Page 34 of The Scot Who Loved Me

She studied him intently. “You get a certain tone when you speak of home, yet you’ve stayed among the English.”

With Anne, a statement could be both declaration and question. He wasn’t sure of the answer. Emotions wanted to drown him. Why he couldn’t leave, yet why he’d believed now, years after the Uprisin’, he should. Answers bubbled near the surface, popping and breaking before he could grasp them.

“You don’t hate the English,” she said. “I don’t see it in you.”

“Prison changed that. They’re no’ all good and they’re no’ all bad.”

“Yet you hate that I had an English husband.”

His gut clenched. He had no words for that. None at all.

“You’re not bitter? About the English?” she asked.

“A wasteful emotion.” Out of the water, he eased her onto firm ground and called out, “Mr. Baines, hop aboard. I’ll give you a send-off.”

Talk of English husbands unsettled him. He needed to shove something.

“Thank you kindly.” The ferryman jumped into his wherry and found his seat. Oars in hand, he nodded. “Whenever you’re ready, sir.”

Will seized the opportunity to put his shoulder to the vessel. To burn his restlessness with a good, hard push. Feet digging into soft sand, hedid push. And push. Limbs and muscles tensed and strove. Mud scraped the red hull and with a final thrust, he sent it swaying into the river.

Mr. Baines shouted a farewell, and Will waved from the water’s edge. A drop of sweat ran down his back, stinging a cut from the beating he took at Marshalsea. Last night Anne saved him from that prison. Now she waited for him, cloaked and quiet, at stairs that rose from the beach to Bermondsey Lane.

Skin on his chest pebbled. Night brimmed with intimacy, a different flavor than the White Lamb’s variety. Anne had to feel it.

Did she have more questions for him?

He had one for her.

Chapter Ten

Will ambled across loose soil, a breeze teasing his mussed queue. Talk of family brought ghosts of questions past. Of mistakes made and lessons learned. Though Will trod on English soil, he was every inch a proud highlander. Not years nor a lost war could change that.

“That was kind of you to help Mr. Baines,” she said.

Will mounted the bottom step and stopped, eye level with her. “It was the decent thing to do.”

She didn’t move. He was heart-achingly decent.

One side of his mouth curved up, and her traitorous breath hitched loudly. Will’s mouth twitched, victorious at his effect, no doubt.

A tender gauntlet had been thrown, and she was not one to shirk a challenge.

With a bold hand, she brushed back a lock of hair batting his cheek. The texture was thick gold and twice as smooth. She tucked it behind Will’s ear and he stilled, a lion tamed.

“You really are a good man, Will MacDonald.”

“You say that like it’s a new discovery.”

“I might have known it once before, but it bears repeating.”

“A mon never tires of hearing it.”

“Is that an invitation to stroke your pride?”

“Stroke whatever you like, lass,” he said in a feather-soft voice.

She huffed at her own weakness. She’d walked right into the snare of innuendo and Will was not one to let opportunity slip from his fingers.