Page 32 of A Scot Is Not Enough

She wished Mr. Sloane had been the typical boor who wanted a tup. A man like that could easily be managed. But his stillness wooed her. Peaceful, alluring, shadows and light carving his face enticingly.

“My mother left my father and me to wed another man,” she said grudgingly.

His eyes rounded. “Your mother was a bigamist?”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be perfect? You could add ‘daughter of a bigamist’ to your journal.”

Mr. Sloane was patient. She crossed her arms as if to stem a tide of words, but it didn’t work.

“My mother was my father’s housekeeper. They never wed.” She paused a heartbeat to let that shocking news sink in. “You see, Mr. Sloane, bastard daughters of freethinking surgeons don’t become fast friends with proper girls who play proper games. I didn’t have time for them anyway. I had my father’s household to run.”

The fire crackled conspicuously in the corner. On the street below, a mother and father herded two children into a waiting carriage. She watched them under her lashes. She’d seen the family eating their dinner upon entering the White Hart. Cheerful, they were, chattering away. Outside, the father scooped up the boy and deposited him in the carriage. The sweetness hit a raw place. Mr. Sloane watched the tableau with her until the door was shut and the coachman snapped the reins.

“You see?” He leaned casually against the window frame. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

What? Watching the happy family or admitting she didn’t come from one? Mr. Sloane distilled the air. So calm, so comforting, the sting of her admission evaporating.

“You’re trying to take the starch out of me, aren’t you?”

“I’d settle for building a bridge of trust, Miss MacDonald, which is the only way we’ll both get what we want.” He paused. “As long as this isn’t about anyone getting hurt.”

She tried to absorb this new turn. To make sense of why he wanted her trust. This was what happened to women who lived in the shadows. Honest light was uncomfortably foreign.

“I’m only taking back what was stolen from people I love. Something that was sold to Sir Hans Sloane.”

She looked out the window, a lost soul. In the distance, embers burst in the night sky like gold foil blown apart.

“Vauxhall fireworks,” she murmured. “The last night of the pleasure garden’s season.”

Vauxhall usually ended in August, but the fine end of summer pushed the season another few weeks. More fireworks sparkled over Vauxhall’s Italianate colonnades, offering a glimpse of the garden’s splendor. London was a smelly, vicious, noisy place full of corruption and hypocrisy of all stripes. Despite it, the old bawd of a City had sunk her claws into her—in the best and worst way. The war was her past, not as ardent a cause as it was for Anne and certainly not in the same measure for Mary, which left her adrift. Tethered to a city she shouldn’t love (and sometimes didn’t), yet far from the home she once knew.

“Your point about trust is well taken, Mr. Sloane. I dally with men, but I don’t trust them.”

His left hand held on to his coat over the buttonholes near his heart. He’d be resplendent in court robes, the austere black on a moral man. As judge orbarrister, he’d balance ethos, pathos, and logos with a deft hand. She could at least offer the same to him.

“Very well, Mr. Sloane. You have until the last Vauxhall firework burns. Ask what you will and keep your free pass.” Her chin nudged higher. “I don’t need it.”

“I can ask anything, and you will be truthful?” His voice dripped with disbelief.

Chapter Nine

“Yes. Anything,” she said.

The mood shifted after Miss MacDonald tendered her offer. Naked honesty with a woman was sultry, as tempting as a kiss. As a barrister, he’d sifted lies from truth on a daily basis, seeing affidavit-men loitering outside the Inns of Court with straw in their buckles, the sign they’d lie for a price—and the wealthy families who paid for their lies. For the duke, he read financial reports, searching for dishonest numbers. Now Miss MacDonald promised him bald truth—a woman London’s leading magistrate deemed worthy of a page in one of his ledgers.

If her honesty was glaring, her silence was too.

Miss MacDonald had said nothing about his requirement: two tickets to Swynford House with him at her side.

Moonlight showed her hazel eyes as glittering gems. A wise strategy, holding her tongue.

He ventured a smile. “You aren’t planning on using your charms on me, are you?”

“I won’t. As long as you don’t use your legal wits on me.”

“Hardly a fair fight. I’d lose, you know.”

Her answering smile was a rapier blade’s warning.