Crowley didn’t look at all pleased, but before he could protest Aden flipped the knife in his hand and jammed the blade beneath the lid. He shoved downward, using his weight, and with an earsplitting squeak it lifted. “Well, that’s just poor workmanship, the way that lid fell off there,” Aden noted, pulling it free to set it aside.
Holding her breath and half expecting spiders to be inside, Miranda lifted the lantern and peered inside. Dull metal gleamed back at her. “There’s another box inside.”
The banker pulled it free, setting a smaller metal box, its lid secured by a latch with a keyhole, onto the counter. “We don’t have the key. And this box can’t—”
“Leave the premises,” Aden finished. Taking hold of the metal container, he set it carefully on the floor, then stomped on it. Hard. “I’m finished with being subtle,” he growled, stomping again.
After a few more blows with the hard heel of his boot and backed by the impressive strength of a frustrated Scotsman, the box collapsed on one side, the latch bowing outward. Aden crouched again, using his knife to wrench off the entire latch. Forcing open the lid, he looked inside. And stilled.
“Aden?” she queried, her heart freezing. Spiders or biscuits, if it wasn’t Matthew’s debts inside, she was done for.
A long string of soft Scots-Gaelic curses answered her. “Come down here,” he said finally, settling onto the floor. “Ye need to see this.”
Still barely breathing, she sank onto her knees. She couldn’t marry Vale. Shecouldn’t. the idea had been repulsive before, but now… now she had something she wanted, with all her heart. Anything else—her mind refused to even form the words.
“It’s nae just Matthew and Lord George,” Aden said, lifting a short stack of mismatched papers and handing them to her.
Her fingers shaking, she looked at them while Aden pulled still more out of the misshapen box. Paper after paper, all with the amount of the debt, the date incurred, and the signature of the debtor, plus a careful set of notations on the back of each one listing the “favors” the signatory had delivered, and additional notes about what further deeds they could do in exchange for the forgiveness of their debt. “He never returns them,” she said, a different kind of dread creeping through her.
“Nae. Some of these are a decade old. Older.”
“He keeps these people the way a farmer keeps cattle. Matthew, Lord George, they would never have been free of him.Iwould never have been free of him, of bowing to his every demand. I—”
Aden grabbed her hand. “Ye’re free of him now, Miranda. Ye hear me? Ye beat him.” He pressed a dozen papers into her palm. “Fifty thousand quid worth of promissory notes, all in Matthew’s name. Dunnae read the notations. Just burn them.”
He’dread the notations. She could hear the fury, barely restrained, in his voice. Miranda clenched her fist around the notes. “We beat him,” she said fiercely.
“And those papers of your brother, you can take with you,” Mr. Crowley said. “But do it quickly. I need to put this back together so no one knows it’s been moved.”
“Not just my brother’s papers,” she said, grabbing handfuls of notes and stuffing them into the pocket of her pelisse, the pockets of Aden’s coat, and his sporran. “All of them.”
“Aye,” Aden echoed, finding a cloth bag from somewhere and emptying the rest of the box.
“Aden,” Crowley said, a scowl in his voice. “That wasn’t—”
“Nae. We’re stopping him. But if ye dunnae want the box empty, I’ve an idea of someaught we can put in there.” Handing her the bag and standing, he walked to the nearest desk, found a paper, ink, and a pen, and wrote out a few lines before he folded it and put it inside the mangled metal box. They set it back inside its wooden nest, and using the butt of his knife he hammered the lid back on.
“Once again, don’t move,” Mr. Crowley warned them, hefting the box and lantern and disappearing again.
“What did you say in the note?” Miranda asked, holding the bag and its contents tight to her chest. She held dozens of lives, dozens of futures, in there, hers included.
“I pointed out that the odds werenae in his favor any longer, and suggested he try his luck elsewhere.”
“Will he, though?”
Aden put an arm around her shoulders. “If he wants to continue breathing, aye.” His muscles flexed. “I’d best get ye back to Oswell House before our turn of luck runs dry. We’ve some things to consider,boireannach gaisgeil.”
Yes, they did. He’d actually found a way to set her free. And even more important to her heart,she’dhad a hand in saving herself. Now she needed to enjoy the moment, to think, and to perhaps deliver a lesson to a barbarian that he should believe a woman when she’d declared she knew her own mind.
Chapter Eighteen
Aden sent Miranda up the trellis before him. As she reached the window she gasped and with a rush disappeared inside.
Cursing, Aden swarmed up the trellis after her. If Vale had made his way there in the dark to put a knife through someone, the bastard was going to have to go through a damned Highlander first. And the naval captain was going to find out if he could fly when Aden pitched him out the window.
With a last upward lunge he dove inside, pulling the knife from his boot as he rolled to his feet. “Dunnae…” he began, then closed his mouth, breath returning to his body all in a rush. “Coll.”
Lord Glendarril settled Miranda back onto her feet before he sank into the chair he’d dragged over to the window. “Ten more minutes and ye’d have found me pounding on the door of every bank in London,” he rumbled. “Next time ye go do a burglary, ye tell me where.”
