Page 16 of A Scot Is Not Enough

He laughed, the low graveled sound of a tempted man. Miss MacDonald was a formidable adversary. Her talent in separating the wheat from the chaff in one’s character was eye-opening and accurate. The possibilities she suggested? Endless. The Duke of Newcastle didn’t expect him for a fortnight. Fielding didn’t expect him for a week. He could spend seven unaccountable days and nights with the goddess of Swan Lane.

“A scintillating offer,” he said in a husky voice. “But where I think about your proposition is a moot point.”

“Which brings us to the matter at hand.”

She stood, freeing their entangled knees. He missed them, which gave him pause. What kind of man missed a woman’s knees? Or the pink parts of her toes?

“Are you willing to work with me?” she asked.

Blood throttled his veins. Amber light touched every curve and hollow behind her shift.

She might as well have said,Are you willing to have me?

His smoldering brain thought it. Carnal images lit the fuse with tangled limbs and sweet whispers. By force of will, his gaze climbed up the warp and weft of her shift, inch by inch. His prize was Miss MacDonald’s radiant face free of cosmetics save carmine outlining her lower lip. A woman marked for life. It was good they weren’t touching. One fraction of her flesh on his, and he would combust.

His voice was dry as dust when he said, “This place you want entry to... Where is it?”

She closed her night-robe and knotted the belt.

“A house on Bloomsbury Place.”

“Sir Hans Sloane’s house.”

“Yes.”

Sir Hans Sloane’s house was the only house on Bloomsbury Place which the Government had a key to unlock. Or did Miss MacDonald think him a distant relation to the late physician?

“I am not related to him. By blood or by marriage.”

“Which means you’ll have to be creative.”

Very brisk and businesslike her tone.

Looking nowhere else but her hazel eyes was a feat worthy of Atlas holding up the world.

“That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“It is enough for now.”

The Scotswoman was the queen of artful silence, giving him the opportunity to hedge his moral code. She ambled to her wardrobe and he watched, a parched man thirsty for a drink of her. She foraged through piled petticoats. Panniers and a pair of pink silk shoes fell carelessly to the floor. Shadows and the wardrobe door stole a better view of her.

His mind was a mass of unstable filaments. Might be good to piece them back together.

He shook his head as if that would unloose his sensual haze. He needed to think and collect information. To look carefully, everywhere. Little things spoke, such as DeFoe’s pamphlet,The Original Power of the Collective Body of the People of England, lolling on the end of her luxurious bed. Its corners curled as if Miss MacDonald spent many a night reading the dead author. The walls were more talkative. Red and yellow posies had been painted in uneven rows.

“You’ve papered your walls in white and had them painted. A neat trick to evade the wallpaper tax,” he said.

“At one pence per square yard of wallpaper, it is an outrageous tax. I painted them myself... hardly criminal.”

“Like sniffing barrels?”

Her low laugh behind him was friendly. The rosewater scent that came with it was not.

She touched his shoulder. “Lean forward, Mr. Sloane.”

Her voice was light and tender above his ear and he obeyed without question, a testament to their growing trust.

“I am not asking you to break any laws, merely open a door and walk away.”