Page 56 of The Scot Who Loved Me
“Please... can it wait ’til tomorrow morning?” she asked.
The latch was a staunch soldier guarding Anne. There’d be no passing here. He let go andstepped back, her bolted door a slap in the face. He’d wager all his measly coins that she’d locked the hall door too.
“Will?” Her voice was tentative.
This wasn’t a coy game. She had no reason to fear him. They were in a partnership of sorts, yet he was left out in the cold.
“Yes. Tomorrow morning.”
He’d asked if she and Mr. Neville were in love and got his answer. He didn’t ask the indelicateDid Mr. Neville exercise his husbandlyrights?The possibility scorched him with a fresh wave of jealousy. If what Aunt Flora said was true, Mr. Neville passed along his house and his business, giving Anne security.
The man had married her, while he had deserted her.
After their parting, Anne at least had sent three letters—letters he never got. Blame the mess of war and his constant movement for that, but he never wrote to her. At first, a young man’s indignation kept him from picking up a quill; news of her marriage to Angus MacDonald stopped him for good.
He turned his back on the adjoining door and stared at nothing in particular.
He’d thought . . . what? Helping her league would erase the past? Make all things new? He owed a debt of heavenly magnitude with no earthly way to pay it. The bolted door was but another piece of evidence stacked against him. He crossed the bedchamber ruthlessly unbuttoning his placket. Once loose, his breeches dropped to the floor. He applied the same ferocity to removing the bigamist’s silk stockings. Stockings in hand, he gathered the breeches and was about to throw them at the lone mahogany chair.
His hand froze midair. Black wool stockings hung there. The same Will MacDonald, dockyard laborer stockings he’d left in a soggy heap downstairs last night.
He checked the floor beside the washstand. Moonlight from open drapes showed his boots had been cleaned, the leather oiled, the square toes pointing at him beside his satchel tucked against the wall—the same as his first morning here.
Anne?
Had to be.
He dropped the clothes on the table and sniffed his old stockings.
What a miserable sop he was, sniffing his stockings. But they smelled good, freshly laundered with a hint of lavender.
Hope stirred in his chest.
“Well, well, Mrs. Neville. You’re no’ so sparin’ with your tender mercies after all.”
This was another olive branch.
He closed the drapes and made his way to the bed. Clean stockings and a bolted door, an unexpected combination but a man had to work with what he had.
He sank facedown on the mattress, the bed’s creak lonely. He drew the sheets over his arse but no higher. No need to ruin them. From the other side of the wall, mild bumps sounded. He answered by thumping his pillow with a frustrated fist.
No one was above the draw, the beauty, the sheer strength of love. It molded men. It shaped women. Rebellions erupted from it with heart-carved passion for the land of one’s birth, but love for a woman was a different matter.
Rare was the man who walked an easy road to win his true love. And winning the same woman twice in his lifetime? A feat. Especially elusive, dark-haired lasses who moved mysteriously in the night.
Lasses with secrets... his weakness.
Chapter Eighteen
Anne’s quill didn’t impart ink; it stabbed it. Ungraceful zeros and smeared ones lined two columns of her ledger as if a battle took place on the page. Perhaps this morning it did. Neglected ledgers, Aunt Flora’s shopping list, and correspondence cluttered her humble escritoire. The Countess of Denton had sent not one but two missives, hand-delivered by a footman (the liveried variety). Both letters stared with pompous authority, a styledDstamped in red wax, the drips reminiscent of blood.
Was she being dramatic? Twirling her quill, she couldn’t decide.
The Denton name carried a long history of power, seized in great legal swipes. When the correct channels wouldn’t suffice, shadow work did. Centuries of rank distilled their blood, arrogance inbred.
She fiddled with the black ribbon at her neck. A vise was closing in on her. On one side, the countess’s grasping hand reached into her homevia the unopened correspondence. On the other, Will, the prize her ladyship wanted.
He was a patient statue in her salon with Aunt Flora bustling around him. A tuck here, a pin inserted there. His waistcoat for the night of the art salon had to be just right.
