The ginger snorted. “It’s interesting to me that he’d likely pay me to tell him some big Scot’s looking for stories about him.”
“Aye. But then ye’d have to find him, talk to him, and get the blunt from him.”
“That’s the truth, Billy,” the ruddy man put in. “That fucking vulture would listen, smile, give you a shilling, then slit your throat the minute you turned your back.”
“I, on the other hand, dunnae slit throats,” Aden added, not at all surprised by the description.
“So you say. You look like you could beat a man to death with but one hand, though.”
“Dunnae cross me and dunnae lie to me, and ye’ll nae need to discover if that’s so. Are any of ye willing to tell me a true tale?”
Billy grimaced. “If it gets back to him that I talked, I’ll be on some scow drudging up mud to widen the Port Jackson harbor alongside the convicts.”
That would be Port Jackson in Australia. Was Vale that powerful, though, or did he simply give that impression? By rising to captain as quickly as he had, he’d at least proven that he had influence—but was it real, lasting influence, or the kind that had been bartered for with losses at the table and could be quickly disposed of?
“He’s retired from the navy and he’s in London chasing after a Society lass,” he said aloud. “Unless ye tell him yerself, he’ll nae ken a thing about this conversation.”
“A Society lady, eh?” Billy took a swig of Newborn’s potent cider. “Makes sense. He was always going on about grand mansions and dining with dukes. Every time we went ashore, he would head for officers’ clubs and win the shirt off some admiral’s upjumped son without a brain twixt his ears, and suddenly Vale had another promotion or another medal. And then he’d lecture those of us bunking in hammocks belowdecks about how we was animals bred to feed the wealthy and powerful, and how none of us had the spleen to turn predator ourselves.”
“And if ye so much as twitched or grumbled,” the ruddy-faced man added, “it was up into the rigging you went until he saw fit to allow you down again.”
“Danny Pierce was up there for near two days once,” Billy said, nodding. “Fell out of the rigging, finally, but got tangled up on the way down or he’d have opened his skull like a ripe melon on the deck. He was odd and scared of high places after that, and whenever the cap’n saw him on deck, up the bastard would make him go. Danny finally vanished one day. They said he’d gone ashore and fled his duties, but we weren’t anywhere near land the last I seen him.”
“Do ye reckon Vale killed him?” Aden asked, memorizing every name and anecdote for later use.
“Nah. I think poor Danny got tired of being scared and jumped overboard. There should’ve been an inquiry, but Vulture Vale knew who would bend over for him, and nothing ever came of it.”
The rest of the stories were equally disturbing, and all followed a similar pattern: Vale wanted something to happen, and he either went out and arranged for someone to owe him a favor, or he called in one of the favors he’d already secured. All of the favors involved forgiving debts his victims had mysteriously accrued in his presence. They said a leopard couldn’t change his spots, and while Vale’s ultimate plan might have been to don a lion’s pelt, he was still a leopard.
A common-born leopard, at that, and one who told himself he was better or more worthy than his fellows, but at the same time tricked and cheated because deep down he knew he couldn’t earn a better life on his own merits—because he had none. Vale knew what he was, and spent all his efforts convincing himself otherwise, likely terrified that someone he couldn’t catch beneath his thumb would point out the fact of his monstrosity.
Once Aden had purchased a few rounds of drinks, two more men came forward with their own tales about Vulture Vale. Nothing more about Cornwall or Vale’s origins, though the bulk of tales continued to suggest that he’d come from very ordinary stock. Every bit of it at least clarified Aden’s view of the man he’d set himself to face across the table. It said something that even far away from Vale and India and assigned to different ships under different captains, the sailors still hesitated to come forward. Vale scared them, in a way that rough seas and cutthroat pirates did not.
That was how Vale worked, though: He found the vulnerable, the frightened, the desperate, and he took advantage. It was damned time someone fought back. The fact that it was a woman who’d chosen to do so, a lass with manners and propriety and kindness and a barbarian Highlander on her side, made it all the sweeter. Now he only needed to make certain she won.
When he met up with Niall again, he had fifty fewer pounds and a priceless amount of information. And his brother had a tale or two of his own, including one from an officer who’d known Vale back when he’d first purchased his junior lieutenancy, and had described younger Vale as being cunning, heartless, and utterly focused on achieving a captaincy. He’d claimed to come from a family who hadn’t appreciated his “gifts,” while he’d certainly understood their limitations.
That bit of information had cost another twenty quid. The thousand pounds Francesca had given him seemed to be shrinking before his eyes, but strawberries, bribes, and rounds of drinks were expensive.
He had a few more things to secure when he returned to London, but two or three hundred pounds in his pockets when he finally sat down should be all he required. His mother might believe he meant to use all the money at the tables, and she was welcome to think so. But attempting to win fifty thousand pounds with one thousand, and doing it in a matter of days, would be a fool’s errand. And he did try not to be foolish.
“Is yer hurry to be back in London because ye reckon ye’re the only obstacle between Captain Vale and a marriage license?” Niall asked, kneeing Kelpie in the ribs to keep the gelding apace with the long-legged Loki.
“I want to get back so I can put a ball through him if hedoestry someaught,” Aden retorted.
He’d kept a firm rein on his temper all night, but now that they were galloping north every tale of cruelty and callousness thrummed into him like a drumbeat. That…manhad his gaze set on Miranda. Had danced with her, and while Aden had been miles away Vale had dined with her family in her house. Robert Vale wanted to use her as a stepping-stone, and the bastard wouldn’t hesitate to grind her into the dirt once he’d done so.
“Aden!”
Aden started, looking sideways at his younger brother. “What is it?”
“I said, ye cannae gallop all the way back to London,” Niall commented. “Slow down and ye’ll get there without killing Loki and Kelpie—unless ye care to change horses at every inn we pass by.”
Cursing under his breath, Aden drew the chestnut back to a canter. Aye, he did want to change up horses at every inn, but that would eat away at the money in his pockets, too—not to mention the embarrassment Loki would feel at being left behind to walk back to London later in the company of some stable boy. He’d figured the pace—walk a mile and canter for two—would have them back in Mayfair by midmorning, and that would simply have to do.
“If ye want someaught to ponder other than what peril yer lass could be in at just past two o’clock in the morning, why dunnae ye tell me what, exactly, ye do mean to do about her brother? Ye may nae have said exactly how Vale came to have so much paper of Matthew’s, but I reckon it was because the lad’s a poor gambler with nae any common sense.”
His brothers weren’t idiots, and Niall made a good point—if he’d filled in the empty bits of the story with some logic and imagination, Coll would have no difficulty doing the same. “It was wagering, and it was him being hunted by a man who spits venom. Dunnae ye fret about Eloise. If I ever catch him wagering again, I’ll break both his arms. We dunnae need ye or Coll breaking his neck. Eloise chose him for his good heart, and nae because he can tell a friend from a foe at fifty paces.”
