“I’ll do it,” she whispered with only two inches between their mouths.

He leaned back and released her arms, disappointment mingling with profound relief. Her lips were full and dark pink and he would have liked to have that memory.

“Thank you,” he said.

“But I have two conditions.” Again she folded her hands. She was unbelievably adorable, with her pert nose, the bonnet framing her golden braids, its ribbon tied at a jaunty angle beneath her chin, and her small, sweet breasts rising on the quick breaths she was trying to hide.

“What are they?” he said.

“Before I go to Leith with you, you must tell me everything.”

“Agreed.”

Both slender brows perked high. “You will tell me?”

“Yes.” He wouldn’t. Not everything. Everything would give her nightmares for months. But he would tell her enough to satisfy her curiosity. “If you agree to never share the information. With anyone.”

“Anyone?”

He nodded once.

“I agree,” she said.

“The other condition?”

“You must not enter my room through the window again,” she said just a bit primly, her brows still arched high.

For the first time in months he found himself smiling.

“I agree to your terms, Miss Astell.”

“I cannot remain here with you now,” she said, glancing about the street. “I mustn’t—that is, it would not be ideal if anyone saw me here with you.”

A frisson of panic stole up his spine. Allowing her the night to ponder this agreement was not wise.

Always act quick, Scholar, and you’ll never find a knife in your belly.

Pate’s hated voice in his head had saved him a dozen times in twenty-one months. But it wouldn’t guide him now. The crease in her brow made him back away. The tiny remnant of the gentleman inside him fighting to remain alive could not force her.

“By first light,” he said, “leave word for me at the Hart and Rose as to where and when you care to meet tomorrow. I’ll be there.” Slapping his hat back onto his head and dragging it down to shade his eyes, he started off.

“Wait.”

He turned to her. Her hands were clenched together at her waist.

“Tonight,” she said.

“Tonight?”

“I will meet you tonight. At nine o’clock. At the Hart and Rose.”

He hadn’t smiled this much in two years.

“A woman of courage.” He bowed. “Until nine o’clock, Miss Astell.”

As he left the mews behind, his steps were easier than they had been in eons. Soon, very soon, he would be free—free for the first time in more than a year and a half. And she would make it happen.

She might not require a kiss now. But when this was all over, he would enjoy one all the same. In thanks, of course.

He was in fact no longer a gentleman. Far from it. And taking what he wanted was what a pirate did best.

After dinner Esme waited until Mrs. McDade was occupied receiving room keys from several women leaving the boardinghouse at once, and slipped past them. If the proprietress did not have her key, she would not know she was gone.

Inside the pub the rich, warm scent of stout mingled with coffee, black tea, bacon, and bread fresh from the oven. A bar in the center allowed the tables about the edges to each have virtual privacy.

“The corner table,” she heard in her ear and swiveled her head to find Charlie not six inches behind her. A hot, wonderful wave of pure pleasure rushed through her.

In the past, seeing him unexpectedly had always made her heart do little skips and her breaths come too quickly. But these feelings he elicited—now—were entirely different.

He was just so big. And hard. She had never really noticed men’s necks before, but now she could not seem not to notice that even this unremarkable part of him looked muscular, the sinews pronounced. Staring at it did deliciously wanton things to her insides.

The muscles of farm workers at home had never done such things to her. She supposed it simply must be Charlie’s muscles, then.

He stood nearly as close as he had earlier at the mews when he had held her and she had thought he intended to kiss her.

He hadn’t, of course. Charles Brittle would never in a thousand years kiss her—not intentionally, at least. He had, after all, said that kissing her in the alley was a mistake.

“Quickly now,” he said in that same low, rough voice she could not quite believe was his. “We mustn’t attract undue attention.”

He looked like a laborer, yet still spoke like a gentleman.

She went to the corner table and began to slide onto the bench, but his hand came around her arm, stalling her.

“There,” he said, nodding toward the opposite seat. “I’ve to keep a watch on the door.”

Prickly alarm scampered around her stomach. So many sensations. It was like a banquet!

Shifting to the other side, she watched him fold himself into the bench with his back against the rear wall. His gaze scanned the room.

“Why must you watch the door?” she said. “Are you expecting someone else? Some other woman whose bedchamber you also broke into last night, perhaps?”

A gleam lit his eyes, but he did not smile. His smiles used to come infrequently, but they had been so warm. Kind.

This man radiated heat. But there was no warmth of sentiment in him now.

The barkeep set down a bottle, two glasses, and a pot of tea and a cup, then left.

Charlie poured from the bottle into both glasses. He slid one toward her. The piquant tang rising from it made her eyes water.

“Thank you, but I don’t drink spirits,” she said.

He took up his own glass and swallowed the contents as she poured tea.

“Will you ever ask me the reason I am in Edinburgh?” she said.

“It’s irrelevant to me.”

Setting down the teacup, she stood up. “Mr. Brittle, I came here tonight as a favor to—”

He grasped her wrist.

“I beg your pardon, Esme.” His voice was very low. “It’s been some time since I have had to—I beg your pardon.”

In the golden flecks of his eyes was the oddest, most unsettling light.

She reseated herself. His hand slid away but remained palm down on the tabletop, as though keeping it at the ready to restrain her again if she sought to leave.

In two days now he had touched her, and said her name, more times than he had in three years. He must desperately need that dog.

She took up her cup again. The steam rising to her nostrils soothed her.

“Did you know, of all the senses,” she said, “smell is the most vivid enticement to memory? For instance, I can drink unadorned black tea every day and it will always remind me of sitting at the table in the old farmhouse with my sister Mary teaching our youngest sister, Colleen, how to hold a cup and lift it to her lips without spilling.”

He simply watched her now, and did not respond.

“After many months of this,” she continued, “when Colleen finally mastered it, my mother made cakes with the last of the sugar and we had a celebratory tea party.” So many tears had been shed in those months, yet they were always intermingled with laughter and embraces.

Colleen had been four when she had begun talking. Five when she had first walked alone. Seven when she had first used a teacup and spoon without assistance.

In her last letter, Mary wrote that Colleen had just completed her first needlepoint sampler: three block letters on a scrap of old linen—A, B, and C—in time for her fifteenth birthday.

Esme’s throat thickened. She could not fail in her project here. Whatever reason Charles Brittle had for hiding from the police, and no matter that his beautiful eyes made her insides dreadfully achy, she could not jeopardize the only chance she would ever get to save her sisters from their uncle.

“How I miss them.” She sighed.

“Why have you come to Edinburgh?” he said below the conversations of other patrons.

“I am here for a gathering of perfumers,” she said. “Every master perfumer in Europe is attending. I hope to apprentice myself to the best.”

Charlie said nothing. She wrapped both hands around the teacup.

“I suppose you don’t wish to hear about anybody else on Gracechurch Street either,” she said.

“You suppose correctly.” Oddly, his gaze seemed to be on her lips.

She licked them.

His fingers tightened about his empty glass.

“All right,” she said, private little explosions happening where they probably shouldn’t. “Tell me your story.”

“It isn’t a story. Merely a few inconvenient coincidences.”

“Why did you leave London?”

“The shop was doing well. I hadn’t had a real holiday in years.”

Ever, in Esme’s understanding. While Josiah gadded about town like a socialite and Mr. Brittle Senior negotiated deals with authors, Charlie did everything else: kept the shop stocked with supplies, organized the schedule of projects for the pressmen, designed layouts, set the type of every page, and ensured that each publication was flawless, each printing perfect. Esme’s friend Gabrielle Flood, who had proof-edited pages in the shop for eight years, always said the business would fail if not for Charlie.

“Perhaps I should say, why did you leave London unexpectedly?”

But she knew. For all eight years that Gabrielle had worked at Brittle and Sons, Charlie had been devoted to her. Then one day a handsome naval captain had swept in and swept Gabrielle off her feet, and Gabrielle resigned from Brittle and Sons. Three days later, Charlie had disappeared.

“I needed a change,” he said now.

“Did you find the change you were seeking?”

The line of his mouth amidst the whiskers was unforgiving.

She held her breath.

“I did,” he only said.

She blew out a frustrated exhale. “Mr. Brittle, if you will not keep to your side of the bargain, I will not keep to mine.”

“I rode to the coast, sold my horse, found the docks, and signed on with the first ship that needed hands. It happened to be a whaler.” He spoke without inflection in his voice. “A month later our ship was boarded by pirates. I was—”

“Pirates?”

“I was impressed into the corsair’s crew—”

“Im-impressed?” she stammered.

“Given the choice of life as a crewmember or death, I chose to live. I spent the next twenty months on board until I disembarked in Leith last week. End of story.” Finally he moved, leaning forward until she could see each gold fleck in his eyes. “That fulfills my side of our agreement, Miss Astell. Recall that part of yours is to share the story with no one.”

“You have been a pirate?”

“It’s probably best not to inform everyone in this pub, hmm?” he said with a slight upturn of one side of his mouth. “We don’t want anyone here to feel the need to summon the police. Then you might have to lie again, and I might have to kiss you again, and we would be right back where we were two nights ago, wouldn’t we?”

“This cavalier attitude is not charming me.”

“I don’t need to charm you. I only need you to fulfill your side of our bargain.”

A hundred questions tumbled to her tongue.

She made herself nod.

“Tomorrow night in Leith,” he said, “the Assembly Rooms will host a public ball. The man currently in possession of the dog will attend that ball. I have not, however, managed to discover his name.”

“He owns a dog you want, and you know he will attend a ball, but you do not know his name? That seems unlikely.”

“And inconvenient. Yet it is the unfortunate truth. I also know nothing of his appearance.”

“Charlie,” she whispered, “you haven’t really been a pirate for nearly two years, have you?”

“Focus, Esme.”

“I am having difficulty digesting all of this.”

“Clearly. But I have very little time to find this dog. Do you understand?”

“Yes. But how you expect me to find a particular man with a particular dog at a ball at which I assume there will be dozens of men, I cannot fathom.”

“Men of wealth keep their dogs in the countryside. For hunting.”

“I see. But if you don’t know who the man is, how do you know that he is wealthy?”

“He paid another man a significant sum to steal the dog for him.”

“Oh!” Relief fanned through her. “He did not come by the dog honestly?”

“No. He has been in possession of it only a few days. Are you satisfied now that I am not dragging you into performing quite as reprehensible an act as you imagined?”

“If I had imagined you were dragging me into performing a reprehensible act I would not have come here tonight, of course.”

He seemed to study her, his features hard. But now in the gray-green of his eyes she saw an intensity of emotion that shocked her.

“Why don’t you run away?” she blurted out. “You are on land now. You can leave for London in the morning. Go home. Your father and brother will help you. The shop is as successful as ever. It’s true that they were at wits’ end for a few months after you departed, and Gabrielle left, of course, and they had to scramble around a bit to replace both of you. But they did so, not as competently as either you or Elle, but sufficiently. Your family must have plenty of money to—”

His gaze shifted over her shoulder. She swiveled to see five boys entering the pub.

“You lads,” the barkeep said. “Be off with—”

“They are with me,” Charlie said in the deep voice that made Esme’s insides shiver with heat.

The barkeep grumbled and returned to wiping the bar.

Four of the boys remained just inside the doorway. One came forward, his eyes widening.

“Knock me down, Scholar! She be a bonnie one!”

“Stuff those eyes back in your head,” Charlie said. “Miss Astell, this is Rory Markum of the Blue Thistle in Leith.”

Rory’s spine went straight. “How d’you do, mum?” He tugged on the brim of his filthy cap. Then he spoiled the effect by offering her a grin that lacked all four front teeth. He was wiry and no more than nine or ten.

In the doorway, the other four boys tugged their caps too.

“Good evening, boys,” she said.

“Did you boys come here only to gape at a pretty woman or do you have information for me?” Charlie’s features had settled into sober lines.

“Aye, sir. Pate’s fixing to come ashore as planned.”

“Five days.”

“Aye.” Rory screwed up his lips. “Got a plan, Scholar?”

“I do. Now off with you. And keep your ears to the wind.”

“Aye, sir!” With another tug of his cap at her, and a wink, he scampered out with the other boys.

“Your minions?” she said.

“Just boys in need of activity.”

“Mm. That was what you used to say about Sprout.”

“Did I?”

“Gabrielle told us that when Sprout was about to be taken by the sweep master you hired him to run errands for the shop. She said you saved Sprout.”

“She overstated it.”

“I don’t think so. Who is Pate?”

“Nobody important.”

“And if he were you wouldn’t tell me anyway, I presume.”

“You presume correctly.”

“Why did Rory call you Scholar?”

“Sailors are fond of nicknames,” he said and leaned forward again. “I never realized you were so curious.”

“That does not surprise me,” she said with a little curve of her dark pink lips. “You barely ever spoke to me. Not directly.”

Because after that occasion with the filing project and her round hips and his fantasies, every time he looked at her he’d forgotten what he intended to say.

“Curiosity, now,” he made himself say, “will not serve you well, Esme.”

Her lips were parting and her lashes fanning and, blast, his breeches were tightening.

“I have realized why it is that you believe I can find the man with the dog,” she said.

“Have you?” His voice was too rough. For all her tightly braided hair and simple gowns, she must know that when men looked at her their mouths went dry.

And when she smiled . . .

The whole room got momentarily hazy. Those lips . . .

Focus, Scholar.

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “When Sprout lost his puppy, you began the hunt for it. You must remember how I found it in the Barrel.”

The King’s Barrel was a three-story rabbit warren of rooms and nooks and corridors. Yet Esme, a girl accustomed to the scents of bergamot and roses, had sniffed out the mongrel hiding in an old crate.

“Yes,” he said.

“It was nearly midnight before we found it,” she said with a delighted grin. “But you would not give up searching.”

Neither would she, long after her friends had gone home.

“You knew how Sprout adored that pup,” she said. “How kind you were to him.” Her eyes looked too bright. “Charles Westley Brittle, you are a good man.”

He grasped her hand, gripped it tightly, and made his tone neutral.

“If I saw that man on the street today, I would not recognize him. You asked me why I do not leave for London?”

Eyes wide, she nodded.

“I cannot go home,” he said. “For any reason. Ever again. The man who left London twenty-one months ago is dead. Believe that.” His hand slid away from hers. Setting coins on the table, he stood and waited for her to follow. “I will walk with you to the boardinghouse.”

“Yes,” she said, taking up her bonnet, covering her golden braids with it, and moving toward the door. “You must. I cannot enter without your assistance.”

When he stepped out onto the street he said, “I beg your pardon?”

“For a man who claims to be a pirate, you still speak remarkably like a gentleman. I suppose that is why they call you the Scholar?”

“Just Scholar,” he corrected and bit back his smile.

“Mrs. McDade bolts the front door at ten o’clock. The clock in the pub showed quarter past ten just now.”

“That would have been useful information to have twenty minutes ago. Where exactly do you expect to sleep tonight?” He shoved away images of her golden tresses spread across his skin.

“In my room. You must teach me to climb in through the window.”

He grasped her elbow lightly, and she halted and turned to him. Pale light from the lamp at the Hart and Rose’s door illumined her eyes and damnably fine lips, which were smiling now.

“You planned this,” he said.

“Of course I did. If we are to be free to take whatever time necessary tomorrow night to retrieve the dog—do you know its name?”

“No.”

“We will call it Argos.”

“Argos?”

“From ancient mythology,” she said as though of course he knew that. Which he did.

He released her. “Odysseus’s dog?”

“Suitable for a pirate.”

“Odysseus was a hero, Esme.”

“He was a sailor. Anyway, if we are to be free to take whatever time necessary to retrieve Argos tomorrow night, we mustn’t be worrying about my curfew. A rehearsal tonight is wise.”

“How do you propose to climb up the side of the building wearing that?”

She looked down. “Do you think my skirts will impede movement?”

“I think there is a reason sailors don’t wear them.”

“Oh, is that the reason, Mr. Scholar?”

“Just Scholar.” He didn’t want to wait for the excuse of the police chasing him: he needed those sassy lips beneath his now. And then the rest of her beneath him too.

Abruptly her brow pleated.

“Is it very uncomfortable?” Her voice was unsteady.

Tamping down lust? Yes.

“Is what very uncomfortable?”

“Sailing away from land, when you fear the sea?”

Extraordinary. For three years he had believed her sweet, reserved, self-possessed. And edible. All that time she had been hiding this.

“Not any longer,” he said.

“How did you do it?”

He headed toward the boardinghouse.

“Enough questions for tonight, Miss Astell. You’ve a building to scale.”