Page 78 of The Scot Who Loved Me

“Oh, Anne.” Cecelia’s groan tripped into a delicious giggle.

She managed a wobbly smile. “It was Mr. Harrison’s suggestion... who of course has no idea what I am taking to Arisaig.”

Mary speared a slice of fruit. “Quite fortuitous, don’t you think?”

“It is. I will leave at dawn the morning after we take back the gold.”

She basked in the glow of friendship. Days like this were coming to an end. This unique, trying, and utterly satisfying time in her life would be no more. Taking home Jacobite gold was going to happen, which meant her life would change drastically.

She checked the clock and her pulse leaped unpleasantly. Twenty minutes to one!

“I must be off!”

She ran to the entry hall and jammed her straw hat on her head. While her nimble fingers tied a black silk ribbon under her chin, Mary was in the midst of recounting their visit to West and Sons Shipping. She was half out the door, nearly free to concentrate on the countess when she heard Aunt Maude.

“But what happened tae Will?”

Silence.

Anne clicked the door shut and soaked up blessed sunshine.Will.He was a heart-breaking puzzle. How could a woman long for a man, yet want to soundly thrash him?

She turned west, blending into Southwark’s foot traffic: chimney sweeps, sweat streaking charcoaled cheeks, costermongers hawking vegetables already limp in summer sun. These were Southwark’s foot soldiers, the common folk striving to keep impoverishment at bay. The Neville Warehouse ledger was her armor in that fight, clamped in her left arm, covering her heart. She was off to a battle of sorts, but her mind picked the bones of earlier wonderings. What happened to Will?

Was he in a ditch?

Did he spend his evening, thoroughly sotted with Mr. West?

Or was he hunting a man with aT-branded thumb in a misguided effort to exact justice for her?

Cut from a chivalrous mold, Will would strive hard to right a wrong—especially his wrongs. Guilt had colored his eyes the night she’d told him of the babe in her belly eight years past. He’d left her and their unborn babe to fight a war. A man would have to work very hard to atone for that. The matter was done for her. History.

A stubborn man, Will wouldn’t see it the same.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Pink-arsed cherubs cavorting on clouds was too much by any standard, a treacle image for a woman who’d never been angelic a day in her life. Yet, the heavenly tableau adorned Lady Denton’s gilt-trimmed door. On closer inspection, plump little angels decorated the entire vis-à-vis carriage, their innocent faces peeking from clouds on every panel. Excess run amok. Within the carriage, indolent fanning slowed.

“Mrs. Neville, how kind of you to join me.”

Anne bent the brim of her straw hat for more shade. Pearl earbobs the size of thumbnails decorated the countess’s ears.

Pearls. Doesn’t every woman wear them to purchase a warehouse?

Swallowing her sarcasm, she strode to the carriage. Her legs were equipped with better manners than her brain. If she had her druthers, she’d walk to the warehouse door, and let the countess meet her there. Alas, her widow’s independence ran only so deep. Good breeding was her bedrock, thanks to her grandmother. Thus,she found herself approaching the carriage for a better view of cloud-swimming cherubs on a field of blue.

“Lady Denton.” A touch of mockery in her voice, she swept the deepest of deep curtsies and held it.

With strong and slender thighs, she could play the obsequious game all day should Countess Denton require it.

A snort sounded while she rose slowly, her gaze to the ground. The countess wasn’t fooled by the display.

“You’re late.” The fan snapped shut.

Lady Denton was a face in her carriage, her black hair a fashionabletêtede moutonmound of curls. Sheep’s head curls were all the rage. Anne’s hair was a horse tail down her back.

“I beg pardon for my lateness,” she said. “But as you can see, Neville Warehouse hasn’t gone anywhere.”

“Humor. How refined.” The countess rapped her fan against the window, and a footman in scarlet and royal blue livery scurried to open the carriage door.