Heather and Velvet

by Teresa Medeiros

  The thought gave Prudence a sharp pang in the vicinity of her heart. After all, she reminded herself, Tricia was the wife Sebastian would have chosen. He had once judged Prudence good enough to be his mistress, but not his bride. All of her old feelings of inadequacy came flooding back. Without realizing it, she lifted a hand to smooth her hair into a chignon that wasn’t there.

  Tricia tilted her nose in the air. “You wicked scoundrel! God take pity on you if my niece’s betrothed catches up with you. He is a powerful man, and I can promise you his retribution will be slow and painful.”

  Prudence felt the tension ease out of Sebastian’s body. “Who are you engaged to?” he whispered to her. “God?”

  “Why, if my own fiancé were here …” Tricia sniffed, mercifully leaving that threat unfinished.

  Sebastian turned to Tiny, disguising his voice with a graveled brogue that made Prudence shiver. “Return the countess to her coach. The others are ready and waiting.”

  “Come, dear,” Tricia commanded Prudence, twirling her ragged parasol. “It seems the cretin has taken my warning to heart. Shall we go?”

  Prudence inched toward her aunt, wondering what her chances were of slipping away unnoticed.

  Sebastian’s warm hand closed over her elbow. “The young lady will remain with me.”

  Both Tricia and Tiny spun around to gape at them. Prudence lifted her chin, determined to salvage some shred of her pride. “You heard the man. I’m staying with him. I’m—I’m bored. I’ve decided a little jaunt might improve my disposition. They say the Highland air is just the thing for headaches.”

  “A jaunt?” Tricia echoed. “With a vicious highwayman?”

  Prudence pulled off her spectacles. Her hair billowed around her face in a dark cloud. “I’ll be fine, Auntie. Truly I will. He won’t hurt me.” Another lie to add to many, she thought.

  Tricia stared at her niece as if seeing her for the first time, fascinated by the resolve in Prudence’s violet eyes. “But Laird MacKay? Your engagement? The betrothal papers have been signed. The banns have been posted.”

  Prudence smiled faintly. “If anyone will understand, Killian will.”

  Sebastian’s hand tightened on her elbow. Glancing at him, she saw his eyes narrowed to stormy slits.

  Tiny laced a protective arm through Tricia’s. “Come, me wee countess.” He gave Sebastian a dark glance over her head. “Ye know how stubborn the young are when they take a notion in their silly noggins.”

  Tricia gazed up at him, bewilderment softening her features. As he led her away, she clung to his brawny arm without realizing it. “How could the girl be so ungrateful? I finally coaxed some old goat into marrying her and she runs off for a fling with a highwayman. You will watch after her, won’t you? She’s had her nose buried in a book her whole life. The poor dear hasn’t an ounce of common sense.”

  “Aye, me lady,” Tiny said soothingly. “I swear it on me poor mum’s grave. I’ll watch after the lass like she was me own sweet daughter.”

  “Stop squirmin’, lass, or I’ll have to shoot ye.” Tiny oomphed as one of Prudence’s flailing elbows caught him in the gut.

  She clenched her teeth. “Wait until after the vows, won’t you? So my husband can inherit.” She aimed a kick at Tiny’s shin. It was like striking an oak.

  Prudence felt as if she had been riding for a lifetime. Every muscle in her body throbbed from the grueling trip up the mountain. She had finally slumped in the saddle, only to be awakened by Tiny snatching her off the horse.

  The dirt road was deserted. Somewhere in the small village, a door slammed with a final thump.

  Tiny cupped her elbows in his palms and lifted her over the threshold of a narrow house. As she hung in his grasp like an oversized rag doll, a freckled weasel of a man blinked at her curiously. She bared her teeth at him and he sidled away, his long, untidy whiskers aquiver. He could only be Jamie’s father, she thought, and shuddered to think of the terrors a tiny Jamie must have inflicted on so timid a sire.

  To her bleary eyes, everyone in the room seemed to be animals. Jamie slipped in and out like a sinuous fox, ready to bolt at the merest scent of danger. Jamie’s father offered his bony back as a desk so Sebastian could set quill to parchment, signing the document that would bind them as man and wife. The firelight played over the lean planes of Sebastian’s face. He was a sandy panther, both compelling and dangerous.

  She wondered what sort of animal she might be. As Sebastian handed her the register and forced the quill between her fingers, the answer came to her.

  Dinner.

  She was a dinner animal.

  A bitter viper of disappointment uncurled in her gut. This was hardly the moment of tenderness and celebration she had once dared to dream of. This night she bid farewell to her last hope of affection. She might have been happier at Lindentree as the cherished mistress of her aunt’s husband. At least when Sebastian touched her, it would have been out of love at best, tender lust at worst, but never out of greed. Perhaps when this mockery was over, he would send her back to England to salvage some remnant of her dignity. She chewed on her lower lip, terrified she might burst into childish tears before them all.

  Jamie’s father peevishly asked them to kneel. Tiny lowered Prudence to her knees. The prayer book rustled in the minister’s shaking hands. Tiny shuffled his feet while Jamie untucked his father’s shirt and honked into the hem.

  As Reverend Graham fumbled through a prayer, Sebastian stole a look at his bride, acutely aware of the slight pressure of her thigh against his own. Her chest rose and fell unevenly with each sullen breath. Her eyes were downcast, the lids swollen from weeping. Rather than detracting from her beauty, they gave her face a sultry maturity, stirring against the piquant curve of her cheek and the mutinous tilt of her lips.

  He had avoided her all day, deliberately riding behind her, but unable to stop his gaze from drifting to the obstinate set of her slender shoulders. Why did she look so grim now? Was the prospect of marrying him that repugnant? She had once wanted him. But that was before she had entered the polished grace and elegance of society, he reminded himself. Perhaps her time in Edinburgh had opened her eyes to a richer and more opulent world. Perhaps she truly wished to marry MacKay, or a man like him. A man who could lavish her with jewels and wealth and take her anywhere in the world.

  But even as he armored his heart with doubts, Sebastian was haunted by the memory of her tenderness when she had dared to fold him in the soft wings of her body, the husky catch in her voice when she had begged him to love her.

  His body stiffened with unwanted desire. A fierce wave of possessiveness swept him. Her hand lay in the folds of her skirt. He reached over and took it in his own.

  As Prudence stared at his wind-chapped knuckles, the minister’s words faded to a buzz. Sebastian’s tapered fingers laced around hers. His nails were clean and neatly trimmed. But for their strength and calluses, his hands might have been those of an artist. His thumb stroked the tingling center of her palm in a rhythm she recognized only too well.

  “Well, lass, do ye swear it or not?”

  She snatched her hand back. The minister was peering down his nose at her with unmistakable annoyance. The hard barrel of Tiny’s pistol nudged her shoulders.

  “I swear it,” she snapped, having no idea if she was vowing to be shot or wed. From the mocking sparkle in Sebastian’s eyes, it would hardly matter which.

  His smooth, deep voice repeated his vows without faltering.

  At last, Jamie’s father commanded them to stand. “Is there a ring?”

  Jamie opened a grimy burlap sack that jingled with stolen jewelry. Prudence glared at him. He snapped it closed, shrugging sheepishly.

  His father wrung the prayer book in his hands. “You may give your bride a wedding kiss if you like.”

  She turned a cold cheek to Sebastian. He cupped her chin in his fingers and tilted her face to his. Her eyes widened as his tongue parted her teeth and swept her mouth in a f
eathery caress. She shivered as he drew away. The look he gave her from beneath his smoky lashes marked her as a fool for believing he might allow their marriage to stand in name only.

  Prudence shoved a bannock into her mouth, tearing at the biscuit with her teeth like the small, mean-eyed animal she could feel herself becoming.

  She huddled against a wall, wrapped in her rumpled redingote, and watched the world through a nest of tangled hair. The scene had the unreality of a dream.

  The cracked face of the clock on the mantle told her it was well past midnight. Still the villagers kept pouring in, kegs of ale hoisted on their shoulders, sleepy children clinging to their hands. They had all come to congratulate the bridegroom, the dashing Kirkpatrick, who had kidnapped his bride and wed her at gunpoint. That did not seem to be an uncommon occurrence in this part of the world, and it called for a celebration of the groom’s cunning and daring.

  Tiny hefted his mug in a toast, spattering ale in Sebastian’s hair. Sebastian gave him a mock growl as he swiped at the amber drops. A grizzled old Highlander sprawled on a faded settee tossed a jibe at Sebastian in a thick burr. Sebastian’s answering grin reminded Prudence when she least needed it of what a devastatingly handsome man her new husband was.

  She jerked her feet back as a sheep trotted into the parlor, his hooves clicking on the hardwood floor. He sank down in front of the fire. Tendrils of steam rose from his damp wool.

  Jamie’s mother flitted in and out of the kitchen, bearing simmering bowls of haggis and dodging teacups tossed by a boisterous and drunken Tiny. She gave Jamie a wide berth and winced each time he called her “mum.”

  Prudence watched as she slipped her small treasures out from under the greedy eyes of the parlor full of thieves. A pewter thimble sank into a bubbling bowl of haggis. A china cow with no head disappeared beneath her skirts. A silver fork vanished under a chair cushion. Jamie waited until she’d trotted back to the kitchen before extracting the fork, biting it, and tucking it up his sleeve. Feeling Prudence’s disapproving gaze, he winked at her. She ducked as a teacup went flying past her nose.

  As far as Prudence could tell, being a wife wasn’t much different from being a poor relation. No one came over to congratulate her. Sebastian ignored her. She was as invisible as she’d ever been. At least at Lindentree, she could plead a headache and escape to her room. She smothered a yawn with the back of her hand. The sheep gazed reproachfully at her as if she ought to be enjoying herself more. She stared back, musing how soft and inviting his wooly flank looked.

  She gave his cheek a tentative scratch. He nuzzled his nose against her palm. Heartened by that overture, she lay back, resting her head against the fleecy underside of his belly and breathing deeply the damp, warm scent of his wool.

  Sebastian wiggled his foot. His ankle had gone to sleep along with the rest of him. He rolled onto his back, and his hand plunged off the faded brocade of the settee. His knuckles rapped sharply on the floor. He groaned, stretching lazily as bizarre images flooded his mind: winged teacups; Jamie snuffling into his dad’s shirt hem; women tumbling in and out of his blankets like acrobats. Good God, he thought, he’d best trade the traitorous whisky for some good honest Scottish ale! He knuckled his eyes, yawning, then froze, all of his thoughts stripped bare by a vision of Prudence, hair tumbled and arms akimbo, with murder in her eyes and a gun in her hand.

  He sat straight up and peered over the back of the settee, and a wave of tenderness washed over him.

  Prudence was propped against a pudgy sheep, eyes closed, legs splayed, and chin nestled on her chest. Her hair drooped over her face. Shadows smudged the skin beneath her eyes. Her spectacles hung askew on her nose. She looked like a bedraggled doll, dressed with care, then abandoned, broken and forlorn, by some thoughtless child. The sheep was chewing happily on the fur of her shoulder-cape.

  Sebastian rose, stepping over a snoring Jamie. The fire had waned, but the shock of the cool air was nothing compared to the shock of discovering his visions were not dreams, but memories.

  He knelt beside her, skirting the carnage of a teacup. Firelight brushed the delicate planes of her face. “My wife,” he murmured, cherishing the word he had stolen for such a short time.

  He lifted her in his arms. The sheep reluctantly spat out her cape. Prudence laced her hands behind his neck and snuggled deeper in his embrace. Her solid warmth reminded him that she was not a china doll that might shatter in his clumsy embrace, but a woman with the power to bend and glove and mold her lush curves to his own form. Guilt and desire beat sleepy wings in his belly.

  As he lay her back on the settee, she blew out a soft breath between pursed lips, stirring his hair with a whisper of movement.

  He pressed his mouth against hers.

  Prudence stirred as smooth lips brushed across hers, dusting them with the taste of whisky and tobacco. Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Good night, Mrs. Kerr,” Sebastian whispered.

  He climbed back over Jamie and sank down beside the sheep, oblivious to the bewildered wonder that touched her eyes.

  Twenty-six

  Tiny dumped the large coffer at Sebastian’s feet with a grunt of exertion. “There it be. All of it. Jordy done good by ye.”

  The grizzled bandit behind Tiny flushed at the praise.

  Milky sunshine dribbled out of the pale sky, painting the village road a murky gray. Snow melted in muddy patches. Prudence bounced up and down on her toes to warm herself.

  They stood in the road in front of the Grahams’ narrow cottage. A sleepy-eyed little girl watched from the next stoop, her thin arms protruding from a faded tunic.

  Excitement was written in every tense line of Sebastian’s body as he knelt beside the coffer.

  Prudence nudged it with her toe. “What is it?”

  He grinned up at her. “Your dowry.”

  “My dowry wouldn’t be that heavy. I inherited an honorary peerage, not a treasury.”

  He unfastened the leather straps. “Then consider it a wedding present from my dear grandfather.”

  He threw back the lid. Prudence gasped. Tiny gave a low whistle of admiration as gold coins spilled from the coffer in a musical stream. Sebastian dug his hands into them. They poured through his fingers in shimmering columns.

  Jamie flung himself to his knees and scooped up a handful. “I could buy me a fine pony with a few of these.”

  Sebastian rumpled his hair. “As far as I’m concerned, you can buy the finest steed in Scotland. My charming grandfather saw fit to unfreeze all of our accounts.”

  Tiny scratched his head. “He did it. The old bastard really did it. What did ye do? Promise him yer firstborn son?”

  Sebastian’s grin faded. His eyes met Prudence’s, and a slow flush crept into her cheeks.

  Jordy pulled a thick sheaf of parchment from his shirt. “The other one sent this.”

  Sebastian unfolded the envelope, his hands none too steady.

  Prudence adjusted her spectacles, fighting to keep her voice cool as an unexpected desolation swept her. “Have you got what you want? Will you send me back now?”

  They all looked at her blankly.

  Sebastian scanned the elegant scrawl, frowning. “I just wed you, lass,” he said absently. “Why should I send you back?”

  “That MacKay was an odd one.” Jordy tapped his temple. “A bit teched in the head I believe.”

  Sebastian’s eyes went cool and wary. “Why do you say that?”

  “He laughed when he read yer note. Sputtered so hard I thought he was havin’ a fit.”

  Prudence rocked back on her heels. “Perhaps he found your spelling amusing.”

  Glowering at her, Sebastian snapped the envelope shut. “A pity he wasn’t having a fit. A happy MacKay gives me the jitters.” He spilled gold into his sporran, then slammed the lid of the coffer. “I’d best pay Big Gus for his hospitality. Then we’re going home. To Dunkirk.”

  “Sebastian?” Prudence said softly.

  He swung on hi
s heel, his good cheer dissolving to reveal he was as tense as a cat.

  Prudence mustered the tatters of her logic. “Why don’t you free me? You have what you want now. You’re married to a duchess. You have a fortune in gold and your precious castle. You have no further use for me.”

  His crooked grin was a haunting echo of his once loving smile. He tilted her chin up with one forefinger. His thumb grazed her lower lip with a delicacy that sent shivers through her. “You’d be amazed at the uses I have for you.”

  He turned away, striding down the muddy road like he owned it. The others trailed behind. Prudence sank down on the stoop, propping her chin in her hand.

  The little girl from the next cottage crept closer. Her adoring gaze followed Sebastian. “He’s a bonny one, ain’t he?”

  Prudence’s eyes narrowed. Wind and sun ruffled Sebastian’s sandy hair to gilt. “He’s bonny all right. And if you’re smart, you’ll find the ugliest man you know and beg him to marry you.”

  The child leaned against Prudence’s leg, undaunted by her cynicism. “Me mum says he’s like Robin Hood. Robbin’ from the rich and givin’ to them that needs it.”

  Prudence winced to hear her own innocent words echoed with such childish faith. Men and money. She was beginning to hate the both of them with equal fervor. Even Laird MacKay found her predicament amusing. And Sebastian had always chosen wealth over her. She saw again the gold spilling through his strong, sure fingers. Had he ever touched her with such loving grace?

  The child buried her pug nose in the fur of Prudence’s cape. Prudence glanced down, ashamed to be so caught up in her bitter musings that she hadn’t noticed the girl’s bare feet and painfully thin legs.

  She hugged her close. She smelled like a child, even beneath the layer of dirt that weighted her hair and dulled her skin. Prudence looked around, really seeing the village perched on the barren shelf of the majestic Cairngorm mountains for the first time. Shutters hung crooked on sooty cottages. Chimneys crumbled into gaping holes where thatched roofs had been blown bare by the harsh winter winds. Spring would come soon, but not soon enough for this village.