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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.
