Melissa frowned, shivering anew.
“The best, I tell you,” the old woman boasted.
Plucking a smoked herring from the cart, she waved it beneath Melissa’s nose. Golden-brown and dried to perfection, the herring did smell delicious.
“Caught in the north, my herring is,” she said, leaning toward Melissa. “Off the coast of Highland Scotland, there where he comes from,” she added, chuckling.
No, she cackled.
Melissa froze, her heart racing.
“Who are you?” She stared at her. “Why are you following me?”
“Ask him about the cat,” the old woman said, ignoring her questions as she dropped the herring onto the pile of them on her cart. “He’ll be along shortly.”
Then she was gone.
Or so Melissa thought until she spotted the tall, colorfully-clad hawker near a parked carriage a bit ahead of her. And as the woman pushed her cart around the vehicle’s horses, she hitched her skirts to avoid a pile of ‘horse apples’ on the cobbles. Morning sun glinted off her black boots, the bright light also shining on a twin set of red plaid laces.
Melissa blinked, her jaw slipping even more when the hawker emerged on the other side of the horses – and this time she appeared smaller and garbed in black, her cackle carrying on the wind as she disappeared into the crowd.
~*~
Melissa clapped a hand to her breast. “Oh, my stars…”
“Nae, lass, that is you.”
“Oh!” Her heart soared, the crone forgotten. “You did come.”
Spinning about, excitement swept her to see the Black Lyon so near, and smiling at her. Still mounted, he was only a few feet away, but now he swung down from a gorgeous bay gelding, the reins of a second horse in his hands.
“I keep my word.” He did look glad to see her. “And I say what I mean. You are the brightest light in this dreary city.”
“And you are a rogue.”
“Nae, a Scot, though some might say we’re all rogues.”
“Men apart, my mother insisted.”
His smile deepened. “And she was right.”
Melissa wasn’t about to argue.
How could she, anyway?
Not kilted, he was impeccably dressed in the style of a wealthy, well-bred London gentleman. Melissa flicked her gaze over him, noting everything from the expert tailoring of his black coat to the exquisiteness of his soft gray waistcoat, the snowiness of his shirt, and the sheen of his tall, polished boots. She didn’t linger too long in her perusal of his well-fitting dove-gray breeches.
Danger lurked there, so she quickly returned her attention to his face.
But that, too, was perilous. He was almost too dashing, his smile – and what it did to his eyes, to her – could lead to trouble.
Not that she was complaining.
Far from it, she felt a weakening in her knees. Indeed, he fired the most heated, wildest corners of her soul.
Had a man ever been more appealing?
She didn’t think so.
