The only problem was that when her father had a good plan, disaster almost always loomed. “What plan?” Lottie had asked weakly.
“I’m coming round to that,” he’d said, holding up his hand. “The laird was no’ yet done with me, no,” he’d continued as he poured more whisky for himself, clearly enjoying the retelling of his encounter. “He said I was bloody impractical.”
“He didna,” Mr. MacLean had said flatly, sounding quite offended in spite of the obvious truth in the laird’s statement.
“He mentioned the limestone kilns, and the flax weaving,” her father had said with an airy wave of his hand, as if dismissing those two disastrous endeavors that had each ended badly and at considerable cost to the Livingstones. Bernt Livingstone was a whimsical man, scattered in his thoughts, impractical, and was easily gulled into schemes that fleeced their coffers. Once, when Lottie was a girl, there had been some talk of a new chief. But in the end, the Livingstones revered the code of the clan—Bernt was the grandson of Vilhelm Livingstone, A Danish baron, who had fled Denmark during the war with Sweden with a sizable fortune. He was their undisputed founder, and therefore, Bernt the rightful heir and chief.
Lottie could still recall how her father had stood in their salon that afternoon, his legs braced apart, his eyes gleaming with his plan. She lifted her head from her arms and looked at him. He was sleeping deeply with Morven’s tincture, free from the pain of the hole in his abdomen for the moment. She adored her father, but if there was one thing that sent her into fits of madness, it was his impetuosity. He’d squandered his inheritance on fantastic plans that had never come to fruition.
It was times like these that Lottie missed her mother the most. She’d been good ballast for her husband. She’d been gone for more than ten years, alas, death taking her and the infant daughter she’d given birth to when Mathais had been but a wee bairn, and Lottie only thirteen years old herself. But her mother, Lottie had realized years later, had been prescient on her deathbed. She’d known she was dying, and in those final hours, she’d called Lottie to her, had clutched her hand with a strength that belied her frail state. “Your father will need you, leannan, as will the boys, aye? Heed me, lass—it will seem your life is no’ your own, but you must swear to me now you’ll no’ forget yourself, Lottie.”
“What?” Lottie had asked, grief-stricken and confused.
“Swear to me now you’ll no’ forget your true desires and what you want, aye? You deserve the best of life. It will seem impossible to you, it will seem as if there is no room for you, but you will have that life if you donna lose sight of what you want. 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