Page 29 of A Scot Is Not Enough

“Port suits me, if you have it.”

He walked to a cabinet in the corner. Beside it was the door to his bedchamber.

“Port. A masculine drink.”

“Does my choice surprise you?”

“Everything about you surprises me. In the best way.”

His back was to her, rust velvet stretching across wide shoulders, the coat narrowing to his waist, the frock hem ending on his thighs. They’d both dressed well for this meeting, with enough formality and a trim of desire. Firelight touched Mr. Sloane’s sinewed calves twitching under silk stockings. He was coiled energy. A man who knew what he wanted and would use rigorous strategy to get it.

Desire skittered delicately down her back. This would be their language for the night—a dialect for secrets, another for lust. Conversation would twine like a rope tightly twisted until one of them relented.

It wouldn’t be her.

Mr. Sloane walked to the table, two tin cups clutched by their handles in one hand, a dark-glassed bottle of port in the other. He set them down and poured, tawny port streaming seductively from the bottle’s mouth.

“I decided this was an evening for the entire bottle.” Raggedness edged his voice.

She drank his port, its addictive slide coating her throat. “A tawny port. It matches your eyes.”

Mr. Sloane took a seat on the pine settle nailed to the wall. “I am more interested inyoureyes, Miss MacDonald. In everything about you.”

The world became the small table. Their island. Anything could happen. Mr. Sloane took a long fortifying drink and set the nearly empty tin cup on the table.

“Thirsty business, is it? Having to talk with me,” she said.

“In my short but esteemed turn as barrister, I learned it is the tendency of criminals to confess what is untrue. Imagine how astonishing it has been for me to cross paths with a reprobate—a pretty reprobate—who speaks the truth.”

“This sounds like the beginning of a confession.”

“In a way, it is.”

She crossed one leg over the other and leaned in. “Are you sure you want to pour out your soul to a reprobate?”

He sucked in a quick breath as if she’d asked,Do you want a quick tup? Or a slow one?

His eyes pooled liquid and black, the fire a metallic orange-bronze flame dancing in the center.

“You are the most fascinating woman I have ever had the privilege to meet. I would be lying if I said I didn’t want to taste you, but it is in our best interest to”—he hesitated, intent on his thumb stroking his cup—“to keep our arrangement strictly business.”

“Because you never mix business and pleasure.”

His tortured gaze met hers. “Because sexual congress taints clear thinking.”

“The act does no harm, Mr. Sloane.” She leaned closer, her voice whisper-soft. “Emotions do.”

He breathed that in, a desperate man who found himself in an unknown land. If lust and secrets were dialects on their little island, their currency was honesty and truth. Strange coin shared between two people planning to skirt the law. But this was what she’d learned watching Fielding and his courtroom dramas. To parse words down to the filament. To play on facts and feelings with equal aplomb. In her brief exposure to Mr. Sloane, she’d learned he livedfor the letter of the law, while she paid homage to its spirit.

Poor Mr. Sloane. Desire was ripping him to shreds.

“Let me make this easy for you. Rather than an open door at Bloomsbury Place, I want this instead.” From her petticoat pocket, she pulled a torn piece of paper,The Public Advertiser’s announcement, and set it on the table. “A ticket to the Marquess of Swynford’s ball. All perfectly legal,” she added.

“But you plan to do something illegal.”

Her shrug would’ve made a Frenchwoman proud. If this were a chess match, they were evenly played. Careful but not overly cautious.

He spun the paper around and read it. “This is Wednesday next.”