A Highland Werewolf Wedding - By Terry Spear Page 0,53
bear any males who might have been forced to become pirates. Not having any children emasculated him in front of his men. He couldn’t produce one child. He blamed it on me, and rightly so. I won’t deny I took evil pleasure in knowing he worried about his own manhood.”
Rafferty’s distress over his inability to procreate wasn’t enough to compensate for what Elaine had experienced at his hands, Cearnach thought.
“What happened to him?”
“As privateers, my uncles had some honor. Maybe not a whole lot, but they believed in part they were justified. Not Kelly. He never served as a privateer. All that he stole, he kept for himself, except for the proceeds he had to share with his men. On an earlier voyage, he cheated his men out of their share of the loot. When he went out on the next one, he didn’t come home.
“His men said the quartermaster, Terrance, killed him in a squabble over his share of the loot. He was supposed to have received twice the usual share, like the captain, for seeing that his orders were carried out and managing the day-to-day operations of the ship, administering punishments, and dividing up the loot. The crew threw Terrance overboard to make him pay for murdering the captain. They gave Kelly a burial at sea. I envisioned the captain and his quartermaster floating there together as their ship sailed away. A perfect end to their despicable lives.”
She took a long breath. “I don’t believe it happened that way. One of his men had overheard Kelly and Terrance speaking in the library of my parents’ home about cheating the crew when the two men had had too much whisky to drink, celebrating their return and the loot they’d stolen. Before their next voyage, which was to be their last, the word must have spread among his crew and the men mutinied. That’s loyalty among thieves for you.”
Cearnach didn’t care how the bastard had died as long as he was dead. “What happened to you?”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Deep down he knew it did. Everything that had gone on in her life had made an impact of one kind or another.
“The men figured I was part of the spoils. Probably payment for what Rafferty hadn’t given them, even though they had his ships. They didn’t know what a fighter I had become. Only two of them were guarding me the afternoon they received word that Rafferty was dead and one of the men had taken over as captain of his ship. They didn’t expect me to shift and use my teeth.
“After I’d dealt with them, I sold the properties and moved. Robert Kilpatrick finally found me, saying he’d been contacted by a solicitor in Scotland concerning some correspondence that had to do with our family. The lawyer was reviewing old records and needed to locate me.
“My uncles had mentioned the goods and where they were hidden in a roundabout way, in case anything ever happened to them. They didn’t give me sufficient information to know what the treasure was or where it was kept. For two years, Robert had tried to locate me to see if I knew anything about where the treasure was hidden, or if I at least had the other half of the puzzle.”
She offered Cearnach a wicked smile. “He tried to learn what information I might have without giving up the fact that he knew something of the matter. If he’d gotten the rest of the clues from me, I wouldn’t be here today. I had the impression that his kin knew nothing about what he had discovered. That he was keeping the treasure secret from them so he could have the spoils and not have to share them with the others. Especially when he planned to meet me at the castle ruins two hours before Calla’s wedding. I assumed he didn’t want the McKinleys to know what he was up to. Or maybe even his own brother.”
Cearnach could see Kilpatrick doing that. “If you hadn’t come to Scotland, that would have been my great loss.” He couldn’t imagine not having met her again today. He would never return to Senton Castle’s ruins without remembering how she had looked there earlier this afternoon, first as a human, observing the castle with such awe and reverence, then exploring it like a wolf—eager, excited, loving it.
Elaine turned to him. “So, all I have to do is mate you, and we can go on a