The Highlander’s Pirate Lass by Heather McCollum
Chapter Eight
Beck strode briskly out the door in the wall surrounding Gylin Castle. Rain pelted down on him, the wind gusting the raindrops sideways. Even Eliza wouldn’t try to steal his ship on a night like this.
The lass was bold, clever, and rash, but she wasn’t foolish.
He trudged to the top of the rise that led down into Ormaig and to his cottage. He carried a candle enclosed in glass. Aye, it was good he’d left the castle, or he would be tempted to go back up to Eliza’s room. Adam was right. He should stay away from her. As soon as she could, she would sail away, probably never to return.
As he’d stood across from her in the hallway, watching the candlelight play across her lovely, open features, he thought he’d seen…something, something that beckoned him. More than her beauty and wit. Hair down around her shoulders and the gown showing her full curves, Eliza had looked like a half-undone woman. And if he didn’t know better, which he surely did, she had looked like she wanted him to undo the rest of her. No bastards. You must marry soon. I won’t be landlocked. Voices filled his head, scattering the heat her imagined look had started within him.
Beck took a step down the hill and paused. Crunch. The sound of pebbles behind him made him turn. Eliza? She trudged toward him along the path. The heavy rain weighted her hair and gown, and she held her petticoats high, her slippers squishing in the increasing mud.
She stopped before him, her face tipped up. “Why are you standing out here getting soaked through?” she asked.
He wiped a hand down his face to briefly rid it of water. “Why are ye out here getting soaked through?”
“I…” She licked the raindrops clinging to her lips, and he felt his jack grow under his kilt. “I cannot sleep and wish to see your dwelling.” She bent to purposely look around him. “I saw several completed ones today but didn’t know which one was yours.”
He stared at her for a moment, the rain tapping all around, and then turned to follow her gaze down into Ormaig. “The one toward the back on the left near the tree line.”
She nodded, even though he knew she couldn’t see a thing in the drenched dimness. She raised her arm to indicate the path. “It would be helpful for you to hold your lantern ahead of us. These slippers are melting into nothing, and I would avoid the rocks.”
He lifted the lantern, and they continued on through the wind and rain, walking side by side into the town. The dark cottages looked like cairns lining the road. “Why can’t ye sleep?” he asked above the wind.
“Anders snores.”
He rubbed his hand over the tension in his forehead. “’Tis dangerous to walk out of the castle and find my dwelling by yourself in the dark, in the rain and wind.”
“Because of the wolves?” she asked as they strode forward between the dark shapes of the vacant cottages.
“There are no wolves on Wolf Isle.” He was sure she knew that.
“Oh. Because of the ghosts, then?” she asked, her gaze still trained forward.
“There are no ghosts here.”
“Then you are worried scoundrels will sneak up and steal me away.”
He sighed, seeing where she was leading him. “There are no scoundrels here because there are hardly any people on the isle. And you are likely armed.”
They reached his door. She turned, putting her back against it, and smiled broadly, her damp face tilted up toward his. Raindrops wetting her long eyelashes made them into dark spikes. With the lamplight adding its glow to her face, she did look like a mischievous mermaiden who had come up from the depths to drive him mad with lust.
“I am always armed,” she said. “So you need not worry about me.” She turned and opened the door to his cottage.
Lightning splintered across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. He followed her inside, raising the lantern to flood the room with golden light. He left the door open behind him, the rain filling the silence. He should close it, but would she feel like he was trapping her inside? Bloody hell, Eliza was complicated.
She walked farther into the cottage that he had worked on over the last year, making it water- and wind-tight, like the Calypso. Layers of daub, the lime-ash floor he’d laid, and the layered shale roof made the home cozy and dry, except when the front door was left open in a storm.
Eliza frowned at it. “The rain is coming in. Shut it before we have a flood to clean.” He closed it and left the lamp on the table as he went to the dark hearth to start a fire.
“Spacious,” she said, and he turned on the balls of his feet to watch her walk around the perimeter. “Do you have company often?” she asked while staring at his large bed in the back corner.
“As ye just pointed out, there are not many people on Wolf Isle.”
She turned away so he couldn’t see her reaction. “There’s another room?” She walked to the door off the back wall and opened it, letting the firelight touch inside.
“’Tis a privy room,” Beck said.
“Like you have on your ship,” she said, turning.
He smiled. “Aye.”
“I am going to get Captain John to have one built on the Devil’s Blood.”
He stood, watching her inspect the corners. Even doused with rainwater, she strode with pride and fortitude. Considering all that she had endured, being wet through was hardly an annoyance.
She stopped at his bed and pulled open the shutter over the glass-paned window, but he doubted she could see anything out of it. Turning, her gaze moved restlessly about the room as if she were judging him by it. He only had one trunk and a table with two chairs besides the bed. How did she judge that?
Eliza stopped at the shelves near him by the hearth, which held bowls and basic food supplies he had left before sailing. He felt the fire grow behind him, the heat fending off the chill in the air. It crackled over the sound of the beating rain.
“You cook?” she asked.
Between the hearth fire and the appreciation he saw in her expression, a foolish hope took root that she wanted more than to inspect his home. “For myself,” he said and sat down at the table across from the bed. “Simple things really. Now that Jasper is cooking up at Gylin, I tend to wander up there for meals. So far, Lark hasn’t thrown me out.”
She continued her inspection, and he leaned back in the large chair, watching her. “Do ye approve?”
“Clean, sparse, no offending odors. Aye, ’tis a nice home,” she said and sat in the chair opposite him. Pushing back, she frowned. “You have chairs for giants? My feet do not touch the floor.”
He smiled. “I made them to fit my frame.”
She scooted forward, and he heard her slippers squish against the floor. A sigh came from her open lips. “I’m dampening your chair and floor. No one worries about water marks on a ship.”
“I am dripping too,” he said. He found her a drying sheet and set it around her shoulders. She brought her hair over to one side to squeeze it into the towel, and he saw the pale smoothness of her nape. He inhaled and stepped back quickly before he lost his mind and placed his lips there.
He couldn’t tangle with Eliza. She might be a virgin. She might be fertile. And she definitely didn’t want to get married. Unfortunately the fire inside him didn’t seem to care about the bloody curse or his brothers’ reminders.
Eliza’s fingers drummed across the polished wood planks of the table. “Is that why your bed is so large?”
He blinked, not remembering what they had been talking about.
“Your large furniture,” she said with a grin. “Because you have a large body.”
He met her unblinking stare, the edge of his lips curving up. “Sleeping is one of my favorite things, so I have a big comfortable bed.”
“And you have no problem sleeping here by yourself, all alone, except when you bring a woman back here to fok?”
“I have never brought a woman to my house, especially not to…ye use that word a lot.”
“Fok?”
“Aye.”
He watched the slight lift of her shoulders. “It is what the crew calls it. What word do you use?”
“I…I do not talk about sleeping with a lass to others.”
“Sleeping?” She laughed, her voice going up. “From what I have heard there is rarely any sleeping going on when a man and woman are…” She moved her hand in the air and mouthed the word silently.
“On shore,” Beck said, barely able to hold his chuckle, “and not in a port town like the one where Mistress Claire runs her brothel, we do not use that word, at least among ladies.”
“I am no lady,” she said. “Ladies wear dresses all the time.” She looked down at her bedraggled self. “And keep them dry.” She met his gaze again. “They wear lots of fragrance that makes me sneeze. They are either whores or conceited girls who tease men into asking them to wed.”
“I do not tend to use the word among men either,” Beck continued. Perhaps when his brothers and he were drinking or he hit his thumb with a mallet. How the hell had they gotten onto this topic?
He cupped the back of his head. If Eliza went to Mull and spoke about men and women foking, everyone would say she was crass. Someone like Cecilia would make her feel like an outcast, and she would certainly leave. And I want her to stay.
He dropped his arms back down. Eliza was beautiful. But besides that, she was the most interesting, authentic lass he’d ever met. He’d always sought simple lasses who might fawn on him, but Eliza… She was so much more. And, he realized, he wanted more. He frowned.
She leaned forward and frowned back. “Then what word do you use when speaking of…” and she made a gesture with her two hands to mimic sex. Apparently, she knew the basics of the act.
His frown melted into a grin. “I have never seen a lass do that with her hands.”
She waited, her brows raised.
“Well,” he said, starting slowly. “When talking amongst ourselves over whisky or in private without lasses or those easily offended, a lad may say swive, tup, sleep with…” He thought. “Frig, sard, nug. Some have been known to say they are loving—”
“Love has nothing to do with it,” she said, shaking her head. “Captain John told me if a man says he loves me, it is just because he wants to climb upon me and start rutting.”
Beck coughed into his fist. What could he say on the subject of love? Nothing, and he knew Eliza avoided it. Another reason tangling with her would not work. If Grissell was to be believed about the curse, Beck and his brothers had to learn truths about love in order to completely break the curse on the isle.
He pushed back from the table and found the jug of ale he’d brought down earlier, pouring two cups. All this talk about foking was making him quite thirsty. He set a cup before Eliza and took a drink of his own.
“Your Captain John is accurate. There are a lot of scoundrels and rogues in the world, just looking to get up a lass’s skirts or in her breeches or whatever she wears.” He cleared his throat. “With guidance like that, ’tis no wonder ye do not want to marry.” He swirled the ale in his cup, noticing how the hair had begun to dry around her face, curling up along her perfectly smooth jawline.
She took a drink and shook her head. “Wedding and fo—” She stopped. “Tupping have nothing to do with one another,” she said, confidence in her tone. “I can surely tup a man without wedding him.”
He just stared at her, not sure what to say. Her hands flipped about when she talked to emphasize her meaning. She was passionate about her thoughts, her feelings. Would she be as passionate in his bed? He couldn’t imagine Eliza being anything but, and his jack grew harder.
The fire lit her face, but her enthusiasm added color to her high cheeks. She wet her bottom lip, making him suck some of the ale down his windpipe. He coughed hard for a moment and slid a hand down his mouth. “’Tis a wonder ye would want to…tup at all after ye’ve heard it described as a trick by scoundrels.”
Eliza leaned back in her chair, letting the bathing sheet slide to the floor. The damp dress clung to the lush curves he could see above the table. The neckline was low, and the stays pushed the rise of her breasts high as she inhaled.
“You do not know me well, Beck, but one thing I despise is not knowing things.” She paused as if considering her words carefully. “When Captain John saved me from Jandeau, I knew nothing, nothing at all about sailing or living on a ship. With Jandeau, I only learned how to hide very quietly in small spaces.”
Beck’s hands fisted on the table. If he’d known Eliza’s history with the pirate, he would have fired upon Jandeau anyway, blasting as many holes in his ship until Cullen joined them.
She cleared her throat, frowning at him as if he weren’t listening.
“I will kill him next time I see him,” he said, his words low.
A small smile returned, and she sat up straighter on the edge of the Highlander-sized chair. “Unless I kill him first,” she said. “Anyway… I asked Captain John to give me breeches like the lads he had training on the lines for the sails. I learned faster than all of them and was climbing up high into the topcastle of all the masts. After surviving Jandeau, heights did not frighten me, nothing did. So I learned everything I could, including how to slice a throat or gut someone who wishes me harm.”
Beck set his hands on the table across from her. “I have no doubt ye know everything about running a large ship and a crew.”
She nodded. “I do, but there are things in this world I know nothing about. I hate that.” She folded her hands before her on the table. In the large chair, she looked small, delicate. “And you seem like a proper sort of fellow. You could teach me things, so I won’t be ignorant.”
“Such as?” he asked, his breath momentarily stopping in his lungs.
Her hand flipped about again. “Like proper words and…things other women know in the world. So I will not come across as ignorant.”
What did he know about other things women of the world knew? “Lark will certainly help ye fit in, Eliza.”
She frowned. “I want you to teach me, like you did about the word fok being improper. You are honorable, clever, and will not mock me for my ignorance.”
“What are these things that other women know that ye want to know about?” he asked, watching her closely.
She leaned forward, but instead of answering him she took a drink of ale and sat back in the seat. “Well,” she started, “I know little about cooking and baking since Bart manned the galley on the ship and rarely let any of us in there.”
She took a big breath, and Beck tried to ignore the rise of her flesh above her neckline. Bloody hell, she looked wild and free and utterly delicious sitting there in the firelight.
“And needlepoint,” she said, smiling brightly.
Beck cleared his throat. “Ye want me to teach ye to do needlepoint?” He rubbed the back of his neck.
Her mouth opened, staring at him for a moment, and her brow raised. “Do you know how to do needlepoint?”
“Nay.” He shook his head, dropping his hand back to the table. “But I could ask Lark to teach—”
“That is not what I need to learn.”
“What do ye need to learn then?” Her mind was tangled, and he couldn’t follow it. She wanted to learn proper ways of being a woman on land, and she wanted him to teach her.
She folded her hands on the table, her fingers weaving between one another. “I am a woman now, and the crew goes on and on about—” She stopped herself. “About tupping. As if it is the best thing in the world. ’Tis practically all they talk about, drinking too, but tupping the most.” She was talking fast, and Beck held his breath.
“It shows up in jests and swearing and poems and songs.” She shook her head. “And I know nothing about it. Noooothingggg.” She strung out the word, her shoulders rounding for effect.
Holy Lord.Was she asking what he thought she was asking? He met her gaze, keeping his face neutral. “Ye want me…to teach ye about tupping?”
She straightened. “Aye,” she said with a gusty exhale. “Every little detail.”
His mouth dropped open like a fish caught on a line. What kindly, heroic thing had he done in life for God to grant him such a request from Eliza Wentworth? Did she understand what that meant? “But ye are a virgin, aren’t ye, lass?”
She frowned. “Of course, or I would already know.”
“There are a lot of things that can happen between a man and a woman, Eliza, things that your crew may talk about that go along with tupping, so ye could—”
“All of it. I want to know everything.” Her fingertips bit into the edge of the table.
“From me?” he asked slowly.
Her brows pinched together. “If you don’t want to touch me, you can explain with words.”
“Bloody hell, Eliza, I do.”
“You do what?”
“Want to touch ye, Eliza.” His hand fisted. “If ye saw my jack under the table right now, ye would have no question about it.”
She ducked her head under the edge of the table. “’Tis covered,” she said, coming back up. Her lips were closed tight as if trying not to laugh. “Captain John said that if I ever want to learn about foking, I need to ask a man I trust, one who won’t rut on top of me only to sate his lust.”
“Ye are not saying this because ye want to gut me?”
She crossed her arms, resting her elbows on the table. “If you do not want—”
“Fok, Eliza, of course I do.”
She smiled broadly. “You said fok.” She nodded. “You teach me to do it, and I’ll teach you to talk like a true sailor.”
He couldn’t stop the deep chuckle from coming out. She looked so…happy, as if this had been weighing on her mind. Hell, what would he teach her? Every little detail. She wanted to learn everything. He wasn’t celibate for sure. He’d had his share of lovely young widows and lasses who came to him without their maidenhood. But everything?
“What exactly do ye mean by every little detail?” he asked. Talking was keeping him seated and not lunging across the table like a randy lad who’d found his first willing lass. He made the gesture she’d used before, his finger sliding into the circle his other hand made. “Ye obviously know the basics of what goes together.”
She nodded. “Mistress Claire told me, and I’ve heard the act through her walls at the brothel. Lots of grunting and crying out and panting. It sounds like a lot of work.”
Beck stared at her without saying anything, his jack hard as granite under his kilt. The fire crackled in the grate, and the wind whistled around the eaves, coming down the chimney, making the flames dance. If he ripped the table away between them, that might make her pull her knife. Arse, get ahold of yourself.
He took a deep breath. “It can be…vigorous.”
“I get more than enough exercise on board a ship, climbing the lines and working alongside the crew. I should be fine.”
“Aye,” he said, his voice dropping to a rough murmur. “I think ye will do very fine, lass.”
His tone brought her gaze to his, her smile fading. “Should we start now?” she asked.
Aye. “Do ye have any specific questions first?” Because once they started, he would probably not be coherent enough to answer her questions with words.
“I want to know why it seems to consume everyone’s thoughts. And then there are specific acts they talk about.”
Bloody hell. “Such as?”
“They talk about a woman swallowing or having a mouthful.” She scratched her chin. “Is there drinking or eating involved?”
Beck blinked. “Not…usually.”
“And they talk about riding a girl,” she said, looking across at him. “I might be strong for a woman, but I know I could not carry your weight about. And—”
“Wait,” he said and took a deep breath to rid himself of the scenes her words were creating in his mind. He pushed his chair back and stood, adjusting himself, although he knew there’d be no hiding his rigid jack tenting out his kilt. He walked around the table, and Eliza slid off her perch to stand before him.
She glanced down. “I see it now.”
He let out a chuckle on an exhale. Was God or the Devil jesting with him? At the moment he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was make Eliza Wentworth forget all about what she thought this would be like. She’d lived her life in different types of pain, and he wanted to open her world to pleasure.
No bastards. Aye, he knew that. He’d kept his control enough over the years, and he would with her.
Beck touched a curl that framed her face, sliding his finger along her soft cheek. He bent closer, his face near hers as he met her gaze, letting her see a bit of the lust that flamed through him. “Eliza, lass, are ye sure?”
She met his gaze fiercely. “Aye,” she answered, the single word coming a bit breathless. “I choose you, Beck Macquarie.”