Page 4 of For a Scot's Heart Only

Her mother’s dry lips cracked a smile. “Such a...good girl. You look... like me... when I was fifteen.”

Mary stood tall, her heart and soul crumbling. “Ach a-mhàin gu bheil thu nas fheàrr.”Except you were prettier,she said in Scots Gaelic.

Her mother’s eyelids sagged over a weakening smile. Tears bathed Mary’s face, bringing an awful awakening. Of aching loss and the years she’d strived to please. To be a diligent, responsible girl. Her posture, her manners, her speech—always impeccable.

But love wasn’t enough.

It never was.

Chapter One

London, October 1753

To prepare for an evening in a brothel, the adventurous spinster must strike a balance with the rouge on her cheeks. Too much and men would assume she was a harlot. Too little and men would assume she was a charwoman masquerading in silks. Add a touch of confidence and the blend was just right.

Self-assurance, as it turned out, was the best cosmetic—a trait Mary Fletcher owned.

Velvet slipping off her shoulders, she passed her cloak to an attendant and waded into a sea of excess. Of men feasting their eyes on half-dressed women posing on plinths. Of giggling nymphs playing in a fountain, and a red-headed Venus couched in a papier mâché shell. Pink, of course. In the middle of it all, women in gossamer Greek-styled gowns swirled around a harpist, the opulence fascinating. Almost dreamlike.

Mary skimmed her collarbone, her fingertipstracing its structured line. Beside her, Cecelia MacDonald, her partner for the evening’s mayhem, snapped open a fan.

“Well, what do you think?”

Mary tried for an insouciant, “Not much, I’m afraid.”

Cecelia snorted delicately.

“I don’t believe you.”

Cecelia was right to doubt her, but Mary wasn’t about to spill her soul. She smoothed white silk panniers, her best, though an odd choice given their environs. Soft green vines and spring flowers had been painted on the fabric. Her gown was more daytime luncheon than nighttime debauchery, save two pink crescents rising from her bodice.

She whisked her fan strategically over them.

“If you must know, I noticed the organizer of this evening’s entertainment mixed their mythologies. A deplorable job, in my opinion.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Cecelia asked.

“Nymphs are mainly Greek, and Venus is definitely Roman. Hence, the mixed mythologies.”

Hazel eyes sparkled within a green silk mask. “Your first time in a brothel, andthat’swhat comes to mind?”

Her mind? She couldn’t claim control of it, not with sensual currents dusting her skin. From the glorious high ceilings to the gilt-trimmed mirrors, everything glimmered. She couldn’tnotstare.

Mary wetted her lips. “My second thought was how did they get a fountain to work in a ballroom?”

Cecelia giggled. “Men are not here for lessons in engineering.”

“And we are not here to discuss my impressions of Madame Bedwell’s establishment.”

Herewas Maison Bedwell, an expensive brothel in King’s Square—Soho Square to the fashionable, as it had recently been renamed. The house was an elegant, sizable brick structure designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Somewhere under the palatial roof, a secret society was known to meet. A group so clandestine, they took names such as Lady Pink and Lord Blue to hide their identities, even from each other. But not all of them were Jacobites, a fact Mary and Cecelia had learned from a recent find—a coded ledger that came into their hands. One of the society’s members had the last of the Lost Treasure of Arkaig. Gold livres, support the French sent seven years ago to Bonnie Prince Charlie and his rebels.

A treasure which had disappeared.

For that reason alone, Mary found herself in this luxuriant den of iniquity. Highlanders wanted their money back.

She and Cecelia belonged to a Scottish league sworn to find it. Four long years they’d hunted for the treasure. This past summer they’d taken the first of it from the Countess of Denton. The league was hungry for more. To protect her identity, Mary wore a mask, though it was more precaution than necessity. As proprietor of Fletcher’s House of Corsets and Stays, she didn’t swim in the same social waters as the men in attendance. She sold her goods to their housekeepers and governesses, not their wives and daughters.

But tonight she was a shark in silks. A huntress.