Page 31 of The Scot Who Loved Me

“It sounds easy enough,” he said.

“It will be your quickest workday ever.” A cheerful Cecelia dipped her cup in the toddy bowl. “Nothing can go wrong.”

Chapter Nine

Their wherry glided through inky waters.

One Mr. Henry Baines had met them at Tower Stairs close to midnight. There was none of the usual “Oars and sculls! Sculls and oars!” cries of ferryman. Only one man waited with a candle lamp. At their approach, Mr. Baines had doffed his tricorn and swept a bow worthy of a queen for Anne and Cecelia. The ferryman left his lamp at Tower Stairs, his vessel guided by moonlight alone, a surreptitious passing since The Company of Watermen and Lightermen required well-lit ferries.

Whether driven by coin or a smitten heart, this wasn’t the first late-night ride he’d given these women. Probably wouldn’t be the last.

A well-mannered counterfeit crank and an obliging ferryman. What else would Anne and her league produce?

Will wouldn’t know. She’d gone conspicuously tight-lipped since their near kiss at the White Lamb. They’d entered a tacit agreement, the wordlaterhanging in glances between them.

Raw and restless, he didn’t regret a thing.

His cousin blathered amiably with Mr. Baines. The ferryman, barely twenty and broad of back, obliged her. They gossiped of ships and sea captains and pleasure barges (and who took them privately). Cecelia was intriguing to watch, harvesting tidbits of information from Baines. Her moue was an expressive language all by itself. She was laughter and light, or teasing and coy. He doubted she possessed a serious bone in her body. That his cousin was part of Anne’s league was quite surprising.

The next seat over, Anne’s spine was a ramrod, her face an artful sculpture within her hood. When the City’s lights faded, her eyes met his, vivid, direct, with a touch of wondering. The woman had ensorcelled him with her talk of a widow’s consolation. A kraken could swim upriver, swarm their slender vessel, and he’d be none the wiser of the fabled sea beast’s approach.

All from a plaguing image.

Rumpled sheets. Anne, hair loose, her face turned into a pillow...

Head high, he forced air into his lungs.

... underneath the bed linens, halfway down her body, the smallest stirring.

Loins heavy, he let the rush consume him.

Red lips opened wider. A soft moan, a louder one. The bed creaking, the stir hastening, and the woman, her pleasure cries a sweet song.

Anne sat an arm’s length from him, gentle winds carrying her not-so-innocent lavender and spiced-rum scent. He laughed, a low rusty grumble. He knew howhersong ended. She hadsung it for him many times in their lust-crazed youth.

Of all the White Lamb’s sirens, she lured him. Her emerald eyes haunted him from the shadows of her hood. Same as she did in Marshalsea’s shed while the warder babbled on about kilts. Anne was the only woman he could talk to yet never say a word.

Staring into her eyes was like that, one fluid conversation.

He’d known what it meant to be understood.

Gripping the wherry’s rail, he stared at the river. Their summer together had also been a long, fluent conversation in sex. But, he’d loved Anne. Fiercely. He’d been the same age as Mr. Baines when making that proclamation. Love had flowed like milk and honey then, an easy exchange in the give and take of youth. Now he could barely comprehend its vastness.

What does a young man know of love that an older man doesn’t?

No answer came from stygian waters.

His hold on weathered wood tightened. The beast within didn’t care. It wanted only to be fed.

Mr. Baines halted his drive and turned his face skyward. “Wind’s picking up. I hope it’s not more rainstorms.”

Spring and early summer had inundated the City with rain. Recent days had been a pleasant reprieve.

Anne searched the heavens, moonlight caressing her face. “It’s not a storm. There’s gentleness and warmth to it.”

“Not too warm, I hope,” Cecelia said over her shoulder. “The gutters will be a stew of awful smells.”

Will looked up and speckled stars stared back. “Wind is nature’s way of saying it has somewhere else to be.” When three faces looked at him curiously, he shrugged. “Something my father used to say on blustery days.”