The Scot Who Loved Me

by Gina Conkle

  Aunt Maude and Aunt Flora’s voices rose and fell in sisterly rhythm. Cecelia was among them. The Fletcher sisters would follow. Dinner would be on the table soon. This would be their last meeting to go over the details for tomorrow night.

  The time to steal Jacobite gold was almost upon them.

  She tucked the medallion in her cleavage and cuffed hair off her cheek. Will’s mirror showed flushed cheeks, starry eyes, and moist lips. Mussed hair was life on the wharf, but the former traits were all Will MacDonald’s affect. Cold water splashed on her face would help. Lots of chilly water.

  “Anne?”

  Her name on Will’s lips was a question laced with . . . hope? Did they have another chance? She grasped plain cloth between her breasts. It hurt too much to hope.

  “Will.” She turned around, and he noted her cloth-gripping hand.

  The clench was necessary, it kept her together. She wouldn’t tell him about the Countess of Denton’s offer. It was beneath him, and she’d already scored Will’s pride when he first met the league. She could never make up for her unintended ambush—could anyone? She’d hurt him, he’d hurt her. Theirs was the impossible spiral that wanted closing. True atonement was impossible, and forgiveness too deep and wide to comprehend.

  Still, she’d try.

  “Will, you don’t have to wear the bigamist’s clothes or his shoes. I know you don’t like them, most of them, anyway. Go to that art salon as you are—dock worker, former highland rebel . . . take your pick.”

  His head lifted off the pillow. “I’ll be whatever you need me to be.”

  “I want you to be you.” Each word sunk an arrow into her heart.

  For some reason, this need burned fervently inside, as if she would replay their history and see the brash, kilt-wearing foot soldier she fell in love with. But nothing could erase the years and change between them. Worn-out burgundy velvet shimmered modestly on a wall peg near the window. There was a history behind that coat. One day she would hear it. For now, she’d be content for Will to wear it. It made him happy, that coat and his boots.

  That had to be true love—wanting someone just as they are.

  Will rotated, a leisured turn in which he bunched linens strategically. Propped up on his elbow, dark blond hair at his shoulder, he was regal as a lion . . . or a pagan. Definitely a foreign prince, naked on his throne bed. They were both eyeing his favorite coat.

  “Wear it every day,” she said. “Wear it to the night of the art salon . . . I don’t care. I want you to be comfortable and happy.”

  To which his head cocked and he watched her with a discerning gaze. If she wasn’t careful, Will would see through her. Every flaw, every error and misstep.

  “I’ll see you at dinner.” She fled his bedchamber and shut the door behind her. Its wood panels supported her back while she gathered her wits.

  Be it through prison or the war, Will had gained the gift of understanding. Seeing more, doing more, living a good and decent life, despite bad decisions. It made him a better man. She, however, was crumbling inside, a castle built of sand assaulted by waves.

  She was falling apart bit by bit.

  But the fuse she’d lit with Will? Unfinished.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ancilla rolled her wrist, a lethargic effort to power her fan. The toil was hardly worth it. Her carriage baked in a shaft of sunlight, stalled as it were. Departing Southwark’s narrow, labyrinthine streets required the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon. The roads were abominable, a fair number too narrow for a modern carriage to pass. Buildings leaned liked old drunks, lathe and plaster timbered relics in poor repair. Stuart kings were at fault. They lacked foresight. Many a man did.

  And the odor . . . Appalling.

  Clean streets? Is that too much to ask?

  She winced when bad onions passed inches from her open window (she had a costermonger to thank for that). If the ramble-and-halt rhythm of her carriage didn’t give her a mal de tête, the stench surely would. She mashed a perfume-drenched handkerchief over her nose. Reveling in victory might help. Her meeting with Mrs. Neville was a success by any measure.

  The woman had been properly shocked.

  Rich employment. The chance to make her name as a woman of business because she would be generous and encourage Mrs. Neville to seek her own custom . . . as long as it didn’t interfere with her empire. When the time was right and trust ran deep, she would reveal just how intricate her trade ran.

  All in good time—if she could get out of this forsaken part of the City. Her carriage lurched to a halt again, and a footman appeared outside her window.

  “My lady, there appears to be several barrels in the road ahead. A few broken by the looks. Men are cleaning them up, but it may be several minutes afore we can move on.”

  Afore. His brogue sent a delectable shiver over sticky skin.

  “Of course,” she said, waving him off with her cotton handkerchief.

  He bowed and took his place again at the back of her carriage. She did have a weakness for Scotsmen, highlanders in particular, and their supposed wild, uncouth manners. Some were dull as bricks with barnyard habits. Will MacDonald was the exception. He was the diamond in the rough, eyes like ancient amber and a body made for sin.

  His curious mind and tender soul had burrowed deep inside her. He’d won a piece of her admittedly closed heart when he helped with her son. Normally she kept a wide berth between her private footmen and James. But Will sensed her frustration and offered to help. There was only so much a mother could do for her son. Boys needed a man to guide them.

  James had been a gangly youth, his voice cracking, his confidence faltering. Her husband, the late Earl of Denton, never gave two figs about his son and heir. Will did. The two took to each other, thick as thieves, fishing, swimming, riding on her estates. Will taught her son to shoot, how to clean a fish, and shoot a bow and arrow.

  For James, the sun rose and set on Will.

  There had only ever been one man in her heart—her son, now at university.

  Will had found a way in too.

  His first days serving her, she found him in her library. He marveled at her wealth of books. He’d only ever read two. Their first months together, he’d read twenty.

  She lavished gifts on him, which he refused, unlike other men who’d played the role of her private footman. Leeches, most of them, who quickly became tiresome. Not Will. His pride was horribly offended when she offered to purchase a house for him.

  She’d thought it a step up. He’d thought it the worst hell.

  A man kept by a woman.

  Why? It worked well for thousands of women. But men could be particular.

  She’d wanted a family. Will had never broached the subject of marriage. It was impossible. Her rank, his lack of it. Will had grown restless. She could see it in his faraway stares, and he didn’t approve of some of the men she’d hired. But in quiet moments, she knew. There had to be another woman, someone in his past, but her investigators could find no such woman. Between the war and Will’s clan scattered to the wind, reliable resources were hard to find. Few highlanders wanted to talk to her English agents anyway.

  But there was a woman. She knew it in her bones. Will pined for her.

  If she could find her, she would crush the woman. Find a way to make her disappear. She had resources. Will, however, didn’t seek the woman.

  She pressed perfumed cotton over her nose. He’d left with nothing more than a few farthings in his pocket and the clothes on his back. The same as what he had when she found him at Marylebone Pleasure Gardens. Like others of her station, she hired a guard to walk alongside her carriage while they traveled those dark, perilous streets on the garden’s perimeter. Criminals destroyed streetlamps all the better to work in darkness. Brawny men like Will offered their services, to guide the carriages of London’s best citizens.

  Will had stayed by her window, his charm rough but endearing. When her carriage reached safer streets, sh
e opened her door to him and he obliged her. Being with Will had been a near perfect year. She wanted him back. Simple as that.

  Her eyes fluttered shut, all the better to remember.

  “Lady Denton!” a woman called from the street.

  She roused to scan the faces outside. Grizzled men walked by, hair graying, cheeks dirty, their clothes dirtier. Whores plied their trade, hands fanning shiny faces against the heat. One of them sauntered from the pack of torn hems and bored faces, her hair an alarming shade of red.

  “I remember you from Cuper’s Pleasure Garden, my lady, before it was shut down—” the whore waved a dirt-grimed hand at her own head “—it’s me, Red Bess.”

  “Red Bess . . . I beg your pardon, but I cannot recall making your acquaintance.” She was kind to whores most times. They had their uses and most were a wealth of information.

  A giggle uncoiled. “You’re a different one, milady. Fine manners and all.” Red Bess crossed her arms casually under her bosom. “My hair is my trade card. A way to remember me. If not, you might remember my friend, Peg Boyle.”

  Ancilla could feel a wan smile spreading. Peg Boyle, a Cuper’s Pleasure Garden whore, had been particularly helpful in the past, and she’d been rewarded for it. By the gleam in Red Bess’s eyes, she wanted to be helpful too. A seller of information. But in this part of Southwark? The quality of it was doubtful. Ancilla dug into her velvet coin purse. A shilling would make the woman go away.

  She passed the shilling out the window. “Here, a deposit.”

  The coin fell into Red Bess’s open hand.

  “You can do better than a shilling, milady.”

  “You’re an insolent piece.” She raised her fan to summon her footman.

  “I have information you’ll want, milady.” Red Bess’s tone cleaved the fat from their conversation. “But you’ll have to pay more than this.”

  A frisson impelled Ancilla to sit up and take note. The whore was dead serious, tired (no doubt the hazard of her profession) but quite focused. Her thin-lipped mouth was void of false friendliness, and she had known Peg Boyle.

  “Very well. I’ll pay a half crown if your information is good.”

  “It’s good, milady, and I’ll take three half crowns for it.”

  Her blood spiked with irritation and interest. Red Bess was astonishingly confident in what she had to offer, confident enough to wave it like a juicy steak.

  Ancilla was hungry enough to bite. She produced a half crown from her velvet purse and offered it.

  “I said three half crowns, milady.” Red Bess was mutinous.

  “We’ll build a bridge, you and I. If your first offering is worthwhile, you’ll get more. If not, our transaction is done.”

  “Start diggin’ in that velvet purse of yours because my information is about the widow of Bermondsey Wall, Mrs. Anne Neville—”

  “I have paid better people than you to inquire about the woman.” Disappointed, Ancilla’s hand dropped to her lap.

  “—and Will MacDonald.” Red Bess smiled slyly.

  She sat taller despite the road’s atrocious smell.

  So, the whore remembered seeing her with Will. She and Will had gone to Cuper’s Pleasure Garden to watch fireworks when he’d been in her household. Will’s sudden betrothal to the Southwark widow had been a surprise.

  Her investigator had begun his work last spring and concluded it midsummer when she was still at her country estate. She wouldn’t offer the esteemed position of managing her warehouses without a study of the woman first. The investigator’s report painted a picture of a reliable woman of humble commerce with two older, unnamed female relatives in her household. He’d noted Mrs. Neville’s visits, few though they were, to London’s less savory taverns. The hidden message being, the woman might have a tolerance for working outside the law. Even better, there was no hint of interest in a third marriage, but Mrs. Neville was a handsome woman. A sudden, late summer betrothal wasn’t out of the question.

  “Go on.”

  “’Bout a week ago, I was standing outside the Iron Bell. It was midnight, the streets empty, no custom to speak of. Then who comes walkin’ right here on Mill Lane, but Mrs. Neville herself with a gorgeous man in a tattered kilt ’bout ten paces behind her.” Red Bess smirked. “A rare sight, it was.”

  “Thus far, I’m not impressed with the quality of your information.”

  The carriage’s rear spring gave and the footman appeared. “Three more minutes, milady.” His gaze slid to Red Bess. “Is all well here, milady?”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, waving him off. To Red Bess, “Go on.”

  “The next night, Mr. Ledwell, a warder from Marshalsea, was at the Iron Bell. He had some awful bruises round his eyes, but he was braggin’ ’bout how he got the best of the other man, a highlander, dragged to Marshalsea, arrested for wearin’ his kilt. I figured it had to be the man I saw the night before.” She paused for dramatic effect. “But how did he get out of prison?”

  “You need this—” Ancilla held up a half crown “—to continue your tale?”

  “You and I have good accord, milady.” Red Bess took the coin and stuffed it behind stained scarlet stays. “Another pint, an’ the warder told me a woman paid thirty half guineas for the man’s release and his arrest record.”

  “Thirty half guineas? A princely sum.”

  “A woman who pays that means business.”

  “Or she wanted this particular man.” Ancilla’s vision narrowed. Bribes greased the wheels of London’s prison, a standard story, but thirty half guineas for a man Mrs. Neville had met this summer?

  “That’s what I thought, especially it being Mrs. Neville. She keeps her warehouse in good repair, but her house is not the house of a woman who can toss around thirty half guineas.”

  “Or the warder lied because he wanted to impress you,” she said. In the matter of bribes and information, one had to consider all possibilities.

  “No, milady. I have proof.”

  “Proof?”

  “Show me your next coin and I’ll show you my proof . . .’cause this is one you’ll want to see.”

  Another half crown was passed. Red Bess took it and slid it into her stays. Then she did the oddest thing, pressing her body against the carriage, head swiveling to the left and the right, her hands fishing south on her person. A thump, and the whore stepped back, producing a shiny gold half guinea, clamped between her middle finger and forefinger.

  “Mr. Ledwell paid for his tup with this. He took me from the back, which gave me time to look at the coin and think ’bout where I’d seen Will MacDonald’s face. That’s when I remembered you.” Red Bess’s voice dropped as if now the woman was reaching the meat of her tale. “Mr. Ledwell finished his business and I said how smooth and pretty was the coin he gave me. He said all of them were just as smooth.”

  “A smooth coin? Not exactly a scintillating fact, I’m afraid.”

  Red Bess’s eyes were flinty shards. “How ’bout a fifty-year-old coin? Is that scint’lating enough?”

  “Let me see.” Ancilla snatched the coin and read 1703 on one side, VIGO on the other.

  The coin was remarkably shiny and clean, its weight solid and true. A tin disc in the middle was a forger’s trick to melt the coin and recast it with less gold. Yet, this coin was true. She’d held enough to know. Red Bess reached into the carriage and took back her coin. The impertinent grasp would normally get her knuckles smacked, but Ancilla’s spine fell against the squab.

  How did a five-pounds-a-month (before expenses) warehouse owner accumulate that much money?

  “I can tell by yer face that yer beginnin’ to see the value of my information, milady.” Red Bess’s jaw managed to be mulish and her eyes triumphant. “I’m thinkin’ this last bit I have is worth two half crowns.”

  “You have more information?”

  Red Bess nodded and Ancilla opened her velvet purse and paid the sum.

  Red Bess’s fist closed around two half crowns and
she finished her late summer tale. “Yesterday, Black Horse Brewery’s new man made a delivery. He’s a Scot, hails from Linlithgow. Said while he was out making deliveries, he thought he saw a man he knew walking by Bermondsey Wall. A Will MacDonald, who fought in the Rebellion of ’45. The Black Horse brewer is a talker. Says he fought in the rebellion too, but that’s not the first time he saw Will MacDonald.”

  The open window framed Red Bess’s face, a flushed and avid face about to impart two half crowns’ worth of information.

  Ancilla was at the edge of her seat. “Tell me.”

  “The brewer says first time he saw Will MacDonald was in Linlithgow summer before the rebellion . . . when he was kissing a black-haired woman. The very same black-haired woman the brewer saw with Will near Bermondsey Wall.”

  Ancilla squeezed her velvet purse hard enough that coin edges bit her palm. Anger, putrid and vile, threatened to overflow. Red Bess jumped back, her eyes flaring wide.

  “Is there anything else?” she asked much too softly.

  “No, milady.”

  “You did well,” she assured. “I will not forget this.”

  The carriage lurched forward, all the better for her to stew over this stunning news. Red Bess watched her go, sunlight fracturing in her violent red hair. The woman missed a prime opportunity. She could’ve demanded all the contents of the velvet purse.

  Ancilla would have given it to her and more.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Will scooped a generous spoonful of porridge into his bowl and reached for the chipped Lambethware pitcher.

  “So . . . Mrs. Neville.” He commenced swirling concentric circles of cream on his porridge. “It struck me, the day afore yesterday, you were putting distance between us. Being spare with your words and your doors bolted against a friendly visit, as it were.”

  “Both friendly visits?” she asked innocently.

  “Both your doors.” He was unabashed, setting the empty pitcher down. “I would add, your nefarious ploy to get me to wear butter yellow.”