Heather and Velvet (46 page)

Jamie hurled the plaid into her lap. “I hope it keeps ye warm at night, Mrs. Kerr, fer it’s all ye’ll have left of Sebastian once D’Artan gets through with him.”

With a piercing cry, Jamie steered his horse in a circle, shoving his way heedlessly through the guards. Tiny cast Prudence a last condemning look before following. The steady beat of their mounts’ hooves rocked the turf as they pounded toward the horizon.

Prudence ran a hand over the soft wool in her lap, unable to meet MacKay’s searching gaze. Her meticulous fingers caressed the rich material until they caught in the jagged, blackened hole near the hem.

Prudence and Laird MacKay rode in silence, their guards a wary phalanx around them. Sebastian’s plaid still lay across her lap. When MacKay glanced at her, she could feel the measuring heat of his concern, but carefully kept her expression stony.

He cleared his throat. “You know, lass, if you wanted, I could ride back and—”

She swayed in her saddle, and he quickly caught her elbow. She pressed her fingertips to her temple, knowing her pallor was convincing, for it was genuine.

She leaned against him. “My head … it just began to pound. It must be the sun.”

MacKay fumbled for his canteen. She clutched his arm, gazing at him with quiet despair. “The Blake estate is just
ahead. Could we stop for a rest? I’m not quite ready to face my aunt. She’ll have so many questions …”

He patted her hand. “Of course, my dear.”

Without asking her leave, he tossed her reins to one of the guards and lifted her into the saddle in front of him. He tucked Sebastian’s tartan around her shoulders. She buried her face in it, as he urged the gelding forward, blessing the sheltering folds for hiding the sudden heat in her cheeks.

A row of servants gaped as the Blakes’ butler led Prudence and MacKay into the dim coolness of the entranceway. Prudence clung to MacKay, her head bowed, and stumbled as they reached the foot of the stairs.

The loquacious young butler informed them that Miss Blake was in London for the season and the squire had ridden over to visit the countess at Lindentree.

But, of course, he would be more than happy to provide rooms for Miss Walker and her guest to refresh themselves. After he had shown Laird MacKay to the room next to hers, he even dared to touch Prudence’s hand. He was quite sympathetic to her plight. He had read about it in all of the newspapers. Prudence had no inkling that she had become such a celebrity while she was gone.

“Would you care for some chocolate?” he asked. “Or perhaps some piping hot scones with clotted cream and kippers with—”

She smiled wanly. “A flask of brandy and a cigar, please. Immediately.” She closed the door in his face.

It was a long moment before his footsteps moved away down the corridor. Prudence darted to the window. No trellis. She grimaced at the sight of the thorny rosebushes below. The room overlooked the back of the rambling Tudor house. She could see MacKay’s guards smoking and leaning against the stable wall. A lazy furl of pipe smoke uncurled on the morning breeze. The sun glinted off their pistols.

A shy tap sent her scurrying back to the door. The earnest butler stood there, brandy and cheroot in hand.

“I’ve heard the Scots are an unpredictable, savage lot,” he whispered, gazing at her as if he expected her to throw off her clothes and break into a wild Highland jig. Prudence was half tempted to oblige him just so he’d go away.

The excited hunger in his eyes gave her a better idea, though. She caught his forearm and jerked him into the room. “You’re quite right. The Scots are a mad race. And that man in the next room is the maddest of them all.”

“The pleasant gentleman with the white hair?” He frowned at the connecting door.

Prudence snorted. “A clever disguise. He is the savage who abducted me. He’s returning me to my aunt’s estate in the hope of extracting a ransom from the poor dear.” She dragged the butler to the window, peering around the drapes with theatrical stealth. “See those men out there? Those are his henchmen. Skilled assassins, every one of them.”

“Oh, my. Oh, my!” His voice sank to a whisper. “You don’t mean he is … he can’t be … not the—”

Her smile was deadly sweet. “The Dreadful Scot Bandit Kirkpatrick. In the flesh.”

A shuddering wail escaped the butler. “What shall I do? I’m new to this post. I wouldn’t have gotten the position at all if Devony—I mean Miss Blake—hadn’t recommended me. Only a week on the job and I’ve let a vicious felon into the house.” He stared at her hopefully. “Do you think he’d leave if I offered him the silver?”

Prudence lowered her voice, using its husky timbre to contemptuous advantage. “Leave? How would it look on your record if you let the most notorious highwayman since Black Jack Jones escape from your grasp?”

He tugged at one of his wig curls, obviously torn between the fear of murder and the temptation of being a hero.

Prudence toyed with his sleeve. “There is the reward to consider.”

A wealthy hero.

“And think of how impressed Miss Blake will be by your bravery.”

A wealthy adored hero.

He grasped Prudence’s hands in his sweaty palms. “What shall I do?”

She leaned forward and whispered, “Bring me guns. Lots of guns.”

S
ebastian’s nose crinkled as an acrid stench wafted toward him. Prudence must be cooking breakfast, he thought. He would have to ride down to the village and hire her a cook. He’d much rather have her snuggled beside him, her head nestled in the crook of his arm, than struggling over an ancient hearth. Why, if she were next to him, he could nuzzle her throat, stroke her until she was purring like a kitten beneath him, and …

He sniffed. Eggs? Where had Jamie pilfered such ill-smelling eggs? From a bloody dragon? Over the reek of sulfur came a pungent whiff of ammonia that brought tears stinging against his heavy lids.

He struggled to lift them. A fractured eddy of sunlight swirled before his eyes.

Broken images assailed him. A rough-hewn window. Slats of azure blue between bud-laden branches. A breeze drifted through the open window, rife with the promise of spring. Sebastian knew where he was. The old crofter’s hut. Pain shot through his ankle. Perhaps the last year had been but a dream, he mused. If he closed his eyes, a girl might
kneel next to him, her fragrant hair swinging close enough to brush his chest, her cool fingers touching his brow with loving concern. If she did, he would carry her far away with him and never once be fool enough to look back.

Metal clinked against earthenware. Sebastian’s vision sharpened. He muffled a groan at the sight of D’Artan hunched over a brass scale that sat on the scarred table. His grandfather measured out a paper cone of metal shavings, then bent to the hearth to stir them into the bubbling contents of a small iron kettle. Sebastian hoped it wasn’t breakfast.

He wiggled his fingers. A stabbing tingle shot up his arm. With his returning awareness came a myriad of other discomforts. His hands were bound at the small of his back, his bad ankle bent at an awkward slant. His shoulder hurt like hell, and that might have something to do with the blackened bloodstains spilled down his shirt. A bitter taste lingered at the back of his throat. He knew that taste only too well. Just how much opium had D’Artan forced on him?

He still felt a bit giddy and almost laughed as he watched his grandfather scamper between hearth and bench like a frenzied monkey. D’Artan muttered something under his breath. A French monkey, Sebastian amended.

He’d never seen his grandfather so ruffled. D’Artan’s gray hair clung to his head in wisps, as if he’d combed it with agitated fingers. The heat from the fire flushed his smooth cheeks to pink. Sweat stained his long apron.

Sebastian watched with detached interest as D’Artan carried the small vat from hearth to table with gloved hands. He dipped a silver spoon into the mixture. It hissed and bubbled. When he lifted the dripping spoon, it was nothing but a twisted, smoking mass. Sebastian swallowed.

“I’d prefer kippers and eggs if you don’t mind,” he said.

D’Artan jerked at the sound of his rusty voice, almost overturning the acid. He steadied it, his hands trembling with annoyance.

With alarming speed, a sunny smile replaced his frown. “You don’t have to choose the menu. We’re expecting company for breakfast.”

Sebastian lifted an eyebrow, studying the table. It was
spread with gunpowder, two pistols, a knife, and the vat of bubbling acid. “Who? Lucretia Borgia? Your old card-playing friend, the Marquis de Sade?”

“Wrong again. Your own loving wife. I sent her an engraved invitation.”

A lusty roar of laughter burst from Sebastian. D’Artan’s smile faded.

“My
wife
won’t come. After the way I treated her at our last meeting, she wouldn’t spit on me if I were ablaze.”

D’Artan stood up and advanced on him. Sebastian held himself rigid, refusing to betray so much as a flinch. “Perhaps you underestimate your charm.” His grandfather swiped a lock of hair from his brow with a tender hand. “And your prowess.”

“Perhaps I overestimate it. As my father did when he abducted your daughter and expected her to fall in love with him.”

A dark red suffused D’Artan’s face. His snarl drew his skin taut over aristocratic cheekbones. “Make no mention of that savage to me. The past is done. I care only for the future.”

Sebastian closed his eyes in mock boredom. “And a long dull future it will be if it’s just you and I sitting here for all eternity, awaiting a lady with a formula.”

D’Artan leaned close to him. “If she does not come, only my future will be long and dull. Yours will be very short indeed.”

D’Artan’s eyes glittered like shards of flint. Sebastian’s hope that misplaced sentiment might stop his grandfather from killing him died on a stale and fruity breath.

D’Artan flitted back to the table, rubbing his palms together. Drops of spittle caught on his lips. He held a glass vial up to the sunlight. “I never did see what attraction our proud Miss Walker held for you. I can’t wait for the severe little creature to stumble in, weeping and wringing her hands, babbling her precious formula to save your life. How I shall delight in her histrionics!”

“You coldhearted son-of-a—”

Sebastian’s oath was cut off by a deafening pistol blast. The thunder of hoofbeats shook the hut.

The vial slipped from D’Artan’s hand and shattered on the hard-packed floor. “If that pinched little chit has dared to bring the law …”He drew a German pocket pistol from his apron. His boots crunched the broken shards of glass as he went to open the door a furtive crack.

Sebastian had to know what was going on. He shifted more weight onto the leg folded beneath him. The devil dug a bony claw of pain into his shoulder. Sweat beaded his brow. He had to do this quickly or he would lose the courage to do it at all. His teeth sank into his lower lip as he flung himself up and around onto his knees, slamming his injured shoulder against the windowsill. Sunlight and agony blinded him. He tasted the metallic tang of blood on his tongue.

As D’Artan bit off a profane curse, Sebastian gazed out the window. Smoke from the pistol blast drifted through the trees. He blinked, seeing the vision before him through a fractured prism of pain, then gave his head a hard shake. Perhaps so much blood had trickled out of his shoulder that there was none left to feed his brain.

But Prudence was still there, armed and straddling MacKay’s gelding as if she’d been born to the saddle.

Her voice rang out in a singing brogue that would have done Jamie proud. “Open the door, ye bloody bastard, before I blow yer French arse from here to kingdom come.”

Sebastian slumped against the windowsill, banging his head and wondering if it would hurt more to laugh or cry.

P
rudence gave the muzzle of her pistol a dainty blow before shoving it into the sash of her skirt. The butt of another pistol protruded beside it.

Sebastian marveled at the knotting of his gut, the slow, steady beat of desire in his groin. He supposed he’d have to have no pulse at all before his heart stopped shoving blood into all the wrong places whenever Prudence was near. She was angel fire and demon ice perched on MacKay’s horse like a Highland princess, his own plaid draped carelessly over one shoulder. She had pulled her skirt between her legs and anchored it at her waist in makeshift breeches. Only the bandit’s mask was absent, replaced by an incongruous pair of spectacles. She had come garbed not for a costume ball, but for a deadly masquerade where the players were no less dangerous for being known.