Highland Lover: Book 3 Scottish Knights Trilogy by Amanda Scott

boy, “in you go.”
    “Can you lower this boat safely?” she asked.
    “Aye, sure,” he said, steadying the coble while she moved to sit by Will.
    “After you do, how will you and your man get into it?”
    “You’ll see,” he said. “You need only sit still whilst we do it.”
    When she and Will were safe and gripping the mast, he helped Mace hoist the bow enough to clear the railing. Then they raised the stern. The tricky bit came next, but both men had done similar tasks many times. Using the pulleys and tie bars, moving with well-accustomed dexterity, they let the coble swing out over the railing and into position to lower.
    Roping it off once more and standing on the railing, Jake got in first, then Mace. They raised the mast, then untied the ropes, watching each other as they slowly began to lower the boat. The increasing list of the ship made their task easier, but Jake knew that they remained in dire peril. The next giant wave might make the ship turn turtle, and that would be that for all of them.
    At the last minute, a wave nearly undid them, but he and Mace released the ropes and grabbed oars to steady the boat as it slid down the offside of the wave.
    “Row from where you are, Mace,” Jake shouted. “I’ll get the sail up and set whilst we’re protected by the ship. That wind will hit us hard in the open.”

    Alyson watched intently, looking from one man to the other, and feeling as if her heart were seeking a home away from her chest. Although she believed that one should cope with life as it came, seeing her rescuers face three swordsmen and then having to descend from the ship in this small boat… She shuddered.
    Surely, the pounding in her head and throat were but echoes of her pounding heart, but she could not recall a time when she had been more terrified. And Jake Maxwell’s saying that the
Maryenknyght
could roll at any time kept repeating itself in her mind. That didn’t help, but try as she might to stifle the thought, it lingered.
    She and Will both bent over, trying to protect themselves from seawater that sloshed over the sides and rain driven by the errant gusts of wind that whipped and howled around the
Maryenknyght
as Mace, rowing in the bow, pulled the coble away from the ship. Jake stood right between Will and Alyson, unfurling the sail.
    Will hauled himself up to help as well as he could, and Jake did not object. Alyson wished he would order the boy to sit down again but held her peace, having all she could do to keep her hood in place with one hand and her free arm wrapped around the mast. When wind caught the sail, Will sat down with a bump and bent swiftlyaway from a spray of seawater, so their faces were close together.
    Jake moved sternward to take the tiller.
    “Are you frightened?” she asked the boy.
    “Not if I can keep me eye on summat tae do,” he said. “When they was a-lowering us doon tae the water, I near lost what I ate earlier. But, after coming doon from the Bass Rock in that great basket wi’ Jamie, even that were nowt.”
    Remembering the graphic description that the boys had given Ciara and her of their departure from the three-hundred-foot rock at the mouth of the Firth of Forth, Alyson managed a smile for Will. “The two of you are so brave,” she said. “I’d have swooned away at having to sit in a basket whilst someone above lowered me into heaving seas like those raging that night around the Bass Rock.”
    “Aye, well, where they lowered us were no sae wild as what they rowed us through tae get tae the ship. In troth, I were more scared a-climbing up that rope ladder than in the basket. Lord Orkney said most folks prefer the basket tae walking over tae the leeward shore, though. We couldna go that way, ’cause it were too close tae where Tantallon Castle sits on the opposite shore. Since only Douglases live there, and most Douglases were a-looking for us fierce…” He shrugged.
    “Why did people otherwise prefer the basket to the leeward