Page 22 of The Scot Who Loved Me

He was slow to tear his attention from Anne’s staunch profile. The tiny hairs on his nape were twitching. Blasted woman. She was hiding something.

“Where is this house anyway?”

He snatched the foolscap and studied it. Heat began to coat his skin, the pained rush of embarrassment combined with a strong desire for the ground to swallow him whole.Upper Brook Streetbuttressed a grand house facing a familiar garden square.The address written at the bottom scalded him: Grosvenor Square.

Silence pounded his ears. His past was in the bile creeping up his throat. Outside, a driver yelled at a team of horses clip-clopping alongBermondsey Lane, but inside the salon no one made a sound. He rose from the chair, his limbs sturdy despite the quake within.

He loomed over Anne and held up the paper, his fingertips bloodless and his voice dangerously mild. “Who has the gold?”

“The Countess of Denton.”

The beast inside him raked vicious claws the length of his soul and laughed.

Chapter Six

Will’s gaze distilled the air to its simplest form. Breathing hurt. She touched fingertips to the table for balance. The need for Jacobite treasure shimmered blindingly, but she’d just asked Will to pay a hefty price by returning to his shame.

To the woman who’d kept him like a favorite possession.

It had been an honest contract with Lady Denton. That much she knew, and while certain men reveled in the role, Will had not. At present, he burned with shame and ire, twin flames threatening to scorch her. Everyone in the league had sacrificed in one way or another, but his past was the currency they needed most.

Will set the paper on the table with heart-aching carefulness and stalked across the room. Male pride evened his shoulders, a majestic form at the window. Thank God the glass stopped him. At his nape, his queue’s black silk ribbon taunted her.

Promises made, promises broken. Their legacy.

She clutched her stomacher. Behind tasteful embroidery, pain twisted and pressed as if someone had drawn back their booted foot and kicked her.

Her eyes stung. She’d hurt Will again.

“Ladies, please give us a moment.”

In her side vision, fluent glances spread around the table. Chairs scraped and the women exited in respectful silence, their footsteps a hushed clutter until the salon doors squeaked shut.

Will’s dignity was on the altar.

The Countess of Denton collected braw men the way others collected soft-paste porcelain figurines, though her tastes ran afoul of her class. Former soldiers, thief takers, the odd dockside brute. Gruff men hungry for coin and a warm bed, men good in a fight. If an attractive woman from Society’s higher places came with the offer, it was fine by them.Her private footman.That’s what the countess called the man who attended her, though no livery was worn. And her ladyship never kept a man beyond six months.

She’d kept Will for a year.

Their arrangement was no mystery; how it began and ended was.

What happened?

Anne rubbed her nape, the knot in her back palpable, the tension growing. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be a hunchback, worn out and old before her time, and at the moment, time was not her friend. Daylight waned in the glass framing Will. The gloaming hour would soon come.

A well-executed crime required precision and confidence in one’s partners.

Was he in? Or out?

“Will,” she called as gently as she could.

Not a twitch.

“Will.” She was louder this time, and he, a statue.

Head high, his stance brittle, she feared he’d break. A ridiculous notion for a man like Will. He’d always been mighty. Nothing could crack him, not a lost war, nor imprisonment. Still, she sped across the room only to stop short, skirts swinging, her heart in her throat when Will spun around with a glare to cut stone.

“You played me falsely, madame.”