Page 51 of A Scot Is Not Enough

“Two tickets to Swynford for the British Museum’s fundraising event.”

“Why? Is your mother desperate to go?”

“Not my mother. The alluring Scotswoman.”

“The one who rejected you today? You’re courting her with a fundraising dinner?”

Was he courting Miss MacDonald?

“Yes.”

Burton laughed. “Good Lord, man, if that’s your idea of pleasing a lady—”

“Shewantsto go. And it is a costume ball,” he added, as if that increased the excitement.

Burton’s arms spread with faux delight. “Well, why didn’t you say it was a costume ball?” His arms dropped. “Because it doesn’t matter how you dress up those events. There’s a reason the museum governors have had a hard time raising money.”

“Could it be the corruption in their lottery?”

“Don’t be factual. I’m trying to help you, man. Their events are dull, dull, dull. The lot of them take warm milk at nine o’clock.”

More women with generous cleavages entered the Five Bells. They joined the Covent Garden nymphs laughing at a lordling’s quip. The youthful gentlemen had to be freshly done with university with years of flirtation ahead.

Had it ever been that easy? Or had he simply not cared?

Burton cleared his throat. “Is it possible you misread the lady’s intent?” A pause was filled by raucous laughter and, “I could tutor you on the art of courtship.”

Alexander rocked his empty tankard. “My courting skills are fine, thank you.”

Brave words, but they weren’t entirely true. Miss MacDonald’s anguished eyes haunted him.

“What kind of woman craves an evening with do-gooders high in the instep? Is your Scotswoman of the morally upright variety?”

Polly plunked down two frothy pints of small beer and cleared the empty tankards. He poured the cooldrink down his throat, glad for the diversion. Miss MacDonald’s character was an intricate map and he the intrepid explorer discovering her.

Burton slurped froth off his beer. “There’s a correlation to London’s morally upright ladies and sexual congress... or the lack of it.”

“And this is important because...?”

“Because up here”—Burton raised a flattened hand at eye level—“you have the sainted raise-money-for-foundling-homes women. They won’t lift their skirts for any man but a husband, and few of them do even that.” He lowered his hand two inches. “Here are the sainted raise-money-for-hospitals women who might let you grope them on a dark garden path.” Burton lowered his hand another two inches. “And here we have the nearly sainted civically aware women, which includes museum enthusiasts. Women so tedious you don’t want to grope them in the dark.”

A moon-kissed shoulder came to mind. Miss MacDonald was splendidly carnal and complex, the most grope-worthy woman to walk the earth.

“The woman in question is committed to helping the lost souls in Southwark’s Tenter Ground.”

Burton moaned. “That’s as bad as the shrill raise-money-for-foundling-homes women.”

“Miss MacDonald is in a class all her own.”

He defended her ardently, but Burton eyed him keenly, a hunting dog on the scent.

“Did you say MacDonald?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that the surname Fernsby researched? The one you had him digging through the Pell rolls for?”

Sometimes the sworn clerk was too smart for his own good. Alexander eyed him with cool equanimity.