Page 4 of The Scot Who Loved Me
“It’s your gold.” Iron-clad wrists knocked the wall. “I’m a captive audience. Start talkin’.”
An ugly shiver skipped across her back when a beady-eyed rat tottered out from a pile of straw. Before setting out for Marshalsea, she’d thought about what to say and how to say it. Facing Will, those practiced words crumbled on her tongue. Nothing was right. Her gaze slid over hair in need of washing, a jaw in need of a shave, and eyes a touch fevered.
All she could manage was, “I want to hire you.”
His glower was monstrous. “Those days are over. I won’ work for a woman.”
Insufferable man.“This is not about you warming my bed. I need your talent for... finding things.”
“Finding things?” Disdain twisted his mouth. “You go’ to do better than that.”
“You would be well paid. Ten times your earnings from the docks.”
Torchlight flickered on unconvinced features.
“Ledwell gave me your arrest record.” She rummaged for the rolled-up document tucked inside her pocket. “I can burn it tonight, and you would be free.”
“Free is a questionable word these days.” A shake of his head and, “Find another mon.”
“No. It must be you.”
His scowl deepened. “Why me?”
“Because only a highlander will do.”
Tension thrummed in her veins. Fierce, knowing eyes searched her hood pulled low as if he had an inkling of her identity. Beside her, one thigh shook a wide strip of tartan to cover Will decently. The beast was getting down to business.
“Now why would a Sassenach ask so prettily formyhelp?” His tone was deceptively soft. “Time to show your face, lass.”
Her soul’s frayed parts called for readiness.
She scraped back her hood. “Because a Sassenach isn’t doing the asking.”
His gaze smashed into hers. Startling. Incendiary. A glare to blast her back into the night. The shed’s wretched air suffocated, yet Will’s nostrils flared and his chest rose and fell with ragged breaths. His only sign of life. Otherwise, he didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t blink.
She was hanging by a thread.
“Anne Fletcher MacDonald,” he said at last.
“Anne Fletcher MacDonald... Neville. Mrs. Neville to you.”
Will’s brows thundered. “You married anEnglishmon?”
She braced herself. “Yes.”
Teeth bared, he blistered her ears with a string of Gaelic curses. She flinched but held her ground. Having spent much of her childhood in London with her English grandmother, tutors had scrubbed her diction clean, though not her vocabulary. Her brothers had made sure of that.
Will’s face was inches from hers. “Ask your English husband to protect you.”
“I can’t. He’s dead.”
“Like the first one?” Wildness glittered in his eyes.
The jibe struck hard. She quaked with emotion stuffed behind a cool facade, an inborn skill she’d honed to perfection. By the sour sentiment twisting Will’s rugged features, she could no more talk sensibly with him now than she could eight years ago.
If her heart had turned to ice, rage had flamed in his.
“We share too many secrets,” she said.
