Page 71 of The Scot Who Loved Me
The key. The gold. A new life.
Would she want me?Her politely bolted bedchamber door was evidence that she did not. He was half-skilled in matters of men and women. Poorly prepared when it came to love. Other than protect and provide, he didn’t have a clue how to win Anne.
One problem at a time. At present, he owed Mr. West an explanation. He stared at clouded blue skies and decided to be as forthright as a man about to commit a crime could be.
“Mrs. Neville used considerable resources to set me free after the Night Watch hauled me off to Marshalsea.”
“So that’s where you landed.”
“It is.”
“We didn’t think to search this side of the river for you,” West said, glossing over questions about Mrs. Neville’s resources and putting a neat ending on Will’s summary, until...
“I’ve never known you to let your August ritualland you in prison.” There was the rub, and West was poking it.
“Marshalsea was a respite,” he said in breezy tones. “Time to stretch my legs, rest my back.”
“Like taking the waters in Bath.”
“Exactly.” He grinned half-heartedly and turned the conversation. “What’s this interest of yours in Miss Fletcher?”
West scratched his nape, affecting a casual demeanor. “I could do with a dalliance.”
“Bored, are you?”
“She’d be a diversion. I’m plagued these days by warehouse troubles and missing laborers,” West said with droll humor.
His grip on the frame tightened. A splinter might’ve slipped under his skin. “Forgive me for no’ coming sooner. You’ve been good to me, hiring me, teaching me a new trade. I owe you.”
West snorted. “That’s a load of shite and you know it. You’ve outworked every man here and then some. I should’ve doubled your wages long ago.” West slanted a look at him. “Nor have I forgotten that you saved my life. We both know I owe you the greatest of debts.”
The past was in West’s ominous tone. Another debt...
Seagulls screeched outside, landing on theMathilde’s mizzen mast. A memory floated in their shrieking cries, the keening wind of a cold dark night his first winter working the docks.
Iron tools had gone missing. Chisels, hammers, caulking irons one day. Boxes of nails and a gimlet the next. After a week of losses, Mr. West had decided to stay late, alone, since the men in his employ hadalready earned their wages and more. That’s what men did at West and Sons Shipping. They went above and beyond, but that particular day had been brutal. A chill camping in limbs, men with the ague, miserable but still working. Like the others, Will had been bone tired and hungry that night. No one had wanted to stay late.
He had one foot in the wherry when air soughed through leafless trees rimming the Howland Great Wet Docks. The boat rocked men shivering under a primordial sky.
“Mr. MacDonald. We don’t have all night,” a man in the boat said. “I’ve got a pretty whore off King Henry’s Yard waiting to see me.”
“She’s waiting to seeyercoin, ye fool,” was another’s answer.
The men snickered, and a gust danced with whitecaps on the river. The day had been loathsome, but the night would be worse, hallowed and dark, and there was something about those trees...
He stepped back onto the dock, his coat blowing sideways. “Go on without me.”
Will walked to the blacksmith’s forge, following a clanking noise.
He’d never forgotten that night.
Three rufflers, big and nasty with stony fists and foul breath, had come off Rogue’s Lane at the back of the wet dock. They had the jump on Mr. West. One eye swollen, blood and spittle dripping from his mouth, West gave as good as he got. But against three men, one armed with an adze, the fight was getting ugly—until Will arrived.
Bones had crunched. A tooth had gone flying. Blood had puddled the forge floor. The thievesfought like men who’d neither give nor ask for quarter. A knife-sharp glance from Mr. West’s good eye was a fast conversation. They were in it to the death.
Later when skies were pitch black, Mr. West and Will weighted three dead men with rocks, rowed them out far past the King’s Yard, and dumped them in the river near the Isle of Dogs. They rowed the choppy river back to West and Sons Shipping. Utterly spent, they sank to the floor of West’s office. Whisky was shared and a friendship born.
Down below in that same yard, Jemmy Brown introduced the ladies to everyone. Men balancing lumber on their shoulders stopped and touched forelocks. Friendly conversations rose, twined with the ping of a blacksmith’s hammer. Mr. West’s skirted guests were a pleasant distraction, twin confections.
