A Pirate's Wife for Me (11 page)

"Exactly!" Taran removed the book from her hands before she deciphered enough to declare herself skilled. "So I will be the one going to Cenorina to read the documents. You, however, are not a good candidate to find them. You're a gently bred young lady, not a picklock."

"All the more reason I should be sent. I am not a suspicious character." Cate smiled, a lopsided, provocative smile. "Mr. Throckmorton examined my picklock credentials thoroughly."

"Perhaps you could demonstrate for us." Sibeol pointed to the door. "Could you open that?"

Without even glancing at the lock, Cate said, "Yes."

Taran wanted her to fail. "Open it in less than a minute."

She reached into the black velvet reticule that hung around her waist, and pulled out a battered brown leather workman's kit tied in a ribbon. She placed it on the table and opened it to reveal narrow, sharp and shiny implements.

He wanted her to fail very badly. "Let's say that your tools are out of reach, and you have to work without them." He pulled out his pocket watch and glanced at the face. "Starting now."

Cate's air of assurance didn't dim. Her gaze swept the room. "Very well." Leaning across the desk, she took his perfectly sharpened pen and, from the nightstand, his best scissors, the ones he used to trim his beard.

He winced. That her machinations would ruin his pen was without question. That the edge on the scissors would be sacrificed, he didn't doubt. Cate would make him pay for his doubt, and she would enjoy every moment.

Sibeol took the large key off the corner of Taran's desk. "I'll turn the lock from the outside, and wait for you to open it." On the way out the door, Sibeol patted her on the arm. "I have every confidence in you, dear."

Taran shot his mother a glance of moody reproval.

With a smug smile, she sailed out the door.

"Thank you, ma'am." Cate waited with her implements while Sibeol left and the sound of the tumblers fell into place.

Cate pointed to the lock, and in an instructional tone, said, "From the shape of the key and sound of the lock, I can say this is a ward lock. The oldest ones were easy to pick, and you'd be surprised at the number of old ones still in use. The newer ones – this is one – have double tumblers. They're a little more difficult." She knelt before the lock.

Taran strolled over and knelt at her side. Her feminine scent rose in waves from her body. Orange soap and sandalwood perfume, and underlying them was the warm, spicy aroma of Cate. Those scents carried with them a memory that even now brought him to eager readiness. Cate's power over him had not diminished with the years. If anything, it had increased, and he … well, he was grateful his mother had removed herself from the room and was not here to examine the fit of his trousers.

Leaning close, he spoke so that his breath brushed Cate's ear. "Tell me, how did you learn such a skill?"

She shot him a scornful glance. She realized his ploy.

She would try to break the lock.

He would distract her.

She didn't waste time slapping him. She inserted first the pen, then the scissors, in the keyhole. In short bursts of speech, she said, "When I was eighteen, I caught a fellow burglarizing our house in Edinburgh."

Taran touched the short wisps of hair that had fallen from her chignon with the palm of his hand. Then he fingered the silky locks. He'd forgotten how very much he loved to play with her hair, to see the contrast between each strand — some almost blonde, some vibrant red, some richly auburn. Together they made up the glorious color of autumn leaves, and when he closed his eyes, he could still see the waist-length strands spread across a white pillowcase.

But what had happened to make her cut it? "This burglar awakened your curiosity, but nevertheless you turned this thief over to the authorities." He tugged at her hair until she had to turn her head and look at him. "Tell me that is what you did."

Those green eyes weighed and dismissed him. "Over to the authorities? Not at all. I made a pact with him."

She chilled Taran's blood. "You haven't changed. You're still the same daredevil Cate."

She turned back to her work, but her tones were crisp and forthright. "It was stupid. I admit it."

She admitted it, did she? "Thieves have no honor."

Even more crisply, she said, "As much honor as some pirates I can mention."

He wouldn't win that argument. "Was he old?"

"Who? Billy?" With a reminiscent smile, she glanced at Taran, all the while fiddling with the internal lock mechanism. "Only five years older. Charming. Handsome. He'd been caught before, but by ladies, and always he'd talked his way out."

This woman tripped along the high wire as if her future wasn't ticking off in seconds on his watch. "A seducer?"

"Billy?" She laughed, wealth of affection in her tone. "No, not my Billy."

Taran didn't believe her.

"But I demanded he teach me his skills, or he would be in such a deep prison he'd never dig his way out." Her cool tone told Taran how ruthless she had been.

"Did Kiernan know about this?"

"I did not wish to worry my brother any further. He was the laird. He had duties, and the fulfillment of those duties kept him working more nights than I care to recall."

"Did you ever tell him?" Taran heard a clinking in the lock.

"Later." She sounded grim.

Taran hoped that meant Kiernan had taught her a lesson she wouldn't soon forget. "This picklock taught you his vile skills while in your home."

"Not at all." She twisted her instruments. "I went with him on his jobs. I picked locks on some of the best homes in Edinburgh. The secrets I could tell! Did you know the mayor spends all his money on show, and none on his family's comforts. It's shoddy upstairs, and cold. He skimps on the fires."

"I don't care about the bloody damned mayor!" In his imagination, Taran could see her as she had been then. Twenty years old, bold as bedamned, going to hell in her own way with no one to stop her. She made him break out into a sweat. "You're lucky you weren't killed."

She gave an elegant shrug. "I was shot at a few times."

He wanted to shake her. And hug her. And lay her naked on a bed and affirm life with her in the most primitive method possible. All that stopped him was the memory of the wild lass she had been – and the pain from the gunshot wound she'd inflicted the night before. "What were you thinking?"

She spoke rapidly. "I was thinking my life wasn't worth living because my lover had taken my virtue and my love and left me with nothing but a scarred reputation and a broken heart. My friends dropped me for fear they'd be tainted with my character. I was not invited to parties or for visits. I was lonely. And I was furious." She handed him his pen with its nib destroyed and his scissors with the point bent.

"But to try and get yourself killed –"

"I wasn't trying to get myself killed. I was proving to the world I was as bad as they supposed." Her nostrils widened as if she smelled something nasty. "It took one close call before I realized that, as long as I'm busy, I could live very happily as a spinster; indeed, much more happily than most of my married friends. As I'm sure you realize, that's one of the reasons why I've come here to work." She looked him over as if
he
were the source of the rot. "It's only bad luck that I have to work with
you."

He fingered the instruments. "Are you giving up?" He glanced at his forgotten watch. A minute and five seconds. "No matter. Time's up."

Agreeably, she reached up and turned the handle.

Sibeol walked in. "The door is unlocked."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For a brief, a very brief, moment,
Cate relished Taran's astonishment.

Then she stood and shook out her skirts. She gathered her lockpick kit and placed it in her reticule. She curtsied to Sibeol, nodded to Taran, and started out the door.

"Wait a minute, Miss MacLean!" He caught her arm, and his tone raised goosebumps. "What do you mean, one extremely close call?"

Cate bit her lip. As soon as she had said that, she knew she should have kept her mouth shut. Impetuosity had brought her years of loneliness and heartache; now she tried always to guard her tongue. But sometimes, she spoke without thought, especially when she was angry — and she was always angry around Taran. "I should go."

"You should tell me what you meant by
one extremely close call."

She would tell him nothing more. Folding her hands at her waist, she said, "By word and deed, I have proved myself capable, and I will no longer answer your questions."

He dared to point his finger at her. "You will do as I tell you, and I say —"

"Taran!" Sibeol interrupted. "Stop badgering Cate. She can do the job." Going to her rocking chair, she picked up her knitting, seated herself, and set to work.

He straightened. He paced away again, then back to Cate, and he loomed once more. "How many other missions have you worked?"

"How many?" She almost told him the truth, if only for the fun of goading Taran into another frenzy of anxiety. But she wouldn't be left behind in this pub while Taran went off to do her job, so she looked him in the eyes and lied. "This is my third mission."

Swinging toward Sibeol, he offered his hands outspread. "Mother!"

"It's too bad she's so inexperienced," Sibeol said. "But she's still the only picklock we have."

"I can solve that." He fixed Cate with a stern gaze. "I want you to teach me how to pick a lock."

In her slowest, most sarcastic drawl, she said, "Yes, and I want to learn to be a pirate captain. Can you teach me everything I need to know before I leave for Cenorina?"

"If I knew how to open locks, you wouldn't have to go to Cenorina."

"If I knew how to be a pirate captain, England wouldn't need
you."

He towered over her again, doing his hawk imitation, and glared down his beak of a nose.

Unfortunately for him, she had no fear of hunting birds; she'd trained her own. "I would expect a more reasoned response from a man who carries the responsibilities you do, even if those responsibilities are outside the bounds of morality." She caught herself before she went too far, said too much. "After all, if picking locks were that easy, anyone could do it, and then what good would a lock be?"

"You
learned."

God's teeth, he was insulting. "So it must be simple?"

"I did not say that. I merely meant that, as you've pointed out, I am a pirate and a thief." He smiled, all self-deprecation and charisma. "I can surely acquire the knowledge of picking a lock."

It was almost a decade too late for him to charm her. "Learning took me two years. I have a touch for it." Again, she rubbed her fingers together. "And an ear, Billy said, that listens to what the lock tells me."

"Dear, she's right." Sibeol knitted and rocked, the squeaking of the floorboards an accompaniment to their conversation. "You know she is. We'll have to think of a way to keep her extra safe."

Stubbornly, Taran said, "I still want to try."

"All right." Cate dragged the words out. "I'll show you, if you'll show me more ways to defend myself."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Do you feel the need to defend yourself?"
"I'm a woman going into a dangerous situation. I can depend on the element of surprise only once. After that, I have to somehow win my way free – and last night you proved to me I don't know enough."

He nodded slowly, and the way he watched her made her want to squirm. "Yes, I'll teach you."

Cate hoped she hadn't made a mistake. She'd lost the fight last night for more reasons that simple ineptitude. When he'd put his arms around her and he wrapped her in his dark spell, she had lost her formidable good sense and became, again, that girl who lived and breathed for the touch of one Taran Tamson. She shouldn't test her will power again, but what was her choice?

Sibeol came to her rescue. "Better yet, Taran, have Blowfish teach her. He's small, he's fast, and he's tricky — and you are busy with the plans for Cenorina."

"Hm." Taran stroked his beard, then strolled back behind his desk. "A good thought. Yes, Blowfish it shall be."

Cate kept her backbone straight. It wouldn't do to show her relief. "I'll go then." She stepped toward the door.

He stopped her. "Before you leave, Cate, I would very much like to impress on you the peril we'll face on this mission." When she would have spoken, he held up his hand. "Please. Let me finish. We have lived in the same household. Together we have a history that includes your whole family, and we have a history between the two of us."

She hated the blush that lit her cheeks. The prudent responses she had so painfully taught herself disappeared when he spoke, for she lived in fear he would reveal all of the truths between them. And one of those truths loomed like a monolith, always there, always waiting to fall, to crush her.

Of all the men in the world, why did this man have to be directing her first mission? Was it fate mocking her, or God reminding her of her duties and her sins?