by Gina Conkle
A playhouse for adults, follies were. The provenance of people with too much wealth and not enough brains to wisely use it. Hence, their foolish spending. No folly graced Clanranald MacDonald lands. Highlanders had the good sense to cry foul—or fool—as it were. If a castle was crumbling, it was because man or nature had a hand in it. No need to pay someone to build something and make it look like it was falling apart.
False things were a foil for the truth.
As a perfect example, there was him. An overlarge mirrored sconce reflected a man playing a velvet-clad guest. It was him playing a false game, not unlike his sojourn as private footman under Ancilla’s roof when footmen slept belowstairs, while he’d lived abovestairs.
Thankfully, none of the servants trawling the room were here when he was in residence.
One of them slowed his stride. “Champagne, sir?”
The footman was liveried in a diminished spirit, eyes properly downcast.
“None, thank you.” The footman turned, when Will asked, “Have you a good stout ale?”
The footman in scarlet and navy blue hesitated.
Will urged the lad’s gaze to meet his. “You know, a hearty, dark ale. Something a man can sink his teeth into. Something you probably drink on your half day.”
The almost blindingly white periwig edged up a few degrees. The lad looked to be eighteen, if he was a day. An obliging servant, he gave the expected response. “I can ask in the kitchens, sir.”
Will already knew the answer. “Never mind. Can you tell me when red wine will be served?”
That set the lad’s shoulders right. “No red wine tonight, sir. Her ladyship’s orders. I can have a word with the butler. Lady Denton might change her mind if enough guests ask for it.”
“No’ if they’re pouring her expensive champagne down their gullets.”
Which earned him a twitch on the lad’s mouth. “I suppose not, sir.”
“Thank you.”
The footman moved on, and Will whistled low under his breath. No red wine. The art of chaos. When it can, it will strike. Anne and Cecelia needed to know this news, but they were currently engaged in an animated discussion which centered on Mr. James Hadley. He remembered the newly wedded Spruce Prig, the sheer delight in his bride and his supposed promise to leave a life of crime.
So much for promises.
He continued his amble along the row of paintings. Boring landscape, boring landscape, another boring landscape until his well-heeled shoes stuck to the floor. This one took his breath away, a painting of a place dear to him. Sandy beaches, purple heather, and otherworldly standing stones.
The Isle of Benbecula.
Longing wrenched his heart. The artist captured sunlight on water, the beach’s slope, and the scruff of land above it. The carpet underfoot became soft sand. He heard sand crunch under his boots and felt the sun shining on his head. He breathed deeply as if smelling the island’s clean, briny air. He touched the painting like a desperate man. Fair distant winds whispered through it. Haunting him. Calling him. The whisper keened with bagpipes, a sharp, ancient cry.
Come home, it said.
He’d landed on that beach as a boy, many times, with his father.
The very same place he’d thought to show his son someday.
He tried to swallow the knot in his throat and tried to tear himself away. He couldn’t.
Wild and wicked, that’s what lowland Scots thought of their highland brethren. Picts and Norse-Gaels once carved out homes in the isles, history written in blood. The highlands ran in his veins, the brisk winds and peaty bogs. A place of pagan warriors. His ancestors. He could feel their roar at what had become of him. Of rebellion and loss. The City left its grit, a brand to be sure. Here were different warriors, the victorious ones and those who lost. Defeat was a scar that would stay forever, a reminder of what could have been. Yet, his forefathers had carried on in the land they’d loved.
Why couldn’t he do the same?
These years had changed him with one constant in his heart, the woman he’d thought he’d lost.
“Anne . . .” Cecelia’s voice rose in caution.
Anne was walking toward him. The woman was a warning and a prayer, snatching another glass of champagne from a passing tray. “I’m fine. If I can hold my own with sailors, I can certainly hold my own at—” her glass-holding hand arced at the room “—an art salon.” Her last words were delivered with the faintest sneer. “What do you think?”
Anne took a drink, her eyes seeking him. Clear emeralds, cosmetics enhancing sooty lashes and sharp cheekbones. The near-emptied glass wore her carmine lip print on its rim. She’d leave her stamp. Always.
“I think you will do what you will, lass. You always have.”
Her seductive laugh tumbled low. He watched her delicate throat work while she finished the champagne, her green eyes sparkling through her lashes. Mr. Hadley’s Spruce Prigs were spreading out. They blended in, making a show of studying the artwork. One Spruce Prig discussed the merits of a horse’s portrait with an older gentleman. Others took the stairs, sharks on the hunt for silver and soft-paste porcelain figures, anything they could lift. Paintings were dull custom for the likes of them.
Cecelia watched them go, her eyes catching Will’s.
“The two of you keep out of trouble, will you? I hear the countess changed her mind about serving red wine.” She smiled deviously. “I am about to correct that.”
His cousin sauntered off.
Anne reached out and came short of touching the painting. “Is that—”
“The Isle of Benbecula,” he said reverently.
The gold medallion, its curlicued nine, rested over her bodice. Anne didn’t bother to hide it. She was bold and wounded, as tortured and trapped in this gilt refinement as he. A black curl unmoored itself, this one resting high on her breast. The curl seemed to ride the swell, up and down with her breaths. When his gaze met her eyes, he found her wounds bared, her heart broken.
“Take me from this place, Will,” was her hoarse cry.
“The gold,” he murmured.
“Anywhere. Just away from this . . . Please.” Her plaintive whisper was enough.
He took her hand and led her out of the drawing room and down the hall to an alcove near the dining room. Ferns and a marble bust on a pedestal provided cover, their oasis. He folded Anne into his arms or she folded herself into his. It was hard to tell with his heart beating out of his chest. She nestled her head under his chin and that was enough.
Contentment and satisfaction was a calm island in their storm. More truths had been shared this past week than one dare put in a lifetime, and they wore down the heartiest soul. Her hair under his chin, her hands on his back, the lavender she preferred. It all came back to him. The feel of Anne’s body molded to his and the deep-seated satisfaction it brought.
She belonged in his arms.
His hands seemed to agree. They began to move with pride of ownership and remembrance. The slender line of her back and the stays hugging it. Beyond their slice of heaven, voices rose and fell, champagne-slurred, cheery, oblivious to the pair comforting each other ten or twelve paces away. Music drifted from the drawing room, but Anne’s sigh was the sweetest music.
Her head tipped up, and he would nurse those sighs. Play them for the fine music they were. Down, down he went. His mouth to hers, soft and tender as spring. Falling into a peaceful place with the woman who held his heart. This was nothing like hot sexual need. Her arms around him, her mouth moving against his.
Softer than velvet. Warm and wet. A taste of Anne long overdue.
She quivered in his arms. The sensation rocked him. It went through silk petticoats to his thighs. He groaned in her mouth, feeling Anne and hungry for more.
Her hands circled his back and slid forward. They parted, a slight break.
“This is not enough.” Anne’s voice was a purr as she set both hands on his chest and pushed him against the wall.
With the w
all at his back, his stance widened. He dragged Anne close—or she fell into him. Their reconnection sizzled. Her hands sliding over his chest, finding his nipple through silk and linen and stroking it to a fine point.
He bunched her skirts in one hand, desperate to hoist them and see her fine legs. To touch them, find the tender skin of her inner thighs, the slick skin high between them. Anne’s husky laugh tickled his neck. She pushed up on her toes and nibbled his neck.
Her lips grazed his earlobe, and she sucked.
Soft, wet, suckling noises drove him mad. His cock began to swell.
Anne rubbed her body full against his. Silk against silk. She hummed, a languid music of pleasure until her mouth found his. He had to touch her hair, to see it falling gracefully. Black silk it was. He tunneled his fingers through it, slow and careful, feeling the wealth of his life right here. It was good to love a woman who reveled as much in understanding his heart as she did in pleasuring his body.
He’d revel in a lifetime of pleasuring her.
A loud cough on the other side of the pedestal froze their kiss. Anne jerked back, a hand on her mouth.
“It’s time tae begin.” The whisper-hiss was Aunt Flora’s.
Anne’s eyes sparkled like emeralds in the shadowed alcove. Unmoored hair fell around her shoulders, as much of it up as down. She set a hand over his heart, where the Wilkes Lock key was tucked.
“I am with you. Always,” she said in a kiss-drenched voice.
His heart was maddeningly light and pure—even if other parts of him weren’t.
“And I with you, lass. I give you all that I have, all that I am.”
Their words bound them, a tie no man or woman could destroy.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Hands clasped, they sped down the hall to Lady Denton’s study. Anne—his Anne—laughed like a carefree maid when he pushed open the door. A body could think they were off to finish what they’d started in the alcove, not take Jacobite gold. No lights guided them, save the slivered moon’s mean offering and a lamp in the mews. He reached into his pocket for the Wilkes Lock key. Silver glinted in his hand.
He breathed a prayer, Let this key be true.
By the mantel, the scrape of flint sounded, and a flame jumped to life. Anne lit a taper on a four-stick candelabra and was about to light the other three.
“No light.”
“Not even one?”
“I’ve go’ the moon to help me,” he said, dropping to one knee.
“Sounds like you colluded with the heavens.”
Footsteps padded over plush carpet. Anne crouched beside him, a sigh of silk and lavender. She was the fey creature who’d rescued him from Marshalsea, her face awash in shadows. With her hair half-fallen, she resembled a woman who’d just tumbled from an assignation of clothed sex. Theirs very nearly was.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are brave and strong, Will MacDonald. This couldn’t have happened without you.”
He swallowed hard. Her adoration was a gift. Words laid at his feet, better than Jacobite gold. To be the man she needed.
“You were doing a fine job without me, lass.”
“We both know this would have been much more difficult without you.”
An honest admission. He reached for her hand and kissed her fingertips, the back of it, a knuckle, then turning her hand over to kiss tender flesh where her pulse throbbed.
Her sharp inhale was gratifying.
Anne pressed against him, her forehead touching his. “Later,” she whispered.
“Later.”
The promise uncoiled them to finish their job. Otherwise they’d combust, gold or no gold.
Anne bunched petticoats about her knees and pushed off the ground. Her silhouette of slender calves in pretty shoes almost undid him. She opened the window casement.
“Get ready,” she whispered hoarsely.
A horse snort was the answer outside the window.
“We’ve been waiting.” Mary Fletcher’s worried voice rose in the night.
He blocked their muffled conversation from his mind and concentrated on the cabinet. His eyes were fully adjusted to the dark. Brass gleamed the Wilkes Lock and its poetic, scripted warning.
If I had ye gift of tongue
I would declare and do no wrong
Who ye are ye com by stealth
To impare my Master’s wealth
The warning was etched near the head of a man dressed in the garb of another century, his staff pointing to the number ninety-eight. The numbered dial, the lock’s tracking system.
A tiny nob stood out under the figure’s left foot. Will pushed it. The figure’s left leg kicked forward, revealing a keyhole. Will inserted the filigreed key. He set a finger on the back of the figure’s hat and gently tipped the hat while he turned the key.
The bolt released.
The numbered dial turned, and the cabinet clicked open.
It worked!
He released a long gust of air and opened the cabinet door, its oiled hinges quiet. Inside the dark cavern, he found a wooden box and a stack of leather folios. Ancilla’s dark secrets were in there. Perhaps the secrets of other men and women. They were not his concern. The bulging leather bags, stained and well traveled, were. The bags were heaped in a careless pile, each one the size of Aunt Maude’s pea-shucking bowl.
He grinned at the comparison. He really was a simple man. With a heave, he dragged one out of the cabinet. It clinked heavily on the floor.
“Open it.”
“It’s gold coins, Anne. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”
She stood above him, hands on hips. “I’ve waited a long time to see these coins, Will MacDonald.”
Outside light haloed Anne, a warrior in shimmering silk. Fiercely beautiful, she would not be denied. His pulse picked up, the cost of kneeling before plunder not yet theirs. The treasure was within their grasp, but they were still in Denton House.
He coaxed himself to outer calm. “As you wish, lass. But make it quick.”
He untied one bag, and Anne knelt down to stare into it. He did too, finding reverence in the moment. The gold gathered light, its shine touching Anne’s cheeks. So many French livres. Hard, flat, ready to be of service. These were old coins, their fluted edges worn smooth from use and their metallic tang, dirty. This gold, which was meant to win a war, would help those who’d lost it. Such was the matter of money. The hands that used it made the difference. Oddly, neither he nor Anne dug into the bag. The coins weren’t theirs. Their mission was to return the treasure to their clan chief and then it would be given to those in need.
Never did he imagine the lass he’d loved at the beginning of the war would help him end it. But this was the end—of his losses and hers.
“Ready?” he asked with more hope than he’d felt in a long, long time.
“Yes.”
He knotted the large leather purse, and cupping it with both hands, he carried it to the window where Mary Fletcher waited. Like her sister, she was dressed as a man, hair tucked under a Dutch cap, grime on her face. Margaret Fletcher waved to him from her place on the street where she petted the horses.
With the house’s elevation, Mary Fletcher had to stand in a dray to receive the gold.
“It’s heavy,” he warned.
“I’m a strong woman. I can take it.”
The burden passed, she almost dropped it. The bag slid down the front of her, but she caught it at her knees with a grunt of effort. Her eyes were saucers in her head when she looked at him.
“Uh! The countess could have shown better manners and parsed the gold into smaller bags.” Her dry jest was punctuated with more grunts.
“Got it?”
“Yes. Consider me prepared.”
“Good. There are seven more.”
He ducked back to the cabinet to the sounds of her heavy boots clomping in the dray. Anne was on her knees, dragging bags from the cabinet and shuffling them along the carpeted floor.
Sh
e angled her body oddly, digging about her waist. “Bad night to wear new stays.”
From Aunt Maude and Aunt Flora, folding themselves into Denton House as occasional servants to Cecelia and her diversionary Spruce Prigs to the steady Fletcher sisters. All worked like cogs in a clock.
The chink, chink, chink of coins was the only noise they made. One bag after another was carried across the room and sent out the window.
“One left.” Anne leaned on the cabinet door and levered herself upright.
Will closed the cabinet and pocketed the key. If the study appeared undisturbed, Ancilla’s attention would be on the Spruce Prigs and not the Jacobite gold. He lifted the final bag with ease and went to the window. Mary Fletcher’s hands were reaching for it when the bone-freezing cock of a pistol broke the quiet.
He turned to meet the pistol’s owner, the bag still in hand. Anne did the same beside him.
“That’s what you’re up to,” a male voice said from the doorway.
Rory MacLeod strode in, a well-traveled flintlock pointed at Will. His chest, to be precise. He made a big target and any lower the shooter risked hitting the bag of gold. Coins would explode in a mess. MacLeod stopped a foot from the other side of the desk, casting a curious glance at the cabinet.
“Mr. MacLeod, what a surprise.” Anne took a half step to the left, shielding Will.
MacLeod gave a single nod, impressed by her bold move. His gaze wandered higher to Will’s face. “Never had a woman do that for me. You are a lucky man.”
Will stepped around Anne and strode to the desk where he dropped the bag with a loud, decisive clink.
“I am.”
Anne rushed forward. “You will let us go, Mr. MacLeod.”
To which he snorted and waggled the flintlock. “I’m the one with the pistol, Mrs. Neville. I’ll give the orders.”
The room was dark, but Will caught movement in his side vision. Anne. She didn’t have her knife. He knew this because his hands had been everywhere on her . . . unless she strapped it to her left thigh. He’d been too busy hitching petticoats on her right thigh to notice a weapon on her other leg, and panniers were the devil’s own curse to a man with seduction on his mind.
