“You dare come back here,” he said slowly. “This is your fault. If you’d been here, I’d have been here. But instead I had to search all over Aberdeen for your fool hide. If we’d been here, the farm would’ve been fine.”

“I … I was at Dunnottar.”

“Don’t lie to me,” he spat. “You were with him. And now we’ve nothing left because of it.”

She glanced behind her to the cottage, fueled by desperation. “We can rebuild—”

“Can’t build nothing from nothing.” He shook his head, disgust curling his lip. “He sullied you, didn’t he?”

“That’s none of your business,” she snapped, grateful to feel ire replacing her despair.

He looked incredulous. “Don’t you get it, girl? It is my business. You’d best hope Fraser will still take you, because if he don’t marry you, both of us is off to the poorhouse.”

The thought of marrying Fraser was a worse nightmare even than the sight of their smoldering farm. Her father had the right to force her into wedlock, but she was a pirate wench now and she would dig in her heels. “I can’t marry him,” she cried. “I will not.”

“Ye can and will.” He stalked toward her, for a moment looking like a younger man again, and it sent a shiver of foreboding up her spine.

She took a step back. “I won’t. I’m to marry Aidan. He’s strong and able. He’ll help us rebuild.”

“Can Aidan repay our debts?”

“Your debts,” she snapped. “Your choices, your vices. These are your debts I’m paying for.”

“Don’t be a fool. They’re yours too. That money filled your belly too. Put a roof over your head. If you’d been a lad, you could’ve helped more—”

“How could I have helped more?” Sadness swamped her, a dull ache in her chest. Her father was eager to throw her to the wolves in order to save his own hide, sacrificing her for financial gain.

“I’m telling you how you can help,” he said, his chin trembling with temper kept barely in check. “You marry that man Fraser, or our debts will see us both sent to the poorhouse.”

The horrific truth was dawning. Her father was in debt and they hadn’t the money to pay. But he’d been wrong on one count: they’d be lucky if they were only sent to the poorhouse. Idle, able-bodied poor were as likely to be shipped off to the Indies or America.

She had no choice. They were destitute. It was marriage for her, or some worse fate for the two of them.

She became frantic. Her world was spinning out of control, and she was powerless to stop it. “Please, Da,” she pleaded. “Don’t you see? It’s Fraser who’s behind this. He’s the one who destroyed the farm.”

“Well, then he did a tidy job of it, because now you have no choice. You just pray he’ll still take you. God willing, he’ll still keep you even though you’re no maiden. Now stop that caterwauling. It’s no’ like you, and I don’t like it.” He grabbed her arm and began to drag her up the hill.

“Stop!” She jerked her arm away. “What of the farm? What are you doing?”

“Daft girl, what do you think I’m doing? I’m taking you to him.”

It was all happening too fast. Fraser had held the last card, and he’d played it perfectly. She and her father had bills to pay, and no means to pay them. Aidan had no money either, and if he saddled himself with her, he’d be in line for the workhouse, too. She couldn’t bear the thought of him being held captive again.

She had no choice but to marry Fraser. Life as she knew it was ending.

She planted her feet, making her father stumble. “Can I at least say good-bye?”

“To that devil MacAlpin? And let the blackguard steal you away? I think not, girl.” He tugged her onward. “You’re lucky I don’t let Fraser’s men deal with him.”

Another fact dawned, and the shock of it impaled her. If Fraser had done all this simply to have her as a bride, what would he do to Aidan if he were to discover him?

Her heart choked her throat until it was difficult to breathe, impossible to swallow.

Aidan sought the man with the black pearl, a man connected to Fraser, and it was only a matter of time before he found both men. If Fraser realized she loved Aidan, he’d surely kill him. And with a fleet of dockside thugs on his payroll, she didn’t doubt his ability.

She thought of those butchered sheep. What tortures might Fraser devise if he discovered Aidan had been the one to deny him the pleasure of her maidenhead? Aidan, who’d already suffered torments enough for one lifetime.

She had to keep him safe. And the only way to do that was to go to Fraser. To marry him.

By sacrificing herself, her very life, she’d keep Aidan free. The image of his scarred wrists and back was seared into her memory—she’d never want to inflict such pain on him again.

Fraser heard voices at the door and felt his mouth curl into a smile. Albert and Elspeth Farquharson, he’d wager, and right on time.

The whole fire episode had been so unlike him—it’d taken him a full hour to wash the stink of smoke from his body—but he wasn’t one to suffer a plan going awry. He’d gotten it into his head that a bit of sheep pasturage in the guise of a wool farm would be just the thing to explain away his not entirely legal profits in the slave trade.

Besides, he hadn’t been about to sit idly by as the girl took it in her head to spurn him. Even less would he endure being jilted for some other fool—likely some sodding farmer, or whatever sort of man it was who struck the fancies of young girls.

Though using alcohol as an incendiary had been inspired, torching their farm to the ground had been an ordeal. Yet the moment Elspeth and her father entered his office, he knew at once it’d been worth it.

She was lovely, pale and fragile, with the bloom of exertion on her cheeks. Or perhaps it was anger he saw in her blush, and he thought he might just prefer that even more. He’d want this girl beneath him even if she hadn’t come with a strip of land he could claim for profit.

“Well, good day to the both of you.” He stood and gestured for them to take a seat. “Please join me.”

“Expecting us, were you?” She looked at him with a spark in her eyes. There was anger in her gaze, but something else too. Fear.

It sent a bolt of heat to his loins.

He knew the sheep had put the fear there—or rather, what he’d done to them. He could see the horror of his butchery in her eyes. The cursed beasts had as much wool between their ears as they had on their backs, and slaughtering the lot of them had been more chore than challenge. But it’d been the crowning touch, and just the thing to show Elspeth what came to pass when people crossed him.

“On the contrary. After our last conversation, I understood we were to break our engagement.” He adjusted the chair as she sat, thinking there was but one thing to be broken, and it was she. He’d break her like a horse, and what a pleasure it would be. “But I see a new light dancing in your eyes. Have I reason to hope?”

She scowled at him, and it took all his control not to smirk. Underneath the shy exterior, this one was a firebrand.

A thousand times smarter than her dimwit father, and a pleasure to spar with. Her pretty lips thinned. “Hope? You’d better hope—”

“That is,” her father said, quickly cutting her off, “we’re of the hope that you took your last interview with Elspeth to be no more than it was: the silly games of a maiden.”

Fraser smirked. Maiden indeed.

“I enjoy games.” He pinned Elspeth with a look. She squirmed, and he relished the power he had over her. Smart and willful maybe, and not as timid as he’d first thought, but she’d acquiesce to his whims within the year. He’d relish making her yield to him. It was invigorating, like what he imagined a man felt when breaking a wild animal—bringing that spirit to heel, proving that you were its master.

It was exhilarating, better than any hunt. He’d forgotten what it was to feel young, yet here he was, feeling a man of twenty again. Was that how marriage would be? He found himself looking forward to it.

She had a keen mind and sharp, all-seeing eyes, unlike all the other simpering misses he’d ever met. She’d eventually realize he and she were mental matches. She’d grow to appreciate his wisdom.

“I hadn’t realized just how staid my life had become,” he told her, finding himself gratifyingly moved by his own honesty. He puffed up, believing himself a very great good man. It was indeed time to take a wife—all the brilliant men in powerful circles had them. “Until I met you, my dear. You’ve added a bit of sauce to the stock.”

“Them’s welcome words,” her father said. “Because we’re of a mind to step up the wedding a bit.”

“To hasten our nuptials?” He shot her a pointed look— he wanted to hear her say the words. Wanted to hear her beg him. “Could that be true, Elspeth? Do you wish to marry me so very badly?”

It gave him great satisfaction to watch the fire kindle in those pale blue-and-yellow eyes.

She gave him a tight nod, and it was all he could do not to laugh outright.

He was a veritable god of planning, he thought, concealing his surge of triumph. First, there’d been his scheme to trade workers for cotton, avoiding the Crown and her taxes. Then came his masterful handling of the Farquharsons. And now he’d be the savior who’d come in and rebuild her idiot father’s farm, setting in place a sham enterprise with which to explain away his profits.

And he’d win himself a young wife in the bargain.

What a welcome diversion this was proving. He decided to prolong it a bit more. “What, pray, has brought about such a welcome change of heart?”

Though he’d posed the question to Elspeth, it was her father who answered. “There’s been an accident, see. And … we were hoping …”