Page 25 of The Scot Who Loved Me
A dangerous flame, indeed.
“We’ll be safe, I assure you.” She tempted fate by rubbing a threadbare spot on his sleeve. “We need you looking the part of a merchant on the rise.”
Will’s big hand folded over hers, his warmth seeping into her skin. She shivered nicely when he leaned in and his lips grazed her ear.
“No, lass. You need me looking like your betrothed.”
Chapter Seven
Moorfields was the common man’s pleasure garden, where good and evil met. Open-air markets and traveling shows, criminals and Methodists all mingled as one. Ha’pennies flooded the torchlit green, passing from one grubby hand to the next. So many, Will crossed trampled grass, tasting copper’s dirty tang.
The dance of vice and virtue. The night was rife with it.
A bored fortune-teller shuffled cards inside her open tent. Yawning players in patched clothes traipsed a makeshift stage. The drunk and aimless gathered and they weren’t particular about their entertainment. Anything would do; in its absence trouble brewed. West End nobs knew this. The idle poor rioted.
Keep them numb,Ancilla would say from the comfort of her gilt-trimmed carriage.
He’d watched and learned in those days. The Countess of Denton was older, smarter, and accomplished, a beauty to seize a man's breath. Or his ballocks. Sometimes the countess took both.She’d taken in a young forgotten foot soldier, a wild highlander and molded him. A quiet hulking man who read more and pondered things took his place.
One lesson in particular stuck: survival was primal, and it often came well dressed.
Him wading through Middle Moorfields was about another confounding woman, and he’d traveled a long distance these years to find her. She had something he wanted. Tonight, he’d get it. But the crossing was gritty, a dogged journey that began on a doorstep in Edinburgh and landed him here, in Crown Alley.
Tall, dark, and bricked, the alley was busy. Men hanging candle lamps to ward off night, boys roping barrels. A pipe-smoking, thrum-capped sailor slouched beside the alley’s lone door. Music and laughter swelled behind it.
“Ye here for the weddin’ feast?” the old man asked. “Or the bare-knuckle brawlers?”
Will stepped back and checked the tavern’s sign. Faded letters spelledWhite Lamb, but an impudent soul had recently painted a lush, red-lipped smirk on the wee animal.
“Neither. I’m meeting a woman.”
The seaman let loose a salty laugh. “It’s all the same, lad.”
He eyed the door. The latch was rattling as if straining to hold a raucous tide of merriment.
“It starts like whot’s in there—” the sailor pointed at the tavern “—and ends like that.” He jabbed a thumb at the roped-off ring. “If yer lucky, she’ll give ye a kiss and a tup—” he opened the door with a flourish “—no leg shackle required.”
Will tipped at waves of noise, color, and the scent of women washing him. Deep within a fiddle sawed a rustic tune. Feet were stomping. Hands were clapping. Breasts were heaving, plump and ripe for the picking. Pale and dark skinned, the public house welcomed all comers. Sirens, all of them. Their eyes sparkled with invitation:Sex is here.
He stepped inside, a carnal current vibrating from the floor up his legs.
A leg shackle never looked so desirable.
He didn’t bother to bite back a grin of male appreciation. Women were everywhere. On the stairs and above them, crowding the railing, flirting with crane-necked men below. Silk petticoats mashed between balusters, skirts too fine for this establishment. Somewhere a tallyman had made a year’s worth of coin renting gowns to the women here tonight. Those skirts were meant to be seen—and lifted. Tamer crowds milled the room’s perimeter, pints in hand without a table in sight. The center was for dancing—if that’s what one called the melee of bodies. Men tossed up women and twirled them close. Partners passed in messy lines. Torsos rubbed and necks arched to receive a carnal kiss.
Even the primmest preacher would throb with lust should he cross the White Lamb’s threshold.
“There you are!” His cousin sidled up to him, breathless with excitement. “Quite a lively reel, isn’t it?”
Thumb hooked in his waistcoat pocket, he soaked in the revelry. “Been to my share of country assemblies, but I’ve never seen a reel like that.”
Which made his cousin laugh. She linked arms with him, and he smelled spiced rum. It had been a long, long time since he’d last set foot in the White Lamb. It was quieter then: thieves and cutthroats, harlots and humble travelers, all taking respite from the thirsty business of life. If what he was witnessing tonight was how a newborn marriage came about, he needed to get out more. Perhaps he’d kept too much to himself laboring for West and Sons Shipping. Most days, once the work was done, he’d find a chophouse, get his fill of food, and find his bed—alone.
A deep itch grabbed hold, and he searched the dancers for a seditious raven-haired woman. All and sundry in this establishment would test the limits of their bed ropes.
Why shouldn’t he do the same?
“Mr. Gladwell’s daughter, Hannah, wed one Mr. James Hadley.” His cousin stood on tiptoe and pointed. “There they are.”
