Page 92 of A Scot Is Not Enough

“No one else knows about this?” she asked.

“Only the two of us.”

Was Cecelia thinking of their conversation in her Southwark orchard? What a wicked week of truth and treason they’d shared. Sunlight poured around the Scotswoman wrapped in the unsightly brown robe. He’d followed her through this kitchen with his hands tied behind his back and she garbed in a flimsy shift and robe, the night his adventure began with the goddess of Swan Lane.

She stopped her pacing. “You saidweprove Lady Denton is Lady Pink.”

“I did.”

“You want to work with me,” she said carefully.

“I want to be with you in every sense of the word.”

Undammed currents flowed hot and sweet. Theirs would be a partnership, a joining, anus. His vocabulary was already adapting, but there was no sense inspooking her. Fierce mystical creatures, he suspected, were cautious about matters of the heart.

Miss MacDonald clutched her night-robe as one does when riding a speeding carriage.

“Exactly what are you proposing?”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Two river barges anchored the Southwark side, their torch flames slanting in the midnight wind. Mr. Baines’s wherry scraped the wall near Arundel Stairs. Ink-black water slapped the narrow unlit boat while Mr. Sloane steadied his sea legs and reached for a dark timbered wall.

“The rope,” he said.

Cecelia passed it to him, her stance less graceful. Mr. Sloane wound the rope around the piling while the boat wobbled under quickening currents. She hugged a piling and had her hat knocked off her head.

“Steady, Mr. Baines,” she said. “I’m getting a mouthful of pitch.”

“I’m doing the best I can, miss, but the river’s churning something wicked.” Mr. Baines fought to hold his wherry in place with a pike pole. “Storm’s coming.”

Nature was dropping billowing clouds and biting winds. Waves stirred. Thunder and lightning flashed in the distance, a gift coming from Brighton.

“The rope’s secure.” Mr. Sloane held on to his hat lest the wind take it away.

Cecelia let go of the piling and collected her tricorn off the wherry’s floor. To Mr. Baines she said, “Give us half an hour.”

“I’ll be here.” Pike pole in hand, he walked nimbly across two benches and hunkered down, pulling his greatcoat tightly about.

With no lamps, their journey from Swan Lane to Arundel Stairs was precarious and illegal, but it paled in comparison to what she and Mr. Sloane were about to do. The barrister-cum-government-man led the way, stepping over a bench to stand beside her. Night sketched his face above hers, hawkish yet refined. They’d dressed in black from head to toe save plain linen shirts but no cravats. With his shirt open at the neck, the exposed cloth fluttering, he could be a pirate or a smuggler on a midnight run. A black scarf hid her hair and coal dust smudged her cheeks.

Mr. Sloane touched her elbow. “We look for ship manifests from three years ago. That’s all. We’re in. We’re out.”

They’d already dissected which of the countess’s warehouses would house shipping records and when and how to breach it.

His teeth slashed a wicked white crescent in darkness. “Before you know it, we’ll be back in your bedchamber to finish the bath I started this morning.”

“How can you think about sexual congress at a time like this?” She hoisted herself from the boat to Arundel Stairs, thrilled to her toes.

Sex and Sloane, there was a ring to it like excellent music waiting to be heard. He was right behind her,the wind carrying his low laugh. They scampered up the stairs to Arundel Street. Candle lamps dropped blurred splotches of light every ten paces. Cecelia plastered herself against a brick wall between the first and second halo. Her pistol bumped her spine, tucked in the back of her breeches. Alexander was similarly armed. No barrels or crates blocked their view from the river to the Strand.

“Why couldn’t she have properly dingy warehouses?” she asked. “That’s what we have in Southwark.”

Alexander extracted a slim metal file from his coat pocket, followed by a second piece which looked suspiciously like a woman’s hairpin. He squinted at the hairpin and ran his thumb over a hook at the end of it.

“Look at you, cavorting with a Jacobite womanandpicking locks. What would His Grace say?”

Bronze eyes sparkled in the night.