The girl was silent, measuring. Was she at a loss, or was this part of her ruse?

“Your father has a peculiar way of broaching a potential business relationship,” he said, filling the silence.

“My father doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Indeed?” He was genuinely taken aback at this latest wrinkle. He suspected she played a deep game, but he’d been swimming in deep waters long before she was born.

He found himself smiling. To his surprise, he was not unamused. It’d been years since he’d been in the company of a young female. Moreover, he loved a lively discussion, and intelligent debate was something sorely lacking in his dockside venture. He suspected if he plumbed deeper, this Elspeth would hold up admirably in a mental crossing of swords.

“Would you like to hear what I think?” he asked. “Your father told me about his business. I worry how profitable such a harebrained venture might be. I think you worry too.”

He could see in her pursed lips just how on the mark he’d been.

But then she shocked him by snapping, “You should worry more about your own presumptions.”

Dougal laughed outright. “What a singularly puzzling thing you are.”

The lass might look green enough to be his granddaughter, but she was a clever one. And, he realized, not unpretty at all. Quite fair, in fact.

He wondered if the girl could be brought to heel. He’d never married—business had always taken precedence— but he saw now that a man might go far with a partner of pleasant countenance and bright mind by his side. Even better that her family was in the woolen business.

A sheep farm could be just the thing to explain away his new profits. Elspeth’s father was in desperate financial straits. Time for Dougal to see just how desperate.

He reached across the table and patted her pretty little hand. “Perhaps we should settle on an alliance, you and I?”

Chapter 20

Elspeth studied Aidan’s profile and felt a pang. She’d been working distractedly on her tallies when he arrived, and when he’d asked to see them, she’d been happy to oblige. But now he was poring over the account book in such earnest, doing his level best to help her.

As she was doing her best to help him.

“Twenty head isn’t many of the cursed beasts,” he was saying, pointing to a figure. He tilted the book toward the window to aid her, even though the day wasn’t dark enough yet to hamper her vision. “But they’ll account for more wool than this at shearing time.”

She stared blindly at the number, wondering who Dougal Fraser really was. The strongman he’d been entertaining when she arrived had done nothing to put her mind at ease. He’d seemed a shadowy, criminal sort.

“You’re not just shearing it into sacks. If you grade it”—he met her eyes, mistaking her silence for confusion—“grade it … meaning … to open up the fleece, aye? Tear out the hard bits, clean it up. It increases its worth in a higher proportion to the labor it requires.”

She nodded, not caring. Why would Dougal Fraser’s name appear on one of Aidan’s papers? What would an aging wool merchant have to do with the pirate who’d kidnapped him?

And what was her father doing meeting with the likes of Fraser, anyway? Surely it just had something to do with wool, but Da was pitifully lacking in good sense, and she hoped he wouldn’t get both of them in trouble.

“This word, though … this is shoulder?”

She glanced to where Aidan pointed. “Yes. Very good. Shoulder.”

How on earth might a knit export business be connected to the man who’d kidnapped Aidan? Had it something to do with ships? She thought of the paper she’d stolen. Was it a dead end? Or did it hold a pertinent clue? She wondered if she shouldn’t just sneak it back among Aidan’s papers.

“So then, regarding this figure here,” he said, pointing to a number. “You should account for it differently. Shoulder wool is finer.”

“Yes.” She glanced at the tally. “Finer.”

When she went to Fraser’s office, she didn’t know who he was or what she’d find. And she certainly hadn’t wanted to betray her identity. Her plan had been simply to feign innocence, get a sense of what he was about, and scuttle home again.

But he’d recognized her name, and now she seemed to find herself in a fix she didn’t quite understand. At the end of their interview, he’d patted her hand, and his touch had made her flesh creep. Its implication had made her deeply uneasy. Not to mention, she hadn’t uncovered any clues as to Aidan’s predicament, leaving her more confused than ever.

She realized Aidan hadn’t spoken for a time, and she looked at him.

He raised a brow. “Are you paying attention?”

“Beg pardon?”

“You’re distracted, Beth. I’ve just pointed out a way you can double your profits, yet you seem to be off gathering wool of a different sort.”

She stared back at him, utterly baffled.

“Woolgathering. As in daydreaming.” He put her account book down. He’d been so excited to see her, wondering how he might steal another kiss. Yet she seemed to be a thousand leagues away.

Had he frightened her with his kiss? Put her off? But he knew those fears were unfounded. She’d kissed him back with the enthusiasm of a wanton—just the memory of it drove him wild.

She was likely preoccupied with troubles of her own. He knew she had them in droves, and he was trying hard to help her. His reading had improved enough to double-check her tallies, but not so much that he could be the man he wanted to be. A learned man, who could handle all the accounting, all of the bills and correspondence required of a responsible gentleman.

He stole a look at her. She was deep in concentration, her lips pursed into the most unintentionally sexy little pout. It was all he could do not to toss her papers to the ground and simply claim that mouth with his.

No, he decided, feeling more determined than ever, he needed to be a learned man, an erudite man. A man able to read her sonnets as they lay beneath a tangle of sheets, their bodies entwined.

She looked to him, catching his stare. He gave her a smile, and for once it didn’t smooth the furrow from her brow.

“Never you mind it,” he said, shutting the book. He’d just have to work harder so he could shoulder more of her burdens. She thought the work was tedious, but he found himself dreaming of such duties. He’d enjoy things like minding the monthly accounts, would enjoy a farm to call his own, and a wife like her to share it with.

“I’m sorry. I suppose I am woolgathering.” She gave an absentminded half smile. “It’s just … do you think your pirate is in Aberdeen? If you’d let me read your papers, I could help you search for clues.”

He stiffened. He’d known when he found her that day in his room that trouble lay on the horizon. “I’ve told you. My papers are private.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

Her delicate brow was furrowed, and he was sorry to have been the one to put the worry there. “On the contrary, I trust you more than I trust any other soul.”

“Then what is this business you’re about?”

“My business is to keep you safe,” he answered without thinking.

“Truly, Aidan?” Light snapped to life in her eyes, dancing clear and bright. She smiled at him—for him— and he felt his heart swell. “Truly you want to keep me safe?”

He stared at her a moment, taking in those all-seeing eyes, her gentle countenance, and her face, fine as porcelain. She was kind and good, sweet thoughtfulness and artless honesty. She was all that had been taken from him so long ago—and all that he desired now. He realized how true his words had been. He did want to care for her.

And it unsettled him.

More than any revenge or intrigue, it was this genteel, bookish woman who’d managed to unnerve him. A mere few moments of her uncharacteristic lack of attention, and he’d fretted and frowned like a schoolboy. But then, when he’d shown the simplest consideration, she’d come to life, looking at him with such warmth, and not an ounce of artifice. He fantasized what it would be to let her in. To tell her his secrets, feeling that gaze focused only on him, her responses ever transparent and true. Truly to keep her safe.

To keep her.

“Want to? Aye, Beth. I find I do.”

But even as he said it, he knew he couldn’t share a bed with a treasure like her while his nights were spent dreaming of revenge. In a distant future, when he was a respectable man, a man of books and accomplished in a trade, he would court her in earnest. But first, he needed to exorcise his past.

He’d spent most of his life wanting one thing: to find and kill the man who’d kidnapped him so long ago. But now Aidan found he had a second dream, a fragile one, only now blooming to life in his chest.

To be worthy of Elspeth Farquharson.

But first, he’d need to settle his business. He’d track down and kill the man with the black pearl. He’d put his past forever behind him. Because, for the first time, he could envision a future.

“Someday,” he said quietly, “someday I’ll be worthy of it.”

She bolted straight in her chair and grabbed his hands in hers, sending papers fluttering to the floor. “You’re worthy now.”

He’d been bought and sold. He knew his worth. It was six pounds two shillings sterling.

“No, not of you, of this.” He turned her hand over in his. It was so small, the fingers delicately tapering to clean, finely rounded nails. He traced her palm and then ran a thumb along a thin line of callus. She worked hard on the farm—harder than she ought.

She snatched her hand back with a rueful frown that cracked his heart. “My hands aren’t fine like a lady’s hands should be.”

Grabbing it back, he kissed her palm. “You’re wrong.”

Tenderly, he turned it over, kissing her knuckles like the most dashing of courtiers. “Yours are the finest of all. You, everything a lady aspires to be.”