Heather and Velvet (30 page)

Free at last in the sprawling streets of Old Edinburgh! She and Laird MacKay had snuck out like children while Tricia napped, escaping both Tricia’s herd of maids and D’Artan’s dour shadow. Another moment trapped in the sticky fibers of the viscount’s web, and Prudence believed she might have run screaming from the Campbells’ town house.

The past week had been sheer misery. When she had pleaded a headache to avoid working in his laboratory, D’Artan had haunted her like a solicitous ghost. He had fetched her shawl when the parlor was chilly, dipped his finger in her tea to check its warmth, gifted her with a rare edition of Diderot’s
Encyclopedia
and a foil-wrapped box of chocolates. She had accepted his tender graces, her teeth gritted behind her smile. Tricia and Lady Campbell had
exchanged amused glances, never noticing that Prudence fed the chocolates to Boris and poured the tea into the drooping bay tree behind the settee. She had just traded the priceless
Encyclopedia
bound in Moroccan leather for a lurid novella only Devony could enjoy.

She gave a little hop to avoid two small boys chasing a careening ball from an alley. As she walked on to where she’d agreed to meet MacKay, she fought to keep from searching every face she saw for a trace of Sebastian. She lost. The pain of his abandonment cut a raw swath through her. Each time she lifted her eyes, she saw him turning his back on her, walking into the night, leaving her to D’Artan’s grim machinations. But who was she to blame him? Hadn’t she turned her back on him as well? The tenderness of his kiss on the snowy terrace haunted her dreams until she awoke shivering and crying, her night rail tangled around her legs.

She passed a withered old woman who hawked her steaming chestnuts in singsong rhythm. Warm laughter burst from a coffee room. The scent of roasting chocolate beans drifted to her nose. By fading daylight, the shopkeepers lit candles in windows that sparkled like walls of glass. She wistfully remembered a winter eve in London when she and her papa had walked hand in hand down Fleet Street, admiring the shining displays of goods they could not afford and were content without. Life had been much simpler then.

A passing lamplighter wrapped in a woolen muffler gave her a brisk nod. She hastened on. Darkness was closing in. From behind her, she heard the crunch of stealthy footfalls. She glanced back and saw the lamplighter, a sooty shadow against the deepening darkness.

She rounded a corner, relieved to see the sturdy figure of Laird MacKay standing in the halo of a street lamp. A rush of affection brightened her spirits. The rugged Highlander had been her salvation in the past week. He had called at the Campbell mansion faithfully each day, displacing the glowering viscount from her side. Prudence knew now why both D’Artan and Sebastian despised him. He had lost D’Artan’s precious daughter and Sebastian’s mother to Brendan Kerr.
But since the night of the robbery, the canny laird had made no further mention of a man named Sebastian, although Prudence often glanced up to find his gaze locked on her in smoky appraisal.

MacKay did not hear her approach. He was staring at a scrap of paper tacked on the lamppost. She slipped up beside him.

Her heart lurched as she saw what had captivated him.

Someone had finally captured the Dreadful Scot Bandit Kirkpatrick—an artist of consummate skill. The mask still veiled the upper portion of his face, but the slanted curve of his jaw, the teasing brackets around his mouth, and the broad planes of his throat were all Sebastian.

Prudence reached out as if hypnotized and touched a fingertip to the sulky line of his mouth. MacKay drew in a breath, and she knew she had betrayed herself.

She snatched the notice from the post and shoved it into her reticule. “Silly authorities. They shouldn’t clutter up such a lovely city with this refuse.”

MacKay caught her wrist in a grip that was anything but infirm. “Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?”

She jerked away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I haven’t the faintest idea who you’re talking about.”

A ripple of cream on the next post caught her eye. She started for it. MacKay fumbled at his sporran, and the rustle of paper froze her in her tracks.

She turned. MacKay stood with arm outstretched, a handful of bills crumpled in his fist. The wind caught one and sent it fluttering down the street.

His eyes were beseeching. “You can destroy that one if you want. But they’re putting them up faster than I can tear them down. Somebody’s turned traitor on him, lass, and I’d be willing to bet it’s that wretched grandfather of his.”

Prudence looked up and down the long street, and realized with despair that every post sported one of the uncanny likenesses.

Her voice rose on a note of hysteria. “Why should
you
want to help him? I know who you are. You kicked him out of Dunkirk before his father’s body was even cold.”

MacKay crossed the distance between them in two
strides. His nostrils flared. “Tis a lie. When I took Dunkirk, the boy had fled and Brendan Kerr’s black soul was already roasting in hell.” He passed a hand over his eyes as if he could somehow erase the pain etched on his features. “I used to see the wee lad, poaching my land, skulking in the brush like a wild creature. But I could never get close to him. Do you know what it was like to see his mother’s eyes peering out of that dirty, bruised face?”

“Yet you took his precious Dunkirk away from him.”

MacKay’s shoulders slumped. “I wouldn’t have run the lad off when Kerr died. I’d have let him stay on. I’d have taken care of him. Fed him, clothed him, sent him to school. But he never gave me a chance to tell him that. He wanted nothing from me. Why, I couldn’t even catch him!”

He bowed his head. There was something about this man, some indefinable kindness Prudence had sensed from the first moment they had met. It was almost as if they’d known each other before.

She gently touched his sleeve. Hope sparkled in her eyes. “Don’t despair, Laird MacKay. Perhaps if we both try very hard, we can catch him together.”

His gaze softened as he brushed a tear from her cheek with wizened fingers. “If he can resist you, lass, the lad’s a bigger fool than his father.”

He opened his arms to her. Prudence was so weary of secrets, and MacKay’s shoulders, like her papa’s, seemed strong enough to bear even the worst of them. As she lay her cheek against the scratchy softness of his plaid, the lamplighter tore a handbill off a post and melted back into the darkness, his broad shoulders braced against the bitter cold.

Tricia reclined like a queen among her feather pillows. As Prudence approached the bed, her aunt clawed through a gold-foil box and popped a chocolate in her mouth. Prudence wiped her palms on her skirt, wondering what occasion could have been so dire that her aunt would rise before noon.

Gauzy winter light sifted through the drapes, stoking to
life the lush shades of a Gainsborough on the far wall. Pieces of correspondence were scattered across Tricia’s satin counterpane.

“Good morning, dear. I trust you slept well.” Tricia licked chocolate from her lips like a lazy cat.

Prudence hoped her spectacles hid her swollen eyes. “Like a babe,” she lied.

“You retired rather late last night.”

Prudence’s wariness subsided. She was only to be scolded for her tardiness after all. “Laird MacKay took me to a coffeehouse. We began talking and lost track of the time.”

Tricia arched an immaculately drawn eyebrow. “A bit scandalous for you to entertain a strange man in a public coffeehouse, don’t you think?”

Prudence squelched an uncharitable thought about all the strange men Tricia had entertained in her bedchamber. “I’d say not. We are nearing the turn of the century, after all. Laird MacKay is both a pleasant companion and a gentleman.”

“He must find you a pleasant companion as well.” Smiling enigmatically, Tricia smoothed a creased scrap of paper on her knee. “I felt you should know, I have received two offers of marriage this morning.”

Prudence’s own smile was wan. “Two proposals before breakfast? Even for you, that’s quite a coup.”

“I have decided to accept one of them.”

Prudence’s smile faded. She had been waiting for this moment since Sebastian first disappeared. Tricia was ready to marry again and rid her household of her spinster niece. That was all right, Prudence assured herself. She would survive. She could afford a small house now, a few servants, books of her own. She would find contentment in living alone. And Laird MacKay had brought a daring and long-forgotten element back into her life—hope for the future. He was a wealthy man with an army of men at his disposal. With his help, perhaps she could find Sebastian and somehow make amends.

Tricia’s words startled her back into the present. “I’d barely had time to peruse the first offer when your rugged
laird came bursting in with such an ardent plea that I couldn’t deny him an audience.”

Prudence frowned. Laird MacKay had made no mention of such intentions the previous night. She hadn’t even noticed him courting Tricia. “He seems a fine man,” she said weakly. “It would be easy to grow quite fond of him.”

“I’m relieved you feel that way. You see, Prudence, the proposals were not for my hand. They were for yours. And as your guardian, I feel it is long past time for you to wed. I will no longer tolerate your wavering. I insist you make a decision. Before the end of the week.”

Prudence stared at her aunt, her mind stumbling over the question she was afraid to ask. “If Laird MacKay made the second offer, who made the first?”

Tricia blinked in wide-eyed innocence. “Haven’t you guessed?” When Prudence mutely shook her head, Tricia popped another chocolate in her mouth. “Why, darling, the Viscount D’Artan, of course!”

S
ebastian Kerr was a desperate man. As his horse plunged down the mountainside, he sawed on the reins, throwing his weight back to keep from tumbling forward and being crushed beneath the beast’s shaggy hooves. His crude mask blinded him to the other riders, but the ground shook with the thunder of hoofbeats. He could smell their fear even through the smothering thickness of the burlap. The harsh rasp of his own breathing filled his ears. He longed to tear off the mask. It was little more than a sack cut with eyeholes—the sort of mask a scarecrow might wear, the sort of mask the hangman would slip tenderly over his head when he was caught.

Icy water splashed into the holes in his boots as his horse forded a swollen burn. The agitated shouts of their pursuers faded to the echoes of curses, as the Frenchmen chasing them drove their mounts to the edge of the cliff, only to discover their prey had vanished, borne on the sturdy wings of horses bred for the wild and rocky terrain.

Sebastian was the first to halt. He clawed at the strings
of his mask and jerked it off, sucking in a deep breath of the cold, cleansing air.

A hairy hand curled around his bridle. “God’s land, Kirkpatrick, what are the Frenchies doin’ in the Highlands?”

Sebastian gave the furry paw a disparaging glance, keeping his voice deliberately cool. “How should I know? Why don’t you ride up and ask them, Angus?”

He had to look up to meet the glowering eye of Big Gus McClain. A dingy patch covered the bandit’s other eye.

Big Gus freed Sebastian’s bridle and spat in the burn. “Ye mumblin’ French in yer sleep and all, I thought ye’d be the one to know.”

The wind shifted; McClain’s stench wafted toward Sebastian, making him itch for a bath. He longed to steal away with the precious ball of soap he had pilfered from a crofter’s wife.

Tiny shoved his mount between the two men, grinning roguishly. “Everyone knows the French have a love of bonny music.”

Jamie’s nasal laugh rang out. The other men sniggered nervously. They had been tearing an organ out of a tiny kirk when the Frenchmen had approached.

“Or perhaps they’re just regular churchgoers.” Sebastian’s smile was politely ferocious. It whetted Big Gus’s suspicions that beneath his soft-spoken, clean-smelling exterior lay a man infinitely more dangerous than himself.

“Aye. Regular churchgoers,” McClain echoed thoughtfully. “Maybe that they were.”

The men dared to shoot Sebastian half-curious, half-admiring glances as their horses milled into motion, churning the water to icy froth.

Big Gus and his men were the scourge of the Highlands. Even by Sir Arlo Tugbert’s exacting standards, they made the Dreadful Scot Bandit Kirkpatrick and his men look like fops at a tea party. Sebastian had been accepted into their ranks on the sheer menace of his reputation, but he had the sinking suspicion that if he didn’t rape a virgin or shoot someone in cold blood very soon, his own corpse might be
auctioned off to the Edinburgh Medical Society. He wondered if shooting himself would count.

The thunder of the other men’s hoofbeats faded. Only Tiny remained. Sebastian’s gaze strayed to the harsh line of the ridge. “Something’s gone wrong, Tiny. Something’s gone terribly wrong or he wouldn’t have sent them after me. The bastard won’t give up this time. What if he’s changed his mind and decided he wants her dead?”