Page 5 of A Scot Is Not Enough

Nothing cried admirer either. Quite a conundrum, the gentleman in green.

She set down emerald stockings in favor of a butter yellow pair. When she unspooled them, the hat across the street tipped a fraction higher.

“Like pale colors, do you?”

“Talking to yourself?” Mary slipped in beside her and began reorganizing the display.

“I’m baiting my hook.”

“The man following you is not a fish.”

“With delicious calves like that, I hope not.” She dropped the yellow stockings.

“You are incorrigible.” Mary’sr’s trilled.

“And you, dear, are going to help me figure out what shade my friend across the street favors”—she petted decadent pink stockings—“while you tell me about thesgian-dubhand the documents that should not be in your shop.”

“Documents we had no choice but to accept if we want to accomplish our mission.” Mary was steely voiced, plucking white stockings from the pile. “Try these.”

She took them, but the tricorn tipped lower. Her mysterious hunter produced a pencil and a pocket journal from inside his coat and flipped it open. Lace cuffs danced at the back of long-fingered, masculine hands. Her gaze lingered on them.

Would his touch be soft? Or firm?

“No interest in the white,” she said.

“Try the vermillion... though I should be flogged for encouraging you.”

“Do they match my lips?” She smiled and set the stockings against her cheek.

“They do.” Mary folded prim hands. “Your coquettish display has caught his attention.”

Across the street, the pencil stopped. Her hunter’s head nudged higher, but two hacks rolling by wrecked her view.

Cecelia slid her arm inside the stocking and checked the weave. “Tell me your news.”

Mary was again fixing the display, her face a shopkeeper’s solicitous mask. Since coming to the City, subterfuge had become an art form they’d perfected while living dual lives.

“One of Cumberland’s men sold thesgian-dubhto Sir Hans Sloane,” Mary said in a quiet voice.

“The collector physician who died last January?”

“The very same. Apparently, thesgian-dubhhas been stored in his home at Bloomsbury Place. Kept in a crate all this time.”

She huffed her disbelief. “That explains why no one knew its whereabouts.”

“He willed everything to the crown for a public museum. It’s been in the newspapers.”

“And now Clanranald’ssgian-dubhhas been reduced to a curiosity to be gawked at.”

“One of eighty thousand curiosities, I collect. Not even two houses joined together can display everything.” Mary’s voice pitched higher. “Can you imagine it?”

She yanked the stocking off her arm. “How am I going to find one dagger in that mess?”

Mary smiled coyly. “Sneak into the late doctor’s house and search, one crate at a time?”

“Now who’s being incorrigible?”

Mary picked up indigo stockings.