“Plain?” Aidan fisted his hands. There was an unassuming simplicity to Elspeth’s beauty, but she was hardly plain—Aidan just called it natural.
“Well, that was what I’d thought at first.” He leaned on his desk, confiding, “I’d never marry an ugly girl, you see.”
“I do see.” Aidan nodded, barely seeing the man through the film of red that’d dropped before his eyes. He imagined the dozen different ways in which he could beat this swine to a pulp.
“But she struck me as a bright sort of girl,” Fraser continued in an annoyingly musing sort of tone. “Though very quiet. I imagine it indicates a biddable nature.”
Aidan gritted his teeth in a smile. Biddable was the last word he’d used to describe Elspeth. “Found yourself a tractable girl, did you?”
“Indeed. Or so she’ll be, once I get her out from her father’s thumb and under mine. The man’s a doddering old fellow.” Fraser tapped his head. “Bit dim in the upper works too, if you ask me.”
“It’s remarkable how dim-witted some folk can be.” Aidan forced his voice to be light, adopting his blithe mask to conceal what felt like a giant fist crushing his chest.
“Just so!” Fraser smiled, looking at ease now, nodding jovially. “You seem a bright lad. A man after my own heart.” He began to turn his attention to the papers on his desk. Shooing Aidan toward the door, he said, “Now get yourself to the docks.” He paused, giving Aidan an avuncular wink. “Tell them the Bishop sent you.”
The Bishop. Aggravation fueled Aidan’s stride. Wealthy men and their ridiculous flights of fancy.
He smelled Aberdeen harbor before he saw it, the stench summoning a churn of emotions. The heavy scent of salt, oil casks, and decaying fish would forever remind him how it had felt to dock as a free man, returned to Scotland once more.
But it also recalled a darker, more distant time, when he’d been a young boy, torn from his homeland for what he thought would be forever. His captors had pulled the sack from his head, putting him face-to-face with the man he’d sworn as his enemy above all others.
As a lad, he’d heard stories of pirates, but never had he pictured them like that man. He’d always imagined they might be dashing, or handsome, or perhaps even grotesquely ugly. But the man who’d ordered his capture had been decidedly average, neither tall nor short, with only a black pearl in his ear to mark him as anything other than ordinary. And somehow it was his unremarkable looks that’d made him seem all the crueler.
Aidan turned onto one of the larger streets leading down to the harbor. He girded himself for the inevitable onslaught of memories. Forever, he’d carry a picture of the docks as they’d receded from his young view. Forever the sight of them would invoke the old heartbreak and terror as the spires of Aberdeen, and then the coast of Scotland itself, had faded into a vast gray nothing.
He’d girded himself, but there was nothing to prepare him for what he saw docked at King’s Quay. A wave of horror crippled him.
It was the ship, the one captained by the man with the pearl earring.
He shook his head, scrubbing a hand roughly along his jaw. Not the ship. This one bore a different name— Endeavor, painted in a cheery red script—not León de Oro. He was staring at an exact replica of the boat that’d stolen him thirteen long years past.
Sailors rarely changed the names of their ships. Pirates were a particularly superstitious lot, and the man with the black pearl had been no different. Aidan recalled the rules: no whistling, no cutting of hair or nails. No pigs, nor rabbit, nor salmon. With ice in his belly, he recalled the chimney boy who’d been tossed overboard to drown, his crime that he’d been born with red hair.
Despite the resemblance, Aidan told himself he was jumping to conclusions, that the two ships weren’t the same. Endeavor was a rare craft, an exotic Spanish beauty known as a xebec, and she was fast, her foremast raking forward as though the ship itself were eager to slice through the wind. She bore a sleekly pointing bow, a hefty stern, and a wide hull exactly like the one in which he’d been imprisoned, laboring for weeks in a grim darkness that’d reeked of mildew and tar. But it seemed more than a coincidence.
Recovering from his shock, he realized he was striding straight for it, his hand braced on the hilt of his sword. He tempered his impulses, forcing himself to halt. He’d need to bide his time—his ghost wasn’t aboard this ship.
His mind raced. The Endeavor was well guarded, sailors swarming on the deck and in the ratlines like flies over a mound of dung. She may not have been his ship, but she was so very like it that a deep foreboding crept through his gut. Elspeth was being wed to a man involved with this.
He just needed to prove hers was a bad match to a bad man.
Seeing a shadow, he stiffened. Someone was approaching. The day was hazy and overcast, but still, he could make out a gray shadow wavering along the rotting timbers of the dock.
He put his hand on his hilt and canted his elbow out hard. There’d be no mistaking the threat in his posture.
The shadow made straight for him, its amorphous shape speaking to a short, cloaked figure. He peered out the corners of his eyes.
“What have you discovered?” asked a familiar voice. The sound aroused much ire, a goodly dose of anxiety, plus a maddening pleasure, all melding together into a blade that cut straight to his heart.
Elspeth.
Chapter 22
He grabbed her arm. “What are you doing here?”
She flinched away, startled at the rough grip. “I followed you.”
“Sorry,” he said, smoothing her arm where he’d grabbed her. He visibly tried to clear the anger from his face, which left him looking pinched. “What were you—?”
A commotion got their attention—a handful of sailors riled up for what was looking like a brawl—and he swept her away, heading down the harbor and up the first alleyway. It was a dead end, and he ducked them into a shadowy corner. “What were you thinking?” he repeated in a low hiss. “You could get hurt.”
She ignored his concerns, her voice vibrating with excitement. “You saw him, didn’t you? Dougal Fraser?” Aidan would help her, she knew. He would save her from this ridiculous marriage.
“I saw him,” he answered in a tight voice. “And you’re lucky he didn’t see you, though I’d like to know how you even heard of the man.” He paused, taking in her outfit, and made a face that was half amused, half exasperated. “What are you thinking, skulking about, and in this ridiculous old cloak?”
“What else am I to do? My father is unrelenting. He doesn’t believe that Fraser is a bad man.” She clutched at his shirtsleeves. “Is he? What do you know?”
“What do I know?” Aidan’s narrowing eyes alarmed her a little. But the sight was exhilarating too. She’d glimpsed Aidan vulnerable, yet now, the way he was taking charge, she saw just how powerful he was.
“Yes,” she said, a bit breathless. They stood hidden in a corner, and the darkness etched black shadows along his cheeks, under his jaw. His chest was solid, and his heat radiated to her, and she felt she might be lost, consumed by his burning energy. Aidan was a force—knowing he was intent on safeguarding her over all other women was a thrill beyond measure. “When Da told us about him, it seemed you knew something.”
“What of you?” he demanded. “I think you’re the one who knows something. And I think it has to do with a little something you stole from me.”
“Stole… something?” Her voice sounded weak to her ears. Stolen something indeed. A sheet of paper that was currently chafing inside her bodice.
He took her chin and gently tipped it to the right and left, studying her. “Very pretty, Beth. But it won’t work on me.” He gave it a gentle pinch. “Now tell. Where is it? This Dougal Fraser is up to no good, and I need to find proof. I’ll start by looking at whatever it is you took from my papers.”
“We’ll find proof.” If Aidan thought to embark alone on an intrigue—one intended for her own good, no less— he had another thing coming. “And your paper is safe with me.”
“What if your father reads it?” He let go her chin and stepped closer. “It’s not safe if he can find it in the house.”
“It’s not in the house.”
He stepped closer still, and something in her belly sparked in response. “The paper is on your person?”
She imagined his intention had been to make a threatening impression, but his proximity was having quite the opposite effect. “Perhaps,” she said, not budging her eyes from his. She felt something inside her smolder, and willed it to burn clear in her gaze.
“Perhaps,” he mimicked. “You little fox, you’re more than folk take you for, do you know that?”
She shrugged, her lip trembling in a coy smile.
He took one last step forward, till his stomach was pressed against hers. “Shall I frisk you, then?”
He was a solid wall of hot muscle pressed along her thighs, against her breasts, inflaming her till she thought she might come apart from her trembling. “If you must.”
He raised a hand to stroke up the side of her torso, and she answered instinctively by lifting her arms to rest on his shoulders. His eyes grew dark, his voice ragged. “What’s the matter with me? You’re being wed to a criminal. I feel in my gut that the man whose face has haunted me for years is in reach. Yet all I can think is that I want to kiss you.”
“Kiss me?” Her voice cracked as he began to nuzzle her neck.
His hand roved her torso eagerly now, drifting thrillingly close to the swell of her breast. “I’ll stop, if you wish it,” he said, his voice a low rasp.
She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. His mouth slowed, hovering hot over her throat. Oh God, did he think she wanted him to stop? How to show him she wanted very much for him to kiss her once more? She did as she imagined any romantic heroine would do, and pulling apart from him, she tilted up her face and shut her eyes.