Page 3 of A Scot Is Not Enough
Duty didn’t draw Alexander forward. Temptation did.
Cool air leeched, glass to skin. The window was a thin barrier to the play of life on the street. Miss MacDonald glittered, a diamond among the drab. Her incandescent smile was a gift bestowed on two men dancing attendance, tradesmen by the look of their shoes and coats. What an interesting world she inhabited. Prettiness and charm stamped her calling card.
What harm was there in following her?
Behind him, the window reflected a watery version of Fielding, his bewigged head bent, his hand gripping a quill that scratched paper with furious speed.
“Mr. Sloane...”
“Yes?”
“Do not show your face in my chambers until Wednesday next.” More quill scratches. “And when you do, you’d better have something interesting to report.”
Alexander’s grim smile showed in the glass. Fielding had him neatly cornered. There’d be no refusing the magistrate, but if he played his cards right, this could end well.Very well.
Outside Miss MacDonald laughed, the faint notes calling him.
A week investigating her. A chase, as it were.
Hair on his arms pricked. This was . . . primal. He, the hunter, and she his prey.
“Leave the ledger,” Fielding droned. “You won’t need it.”
Alexander’s eyes were on the world outside, the account book somehow finding the desk. His lovely quarry raised her hood, a gentle dismissal for her male audience.
Excitement caught fire in his veins. His hunt had begun.
Chapter Two
Fletcher’s House of Corsets and Stays was a temple of feminine wantonness. Red-and-white-striped walls, white shelves delicately chipped, and reverent shoppers searching for sublime undergarments in a cloud of rosewater perfume. Women of modest means flocked daily to the shop, handing over hard-earned silver to buy Fletcher House creations.
Cecelia twirled a pretty pink ribbon lacing jet-black stays.
A breath of femininity, that ribbon. Transformative.
Drab linen stays werede rigueur, the uniform of maids, matrons, grocers’ and drapers’ wives, housekeepers, and the like. A travesty the Fletcher sisters, Mary and Margaret, had set out to change.
Harlots wore bright stays and ladies of the highest social circles wore colorful corsets—what didthatmean?
Cecelia smirked.A question to be answered another time.
She staked a spot at the window. On one side of the display shelf, stays fanned in a rainbow of color, andmatched stockings fanned on the other. She picked up vermillion stays.
“Cecelia.” Mary Fletcher approached, arms out to hug her.
“Don’t.” She dipped a formal curtsey.
Brow puzzling, Mary did the same. “Why are we curtseying?”
“Because I’m being followed.”
Quick knowledge washed Mary. A graceful beauty of twenty-nine years, her intelligent gray eyes adjusted to subterfuge the way cats’ eyes adjusted to the dark. Hands folding primly, she played the attentive shopkeeper. Not for a second did she remove her gaze from Cecelia and check the street outside her window.
“The man across the street,” Mary said.
“How ever did you guess?”
“Because no man is that interested in a chandler shop.”
