Page 10 of The Scot Who Loved Me
“If it takes the starch out of your spine, I’ll listen. But it doesna change the fact that rebellion is sheer folly.”
“So says the man willing to molder in prison over a kilt.”
Mouth clamping, he eased his stance. As logic went, she had him there.
“My demise, my choice. But, bringin’ down others... Your leader has porridge for brains, and I’ll be the mon to tell him.”
Her lips curved beguilingly. “You shall have your chance. The league meets tomorrow.”
“Good.” He cupped his hands and blew into them. “What’s your second requirement?”
“You take a bath.” Anne coughed delicately and set a gloved finger under her nose. “You smell awful.”
He chuckled, rubbing his hands for warmth. “I could use a good scrubbin’.”
“Finally, we share common cause.”
Anne unlocked her door, and he entered a humble home etched with signs of wealth and poverty. While she locked the door behind him, he dragged a dirty boot across an iron scraper. A faded mural of sloops covered one entry wall with London Bridge and river barges painted on the other.
“Follow me.” Anne wasted no time, leading him through a small dining room to the kitchen.
Embers heated four modest cauldrons at the hearth, and a dented copper tub gleamed in one corner. Anne dropped her cloak and gloves onthe oak table while he waited. She stirred life into the kitchen’s dying fire, a gold medallion on a black ribbon teetering from her neck.
“The tub,” she said, tucking the medallion into her bodice. “Bring it here.”
Glad to be of use, he dragged it across the kitchen and set it down with athudbetween the table and the hearth. “That’ll wake up the house.”
“No one will bother us. Aunt Maude is exhausted from preparing a chamber for you and—” smiling like a conspirator, she hoisted a pot off its hook “—Aunt Flora nips brandy before bed.”
She emptied one cauldron after another into the tub. He should help, but his feet were lead. Warmth, imprecise and imperfect, seeped into his bones. It came from faint light dancing on stone floors. From water’s cheery splash and the plum skirts hugging Anne’s bottom. He stood by the hearth, kneading his aching shoulder, weakened by a canny woman. Her weapons of choice were clean linens, a hot bath, and a cake of soap she set out for him. The comforts of home.
“You knew I’d follow. That I’d have to see where you lived.”
Was his voice hoarse?
Anne was an enchantress, her fingertips swirling bathwater. “You’re a free man. That is what matters.”
Shadows and light played on her bodice, and like a starving wretch, he took his fill. Steam anointing her skin. A tiny freckle blooming on her breast. Her cleavage, an enticing trail and theplump mounds pressing it. A man could spend all night drawing his finger through that mysterious line and count himself content. Even her collarbone’s silken ridge begged to be traced.
Anne glowed. A widow’s independence became her.
She stretched upright, firelight slanting across her face. “Your bath is ready.”
He ceased his shoulder rubbing, the artless moment sinking in. He was about to take off his clothes, which wouldn’t be bad except that he’d been inside Anne. He’d tasted her. Their past whispered a sensual language he longed to forget. The same couldn’t be said of Anne. She was remote, as if tending a half-naked man in her kitchen was commonplace.
Could be it was.
Let her host all of Southwark.He was miserable, stretching angrily to free himself of his shirt. It was halfway off when he flinched, a groan curdling in his throat. Every cut and welt branded him.
Warm hands urged his elbows down. “Let me help.”
Arms heavy, he did.
Mellow light licked the column of Anne’s neck and crafted her lashes as ebon fans. Her attentive hands checked a frayed seam. Slowly. Agonizingly. He burned to be irked with her for reappearing after all these years, but she was kindness itself with glossy midnight tresses.
Black-haired lasses... his weakness.
Her touches were innocent; his thoughts were not.
