The Scot Who Loved Me

by Gina Conkle

  West strode to his desk and dove into his comfortable world of business. “Go ahead,” he said distractedly. “Ring the bell, and announce the workday done. The forge is Miss Fletcher’s to use as she sees fit.”

  “Thank you.”

  West’s gaze lifted from a stack of papers. His eyes were knife sharp on Will. This was a tremendous risk, but a debt was paid, the transaction done. There’d be no more questions about the Wilkes Lock key.

  Will pushed the casement wider, breathing iron, grit, and sweat . . . his history on the Howland Great Wet Dock. He’d recovered here. Become the man he was today for the new trade he’d learned and a true friendship earned. A pang uncoiling in his chest, he reached for the bell cord and rang the end of the workday. Smiling men hailed greetings when they saw him half out the window. He would go down and see them. After today, he’d not come back here again. He couldn’t.

  It was on him to leave the lightest trail. After the gold was stolen, Ancilla would trace his whereabouts. He’d have a word with Anne when they were alone in the forge. The league should scatter after the art salon.

  At the moment, he had goodbyes to attend.

  The peculiar throb inside him rippled wider. “I’ll go down and say my farewells.”

  “Yes, do.”

  His hand was on the latch, the door ajar when West spoke, his head down as he shuffled papers.

  “You said Miss Fletcher is a capable smith, but . . . I don’t suppose Miss Fletcher needs a man to help her with the forge, does she?”

  “Neither Miss Fletcher nor Mrs. Neville need a man for anything.”

  And that stirred the widest rift of all in Will’s chest.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Will hadn’t come home last night, though home wasn’t precisely correct. Will MacDonald didn’t live at Neville House. He sojourned here, a man passing through her life the same as he did eight summers ago. But that wasn’t precisely correct either.

  She rubbed her temple, the bruised one. Splitting hairs over Will MacDonald’s place in her home was not a priority, yet it was all she could think about.

  He was all she could think about.

  It was maddening.

  She’d never been one to dither about men. She liked them. They had their uses, certainly. Nor had she ever been the heartless variety of woman out to conquer every man who crossed her path. A rude return to her father’s Edinburgh house at fifteen had taught her a thing or two about men. Her grandmother’s staid, gentle home was one version of love. Another version existed with her brothers; theirs was a rough-and-tumble camaraderie thrown awry when she reappeared after years gone. To them, she was a foreign species. A sister.

  She developed a backbone, as one does in a household of men. Steeled by order, primed with love.

  It was all for the day she opened the door on Lothian Street and found a handsome, kilted highlander. Brash, broody, with a charm all his own, Will MacDonald was a gift. The harbinger of wide-open land and freedom.

  He made her heart sing, and at the moment, he made numbers swim before her eyes.

  Tiredness could be the issue. She’d stayed up late, a candle in the window, waiting. She’d kept her hands busy with mending. It was good for the soul, as Aunt Flora would say. It gave a woman hours to think.

  At the moment, her thoughts ran to giving Will a sound drubbing.

  She worried over him, big lug that he was with a brawny back and caber-tossing thighs. He was at heart a gentle soul, which made the numbers swim again. A foreign drop of wetness plopped indignantly on the page. She swallowed, or tried to. It was confusing, this dampness in her eyes and dryness in her throat. Her body demanded she acknowledge a simple fact: Will still owned her heart.

  A pained howl wanted out. Venting wouldn’t matter.

  The man destined to seek his father in Virginia was destined to leave her behind. He had grand plans (not that he’d shared them). She wasn’t in them. For the moment, her greatest task was to thwart the Countess of Denton. Throw the woman off from any hint of what Will and the league were going to do.

  She wiped her eyes, free to concentrate on important tasks that didn’t include wondering where Will MacDonald slept last night. Wondering if he had hit his head and fallen in the street. Or wondering if he’d availed himself to Red Bess’s tender mercies.

  She was free to ask important questions such as what color should a woman wear when meeting her nemesis? The question tumbled around Anne’s mind all morning. She’d already changed twice. It was exhausting, taking as much focus preparing to meet an artful enemy as an assignation with a cherished man. Funny about that. Will had never cared what she wore as long as she was in the gown. When he was randy, her out of her gown was even better.

  “Stop,” she said under her breath.

  “What’s that, dear?” Aunt Flora hemmed an apron in the great chair by the window. The sunlight helped her stitching.

  “It’s nothing.”

  She was careful not to turn fully around. Aunt Flora might be across the salon and her eyesight dimming, but she had a talent for sniffing out emotions and demanding a body confess.

  “I’m finishing the Neville Warehouse ledger . . . for my meeting with the countess.”

  “Excellent, dear.” The needle wound in and out of pristine muslin. “I feared you might fash yourself over Will no’ coming home last night.”

  “I’m not,” she said tersely. “He’s a grown man who can do what he wants.”

  Aunt Flora shifted in her seat, daylight shining on black petticoats. Her smile was beatific. “I seem tae recall saying the same tae Will—” the needle’s hypnotic rhythm stopped “—about you.”

  She rolled her pencil. “This isn’t his home. He is a guest. We should remember that.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  Anne scribbled on foolscap beside the ledger. It was her place to check her sums and draw aimless but satisfying pictures and shapes. Nothing of consequence. A rose, a swirl, a shape that morphed into a mess. She should concentrate. Will had stolen most of her night. He would not steal her day. There were things to do, such as deciding if wearing her garnets to the warehouse would be too much. To do what? Impress the Countess of Denton?

  The garnets were out of the question. She’d worn them when the countess came home early, and she would wear them again the night of the art salon. They were her only display of wealth, save her three gold rings. She made a fist and rubbed them. Pretty, scrawny things that once belonged to her mother. They reminded her of a Roman caestus, fighters’ gloves. Except these rings were too flat to be harmful and too thin for a show of wealth.

  Confidence was all she had. She’d array herself in it. Armed with her ledger, proof she was a competent woman of business. She’d wear the plum fustian petticoats she wore when setting Will free from Marshalsea.

  And seeing to his bath.

  That made her smile.

  Yes. The plum fustian with the stomacher and plain outer robe, all in the same unembellished fabric . . . save lacey elbows, all the better to hide her knife.

  Another reason to smile. She could take care of herself.

  She glanced at Mr. Neville’s plain weight-driven wall clock. Half past eleven. Enough time to change from another version of yesterday’s gray gown. This one had small red flowers painted on the fabric. She was scratching one little flower when a soft, metallic whine sounded. Her front door was opened.

  Her pulse leaped. She sprang up from her chair and ran to the salon door.

  “Will?”

  Sunlight haloed a feminine form.

  “No, it’s me. Cecelia.” She shut the door. “Where did he go?”

  Tension spooled between her shoulder blades. “I don’t know. He’s been out all night.”

  Cecelia untied her straw hat, one arm clutching papers to her ribs. “He didn’t come home?”

  “This isn’t his home,” she said irritably. “He is a guest.”

  How vexing. The ladies of her league already
thought of Will as a permanent fixture.

  “A guest you want to keep around, I think.” Cecelia tossed her hat on the entry table with a breezy, “Chan eil an earball aige fo do choi.”

  “I don’t want to keep his tail under my foot,” she said defensively. Just know his whereabouts.

  Cecelia’s eyes narrowed. “Did you cry over him?”

  “I—” She touched the corner of her eyes.

  Cecelia brushed her hand away. “Don’t. Wetness spikes your lashes prettily, long gorgeous things that they are.” Cecelia linked arms with her and they ambled into the salon. “Does he know that you’ve shed tears over him?”

  “I don’t . . . I didn’t shed tears over him.”

  Cecelia snorted, an artful feminine sound that matched her kohled eyes and rouged cheeks. “Your lashes tell me you shed a few tears, prettily, no blotched cheeks, but you are terribly pale.”

  She touched her cheeks. Cecelia wasn’t being unkind. She was being direct and helpful . . . and too insightful.

  “It’s written all over your face, Anne. You didn’t sleep a wink, did you?” Cecelia led them to the settee where they both sank onto its lumpy yellow seat. “Good morning, Aunt Flora.”

  “Good morning, dear.” The rhythmic needle didn’t stop.

  “Today, I am the bearer of bad news.”

  “What bad news, dear?”

  Cecelia unfurled the papers she’d carried and slapped them on the upholstery with a dramatic flair. “It’s all this sunshine, I tell you. It emboldens criminals.”

  Anne chuckled and picked up one of the papers. “Are we the pot decrying the kettle?”

  Cecelia waved off her quip. “We need torrential downpours, same as we had earlier this summer. Heavy rain cleans more than gutters.”

  Anne scanned the paper, its blaring captions and columns of print all the usual dire news and gossip. “What troubles you so?”

  “Don’t you see?” Cecelia rattled another paper. She punched an elegant finger at a caption.

  Anne read a few lines underneath it. “A housebreaking?”

  “Yes. A rather grisly one. The rise of violence and housebreakers has everyone talking.” Cecelia started to fold the paper. “I tried asking about our man at Covent Garden and—”

  “You asked about Will?”

  Feminine brows arched and the folding stopped. “No, Mr. Rory MacLeod.” Cecelia could’ve followed with you idiot but she kindly shook her head and continued folding. “You are lovesick,” she muttered.

  Anne bit her bottom lip. She checked the clock. It was almost noon. He still wasn’t back, and she’d have to leave shortly. Seeing Will made her day better. His presence was amiable. Amiable? She cringed behind the paper she was supposed to peruse. Amiable was better suited for recommending a chimney sweep or describing a favorite costermonger.

  She sucked in a deep breath and tried to read the paper. Cecelia was rummaging through the other papers, a line etched in otherwise smooth skin above her nose. Something had gotten her dander up.

  “You’ve heard nothing about Mr. MacLeod?” Anne asked conversationally.

  “Nothing. The man could be a ghost. Which is strange, don’t you think? The person you and Will described would surely have stopped in a pub or tavern somewhere in the City, yet not a soul claims to have heard of him.”

  “Strange.”

  “Would you like some luncheon, dears?” Aunt Flora rose from her chair, her knees cracking.

  “A little something would be nice,” Cecelia said.

  Aunt Flora headed to the kitchen and Anne refocused on the Fore Street Journal. Unlike the Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer, which Aunt Flora hoarded in a basket in the corner of the salon, it did not print pictures. She skimmed a hyperbolic column dedicated to housebreaking incidents.

  “It says, last night, there was a horrible housebreaking on Little Wood Street, another at Dean Street and another near Lincoln Inn Fields.” Anne felt her eyes pop bigger. “Housebreakers moving to the West End? Rather bold of them.”

  “Read further.”

  She skimmed, which worked the same. Her mind could barely concentrate on a column of sums, much less a breathless recounting of terribly vicious crimes.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “The part that says the Duke of Newcastle summoned Bow Street’s magistrate, Mr. Henry Fielding.” Carmine lips twisted a pout worthy of Drury Lane. “Friends tell me the crown insists on criminal reform, and Mr. Fielding has been charged to see it done.”

  Cecelia’s friends were a nebulous lot. She rarely expounded on who they were, and Anne never pressed. But that pout began to falter, and unease climbed into hazel eyes.

  “You look worried. Don’t be—snails move faster than the crown.”

  Cecelia shook her head emphatically. “No. This is different. Change is coming. Common folk are in an uproar. Look at what happened to you.”

  Anne touched the nearly forgotten bruise. London’s aggressive tumble was part of daily life.

  “I’ve been to Bow Street, Anne. I’ve watched Mr. Fielding in action. I’ve caught him watching me.”

  “Because you’re pretty.”

  “Or because he’s seen this.” Cecelia peeled back a finger’s width of lace, baring her tartan rosette.

  A well-known fact: Mr. Henry Fielding wrote vociferously against the Jacobite cause. It was just like Cecelia to flounce into the gallery of the magistrate’s court, her devil-take-you rosette showing. Anne sighed. From what she’d heard, it was just like Mr. Fielding to take note.

  “He keeps meticulous records of criminals and their associates—even if they’ve never been charged with a crime.” Cecelia worried a line in her petticoat. “This doesn’t bode well for us.”

  Cecelia was lightness and cheer. She spoke the language of fashion and beauty. Fun and flirtation were her currency. That she pored over newspapers was troubling. An obsessive habit? A restless mind? She read positively everything. Perhaps their drive for the Jacobite gold had been too much? It could be she was cracking under pressure.

  “Cecelia,” she chided. “I hardly think—”

  “He has a record of me!” Cecelia whisper-hissed.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The front door opened. Pleasant conversations rose, Aunt Flora greeting Aunt Maude returned from purchasing more candles, Margaret and Mary Fletcher joking about Neville House needing to lock its door, and not a manly brogue among them. Aunt Flora’s refrain rang in her head: He’s a grown man who can come and go as he pleases.

  At the moment, Will should be the least of her worries. The league needed her. Cecelia needed her. The woman was white as a sheet behind rouged cheeks.

  Anne squeezed her hand and said a quick, “Please. You and I will speak of this later. Not a word to them about Mr. Fielding and his meticulous records.”

  Cecelia gave a jerky nod. “None.” Though worry was plainly writ on her face.

  Anne rubbed trim on her skirt between her thumb and forefingers. It was difficult to think with the clamor in her mind. If Cecelia is in Mr. Fielding’s book, she might be too. And the other ladies.

  Had Bow Street’s magistrate heard whispers of their league?

  “I cleaned the key.” Mary swept into the salon, smiling proudly and her hand open.

  The silver Wilkes Locke key rested innocently in her palm. The key, still cast in wax, had gone home with Mary after their interesting sojourn at West and Sons Shipping. Will and Mr. West had taken Mr. West’s small boat and seen Mary delivered to Billingsgate Stairs, and the sun had just set when they delivered her to Bermondsey Wall’s beach.

  Mary’s hand inched closer. “Aren’t you going to take it?”

  She did. The metal was warm. Mary must have kept a firm grip on it all the way from White Cross Street. Silver twisted a pretty tangle on the bowhead, a nice recreation despite the fire having melted part of the wax.

  Mary hovered near, hands clasped, her head cocked as if she sensed something was amiss
.

  Anne cleared her throat and closed her fingers around the seditious key. “Thank you.”

  “Are you well?” Mary asked.

  “Will didna come home last night.” Aunt Maude tossed out that information.

  Mary mouthed a silent O.

  Anne shifted irritably. “He is a guest.” Which everyone ignored when a beaming Aunt Flora set a tray on the low table by the settee.

  Will MacDonald was only a few days in their fold, but he’d won a permanent place in their hearts. Why shouldn’t he? The man had knowledge of the key’s whereabouts, had sneaked into a house where he dreaded to return, and imprinted the key in wax. If these feats weren’t enough, he produced a forge—a forge!—for Mary to use when all seemed lost.

  The man was a miracle worker. He should be an honorary league member.

  She was happy calling him Hades. His absence was bedeviling.

  Aunt Maude set aside her basket of market goods. Plain wood chairs were brought over to encircle the low table. The Fletcher sisters and Aunt Maude and Aunt Flora chattered on, balancing small Lambethware plates in one hand, while selecting from the luncheon offering of fruit slices and palm-sized slices of meat and potato pie. Cecelia quietly gathered the newspapers she’d brought, and Anne tucked the Wilkes Lock key into her petticoat pocket.

  Life was a cheerful prospect for most of the league. Anne wanted to keep it that way.

  “Anne, aren’t you going tae eat?” Aunt Flora asked.

  Cecelia put a flaky triangle on her plate and poked a fork at its gold-baked edge.

  Anne checked the clock. Twenty minutes past noon. “I can’t. I must leave in ten minutes.”

  “She’s meeting Lady Denton at one o’clock,” Aunt Maude said.

  Cecelia stopped torturing her meat pie. “The witch of Grosvenor Square plagues you?”

  “Such scorn, delivered with perfect manners.” Mary smiled and elegantly wiped the corner of her mouth where a crumb sat. “It’s why you are dear to me, Cecelia.”