Claimed by a Scottish Lord (18 page)

―Reckon his lordship knows him best.‖ McBain‘s implacable tone was unmistakable.

―They were business rivals, so to speak.‖

―Lord Roxburghe personally knows my father?‖ She had not meant her voice to come out so sharp, but the fact that Ruark and her father were
personally
acquainted had somehow escaped her. She didn‘t know why it should have seemed important, except that it felt relevant to her current situation. ―Just what manner of commerce did my father and your laird share?‖

McBain ran a finger beneath his stock while he cleared his throat. ―Reckon ye best be takin‘ up that topic with his lordship when he awakens, lass.‖

R
uark heard the swishing of a petticoat first, before he became aware that the soft tread of slippers on carpet was not Mary Duff pacing a rut into the fine weave. Pushing up on his elbows, he gave his trespasser‘s back a frown even as he admired her lines and the way her skirts flared from her hips. With his hair falling over his forehead, Ruark could barely see more than shadows and shapes in the darkness, but he would know that enticing silhouette anywhere.

His first inclination was to check his weapons. His second was less refined. Just then, she lifted her head and saw that he was awake. ―What the hell hour is it?‖ he grumbled.

―Late. ‘Tis at least seven o‘clock.‖

Turning her back to him, she stretched out her arms like Moses confronting the Red Sea and threw open the heavy velvet curtains that usually blocked out the light of the day.

Sunlight glared through the lead glass and he winced against the brightness. The master‘s chamber, though unmistakably masculine—dark furniture carved from solid oak, jade damask wallpaper, and plum brocade chairs—looked severe in contrast to Rose‘s soft, refined presence.

She placed her hands on her hips, giving him her full measure. ―I have just come from a visit with McBain.‖

Ruark slept naked. The sheet covered the lower half of his body, but that was all the modesty it afforded him. Her presence in his room had a predictable effect on him. Clearing his throat and turning on his side, he rested his head on his hand and his elbow on his hip, letting his arm hide the obvious. He admired the fit of her bodice. With her hair braided in a thick coronet around her head, she reminded him of a female Thor or the goddess Diana. Leaning slightly to peer over the edge of the bed, he saw that the hem of her skirt only reached her calves, exposing a well-turned ankle. She wore shoes the color of soft butter.

―Did you hear me?‖

The glaring heat from those green eyes was enough to hold his attention. That and the hint of a blush staining her cheeks. ―And that warrants a visit to my chambers. Why?‖

―You
know
my father.‖

Ruark pushed himself into a sitting position against the carved oak backboard, dragging the sheet up with him. He pulled one knee to his chest beneath the sheet. It occurred to him that Mary or Jason would never have allowed her in these chambers. ―How did you find my rooms?

Have you done away with my staff while I slept?‖

―And if I had, would I have spared you?‖ She raised her chin. ―I think not.‖

Peering more closely at her attire, he wondered where the hell Mary had procured those garments. They did not belong to his mother. And he was damn sure they did not come from a modiste. ―You look like something out of a children‘s ditty about lost sheep.‖ But rather than a shepherd‘s staff gripped in her hand, he pictured a bolt of lightning. He almost laughed at the image until the look from her narrowed eyes stopped him.

―Mrs. Duff is in the kitchen,‖ she said and continued her limping pace back and forth in front of the window. ―Jason is sitting outside my door and probably does not even know I have left the room. As for how I found you, ‘twas simple. Mr. McBain said you were asleep, so once outside, I looked for the room with curtains shuttered against the light, and thus through a matter of deductive reasoning and pure luck, I ended here. Your
boundaries
be damned.‖

He allowed himself a small smile. It didn‘t surprise him that she had found another way out of her room. ―And yet I doubt you are here to serve me breakfast.‖

She stopped in front of the plum tufted chair beside the bed. ―Everyone knows my father served the admiralty before he retired to live at Kirkland Park. You were a privateer for the king. I want to know how you know each other.‖

Ruark should not have been surprised that she would have eventually confronted him over the subject. Then suddenly it didn‘t matter if she knew.

Scraping his palm over his bristled jaw, he gave her a direct look. ―Almost two years ago outside Rotterdam, I came across a ship carrying contraband that Hereford removed off an East Indiaman. I impounded it.‖

―You mean you stole it.‖

―The wares were already stolen. I merely put it to better use.‖

She visibly swallowed. ―Why did he never report the theft?‖

―What is to report? That I took cargo Hereford had pirated a month earlier from an East Indiamen off the Azores? Cargo he was trying to sell in France, consisting of tea, China silk, and gunpowder. Also a hundred tons of opium, all owned by the venerable John Company. Aye, we know each other personally.‖ As he began to feel the faint stirrings of a deep-rooted hatred, Ruark clenched his jaw. ―We were well acquainted before he returned to England and accepted an appointment as the English warden.‖

Rose sank into the chair. The window framed her like a Holbein portrait. ―Why France?‖

Her quiet tone pulled at him and he looked at her to find her eyes on his face, searching.

―The French are always fighting with the British. They need gunpowder. As for the other wares, Parisians pay a premium to support their vices.‖

―What did you do with the goods?‖

―I kept the gunpowder. One never knows when it will come in handy. The opium went overboard, into the sea. As for the rest, you would have to ask Tucker. He used it to keep much of the good folk around Castleton and Carlisle from starving last winter.‖

Almost self-consciously, she looked at her hands clenched in her lap. ―You
are
good friends with Friar Tucker.‖

―We were. Until you.‖

She smoothed her skirts, an action he noted she did often when uncertain. ―My father was bound to have found me eventually,‖ she said. ―There is no sense in holding a grudge with one another . because of me.‖

―I think I can manage the friar.‖

It was his increasing feelings for Rose with which he found difficulty reconciling himself. He had returned late last night exhausted only to pass her room on the way to his and stop. She and Mary were inside and Ruark had stood outside listening as Rose laughed at something his housekeeper had said. Jason told him that Lady Roselyn had behaved ever the gracious lady while recovering from her serious injury, sharing tea and sewing with his staff. Today he had planned to conduct a search of her quarters because he did not trust her complicity—no doubt she had knives, forks, and scissors stashed in every corner of her chambers—but last night it had taken all of his control not to open the door and go inside because, Lord . he wanted to look at her. Now he wanted only not to hurt her.

She said nothing for a moment but the whitening of her knuckles revealed her tension.

―Did people die? On that East Indiaman, I mean.‖

He could lie, but decided she‘d been lied to enough in her life. ―The ship was destroyed somewhere off the coast of the Azores. Rumor was it vanished during a blow. A storm. No one would have doubted the story had some of the East Indiaman‘s cargo not begun showing up two weeks later in various ports in Tripoli and Antwerp. And finally Rotterdam.‖

Her eyes were wide, refusing to believe the horror of the worst. ―But is it not possible the ship did go down in a storm?‖

Pulled by the braided piece of silver warming his finger, Ruark leaned his head against the backboard and studied the ring. It seemed to absorb not only the sunlight but also the darkest edges of his thoughts, as if to bring them into the light and into his focus. And for a brief moment, he felt exposed and vulnerable to his sins.

―You can believe what you wish, Rose.‖ He curled his fingers into his palm as if that would make him less culpable for his own choices in life. ―But that cargo was taken off that Indiaman before the storm.‖

―You are so sure . because you were there?‖ She looked at him closely. ―You
were
there,‖ she whispered, ―Why? Because you were following my father or the East Indiaman?‖

―We had been shadowing the East Indiaman for days. The letters of marque I carry gives me authority to aide and protect British economic interests. Before the ship passed the Cape, everyone within a thousand miles knew the real value of that Indiaman‘s cargo. There had been other attacks on our vessels so we followed. Then a squall caught us while we were under full press of canvas and snapped our mainmast.

―When we finally caught up to the Indiaman two days later, there was nothing left of the ship but the burned-out debris to tell the tale. After plucking four survivors from shark-infested waters, we learned that a British naval vessel had been responsible for destroying the Indiaman, which carried a crew upward of two hundred souls. We learned that a large amount of cargo had been transferred from the British naval vessel to another ship. I followed it to the Dutch port of Rotterdam, where we both put in for refitting. Later, I impounded the cargo in the open sea.‖ He looked down at his hands. ―The captain knew who I was when I boarded. He told us where the cargo had come from, then he hanged himself. Out of fear of retribution from me or Hereford, I will never know.‖

―Surely you could have told the admiralty.‖

―On that dead captain‘s word?‖

What Ruark did not tell her, what he could not tell her was that the ship he had boarded, the ship that had accepted the stolen cargo, belonged to Roxburghe Shipping. His own family‘s fleet of trading vessels. He could not accuse Hereford without implicating his own family and casting the name of traitor to the Kerr name. He might despise his father, but he would not destroy Jamie or Julia. He did not know if his father was involved. He could find no proof.

―Without evidence, I had nothing. But I could bloody make Hereford‘s life hell on the sea. He never got hold of another ship after that.‖

Now his father was dead and Jamie gone.

Her eyes swept to and fro from the floor to the wall. ―And now in the past year my father retired from the admiralty to take his place as the English warden, your father is dead and your brother is a hostage.‖ She shook her head as if mulling over these same observations and then coming to the correct conclusions. ―What was the value of that cargo?‖

A fortune by even royal standards. Yet, he was compelled to tell her the truth. Why not?

He had spared no detail yet. ―Ninety thousand pounds.‖

Rose‘s disbelief came at him. ―That is what my father wants from you in exchange for your brother. Payment for what you took from him.‖ She came abruptly to her feet, tension in every line of her body. ―This has been your fight from the start? It is you personally he wants to destroy. Check and checkmate.‖

She spun away, folding her arms across her chest. ―Have your actions been any different from my father‘s?‖ she cried, her voice distressed by emotion. ―Are you not alike?‖

He dragged the sheet off the bed as he stood and walked over to her. His mouth tight.

Ruark had told himself a thousand times he was not to blame for Hereford‘s actions. That he was nothing like Hereford.

But his own silence condemned him.

He had brought this upon himself. He could not pretend to shortsightedness, because in the back of his mind he had been perfectly aware of the consequences of his actions and had not cared—until his father died and Duncan played right into Hereford‘s hands and took good Kerr men across the border, maybe to die as well. Now suddenly Jamie‘s life was at stake.

And Rose had become the anchor around his neck threatening to drag him deeper into murky depths. Yet, it was not her worth in gold that caused him to inspect more closely his feelings, and why her presence in his life was bloody fooking with his internal moral compass.

He leaned his hand against the glass, so close to her he could smell the sunlight on her hair. ―You tell me, Rose.‖ Ruark spoke softly but his words cut deep. ―Am I like your father?

Are we the same?‖

―I think . ‖ She furiously scrubbed the heel of her hand across each cheek and turned bright eyes on him. She touched his face. ―I think a man who can help Castleton and others survive a winter with smuggled goods at great peril to his own life, and someone whom Friar Tucker has clearly respected, cannot be malevolent,‖ she said, with such conviction it stopped his heart. ―Now I understand. Without me, you do not have enough with which to bargain for your brother‘s life.‖

She blinked back tears, but it was not hate he saw in her eyes, and he was shocked that one look could undo him so completely. Then she said something else he did not expect. ―Thank you for being honest with me.‖

She turned and walked out of the room, leaving him with his palm pressed against the warm glass of the window, looking outside upon a rare sunny day and suddenly feeling much older than his thirty years.

Chapter 10

“Y
our solicitor arrived last night from Hawick,‖ Mary said from the doorway of Ruark‘s bathing chamber.

He stood at the water basin, swishing soap from a razor as he raised his gaze and locked with Mary‘s in the glass. She stood behind him, her hands on her ample hips, her lips pursed in a straight line. Water dripped from his wet hair onto his bare shoulders. He wore a clean pair of leather breeches but little else and those he had dragged on after Rose left his chambers.

Ruark had gone to Hawick last week for many reasons, one being to assess Stonehaven‘s accounting books. Ruark needed to know his father‘s business transactions these past years. If there
was
a connection between his father‘s death and Hereford, it would be found in the accounting books, many of which were missing from Stonehaven, but which he had hoped his father‘s solicitor had copies. Most importantly, banking transactions were always duplicated. If he could find proof, anything to connect Hereford to his father‘s death, there may be another way to end this standoff with Hereford.