“So he drinks our milk now?” her father asked. “All you do is harp about money, money, money, and you’re giving him the milk for free?” He glared at Aidan. “That best be the only thing she’s giving away.”
“Da!” Elspeth was mortified. She knew her father was overprotective, and that he clung to set ideas and old ways, but this was too much. “It’s time for our lesson. Now, if you’ll please leave us.”
“I’ll be doing no such thing.” He kicked a bench against the back wall and sat down defiantly.
She sighed. “You may stay, Da, but please be polite.”
He only glared in reply, sucking thoughtfully at his pipe. The smoke drifted lazily out the open window.
She went to retrieve her small worktable from the corner, her face burning. Her father had the habit of putting the lion’s share of responsibility on her shoulders, until it didn’t please him, and then he’d treat her like a girl who didn’t know better.
Why did he insist on watching them? He was acting as though Aidan might steal something. And what had they to steal anyway? A cup of milk? Some oats?
Her virtue?
She shivered. As if his paternal presence could curb her improper thoughts. Sinful thoughts of Aidan danced in her head every day, throughout the day, no matter the place, no matter the company.
Discomfited, she tossed out the first rational words that popped into her head. “You’ll recall, Da, it was you who taught me the importance of being a gracious host.”
Her father only grunted, but Aidan was at her back in an instant. He brushed a surreptitious hand at her elbow, telling her quietly, “Don’t worry yourself on my account. Your father is welcome to stay. It’s his home after all.” Though he gave her one of his jaunty smiles, it wasn’t in his eyes. Reaching from behind her, he snatched the table and stool from her hands. “I’ll just stoke the fire before we begin. I’ve noticed you see better by the firelight.”
The heat of him at her back made her skin pull taut. “I … yes … that’d be lovely, thank you.”
“Well, aren’t you two just a couple of maids in the henhouse?” Her father tapped his pipe against the windowsill, then began to refill it from a pouch in his sporran. “Is this a lesson or a tea party?”
“Da, I told you, you’re welcome to stay, but please hold your tongue.” She stole a glance at Aidan as he tended the fire. She longed to gauge his mood, but it was impossible to read him from just the set of that strong back.
Her father was being a horrible curmudgeon, and she was terrified he might frighten Aidan off. She didn’t have much in her life, and getting to spend time with her roguish hero was a precious gift—one that she knew wouldn’t last forever.
But then Aidan turned, and she read calm on those chiseled features. There was no cowing him, she realized. The man had faced God knew what in his life; a cold shoulder and some harsh words from a country farmer would roll off him like rain from wool.
Elspeth admired him. She knew the MacAlpins were frustrated by what they thought were his secretive ways, but she knew Aidan was simply his own man, who kept his own counsel.
He was persistent—learning to read was no easy trick for a man grown—and brave, too, for it was only a courageous man who admitted his weaknesses. In fact, it seemed he’d returned from his last trip to Aberdeen with his passion for learning redoubled. And though it baffled
her, she didn’t question it.
So long as he kept coming.
“Do your worst,” he said, dropping onto the stool next to hers.
His knee jostled hers as he sat, and she burned with awareness of his body, his proximity. She attempted a breezy smile, hoping to be as charmingly casual as he.
“What’s this? Miss Beth with a smile?” Aidan leaned aside to let the firelight hit her full on her face. “I fear I am to be the victim of your cruel intent.”
The flirtatious banter brought a flush to her cheeks. She worried she might begin at any moment to grin like a baboon with her pleasure, and her lips trembled with the effort to look dignified at all costs. “Not so dire as all that,” she said, pulling a prized manuscript from her lap.
“A fine thing.” Her father’s voice boomed from the corner, where he sat glowering at both of them. “Having the lass read at night. Don’t you know it hurts her eyes?”
“I’m fine,” she protested, not lifting her eyes from the page. Cutting off the comment she knew might be coming, she quickly added, “A translation of Homer’s Iliad. It’s a bit rough going, but I thought we could both have a try reading from it.”
“Ah,” he said, taking it from her hands. “This is the one you told me about?”
“Yes, with Achilles.”
“Mary, Mother of God, preserve me,” her father erupted. “You’re not with that heathen nonsense again, are ye?” He tapped his pipe hard on the windowsill and then glared regretfully at the empty bowl.
Elspeth bit back a smile, realizing what would liberate them from her father. “Angus keeps a pipe. I imagine he can refill you.”
Her father’s eyes flickered bright, but then worries of propriety drooped his shoulders. He looked for all the world like he wanted to flee, his tastes running more toward tales of Cromwell and songs made for singing in the fields.
“It’s truly fine for you to leave,” she pressed. “I’m alone with men all the time, with Angus and with other merchants too, sorting our accounts.”
He shot a measuring glare at Aidan.
“We’ve coin to spare this month.” She nodded toward the door. “Now go refill that wee pouch of yours.”
That decided it for him. With a brusque nod and dire admonitions for his daughter’s safety, Elspeth’s father left.
“I apologize for his rudeness,” she said quietly.
Aidan waved it off. “To the contrary. I’m glad to see he has a care with you. I’d wondered, you know.”
“You did?” she asked, brightening. She’d be sure to replay those words in her head later, mulling every possible implication.
Rather than answer, Aidan turned his attention to the book. Even though he’d grown gruff, he was leafing through the pages gingerly, and she appreciated his care. “Where do you keep this one? In the sugar?”
“Your brother Declan lent it to me.” When he looked up at her with raised brows, she nodded. “Dunnottar has a library, you know. Well, it’s mostly in ruins, but a tidy collection of classics seems to have survived the devastation.”
A peculiar look furrowed his brow. “You even talk like a book, you know it?”
Frowning, she looked down.
With a fingertip to her chin, he tilted her face back up. “It’s a good thing.”
“Well, what of you?” she asked defensively. “You speak very well yourself, despite the… for a …”
“For a man who’s spent much time in shackles?” He gave her a careless shrug, seeming to sense how she regretted her words. “Don’t worry, you can speak of it. It’s not as though it ever slips my mind.”
She tried to keep her face a blank, though she wanted to cringe. How would Aidan ever forget his past, how could he ever forget the outcast he’d become, when men like her father were quick with their suspicions to remind him?
“Yes,” she said. “You speak well, especially for one who’s led a life of such privation and cruelty.”
But even as she said it, she knew. She’d seen for herself just how smart Aidan was. Unlike most men, who postured arrogance and pretended to know it all, he was ever ready with another question on his tongue, as if he could make up for his lost years of refinement and education in their evening lessons alone.
“I’ll tell you where I got all my pretty turns of phrase, luvvie. Though you may not like to hear it. You see, early on, I learned the true currency of the Indies. Husbands are never about, and that leaves the wives, and they’ve a taste for parlor talk around rough-looking men with gently bred voices.” He sneered. “I spent my mornings chesthigh in the cane, and my evenings serving rumbullion and fruit to rooms full of rich plantation women, bored of the heat and their entitlement.”
Her mind spun with the hideous image. What else might bored plantation wives have wanted of their indentured servants? She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came to her.
Aidan’s laugh was self-deprecating. He shoved The Iliad back in her hands. “I’m certain Achilles makes a better story.”
He leaned forward, resting elbows on knees, watching her. He tried to look casual, but Elspeth saw his shoulders were flexed taut. “So you and Declan, is it?”
“Declan?” The odd question threw her, making her forget her earlier discomfort.
He nodded slowly. “Aye, Declan. Do you have a fancy for my brother or don’t you? He’d be able to talk bookish things with you.”
“Declan?” she repeated. Was she misunderstanding the implication? Aidan had sounded wary—was he just a little vulnerable too? “No, not Declan,” she said, more slowly this time, and smiled at the relief she thought she saw along his brow. “He’s merely the self-proclaimed guardian of your family library.”
He barked a quick laugh. “Self-proclaimed? Uncontested, more like. Can you truly imagine someone else caring two whits about a library? Bridget? Gregor, mayhap?”
She allowed herself a giggle. “No, I suppose not.”
He nodded to the book forgotten in her hands. “Well, shall we get on with Sir Achilles? You say he was a warrior.”
“Indeed.” She smiled, thinking the man next to her no less heroic than any of the Greek gods. “He was away for many years. So the story went, he could have either homecoming, or glory, but not both.”
Aidan curled his lip. “I feel a kinship already.”
She paused, realizing she needed to tread carefully. Her intent hadn’t been to draw any parallels between the real man and the literary one.
