As she rolled to her side and pounded her bolster into submission, she had the discomfiting sensation that she was eleven years old again and struggling to understand why Papa must send every extra tuppence to his “poor orphaned little sister.”
“Be patient, my Prudence,” he would say. “All it will take is one word from the king and your future will be secure. Our day will soon arrive.” Prudence was still waiting.
While she and her papa had lived in rustic comfort in a two-room apartment in London, Tricia had luxuriated in the Northumberland countryside, collecting and discarding Hepplewhite pier-tables and fawning beaux with equal panache. Prudence had tried not to resent her lovely aunt.
To Prudence, Tricia’s infrequent calls to their cluttered lodgings had been like the earthly visitations of a satin-swathed fairy. Tricia would pat her cheek, her fingers cool beneath their net gloving. An irresistible sympathy would warm her amber eyes as she pressed a perfumed kerchief to her dainty nose. For a brief moment, basking in the glow of Tricia’s attention, Prudence would find it not so terrible to be smart and skinny and plain.
The sympathy in Sebastian’s touch told her otherwise. Prudence flung herself onto her stomach. Sympathy was too kind a word. Perhaps someday she would learn to separate it from pity.
Coach wheels rattled on the cobblestones of the drive. Tricia’s lilting farewell drifted up through Prudence’s open window. Devony Blake, she thought, was now free to go home and dream of her mystery bandit with the relentless hands and heated lips, while Tricia was left to do more than dream with a man who was a greater mystery than she knew.
Prudence sighed, wishing her kitten was snuggled beside her. He was probably in the herb garden, chasing moonbeams and dreaming of bewhiskered fairies. Why should he be at her side when she needed him? What could she expect of a beast with a treacherous name like Sebastian? Especially a male beast.
A board creaked on the stairs. She pulled the counterpane over her head. A hushed whisper was followed by a throaty giggle, then the giggle was muffled abruptly in a manner Prudence did not choose to explore. A door closed. The house fell silent.
Prudence lay still until her legs grew stiff and she wearied of breathing the air beneath the stifling confines of the covers. How dare the scoundrel pity her? she thought, throwing back the counterpane.
She rose to pace the room. Moonlight slanted like prison bars across the rug. A brisk night breeze stirred the ruffled curtains. Her restlessness grew until it bordered on wildness. She picked up a book and tossed it down, then strode to the ceramic water pitcher.
It was empty.
It was just like the maids to forget to fill it, she thought. No doubt Tricia’s pitcher was brimming over with cold water. Old Fish had probably shaved the ice himself for her ladyship’s pleasure.
Prudence’s throat suddenly felt as parched as if she’d trekked across the Sahara without benefit of a camel. She tightened her jaw, telling herself she would not remain a prisoner in her bedroom for the rest of her life, simply because her aunt had the insensitivity to marry a highwayman.
She donned a wrapper and stuck her head out the door to peer both ways. The long corridor was empty. A single candle in a glass sconce cast a gentle glow on the polished cedar floor. Old Fish always kept a candle burning for his mistress. Tricia hated the dark.
Prudence crept into the hall, her bravado dissipating along with her savage temper. The days when she would have gone to her aunt’s chamber for a drink were done. Heaven knows what sordid sight might greet her there.
She sank down at the top of the stairs and peered through a lyre-shaped baluster. Her hands curled around the cool wrought-iron. Moonlight and shadows dappled the entranceway below. A candle left guttering in the drawing room cast a shallow pool of light across the marble tile. Prudence listened, but heard only the odd creaks and groans of any house abandoned to the stillness of night.
She glided down the stairs. The mahogany banister felt clammy beneath her palm.
As she stepped off the last stair and turned toward the mundane comfort of the kitchens, a band of relentless muscle shot around her waist and jerked her against an unyielding male chest. A firm hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her would-be scream to silence.
Six
Prudence waited for the steely arm wrapped around her waist to lift and tighten across her throat. She could well imagine the conversation between Tricia and her fiancé over breakfast the following morn.
Sebastian’s sulky mouth would look appropriately penitent. “I’m dreadfully sorry, pudding. I mistook her for a robber and accidentally strangled her to death.”
Tricia would tap Sebastian’s arm playfully with her fan. “You silly boy. How unfortunate! You didn’t leave a mess, did you? I had that marble floor installed only last February.”
Prudence slowly realized he was holding her only firmly enough to still her fevered struggles to a helpless wiggle. It was a measure of the strength of the man that he could restrain her without hurting her. She felt a gentleness in his touch, an unspoken wish to exert no more force than was necessary to hold her. He dragged her into the shadows beneath the stairs, pressing his back to the wall for leverage. Her weight fell helplessly against him; her hips were pinned to the muscular contours of his thighs. He splayed his legs to keep his balance.
His breath, laced with tobacco and brandy, stirred her nightcap. “Quiet, lass. I won’t hurt you. If you’ll quit squeaking and squirming, I’ll let you go. I swear it.”
She ceased her struggles. His muscles relaxed, but his forearm remained snug beneath her breasts, and his warm palm still cupped her mouth. The heat of his body trapped her in a silken web perilously near to an embrace. As he buried his face in her unbound hair, she realized the danger she believed herself to be in might be of a different sort altogether. Perhaps he had made his promise not to hurt her in haste. The pain he was capable of inflicting was both sweet and deadly.
He eased his hand from her mouth. His fingers lingered for a tantalizing moment against her lips.
She took a shuddering breath and summoned some shred of dignity. “Would you please unhand me, sir?”
She might have imagined the briefest brush of his lips against her bared shoulder before he freed her. “As the lady wishes.”
She stepped away from him, but her knees betrayed her. He reached out to steady her. She jerked her nightcap straight before turning to face him.
He leaned against the curving wall with arms crossed. Shadows hid his face. Prudence felt exposed in the bright ribbon of moonlight streaming through the fanlight over the door. She sensed rather than saw his gaze slide downward over the thin cotton of her wrapper. She shivered, though the night was not cold.
“I thought you’d never come,” he said.
“I fear to disappoint you, Lord Kerr, but I did not come downstairs for a rendezvous with you.”
“Are you so sure? Or are you lying to yourself again? As I recall, you weren’t too clear on your reasons for accompanying me to the crofter’s hut either.”
“I might suggest that you were the one unclear about my motives, not I.”
He stepped into the light. If Prudence had found his dress to be immodest at supper, she was doubly alarmed now at his casual disarray. He had discarded his frock coat. His white shirt was half unbuttoned, and moonlight gilded the fur of his chest to gold. His hair was freed of its queue and tumbled loose around his face in a way more becoming than Prudence would have ever admitted. She took an involuntary step backward.
He circled her like a tawny panther. “You’re a cool one, aren’t you? I admire that in a man.”
She chose to ignore the implied insult, studying the marble tiles as if she’d never seen them before.
“You’d make a fine faro player,” he went on. “I dare say you’ve never tried your hand at it, though.”
“Of course not.” She lifted her head to face him. “Although I’m sure you’d number it among your many skills, along with
highway robbery and lurking under stairways.”
“Don’t forget cheating at whist. What did you come down for, Miss Walker? Dessert?” His crooked smile was infuriating.
“I thought you might need help finding the silver,” she snapped.
“Ah, the mouse roars. Is that why you believe I came to Lindentree? To rob your aunt?”
Prudence wished that was what she did believe. “No.” Her voice lost its stinging note. “I believe you came to Lindentree to marry her.”
He stared down into her eyes, seeming mesmerized for a moment. He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, then let it fall. “You should have worn your bloody spectacles. You could fall down in the dark and hurt yourself.” He walked over to the pier-table, his limp more pronounced than before. Picking up a china shepherdess, he laughed shakily. “You have only yourself to blame. It was you who told me you would cry if I were to hang. You who suggested I might pursue my lust for gain in a more honorable fashion.”
“Such as marrying a rich woman?”
“Aye.” His long, elegant fingers caressed the delicate china. Prudence wondered if he was assessing its value. “It’s a timeworn but socially acceptable method of amassing a fortune.”
“You and Tricia have more in common than I realized.” Prudence paced into the glow from the drawing room and back, frowning distractedly. The wrapper foamed around her calves. “Tricia always marries men with money. I have been over and over it in my mind and I can’t figure out why she would marry you.”
She turned back to face him. He stood silhouetted in the moonlight like a rumpled pagan god, and her cheeks flamed as she realized what a stupid question it had been. The reason for Tricia’s choice was all too clear—as clear as the silvery light bathing the slanted planes of his face. Tricia had finally found a man more beautiful than she.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I lied. I told her Dunkirk was still mine. And soon it will be. With an English countess as my wife and her purse strings to back me, even MacKay won’t be able to stop me from claiming it. A few more robberies and I’ll have enough in my account to maintain the illusion of riches—at least until we’re wed.”
Prudence kept her tone deliberately light. “Why marry? Why not just purchase your own title? Our prime minister hands them out like tissue paper. All you must do is prove an annual income of ten thousand pounds.”
“What should I list as my vocation? Robber? Notorious criminal?”
She inclined her head, hiding a reluctant smile. “It will be quite a coup for Tricia to add a Scottish laird to her collection of French counts and Austrian barons.”
“And if she knew I was a deposed Scottish laird?”
“As long as you escaped with the family treasury, she wouldn’t care. The more deposed the better. Tricia loves a lost cause.”
Prudence was unprepared for the touch of his fingers as he tilted her chin up. Her skin tingled at the warm shock of the contact.
“Is that what you think I am?” he asked. “A lost cause?” His gaze searched her face, lingering on her lips.
Her smile faded. “What you are, my lord, is of no concern to me.”
With that cool dismissal, she turned away and caught the skirt of her wrapper in her trembling hands.
As she started up the stairs, he caught her arm, and she felt something akin to desperation in his grasp. “I never expected to find you in a household like Lindentree.”
She could not look at him. “Are you sorry?”
“Sorry is only the half of it, lass. I never wanted to lay eyes on you again.”
He did not protest when she gently disengaged herself from his grip. Prudence was barricaded safely behind her bedroom door before she realized her face was wet with tears.
Sebastian rose at dawn to prowl the sleeping house. The hollow silence and the vacant blue gaze of the china shepherdess in the entranceway drove him out into the manicured gardens. In a few short weeks, they would be his gardens. Beads of dew sparkled on mint green blades of grass. He reclined on a marble bench and watched the sky melt from gray to pink to powder blue. A slim Ionic column sprouted from the polished flagstones. It was a column that went nowhere and supported nothing, and to Sebastian it expressed perfectly the elusive flaw of Lindentree’s gardens. They were beautiful, but purposeless. Much like their mistress.
When they had met in London a few months ago, Tricia had seemed the perfect companion to his grandfather’s education—amusing, enthusiastic in bed, widowed, wealthy, and possessing more titles than any woman or man he knew. He had studied her with painstaking care, using his natural talent as a mimic to learn her speech patterns and manners. Any gentleman, he knew, would be well complemented by having such a woman as his mistress.
But Sebastian was no gentleman. He knew it was only a matter of time before he turned around at some London party and came face to face with Killian MacKay. Then all of society would know him for what he was—a common thieving bastard. To escape D’Artan and build any sort of future in a society that should rightfully despise him, he needed not a mistress, but a wife.
Sebastian stood. The serenity of the gardens only mocked the hard edge of his restlessness. At every corner, at every bend of the path, stood iron trellises draped with velvety blossoms of honeysuckle. He plucked a bloom as he passed and pinched away the tender tip. His tongue darted out to catch the golden bead of nectar that welled on the delicate stamen.
He closed his eyes, haunted by the fragrant memory of Prudence’s unbound hair. Had his besotted senses imagined it or had her hair been scented with the elusive breath of honeysuckle? It took little imagination for him to conjure up the way she had felt when she had gone soft and pliant in his arms the night before. Her modest wrapper had done little to disguise her gentle curves. He could have held her all night.
Sebastian opened his eyes. He had not lied to her. He had hoped never to lay eyes on her again. Prudence Walker was dangerous. Far more dangerous than his grandfather knew. There was more at risk than just a shipment of gunpowder or the old man’s election to the House of Commons. Sebastian’s entire future hung on her discretion. His fingers curled into a fist.
I would like her dispatched.
The memory of D’Artan’s icy commission darkened his eyes. He had never deliberately disobeyed his grandfather. He had learned long ago to laugh in his father’s face, knowing he would get no more than a busted rib or a bloody nose for his insolence. But with D’Artan, one was never sure what one would get.
Sebastian opened his palm. The crushed bits of the honeysuckle blossom scattered in the wind.
The dining-room door swung open. Sebastian glanced up for the twelfth time, only to be rewarded by the shriveled countenance of Old Fish. He returned his attention to his poached eggs, resisting the urge to growl.
His earlier request for breakfast had been met with a cool stare.
“The countess never takes breakfast before noon,” Old Fish had said.
“That’s all very well,” Sebastian had replied. “But I’d like something to eat now. Noon is five hours away.”
The butler had sniffed, and dared a glance at the clock on the mantel. “Perhaps I could serve chocolate in your chamber.”
Sebastian was not accustomed to ordering servants. He would have barked a command and boxed Jamie’s ears for such impudence, but he’d been momentarily perplexed at how to handle the butler. The vision of what Old Fish’s expression might be if he boxed his ears had given Sebastian the impetus he needed for a gracious smile.
“A very kind offer indeed, but I believe I’ll take my breakfast in the dining room.” Sebastian had paused. “Every morning.”
With a flare of his aristocratic nostrils, Old Fish had bowed his surrender.
Sebastian had seated himself at the end of the long table, fully prepared to be served day-old gruel. But Old Fish had been determined to get the last word, whether it was spoken or not, and Sebastian had watched helplessly as course after course of steaming food was wh
eeled in and placed on the cherry sideboard. Hot scones slathered with honey followed fresh kippers and chilled rosettes of butter. Thick slabs of bacon glistened next to mounds of strawberries and clotted cream. Even Tiny would have been hard-pressed to do justice to such a feast. Too late, Sebastian had realized he wasn’t hungry.
So he’d picked at his eggs and absently calculated the value of the silver warming dishes perched over the tiny candles. His gaze swung to the door each time it opened, as if by the sheer force of his will he could conjure up the person he wanted to see.
Old Fish hovered at his elbow. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
Sebastian laid down his knife, realizing with chagrin that he had been eating with the blade. His untouched fork gleamed amidst the snowy folds of his napkin. “I believe that will be all.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me, Fish, does Miss Walker ever take breakfast in the dining room?”
The butler’s thin lips compressed to a line of disdain. “She does not. I see no point in disturbing the servants for Miss Walker’s breakfast. She prefers to pick up a scone in the kitchens and carry it to the library.” He sniffed. “Very considerate of her, I might add.”
What sort of bizarre household was this where the servants were not to be disturbed for their masters’ comforts? Sebastian wondered. He would like to disturb personally anyone who intimated that Prudence wasn’t worth cooking for. How many times had she gone without breakfast or a warm fire to be “considerate”? When he was master of Lindentree, she would lack for nothing. He would see to it.
“Has Miss Walker already been to the kitchens this morning?” he asked.
“Nearly an hour ago.”
Sebastian jumped up. His knife clattered to the floor. “Very well. That will be all. Thank you.” He raced for the door. “The kippers were tasty,” he said over his shoulder to the gaping butler. “Nice butter too. Is there a trick to getting those little pats to look like roses?”
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