Page 21 of The Scot Who Loved Me

In scanning their faces, there was no mistaking Mary Fletcher and Cecelia MacDonald capable of leading this league. With full curves, chestnut hair, and a cleft chin, Mary Fletcher was a beauty... as his purely male opinion went. By her plain fashion and prim hair, she wouldn’t tolerate her appearance as her stock in trade. His cousin, however, thrived on it. She was a brazen piece. Proudly so. Honey-gold curls in flirtatious places, a heart-shaped patch on her cheek. Cecelia MacDonald would play her features to the hilt and give as good as she got.

Wise men would look deeper and find their true worth.

“And your leader is...?”

Anne set the foolscap on the table. “Me.”

A half-cocked smile formed. He should’ve known. Anne was unafraid of firm decisions. She was his past, and for the next few days, his near future. She smoothed the paper, a pretty wisp of hair gracing her cheek. Someday a better man than him would earn the right to brush it aside.

“Lead on,” he said, but the salon was oddly quiet.

Not a rustle of petticoats or creak of a chair.

The women glued their attention to the foolscap. Forearms bracing on the table, he did the same. It was a detailed floorplan of a grand home. The league’s rival for the gold, no doubt. Someone with a lot of quid and an appetite for more. Eyeing it, a vague remembrance teased him.

“We do this in two parts,” Anne said. “Tomorrow, we make a copy of the key holding the gold.” To him, she said, “The gold is in a cabinet built into a wall, secured by a Wilkes Lock.”

“I know how they work.” He craned his neck for a better view of the floorplan. “A tricky lock with a numbered dial etched in the metal. Keeps count each time it’s opened.”

“Which is why we will have one chance to open it.”

He honed in on the room marked with an X where the gold was stored.

“When you find the key, press it into this.” Mary passed over a block of wax.

The whitish lump was cool in his hand. He would make an impression of the key?

“Have a care when you pull it out,” Mary said, finishing her instructions. “Or I won’t be able to make an exact reproduction.”

He rolled the wax across his palm. “We’re no’ stealing the gold the same day?”

“We cannot. There are nearly seventeen hundred livres. The cover of night is best.” Anne slid the map closer to him. “Tomorrow is the servants’ half day. Only the housekeeper will be in residence. That is our day to imprint the key.”

“When do we steal the gold?” he asked.

“There will be an evening entertainment, two hundred people or so, attending an art salon about a week from today.”

“You want to take the gold with that many people around?”

“It is the perfect time. The more in attendance, the better.” His cousin regarded him with cynical eyes. “It is the law of social events. The bigger the crowd, the more they preen and posture.Especiallyin London.”

Could her drawl have been any more dramatic?

“Everyone will be so concerned with how they look and what they think everyone is thinking about them that they won’t notice what’s right under their noses,” the elder Miss Fletcher said.

“Aunt Flora will be in the kitchens, and Aunt Maude will be an attending maid in the ground floor retiring room. A signal will be given, and that’s when you and I shall go to the study, unlock the cabinet, and pass the gold to Mary and Margaret through the window here—” Anne tapped the paper “—where they will be waiting with a cart.”

“That particular window is at the side of the house but near the mews,” Miss Fletcher added. “We should escape notice.”

He scrubbed a hand across his mouth. “It doesna matter how fine the clothes I wear, I’m no’ a mon for such events.”

“You are exactly the man we want.”

Something in Anne’s gentle voice and demure lashes gave him pause. Anne had never been demure. Why the sudden show now?

“You will be fine,” his cousin assured him. “Wine and champagne will flow. And not all in attendance will be the genteel sort. The guest list includes artists and the women they paint in the nude. Those paintings, among others, will be on display.”

Miss Fletcher’s lip pressed with mild disapproval. “It will not be an evening for overfine manners.”