Falling for the Pirate
possessions, his honor—none of it had any value to them.
    A soft scratch came from the door.
    “Yes?” he barked.
    “Someone at the back for you,” came Mrs. Wheaton’s reply.
    The only person who ever appeared at the back door for him was Santiago. He didn’t bother asking his housekeeper why she let Adrian into his study, but not Santiago. For one thing, Adrian was a duke. And for another, she had never seemed to like his other friend. She would never say so—indeed, she never said much at all—but it had been clear from the way she deliberately avoided him.
    “The girl will be joining me for supper,” he said as he passed her.
    He found Santiago standing on the stoop, huddled against the wall. The cold wind was particularly vicious today. Nate waved him inside. “Come in, man. You know better than to knock back here.”
    “I don’t mind.”
    Santiago didn’t mind much. Nate had saved him from a particularly brutal attack and thus had earned his lifelong loyalty. He did whatever Nate asked. He’d even offered to kill Hargate for him. But that was Nate’s right. His privilege.
    “What did you find out?” he asked as they strode into the kitchen and his friend warmed his hands over the stove.
    “Not much,” Santiago admitted. “No one has heard from him.”
    “Damn. I’d hoped someone would be willing to talk. For coin, if nothing else.”
    Santiago turned to warm his backside. “Maybe he left the country. He could have gone anywhere. America. The Orient.”
    Nate might have thought so too, but the girl upstairs proved otherwise. Hargate wouldn’t have fled the country if he’d sent his daughter to spy. Or steal. What had Hargate hoped she’d find? There wasn’t much money to be found in the shipping offices. The company had been burning on embers by the time Fortune Investments had purchased it. There were only files full of original Hargate paperwork—whatever hadn’t been confiscated by the courts.
    No, his enemy did not seek money. Nate had more valuables in his home than in the warehouse. It didn’t add up. But he had obviously sent her for something.
    Therefore, he had not fled the country.
    “He’s got enough blunt to resettle,” Nate admitted. “But he might be after more before he leaves.”
    “He’s greedy…but the charges against him are solid. He won’t want to stay and face them.”
    True enough. So, what was so important that it would make him risk staying?
    The paperwork, in sum, proved that Hargate had been siphoning money from the company for many years. A simple discrepancy in the books could be an honest error, but his embezzlement had been consistent and systematic. The invoices and receipts in those files proved it.
    What if she hadn’t been sent to steal something? What if she was sent to destroy them? But the authorities had already confiscated more than enough evidence to convict the man. Hargate would know that.
    Hargate Shipping had also already been liquidated—almost all of it was now owned by Nate. Stephen Hargate had been indicted for his crimes, though he’d fled before the arrest could be made. The public shame that had come down upon him had gained him permanent expulsion from polite society.
    And Juliana too.
    So, perhaps it hadn’t only been paternal loyalty that had prompted her actions.
    He glanced around the kitchen. The cook had taken her break, as she usually did at this hour. To let the loaves cool. Though he knew she took a nap. She was getting older and soon he’d have to pension her off.
    Despite the empty room, he lowered his voice. “What do you know about his daughter?”
    Santiago’s brows dipped together. “Her name is Jul—”
    “I know what her name is. What else do you know about her?”
    He shrugged. “Not much. She attended dinner parties with her father when she was home.”
    “When she was home? Where else was she?”
    “At school.”
    School? No. He’d seen her. He’d seen enough to know she was a woman. Not a

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