Julia London - Devil In Tartan

Aulay glared at her, and she glared back, her eyes an icy blue now, her cheeks flushed. Her lips had parted and she was choking. She was shaking. But she thrust the gun deeper into his skin.

“Do as she says, Captain,” came a hoarse voice from the bunk. “And we’ll fetch your first mate, we will.”

Neither he nor the woman moved. Her eyes narrowed, her brows dipping into a vee of determination. He slowly let go her neck, and she sagged backward, dropped the gun from his gullet. She clutched a small dueling pistol in one hand and pressed the other hand to her throat. She blinked and suddenly turned to the bunk. “Fader? How do you fare?”

“As poorly as a three-legged horse. Donna tend me, pusling, do as the captain says,” he told her. “Gilroy is a fine captain, that he is, but he’s no’ been a’sea in many years, and he’s no’ sailed a ship as fine as this, aye? Go, and see to your brothers while you’re out.”

She hesitated. She gave Aulay a dark look. But then she went, obedient, hurrying to the cabin door and yanking it open. A gale of wind and rain blew in as she went out, then was silenced when she pulled the door shut behind her.

Aulay fell back against the cabin wall, his breath short, his heart still beating rapidly.

“Donna blame her,” the man said from his bunk. “My daughter is no’ at fault for what has happened. The blame lies entirely with me.”

“It lies with all of you, and you’ll all hang for it,” Aulay said flatly. “All of you.”

The man said nothing more.

Aulay waited, pacing the wee bit of floor the shackle would allow him. He heard voices, but could not make them out, not with the wind howling and the ship groaning so loudly. But after an eternity, it seemed that the ship was pitching less. Perhaps the storm was weakening. Perhaps she’d given the helm to Beaty.

It seemed as if hours passed before she finally returned, bursting into the cabin and slamming it shut behind her in the face of a gale. She was soaked through to the skin, her hair was plastered to her head, and her gown so wet and heavy that it dragged the ground and clung to the voluptuous curves of her body. Her gun, he noted, was tucked into the waist of her petticoat.

She went straight to the bunk and leaned over the old man, stroking his head. “You’re warm,” she said.

“Aye, I feel as if that old Mrs. MacGuire has put her boot through me head,” he said.

“You’re bleeding again, Fader. I’ll fetch Morven, aye?”

“Leave him be, lass. He’s needed on deck and he canna do more than he’s done. If you’ve a wee bit more of the draught, however.”

She slipped a hand into the pocket of her gown and withdrew a brown vial. She shook the contents, then lifted the man’s head and helped him take the liquid. When he’d had enough, she held the brown glass vial up to the light from the porthole. “We’ve scarcely any of it left,” she said, the worry evident in her voice.

“Och, we Livingstones are made of sturdy stock. I’ll be quite all right,” the man said, but Aulay could tell from the roughness in his voice that he was not all right. That was just as well, then—one fewer to hang.

She sat on the edge of the bunk, shivering, periodically clutching the edge of it when the ship surged up or down or right or left. Aulay relaxed a wee bit—he was confident Beaty was now at the helm, as the ship was riding over the waves instead of crashing headlong into them.

He slid down onto his haunches, watching her, his gaze on her long, elegantly slender neck, the soft slope of her shoulders. Aye, she was bonny, that she was, as bonny as any woman he’d ever seen in his life. He had the sudden image of her silky hair covering her face as she twisted on the end of a rope.

He seethed with fury. With her. With himself. But he had to keep his wits about him if he had any hope of persuading her to remove the shackle and the binds at his wrists.

The old man was soon snoring. The lass—the Livingstone lass, apparently—stood and moved wearily to the table. She kicked off her boots, then wrung the water from her hair and tied it into a knot at her nape. And then, without compunction, she lifted her gown, put one foot onto a chair, and began to roll down a stocking.

Aulay was not happy to feel just as fascinated by this display of a shapely leg as he had been when she’d first come on board. God knew he’d known many audacious women, many of whom were closely related to him...but none like her. Not a single beautiful, gun-wielding, knee-kicking pirate. Not a single lass who could possibly steal a ship, press a gun into his neck and then brazenly undress before him.

What infuriated him most was that there was a part of his sorry self that was utterly aroused by it.

She seemed to sense his study of her. She turned her head and gave him a pointed look. Aulay shrugged. “What did you expect, then?”

“What did I expect? I expected this entire voyage to have gone quite a lot differently, that’s what,” she said crossly. She tossed one stocking down, then lifted the next leg and began to roll that stocking down.

Aulay tried not to look at her bare leg. Well. He didn’t try very hard, really, but he had it in his head he ought not to look. “Who sails?” he asked gruffly.

“Your man. Beaty,” she said with exasperation, and discarded the second stocking just as carelessly as the first. “He was quite at odds with the idea. He scolded me right harshly for having taken the ship, he did, and in front of all those men, too, aye? But when I explained that his very own captain had asked it of him—” she paused to look at Aulay “—after swearing on my mother’s grave that you were verra much alive,” she added, sounding miffed that Beaty would dare to question her on that front. “When I promised him that you lived, and you yourself had asked him to take the helm, he softened a wee bit and agreed to go on deck with Gilroy and the others.”

“And the rest of my men?”

“Your crew? They’re well, they are. Mad as hornets, but well enough.”

“No one hurt?” Aulay asked.

“Aye, well...three of them. Broken bones and the like. But we’re looking after them properly.” She yanked the fasteners of her gown and shrugged out of it, throwing it onto the back of the chair. Next came her stomacher. Astonishingly, she now stood barefoot in the middle of his cabin with nothing more than a petticoat, her stays and a chemise so sheer underneath that her breasts might as well have been exposed to him. She slipped her gun from her waist and laid it on the table.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” he asked incredulously. He’d never seen a woman disrobe without hesitation or conceit, unless for his pleasure. Certainly not in circumstances like this. This woman was utterly beyond redemption.

She clucked at him. “If I remain in soaked clothing, it will be the death of me, aye? I donna have a proper gown or a dressing room, do I?”

Aulay couldn’t help himself—he took in her figure. Slowly. Curve by delicious curve.

“Donna look at me like that,” she said.

“What, or you’ll shoot? What would you have me do, then? Fix my gaze on the wall?”

Her cheeks colored. She folded her arms over her body, which pronounced her perfect breasts to him even more, and shivered noticeably.

Aulay sighed. He was either a bloody fool or a great humanitarian, because he said, “My greatcoat is just there,” and nodded to a series of pegs on the wall that held his clothing.

She looked over her shoulder in the direction he indicated, but made no move to get the coat. “No, thank you.”

“Stubborn wench,” he said irritably. “Watching you shiver like a wee waif makes it feel bloody well cold in here. Take it.”