She felt his responding laugh all the way to her bones, and that made her consider the other things she could feel, as she sat on his thighs and the horse rocketed down the lane. When she deliberately shifted a little, he gave a muttered curse.
“Here I am trying to be a bloody hero,” he murmured, “and all I can think of is that I want ye again, and now that I’ve had ye, I reckon no one else will ever do for me.”
She kissed his jaw. “I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me, because even with Vale breathing down my neck, being with you is all I can think about.”
“Mayhap we’re both wicked, lass.”
Miranda liked that. Wicked. A few weeks ago being called “nearly scandalous” had satisfied her, but she was finished with being “nearly” anything. And she was finished with frivolous evenings where the most serious discussion she was likely to have was whether the long-lost Lady Temperance Hartwood would finally reappear as the wife of a butcher or a tanner or something, six pudgy children in tow.
“We could keep riding all the way to the coast and board a ship bound for Portugal,” she suggested.
“I’m rescuing ye whether ye want it or nae,” he returned with a brief grin. “If ye want to flee after, well, the Highlands are a fine a place as any to get lost.” His smile flattened a little. “Or wherever ye wish. Ye’ll be free to call on Prussians or Egyptians or even Americans, if ye care to do so.”
There he went again, sidestepping any mention of a future they might share. Stubborn, stubborn Highlander. He would tell her that he loved her and melt her heart, tell her that he wanted her and heat her from the inside out, but he rode miles away from any mention of the word “marriage,” for fear that she might be answering out of gratitude or a sense of obligation or even a last, desperate effort to free herself from Vale’s grasp. And he doubted his own sense of honor.
When they reached Threadneedle Street, the massive Bank of England looming dark and imposing to their left, Aden slowed to a walk. “Northeast corner,” he muttered, turning them up Bartholomew Lane along the bank’s broad backside.
“You trust this fellow we’re meeting?” she whispered, shivering as she looked up at the building. “Not to disparage you, but he is a gambler. Vale could own him.”
“I was a gambler, too, until a few hours ago. I reckon we’ll find out shortly if I read him rightly or nae.”
Half of her hoped Aden had been wrong, that they weren’t just about to burgle the Bank of England. But if he was wrong, she would be paying a horrible price, anyway, and he would have been blackballed for no blasted reason at all.
“Gavin,” he called, his voice barely audible, “keep an eye on that lad in the blue coat. He’s a guard, I reckon. Let me know when he turns the corner.”
Keeping them at a walk, the two horses headed up toward Lothbury. If he didn’t decide what he was about soon, they would have to circle the entire building again.
“Go,” Gavin hissed. An instant later, Aden had his hands around Miranda’s waist as he lifted her to the ground. He followed her a second later and tossed the bay’s reins to the groom.
“Keep going up the street and around, in a big circle,” he instructed. “Look for us.”
Nodding, Gavin continued up to the cross street and headed left on Lothbury. “He seems very comfortable with this,” Miranda noted, hardly daring to breathe.
“He’s done worse in our company,” Aden agreed, and took her hand. Hurrying her into a brisk walk, they headed directly for the small employee’s door at the northeast corner of the building. Ducking them into the shadows, he made a fist and knocked.
“That’s rather anticlimactic,” she muttered.
He chuckled. “If nobody answers I’ll have to start breaking things.”
The door opened with an abruptness that startled her, dim lantern light flooding into the street. “This way,” a thin, older man with a cloud of brown and white hair whispered. “No lingering.”
She stepped past him, Aden on her heels. As she watched, the man shut and locked the door again, then picked up the lamp to lead the way down a long hallway lined with doors.
“Stay close. It gets very dark in here at night.” He half faced her. “Peter Crowley,” he said in a low voice. “You would be Miss Harris, I presume?”
“Yes, I would be. So you and Aden have played at cards?”
“I’d say he’s bought me a few beers over the course of the Season,” Mr. Crowley returned. “And lost many a penny.”
“Crowley nae wagers more than a shilling,” Aden commented, warm and solid behind her. “Claims his wife, Mary, would crack him over the head if he ever lost more than that.”
“That is very good incentive, then. But why are you helping us, Mr. Crowley? You’re risking your employment.”
“I’ve worked in this bank for most of my adult life,” he said. “I’ve seen men come in to empty their accounts and hand them over to some stranger because of an unlucky turn of the cards. Lately I’ve seen several account holders arrive with the very same man in tow. When Aden told me your troubles, I realized we were all dismayed by the very same man. Legally I can’t do anything to stop this cheating and double dealing. But tonight, here in the dark, I can.”
“Ye’re a good man, Peter.”
“As are you. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be here. I am risking a great deal. Not to mention my wife cracking me on the head.”
He stopped them somewhere close to the bank’s middle, a place with cabinets and counters and still more doors and walls. It was a labyrinth. Even if there had been a hundred lamps, she didn’t think she would have been able to find her way out again.
“The private rooms where customers store their items in need of protection are down the hall over there.” Mr. Crowley gestured into the darkness. “I can’t in good conscience allow you in there, and I don’t have another lamp. So please, don’t move. We have a very limited amount of time.”
Mr. Crowley and his lantern retreated, the small circle of light receding until he turned a corner, leaving them in the dark. In the distance something rattled, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing.
“You might have told Lady Aldriss that this isn’t quite a burglary,” Miranda whispered, reaching out and finding Aden’s sleeve, then working her way down to his hand.
“It is a burglary. We’re just nae breaking a door to get inside. If we get caught, ye’re to faint and claim I kidnapped ye. And I’m nae jesting about that, Miranda. Ye ken?”
“So you go to prison for even worse crimes than burglary and I get to marry Vale?” she retorted, sotto voce. “I would rather join you in a cell at the Old Bailey.”
“I dunnae reckon they’d let us share.”
It still sounded better than marrying Vale. “Did you make Peter Crowley’s acquaintance because you knew he worked here, and you knew Lord George and Matthew banked here?”
“I met Crowley before I met ye. Once ye asked for my help I did query if he’d ever seen a hawk-faced man wagering, and he said nae but that he’d seen him here at the bank with a lad who sounded like George Humphries. The rest came together later.”
“I imagine I’m supposed to deliver another lesson in polite Society to you now, and tell you that sons of earls and brothers of viscounts do not go wagering at establishments where bank clerks and tradesmen spend their coin,” she mused, squeezing his hand. “And that aristocrats do not call commoners ‘friend.’”
“Ye can if ye’d like, but I’d be disap—”
“I’m not going to do any such thing,” she interrupted. “By breaking those rules, you very likely saved my life—or at least my sanity.”
“Ye broke a few for me, as well, lass,” he returned in his low brogue. “And I hope ye’ll break a few more.”
That made a shiver run down her spine, one not entirely caused by the looming darkness around them. The idea of being with him again left her feeling nearly euphoric.
The flood of light as M
r. Crowley reentered the main space was nearly blinding. Despite all the conversation about why they’d come here, it wasn’t until she saw the wooden box in the bank clerk’s hands that the worry of it all hit her. If Vale’s papers weren’t in that box, one of two things would likely happen tomorrow: Either Vale would arrive at her house and tell her parents why she would be marrying him; or Aden would kill him. There didn’t seem to be a third choice, however desperately she wished for one.
“Captain Robert Vale did not want anyone looking at his possessions,” Mr. Crowley said, putting the box on the counter. It made a heavy thud, not at all like something that held a few very valuable pieces of paper. “It’s nailed shut. And before you ask, I cannot let this box leave the bank.”
Indeed, the box was stamped with the bank’s seal and several notations indicating its ownership, location, and the date it had been deposited. As Miranda began to lament all over again why no one had brought a hammer or an iron pry bar, Aden bent down and freed the knife from his boot.
Crowley didn’t look at all pleased, but before he could protest Aden flipped the knife in his hand and jammed the blade beneath the lid. He shoved downward, using his weight, and with an earsplitting squeak it lifted. “Well, that’s just poor workmanship, the way that lid fell off there,” Aden noted, pulling it free to set it aside.
Holding her breath and half expecting spiders to be inside, Miranda lifted the lantern and peered inside. Dull metal gleamed back at her. “There’s another box inside.”
The banker pulled it free, setting a smaller metal box, its lid secured by a latch with a keyhole, onto the counter. “We don’t have the key. And this box can’t—”
“Leave the premises,” Aden finished. Taking hold of the metal container, he set it carefully on the floor, then stomped on it. Hard. “I’m finished with being subtle,” he growled, stomping again.
After a few more blows with the hard heel of his boot and backed by the impressive strength of a frustrated Scotsman, the box collapsed on one side, the latch bowing outward. Aden crouched again, using his knife to wrench off the entire latch. Forcing open the lid, he looked inside. And stilled.
“Aden?” she queried, her heart freezing. Spiders or biscuits, if it wasn’t Matthew’s debts inside, she was done for.
A long string of soft Scots-Gaelic curses answered her. “Come down here,” he said finally, settling onto the floor. “Ye need to see this.”
Still barely breathing, she sank onto her knees. She couldn’t marry Vale. She couldn’t. the idea had been repulsive before, but now … now she had something she wanted, with all her heart. Anything else—her mind refused to even form the words.
“It’s nae just Matthew and Lord George,” Aden said, lifting a short stack of mismatched papers and handing them to her.
Her fingers shaking, she looked at them while Aden pulled still more out of the misshapen box. Paper after paper, all with the amount of the debt, the date incurred, and the signature of the debtor, plus a careful set of notations on the back of each one listing the “favors” the signatory had delivered, and additional notes about what further deeds they could do in exchange for the forgiveness of their debt. “He never returns them,” she said, a different kind of dread creeping through her.
“Nae. Some of these are a decade old. Older.”
“He keeps these people the way a farmer keeps cattle. Matthew, Lord George, they would never have been free of him. I would never have been free of him, of bowing to his every demand. I—”
Aden grabbed her hand. “Ye’re free of him now, Miranda. Ye hear me? Ye beat him.” He pressed a dozen papers into her palm. “Fifty thousand quid worth of promissory notes, all in Matthew’s name. Dunnae read the notations. Just burn them.”
He’d read the notations. She could hear the fury, barely restrained, in his voice. Miranda clenched her fist around the notes. “We beat him,” she said fiercely.
“And those papers of your brother, you can take with you,” Mr. Crowley said. “But do it quickly. I need to put this back together so no one knows it’s been moved.”
“Not just my brother’s papers,” she said, grabbing handfuls of notes and stuffing them into the pocket of her pelisse, the pockets of Aden’s coat, and his sporran. “All of them.”
“Aye,” Aden echoed, finding a cloth bag from somewhere and emptying the rest of the box.
“Aden,” Crowley said, a scowl in his voice. “That wasn’t—”
“Nae. We’re stopping him. But if ye dunnae want the box empty, I’ve an idea of someaught we can put in there.” Handing her the bag and standing, he walked to the nearest desk, found a paper, ink, and a pen, and wrote out a few lines before he folded it and put it inside the mangled metal box. They set it back inside its wooden nest, and using the butt of his knife he hammered the lid back on.
“Once again, don’t move,” Mr. Crowley warned them, hefting the box and lantern and disappearing again.
“What did you say in the note?” Miranda asked, holding the bag and its contents tight to her chest. She held dozens of lives, dozens of futures, in there, hers included.
“I pointed out that the odds werenae in his favor any longer, and suggested he try his luck elsewhere.”
“Will he, though?”
Aden put an arm around her shoulders. “If he wants to continue breathing, aye.” His muscles flexed. “I’d best get ye back to Oswell House before our turn of luck runs dry. We’ve some things to consider, boireannach gaisgeil.”
Yes, they did. He’d actually found a way to set her free. And even more important to her heart, she’d had a hand in saving herself. Now she needed to enjoy the moment, to think, and to perhaps deliver a lesson to a barbarian that he should believe a woman when she’d declared she knew her own mind.
Chapter Eighteen
Aden sent Miranda up the trellis before him. As she reached the window she gasped and with a rush disappeared inside.
Cursing, Aden swarmed up the trellis after her. If Vale had made his way there in the dark to put a knife through someone, the bastard was going to have to go through a damned Highlander first. And the naval captain was going to find out if he could fly when Aden pitched him out the window.
With a last upward lunge he dove inside, pulling the knife from his boot as he rolled to his feet. “Dunnae…” he began, then closed his mouth, breath returning to his body all in a rush. “Coll.”
Lord Glendarril settled Miranda back onto her feet before he sank into the chair he’d dragged over to the window. “Ten more minutes and ye’d have found me pounding on the door of every bank in London,” he rumbled. “Next time ye go do a burglary, ye tell me where.”
In a very short time Aden had gone from being the mysterious brother who went his own way with no one being the wiser, to being the one without any damned secrets at all. Oddly enough, though, the idea didn’t even trouble him. “Agreed. Now get out of my bedchamber, giant.”
With a sigh Coll rose, a book clutched in one hand. “Aye, but I’m taking this with me. This Tom Jones is a sgat. Ye didnae tell me any of the books ye read were actually interesting.”
“Take it, then.”
The oldest MacTaggert brother reached the door and pulled it open, then looked back with a lifted eyebrow. “Might I show ye to yer room, Miss Harris?”
Miranda looked from the giant to him. Aden wanted to catch hold of her, make her stay, but he’d spent weeks telling her he’d set her free, and telling himself not to try to put more ropes around her when she’d only just escaped. Clenching his fist to keep from reaching out to this stubborn, exasperating, impossibly irresistible woman, he shrugged. “Do as ye think best, lass.”
With a sour look that felt like a dagger in his heart, she nodded and joined Coll at the door. “Good night, then,” she said quietly, and turned away—to shut the door on the giant’s backside.
“Miranda?” Aden whispered.
Facing him, she leaned back against the door, reaching down one hand to turn
the key and lock it. Aden was fairly certain he heard Coll’s low chuckle, then the sound of the door across the hallway closing.
Slowly she straightened and took a gliding step toward him. Both her hands went up, and a moment later her hair came down in a dark, curling tumble. “The way I see it, Mr. MacTaggert,” she murmured as she continued her approach, unbuttoning the front of her pelisse and dropping it to the wood floor, “I am a free woman.”
“So ye are,” he made himself say, wondering that he didn’t burst into flames from just being close to this sultry goddess disrobing in the dimness before him.
“So I am.”
“Ye just said that.”
She paused, her gown down around her waist and only a shift shielding her fine breasts from his view. “Do you really want to argue right now, Aden Domnhall MacTaggert?”
“Nae. I do not.” He enunciated the last word clearly. “But we’ve a sack of notes to burn.”
She looked at his hand, where the sack still hung from his fingers. “If we burn them,” she said, meeting his gaze again, “how would the people Vale has caught know that they’re free?”
“They wouldnae, I suppose. He could claim he still has the papers. Or rather, just nae admit he lost them.”
“Then we need the names and addresses first, so we can let them know they’re free. Then we burn them.”
Aden nodded. He wasn’t about to argue with her. She’d nearly been caught by Vale. If she wanted to see the rest of the unfortunates set free as well, by God they would do it.
Aden set the sack into his wardrobe, put a coat over it, and closed the doors again. “That’ll do for now, I reckon.”
Whatever came next, he wanted this damned bonny woman in his arms tonight. Crossing the room he kissed her, reveling in the way she leaned into the embrace, the way her arms swept around his neck to pull herself closer against him. A swift tug of the ribbon at her waist dropped her gown to the floor, and he lifted her out of it.
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