“He willnae, because Vale’s a soulless devil who preys on naive, friendly young lads, and our piuthar loves the boy. I’ll manage Matthew Harris.”
They rode in silence for a mile or so. “Aden, are ye in this for a bride who’s grateful to ye, or for one ye can love?”
“Those two things arenae mutually exclusive, I reckon.”
“Ye know what I’m saying,” Niall insisted. “When Amy and I—”
“Nae.” Aden cut him off with a slash of his hand. “Ye dunnae get to advise me because ye were lucky enough to find a woman who thinks yer annoying charm is … well, charming. I’ll find my own path, thank ye very much. And aye, I know my heart. I dunnae yet know hers. I cannae, until she’s free.”
“Well, that sounds wise enough, but ye’ve nae twisted yerself into knots for any other lass that I recall.”
No, he hadn’t. And whatever reasonable, logical story he tried to spin for himself, deep down he knew the truth. He’d found his forever, and he would do anything necessary to rescue and protect her whether it ultimately benefited him or not. “Mayhap I did, and I just nae told ye,” he quipped, mostly to turn the subject to his past romantic escapades and away from the one that actually mattered.
The sun brushed the tops of the old, rolling hills to the west as they trotted into Portsmouth. He could smell the ocean just to the south, wet and salt and cold, but less wild than its Highlands self. This part of the Atlantic had been tamed a very long time ago, and only dared raise its head when it had the might of winter at its back.
Ignoring the rows of wee houses and shops, they continued toward the port and its accompanying warehouses, taverns, inns, and whores. Finally he slowed, gesturing with his chin toward a well-lit tavern resting on a wide, well-traveled lane. “The Briny Deep,” he said aloud. “I reckon that looks to be a place for a naval lieutenant or two. Ye remember what I need to know?”
Niall swung out of the saddle and tied Kelpie to the nearest hitching post. “Aye. I’ll see ye back here at two o’clock. Dunnae get knocked over the head and end up on some ship bound for the Orient.”
Aden nodded. “I’ll start at the other end and work my way back toward ye. Six hours is all we have; I need to be back in London before the gossips are awake.”
He continued east and south, closer to the water. Niall would look for officers, equals of Vale whether the captain had seen them as such or not. As for himself, he wanted to chat with some common sailors, the ones who would have had to follow Captain Vale’s orders. His father had always said that to know a man’s character, speak to those whose lives he’s responsible for. Or something close to that, but with more profanity.
With the piers and docks and the ocean—gray and flat at twilight—in sight, he stopped in front of the Mizzenmast tavern. It wasn’t even fully dark, yet, but the tavern already spewed fiddle music and loud men’s voices and a few female ones amid the clutter of sound. Wrapping Loki’s reins around a hitching post, he patted the chestnut on the neck. “Dunnae let anyone make off with ye, lad. We’ve a busy night ahead.”
At the Mizzenmast he received only blank stares, even after he purchased a round of drinks, at the mention of Captain Robert Vale. It made sense; Vale had served in India, while the royal navy had men stationed all over the world. This lot seemed to have bonded over their travels to the southern Americas and the Caribbean tobacco plantations. When he inquired where he might find lads who sailed Indian waters, they gave him the names of three additional taverns—the Public House, the Punjabi, and the Water Buffalo.
The latter two taverns, he subsequently discovered, were owned by former sailors who’d each been in the employ of the East India Company. Finding one of them, though, took him nearly an hour amid the maze of building and shipbuilding yards, supply wagons, piers, and broken old sailors lurking in doorways and ready to pounce for enough coin to purchase just one more drink.
Finally he rounded yet another corner, beginning to wonder whom he could bribe to guide him without worry over whether they’d try to murder him in some alley, and a dingy sign with a very large, fierce-looking black cow came into view ahead.
As he drew closer, faded lettering beneath the malformed bovine proclaimed that he’d found the Water Buffalo. It reminded him of some of the worst gaming hells in London, but even more run-down looking. Thank the devil he’d come himself to this one, instead of asking it of his newly married younger brother. Aye, Niall could charm the stinger off a bee, but the inhabitants here weren’t honeybees. They were more likely to be drunk, angry wasps.
Making a quick check to see that his sgian-dubh remained sharp and hidden in his boot, he pushed open the door and walked inside. No one played music here, except for the cymbals between the fingers of the old woman standing on a chair in the corner, her middle bared and brown, intricate tattoos winding up both forearms to vanish beneath the faded red and gold silk she wore above and below her belly. Her feet were bare beneath the calf-length skirt, and decorated in more of the same ink as was on her arms. The old, gray-haired woman rolled her hips to the left and swayed to the right, then the opposite, in a slow, rocking dance accompanied only by the tinny chink of the cymbals. With every sway of her hips she lifted one foot a few inches above the seat of the chair.
“My wife,” the short, bald man behind the counter grunted, and pulled a cork from a barrel to pour a stream of brown liquid into a tin cup. “You looked at her dancing, so you owe me a shilling and I owe you a mug of Indian cider.”
Aden flipped a shilling onto the counter, and it disappeared before it could finish moving. “What’s Indian cider?” he asked, lifting the mug and taking a sniff. Apple, cinnamon, and something musty smelling. Not unpleasant, but not something he’d scented before.
“Apples, cinnamon, blackcurrant vinegar, and ginger. And a dab or two of whisky. I make it myself.”
Elsewhere Aden might have downed the entire cupful, but even up in Scotland he’d heard the tales of men being drugged in taverns and waking up halfway across the Atlantic where they would be declared a stowaway and given the choice of either being tossed overboard or signing on as a member of the crew. Keeping his gaze on the tavern keeper, he lifted the tin and took one tentative swallow. “Hmm. Nae half bad. Ye werenae jesting about the whisky, either. That’s a Scottish dab, nice and potent. Ye dunnae water down yer brew.”
The old man chuckled, clearly flattered. “You’re a brave man, Highlander. And I haven’t helped the merchants or His Majesty recruit crew in a decade. You keep putting coins on my bar top, and you’ve nothing to fear from me.”
“Just don’t eat any of that stew he’ll be peddling next,” one of the dozen men scattered about the dark tavern called out, and the others laughed.
“Just for that, Weatherly, I’m giving your supper to Duke.”
“Heh. I thought you liked that dog.”
Amid the continued laughter, Aden stuck out his hand. “Aden MacTaggert.”
The old man shook it. “David Newborn.”
“I’m looking to hear some tales about a particular man,” Aden went on. “And I have a bit of coin if the stories turn out to be true.”
“Which man’s made you so curious, then?”
“He goes by Vale. Robert Vale. Calls himself a captain, late of the Merry Widow out of India.”
“Vulture Vale?” asked one of the men seated at the long wooden table dominating the center of the space.
“From what I’ve seen, aye, that would be him.” Taking his mug, Aden strolled over to take a seat on one of the worn benches. “Are ye acquainted with him, or just his name?”
“How much coin is it worth to you if I answer that?” the tall, skeletal man with a startling shock of ginger hair asked.
“That depends on how much ye actually know.”
“I’ll tell you he’s a right bastard for free,” a second, red-faced man seated toward the end of the table stated.
“I reckoned he was that, all on my own,” Aden returned. “Tell me
someaught more interesting. More personal.”
The ginger snorted. “It’s interesting to me that he’d likely pay me to tell him some big Scot’s looking for stories about him.”
“Aye. But then ye’d have to find him, talk to him, and get the blunt from him.”
“That’s the truth, Billy,” the ruddy man put in. “That fucking vulture would listen, smile, give you a shilling, then slit your throat the minute you turned your back.”
“I, on the other hand, dunnae slit throats,” Aden added, not at all surprised by the description.
“So you say. You look like you could beat a man to death with but one hand, though.”
“Dunnae cross me and dunnae lie to me, and ye’ll nae need to discover if that’s so. Are any of ye willing to tell me a true tale?”
Billy grimaced. “If it gets back to him that I talked, I’ll be on some scow drudging up mud to widen the Port Jackson harbor alongside the convicts.”
That would be Port Jackson in Australia. Was Vale that powerful, though, or did he simply give that impression? By rising to captain as quickly as he had, he’d at least proven that he had influence—but was it real, lasting influence, or the kind that had been bartered for with losses at the table and could be quickly disposed of?
“He’s retired from the navy and he’s in London chasing after a Society lass,” he said aloud. “Unless ye tell him yerself, he’ll nae ken a thing about this conversation.”
“A Society lady, eh?” Billy took a swig of Newborn’s potent cider. “Makes sense. He was always going on about grand mansions and dining with dukes. Every time we went ashore, he would head for officers’ clubs and win the shirt off some admiral’s upjumped son without a brain twixt his ears, and suddenly Vale had another promotion or another medal. And then he’d lecture those of us bunking in hammocks belowdecks about how we was animals bred to feed the wealthy and powerful, and how none of us had the spleen to turn predator ourselves.”
“And if ye so much as twitched or grumbled,” the ruddy-faced man added, “it was up into the rigging you went until he saw fit to allow you down again.”
“Danny Pierce was up there for near two days once,” Billy said, nodding. “Fell out of the rigging, finally, but got tangled up on the way down or he’d have opened his skull like a ripe melon on the deck. He was odd and scared of high places after that, and whenever the cap’n saw him on deck, up the bastard would make him go. Danny finally vanished one day. They said he’d gone ashore and fled his duties, but we weren’t anywhere near land the last I seen him.”
“Do ye reckon Vale killed him?” Aden asked, memorizing every name and anecdote for later use.
“Nah. I think poor Danny got tired of being scared and jumped overboard. There should’ve been an inquiry, but Vulture Vale knew who would bend over for him, and nothing ever came of it.”
The rest of the stories were equally disturbing, and all followed a similar pattern: Vale wanted something to happen, and he either went out and arranged for someone to owe him a favor, or he called in one of the favors he’d already secured. All of the favors involved forgiving debts his victims had mysteriously accrued in his presence. They said a leopard couldn’t change his spots, and while Vale’s ultimate plan might have been to don a lion’s pelt, he was still a leopard.
A common-born leopard, at that, and one who told himself he was better or more worthy than his fellows, but at the same time tricked and cheated because deep down he knew he couldn’t earn a better life on his own merits—because he had none. Vale knew what he was, and spent all his efforts convincing himself otherwise, likely terrified that someone he couldn’t catch beneath his thumb would point out the fact of his monstrosity.
Once Aden had purchased a few rounds of drinks, two more men came forward with their own tales about Vulture Vale. Nothing more about Cornwall or Vale’s origins, though the bulk of tales continued to suggest that he’d come from very ordinary stock. Every bit of it at least clarified Aden’s view of the man he’d set himself to face across the table. It said something that even far away from Vale and India and assigned to different ships under different captains, the sailors still hesitated to come forward. Vale scared them, in a way that rough seas and cutthroat pirates did not.
That was how Vale worked, though: He found the vulnerable, the frightened, the desperate, and he took advantage. It was damned time someone fought back. The fact that it was a woman who’d chosen to do so, a lass with manners and propriety and kindness and a barbarian Highlander on her side, made it all the sweeter. Now he only needed to make certain she won.
When he met up with Niall again, he had fifty fewer pounds and a priceless amount of information. And his brother had a tale or two of his own, including one from an officer who’d known Vale back when he’d first purchased his junior lieutenancy, and had described younger Vale as being cunning, heartless, and utterly focused on achieving a captaincy. He’d claimed to come from a family who hadn’t appreciated his “gifts,” while he’d certainly understood their limitations.
That bit of information had cost another twenty quid. The thousand pounds Francesca had given him seemed to be shrinking before his eyes, but strawberries, bribes, and rounds of drinks were expensive.
He had a few more things to secure when he returned to London, but two or three hundred pounds in his pockets when he finally sat down should be all he required. His mother might believe he meant to use all the money at the tables, and she was welcome to think so. But attempting to win fifty thousand pounds with one thousand, and doing it in a matter of days, would be a fool’s errand. And he did try not to be foolish.
“Is yer hurry to be back in London because ye reckon ye’re the only obstacle between Captain Vale and a marriage license?” Niall asked, kneeing Kelpie in the ribs to keep the gelding apace with the long-legged Loki.
“I want to get back so I can put a ball through him if he does try someaught,” Aden retorted.
He’d kept a firm rein on his temper all night, but now that they were galloping north every tale of cruelty and callousness thrummed into him like a drumbeat. That … man had his gaze set on Miranda. Had danced with her, and while Aden had been miles away Vale had dined with her family in her house. Robert Vale wanted to use her as a stepping-stone, and the bastard wouldn’t hesitate to grind her into the dirt once he’d done so.
“Aden!”
Aden started, looking sideways at his younger brother. “What is it?”
“I said, ye cannae gallop all the way back to London,” Niall commented. “Slow down and ye’ll get there without killing Loki and Kelpie—unless ye care to change horses at every inn we pass by.”
Cursing under his breath, Aden drew the chestnut back to a canter. Aye, he did want to change up horses at every inn, but that would eat away at the money in his pockets, too—not to mention the embarrassment Loki would feel at being left behind to walk back to London later in the company of some stable boy. He’d figured the pace—walk a mile and canter for two—would have them back in Mayfair by midmorning, and that would simply have to do.
“If ye want someaught to ponder other than what peril yer lass could be in at just past two o’clock in the morning, why dunnae ye tell me what, exactly, ye do mean to do about her brother? Ye may nae have said exactly how Vale came to have so much paper of Matthew’s, but I reckon it was because the lad’s a poor gambler with nae any common sense.”
His brothers weren’t idiots, and Niall made a good point—if he’d filled in the empty bits of the story with some logic and imagination, Coll would have no difficulty doing the same. “It was wagering, and it was him being hunted by a man who spits venom. Dunnae ye fret about Eloise. If I ever catch him wagering again, I’ll break both his arms. We dunnae need ye or Coll breaking his neck. Eloise chose him for his good heart, and nae because he can tell a friend from a foe at fifty paces.”
“Ye can do that.”
Aden sent his brother a grim smile. “Aye, but I’ve nae a good heart.
”
“Och, bràthair, I do hope I’m about when ye realize just how wrong ye are about that.”
Considering he’d lacked the self-control to keep from ruining a lass who needed his help and that he was now having deadly serious thoughts about killing a man who planned to marry her, Aden wasn’t so certain he had any heart at all, much less a good one. All he did know was that he meant to rescue Miranda Harris, that he wanted her for himself, and that he didn’t care about the cost.
* * *
Captain Vale knew which fork went with which dish. He knew how to chat politely about the weather and the attractions of London, as well, but to Miranda’s eyes it all sounded rehearsed, as if someone—George or Matthew, no doubt—had told him which topics to pursue and which to avoid, and so he’d perused the newspapers to find as much banality as he could.
She wouldn’t say her parents had been charmed, but they certainly hadn’t been alarmed—which was undoubtedly all he’d aimed for. At the same time she’d seen a few moments where he clenched his jaw or gripped his proper fork too tightly, because she’d been looking for them. Aden might as well have been seated at the dinner table last night as well, because the Highlander had seen to it that he was very much a topic of conversation.
In fact, if Aden’s goal had been to infuriate Robert Vale, he’d thus far been doing quite well. Whether angering a heartless villain and blackmailer would accomplish anything useful, Miranda had no idea. All she did have, actually, was a rather alarming amount of trust in—and infatuation with—Aden MacTaggert.
She rose early, half expecting him to climb through her window before dawn, whatever mysterious wagering task he’d assigned to himself overnight. When no one but a blackbird came knocking at her windowsill, she summoned Millie and dressed, and then decided Aden would come calling by breakfast so she could tell him how her evening had gone. Or rather, to select a new book from the library. As she stirred her soft-boiled eggs into mush, he continued his absence, and she resentfully tried to ignore the chiming of the clock in the foyer—which nevertheless insisted on sounding off nine times.
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