The Scot Who Loved Me

by Gina Conkle

  His desertion . . . committed in ignorance under the belief she’d deserted him.

  “Mr. Styles is not in the square,” Anne said.

  He consulted a pocket watch which he’d found at the bottom of the bigamist’s sea chest. “He has five minutes.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  His gaze shot from one corner to the next. “I don’t either, though I canna be sure if it’s Mr. Styles or something else.”

  More pigeons than people inhabited the square. It was quiet. Too quiet.

  “This could be nerves,” Anne said. “Since we’re about to commit a misdeed.”

  “Misdeed?” he snorted. “A genteel way to put it.”

  Anne linked her arm with his. “Walk with me. We’re supposed to be a newly betrothed pair out for a leisured stroll, remember?”

  Scouting for battle was easier than this. A man could at least use trees and bushes to his advantage. Anne was a natural, slim fingers in the crook of his elbow, her stroll sedate. The brim of her hat covered all but soft red lips and pale skin, badges of a gentlewoman. He wasn’t fooled. Anne would brandish her knife and charge Denton House this very moment if she thought it best.

  A bored footman walking a scrap of a dog crossed the road. The little girl in the Garden Oval shrieked gleefully at a squirrel. A lady of quality exited her home and ensconced herself in a waiting sedan chair painted with roses. Two men dressed in claret-colored coats bent their knees, lifted their burden, and off they went, the lady they served fanning herself languidly.

  Anne’s petticoats brushed his legs, and his cares melted with each gentle swish. She walked with grace, her face tipping companionably to his. The bruise at her temple was the only thing out of place.

  “Tell me about the night you were attacked,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I will track them down and see justice done.”

  Her grip firmed on his arm. “You can’t go to the magistrate.”

  “I wasna thinking of that kind of justice.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  It struck him right then: he was good at protecting, and this skill, the strength of his back and his ham-sized fists, might be the door to winning Anne once again. His rough charm only went so far.

  “You opened this door, Mrs. Neville. I intend to be fully at your service.”

  “Helping with the key and the gold is more than enough,” she said quietly. “Your brute strength is best served there.”

  He chuckled. “No false flattery from you.”

  A squirrel scampered from a hedge behind the garden’s black railing. The wee beast flitted its tail and darted across an ostentatiously wide street.

  “Your about-face is . . . curious.”

  Ancilla’s house loomed. “Consider it atonement.”

  Her breath caught. A good sign? Or bad?

  He slid two fingers in between his neck and cravat and tugged. “Maybe it’s my better nature wanting to protect a clanswoman.”

  Because I’ll do whatever I must to win you back.

  He’d wooed her as a headstrong maiden of nineteen. Wooing the older, wiser woman at his side would be another kettle of fish. Ardent words and passionate kisses worked once; both ploys wouldn’t work again. The test was how to win a twice-widowed woman? She already knew the dance of courtship. Freedom and independence appealed more than anything a man could give. Nor was Anne drawn to money. She was on the cusp of stealing a treasure to give it away.

  “And how do you propose to do this?” she asked. “‘See justice done’ as you say.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’d forget about it, if I were you. The attack was happenstance. Life on the wharfs.”

  “You’re the shepherdess of a seditious league. Anything bad happening to you is no’ happenstance.”

  “I really don’t need protecting,” she muttered.

  A poorly dressed man entered the square off North Audley Street, wheeling a squeaky handcart.

  “Mr. Styles,” Anne said under her breath, her relief palpable. “Let’s go.”

  He stopped and clamped a hand on hers. “Tell me.”

  She tried to pull him along. He didn’t budge. Carmine lips pressed into a rigid line.

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “You’re no’ the first to say that.”

  “What if I don’t want you to investigate my attack?”

  The stubborn lass had held too many cards for too long. He could argue a million things, but with Anne, it wouldn’t work. Actions always spoke loudest. The squeaking cart neared Denton House. Birds chirped and Will pulled out the pocket watch, sunlight blindingly bright on the silver.

  “One minute and counting, Mrs. Neville.”

  Her bosom heaved. She was indignant, her eyes green chips shaded by her straw hat. A stooped rag-n-bone man stopped his cart at the stairs of Denton House. Will had a direct view, but Anne, angled toward Will, couldn’t see, though she could certainly hear the goings-on behind her. The ruse was afoot. Mr. Styles had indeed transformed himself. Soiled shirt, patched breeches, hair untidy. He scratched his head and rifled through a pile of clothes.

  “There’s nothing I can say to convince you?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Sweat trickled under Anne’s gossamer kerchief tucked into her bodice. Could be he was pushing his luck, but time wasn’t on his side—for finding the men who hurt Anne or winning her heart. He tucked the watch into his pocket where the lump of wax waited. A footman marching toward them eyed Will, his gait slowing. The servant changed course and crossed the street, giving them a wide berth.

  “Mr. Styles just popped something white into his mouth,” Will said in a voice for Anne’s ears alone. “At least we’re getting this part right. Betrothed couples have the odd spat, don’t they?”

  Her slender nostrils flared. “And you’re making my heart race, but not the good kind.”

  “It’s a start, lass.”

  To which she glanced peculiarly at him before glancing at Denton House over her shoulder. The counterfeit crank was making a show of rummaging through his cart of clothes, his jaws working.

  Anne linked a stiff arm with his. “You want information? Start walking.”

  He did, which loosened Anne’s tongue.

  “I was alone in my warehouse at Gun Wharf. It was late and there was only one lamp burning. Three men with dark scarves covering their faces entered my warehouse. Two of them ransacked stored goods, though nothing was stolen. The third man came at me. We fought. He knocked me into a post which is how I got hurt. That blow left me dazed and disoriented. I recovered . . . couldn’t have been more than a minute, but when I turned around, all three were gone.”

  Foam squished out the corner of Mr. Styles’s mouth.

  “Did you notice anything different about the men?”

  “Will!” she hissed, her arm taut against his.

  “Anything at all?”

  Mr. Styles mounted the steps to Denton House. Anne shook with nerves and anger, her head swiveling from Denton House to Will.

  “Calm yourself, lass.” His voice was even but copper’s flavor coated his tongue, the familiar taste of prebattle madness. They were seconds away from committing malfeasance—if only to take back what was rightfully theirs. While Anne’s steel nerves were fraying, his were going cold.

  “Take a deep breath,” he coaxed.

  She obeyed. Her arm’s rise and fall against his evidenced it. His satisfaction at her listening to him was a victory best gloated over later. A crime was in play. When Mr. Styles banged the door’s brass knocker, their stroll landed them near Denton House. He touched Anne’s fingers tucked in his elbow. She bumped intimately against him, Anne’s hard swallow her telltale sign of fear.

  They stepped as one onto the wide street, sunlight blasting their heads. Mr. Styles banged the knocker again and slumped convincingly against Lady Denton’s bright blue door.

  Anne’s straw bonnet tipped a thou
ghtful angle. “You know, there is a particular detail that I forgot. The man who fought me had the letter T branded on his thumb.”

  Will picked up their pace. “Let’s get our key.”

  The letter T, brand of the common thief. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The ruse began with frightening ease. A simple choice, him trotting ahead of Anne and racing up stone steps. He left behind regrets at forcing her hand. They were good at butting heads. Any worthwhile partnership would experience a seesaw of wills. It was part of the climb to higher ground. At present, that meant mounting Lady Denton’s stone steps where Mr. Styles thrashed.

  His falling-down disease act was worthy of Drury Lane. Foam frothed at his mouth. Limbs went stiff. The man arched his back while his eyelids fluttered madly. Will dropped to his knee, convinced.

  He banged on the door, bellowing, “Help! Come help, at once!”

  Anne knelt on the front step, fanning the rag-n-bone man. Seconds passed, expanding to a minute. A small crowd was gathering off Brook Street. A butler at a neighboring Grosvenor Square home poked his head outside his door, while Denton House’s door stayed shut.

  “Where the devil . . .” Will cursed under his breath and banged an open hand on solid wood with all his might.

  “Open up! Help—”

  The door swung open. “What in the name of all that’s holy is going on?”

  Beady blue eyes glared at him from under the frill of a large mob cap—the housekeeper—if he read her starched gray skirts and pristine apron right.

  He pointed down and spoke in his best man-of-business voice. “This mon has fallen ill on your doorstep. He needs water.”

  Wispy brows pinched in disapproval. “Why, he’s—”

  “He is ill, and it is your Christian duty to help, ma’am.”

  Mr. Styles’s shaky hand grasped the housekeeper’s hem. “Waaa-terr.”

  Mr. Styles had a fine grip. The housekeeper, a stern-visaged woman, tried to yank free her petticoat. Pulling Mr. Styles in wouldn’t work. The housekeeper’s stout body was planted in the doorway.

  “Waaa-terrr.” More bubbles and spittle dribbled from the corner of Mr. Styles’s mouth.

  “Please! Help the poor man,” Anne cried, fanning him with all her might.

  The woman gawked. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Hold his hand, stroke his brow,” Anne said. “I will cool him.”

  The woman eyed the filthy rag-n-bone man, miserable to her bones. “But, he’s . . . ghastly.”

  “Is he not fit for the kindness of your bosom?” Will asked with righteous indignation.

  Emerald eyes glinted with startled humor. Anne’s head dipped fast. She was a straw hat and a furious fan. The housekeeper blinked at him, at the gathering crowd, and at the man holding her hem.

  “I will fetch a glass of water while you guard your mistress’s front door,” he said.

  “Cover his hand with yours and rub,” Anne said. “It will surely loosen his fingers.”

  The housekeeper was keen to free her hem. Knees cracking on her descent, she lumbered downward and the front door swung wide.

  “He smells awful,” the housekeeper whispered. To Will, she nodded at a passage flanked by ferns. “Go down that hall. You’ll find a narrow plain white door on the right. The kitchen is through it, belowstairs.”

  She sniffed at the half-dozen onlookers, people of quality by their dress, people she could scarcely order away.

  Will was off, his footsteps echoing on the black-and-white marble floor. Cold and cavernous, Denton House was the height of fashion. Everything was big. Wainscoting panels, the height of the wall. Pedestals with flowing plants. Darting to the left, carpet dulled the sound of his rapid footsteps.

  The study was the last door on the left at the end of the hall. He trotted to it, his heart kicking faster.

  Sweat dampened his cravat. He turned the familiar brass knob and the ghost of his past came to call. Ancilla’s perfume. The heavy scent, akin to dark red wine, clung everywhere, exquisite and expensive like the complex woman who wore it. It had taken him months of scrubbing whaling ships to blot out the smell. Ancilla, his great sensual mistake. She’d been a means of survival and the plummeting of his pride. They’d sealed their bargain in this room.

  Daylight flooded the carpet’s twisting yellow vines. It was second only to the quality sprawled across her bedchamber floor. Walking across it felt like walking on clouds, which he did in a bigamist’s shoes. How out of place he was—then and now.

  He sidled between the bookshelf and a satinwood desk, sunshine streaking its polished surface. He faced the cabinets and crouched lower, a desk corner scoring his back. Copper’s tang hit his tongue. He was face-to-face with the gleaming Wilkes Lock. Polished brass, a guardsman etched in metal, his pointer directed at a numbered dial for the owner to count how often it was unlocked.

  Jacobite gold sat behind it.

  He itched to take it now. A wailing moan trailed down the hall. Mr. Styles giving a warning?

  Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. He was wasting precious time.

  He searched for Dr. Colombo’s book. The countess usually hid it in plain sight on one of these three shelves. Plain black leather, the embossed gold worn with time.

  He scanned book titles, and . . . there it was. Osservazioni anatomiche con enfasi sull’Amor Veneris, within arm’s reach of the desk.

  “You’re getting lazy, Ancilla.”

  He snatched it off the shelf and flipped open the book. Inside hollowed-out pages sat the key. A silver filigree bowhead, its teeth a square with defined cutouts and indents, which set it apart from other keys.

  From the open door more moaning carried. Louder this time.

  He pulled the wax from his pocket and mashed the key inside it. Was the housekeeper getting suspicious?

  His mouth was dry and his skin hot. Velvet on a hot day. He should’ve listened to Aunt Flora. She’d cautioned him, silk was better in summer.

  He was careful, removing the key by the bow head as Miss Fletcher had advised. He rubbed all vestiges of wax from the filigree too. A wipe to his temple and he returned the key to its nest in the book.

  Back it went to the shelf and he trotted out of the study, careful to shut the door.

  The hall was still empty and light. His race to the kitchen was quick, the wax lump safe in his pocket. He retrieved a cup of water and climbed back up the short stack of stairs to the ground floor, his heart thumping.

  They were nearly done.

  He coaxed calmness, his feet flying over the hall’s carpet. Not a drop spilled. Flush with victory he rounded the corner, and a sherry gaze collided with his.

  A chill grabbed him by the throat. A slender, elegant woman stood in the doorway, raven haired and ruthless.

  “Will?” His former lover’s voice was a shocked wisp.

  “Ancilla.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Anne’s stomach could be rotating torturously on a medieval spit. The Countess of Denton had taken no notice of anyone else, her visage morphing with stunning speed. And Will . . . saying her Christian name for all to hear. The tableau was awkward and endless. Afternoon sun beating the road. Crowds gossiping. Impeccable servants waiting. A second later the countess speared Anne, her eyes glittering pools of speculation. Her gaze drew a line. Anne to Will, Will to Anne.

  The countess did the math and she did not like the answer.

  Lady Denton tossed aside years of breeding, stepped over Mr. Styles, and swept through her marbled entry, a moth to the flame that was Will MacDonald. Never mind her ladyship’s current private footman standing on the steps, the flustered housekeeper kneeling in the doorway, or Anne.

  It’d be comical, but Anne wasn’t laughing. She was hot and jealous.

  A big paw crossed her vision. “Let’s get you up, ma’am.”

  She took it and clambered upright, her silk-covered whalebone corset sticky against her ribs.
Wrong day to wear a new corset.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The paw held on. “Name’s Rory MacLeod.”

  A Western Isles brogue—and he was a MacLeod.

  Her panniers jammed unprettily against the door frame. Perceptive crystalline blue eyes searched hers. Scarred at his eyebrow and chin, Mr. MacLeod was the rough sort. He chewed a long blade of grass at the corner of his mouth, and dust coated his boots. Thickly built, nicked knuckles, a bull of a man who probably made his coin as a bare-knuckle brawler—and he was a MacLeod.

  Her mind reeled. What is he doing here? And still in possession of my fingers?

  “My hand, if you don’t mind.”

  He released it. “This is where you tell me your name, miss—” his gaze slid to Will and the countess talking in the entry “—or is it missus?”

  “Mrs. Neville.” She smoothed her skirts, calling out. “Will, water for this poor man if you please.”

  They were atrocious actors in this ruse, thrown off step by the Countess of Denton’s sudden appearance. Mr. Styles, however, played his part with aplomb. Mr. MacLeod helped the coughing rag-n-bone man to his feet, then went two steps lower and retrieved the older man’s battered tricorn.

  “For you, sir.” Will handed over the cup of water.

  A shaky hand accepted the boon. “You are too kind,” Mr. Styles rasped. He wiped a dirty sleeve across his foam-caked mouth and gulped water.

  This was the housekeeper’s cue to bustle down the steps and clear the riffraff. A grand carriage with the Denton crest on the door loitered in the road. One of the attendants held the reins of a large bay horse.

  “Take the carriage to the mews, and I shall supervise the unloading there.” She pushed the wooden cart with its hodge-podge of garments to Brook Street’s corner and dusted off her hands as if the matter was done.

  “What a surprise, Mrs. Neville.”

  Anne whipped around. Centuries of quality flowed in Lady Denton’s blood. She was perfect in butter-hued silk, her rapier glare put away. Hair impeccably coifed boasted one silver-white lock in otherwise midnight dark hair. Anne felt dampness growing under her chin, no doubt darkening her bonnet’s wilting peach ribbon. This was a baptism of fire.