Page 82 of Wicked Highland Heroes

“Oscar!” Miss Crenshaw whirled toward the door.

Erroll caught her arm. “You will not venture from this room nearly naked.”

“I must see to him.”

“Be quick with your answer, Ash,” Erroll ordered.

“I only conked him over the head.”

“That is only fair,” Erroll told her. “After all, Oscar did the same to me.”

“There is no comparison.” She blew out an angry breath. “I should have shot you.”

“You did.”

She gave him a withering look. “Yet here is your brother, committing the same crime.”

“Not quite the same crime,” Erroll replied.

Her cheeks reddened. “What is happening?”

“We were mistaken for a press gang.”

Eve Crenshaw barked laughter, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Is something funny?” he asked.

She shook her head, her eyes wide over the hand that still covered her mouth.

Erroll suddenly realized why she was laughing. “There seems to be a great deal of kidnapping going on these days, wouldn’t you agree, Miss Crenshaw?”

Her eyes flicked to his brother, then came back onto him, narrowed in warning.

“Mistook us for a press gang?” Miss Grace Crenshaw cut in on the byplay. “That is ridiculous.”

“Bad luck is what it is,” Erroll looked at Ash. “The slavers dropped anchor in the cove to the south. I’m certain they got away.”

“Damn bastards.” Ash shot him a dark look. “What are you doing here?”

“Bad timing. Your sheriff made sure I knew that. He has a perverse sense of humor, by the way. He didn’t tell me you were leading this expedition. But come along. We’ll leave the ladies to dress. Somerset, would you see them to their cabin when they are respectable?”

“What would you know of being respectable?” Eve Crenshaw snapped.

“Enough to know this does not qualify.”

“I want to know everything that has happened,” she said. “I’ll come up on deck once I am dressed.”

“I have had enough excitement for one evening,” Erroll said. “You ladies will return to your cabin. We will attend to Oscar and send him along presently.”

She drew in a sharp breath and he knew she’d forgotten Oscar. Erroll gave her no chance to further lecture him, but quit the room with the other men.

After Erroll briefed Ash on the evening’s events, he finished off the last of the whisky sitting before him on the table in the galley, and ended with, “The fourth sailor ran into the trees. If you can locate him before he finds a way off the island you might learn where Johnson is headed.”

“One of the sailors is still here?” Ash demanded. “Damn it, why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”

Erroll refilled his and Ash’s glass with more whiskey. “I told your sheriff. He began a search before we returned to the collier.”

Ash relaxed. “Laine knows what he’s doing. If the man is still here, he’ll find him.”