“The father and his daughter are your concern,” Stirling continued. “Your assignment is simply to protect them.”
Alasdair frowned. He was to play nursemaid? “Not to seek the spy?”
“No.” Stirling shook his head. “We have an operative in place for that. You’re to get close to the family and, if you feel their danger is too great, move them to safety.”
“If I unveil this spy—”
“No.” Stirling gave a firm shake of his head. “The Raven wants the spy alive and unaware they’ve been found out. Besides which, you’re a duke now. Scottish dukes are rare. You’re too valuable to the Crown to risk in confrontation.”
There would be no confrontation. The spy wouldn’t be aware of Alasdair until it was far too late. “If I’m so valuable, why risk me at all?”
“We feel the danger is minimal, and you’re one of the best.”
Something didn’t sit right. “Who are this father and daughter?” Alasdair asked. “Why are they so important the Crown is willing to risk a duke to safeguard them?” No one had guarded Alasdair’s brother while he was away killing for the Crown. Not that anyone could have anticipated the idiocy of trying to take a half-broken stallion over a five-foot wall.
Stirling scrutinized him for a long moment. “The father is the Dagger,” he finally said, the words a mere whisper in the flickering half-light of the wine cellar.
Alasdair rocked back on his heels.The Dagger.The king’s most skilled assassin. Alasdair’s hero, in a sense. It was difficult to say, as Dagger was a hereditary position. Men like Alasdair were selected from the ranks for their skill. The Dagger was sculpted from birth. The title evoked a near-mythological fear to their nation’s enemies, for the Dagger never died. He’d been lurking in the shadows for hundreds of years.
“We owe it to the family to keep them safe,” Stirling’s voice remained low.
Alasdair’s resentment had fled at the man’s title. “Yes, we do.”
Stirling gave a sharp nod. “Good. How will you insert yourself into the household? The daughter doesn’t know what her father did, or her brother does. They, and the Crown, wish to keep it that way.”
Alasdair frowned. “How old is this daughter?” If she was young, he could pose as a tutor.
“I believe, in her late twenties.”
“And unwed?” Alasdair didn’t bother to hide his dismay. That meant she was hideous of form or temperament or both. She would leap at the chance to push herself onto any man, especially an eligible duke.
Stirling’s wry grin returned. “Courting her would be the easiest way to spend time there, and you could introduce her to your mother.”
Alasdair returned a flat stare. “Courting her would not permit me to remain there at all hours. In fact, it would prohibit such behavior.” And he would not risk ending up wed to whatever hideous creature lurked in the Dagger’s household. “Will she recognize me, this old maid?”
Stirling shook his head. “I doubt it. She rarely leaves the family estate. She writes only to her brother and two gentlemen she knows as Lord Belview and Lord Winston, but that’s on her father’s behalf. His eyesight is failing. The daughter has no known friends.”
Alasdair nodded, frowning at this fuller picture of the aging former Dagger and of the hideous spinster Alasdair would guard for the Crown. He must go there without wooing her, without putting the thought of marriage in her head, and yet have an excuse to remain as long as needed. One she would believe.
He knew he had no hope of fooling the father. No one outwitted the Dagger, even in retirement. Therefore, Alasdair’s excuse for being there must also reassure, give some hint he was an ally. He didn’t wish his arrival to worry the old man. That would be cruel.
“These two lords she writes to, tell me more about who she believes them to be,” he said. As Stirling spoke, Alasdair leaned against the wall to listen, and to formulate the perfect plan.
