Harrison seemed to digest her words as he took the case from his brother and placed it in her hands. “Tell us the nature of your business, Miss Templeton. We will help you.”
She shot MacMasters a pointed glare. “He already knows what’s in here. I can only pray he did not damage it. I cannot imagine he would treat such a rare find with the respect it deserves.”
She opened the valise and removed the book. A treasure, indeed.
“A book?” Harrison’s brows knit into a line. He rubbed his jaw as if it ached. “Frankenstein’s monster, no less.”
“Aye, a blasted book.” MacMasters pinned her with his dark gaze. “I’ve no interest in mad scientists and piecemeal bodies. And neither does Cranston. What are ye hiding?”
Johanna hiked her chin. “I’ll have you know Mrs. Shelley’s work is a classic. This particular volume is uniquely valuable.”
“Valuable?” His scowl deepened. “It’s time ye start telling us the truth. The woman who wrote that drivel didn’t have men chasing after her who wanted her dead. What you’ve got hunting you is real, lass. Not the product of an intellectual female’s overactive imagination.”
Devil take the man. She’d been prepared for an ill-spoken brute. But Connor MacMasters was articulate. Intelligent. And as arrogant as a buccaneer of old.
She kept a firm grip on the novel. “I will have you know this book is quite rare, a first edition, published anonymously in a printing of only a few hundred copies. Mrs. Shelley wrote an inscription on the title page. Only a handful of volumes bear her handwritten words.”
“Ye’re telling me Cranston wants a book about a monster?” MacMasters plowed a large hand through his straight, dark hair.
“This is not merely a novel. It’s a treasure. One of a kind.”
“May I see it?” Was the physician’s voice always so subtly coaxing, or had he reserved that velvet tone for women who showed up on his doorstep, wounded and carrying an immeasurably valuable book?
She offered him the volume. Handling it with the respect it deserved, he inspected it with a scientist’s regard for detail.
“I see nothing questionable,” he observed. “How did you come to possess it?”
“I received this book as a gift.”
MacMasters’s eyes narrowed. Did suspicion always play in those green irises? “Who gave this to ye?”
“An acquaintance.”
“A man ye’ve been involved with?” he pressed.
“Involved with?” Heat crept over her cheeks. They’d likely stained scarlet. “No. Nothing like that.”
He folded his arms at the waist. Impatience infused the simple movement. “Who is he?”
“No one you’d know. He’s not from these parts,” she stalled. How much could she safely disclose to these men?
His eyes went flinty, like shards of emerald mixed with silver. “Ye need to tell us who gave ye this book.”
When he looked at her like that, she could feel her pulse speed. She pulled in a breath, then another. “I really don’t see that this your concern.”
“Ye were wounded tonight. The man who wielded that knife would’ve slit yer pretty throat, if I’d given him the chance.” MacMasters came closer, towering over her. “That makes it my concern.”
Maddeningly, the stern set of his features eased her apprehension. His expression was not the carefully constructed mask of a liar, and the rawness in his voice bore no trace of deception.
Still, she couldn’t afford to trust him. She wasn’t so addled by the medicine the doctor had given her and the heady effects of MacMasters’s nearness that she didn’t remember that.
If only those perceptive eyes didn’t draw her in and the curve of his masculine mouth did not conjure unwanted heat deep within. Would his lips be gentle against hers? Or would his kiss exact a far rougher possession?
She drew in a lungful of air, pushing away the scandalous images. What on earth had come over her? Had the events of the past fortnight left her shaken? No wonder, that. Her orderly existence had been shredded. Uncertainty, unlike any she’d ever known, shrouded each moment.
She banished her mind’s rebellious wonderings to its far recesses. Perhaps someday, when this nightmare was over, she’d tap into those sensual images to fuel her next heroine’s adventures. She would need a fresh bottle of ink and a thick notebook to record the seductive scenes this Highlander inspired.
He eyed her beneath hooded lids. “Ye don’t know what ye’re dealing with, lass. If ye’ve got a brain under all that hair, ye’ll turn around and head home. There won’t always be someone around to protect ye.”
“Protect me? Is that what you call your interference?” She summoned an indignant huff. “Have you gone mad?”
“Not yet, though ye may be the one to finally push me over the brink. A lady dressed in finery, thinking to do business with the worst sort of ruffians. If not for my interference, ye’d have gone off with a pair of swine who’d take what they needed and toss what was left of ye in a shallow grave. Or worse.”