LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FOUR

      IT WAS THE rising swells that seeped into Aulay’s consciousness, the familiar pitch and roll of his ship as it was tossed about in a storm. The pressing instinct to change the sails woke him. He was disoriented and groggy at first, his throat parched, his head aching fiercely...but he was increasingly aware of heavy rain pummeling the ship and lashing against the portholes, the crashing sound of waves hitting the forecastle and the impact of the blow.

      Who is at the helm?

      He tried to rise but his wrists were bound. He remembered he was on the floor of his cabin, his ankle shackled to a desk that was bolted to the floor. He was gagged, too, the cloth biting into the flesh at his cheeks. He managed to push himself up to sitting and sagged against the wall of his quarters, attempting to shake off the feeling of wool covering his brain. His wrists ached and were bleeding where he’d apparently tried to twist them free of the binds. His thoughts were so hazy that he couldn’t recall how, precisely, he’d ended up here. He couldn’t recall anything but the woman who had kicked him in the chin.

      He blinked back the fog and looked around his cabin. His paintings on the wall, his books stacked neatly on the small bedside table. Familiar things...and there, in the middle of those familiar things was the woman, her head pillowed on her arms at his table. That bloody bonny hair had been the siren’s call that had snared him like a slow sea turtle—that much, he recalled. Aye, he’d be pleased to attend her hanging, he would. He’d watch the lot of them swing for what they’d done if they made it to the gallows and not feel the slightest bit of unease about it. He preferred to kill them with his bare hands, particularly if even one of his men had been harmed. Where are the men?

      He glared across the room at the lady, wondering how to navigate this predicament.

      God’s teeth, but he ought to swing alongside these thieves for having been so bloody stupid. He was a grown man, not a lad, and yet he’d behaved like one, fixated on the woman the moment he’d caught sight of her. He’d been stunned stupid by her beauty and his common sense had walked off a damn plank. He’d been transfixed with the creamy skin of a shapely leg as that gown had slid up and up, oblivious to what was happening around him, and practically salivating like a lad. It was a naïve mistake and he despised himself for it.

      The ship lurched to starboard. Bloody hell, he needed her to wake. Aulay tried to shout, but the sound of his voice was muffled by the gag and the winds howling around the ship. He spotted a pair of his boots tucked in next to the desk. He rolled onto his side, and with his free leg, kicked them. They toppled over, but the soft leather didn’t make enough noise to wake her. He looked up to the desk. There were several things there, including an octant and compass. Aulay slid his free leg beneath him and pushed up the wall to his feet. He hopped closer to the desk and with one swipe of his bound hands, he sent the instruments tumbling to the floor.

      The lass’s head snapped up with her gasp of fright. She jerked around, her hair flying, and stared at him, blinking, as if she couldn’t quite place him. But she quickly gathered her wits and leaped to her feet and backed out of his reach.

      The ship suddenly rose up on a wave and just as quickly sank again, heeling right, and she was knocked off balance, crashing into the wall just below the porthole before catching herself on the sideboard. They would capsize if the ship wasn’t sailed properly, and somehow, he needed her to understand that. He looked at his desk. He grabbed a quill in his fist, and fumbled with the lid of the ink pot, spilling some ink onto a map. He picked up a chart and wrote reef. He pushed it toward her.

      She stared at him with those wide, Caribbean-blue eyes. She pushed a tangle of hair from her cheek, then craned her neck to try and see what he’d written from where she stood. Of course she couldn’t, and shrank against the wall. “I know what you must think,” she said.

      What a ridiculous creature. She could not possibly fathom that he was imagining that slender neck in a noose just now.

      “But this is no’ what it must seem to you.”

      Not what it seems? What it seemed was piracy. Was he not bound? Were his men not lost to him? Had his ship and his cargo not been stolen? Aye, piracy was exactly what it seemed.

      The ship heaved again and she stumbled, catching herself on the bunk. She put her hand to the forehead of the man who lay there, then pulled up the coverlet—Aulay’s coverlet, thank you. His bunk, his bed, his linens, his pillow.

      “We donna mean to keep your ship, on my word.”

      Aulay arched one very dubious brow above the other.

      “Once we reach port, we’ll return the ship to you as we found it, aye? You have my word,” she said, and pressed a hand to her heart as if to pledge it before being tossed again by the ship’s heaving.

      Bloody ignorant wench. If he’d been able to speak, Aulay would have cursed her. There was no time for her excuses. He glared at her and pointed to the chart.

      But she moved away from the chart, putting the table where he often took his meals with Beaty between them. “You need no’ look at me in that manner,” she said. “I know you’re quite angry. On my honor, I canna convey how much I regret that it has come to this, aye? But we were taking on water, and we’ve a mission that canna be delayed. We were hopeless, and I’m afraid there was naugh’ to be done for it. But that in no way eases my deep remorse, Captain.”

      Did she take him a fool? Aulay wanted to strangle her. Unfortunately, the more important issue was the matter of the ship.

      “As you can see, my father is badly wounded,” she continued, ignoring his dark look. “They...they meant to draw straws to see who would drown and who would accompany us in the jolly, and I couldna bear the thought of it, aye? But then you appeared! Out of that gray mist, you suddenly appeared like an angel from heaven,” she said, her voice full of awe.

      The ship rose up; she was very nearly tossed into a chair. “Your crew is to be commended, Captain. You didna see them as you were unconscious, but on my word, they put a good fight, they did. We were armed, so naturally, we had the advantage.”

      He suddenly remembered Beaty asking if they ought to pick up arms and his nonchalance about it. Aye, he was going to kill her with his bare hands, limb by lovely limb. Aulay shouted through the gag, which

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