The Wicked Ways of Alexander Kidd (The MacGregors: Highland Heirs) (4 page)

Today, he would eat, drink, and enjoy the company of his hosts. After that, he would set sail for his treasure and make Camlochlin a memory.

T
rina thought she might go mad at the constant struggle she endured during breakfast. She found that keeping her eyes off Alex Kidd was the most challenging endeavor she’d ever had to perform. The worst part was that she failed—along with almost every unwed female in the Hall. How could anyone succeed when he smiled with the arrogance of a prince and the danger of a wolf? Och, how she wished they were still in the dark outdoors so she couldn’t see the spark in his sultry dark eyes, the deep cleft that dimpled his strong chin. And Lord, she’d never seen a man wearing earrings before, but his thick golden hoops and shoulder-length hair somehow added to his dangerous appeal. Even if she never looked at him again, the memory of his bare torso when he removed his shirt for her uncle would haunt her for ten lifetimes. Cut to absolute perfection, his chest and upper arms were crafted in hard, twitching sinew that boasted power and lissome strength. His tanned, flat belly made her curious to touch him. She blushed, thinking of having never touched a man in such a way before. He strode
like a conquering emperor across the Great Hall filled with deadly Highlanders. He didn’t fear them, or, if he did, he masked it quite well. Virility oozed from his every nuance of movement, and even she, a virgin, felt the sexual pull of it.

Listening to the velvet pitch of his voice while he spoke of his adventures made her hate him… or fall in awe of him. She wasn’t sure which, and she didn’t like it.

“He’s quite an unusual man, don’t ye think?”

Trina turned to her cousin, Abigail, eyeing the pirate captain across the hall, where he stood speaking with Abby’s older brother and the chief’s heir, Adam. At Abby’s side, Mailie and her younger sister Violet stood as if entranced by the sight of him. Until their mother walked past them and gave them each a smack on the rump.

“Turn yer eyes the other way,” Isobel MacGregor warned her two daughters. “That one is trouble.”

Trina agreed. The sooner he left, the happier she’d be.

Abby inched closer to her when Isobel left with the others. “Malcolm and Edmund were on the shore when the sun rose,” she told her. “They said his boat was impressive.”

His boat. Och, how she wished she could see it. Just a glimpse before he left. “Is it a sloop or a schooner?”

Abby shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve no idea what the difference is.”

“A sloop is rigged with a single mainsail, whereas a schooner has two masts. Both are extremely fast. Then again he might have—”

“Honestly, Trina,” her cousin cut her off gently. “Ye know more aboot boats and navigation than most of the men here. When I’m chief, I’ll let ye sail my boats.”

Trina smiled at her as Abby moved away to rejoin the
crowd. Everyone in Camlochlin and all throughout Skye adored the daughter of Rob and Davina for her beauty and steadfast loyalty to her kin. Abby was born to lead the clan more so than her older brother, who cared nothing for the title. If Abby were chief, Trina would happily follow her.

Alone, Trina returned her gaze to where Alex had stood earlier. He was no longer there. She looked around the Hall and was about to go look for him outside when his husky voice came from close behind her.

“’Tis a brigantine,” he said, his warm breath against her ear making her spine tingle.

She’d never seen a brig before. They were larger than schooners, thereby slower in a chase. Cannons were set into the ship’s sides, not in the front and back like smaller ships, positioned to fire when pursued. So, Captain Kidd didn’t run much, but preferred battle?

“Tell me, what else do ya know about ships, Miss Grant?”

“Not a thing,” she replied without turning.

“Navigation?”

“Nothing at all.” He’d been eavesdropping. A very rude characteristic she made a mental note to hold against him.

She took a step forward, eager to be away from him. She didn’t like how he made her skin feel clammy and her throat, dry.

“Ya didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who ran away from men.”

She stopped and turned to him. She did run away. All the time. She ran from the boredom of courting and the confines of marriage. “I run from nothing, Captain Kidd. I thought I proved that to ye already last eve when I took ye prisoner and held yer men at bay.”

He laughed, a short, amused sound filled with deep baritones and a sensual cadence that curled Trina’s toes and made her curse him silently. “I’ve heard that Highlanders were stubborn and prideful. I hadn’t considered it to be true of Highland women, as well.”

Trina thought she should look away in some modest, repentant gesture, but to hell with that. “That’s quite all right, Captain. I dinna’ imagine ye consider many things.” Before he said another word, she whirled around on her heel and returned to her table, where Kyle was waiting for her.

Before she returned to her seat, three women encircled Alex where he stood, giggling at something he said.

“Why does he cause ye such ire?”

“Kyle,” she said, severing her gaze from the licentious pirate and turning it on her cousin. “What makes ye assume I keep the captain in mind long enough to let him irritate me?”

The crook of Kyle’s mouth said all he needed to say.

Trina sighed and shook her head. She hated not being able to keep her thoughts private around Kyle. Still, she wouldn’t go so far as to admit anything more than the slightest interest in Alex Kidd. He was a pirate after all.

“He’s quite full of himself.”

Kyle looked in his direction. “He has reason to be. He moves with a certain kind of menace in his grace. Like a wolf.”

“I hadna’ noticed.”

Her cousin laughed, but only for a moment, until she kicked him hard under the table.

“I dinna’ care how he looks or how he sounds, or moves,” she told him while he bent to rub his ankle under the table. “If I cared aboot the beauty of a man, I would
have married Kevin MacKinnon last winter. The only thing I find of interest aboot Captain Kidd is his adventurous life.”

“How d’ye know he leads an adventurous life, Trina?” Kyle put to her. “Mayhap the majority of his days are lonely and dull and coming ashore is like waking up again?”

This wasn’t a guess. Kyle read expressions better than any book in their grandmere’s vast library. She knew he’d want to study any new souls who turned up in Camlochlin, but had he gleaned this from the captain himself, one of his men? Trina turned to examine Alex with a new perspective. Did he spend months at a time at sea? Was setting foot on land with different faces to look at, fresh food to eat, and fragrant women to share a night with, better than hunting treasure? She could understand that. Aye, she could. She felt her dislike for him fading and when he glanced at her with the residue of a smile he was in the middle of offering to another, she smiled back, then turned away.

And looked straight into the cerulean gaze of her cousin.

“Yer faither would kill him.”

She blinked as the fleeting realization of that truth sank in. She looked toward the table her parents shared with her aunts and uncles. Connor Grant was still the most handsome man in the Hall. Every woman in Camlochlin who wasn’t his kin wished she were Mairi MacGregor. His smile was still as wide as the heavens and as bright as the sun. And it shone most on his wife and bairns. Because he loved her so, he would never let her leave Skye on a pirate ship.

“My faither would have no reason to kill him,” she corrected Kyle when she realized it appeared—at least,
to him, and he’d be correct—that she was considering it, “because I have no intention of doing anything so foolish as what ye’re thinking.”

“Good.” He downed the cup set before him and rose to his feet. “Captain,” he called out and beckoned Kidd to come closer. “Sit with us.”

Trina stiffened in her chair as Kidd moved toward them, vowing to smash Kyle in the head with the flat of her blade later on. “There are things ye’re bursting at the seams to know, but he makes ye a wee bit breathless,” he explained to her gently, ignoring the blush across her nose. “I’ll find oot fer ye.”

Was she supposed to forgive him now? What the hell was the use not to? This was why Kyle was her dearest, most beloved friend. She barely had to tell him anything he didn’t glean on his own. Sure, sometimes his ability was irritating, like when he knew things she didn’t want him to know, but most of the time, it saved her from having to explain herself.

“Captain”—Kyle offered the pirate a seat opposite hers—“I wanted to steal a bit more time to chat with ye before the hour is up and ye leave.”

“Another lesson on readin’ lips?” The captain slipped his gaze to her while he accepted the invitation.

Trina cursed her traitorous nerve endings for tingling over the barest attention from him. She didn’t dare look at Kyle to see if he was watching her. She prayed he wasn’t.

“I think I’ve got the art down close,” Kyle let him know. “I’m a quick learner. Nae, I had hoped to learn more aboot the life of a pirate.”

“Oh?” The captain asked with the slightest upward quirk of his mouth—a quirk that sparked more flames in Trina’s belly. “What would ya like to know?”

“What are some of the places ye’ve been to?” Kyle asked.

Trina settled into her chair, eagerly awaiting his answer. After listening to him for a little while she grew captivated by his tales of adventure on the high seas, from places as far away as Africa and as exotic as Barbados and Madagascar. Och, but she’d never heard such tales and doubted they were true.

“Captain,” she said while he swigged a cup of whisky—and after the sound of his voice and the slow slant of his mouth didn’t cause her heart to accelerate. “I know many noblemen keep servants, but surely the kind of slavery ye speak of in some of these places is an exaggerated rendition.”

“The Indies and Africa are not Great Britain, Miss Grant. They are far more untamed and foreign than anythin’ ya’re acquainted with. Slavery is a harsh truth some people live with. But there be places where the natives live, unbound to master or law. They live free, and they live hard, plantin’, fishin’, dancin’ to music beneath the stars, to music that saturates yar soul and tempts ya to do the most wicked things.”

Trina wanted to blink, but she couldn’t separate her gaze from the pirate’s, even for that brief amount of time. Her insides seared and burned and made her skin damp. He conjured images in her head that quickened her breath and turned her bones to mud. She wanted to leap from her seat and run away from the confident crook of his mouth, the menace of his dark eyes. No man had ever attracted her so. She was correct not to like him. He was more than dangerous. He was perilous to her morals, her virtue.

She remained for as long as she could, imagining him wielding his cutlass against a horde of enemies, wondering
how he looked without his shirt, or standing at the helm of his ship, guiding it toward the next adventure. Soon though, she could take no more and excused herself from the table and the Hall. She left the castle, looking over her shoulder every now and again to make certain she wasn’t being followed.

It didn’t take her long to reach the shore. She only wanted a glimpse of his ship in the first light of day. She knew she shouldn’t look. Curiosity had never been her friend. She should be satisfied with her life, safe and content in Camlochlin. But she wasn’t… because of curiosity.

Her breath caught in her breast at the sight of the magnificent beast heaving atop the waves, gleaming in the sun, its tall masts piercing the heavens. She’d seen a ship similar to this one many years ago, when the first Captain Kidd visited Skye. She’d never forgotten it, letting the memory of its wind-stretched sails and buoyancy, despite its mammoth size, fuel her dreams of leaving in search of adventure. Here was one even more breathtaking.

She so wanted to see it up close. Smell it. Touch it. Just for a moment or two. She’d been too young to get any closer to his father’s ship. How often would opportunities like this come along for her? She looked toward the rocky incline. Did she dare board the ship and take advantage of this moment? It may never come again.

She bolted left and took off along the steep coastline. She knew the best way to reach the boat. She just wanted to feel the ship’s planks beneath her feet, the water rocking her to and fro. What kind of adventures would its sails lead her to? Although the thought did cross her mind, she didn’t plan on hiding aboard, stowing away and setting sail to some strange new land… perhaps in the Indies. She paused at the top of the cliffs and looked
back at her home. What would her life be like away from here? Would leaving her family tear her heart to shreds and make her long for home? Och, Lord, she didn’t want to marry Hugh, or anyone else. Not yet. She wanted an adventure. Just one. What would following a map across the ocean and searching for treasure be like?

She would never admit that what she did next had anything to do with the pirate. Or that the thought of him at her side while they sailed across the horizon made her heart jump in her chest. She stood poised above the ship and looked down at the waves slapping against it, the rope ladder dangling from the hull, inviting her aboard. Desire to spread her wings and be who she wanted to be coursed through her veins the same way it had in her mother’s and her grandparents’ before her.