Page 12 of Transporting a Ruthless Highlander
“Goin’ tae have trouble wi’ that one, Captain,” he observed.
“Dae ye think so?” Gavina stepped up to the gate to look into the cell. “He is certainly bigger than everybody else, Callum, but that doesnae always make folk dangerous. Have ye ever heard the sayin’ ‘gentle giant’?”
“Captain,” he laughed in disbelief. “Did he look gentle tae ye?”
Gavina paused and studied the big man. She prided herself on her intuition, and now it was telling her that there was more to him than met the eye.
“I think ye should keep an eye on him, Callum,” she said thoughtfully. “There is somethin’ different about this prisoner.”
Callum looked at her face, then laughed. “Are ye sure ye are no’ smitten, Captain?” he asked, his eyes twinkling. “He is a very big, tall, an’ handsome man. I wouldnae blame ye if ye found him a bit…attractive.” He winked at her, and she swatted his shoulder with the back of her hand.
“He is prisoner number four-five-two,” she reproached him. “An’ I am no’ paid tae bother about how they look, Callum. A’ I want tae dae is tae get him tae America in one piece. When my duty is done, he will go an’ serve his sentence like everybody else.”
Callum stared at her for a moment, then turned away and went back to his duties. He had never seen their captain show much emotion before. She usually kept her feelings to herself; there must be something very special about this man.
Lying beside Struan, Gavina thought of many more nights that she had been obliged to sleep under the stars. Her father had beaten her many times, especially when she had not been able to find any food or money, and she was too scared to go back to their single room in the hovel where they lived. When she wanted to escape, she would find her own private secluded spot on the stony beach and curl up under the night sky. Then, when she was only ten years old, her father had sent her out one night to pick some pockets, something she hated to do since she had earned herself too many black eyes and bruises that way.
Gavina’s father, Patrick McCartney, was a tall, dark, lanky man who had the bulbous blue nose of a habitual drinker. Gavina had inherited his height from him, but fortunately not his cruel nature.
“It’s a fine night, wee skellum,” he said, with the glint in his eye that always presaged something bad. “A ship has just come in, an’ a’ the sailors will be outside on the streets, an’ they will all have more money than they need. Time we got some o’ it.”
“Dae I have tae, Da?” she pleaded. “Them men always clout me if they find me, an’ sometimes they pull my hair.” She knew that begging her father for mercy would do no good at all, but she could not help herself. Her little body had had enough punishment.
He took her by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled, then gave her a hard slap across her face that knocked her to the floor, bruising her backside and causing her to whimper in fright and pain. Gavina inched backward on the floor on her backside, her eyes round with fear.
He looked into her eyes with a gaze that was as hard as flint. “I need some money tae get back what I lost at the cards last night.” His eyes softened a little. “One more big win an’ we will be rich, darlin’!”
So ye said last time,she thought bitterly.An’ the time before that, an’ the time before that…She looked back as she was leaving, and he inflicted his evil smile on her once more before shooing her away.
“Good huntin’, darlin’!” he said, and those were the last words she ever heard from him.
Wearily, she pulled on her cloak and went outside. In the harbor town of Port Glasgow, the streets reeked of fish and excrement, and hundreds of loathsome rats ran between the feet of the men and women standing there. The men, who were mostly sailors, had only come to spend their earnings on drink and debauchery anyway. The women were the prostitutes who served them, mostly as a way to feed their families.
The only way Gavina could force herself to ply her dishonest trade properly was to think of the fine food she would be able to eat when she earned enough. She would gorge herself on plump breasts of chicken, steak pies, and piles of cheese. She loved cheese. She would eat a whole honeycomb and hundreds of strawberries smothered in cream. And she would run away from her father. How she hated him. Let him pickpocket himself!
Gavina sidled onto the crowded street, keeping to the shadows. In her long black hooded cloak, she was almost invisible, and she stood still, surveying the crowd until she saw a tall, prosperous-looking man standing by himself. He had a big goblet of ale in his hand and was wearing a kilt, but there was a small pouch hanging from a belt at his waist, obviously a purse, and by the way it was hanging, a full one.
Perfect,she thought, and tiptoed toward him until she was right behind him. She carefully unpicked the knot on the cord around the pouch, then eased her hand inside and closed her fingers over a fistful of coins. This was the most difficult part. Infinitely slowly, she eased the loot out of the pouch and turned to walk away, but she did not get very far.
“Where dae ye think ye are goin’ hen?” The figure confronting her was a woman dressed in the brightly-colored clothes of a lady of the night, and she smelled of some unpleasant, overpowering perfume. She stepped close to Gavina, who instinctively stepped backward to avoid her, but she collided with the back of the man she had been robbing.
He whipped around and assessed the situation in a second. He looked first at the woman who had caught Gavina and was now holding on to her tightly by the shoulder.
“Caught this wee tyke tryin’ tae rob ye, sir.” She smiled in an oily fashion, showing a gap in her front teeth. If she was trying to look alluring, she was failing miserably.
The man tossed her a shilling. “Thank ye,” he said, dismissing her. She looked at the coin with a disgusted expression on her face, then the man turned his attention back to Gavina. “Give me my money back,” he demanded.
Gavina gave him back the few coins she had managed to put in her pocket, then he grabbed her wrist.
“Ye are comin’ wi’ me,” he growled. She wanted to scream. She tried to, but nothing would come out of her mouth. Who would bother about one more street urchin anyway?
The man tugged her up to the gangplank of a massive ship and led her inside. Gavina was scared to death but fascinated. She had never been on a boat before. Little did she know that she would not set foot on dry land for a very long time.
Once again, Gavina put her hand to Struan’s throat to check his pulse and was greatly relieved when she felt it beating steadily and strongly against her fingertips.
She sighed and poked the fire with a long thick branch, then threw another couple of logs on it. She knew that she had not collected enough wood to burn through the night, but she had been too exhausted to do any more. Now night was falling, and she could not go down to the beach in the dark because it was useless. As well as that, she could not bear the thought of tripping over the corpses of her crew. There had to be another way of keeping warm.
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