“Of course,” he said gruffly.
Brushing sawdust from his plaid, he took her arm and escorted her outside, away from the prying eyes of Sean and his workers. After the relative gloom of the shed, the light outside was bright enough to make him squint even though clouds covered most of the sky.
“What is it, lass?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. It’s just that…look, can we go somewhere a little more private?”
Jamie looked around. Nobody was even pretending to do any work, and everyone was staring in their direction. Perhaps the folks up at the castle had gotten used to Elise but it seemed the rest of Islay was still in awe at the presence of a MacFinnan spellweaver.
“Aye. This way.”
He led her along the beach, away from the piles of timber, toolsheds, and remnants of old boats, until all the trappings of a shipyard were left behind and they found themselves alone with the crashing waves and the whisper of the wind.
She’d pinned her dark hair back into a plait that fell down her back, but the wind had pried strands loose and they hung around her face in wild, pink-tipped tangles. His fingers itched to reach out and brush them aside, to feel the soft silkiness of them against his skin. But he did not. Something was bothering his MacFinnan spellweaver, and he needed to know what it was.
She held up the document. “I need to show you something.”
She folded onto the damp sand and unrolled the document, pinning it down with pebbles. A little perplexed, Jamie lowered himself onto the sand by her side and leaned forward. The document was a map. A nautical map to be precise, which showed the whole of the Kingdom of the Isles. Little crosses had been drawn in a circle around Islay.
Elise waited expectantly but Jamie only frowned, not sure what he was supposed to be looking at.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well what? It’s a map of the Isles.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know that! Look more closely—don’t those marks mean anything to you?”
Jamie studied the crosses. They were marked in various places, forming a loose circle close to Islay’s coastline. “Thoseare attack sites,” he said. “Ye’ve plotted all the places where the pirates have hit us.”
“Well, technically Andrea plotted them,” she replied. “You really are wasting her talent, did you know that? She’s amazing with numbers. You ought to make her your treasurer or something. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to do any of this without her.”
Jamie studied Elise’s face. She seemed a little out of sorts, as though something had put her on edge. He reached out and placed a hand over hers. “Lass, as much as I appreciate yer insights, I dinna think ye came out here to discuss the talents of my housekeeper. Why dinna ye tell me what’s on yer mind?”
Elise met his gaze and swallowed thickly. She gestured at the map. “Isn’t it obvious?”
He glanced at the document again. While it was helpful to have a visual representation of where the attacks had happened, it didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. He knew where each and every one of the attacks had taken place, each one carved with a bloody knife into his soul. He shook his head, “I dinna understand—”
“Look at the pattern! See how close they are to the coast? These are lightning raids, hitting your ships hard and fast and then disappearing as fast as they’ve come, right? But how can they do that? How can they disappear into the wide-open ocean so quickly? Because that’s not what they’re doing! They’re returning to their base as soon as they’ve hit your ships. And because those attacks are so close to the coast, then their basemustbe somewhere on this island!”
Jamie sighed. “That’s what I thought too. I reached the same conclusion as ye did, lass. But it isnae the case. I have scoured every inch of this island. Every cove, every islet, every estuary or secluded beach has been examined again and again. We found nothing. The pirates aren’t here. Trust me, I’ve looked.”
Elise opened her mouth and closed it again. “But…but that makes no sense!”
Jamie threw up his hands. “Now ye can see why this whole business is so irksome.Noneof it makes sense. We dinna know what these pirates want or why they suddenly began their attacks on us. We dinna know where they’re based or how they manage to evade all pursuit. We dinna know how they always seem to know the cargo routes no matter how much I change them.” Frustration and anger leaked into his voice, despite his best efforts to remain calm. Every time he thought about it, that horrible feeling of helplessness sprang up inside him. And more than anything, Jamie hated feeling helpless.
“No,” Elise said, shaking her head. “I don’t buy it. Theyhaveto be here. They have to be. I would like to go and look.”
“No,” Jamie responded immediately. “Not a chance.”
She bristled at that and he realized he’d said the wrong thing. If he’d learned anything about Elise MacFinnan, it was that she didnotlike being told what to do. He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “What I mean is, there would be no point. Ye’d be wasting yer time. And besides, I canna spare the men to escort ye.”
“Then I’ll go by myself.”
“Ye most certainly will not!” he snapped. “I willnae allow ye to put yerself at risk.”
“What risk?” she retorted, crossing her arms and glaring at him. “You just said the pirates aren’t here! So what exactly would I be at risk from?”
Jamie ground his teeth. “It doesnae matter. It’s my duty to protect ye.”
