He needed something higher to stand on. A chair, mayhap. “Marjorie, what say we bring one of your uncle’s chairs to—”
Hands grabbed him hard from behind. Thoughts tumbled into his head. Why’d Marj grab me? Losh, the girl is strong.
But then the smell hit him. A foul, man smell. Man’s hands. Her uncle Humphrey home? We’re in for it now.
“Still yerself,” a gruff voice whispered in his ear.
A servant of Humphrey’s? He held still, waiting for his mother’s voice to chime out in a scold.
Aidan caught a glimpse of burly, hairy arms. Definitely not a servant.
A sack was shoved over his head. His heart exploded, and with it his limbs, kicking and flailing.
Someone was dragging him backward. He heard his brother calling out useless, clueless things, and Aidan tried to yell for him, but the bag only got in his mouth. He spit it from his lips. The air inside was hot and smelled of sour cheese, and it turned his stomach.
He hammered his heels against the floorboards, but the man was too strong. Aidan had thought himself almost a man, and this proof of his weakness shamed him, terrified him.
Marjorie screamed. Were they taking her too? Like her or no, what kind of man would he be if he let that happen?
He struggled wildly, imagining a miracle, willing it to happen. For once, he wanted Cormac to be the one to save him. Aidan cried out to him, and Cormac shouted back.
Hearing the panic in his brother’s voice made the moment real. This was really happening. Someone was hauling him away. A quivering sensation jittered through his body. He trembled, his every instinct to act, but he was held powerless in the man’s iron grip.
Cormac cried out, but his voice was growing faint as Aidan was hoisted from the room. The knowledge that he was in real, dire trouble broke him. No longer did he think of manhood bravado. Aidan screamed for Cormac, over and over, tears flooding his cheeks.
Marjorie’s shriek pealed from the other room, and as much as she’d annoyed him, a bolt of fear for the girl cut him through. He kicked his foot back, clipping his attacker on the knee, and was answered by a satisfying grunt. He bent his knees to kick again. “Take your hands—”
Something clouted him hard on the back of the head and stars exploded inside the black bag. He heard his own whimpers as though from a distance, and then Aidan blacked out.
It wasn’t until hours later that he awoke. There’d been a cold splash of water to his head that left the taste of salt in his mouth. Another splash, and the rocking and creaking of a ship cut him through, his body knowing at once he was far from land.
The bag was peeled from his face, revealing a man staring at him, smiling. “Fancy a sail, boy?”
Aidan blinked at the sudden brightness. His eyes adjusted, and then all he saw was the glare of gray sea all around, and the glimmer of a black pearl earring in a pirate’s ear.
Chapter 1
Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, 1660
She wasn’t chilled. Her back didn’t ache. She wasn’t in a barn, nor was she seated upon a three-legged stool. She wasn’t in the milking room, and her cheek was most certainly not nestled deep in the thick, musty wool of a sheep’s haunch.
No, Elspeth Josephina Farquharson was at a country dance.
Well, not truly. But she shut her eyes, dreaming what one might be like. There would be laughter, big jugs of ale, and girls with broad smiles walking arm in arm. The pipes would set into a lively reel. She swayed in time.
The door creaked open. The room stilled. Footsteps sounded. The heavy step was confident, masculine.
It was him. He approached from across the room, his eyes only for her. He swept her into his arms.
The reel began again, and he pulled her, steady as the tides, into the middle of the dance floor.
His breacan feile wrapped about her legs as he swung her. She gazed up, easy laughter on her lips, staring into his …
Elspeth’s hands froze on the sheep’s teat.
Brown? Emerald green? Gray as a storm-choked sky? Nay, blue.
She sighed, smiling.
She gazed up, laughter on her lips, at his blue eyes.
He had a smile just for her. It was wicked.
“Elspeth, I say. Are you deaf, girl? That sheep’s wrung dry.”
She sighed again, heavily this time. Her eyes fluttered open. It was her father who stood there, not the dream man.
“Fool girl,” he said, shaking his head, “always in your head. Now come up to the house and put that brain to better use. It’s accounting time, and you know you’re the one with the mind for books.”
Elspeth scooted back from the sheep, clapping her hands clean. “Aye, Father.”
Even though the family farm was small, she the only child, and her mother long dead, her father needed her. And when he needed her, she always went. How he’d managed before her was a marvel.
“You know I don’t have a mind for reckoning.” He gave a loving poke to her temple. “Not like my wee Elspeth.”
She smiled weakly. The day was coming when she’d need to sit her father down and have a serious talk. He’d sold five head of perfectly good cattle to start a woolen business, without consulting her. And now she was the one left to milk the sheep and mind the accounting.
But the books told a grim story, and it grew grimmer by the day.
She worried there might not be enough left to buy back even one cow, if it came to that.
They returned to their two-room cottage, and Elspeth pulled her chair close to the fire. Candles were dear, and the hearth was the only spot bright enough for reading.
“You’re no lad, but still, how would I survive without you?”
She looked up, and despite the cut in her father’s words, she found a rare smile on his face. Tenderness seized her heart. Her parents had been long married before they’d been blessed with their only child. When her mother died in childbirth, she’d left her newborn babe with a man old enough to be a grandfather. A man who’d wished for a son but gotten Elspeth instead.
Her father waited expectantly for a reply. His frizz of gray hair erupted from his head like a halo, or a misshapen bird’s nest.
No, he couldn’t survive without her. Nor would she want him to.
“Good thing it shan’t come to that,” she said. The words pricked her, and she forced a smile. She’d spoken the truth: living without her would never be in question. Any dowry there’d been in linens and woolen goods had been sold off long ago. And what coin there’d been for making Elspeth’s plain features more attractive to a prospective husband had gone to the beasts instead.
“Here’s your things, then.” He pulled her wee worktable by the fire. It bore a sheaf of papers and her precious quill, and the sight of it automatically switched her mind to the business at hand.
“Thank you,” she said, already engrossed in her work. She fished out that month’s tally, squinting to focus.
With a tsk, he rose to stoke the fire higher. “Stubborn lass. I wish you’d allow yourself a reading glass. I’ve heard talk of a man in Aberdeen who fashions spectacles. They even have a wee ribbon that holds them to the head.”
She tilted her chin to bring the numbers into focus, skimming her eyes over the lines. They’d had this argument before. “You know we haven’t the money.”
“But we’ve spent less this month. Or it should read so in that book of yours.” He came and hovered over her, and she shifted so as not to lose the light.
“How is that possible?” She scanned the rows, and one number caught her eye. Growing stern, she put her finger to mark her place. “Da, how is it we have more left over this month, and yet we’re making less than ever?”
She craned her neck to stare a challenge at him. He’d sold personal items off before, and Elspeth wouldn’t put it past him to do something foolish like sell off her mother’s wedding band. She frowned, for it wasn’t as though she’d ever have call to wear anyone’s ring.
“I’ve begun to trade. With Angus.” He paused, letting the farmer’s name hang.
“Angus.” Shaking her head, she looked back down. Her father dreamed of marrying her off to the man. “Not that again.”
Though Angus Gunn was kind enough, and his neighboring farm profitable, he didn’t make her swoon like all the great heroines swooned. And if Elspeth couldn’t have a great love like those she read about in her novels, then she’d rather skip the whole enterprise entirely.
Besides, she knew of another woman who’d stolen Angus’s heart long ago.
Elspeth shut her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “What, pray, have we to trade with Angus?”
“Our sheep’s milk for his oats.”
Her eyes flew open. “Raw oats? However will we mill them?”
“They’re to feed the sheep.”
She bit her lips to halt the first words that came to her tongue. She’d simply have to talk to Angus herself. Perhaps arrange to trade for milled oats so they could fill their bellies instead of just the sheep’s. “Very well, Father.”
There was a knock at the door, and he bolted up, a wide grin on his face. “Talk of him, and he doth appear.”
Elspeth rolled her eyes. When would her father get it through his thick skull that she neither wanted Angus nor he her?
The farmer stood in the doorway and gave her father a stoic nod. He was so tall and so broad, he had to hunch to fit. “I put the oats by the barn.”
He shooed Angus in. “Come in, come in. Say hello to Elspeth.” He swept an arm in her direction. “Doesn’t she look lovely by the firelight?”
“Oh, Da,” she muttered under her breath. Little did he know that what men likely saw was a shy spinster, with plain features adorning a too-thin frame.
Spotting her, Angus slipped his bonnet from his head, crumpling it in his hands. “Good day, Miss Elspeth.”
She put her papers down and gave him a warm smile. She didn’t have feelings for the farmer—he’d been besotted with her best friend, after all. But that didn’t mean she didn’t think him a kind and dependable soul. “Good day, Angus.”