The Scot Who Loved Me

by Gina Conkle

  Hand over her heart, Cecelia bowed from her seat. “I do try.”

  Cecelia passed a fledgling smile to Anne. Jacobite gold wasn’t their only binding tie.

  “Lady Denton sent word yesterday. A letter calling for us to renew our negotiations for the warehouse,” Anne explained. “Will thinks she knows something.”

  “She probably does.” Cecelia set down her plate, her attempt at eating done.

  “You think so?”

  Cecelia curled one foot under her bottom and lounged as best a woman could in a whalebone corset. “You’re good with ciphering, Anne. What is the outcome when you have a woman with tremendous resources and the morals of a snake?”

  She didn’t have to answer. Her league had done the math and come up with the answer.

  “We’ve known the odds were against us since afore we left Scotland,” Aunt Maude said.

  There was a rustle of agreement. This small group of women was ready to change their part of the world, and not the crown nor a powerful, ennobled woman could stop them. Unfortunately, they’d labored unnoticed for so long that anonymity had become a warm blanket they’d taken for granted. But too many unfortunate intersections were colliding of late, intersections that could not be ignored. A change was needed.

  “You aren’t reconsidering our plans for the twenty-eighth, are you? We canna let fear of what the countess could do stop us. We are equal to the task.” Margaret Fletcher, by far the quietest of their merry band, had spoken.

  Anne smiled gently, adding stout-hearted to Margaret’s qualities.

  Forks scraped plates politely. Everyone waited for Anne. Knowledge glinted between her and Cecelia, shiny as quicksilver and twice as dangerous. The two of them were thick as thieves among genteel, skirted thieves.

  “Quitting is not a choice,” Anne said at last. “We go as planned.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Aunt Flora’s fork plowed into a substantial bite.

  Anne rose from her perch on the settee, fingering her medallion. She had less than five minutes to impart needful information.

  “There is, however, one small twist.”

  The fork scraping stopped. Five expectant feminine stares sought hers.

  “All of you must leave the night we take back the gold.” Her gaze touched each woman. “It’s best to assume our cloak of anonymity is gone.”

  “Do you think she knows about us?” Aunt Flora asked. “For all the times I’ve been tae her kitchen, she’s never set foot in that room. Not once.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Even if Lady Denton doesn’t know exactly what we’re up to at the moment, she certainly will once the gold is gone.”

  “But to leave . . . so fast?” Mary asked.

  She was firm. “Yes. Do you have someone to watch over your shop?”

  The best tactic was to herd the conversation away from if they left to when and how it would be done. A tidy maneuver, it worked wonders.

  Mary rested her plate in her lap. “I did hire a shop girl last month.”

  “She’s trustworthy,” Margaret said. “I can vouch—her character is sterling.”

  Anne was pacing in earnest now. A glance at the clock: two minutes to leave.

  “Why would the countess have any inkling of me or Margaret?” Mary asked. “Or Aunt Maude and Aunt Flora? We’re invisible to the likes of her.”

  She set hands together. In supplication. To beg. To order, if she had to, though her shepherdess skills had grown legendary. Why be imperious when building accord was much more effective?

  Trembling, urgent need rose inside her. She wanted to choose her words with care, but an ardent, “Please,” was all that came out.

  Young Margaret Fletcher’s eyes rounded. Aunt Maude’s mouth puckered fiercely. Aunt Flora and Mary’s did too. The seated women checked each other quietly. A bridge of agreement was built one brick at a time. Anne was standing on a structure of trust which had been built long before this moment, and, God willing, would last long after.

  Mary exhaled, her cheeks puffing. “Well, I’ve always wanted to visit Brighton. Perhaps this is our chance,” she said to the room.

  “Flora and I will go with you,” Aunt Maude said, patting Mary’s arm. “And you, Cecelia. Will you join us?”

  Cecelia was coiling a curl around her finger. “I think I shall take the waters at Bath. It should be a fine visit this time of year.”

  “What about you and Will?” Aunt Flora’s blue eyes clouded with worry. “And the gold?”

  Anne strode to her escritoire where the ledger waited, an innocent prop in this ruse. She knew the fate of the Jacobite treasure. If Will was here, she could ask him about his plans beyond the general find his father in Virginia. He’d certainly earned substantial payment to get him there, which was another matter to resolve. His payment. Answering his question about that August day eight years ago was not nearly enough.

  “I don’t know what he has planned.” Saying that squeezed her heart. She opened the slender drawer that housed the Neville Warehouse key.

  “He hasna said much tae me,” Aunt Flora said. “But you’ll be safe. Hauling the gold and all up north?”

  The Neville Warehouse key nestled in a corner of the drawer. She dumped it in her pocket, shut the drawer, and collected the ledger. She hugged the account book to her chest and faced the women she’d labored with, colluded with, and generally grown to love over the past few years. She needed the book’s gentle armor. Her heart was threatening to beat out of her chest and tears of a sudden wanted to spill.

  “Mr. Harrison, an acquaintance from the White Lamb, helped arrange my passage on a recommissioned sloop named—” she held her breath because it was the oddest turn “—The Grosvenor.”

  “Oh, Anne.” Cecelia’s groan tripped into a delicious giggle.

  She managed a wobbly smile. “It was Mr. Harrison’s suggestion . . . who of course has no idea what I am taking to Arisaig.”

  Mary speared a slice of fruit. “Quite fortuitous, don’t you think?”

  “It is. I will leave at dawn the morning after we take back the gold.”

  She basked in the glow of friendship. Days like this were coming to an end. This unique, trying, and utterly satisfying time in her life would be no more. Taking home Jacobite gold was going to happen, which meant her life would change drastically.

  She checked the clock and her pulse leaped unpleasantly. Twenty minutes to one!

  “I must be off!”

  She ran to the entry hall and jammed her straw hat on her head. While her nimble fingers tied a black silk ribbon under her chin, Mary was in the midst of recounting their visit to West and Sons Shipping. She was half out the door, nearly free to concentrate on the countess when she heard Aunt Maude.

  “But what happened tae Will?”

  Silence.

  Anne clicked the door shut and soaked up blessed sunshine. Will. He was a heart-breaking puzzle. How could a woman long for a man, yet want to soundly thrash him?

  She turned west, blending into Southwark’s foot traffic: chimney sweeps, sweat streaking charcoaled cheeks, costermongers hawking vegetables already limp in summer sun. These were Southwark’s foot soldiers, the common folk striving to keep impoverishment at bay. The Neville Warehouse ledger was her armor in that fight, clamped in her left arm, covering her heart. She was off to a battle of sorts, but her mind picked the bones of earlier wonderings. What happened to Will?

  Was he in a ditch?

  Did he spend his evening, thoroughly sotted with Mr. West?

  Or was he hunting a man with a T-branded thumb in a misguided effort to exact justice for her?

  Cut from a chivalrous mold, Will would strive hard to right a wrong—especially his wrongs. Guilt had colored his eyes the night she’d told him of the babe in her belly eight years past. He’d left her and their unborn babe to fight a war. A man would have to work very hard to atone for that. The matter was done for her. History.

  A stubborn man, Will wouldn’t see it the sam
e.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Pink-arsed cherubs cavorting on clouds was too much by any standard, a treacle image for a woman who’d never been angelic a day in her life. Yet, the heavenly tableau adorned Lady Denton’s gilt-trimmed door. On closer inspection, plump little angels decorated the entire vis-à-vis carriage, their innocent faces peeking from clouds on every panel. Excess run amok. Within the carriage, indolent fanning slowed.

  “Mrs. Neville, how kind of you to join me.”

  Anne bent the brim of her straw hat for more shade. Pearl earbobs the size of thumbnails decorated the countess’s ears.

  Pearls. Doesn’t every woman wear them to purchase a warehouse?

  Swallowing her sarcasm, she strode to the carriage. Her legs were equipped with better manners than her brain. If she had her druthers, she’d walk to the warehouse door, and let the countess meet her there. Alas, her widow’s independence ran only so deep. Good breeding was her bedrock, thanks to her grandmother. Thus, she found herself approaching the carriage for a better view of cloud-swimming cherubs on a field of blue.

  “Lady Denton.” A touch of mockery in her voice, she swept the deepest of deep curtsies and held it.

  With strong and slender thighs, she could play the obsequious game all day should Countess Denton require it.

  A snort sounded while she rose slowly, her gaze to the ground. The countess wasn’t fooled by the display.

  “You’re late.” The fan snapped shut.

  Lady Denton was a face in her carriage, her black hair a fashionable tête de mouton mound of curls. Sheep’s head curls were all the rage. Anne’s hair was a horse tail down her back.

  “I beg pardon for my lateness,” she said. “But as you can see, Neville Warehouse hasn’t gone anywhere.”

  “Humor. How refined.” The countess rapped her fan against the window, and a footman in scarlet and royal blue livery scurried to open the carriage door.

  “I find humor helps,” Anne said, stepping back to give the countess room. “Makes the days pass amiably.”

  “Wine and sex do the same.”

  Her step hitched, the stumble slight. Well, that was unexpected.

  “These cobbles, my lady. So uneven.”

  “Don’t be a bore, Mrs. Neville. The cobbles are fine.” The countess was silk unfurling, ice pink and butter yellow. “You were honest with me, it seemed fitting that I do the same.”

  So that was how it was going to be. There was a moment, the sun anointing their meeting while both women took measure of the other. A decision staked itself firmly in Anne’s mind. Confidence would be met with confidence. A woman could fly no better flag.

  “You already gave me a taste of your honesty at Denton House, my lady.”

  A fractured, artful laugh and, “I did, didn’t I?”

  The countess smoothed her skirts and rotated fully, taking in sun-bleached wood and seagulls squabbling over a dead fish. Gun Wharf was small by Southwark standards. Mostly timber and stone passed through here, raw materials for a master craftsman to create something bigger and better somewhere else. With only four warehouses, business was quiet. It always was. Even harlots at sunset sought their custom elsewhere.

  Lady Denton eyed each warehouse, her bored gaze stopping at the fourth, its sign dirt smeared and faded. A W was visible.

  “What is that one?”

  “The sign says Wilcox, my lady. A deserted warehouse, I collect.” She drummed impatient fingers on her ledger. “Shall we walk to my warehouse?”

  Three male heads popped out behind a door at the other end of the wharf. The carriage was a head-scratching sight. The lady who’d decamped it, a floating confection, walking to Neville Warehouse.

  “You might be surprised to learn that I have been looking forward to our meeting,” the countess said.

  “I wouldn’t know that from your missive.”

  Her comment was a parry, left unmet. Lady Denton’s admission was intimate, a door ajar, inviting entry. She was intrigued. That quip about wine and sex still floated feather-like through her brain, the words trying to find the proper place to land.

  “You seek an honest audience with me,” she said.

  “It would be a fine beginning.” Lady Denton tipped her head and read the faded blue-and-white sign above the door. “Neville Warehouse established 1733.”

  An iron padlock sealed the entry. Anne fished around her petticoat pocket, metal clinking. Her fingers brushed the Wilkes Lock key. She froze. Heat needled her scalp as she flicked away the dangerous, filigreed silver piece.

  She’d forgotten that there were two keys in her pocket.

  Lady Denton watched her, the sign no longer of interest. Brows like tapered half-moons pressed together with budding impatience.

  A smile stuck to her lips while her hand closed over a plain bowhead key.

  “Here it is.” She held it up and rammed it in the lock.

  Those tapered half-moons reset. Anne swung the door wide to let Lady Denton pass. She exhaled softly behind the lady’s back.

  Of all the blunders!

  Eyes to azure skies, she steeled herself and went inside. Daylight landed on a shoulder-high stack of Bavarian pine and the countess, poking around the near-empty building. Eight crates were stacked on one wall. A dozen barrels nestled two abreast, Mermaid Brewery branded on their bellies. Anne busied herself with unlocking the inside padlock of a larger, river-facing door. Heels digging in, she heaved the door, its rusty wheels squeak, squeak, squeaking. The Thames was on the other side, a modest wood crane and its iron hook overhanging it. The loft above housed the crane’s treadwheel, which powered the crane.

  A narrow strip of land, enough to stack two barrels side by side stood between her and timeless waters. She waited, more curious than alarmed. The key was in her pocket, and truth be told, she’d skirted more dire circumstances than a noblewoman mired in ennui.

  Lady Denton approached, her face . . . charitable.

  “May I see your accounts?” The countess stretched her smooth pale arm.

  The innocuous ledger was passed, and the countess actually pored over it for several minutes, her manicured fingers skimming one page to the next. She’d guess the Countess of Denton cyphered accounts with diamond-like sharpness.

  “You split your custom between factoring and rent,” the countess said. “But in the last year, you’ve averaged less than five pounds a month.”

  Because chasing stolen treasure is time-consuming.

  Instead she offered, “Your calculations are correct. As to my modes of custom, I prefer renting. It’s easier . . . if one finds reliable people.”

  “That is the challenge.” Corners of the lady’s mouth curved as if Anne had passed a test.

  Factoring was time-consuming, purchasing goods that might not be of the best quality (a trial by fire sort of education). A painful lesson learning the subtleties of English granite came to mind. If that risk wasn’t enough, seeking buyers who might not deliver promised funds was another risk. Prime Bavarian lumber lounged in her warehouse, the casualty of a price dispute between two merchants. She wouldn’t be paid until they resolved it.

  The countess shut the ledger. “But no other custom than wood and stone? Rather dull, Mrs. Neville.”

  She smiled. There was the Countess of Denton’s bite.

  “Dull is fine, my lady. It keeps a roof over my head and debt collectors away.”

  She was glad she hadn’t entered Mr. West in her column entitled Future Custom. Her ladyship had clearly scanned the book. For possible connections to the league? It wouldn’t do to draw the man into a troubled web not of his making. She’d let her guard slip with the key. A bad mistake. Arms folding under her bosom, she’d not let another happen again.

  Lady Denton, by contrast, leaned casually against the opposite door frame, her face to the river’s breeze. “I’ve come to the conclusion that you and I are very much alike.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “We are seekers, you and I.
We take what we want despite the silly rules that stand against us.”

  She weighed those words on a scale. There was substance in them. A faint thread, drawing parallel lines. Her struggle, Lady Denton’s struggle. Two women making their way in London.

  Her chin tipped with doubt. They weren’t alike. Not at all.

  “You’re skeptical,” the countess said. “It’s understandable.”

  “I’m assembling all your words. On the one hand, subtle insults. On the other, refreshing directness.”

  A feline smile spread. “You understand me. I knew you possessed a keen mind.”

  She pushed off the wall, struck by the idea of another test done and met with satisfaction. “Why don’t I show you the treadwheel crane? It’s in my counting house in the loft above.”

  “I’ve seen enough.”

  “Are you prepared to make an offer?”

  “For this? Absolutely not.”

  Anne stepped impatiently to take back her ledger. “Then our business is concluded.”

  “Why the rush? Are you off to plan a wedding?”

  She stopped and dug fingernails into her petticoats. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  It was Lady Denton’s turn to tip her chin with doubt.

  “Don’t play me for a fool. The two of you are hardly the smitten pair. You need help with this—” the countess arced her ledger-holding arm at the warehouse “—and Will has experience on the yards. It’s a marriage of convenience.”

  Her jaw dropped. So, this was how her ladyship made sense of her connection with Will.

  “My sources tell me you married Mr. Neville and you gained a warehouse. I did the same but on a grander scale with the Earl of Denton, but that is where our similarity ends.” The countess marched slowly forward, stamped earth submitting to her silk shoes. “My marriage settlement included one warehouse, a fee simple title. Freehold ownership, Mrs. Neville, and I nursed it like a child,” she said proudly. “Now, I own all the warehouses between Arundel Stairs and Strand Bridge. My warehouses are filled with coachmakers, India paper manufactories and hangers, and soft-paste porcelain dishes. Pretty things, beautiful things. Things that sell for a great deal of money.”