Page 62 of A Scot Is Not Enough
He waved to her and set his hat on his head at a careful angle.
“Looks like it’s off to bed for you,” Burton said. “And a losing match for me.”
He was going somewhere with the puzzling Scotswoman in a carriage he was sure didn’t belong to her. He eyed the tavern tent. The man in black lingered where sun and shade met, his attention honed on the robin’s egg blue carriage as if memorizing it.
Alexander waited for the shift in posture, for the moment the man in black would know Alexander watched him.
A lethal stare met his, palpable despite the distance. Miss MacDonald was the quarry and Alexander stood between them. The woman was mystery in petticoats. Her league, thesgian-dubh, her cold watcher. He’d barely scratched the surface of the woman he’d been tasked to follow. Primitive sharpness spurred him. The need to protect.
He would defend Miss MacDonald—with his life.
Sun blasting his face, he touched the brim of his hat. A nod, and the man in black touched his tricorn in return.
Another game was afoot.
Chapter Seventeen
He was quiet the entire carriage ride. He didn’t question the Scotswoman telling the coachman to deposit them at Covent Garden. He didn’t question her when she darted along Henrietta Street and cut through St. Paul’s churchyard before speeding off to the White Hart. He didn’t question Miss MacDonald dashing off a quick note and paying a street lad the princely sum of three shillings to deliver it. He didn’t question her telling the boy to exit through the White Hart’s back door.
Once in his rooms, Miss MacDonald barred the door and rushed to the open window. She was careful to stand in the shadows while studying the street below.
“Are you going to tell me what this is about?” He took a seat on the pine settle armed with clean linens and a pitcher of water. “Because we both know this isn’t about my head.”
Miss MacDonald untied the ribbon securing her straw hat.
“You have been the soul of patience. I would’vedug in my heels and refused to go unless you told me what we were about.”
He dropped a linen in the pitcher. “Therein is the difference. I trust you.”
Miss MacDonald’s face was a pale oval. A beautiful, lost soul stripped of artifice and lies. Her mouth quirked weakly as if it lacked the conviction to form her usual smirk. She was a cornered creature, bracing for destruction. The dismal light in her eyes hit him squarely in the chest. He’d seen more hope in bare-knuckle brawlers at the last minutes of a losing fight.
“Trusting the horrid Jacobite woman... What would Fielding think if he heard you say that?”
He wrung the soaked cloth, disappointed at her deflection.
“Tell me about the man in black.”
“What man in black?”
Miss MacDonald turned to the window, giving him a view of his bloody handprint on her petticoat. Like an ancient tribal claim, that stain. His mark. Baser wants were not their problem; the necessary high-minded wants were. To be with Miss MacDonald meant they had to meet openly on both planes. The Scotswoman’s mind was too agile an instrument to be ignored, and her heart and soul too important.
He patiently unwound wrinkled linen. “He was under the tavern tent. About my height, dark hair, military bearing with a calm I’ll-rip-your-throat-to-pieces demeanor.”
Miss MacDonald’s hair was a frazzled halo, her clothes rumpled. Noise from late-afternoon traffic floated through the open window. Jingling harnesses, rattling carriages, hoovesclip-clop, clip-clop, clip. All thesounds of life while in his room, something threatened to burst.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said.
“Let’s start with the truth.”
Her haunted eyes speared him.
“Otherwise I can’t help you,” he said.
“You want to help the dreaded woman who ensorcells men.”
“A tired argument, quite beneath you. Even the devil himself pleads his case. Why can’t you tell me yours?”
“Equal to the devil, am I?” Her tone met his, jab for jab.
