Page 7 of A Scot Is Not Enough

Promising features.

She dropped the stockings and leaned over to pickthem up. Her barely-there cleavage reflected in the window. Tucked between her paltry breasts was a medallion. She touched the ribbon on which it hung, her finger tracing the black silk line from her neck to her bodice.

Her watcher’s mouth twitched a half smile. Dust motes floated, enchantment to the day’s end. Lulling, secretive. Across the street, her hunter’s fine fingers rose slowly and touched the brim of his hat.

Her astonished gust fogged the window.

He saluted her cleavage!

“A gentleman flirt,” she said under her breath.

How perfectly delicious.

Embers of delight cascaded her limbs. She slid her hand down her stomacher, silk liquid and sensual to touch—until a hack rolled in front of the shop. The same hack, which had delivered her to Fletcher’s House of Corsets and Stays, had come to fetch her at twilight. The driver spied her in the window and tipped his hat.

She righted herself. “Mr. Munro is here. Time for me to go.”

“Don’t forget our meeting tomorrow morning, late.”

“As if I could forget. I shall take these.” She gave the robin’s egg blue stockings to Mary and scooped up vermillion stockings. “These too. And stays to match. In silk, if you have them.”

The shop’s samples would fit her with ease.

“And the garters, do you want them in the same color?” Mary asked. “Or a contrasting hue?”

She batted the air. “Choose for me.”

Mary’s heels clicked her brisk retreat. She would return with a package, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with twine. No graceful boxes for White CrossStreet shoppers. But in between the stays and stockings of this purchase, Mary Fletcher would pass a stack of papers.

Cecelia adjusted her gloves and her mind. A night’s worth of scouring inventory lists and meeting minutes lay ahead. From those documents, she would glean opportunities. Relentless detailed work was how they’d taken back some of the Jacobite gold. The same dogged methods would help to recover thesgian-dubh.

Their rebellion was not a vainglorious pursuit, rather a practical one. To restore what was left of their clan, to rebuild herds and homes, to resurrect Clanranald pride. Results sprouted from diligent labor, from bribing the right people in the right way, never brute force.

She shivered her distaste. Violence was the language of soldiers and dockside rufflers. But what about her mysterious hunter? Was he of that ilk?

Her gloves on, she peered around the waiting hack.

The gentleman in green had vanished.

Chapter Three

Swan Lane was a blasted, cold place. Mist ghosted Miss MacDonald’s stone house and her empty mews. The damp chill froze his stones and turned his breath into tiny nimbuses. He breathed into his icy hands for warmth, trying to make sense of his day.

Nothing added up. His latest journal entry was a litany of uninteresting notes.

Humble, well-kept homes. The cobbles clean. The ivy trimmed. No horse in the mews.

Miss MacDonald was home alone, save her maid-cum-servant named Jenny. He’d waited hours for the Scotswoman to depart and do something, anything, exciting. Criminals flirted best with darkness. Yet, Miss MacDonald stayed home with curtains half-drawn.

She was pacing an upper room, back and forth by her window.

He hugged his coat shut, missing his greatcoat and gloves. If he hadn’t been so hasty in leaving Fielding’s chamber, he would’ve been better prepared. Dinner was a lukewarm meat pie purchased from a street vendor while walking the considerable distance from White Cross Street to Swan Lane. He knew where she lived because it was a note in Fielding’s ledger, the same as her servant’s Christian name.

Earlier, he’d poked up and down Swan Lane and the narrow alley behind it, looking to add to those facts.

And... nothing.

What was he going to report?