To her shock, Sebastian threw back his head and laughed. “All these years and the stubborn old cuss has never married. I must have underestimated Tricia’s charms. We’d best send her back. He’ll have the redcoats on us for sure. He’s worse than his father when it comes to cozening up to the damnable English.”
With Tiny’s accusing gaze on her, Prudence swallowed hard, feeling worse than damnable. Jamie’s cheeks inflated with a worried breath.
Tiny folded his massive arms across his chest. “That’s not the end of it.”
“It is fer him.” Jamie gripped Tiny’s elbow. “Ye heard him. I’ve changed me mind. Be off with ye.”
Tiny shook him away. The lantern threw rocking shadows on the wall. “There’s more.”
“More?” Sebastian said lightly. “Pray, do tell. My infinite patience is wearing thin.”
Tiny pointed at Prudence. Her fingers froze around the blanket.
“That lass told Big Gus to refer all claims fer ransom to her fiancé, Laird Killian MacKay of Strathnaver.”
For a long moment, the only sound was the creak of the lantern suspended from Tiny’s hand.
Sebastian slowly pivoted to face Prudence. A cold light dawned in his eyes.
She shrank against the wall. Shrugging, she accidentally dislodged the blanket from one bare shoulder. A tremulous smile curved her lips. “I was going to tell you, Sebastian. Truly, I was.”
“When?” His voice was deadly soft. “After you and MacKay settled into my castle and raised a passel of whey-faced, mealymouthed brats?” His eyes narrowed to silver slits. “First the sheriff. Now MacKay. You lead a very interesting life for such a dour spinster, don’t you, dear?”
She felt the color drain from her face. “That’s not fair. You don’t understand—”
Tiny took a step backward as Sebastian’s r’s began to roll. “I understand all too well. I sold my soul for Dunkirk and still couldn’t win it. All you had to do was waltz in and bat your pretty eyelashes for that miserable lech MacKay.”
She stared at the blankets, fighting back tears. Should she confess her engagement was only a ruse to trap him for MacKay? Sebastian had every reason to distrust her. After all, she had betrayed him to Tugbert. If he believed she was betraying him to yet another enemy, she might never have a chance to make amends. But as she stared up at him, she was no longer sure she wanted to. All of her noble intentions to play angel of mercy, then retreat meekly back to her own life, melted in the condemning heat of his glare.
“Why should you care who I marry?” she asked, her voice rough with bitterness. “You’re the one who offered me to your grandfather.”
His fingers bit into her chin. “Would you have preferred I had taken you away to Paris that night? Raped you into insensibility to get D’Artan’s godforsaken formula?”
She jerked free of his grasp. “I should have shot you,” she said icily.
“I wish you had.”
“I ought to be worth a pretty fortune to you now. Shall I help you pen the ransom note? Would you like to send MacKay my ear or perhaps a few of my toes?”
His scathing glance took her in, from her tangled mass of hair to her little toes peeping out from beneath the rumpled blankets. “Are you sure he’d even want you now? MacKay’s not too fond of used goods.”
Jamie’s muffled sound of protest was almost her undoing, but she managed to meet his gaze evenly. “Especially goods used by Kerr men.”
Sebastian’s face went white. His hand twitched, and for a timeless second she thought he would strike her. Instead, he reached down and flicked the blanket back over her shoulder.
A wayward tear trickled down the side of her nose. With a snort of disgust, Sebastian reached under the blankets and tossed a scrap of tartan into her lap. She rubbed the soft wool between thumb and forefinger. It was what was left of Sebastian’s plaid, frayed and worn almost bald in spots. She remembered the tender care he had given it, the reverent pride with which he had touched it. It was the Kerr plaid, his only plaid, he had said, and he couldn’t afford another.
She lifted her eyes, gazing at him with regret and pity. The brackets around his mouth deepened for an elusive moment, then his face smoothed into the flawless veneer she was coming to hate. He snatched up his breeches and boots.
“Guard her,” he commanded Tiny with a dark look at Jamie. “If anyone tries to get to her, fire one shot in the air. If she tries to escape”—his even gaze met Prudence’s—“shoot her.”
He flung the curtain aside and ducked into the dawn. Tiny followed. Jamie hung behind, his eyes brimming with mute apology until Tiny’s hand reappeared to jerk him out by the collar. Prudence hugged her knees and rested her cheek against the coarse blanket.
Her gaze fell on the handbill resting on top of the trunk. The Edinburgh artist had been as much a fool as she. He had captured the warm promise of Sebastian’s mouth without revealing any of its sulky threat. For her, the threat had now become a promise.
If his men were goblins, then Sebastian Kerr was no less than their king. She rolled to her side, pressing the scrap of tartan to her mouth to muffle her sobs.
Twenty-five
Sebastian pulled off his mask as he climbed from the dark ring of pines and up the hill, his ankle throbbing in the dawn cold. Tiny dozed beside the cavern, a musket laid across his knees. Sebastian nudged him. Tiny started, blinking guiltily.
“Go prepare their coach for a return to Edinburgh,” Sebastian said softly.
Tiny gave his shoulder a brief squeeze before trotting down the hill.
Sebastian leaned against the cavern wall and drew in a deep breath of the bracing mountain air. There had been nights of exile in Paris and London when he would have given all he owned for one whiff of this purity to wash away the sooty miasma of the city.
His talk with Devony had firmed his resolve, but done little to clear his mind. He stared at his rough hands, unable to forget the shattering instant when he had wanted to hit Prudence. To raise his fist and strike the smug accusation right off her lovely face. Being reminded he was Brendan Kerr’s son made him want to respond as his father would have done. With his fists.
He lowered his arms with a sigh. Perhaps his father had been right. He was clumsy and silly and not even clever enough to tell the difference between love and pretense.
Prudence had betrayed him to Tugbert and to MacKay. It hadn’t been revenge enough to drive him out of England bound like an animal. She sought to imprison him forever in the Highlands, forced to watch as she took her place as MacKay’s doting bride and claimed Dunkirk, the only legacy his father had left him, except for a nose that had been broken one too many times.
A scowl creased his brow as he slipped into the cavern.
Prudence sat on the stool, her gloved hands folded primly in her lap. She was clean and flushed ruddy from a brisk scrubbing in the icy water. Her hair was tied back with one of his own frayed satin ribbons. He saw no trace of the woman who had responded to his bittersweet seduction with such eager passion.
His stomach clenched with foreboding. Prudence’s composure never augured well for him.
As he approached, she stiffened warily. “If you’ve come to ravish me, just throw my gown over my head and have done with it.”
He eyed the alluring swell of her breasts beneath the redingote and grinned wickedly. “A tempting offer to be sure, but I’d hate to muss your charming new garments. Were they a gift from your fiancé?”
He ran a thumb over the lush fox of her shoulder-cape with the assessing touch of a thief. His knuckles brushed her throat and she jerked her gaze guiltily from his lips. Their eyes met and she flushed, obviously embarrassed that his merest touch could evoke such a wanton response in her.
As the worn linen of his breeches tautened across his groin, Sebastian realized he was in danger of being caught in his own snare. He heeded the warning by crossing to the basin and splashing cold water on his face, whistling jauntily all the while.
Prude
nce donned her spectacles, deliberately sliding yet another fragile barrier between them. She peered over their rims at Sebastian’s tousled hair, the drops of water misting his chest, the breeches riding low on his hips. His sheer male beauty was a primitive thing, both threat and allure.
She hid her turmoil behind clipped tones. “How did Tricia stand you in the mornings? Cheerful and gorgeous. It must have been a daunting combination.”
“Simple. Tricia never rose before noon. By then I was bleary-eyed and dissolute.”
“As you were last night?”
“Precisely.”
Their eyes met, and without warning they both remembered the many other things he had been last night—tender and rough, mischievous and sensitive, patient and daring.
He turned his back to her and pulled on another shirt. By its patched condition, she judged his selection to be very limited.
She resisted the urge to duck as he swung around, pistol in hand. “What are you going to do? Shoot me?”
He tucked the pistol in his breeches as a smile flickered across his face. “Too quick.”
He looped a length of rope over his shoulder.
“Hang me?”
“Too merciful.”
He started toward her. She swallowed hard. “Beat me?”
He squatted in front of her. “There’s only one way to make you truly miserable. I’m going to marry you, Duchess.”
His words sang wildly through her mind, then stuck on one discordant note. Duchess. He beamed at her as if he expected her to throw her arms around him and smother his face with kisses.
Her fist came out of nowhere, smashing into his jaw with a force that would have quelled Tiny. He fell backward, treating her to the gratifying sight of the soles of his boots.
He sat up, rubbing his chin ruefully. “Are you sure your father wasn’t a boxer?”
She stood, her eyes narrowed and her fists still clenched. “You wouldn’t marry me for love, but you’ll marry me quick enough for a title, won’t you? You blackhearted, no—good, grasping, villainous—” She sputtered into incoherence.
“Scoundrel?” he suggested, climbing to his feet. “Rogue? Muzzy-headed lout? You wound me, darling. After the tender moments we shared last night, I had hoped you’d wish to do the honorable thing by me.”
“Tender moments, my bustle. You’d tup a goat if it backed up to you.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such language! I dare say you didn’t learn that from one of your father’s anatomy books.”
“It wasn’t marriage on your mind last night, was it?”
His jaw tightened. “Unless I’m mistaken, it wasn’t marriage on your mind either. It certainly wasn’t your impending marriage to Killian MacKay.”
Her nostrils flared in impotent rage. She turned her back on him. “What do you think to gain by marrying me? Does lunacy run in your family?”
“Not lunacy. Pragmatism.” He rested his hands lightly on her shoulders. “With you as my wife, MacKay won’t dare bring the redcoats down on us. If he should be so foolish, they’ll have no case. You, my sweet duchess, are going to buy me the time I need to get what I want from both MacKay and my grandfather.”
She laughed shakily as she bowed her head. “Such a tender declaration of your affections, my lord. I’m touched.”
The nape of her neck was very pale, Sebastian noticed. He hid his pang of regret behind brisk purpose. “Have you any paper?”
She walked over to her trunk without a word. Her face expressionless, she handed him a sheet from the London Times. Her betrothal announcement was inked in bold letters at the top of the page. She bent to fish out a quill and a bottle of ink.
“That wasn’t the sort of paper I meant,” he said angrily.
Prudence shrugged artlessly. The set of his jaw made her wonder how wise she was to bait him.
Before she could hand him a creamy sheet of her stationery, he snatched up the handbill with his likeness and tore it in two. A bereft sound escaped her, but she disguised it as a cough. Using an outcropping of rock as a desk, Sebastian scribbled furiously. She stood on her tiptoes to peer over his shoulder.
He dipped the quill in the ink, wrote something, then scratched it out with furious strokes. “How do you spell ‘torture’?” he muttered.
Her lips tightened to a mutinous pout before she sweetly replied, “T-o-r-c-h-e-r.”
He frowned. “Looks odd. Oh, well. No matter. D’Artan won’t care.” He kept writing.
She crept nearer. “What are you doing? Offering to pull out my fingernails so I’ll surrender the formula?”
He pursed his lips. “Excellent idea.” He scribbled another line, then folded the paper into a packet.
It took Sebastian far longer to write the second note. He hesitated before signing it, knowing he was about to seal not only her fate, but his own as well. The quill hung poised above the paper. Prudence hovered behind him, so near he could feel the soft whisper of her breath against his nape. He gripped the quill tighter, bringing it to bear against the paper in an untidy scrawl.
Sebastian turned so fast that Prudence had to stumble backward so he wouldn’t step on her. “Now all I need is something to prove I’ve got you.”
He stroked his chin. His gaze raked her. Her eyes widened as he bent to slip the wicked skean dhu out of his boot. Her toes curled deep into her shoes.
She backed away. “A-A-About my toes. I was only joking. I doubt if Laird MacKay would even recognize my toes. He’s never seen them.”
Sebastian advanced on her, dagger in hand, his expression resolute.
“Or my ears. He’s never seen them either. Tricia made me wear those dreadful ear bobs. Why, I’d be willing to bet he wouldn’t know my ears from Boris’s …”
Her voice faded as the stone wall dug into her shoulders. Her knees went weak at Sebastian’s intoxicating nearness. She flinched as he reached around and drew away the satin ribbon. Her hair fell in a silky net around her shoulders.
A sob of breathless laughter escaped her. “Oh, my hair. Of course. Take as much as you like. It’s quite impossible. I can’t do anything clever with it.”
His fingers raked her scalp, burrowing deep to free a stray lock from the soft mass. He drew it against her cheek, enchanted by the silky skein, lost in a vision of her astride him, her hair a web of burgundy around his face.
He leaned forward, bracing a knee between hers, his head lowering toward hers. He lifted a hand to stroke her cheek. It was then he remembered the dagger and its grim purpose.
“Ow!” Prudence wailed as his fingers tightened around her hair.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
He touched the razor edge of the dagger to the soft strand. The blade pressed, snapping the first of the delicate filaments. His knuckles went white against the hilt.
“For Christ’s sake!” he erupted. “You cut the blasted stuff. I know nothing about cutting women’s hair.” He thrust the dagger into her hand, then winced as she cheerfully sawed at the lock he’d chosen. “Not so much, will you? I don’t want a bald bride.”
“It is my hair,” she reminded him, thrusting the hair at him. She watched as he divided the hank and tucked half into each note.
“What am I to be, Sebastian?” she asked. “Your hostage or your bride?”
He wet his lips before kissing her hard. “Neither. Both.”
He tied on his mask and gathered his meager belongings with icy efficiency, leaving Prudence standing limply against the wall. She fastened the buttons of her shoulder-cape with stiff fingers, knowing the cold outside could not compare to the fearful ice spreading through her heart.
• • •
Prudence emerged from the cavern into a dazzling burst of sunlight on frost. The last tendrils of morning mist drifted through the trees. In the clearing below, Sebastian saddled two sturdy horses, his face set in concentration, his old limp more pronounced. His mask shadowed his eyes.
She started down the hill, the stares of the bandits crawling agai
nst her skin. As she reached the clearing, Tiny strode through the trees, triumphantly wielding a straggly, dripping mess in one fist. She recoiled, believing for one horrible moment that it was a dead rat, or worse yet, a severed head.
Tiny held his trophy aloft. “That wee countess cleans up real nice once ye wash all that powder and paint off her.”
Prudence was even more horrified as she recognized Tricia’s wig. Surely only death could separate Tricia from her wig!
Sebastian tightened a cinch with obvious unconcern. “You’re a better man than I, Tiny. I never could get her out of all that foolishness.”
“She’s a feisty devil, she is. She didn’t like it none. I had to throw her in the pond.”
Sebastian frowned. “I thought the pond was frozen.”
“It was. But I chopped a hole in the ice before I tossed her in.”
“How thoughtful,” Prudence murmured, dodging a spray of water as Tiny fondly shook the wig.
His grin faded as Tricia came charging into the clearing with a furious screech, tattered parasol in hand.
She rammed the parasol into Tiny’s rock-hard stomach, spitting at him like an enraged kitten. “Give me my wig, you overgrown barbarian! I’ll see you in Newgate for this, if it’s the last thing I do!”
Prudence gaped. She had never realized how much Tricia resembled her own papa. Freckles skimmed her aunt’s pale cheeks. Strings of auburn hair plastered her face.
Tiny rumbled with laughter and held the wig just out of Tricia’s reach. She jumped up and down like a terrier yapping at a bull, then began to flail him with the parasol.
Sebastian could not suppress a snort of laughter. Tricia spun around to see who would dare make sport of her, and glared at the masked highwayman.
Sebastian met her stony gaze without flinching, shocking Prudence with his boldness. This was the moment of truth. Tricia knew her lover’s voice groggy with sleep, and had traced his features with her fingertip beneath the half-light of the moon.
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