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“Well, you nabbed the smuggler, but he weren’t the boss, see. There’s another, a fancy broker type. Him’s who ordered the slaves. And there’s another too—a freebooter like—and him’s your man doing the physical work. Sailing the ship, seeing the bodies to and fro. ”
The bodies. Aidan had been just such a body. A tenyear-old one.
He channeled his rage toward the hired man. “So there are two men outstanding. I don’t suppose it occurred to you to get their names? Or to come bearing any useful information beyond him’s this and him’s that?”
The man opened his mouth and snapped it shut again. He gave a tight shake to his head. “I tried, sir. ”
“I thought as much. ” Aidan dug in his sporran and tossed him a shilling. “A bob for now. A full crown if you
come back with names. ”
The hired man’s face twitched.
Aidan stepped closer to the man in a show of dominance. “If you’re disappointed with the pay, consider it motivation. To return with actual information. As it stands, this meeting was dangerously close to a waste of my time. ”
The man looked at his feet, dejected. “As you say. ”
“Then why do you still stand before me?”
With a nod, his hired man turned and jogged back the way they’d come.
If he wanted information, he’d just have to go back to Aberdeen himself to look for it. He suspected he held clues already, but damned if he was able to read well enough to find out. It was a complication he needed to remedy, and fast.
He couldn’t fail now. He’d been fine-tuning his plan for years: he’d act the part of a wealthy businessman starting his own slave trade and hope he presented competition enough to rouse the man with the pearl earring from whatever rock he hid beneath.
Him, a slaver. The thought was absurd. But lies spilled easily enough from his lips. He wondered grimly, who was Aidan really? His true identity had been stolen from him thirteen years past. If anything, Aidan was the thing that felt foreign. He’d spent his childhood simply called “boy,” and then, when his body far surpassed what one could reasonably consider a boy, that’d evolved into “Scot. ” He’d been pretending ever since, the past thirteen years naught but lies and half-truths.
The first of his many lies had been to his purported master. The man—Nash was his name—had been a simpleton. His was an old Barbadian family, what islanders referred to as “Bims. ” A few years older than Aidan, Nash had been born into a plantation fortune. “Sweet
money,” he’d call it, his “sweet sugar money. White gold. ”
Amassed from the labors of stolen souls.
Aidan sneered, remembering. It’d been simple enough, ingratiating himself with the man. Nash had been eager to speak of Mother Country, and Aidan had dredged as many of his father’s war stories from his memory as he could. His master had lapped up every word, like a starved and stupid pup.
And then he simply bided his time, slowly working out his plan, dreaming of escape. For years, he waited.
Until one day he realized how much his half-wit mas-ter had grown to trust him. When he learned Nash was planning a sail to Aberdeen, it didn’t take long to convince him that Aidan could be trusted as part of the crew.
A few favors, some thrown fists, and several promises later, Aidan found himself captaining a pretty sloop and her three crewmen out of Bajan Harbor, with the imbecile Nash left hog-tied at the dock. As the idyllic crescent of white sand faded into gray sea, the swell of freedom in his chest had been sweeter than any sugarcane.
And then came Aidan’s second lie, to his crew: that his sole purpose was to make his fortune in the slave trade.
He’d regretted the telling of it, but there was no other choice. He had one goal, and one goal only. Not friendship, nor camaraderie. It was to track, to find, and to kill the man who’d abducted him. To do so, he needed to infiltrate the smuggling network.
It would be an impossible task, tracking down the ghost who’d haunted him all these years. But revenge was all Aidan wanted, vengeance all he was.
He’d hide out in Dunnottar, using spies, coin, and his own wits and muscle to guide him. He had only two clues to his enemy’s identity. Knowing the man had been in Aberdeen, thirteen long years ago. And a single black pearl.
The hunt was on.
The hunt was off—if every soul in Aberdeenshire knew what he was about.
“I told you, told all of you, to keep my identity close. ” Aidan shifted his glare from Anya to Elspeth. He was seated at the great slab of wood that was the dining table, simmering with rage. “And now you go and bring this stranger into our home?”
“Elspeth is no stranger. ” Anya kept her chin held high. “I trust her more than I trust my own … my own …”
“Your own sister?” Aidan rolled his eyes, his temper abating. “That girl Bridget has trilled about my homecoming to whoever might chance to look her way. ”
