A Borrowed Scot Read Free

naked.
    What had happened?
    For the first time in her life, she’d no clear recollection of the past hours. Only snatches of images that flew into her mind like pernicious birds.
    The man whose blue eyes seemed to bore through her had been at the Society of the Mercaii. He’d rescued her.
    His hair was thick and black. His face was strong, his cheekbones pronounced, his chin squared and rather pugnacious. His nose fit his face, proud and Roman. His eyebrows and lashes were thick, shielding eyes as blue as the cushions of the carriage. Lines radiated outward from the corners of his eyes, leading her to wonder if he’d spent most of his time outdoors. Or had pain caused them? Twin vertical lines bracketed his full mouth. She suspected they masked dimples that appeared when he smiled. If the man opposite her ever smiled.
    “Sir, can I go now?”
    She turned her attention to the man with the cap.
    “No, Peter. You’re our chaperone.”
    “Chaperone?” she asked. That one word was amazingly difficult to say. Her tongue felt furry and her mouth too dry.
    Her rescuer frowned at her. “If you think I have any intention of being found in a compromising position, you’re mistaken.”
    She licked her lips. “I doubt society would think it proper for two men to keep me company,” she said, sitting upright. “Now, if you had thought to procure a woman as a companion, that would be another story.”
    The man opposite her looked disgruntled.
    “You’re a Scot,” he said.
    “You’re an American although I’ve never heard an American who speaks like you,” she said. She laid her head back against the seat but found it didn’t help the burgeoning headache. “Your words sound stretched out and coated with honey. How very odd.”
    “I’m from Virginia.”
    “Virginia?”
    “You don’t roll your R’s when you say Virginia.”
    He was correcting her pronunciation? She might have had a rejoinder for him if she hadn’t felt so peculiar.
    “Go ahead, Peter,” he said to the man at his side.
    As the coachman left the carriage, the chill of the spring night slapped against her face like a wet cloth. She blinked rapidly, inhaling deeply. The pure cold summoned her back to herself as if, for the last hour or so, she’d been floating somewhere not quite attached to her body.
    She’d never been the type for hysterics. However, as she looked down at herself and plucked the robe with two numb fingers, she was close to panic.
    How on earth was she to get home? Where was her dress? Her shift? The rest of her clothes?
    “I have a robe on,” she said.
    “I put it on you.”
    She didn’t even want to think about that.
    “If you’ll give me your address,” he said, “I’ll see you home.”
    Panic clawed its way up her throat.
    She raised the shade with her fingertip, just enough to see the milky whiteness of fog. Nothing but damp, clinging fog.
    “Where are we?” she asked. “What time is it?”
    Folding her arms over her chest didn’t make her feel more clothed, especially when she suspected that this man, the stranger opposite her, had seen her naked.
    Once she was alone in her bedroom, she’d allow herself to feel the burn of shame. Till then, she simply had to remain as calm as possible. She must extricate herself from this deplorable situation.
    “Past midnight, and in the square outside my house,” he said. “I thought it expeditious to leave the Society as soon as possible.” He hesitated for a moment. “Do you remember any of it?”
    Some, but she wasn’t about to admit it to him. Another thing to contemplate once she was inside her room.
    “I don’t feel well,” she said, a salty taste bathing the back of her throat. She closed her eyes, fighting against becoming sick.
    “Did anyone make you eat or drink anything tonight?”
    She opened her eyes. “I had a cup of something warm when I arrived. It tasted like grapes, but it wasn’t wine.”
    “It was probably drugged.”
    She’d been a fool to