Heather and Velvet (5 page)

She jerked around, dropping the broom with a clunk. A wispy cobweb drifted down and settled over her hair like a wedding bonnet. The sight did not improve his temper.

It unnerved Prudence to have him glowering at her from beneath his low brows. She shrugged apologetically. “Cleaning is a habit with me. My mother died young. I used to look after my father when we lived in London.” She inched toward the chair where her gown hung. “How is your ankle?”

“Still broken. My man Tiny will probably have to break it again before he sets it.”

She winced.

He struggled to a sitting position, grimacing as his stomach muscles stiffened in protest. “I was hoping you’d be gone when I awoke.”

She gestured lamely toward the floor. “There was so much dust. I thought I’d straighten things a bit.”

“I’m sure Tiny will appreciate it when he’s taking his afternoon tea. But you’d best go now. He’s a bit unpredictable. He might decide to break your leg instead of mine.”

She wavered between a smile and a frown. The vision of being tormented by someone named Tiny lacked real menace. She wished he would stop glaring at her. There must be something she could do to make him look at her as he had the night before. Her face brightened as she spotted the bowl on the table.

She scooped it up and carried it to him as if it were the Holy Grail. “I washed your pistol. It was all muddy.”

Sebastian made a small noise at the back of his throat as he peered into the bowl at the submerged weapon. He plucked it out with two fingers. Water streamed from the polished wooden barrel. She was right about one thing. The pistol wasn’t muddy anymore.

She looked so pleased with herself that his impending roar faded to a choked, “Thank you.”

Smiling lazily, he brushed the cobweb from her hair. His eyes softened to sleepy gray, and Prudence’s heart beat faster. Her aunt must be right, she thought. Men fancied brainless women. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she had washed the gun to keep him from shooting her.

As he leaned forward, shooting her was the last thing on Sebastian’s mind. She had learned her lessons of the night well. Her dark lashes swept down to shutter her eyes. Her lips parted as she tilted her face to his. He groaned and buried his hand in her hair and his tongue in the warm, wet recesses of her mouth. He wrapped his arm around her back, and the pistol dangled forgotten from his fingertips.

An angry roar from the doorway drove Prudence into his
lap. “What’s it to be, Kirkpatrick? Are ye goin’ to tup the puir lass or shoot ’er?”

Sebastian lay a warning finger against Prudence’s trembling lips. “Chin up, love,” he whispered. “You’re about to make the acquaintance of my merry men.”

P
rudence slowly turned to face the men. Kirkpatrick kept his arm anchored firmly around her waist.

The two men did not look merry at all, she thought. Even the sunlight quailed before the blond giant standing in the doorway. As he ducked under the lintel, the floor shuddered beneath the booted hams of his feet. He could only be Tiny.

He threw back his head with a laugh that shook the timbers. “I frighted ye, didn’t I? Ye taught me well, lad. Stealth before wealth.”

His long, ratty beard and halo of blond hair made him look more like a misplaced Viking than a Scottish border raider. Prudence half expected him to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to his longship. She pressed her back to Kirkpatrick’s chest, and his hand flattened against her stomach with a soothing stroke.

She recoiled farther as the puckish creature perched on the windowsill gave a nasal coo of horror. “Fer shame, Kirkpatrick, where’s yer mask? Ye mustn’t think much of
the wee lovey, do ye? Shall I take her fer a walk now or later?”

Prudence thought he was the ugliest child she had ever seen. Then she realized he was not a child at all, but a young man, his features pinched to foxlike sharpness. His thin arms were strung with muscles like pianoforte wires. His lips smacked as he sucked the nectar from a honeysuckle blossom and leered at Prudence.

“That won’t be necessary, Jamie,” Kirkpatrick said. “The lass is blind.”

“Blind?” echoed the giant.

“Blind?” repeated Prudence.

Kirkpatrick pinched her sharply. She squinted obligingly.

“You heard me,” he said. “She’s blind. She can see nothing but a wee bit of light and a few shapes. That’s how she came to tumble down that hill last night.”

Jamie crumbled the blossom in his freckled fist. “And what was she doin’ on that hill? Pickin’ daisies?”

Before Kirkpatrick could answer, Prudence said, “I was having a picnic.”

Tiny’s brow folded in a thunderous frown. He crossed arms as big as birch trunks across his chest. “Bloody wet fer a picnic, weren’t it?”

Kirkpatrick gave her hair a warning tug. She ignored him. “Not earlier in the day. You see, I’d been lost for hours until your laird was kind enough to rescue me and bring me here … to his castle.” She blinked at the air a full foot down and three feet over from the source of the rumbling voice.

“Our laird?” hooted Jamie.

“His castle?” echoed Tiny.

Prudence felt around the floor, wincing as a splinter buried itself in her thumb. “I’d best get my things. Laird Kirkpatrick said one of you footmen would be kind enough to escort me to the road where I might await conveyance to my home.”

“Did he now?” Tiny frowned. “Our laird is the purest soul of generosity.”

Sebastian smirked. “So they tell me.”

Prudence rose. Jamie vaulted off the windowsill and into the hut. Sebastian’s jaw tightened, but he refused to let so much as a twitch of an eyebrow betray him. He knew they weren’t convinced of her harmlessness yet. He hoped to God she realized it as well. He folded his arms across his chest to hide his clenched fists.

Prudence took a tentative step forward, arms outstretched to grope the air. Careful not to make a sound, Tiny nudged a stool into her path. Sebastian flinched as her shin slammed into it.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said.

She felt her way around the table with a crescendo of convincing thumps. Just as her hand reached the back of the chair, Jamie snatched away her gown and held it gleefully aloft. Silver hairpins tinkled to the floor. He picked one up, bit the pearl, then tucked it between his lips.

Prudence felt each rung of the chair back, frowning with great perplexity. “I’m sure this is where I left my gown to dry.”

Jamie tossed the velvet into her face. “Here ye go. Must have slipped off.”

“Thank you,” she said, her voice muffled.

She pulled the gown over her head. All three men watched avidly as she buttoned the bodice and tugged on her damp shoes.

Straightening, she clasped her hands together. Sebastian’s spirits sank as he realized what she was waiting for. If only the cantankerous cat would wander over and brush against her ankles. Tiny spotted the kitten at the same moment Sebastian did. It crouched behind one of the table legs, a cottony puff of a tail quivering in anticipation of pouncing on Tiny’s boot.

Tiny bent double and shoveled the creature into his palm. He held it up to eye level, peering at its disgruntled whiskers.

Prudence squeezed her eyes shut, fighting back tears. She did not dare protest or reveal she knew he held Sebastian. He could easily snap the animal’s neck between two fingers.

A low rumble filled the hut. Her eyes flew open. At
first, she thought the massive man was growling at her cat, then she glimpsed the grin on Kirkpatrick’s face. Tiny was purring.

He rubbed the kitten’s belly against his bristled face, his eyes narrowed to blissful slits. “I love cats. Me mum always kept one at the hearth.”

“I love ’em too,” Jamie said. “When there ain’t nothin’ bigger to eat.”

Prudence shuddered.

“Do the wee beastie have a name, lass?” Tiny asked her.

“Sebastian.”

Jamie snorted. “That’s a silly name.”

Sebastian winced. “Give the lady her cat, Tiny. Jamie, take her to the road. Take her
directly
to the road. Then come straight back. Do you understand?”

Jamie doffed his shapeless cap with a mocking bow. “I ain’t daft, me laird.”

Tiny tucked the kitten in Prudence’s arms.

“Thank you ever so much, Mr. Tiny.”

Prudence had to take one last chance. She felt her way along the wall until her toe touched Sebastian’s pallet. She knelt beside him, painfully conscious of the two pairs of eyes boring into her back. Her vacant gaze gave her the perfect chance to study him. She did not need to study him. His face was committed perfectly to her memory. She would see it each morning when she awoke and each night when she closed her eyes. Sunlight revealed tiny crow’s feet, but robbed nothing from his devastating good looks. She touched his cheek, committing its texture to her memory as well.

“Thank you for your kindness, sir. It will not be forgotten.”

He gave her hand a quick, hard squeeze. “That it won’t.”

She turned away before the tears could well in her eyes. Jamie offered her his arm. She stood there stupidly, ignoring it until he linked it in hers.

“Did ye ever hear the joke about the blind whore and the armless sailor?” he asked as he led her to the door.

Sebastian watched her go with a sense of triumph. Then the doorway was empty. The sun lost its sparkle, settling into the dull cast of mid-morning. He grimaced, deepening the brooding lines around his mouth.

Tiny propped his hip on the table. The wood groaned under his weight. “I feared for ye, lad, when I checked the old oak fer a note, but found none. I thought the law had got ye.”

Sebastian refused to meet the other man’s measuring gaze. Tiny knew him better than anyone did. They had run the moors together when they were boys. Tiny was the only one who had ever had the courage to place himself between Sebastian and his father’s fists. It had cost him two teeth and earned him Sebastian’s unswerving loyalty.

“Ye know D’Artan won’t like this one wee bit,” Tiny went on. “If the lass talks, it could be yer neck and his as well.”

Sebastian felt a cold mask fall over his face; the mask of his father’s face, the jovial ferocity he had always longed to smash. “No, Tiny. If she talks, it’ll be her neck.”

Tiny shook his head wearily and crossed the hut to squat down beside him. Sunlight struck silver as he tossed the hairpins in Sebastian’s lap. “Ye’d best treasure them. They’re all ye’ve got to show fer last night’s work.”

Sebastian waited until Tiny had gone to cut a splint before gathering the hairpins. He handled them reverently, as if they were tipped with something far more precious than pearls.

Jamie was the most unpleasant creature Prudence had ever encountered. She ached to be alone with her thoughts, but he chattered on blithely with jokes more suited for a brothel than a lady’s company. She edged away from him when he paused to scratch his crotch and spit. By the time they reached the road, he had dragged her into one wet bramble bush, two rabbit holes, and a tree trunk. Her shins, she knew, would be black and blue by the morrow, and her delicate skin itched already with what threatened to be poison sumac.

Jamie looked both ways down the deserted road, scratching his head. Prudence took a step backward, fearful something might leap out of the ragged mop.

“I hate to leave ye here all by yer lonesome,” he said. “Ye could be set upon by robbers. Ye know how robbers are. They love blind girls.” He leered at her. “Blind girls can’t kiss and tell.”

“I’ll be fine. If you could just sit me down at the side of the road, I’m sure someone will come along soon.”

She resisted the urge to kick him as he led her to the middle of the road and pushed her to a seated position. “There ye go, luv. Sit right here in this patch of wildflowers. Ain’t they pleasant?” His gamin nose wrinkled. “Smell them now.”

Prudence could smell nothing. The muddy road sucked at her skirt. He must think she was blind
and
stupid, she thought. She smiled brightly at the nearest tree. “Thank you. You are a true gentleman.”

He circled her until he stood behind her. “I’ll be on me way now. Good day.” He ran in place for a moment, then stood utterly still, holding his breath.

Prudence began to hum softly, as would any genteel lady who had been left on a flowery bank to await the next coach. After three stanzas of “My Shepherd Is The Living Lord,” Jamie sighed in defeat and melted into the woods. Prudence did not stir. The morning sun lengthened toward noon.

Finally, she dared to peek behind her. Sunlight glinted off glossy foliage. The chirp of a lark broke the waiting silence of the forest. Seeing and hearing nothing else, she gathered her muddy skirts and fled toward the meadow.

A tousled head shot out from behind an oak. Hazel eyes narrowed, and Jamie muttered to himself as Prudence scaled a fence, her bedraggled dress a splash of purple against a field dotted with yellow buttercups.

He tugged his ears and chortled. “Damned agile for a blind lass, wouldn’t ye say, Kirkpatrick, me lad?”

He sprinted toward the hut, leaping rocks and dodging trees like the mad Highlander he was.