Page 51 of The Scot Who Loved Me
He was wooing a complex woman. He had to remember that. Brash emotion defined their past. Anne’s heart, the heart of an older and wiser woman, would have to be won a little at a time.
“Then, you’ll need this.” He took her hand in his and set the wax mold in her palm. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Celebrate your victories, lass.”
Her head bowed, she was almost angelic, looking at the block of wax, its center an empty shape of a key. It was like Anne, a woman fully formed in wisdom and character, yet void in certain parts. He wanted very much to be the one to fill those parts.
Patience, mon, patience.
“Did you know, I am in the midst of negotiating the purchase of our clan’s sheep from a Frenchman?” Her voice was small and quiet.
“That makes you a true shepherdess.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
She lifted her head, her smile blessing him better than the noonday sun. A shared secret, something of a positive nature, broke through her ever-present armor of duty to the clan. Her face tipped to his, her lips free of carmine’s emphatic color. More black wisps fell forward, and this time he gave in to the temptation to brush them back. Her hair was silken onyx threads. Lock by lock, he tucked them behind the peach-soft shell of her ear. The tiniest hairs inhabited her earlobe. He gloried in touching them. Soft and sweet. Tender as summer fruit. Why didn’t men spend more time on a woman’s ears?
Anne’s breasts strained against her bodice.
Because men were slathering hounds there.
“I—we, the lot of us—have met with success because we’ve worked every detail,” she said. “But the countess coming home early and Mr. MacLeod’s sudden appearance cannot be good. Especially when we are so close to getting the gold.”
“Don’t look at it so darkly,” he chided.
“I prefer to call it cautious.”
His ear-exploring fingers dipped to her neck. Her eyes were liquid, pliant, open. Slowly, he followed the trail of her ever-present black ribbon necklace. Tracing the ridge of her collarbone.Tracing the hollow well at the base of her throat. Tracing the high curve of her breast, sanctified territory usually guarded by her neckerchief.
Pale skin pebbled everywhere he touched.
“That’s better,” he murmured.
“Will you ask about Rory MacLeod tomorrow?”
He dragged his finger along the black ribbon into velvet warm cleavage. “We need to negotiate new terms, Mrs. Neville.”
Her breath sawed quietly while merry voices rang from the kitchen. Dishes clanked, and cutlery jingled.
“New terms?”
Heat bloomed in his breeches. Her skin was soft, soft, soft. The freckle high on her breast, a tiny bump. Stolen moments were as exhilarating as a tumble in the sheets, anticipation in its purest form, a hint of what was to come. If he wasn’t careful, he’d miss the beginning of dinner to spend himself in his bedchamber.
“You go’ the imprint of the key. Next comes the gold. Anything else is subject to discussion.”
He was possibly the worst man. Last night he’d been outraged at her believing he’d barter for sex. Today was another story. Today her cleavage was his plunder. Until he touched hard metal. The medallion. He pulled it from her bodice, the thumbprint-sized gold warm from her skin.
Seduction evaporated with a flick of his wrist. A curlicued nine in the center of a diamond had been etched in gold. The Curse of Scotland, the nine of diamonds, its lore long and lethal for highlanders. Feared and hated, even sober-minded lowlanders avoided it. The symbol carried a weighty history.
The Earl of Stair, villain of the massacre at Glencoe in 1692. Nine diamond lozenges was the man’s crest.
Every ninth King of Scotland had been a tyrant and a curse.
A thief in Queen Mary’s court stole Crown Jewels—nine diamonds—causing heavy taxes on all of Scotland to recover the cost.
Mary of Guise, Scotland’s French regent, swindled many a Scottish noble of land and money with her game Comette of which the nine of diamonds was the winning card.
Cumberland had scribbled “No quarter” on a nine of diamonds playing card after Culloden. Some claimed this was false, but he believed it was true.
And these were but a few of the tales of the number nine’s scourge.
