Highland Lover: Book 3 Scottish Knights Trilogy (21 page)

“Nevertheless, sir, Niall is dead. I’m sure of it now.”

Jake was likewise as sure as he could be that Clyne was dead. From all she had told him, the pirates would have had little reason to keep him alive, even if Orkney had promised to arrange his ransom. Since they could demand what they wanted for Orkney and James and had thrown everyone
else
overboard…

But he would not debate that with her now.

Instead, he said, “From what you’ve said, all the men in your dream other than Clyne were alive at the end of it. What I think is that you have been fretting about Clyne, got cold when the quilt slipped off you, and what began as a pleasant dream faded into an unpleasant one and wakened you.”

“But I felt—”

“I don’t doubt your feelings, lass. You admit you don’t understand the gift yourself. Mayhap it is changing, but to allow what is likely an ordinary nightmare to destroy your serenity this way
is
foolish.”

She drew a breath, and something in her expression righted itself. Exhaling, she said, “You’re right, sir. I’m sorry to have disturbed everyone’s peace in such a way.”

He eyed her measuringly. “If you are apologizing because you think you should not have troubled us, I’ll have more to say to you when you are on your feet again, in broad daylight. Until then, I’d advise you to sleep.”

She bit her lower lip and looked at him from under her
lashes. “I am glad I was not alone,” she said. “Whatever it was, it was frightful.”

“If you’ll lie back and draw that quilt over you, I’ll tuck this side in for you,” he said. He maintained control of himself, but as he said the words, he wished fiercely that he could take her in his arms and smooth her fears away.

Instead, he waited patiently while she arranged herself, then tucked the quilt in tightly beneath the featherbed and followed Coll back out on deck.

Alyson breathed more easily when they had gone, but her emotions remained in turmoil. Was Jake angry with her for admitting that she had been a nuisance?

Never before had she viewed Ivor’s quick temper as a blessing. But, just then, she would have given her finest piece of jewelry to be able to read Jake’s temperament as easily as
anyone
could read Ivor’s.

The edge in Jake’s voice when he had said that he would speak to her in daylight had sent a shiver up her spine. But she did not fear Jake. She liked talking with him. Although they often disagreed, she found his opinions and his ways of expressing them interesting and thought provoking. In fact, his generally easy manner made her hope that…

Jake was standing before her, looking as if he were trying to judge her mood. Then his beautiful smile flashed. It amazed her, as it always did, that he could look so serious one moment and so boyishly delighted the next.

She wished she had known him as a boy.

As she moved toward him, she was conscious of the tingling sensation that had become so familiar to her. But soon the sensation was running amok. It touched nerves here and nerves there until her body seemed to have caught fire. The closer she got to him, the hotter she burned inside.

Now he was only a step away. Without hesitation, she took that step and melted against him. The fiery sensations increased, sending impulses to her nipples and to parts of her body deep inside, where she had never felt anything before.

The area at the juncture of her legs tingled and burned. Muscles clenched tightly there, stirring new feelings.

Jake caught her chin in one hand and tilted her face up.

“I want to kiss you,” he said.

“Do you?”

Instead of answering, he captured her lips with his much firmer ones, and his arms went strongly around her, warming her and setting all the fiery nerves inside her leaping like sparks in a greenwood fire.

Everywhere he touched her, she burned. Nevertheless, she wanted him to keep touching her, wanted him to…

Waking as abruptly as she had earlier, Alyson felt nearly the same shock at herself as the nightmare had caused, for dreaming such a thing. Worse was that her body still tingled and burned everywhere it had reacted to Jake’s touch in her dream. Worst of all, she wished that she had not wakened.

Her lips and mouth were dry, but the area between her nether lips was hot and felt strangely moist. Recalling her last thought before waking, she wondered what else she’d have wanted him to do.

An image of Lizzie, talking, jumped into her mind along with Lizzie’s words as she recalled them:
“I tell ye, I do miss Jeb touching me doon there… The man were that skilled wi’ his hands, a-stroking and a-petting till he’d drive me near to madness. He could mak’ me cry out for it any time he’d a mind to do it, too. Sakes, that lad had only to put a finger to one o’ me nipples…”

Alyson could still imagine Jake’s hands on her breasts, as they had been in her dream, but the fiery tingle had gone. Touching a nipple, she felt a slight sensation but nothing like what he’d made her feel in the dream.

She lay sleepless, her thoughts jumbled, and began to suspect that perhaps her marriage had not been all that a marriage could be. But she slept at last, and when she awoke, a thin golden line of sunlight framed each shuttered porthole.

Standing on deck at the stem end of the
Sea Wolf
’s gangway, near the door to the small forecastle cabin, Jake idly fingered the circle stone he’d found on the cliffs. Rubbing it, he mentally calculated how far the English ships might have sailed since leaving Bridlington’s harbor with James and Orkney.

Scudding clouds overhead showed winds steady from the northeast again. Therefore, he had taken the
Sea Wolf
farther from the coast to give them room to tack without drawing undue attention. Unless the winds shifted eastward again, or blessedly southward, it would be a slow day.

It was Sunday morning, and the men were resting, some still breaking their fast. He’d set them to their
oars only if he needed extra power while tacking, or if the winds dropped, or if for some reason they had to go ashore.

Having gleaned details of England’s coastlines from years of sailing and talking with sailors, he decided that, unless the five English ships had put into port somewhere else, they could be a third of the way, even halfway, to London. A third of the way—a hundred miles—was more likely than 150.

Whichever it was, he could not have stopped them.

Even had the English waited for dawn before leaving Bridlington, Jake knew he could not have abandoned Alyson to follow them, or taken her along.

What he had said to Will remained the truth. The
Sea Wolf
might have followed the English ships all the way south to the Thames Estuary. But following the river Thames fifty miles to London would have been madness, and they’d know no more than they knew now.

He was nearly certain that Albany was responsible for what had happened. Cynically, he wondered if winning his son Murdoch’s freedom was Albany’s primary reason, or if it was that the most likely man to rule Scotland if the King of Scots died while the English held Jamie was Albany himself.

Some imp at the back of Jake’s mind suggested that had “Reck Not!” been his motto, as it was Giff MacLennan’s, he’d have managed to steal Jamie and Orkney back from the English. But Jake shook his head at the random thought.

Even Giff would not be so foolish as to set himself against five armed ships from an Isles longship built to carry a small cargo and sixty men at most.

At present, the
Sea Wolf
carried fewer than forty.

As he rubbed the smooth circle stone, Jake saw Mace move to talk to Coll at the helm. Memory stirred of Alyson saying that if one looked through such a stone, one might see a man’s intended wife standing next to him.

With a sudden sense of mischief, Jake raised the stone to look through it at the two near the stern. Only Mace knew of the stone, but both men were observant and would see what Jake was doing. When they did, he would explain to Coll and hint that he’d seen a bride for one of them.

He saw nothing unusual. Thinking it might look more persuasive if he shut his other eye and focused more, he did so. Mace stepped away without glancing his way, and Jake was about to lower the stone and return it to his pouch when movement at the stern cabin door caught his eye.

Still looking through the stone, he shifted to see Alyson step outside on the deck. She did not look at him either, did not even glance his way. He suspected then that she’d seen him the minute she had opened the door.

She did look toward Coll, or mayhap Mace. So Jake kept following her with the stone until she stood by the helmsman.

To his shock, he saw not Coll standing beside her but
himself
.

Hastily lowering the stone, Jake shoved it back into the pouch at his belt and stepped inside the forecastle cabin to collect his wits.

Alyson had seen Jake, but she was looking for Will.

Breathing the fresh morning air after that of the stuffy little cabin was glorious. Moreover, she was hungry, and
she did not immediately see Will. She did see Coll and Mace by the helm, chatting, just before Mace returned to the first bench on that side, where apparently he rowed.

Accordingly, she said in Gaelic to the helmsman, “Good morning, Coll. ’Tis a fine day, is it not?”

“It is, aye, my lady,” he replied with a smile. “I trust ye slept well after yon bad dream ye had.”

“Like a bairn,” she said. “Is young Will nearby? I want to break my fast.”

“I’m here, mistress,” Will said from behind her.

“Mercy,” Alyson exclaimed, turning sharply. “I did not see you at all. But you must have been nearby.”

“I was a-sitting yonder in the corner.” He gestured toward a bench nestled where her cabin wall met the stepped area on the port side. “I saw ye come out, though, and thought ye might be hungry.”

“Starving! I was just telling Coll.”

“Cap’n Jake has apples, ale, and water in yon forecastle cabin for ye, if that will do,” Will said. “He may even ha’ some bread up there, or I can fetch some.”

She eyed the gangway askance. The winds were not as fierce as they’d been, but the galley’s often unexpected motions played merry havoc with one’s balance.