covers rustling, then a faint noise resembling a moan. Standing, he went to the side of the bunk, sitting on the wooden edge.

“You must remain as still as possible, Iseabal,” he said gently, touching her arm. His hand smoothed from elbow to shoulder, fingers splaying against the sleeves of the nightshirt. A sudden picture of her naked beneath the voluminous garment was supplanted by the realization that Iseabal was trembling.

He withdrew his hand and stood.

“Are we to live in England?” she asked. Of all the questions she might have posed, this one was the most difficult to answer.

“Perhaps it would be better not to talk of this now,” he replied, feeling a discomfort that had nothing to do with her proximity and everything to do with his burgeoning conscience. Now was hardly the time to divulge his plans for an annulment. Time enough for honesty later, when she was feeling better.

“I have an errand to perform in London,” he said, returning to his makeshift bed on the floor.

“What errand?”

What should he say? The truth, his conscience heralded. At least that much he could offer her.

“Before I answer, Iseabal,” he said, “do I have your promise that you will not divulge what I tell you?”

The silence seemed to grow, expanding on its own until it filled the cabin.

“Do you ask for such a vow because I’m a Drummond?”

Perhaps he should have answered in the affirmative, but he had not been reared with hatred for her clan. They’d not featured in tales of Gilmuir, or in the heritage passed down by his kinsmen. The fact that he disliked her father intensely had nothing to do with Iseabal.

“No,” he answered. “It is a secret that belongs to another.”

Another interval of silence passed before she spoke again. “Then I promise not to divulge to anyone what you tell me,” she said, her words solemn and having the import of a pledge.

The story was complicated, one that had been told to each of Ian MacRae’s sons only when he was old enough to understand the need for silence.

“My father was born Alec Landers,” he began. “The son of an English earl. But his mother, Moira MacRae, was a Scot, so he used to spend his summers at Gilmuir. From the day my grandmother was murdered, however, he refused to acknowledge his Scottish heritage. Only later did he return to Gilmuir, but as an English colonel commanding Fort William.”

“You’re part English, Alisdair?”

“I am,” he said simply. “My parents fell in love when my father decided to be a rebel. He began to aid the people of Gilmuir, taking on the persona of the Raven, but he soon realized that any act of kindness was not enough to save the MacRaes.”

He heard her indrawn breath and wondered at the cause of it. “The Raven?” she asked faintly.

“You’ve heard of him?”

“Every child in the Highlands has heard of the Raven,” she said, her voice sounding as if it held a smile.

“I shall have to tell him, then,” he said, amused. “He’s a greatly respected laird, but I doubt that my father ever considered becoming a hero.”

“Then he changed his name to MacRae.”

“He did. Ian MacRae, the name his grandfather always called him.”

“What happened to him, Alisdair? No one ever knew. Or, for that matter, what happened to the MacRaes.”

“They escaped Gilmuir together. The world believes that he died at Gilmuir, but he’s alive and well, living in Nova Scotia and still rebelling, in his way, against the English.”

“And that’s where you’re from?”

“An island not far from there,” he said. “We named it Cape Gilmuir in honor of the old place and Scotland.”

“So that’s where the MacRaes went,” she said, her voice sounding increasingly drowsy. If nothing else, Alisdair thought ruefully, the tale had lulled her to sleep. “But why give out that he’s dead?” she asked.

“Because the English would still pursue him as a traitor if they knew he was alive. He was an English colonel, after all.” Stretching out his legs, Alisdair continued with his story. “Before he escaped Scotland, he succeeded to the earldom, yet surrendered the title to his younger brother. His stepmother was the only one in England to know he was still alive.”

“And that is why you’re going to England?” she asked. “To set the record straight somehow?”

“No,” he said. “His younger brother has died and the title is vacant. His stepmother has it in her head that since my father cannot magically appear from the dead, the title should pass to his eldest son, a son whose existence had not been known of until now.”

“You?” Iseabal’s question sounded drowsy. He smiled, thinking that she would soon be asleep again.

“Me,” he answered.

“You’re going to England, then, to accept a title, Alisdair?”

“No,” he told her softly. “I’m going to England to refuse it.”

The galley was filled with a haze because Hamish was smoking his damnable pipe again. James frowned at his brother, but he only smiled in return. Sometimes, he thought, Hamish liked to rile him, receiving as much pleasure from the deed as he did in teasing Douglas or angering Brendan.

Turning away, James concentrated on the entries in his journal. Life aboard ship was tedious, for the most part, and he chose to spend his idle moments in writing down his thoughts while his brothers chose to play at cards. Brendan always won, and Hamish always halfheartedly accused him of cheating. At the end of the game, both brothers were circling each other like quarreling roosters, pleased with an excuse to fight. The winner of the bout would always concede graciously to the other, and for a week or so there was peace among the MacRaes while black eyes and bruises healed.

However their personalities grated against one another, the brothers were united in the front they showed the world. As if, James thought, listening to them quarrel now, each of
them considered himself privileged to insult the other, but the world did not have that right.

Around them, the crew slept, the night lengthened, and still they debated the wisdom of their actions.

Douglas had started it all an hour earlier when he’d posed a surprising question.

“Since we’re so close to England, why don’t we meet Alisdair there?” the youngest MacRae suggested.

They’d been gone four months, ferrying two MacRae ships to the French. The transaction completed, and as profitable as Alisdair had promised, they were on their way home, slipping beneath the noses of the English.

Over the years, the Crown’s military presence in Nova Scotia had grown alarmingly, a fact that greatly displeased his father as well as the older refugees from Gilmuir. The MacRaes had been careful to avoid being noticed.

Turning his attention to his journal, James began to write.

“I don’t see why it’s such a difficult decision,” Douglas said now. “We’re ahead of schedule,” he added, trying to convince them. “London is not that far off course.”

“It’s more than that, Douglas,” Hamish said, scratching his beard. “We’re supposed to be neutral, and it’s a bit like
tweaking the noses of the English to sail into their port city after we’ve sold ships to the French.”

“Ships that will be used against them,” Brendan said, for once in accord with his older brother.

“And who’s to tell?” Douglas said. “One of us? No one else knows.”

“Is it that you’re pining for Alisdair, Douglas?” Hamish asked with a smile, “or simply that you’ve a hankering to see London?”

“I thought his eyes would pop out of his head when we sailed into Calais,” Brendan said.

“I’m not a world traveler like you.” Douglas spoke angrily. “It’s my first voyage.”

“A true sailor,” James remarked. “And not sick once, Douglas.”

“Not like you, James,” Hamish said.

James smiled ruefully as his brothers laughed. During that first voyage he’d not been able to raise his head above the bunk. He was not a born sailor, nor a man as suited to the sea as Alisdair. That first time aboard ship had been to the southern English colonies to purchase ironwood for the hulls of Alisdair’s ships. Not like the ocean crossing that Douglas had endured, and well.

“I can’t be the only one to want a glimpse of London,” Douglas argued.

The four brothers glanced at one another, a grin playing over each face.

“Then what is to stop us?” Douglas asked, evidently sensing that the battle was turning in his favor.

“And you think a MacRae will be welcome in England, Douglas?” Brendan asked.

“All the more reason to join Alisdair,” Douglas countered.

Brendan stood, placed his hands on his hips, and arched his back, stretching. “Who’s to say he’ll welcome our interference?”

“What interference, brother?” Hamish wondered, contentedly puffing on his pipe until his head was wreathed in smoke.

James stood and spoke to his brothers. “Since this is my ship,” he said in order to forestall the budding argument, “I’ll make the decision. We’ll go to London, but we’ll only stay five days.”

“Why five days?” Brendan asked, frowning.

“Because that’s how long the two of you can last before fighting,” he said curtly, grabbing his journal and striding to the door.