The Scot Who Loved Me

by Gina Conkle

  He stared at nothing in particular, his shoulders sinking under the burden of damaged pride. No boy dreamt of going to prison, yet he’d been there. Twice.

  After the war, the English had locked him away on a prison hulk with two hundred other common rebels. One year or so, it was, and each month, he’d endured the ritual of guards descending into the dank hold, a beaver hat filled with nineteen slips of white paper and one slip of black paper. Each month, twenty men took their turn, reaching into the hat. Being reckless, he’d stepped forward often. The prisoner who drew the black piece was tried and executed. Simple as that.

  At first, he’d cravenly prayed for the white slip. Later, he’d cravenly prayed for the black slip.

  One morning the guards called them all on deck, daylight scorching every prisoners’ eyes. Soldiers pointed the business end of their bayonets at him and the other rebels, telling them to seek shelter elsewhere. Shelter! As if rotting below deck was time spent on a pleasure barge. The Act of Indemnity had freed them. Left them as cast-off goods by the River Thames.

  The same ancient waters tapped the wall outside Anne’s house, and his nape prickled.

  She’d said imprisoned again.

  Did Anne know his whereabouts after Culloden? At the shed, she’d rubbed his arm and spoke of his working the docks.

  He hadn’t said a word about the docks.

  “There’s no harm in lettin’ me in for a wee bit of conversation and warmth.” He attempted a cordial smile. “My tackle is fair to freezin’.”

  “Oh, Will . . .” she groaned.

  His charm was rough at best, but it worked. A smile ghosted Anne’s mouth.

  “I’ll let you in under two conditions. First—” she checked the road from whence they came “—you listen to what I have to say about a highland league—”

  “A highland league? Are you mad? It’s—”

  “Dangerous.”

  “It’s sedition!” he whispered vehemently.

  His peace of mind faltered under the weight of Anne’s firm defiance. Scotland’s loss had unhinged him. He knew that. He’d lived with despair and was prepared to stay a forgotten man. But the determination in Anne’s eyes was born of stark rebellion. He’d seen the same in his mirror before the Uprising.

  Anger balled his right hand. He would pummel the man who’d snared Anne, Aunt Maude, and Aunt Flora into a losing proposition.

  “If it takes the starch out of your spine, I’ll listen. But it doesna change the fact that rebellion is sheer folly.”

  “So says the man willing to molder in prison over a kilt.”

  Mouth clamping, he eased his stance. As logic went, she had him there.

  “My demise, my choice. But, bringin’ down others . . . Your leader has porridge for brains, and I’ll be the mon to tell him.”

  Her lips curved beguilingly. “You shall have your chance. The league meets tomorrow.”

  “Good.” He cupped his hands and blew into them. “What’s your second requirement?”

  “You take a bath.” Anne coughed delicately and set a gloved finger under her nose. “You smell awful.”

  He chuckled, rubbing his hands for warmth. “I could use a good scrubbin’.”

  “Finally, we share common cause.”

  Anne unlocked her door, and he entered a humble home etched with signs of wealth and poverty. While she locked the door behind him, he dragged a dirty boot across an iron scraper. A faded mural of sloops covered one entry wall with London Bridge and river barges painted on the other.

  “Follow me.” Anne wasted no time, leading him through a small dining room to the kitchen.

  Embers heated four modest cauldrons at the hearth, and a dented copper tub gleamed in one corner. Anne dropped her cloak and gloves on the oak table while he waited. She stirred life into the kitchen’s dying fire, a gold medallion on a black ribbon teetering from her neck.

  “The tub,” she said, tucking the medallion into her bodice. “Bring it here.”

  Glad to be of use, he dragged it across the kitchen and set it down with a thud between the table and the hearth. “That’ll wake up the house.”

  “No one will bother us. Aunt Maude is exhausted from preparing a chamber for you and—” smiling like a conspirator, she hoisted a pot off its hook “—Aunt Flora nips brandy before bed.”

  She emptied one cauldron after another into the tub. He should help, but his feet were lead. Warmth, imprecise and imperfect, seeped into his bones. It came from faint light dancing on stone floors. From water’s cheery splash and the plum skirts hugging Anne’s bottom. He stood by the hearth, kneading his aching shoulder, weakened by a canny woman. Her weapons of choice were clean linens, a hot bath, and a cake of soap she set out for him. The comforts of home.

  “You knew I’d follow. That I’d have to see where you lived.”

  Was his voice hoarse?

  Anne was an enchantress, her fingertips swirling bathwater. “You’re a free man. That is what matters.”

  Shadows and light played on her bodice, and like a starving wretch, he took his fill. Steam anointing her skin. A tiny freckle blooming on her breast. Her cleavage, an enticing trail and the plump mounds pressing it. A man could spend all night drawing his finger through that mysterious line and count himself content. Even her collarbone’s silken ridge begged to be traced.

  Anne glowed. A widow’s independence became her.

  She stretched upright, firelight slanting across her face. “Your bath is ready.”

  He ceased his shoulder rubbing, the artless moment sinking in. He was about to take off his clothes, which wouldn’t be bad except that he’d been inside Anne. He’d tasted her. Their past whispered a sensual language he longed to forget. The same couldn’t be said of Anne. She was remote, as if tending a half-naked man in her kitchen was commonplace.

  Could be it was.

  Let her host all of Southwark. He was miserable, stretching angrily to free himself of his shirt. It was halfway off when he flinched, a groan curdling in his throat. Every cut and welt branded him.

  Warm hands urged his elbows down. “Let me help.”

  Arms heavy, he did.

  Mellow light licked the column of Anne’s neck and crafted her lashes as ebon fans. Her attentive hands checked a frayed seam. Slowly. Agonizingly. He burned to be irked with her for reappearing after all these years, but she was kindness itself with glossy midnight tresses.

  Black-haired lasses . . . his weakness.

  Her touches were innocent; his thoughts were not.

  Heat from the kitchen’s fire raked his legs. Sweat popped from his skin. He fancied himself stuck between Limbo and Lust, the First and Second Circles of Hell.

  “It’s a lost cause,” she murmured and ripped his shirt in two.

  He lurched, a silent howl bursting in his chest. Linen slipped off his shoulders. So quick, there and gone. A woman tearing off his clothes was savage. Primal. Made his blood pump, erratic and loud in his ears.

  Anne’s dark-fringed eyes met his. “It was the best solution.”

  Tell that to my reeling senses, lass.

  The ruined shirt sailed into the fire. Molars gritting, he felt his nipples pinch to needy points, and he knew who he wanted to touch them. Or kiss them. He wasn’t particular. Instead, his efficient dark-haired temptress dusted threads off his shoulder and accidentally skimmed his ribs with fingertips wispy as dandelion tufts.

  In short, a woman utterly unmoved at touching him.

  He eyed the ceiling, sweet agony rippling to his toes. How much more could he take?

  “Now the kilt,” she said.

  It was the splash of cold water he needed.

  “Oh no.” He grabbed his belt with both hands. “You’re no’ gettin’ my kilt.”

  “You plan to bathe in it?”

  “I’m no’ lettin’ you toss it to the fire. That’s blasphemy.”

  “You cannot be serious. It is beyond repair.”

  He glowered his best for a man slee
p deprived and lust addled. “I agreed to your demands. Now honor mine.”

  Anne’s slender nose nudged higher, and her eyes sparkled. She liked that he wanted to keep it.

  “Let me see what I can do to save it.” And bold as she did eight years ago, Anne hooked two fingers into the waist of his tartan and pulled him close, trust me flashing in her eyes.

  He grunted, a wee bit soused on her lavender scent and those tugging fingers. Trusting the woman was the rub. With his senses scrambled, he couldn’t think straight. If Anne removing his shirt was intoxicating pleasure-pain, her undoing his kilt was ruthless torture.

  Chin to chest, he had to watch.

  Pale, ringless fingers brushed grit off his belt. Dirt clods rained on his boots. Her hair grazed his forearm, black ropes tethering him. He could do with a night of tethering. A feminine body tucked into his. The friction, the softness. Filling his hands with silken hair. Breathy moans against his—

  “The league would be willing to purchase your passage to the colonies and give you a handsome bag of gold to boot. If you help us.”

  His lust landed with a thud on the kitchen floor. Nothing killed a mood like talk of sedition.

  “You know as well as I do, there’s no’ enough gold in England for us to be in the same room for long.”

  Her green gaze pinned him. “It has been eight years, Will. I require certain talents you possess, not social parley.”

  “I said I’d meet your league,” he grumbled.

  There was a jingle. Leather slackened at his waist, and the belt fell to the floor. His kilt drooped but otherwise stayed in place thanks to dried mud and ample sweat’s gluing effect.

  Anne nudged his belt aside with her foot. “Have you heard of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s treasure?”

  Muscles below his navel clenched when her hands invaded deeper territory between kilt and flesh. He concentrated on the far wall, heaviness in his ballocks reminding him his lust hadn’t vanished entirely.

  “The lost Jacobite gold? A myth. About as true as dragons and fey folk.”

  “What if I told you about seven casks filled with gold? Over a million French livres.”

  Anne’s eyes sought his, but the wall was safer while she unwrapped his kilt. “I’d say that’s a story meant to keep rebel hope alive.”

  “It is alive.”

  He dared to look into her eyes. What glittered there was bright, expectant, and hard as any gemstone.

  “Anne,” he said with all the patience he could muster. “The only gold to reach Scotland was thirteen thousand gold livres. Gold lost to the English.”

  Gold they’d desperately needed with two hundred soldiers in tow to help the fight. Gold that could’ve turned the tide of their scrabbly rebellion.

  “A spoil of war lost in March before the Uprising ended. But I am talking about a greater treasure.” She paused unwinding his kilt. “A treasure brought to the west coast in May . . . after the war ended.”

  He knew of the French ships, La Bellona and Le Mars, coming with promised aid. Every rebel did. The Uprising had been gasping its last breath when those ships ran a gauntlet of English warships, trying to deliver supplies. The promised guns, ammunition, and brandy he could believe—Frogs were always good for a tipple. But the French king giving up that much gold after the first shipment was taken by the English? For ragged highlanders who couldn’t unite? It defied reason. His own clan chief had stood with the Government while the chief’s son and heir had fought for the Bonnie Prince.

  They’d been doomed from the start.

  “I know of the ships.” His voice was gruff and tired. “But the gold? A fevered tale, best forgotten.”

  “It’s not a fevered tale.”

  The last yard of wool fell from his body. He was naked save his boots and a draft nipping his arse. This would be laughable, except he smelled worse than a gutter. Anne turned and folded his ruined tartan in silence, her back an unflagging line. He knew that posture. The subject of Jacobite gold was far from over. Toeing off his boots, he released a gusty sigh. The leather, like him, was well-worn, the shaft on both boots slumping badly. He nudged them aside and climbed into hot water.

  “Tell me,” he hissed between clamped teeth. “If the French delivered that much gold, why hasna the Government taken it?”

  Anne set his kilt on the table. “That Butcher, Cumberland, and his men were looking for it. The gold had to be moved.”

  “Never to see the light of day . . . the same as all treasure that doesna exist.”

  He slid under the water’s surface and sprang up fast. Heat prickled his limbs, sinking in muscle deep. Cleansing wetness sprang from his pores. He grabbed the soap and began scrubbing off the odor of prison and bad decisions.

  “It did see daylight,” she said. “The MacPherson of Cluny started spending it.”

  He dunked for a rinse, counted to five, and came up sputtering, “A highland chief spending money? That doesna prove a thing.”

  “It was enough for the Bonnie Prince. He sent Dr. Cameron to the highlands to retrieve the gold.”

  “And the poor mon was executed for his loyalty.” Eyelids heavy, he settled back in the tub. “Yet, no one has found this fabled treasure.”

  Sadly, Dr. Archibald Cameron’s death was not a fable. As a rebel of high status returned to Scottish soil, he’d become a hunted man. The London Daily Advisor had reported English soldiers chased the good doctor in the vicinity of Loch Arkaig. The same newspaper later trumpeted his grisly end in June. Disemboweled and hung because the Government couldn’t resist making a point—all the more reason to knock sense into Anne’s league.

  “As to Dr. Cameron,” Anne said quietly. “There was nothing we could do.”

  He sank deeper in hot water. “Don’t fash yourself. I heard the Government had him locked up tighter than a vicar’s virgin daughter. No visitors.”

  Suds trickled down his cheek. His beard would smell of Anne tomorrow, a twice-widowed woman with treason on her lips who owned a warehouse and had enough funds to pay a costly bribe, yet her house was a step or two above ramshackle. A woman he should leave to his past.

  “Oh, Dr. Cameron had a visitor,” she said over her shoulder. “A woman who claimed she was kin of the MacDonald chief of Clanranald.”

  He opened one eyelid. “Was it you?”

  “No.”

  His vision narrowed on uncombed curls spilling down Anne’s back. “How can you be sure of what this woman said?”

  “Because my source of information has never disappointed.” She turned around, a confident hand on her hip. “Of course, any sapscull would know what Dr. Cameron’s visitor was after.”

  “Jacobite gold?” Reluctant words were thick on his tongue. His mind refused complete surrender, not until he saw the gold and touched it.

  “The league found some of it.” Anne crouched beside him, zeal bright in her eyes. “Will . . . it’s here. In London.”

  Shock muted him. He sat up, needing to digest this, but Anne brimmed with excitement.

  “And we want you to help us steal it!”

  He dragged both hands over his scalp. After all these years, Anne sought him for theft. Not his heart nor his body. How lowering, to sit naked in his former love’s kitchen, battling lustful longings, while she asked him to commit a crime. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of. Thievery was never one of them. He’d been the clan chief’s enforcer, for goodness sake, the one to keep law and order. But the Jacobite treasure had been found, and highlanders were going to take it.

  Steal their own gold?

  Justice was a devious wench.

  The Government would see the matter differently, which shined a light on something he couldn’t ignore. Dr. Cameron’s mysterious visitor was no English spy sent to trick the prisoner. If the Government had gotten their hands on a single rebel livre, they would’ve gloated about it in every newspaper from Plymouth to Aberdeen. Their silence could mean only one thing.

  Anne had another rival for th
e gold—someone worse than King George.

  Water dripped coldly down his neck. Whoever bribed their way into that prison cell was wealthy, powerful, and unafraid of the crown. And a highland league crossing them? Easily crushed.

  Chapter Three

  Smalls landed on his bed—clean, patched, and thankfully his. Morning’s first greeting was followed by more garments flying through the air. Breeches, plop. Waistcoat, shirt, burgundy coat. Plop, plop, plop. His unstarched neck cloth was a well-aimed streamer falling silently on the jumbled pile. A sylph in green petticoats roamed his bedchamber, her hem tapping slender ankles while she went about her business. Dishes clinked. Water splashed. Drapes were snapped properly open.

  He winced at teeth-jarring daylight shocking his body.

  “I am glad you have seen fit to greet the day.” Anne tied back the drapes, a blur of feminine efficiency to his sleep-hazed eyes.

  He scooted upright and scratched his chest, a nearly sated man. One should never underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep to set a body right. It was almost as satisfying as sex.

  Almost.

  “Good morn to you,” he rumbled, entertained by his morning visitor.

  “You mean good afternoon. It is a quarter past one.”

  “Is it?” He wrestled a sheet from the bed, tied it around his waist, and padded to the window to see for himself.

  Gray skies beckoned the brave to crawl atop St. Paul’s Cathedral and touch heaven. A peaceful place above the sprawl. The rest of the world was not so disposed. Wherries, light boats delivering passengers, beetled the river’s surface. A pleasure barge sliced a path near the bridge, the oarsmen working as one. In the distance, docks were a hive. Barrels rolled and stacked. Fat merchants and customs men scuttling around dockers, warehousemen, and clerks. All paid homage to London’s other cathedral, the Custom House.

  Worship of the almighty coin. The City’s lifeblood.

  Money’s fever plagued the best of men. Would he be counted among them?

  His breath fogged cold glass. He could almost feel Anne’s breathing. The quiet, the steadiness. A soldier in silk, she betrayed nothing of what beat within. Did her heart flutter over Jacobite gold in London? He’d fallen asleep to that refrain. Last night’s tempting offer of passage paid and a fat purse would set him up nicely in the colonies. Or he could leave Anne’s house an honest man and shed the last vestiges of the rebellion.