Page 45 of A Scot Is Not Enough

The brightness drained from her eyes.

“Of course.”

He rushed on. “It would take time, months, perhaps.”

Hairs on his nape bristled. Miss MacDonald’s calmness brought to mind a viper a few harrowing seconds before it strikes.

“But this isn’t something you’d tell Fielding straightaway.”

“Speak against two of his most productive thief takers? Fielding would ask for evidence, and there’s none to give. He’d dismiss the news as baseless accusations.”

Her smile was bitter. “And that leaves you reporting on the scurrilous Jacobite woman. Because Fielding wants to hear that.”

He drew in a long, weighty breath.

“I will do my damnedest to divert him from youbut you must give me something tangible. Evidence, you see?”

She didn’t. Miss MacDonald tipped her face to the sun and shut her eyes. She’d left one war behind and found another here in London against a driven magistrate and two corrupt thief takers. Smart, fierce, resourceful, the Scotswoman had accomplished much. By bringing him to this apple orchard, she’d revealed a tenderness for the forgotten. The moment should be illuminating and joyous, a trust shared.

Why, then, was his heart collapsing?

Miss MacDonald opened her eyes and walked away.

When she passed the open gate, he followed.

“Where are you going?”

Miss MacDonald took two more determined strides before she spun around. Her cold eyes froze him in his tracks.

“Our bargain is done, Mr. Sloane.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“I do.”

He watched her, icy pressure expanding in his chest. It made his skin cold and his feet stuck in place. Late-day sun haloed Miss MacDonald on her slow backward walk, her heels kicking up dust clouds on silk-covered shins as she went.

“You don’t have tickets to Swynford House, yet I have given you information to deliver to Fielding. That, sir, leaves you with everything and me nothing.”

A faint wobble edged her strong voice.

“A true friend would see my cares and consider them his. But you have done nothing of the sort.”

Her anguish sliced him. She was right, and he, an artisan of words, had nothing to say. Miss MacDonald had asked for his protection, a form of it, and he’d denied her because the law required facts.

Emotions, he was learning, did not.

Miss MacDonald held his gaze. Her feet came nearly to a stop. He grabbed the gatepost and watched her, transfixed.

“Miss MacDonald... I...”

Afternoon sun shined but he felt no warmth. The Scotswoman’s fair mouth flattened—her final judgment before she gave him her back. She was walking away, her stiff proud spine tearing him apart. She took a narrow southwesterly road. Where she headed wasn’t clear. Her purpose was. Miss MacDonald and her league of Scotswomen worked to save their neglected kin, the Uprising’s abandoned foot soldiers. Would Fielding scoff in disbelief when he shared this latest find? If he told the Duke of Newcastle, would His Grace be moved to care?

What were a few suffering Scots to them?

For the first time in his life, he glimpsed himself and the city through the lens of a Scotswoman’s eyes.

The ugly truth—he didn’t like what he saw.