Free Highland Lover: Book 3 Scottish Knights Trilogy by Amanda Scott Page A

Orkney spoke tae him sharp. So we went doon and told Lady Alyson and Ciara that the pirates was a-boarding. Then we hid. But some o’ them villains came and found Ciara. When she screamed, Jamie ran tae help her. I did, too. But we shouldna had done that.”
    “I’d wager you had few choices, lad,” Jake said. “Had you stayed where you were, they’d likely have found you in any event.”
    “They must have come down to the lower cabins straightaway,” Alyson said. “I’d expected them to head for the hold, but evidently only a few of them did, as we saw. Ciara had just fastened the lid of my kist and was getting into hers when they burst in on her. Then the boys ran in, and the men hustled all three of them away. That’s when I discovered that I was locked in.”
    “A good thing you were,” Jake said. “Had the kist not been locked, that chap who rattled the hasp-pin would have opened it and seen you straightaway.”
    Alyson grimaced, knowing he was right.
    “What did you see topside, Will?” Jake asked next.
    “Men all a-shouting and a-cursing,” Will said. “Some was still a-jumping aboard from the two ships hooked tae the
Maryenknyght
. Others herded our lads sternward like sheep. Someone shouted about us taking on water, and Cap’n—” He glanced at Alyson. “The captain said he’d feared all along that the oakum they’d caulked seams with at Leith hadna had time tae dry proper and wouldna hold. Them fools a-banging their ships against ours as they did must ha’ finished her.”
    “You told me that the pirates threw men overboard,” Alyson prompted. “But you did not see them fling anyone we know, did you?”
    “No tae say ‘fling,’ ” Will said slowly and with audible reluctance.
    “Did someone else
fall
in?” she asked, tensing, fearing for Niall.
    Will was silent.
    Behind her, Jake said with firmness that she had not heard from him before, “Tell us what you saw, Will. If it was dreadful, ’tis better for us to know.”
    “It… it were Ciara,” the boy said, turning at last to look at Alyson, his misery plain to see. “She… she did fall, I think. Sithee, the ship they wanted her on were no the one that they’d said
we
should board. I think she were afeard tae get on t’other one by herself and afeard for ye, too, m’lady.”
    Alyson swallowed hard and pressed her fingernails into the heels of her hands to give herself something else to think about. She did not want to lose her composure before Will and the men.
    “Did she fall between those two ships?” Jake asked the boy.
    “Aye, she did,” Will said, nodding. “The pirate ship were lower than what the
Maryenknyght
were. And they’d put a plank from railing tae railing. I’d no ha’ wanted tae walk across it m’self, and ye could see she were scarified. Them louts wouldna help her, neither. They just laughed and told her tae go. Then one o’ them gave her a wee push. No tae make her fall in, I think, only tae make her get a move on. But wi’ the down-slope and all, she lost her balance.”
    Jake said quietly, “They could not have done much to save her after she fell, my lady. Likely, had they tried to lower a rope and pull her up, the two ships would have crushed her between them. Drowning was a better way to go.”
    She knew that he meant to ease her distress. Instead, his words drew horrible images in her mind that seemed to loom and recede, each fighting others to inflict itself on her: One was of poor Ciara sinking, terrified, beneath the waves; the other of Ciara with two great ships flinging themselves at her from either side.
    Bile rose in Alyson’s throat. Shutting her eyes after placing each foot on the next step, as if she could thereby banish the gruesome images, she concentrated on breathing deeply in and out, then opened her eyes and continued upward, still breathing deeply, until she could trust herself to think properly again.
    “What about Niall, Will?” she asked at last, knowing that she