When a Scot Loves a Lady

Kitty felt as though she’d been dashed with ice water. She fumbled with the clasp.

“Yes, Mr. Milch. But I don’t suppose I shall get very far, shall I?” Just as with the Earl of Blackwood. Her cheeks burned.

“Watch your step, ma’am. And thanks to you, my lord, for repairing the boards on that roof. Sorry I was that you nearly saw much worse there.”

“’Twas but a wee fix.” He had moved away. Kitty was afraid to look. She hated being afraid, and she hated this lack of control. Most of all she hated not understanding what was happening to her.

Good Lord, she had embraced him quite scandalously in full view of anyone who might walk by. She wasn’t thinking.

She never did not think. More importantly, if she had kissed him in a more private location he might still be kissing her now.

She yanked her hood up to hide her face, swung around, and brushed past the innkeeper and the earl. She could not return to the kitchen. Perhaps the outdoors would offer her sanity she could not find within.

Leam pulled his coat off the hook and shoved his arms into it. With a quick nod to the innkeeper he pushed through the rear door. He would slog through the snow to the pub, find Yale, and dig a path all the way to Liverpool if need be.

The cold hit his face like a woman’s slap. The Welshman and the carpenter had made an inelegant trail through the snow. Leam followed, slipping and stumbling and barely noticing his progress.

She’d said it was happening too fast, and Leam couldn’t agree more. Nothing good could come of putting his hands all over Kitty Savege, only an aching cock and a hard slap when he went too far, which he was bound to do if she kept pressing herself up against him. By God, he wasn’t made of ice, although stone seemed appropriate enough right about now.

But perhaps she would not slap him. Perhaps she would…

It didn’t matter what she would do. She was not for him. Not a woman of ice on the surface and fire within. Not any woman who made his heart slam inside his ribs, his mouth go dry, and his head start rhyming couplets.

Dear God, how much of a fool could one man be?

He entered the pub, demanded a pint, and drank it in a swallow. Pushing the glass back toward the tavern keep, he gestured with a jerk of his chin for another, and finally looked about.

Low-ceilinged, with narrow windows and plenty of dark nooks, it was the sort of place well suited to knavery. He might hang his head in shame if he cared any longer about Colin Gray and the damned Club. Everything he’d learned as an agent, every lesson in studying his surroundings swiftly and efficiently, he had forgotten already. Kitty Savege held his entire attention now.

He pressed his eyes shut and blindly took up the glass again.

Dear God, he really wanted her. And the more she touched him with eager innocence, the more difficult it became for him to believe she had been Poole’s mistress.

He scrubbed his hand across his face. He knew better. He knew much better. In London, rumor had raged through the summer and into fall that she had brought criminal evidence against her former lover to the Board of the Admiralty because he had once scorned her. Listening to the gossips and knowing what he’d already known, Leam hadn’t had any reason to disbelieve that rumor.

Taking a heavy breath, he opened his eyes. Yale lounged in a rickety wooden chair, watching him.

Leam straightened and the young Welshman stood and sauntered over, set his tankard on a table, and gestured him from the bar.

“I prefer to stand,” Leam said gruffly.

“Can you for much longer?”

“Can you ever?” He pushed away from the bar and took a seat. The table was tacky, the place smelled of stale ale and sawdust, and something nasty crunched beneath his feet.

“After the scolding you gave me last night, I’ve had but this one glass.”

“You remember the scolding?”

“I’ve the jaw to remind me.” He did, a bluish-black mark coloring his chin. He lifted his half-

empty pint, silver eyes narrowed. “Happy Christmas, old chap.”

Leam scanned the pub’s patrons, a half-dozen men in caps and rough trousers, farmers and shopkeepers who looked like they’d spent half their lives on these benches.

“It’s Cox.”

Yale’s expression did not alter. “Your interested party?”

“I believe so. And I think he’s behind that faulty stable roof. But I still haven’t the foggiest why, or why he’s made himself plain to us.”

“P’raps he hoped to hide here and I routed him out. Or perhaps he simply admires your high fashion and is mad with jealousy. Quite a natty fellow, isn’t he?”

“Goddamn, Wyn.” Leam shoved back his chair and stood.

“Huffing off again? And so swiftly this time.”

“I huffed off swiftly last night as well, which you would recall if you hadn’t been immersed in a barrel of whiskey.”

Yale smiled. “And where is the fair Lady Katherine now?”

“Far and away from me as she may be, I pray.”

“I prithee.”

Leam ground his molars.

Yale crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, you might as well get it right if you’re going to go off spouting verse.”

“That was not verse. It was an actual prayer.” He passed his hand across his face again. He still tasted her on his tongue. It was hopeless, the need rising within him as swift and sure as the panic.

Physical exertion might do it. He would shovel more snow. Perhaps if he exhausted himself he wouldn’t have sufficient energy to lust after her. Or if he continued to lust—a more likely scenario—

he wouldn’t be able to lift his arms to do anything about it. She was curved and hot and he wanted to tear that damned green gown off her and pin her beneath him, to a mattress, the floor, any surface would do.

More shoveling it must be.

Yale hummed something under his breath, clicking a blunt fingernail against his glass.

“Blackwood, old man.”

“What?” he snapped.

“The tavern keep says there’s a very pretty farm girl who works the place every few nights.” He sounded far too casual. “He assures me she is expected this afternoon, despite the snow. Quite punctual when fine gentlemen pass through town, don’t you know.” Now he grinned.

“Wyn.”

“Leam?”

“Go to hell.”

“I’ll save you a seat.”

Leam set his palms down and leaned into the table. “What do you know of Lambert Poole?”

“Only common knowledge, that in July he was stripped of his estates and exiled for supplying arms to insurgents and attempting to bribe Admiralty officials into treason.” Yale met his gaze squarely. “And that three years ago you looked into him rather assiduously.”

Leam drew back slowly. What he did not know about his closest companion of the past five years occasionally astounded him.

“If your interest in Poole now concerns Katherine Savege, Leam, it’s your own business, of course.

But if you think it has got something to do with Cox you will tell me, won’t you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because you’ve quit the Club.” His eyes looked flinty in the dim light. “But the mantle is difficult to cast off, is it not?”

“For some, no doubt.” Leam gestured toward him.

The Welshman laughed, loosening the tension corded between them. “Well, I haven’t anything better to be