Do you see, lass? Do you understand me?”
“Aye, Mor,” Lottie had said, but in truth, she hadn’t understood her mother at the time. She’d been overwrought with grief, had considered her mother’s plea a fevered one. But her mother was right—from the moment of her tragic death forward, Lottie had been mother, daughter and mistress to her family. She’d tried to be the ballast her mother had been to a father who desperately needed it, but God in his heaven, her father made it difficult.
And now? She was sitting at the table of a captain she didn’t know, in his private quarters on a ship she’d taken from him, all because of that damnable whisky, another of her father’s bad ideas.
On the day of Sankt Hans, the laird had accused her father of illegally distilling spirits.
“Naturally, I denied it,” her father had explained. “Aye, he was a bit of a bore, really, what with his talk of penalties and for avoiding the crown’s taxes and undercutting a legitimate trade. He claimed that his clan was the only lawful clan with the right to distill and sell whisky, and I best think on MacColl’s offer to save my bloody arse.”
That was the moment Lottie had assumed all hope was lost for her and she’d have to marry that sheepish old man.
“Aye, and what had you to say to that?” Duff asked.
“I said, good luck to you, then,” her father had said with a twinkle in his eye, and had laughed roundly.
No one else laughed.
“Och, look at you all now,” her father had said gruffly, disappointed in their reaction. “MacColl’s offer is no’ without merit, is it, leannan?” he’d asked curiously, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “He does indeed have a bonny house, finer than this. Twelve rooms, is it?”
“I donna care,” she had said, flustered. “Do you think I can be persuaded with a few rooms? He’s older than you, Fader. Would you have me give up the hope of children one day?”
“Donna fill your head with bees, pusling,” he’d said jovially. “I ask only if you might consider it. Were it up to me, I’d no’ give my one and only daughter, the bonniest woman in all of Scotland, to that old man unless she asked it of me. My plan is far superior.”
Her father had a plan, all right.
His idea was to sell their whisky, once it had matured, in Oban, just across the loch from Lismore. That was where he’d met a man who dabbled in whisky trade, and knew where illicit spirits could be sold for a tidy profit. Lottie had lost patience with her father then—it was one thing to include all of the Livingstones in their secret distillation and plans for the whisky, but it was quite another to speak of it to strangers. It was little wonder Campbell was so suspicious—someone had been talking.
“Naturally, the Scotsman will have a wee bit of the profit for having arranged it, which is only fair, aye?”
“What do you mean, a wee bit of the profit?” Lottie had demanded.
“A mere twenty percent.”
Lottie had gasped with alarm and outrage right alongside Duff and Mr. McLean. “Twenty percent?”
“’Tis an opportunity, Lottie.”
“’Tis robbery, Fader,” she’d said hotly. “For twenty percent of our profit he ought to arrange for us to dine with the king! And now there is a Scotsman wandering Oban who knows what we’re about!” She’d fallen back against the settee and had flung an arm over her eyes rather violently as her mind whirled with the conundrum in which her father had put them.
“We canna sell the whisky in Scotland,” Duff had said to Bernt. “There are Campbells everywhere, aye? They’ll hear of it and toss us in prison and leave us there to rot like dead fish.”
Her father looked properly chastised, and Lottie turned away from him. If they’d only put a bit of money into sheep, as she’d suggested, they’d have no need to distill illegal spirits!
“Lottie, pusling, donna be cross with me,” her father had pleaded. “I’ve many mouths to feed and rents to pay. What was I to do?”
Well. There was a host of other things he might have done, but he hadn’t, and once again, it was up to her to figure a way out of the disaster. She’d stood and had begun to pace, her mind wildly racing. “If we risk discovery by the Campbells if we sell the whisky in Scotland, then we must go somewhere else.”
“Aye?” her father asked, his eyes widening with hope. “Where? England?”
“No, no’ England,” Duff said. “Campbells there, too, mark me.”
Lottie could think of only one place she knew anything about at all, and that only from the tales of others, including the only lover she’d ever had. Lottie hadn’t thought of Anders Iversen in a quite a while, really, and generally preferred not to think of him—she’d managed to put that unfortunate summer behind her. But who would help them now? Who else could they turn to? “Anders Iversen is the bookkeeper for the Copenhagen Company in Aalborg, Denmark, aye? And his father, the exchequer there, remember? The company trades in spirits—he told me so. Perhaps, with Anders’s help, we might sell what we have to that company, aye?”
“Aye,” Duff said, nodding. “I remember, spirits and tobacco,” he said. “Diah, Lottie, you’ve come up with a bonny idea, you have. Half of us on this island hail from Aalborg.”
“Do you think Anders would help us, then?” she’d asked Duff.
“Why, of course he would,” Duff said with great certainty.
“Are you no’ forgetting a crucial detail?” Mr. MacLean asked. “How are we to get the whisky to Denmark?”
“We’ll go by ship,” Lottie had said. “On the Margit.”
“Gilroy Livingstone’s ship? That old tub?” Mr. MacLean said with a snort.
“Donna let Gilroy hear you say it,” her father had warned. “He’s as fine a captain as any to be found in Scotland, and that tub is his pride and joy. Lottie, ’tis a splendid idea, it is.”
It was not a splendid idea, it was a rash one, born of desperation. She’d never met Anders Iversen’s father—for all she knew, he might have died, or changed occupations. She’d had no contact with Anders at all since he’d left Lismore a year ago. “There’ll be some cost to sail across the sea, there will, but we’ll keep our twenty percent,” she said.
“What of Anders?” Duff asked.
“He should be delighted to make the introductions if Lottie asks,” Mr. MacLean said gruffly. “And if no’, we’ll impress on him that we need every cent.”
“What a bonny and bright lass you are, leannan,” her father had said. “No man on this island deserves you. We’ll all go, all of us, you and me and Mats and Drustan and a good crew.” He hesitated, waiting for her objection. When she made none, he said quickly, “We must keep this close, aye?” he said. “The fewer who know what we’re about, the less we must fret over wagging tongues.”
Out of care for her father’s feelings, Lottie had not pointed out how ironic it
