Page 1 of A Scot in the Storm
Chapter 1
Rory
The Buchan Coast, Scotland
October 1773
The sea turnedon them at dusk.
One moment theArdentwas cutting clean through a hard westerly swell, her bow rising and falling in the rhythm Rory had known since boyhood. The next, the horizon vanished, and the sky to the north went black.
“All hands!” He bellowed from the quarterdeck. The air tasted of iron, and the wind had shifted three points in as many minutes. “Reef the topsails! Secure the cargo holds!”
Men scrambled. TheArdentwas a supply brig, not a warship, but her crew were Navy men, disciplined and competent, most of them veterans of rougher waters than the Moray Firth. The topsails came down clean. The hatches were battened. Within minutes the ship was stripped to fighting canvas.
Rory gripped the taffrail and looked east. Somewhere beyond the wall of dark, the headland at Kinnaird jutted into the sea. No light marked it. No beacon warned of the reefs spread beneath the surface like broken teeth. Mariners navigated this stretch bydead reckoning, by prayer, and by luck, and when the luck ran out, the sea took them.
“Rory.”
His brother’s voice cut through the wind. Murtagh was making his way aft, one hand on the lifeline, his fair hair plastered flat to his skull. Twenty years old, six months into his first commission. Until the black clouds had appeared on the horizon, he’d been grinning about it. The grin was gone now.
“Get below,” Rory said.
“I’m fine.”
“That wasna a suggestion.”
Murtagh’s jaw set, the Sinclair jaw their father called it. “I can work a line as well as any man aboard. Ye said so yourself last?—”
“Last week in fair weather.” Rory caught his brother’s arm as the ship heeled. “This isna fair weather. Get below and secure the surgeon’s stores. If this gets bad, we’ll need them.”
It was a task to keep him out of the way, and they both knew it. Rory saw the flicker of resentment in his brother’s eyes. But a direct order was a direct order, and Murtagh Sinclair was a midshipman who followed the chain of command.
“Aye.” Murtagh turned to go, then looked back. The rain was coming harder now. “Dinna do anything stupid without me.”
Rory almost smiled. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Now go on with ye.”
He watched his brother disappear down the companionway, and then the storm hit, and there was no time for watching anything at all.
The first wavebroke over the starboard bow and swept the foredeck clean. Henderson went down. Two men grabbed him before the sea could take him over the side. TheArdentgroaned, a deep sound that came up through the timbers like a living thing. Then the second wave hit.
Rory lashed himself to the helm. The wheel kicked and fought under his hands, the rudder straining against the current. He couldn’t see—rain, spray, dark, all of it a wall—so he sailed by feel. The angle of the deck. The rhythm of the swells. The pitch of the wind in what remained of the rigging.
“We’re too close to shore.” Lachlan, the sailing master, his voice tight beside him. “That last bearing put us a mile off the headland. We need sea room, Captain.”
“Aye.” Rory hauled the wheel to port. TheArdentfought him, sluggish, her hull heavy with the water she’d shipped. “Come on. Turn, damn ye.”
She turned. The bow came around. He felt the moment the wind caught the remaining canvas, and for a handful of seconds he thought they’d make it.
Then the sound came. Not the wind. Not the waves. Something beneath them—a grinding, splintering sound, low and catastrophic. The deck lurched.
The reef.
“We’re aground!” Lachlan was screaming. “Starboard side, she’s tearing?—”
The mainmast snapped twelve feet above the deck with a crack like a cannon shot. Rigging fell in a tangle of rope, canvas, and splintered wood. Then the screaming started.
Rory cut himself free of the helm. “Get the wounded clear of the rigging! Cut away the mainmast before the wreckage drags us under! Launch the boats!”
