Her gaze finally came to rest on the leather-bound coffer sitting at her feet. It was filled with blood money—D’Artan’s blood money. Her lips twitched.
She gave the little girl a squeeze. “Tell me more about this Robin Hood of yours, my dear.”
When Sebastian returned, Prudence was sitting on the coffer surrounded by a giggling, tumbling mass of children. He stopped in his tracks, caught unaware by the charm of the sight. Prudence’s hair was disheveled, her face flushed with laughter. A wistful smile touched his lips.
How easy it was to imagine her with another child on her knee! A tawny-haired little girl with solemn violet eyes and a husky laugh. Or perhaps a boy with fine dark hair and a penchant for mathematics.
Jamie almost ran over him with the wagon, spurring him into movement, and Sebastian’s smile faded. He could ill afford to indulge the wild, selfish hope that the night they had lain together might have borne fruit. As he approached, a towheaded boy threw a staunch arm around Prudence’s neck and glared at him with jealous eyes.
Sebastian locked his hands at the small of his back. “Quite a brood you have here, lass. Are they all yours?”
Prudence bounced a plump baby on her knee. “Only the best behaved.”
The baby lost his own thumb and tucked Prudence’s finger in his mouth.
Jamie climbed down from the wagon, scratching his stomach. “If that don’t beat all. Am I to load them up as well?”
Sebastian lifted an eyebrow, as if the decision were Prudence’s.
“Of course not,” she said, untangling the children from her skirts and handing the baby to an older boy with solemn eyes. “Run along home now, all of you.”
They raced away, their laughter echoing on the wind. The last to go was a thin blonde girl. She pressed her lips to Prudence’s cheek and whispered passionately, “I’ll never ferget ye, Maid Marian. Never. Not even if I live to be twenty.”
The girl’s awestruck gaze devoured Sebastian from his boots to the crown of his hair. She bobbed a nervous curtsy before scampering away.
Sebastian watched her go, his brow furrowed in a curious frown. “Maid Marian?”
Prudence smoothed her skirts. “Simply a game we were playing.”
Jamie was looking at her expectantly. She tucked loose strands of hair back in her queue, dusted off her shoes, and tugged at her redingote.
Jamie rolled his eyes. “If ye’ll excuse me, Princess Prudence, I need to load the gold.”
“Oh.” She stood, stretching like a lazy cat before stepping away from the coffer.
Jamie caught one of the leather handles and tugged. Nothing happened. Prudence quenched a flare of panic.
He fixed Sebastian with a baleful glare. “It’s just like Tiny to run off to his own cottage when there’s work to be done.”
Before Sebastian could reach to help him, Jamie hefted the coffer with both hands. Wiry muscles corded in his arms.
“Damn thing feels like it’s full of rocks,” he wheezed.
Prudence was seized by a sudden fit of coughing.
Jamie lashed the coffer to the wagon, muttering loudly to himself. “Hadn’t even the common decency to ask for pound notes. Had to have a chest of gold like some godforsaken pirate.” His voice rose. “Tight as a Scot, ye are, Sebastian Kerr, and always have been!”
Jamie sank down on the coffer, breathing hard. He met Prudence’s gaze. “Don’t ever forget it, lass. Jamie Graham said it first. Tight as a Scot, that man is.”
Prudence dangled her feet off the ledge and watched snow billow out of the mountains in the north. The weather in the Highlands seemed to be as fickle as Sebastian’s mood. Who would believe that it was nearly March? As they had traveled through the mountains toward Sebastian’s boyhood home, the icy daggers of sleet had shifted to snow, softening the wind with its fluffy white flakes.
Leather boots crunched the frozen earth beside her. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Sebastian propped his foot on a marbled rock.
She sniffed disdainfully. “Tolerable, I suppose.”
The sun chose that moment to break through the sky in the west, shattering the dark clouds and tipping the misty peaks with gold. Sunlight and snow spilled across the glen. Snowflakes caught on Prudence’s lashes. She blinked them away, fighting the strange exultation that swept her. How easy it would be to fall in love with such a land! As easy as it had been to fall in love with the man who stood surveying the mighty peaks as if he were their master, as well as her own.
Clouds sped across the glen, drowning the sunlight and lengthening the cold shadow of the mountain. Prudence tightened her shoulder-cape around her, suppressing a shiver.
Sebastian sat down cross-legged and unfolded an oilcloth package. A strip of mutton was halfway to his lips when he paused.
His eyes twinkled at Prudence. “You did help Mrs. Graham prepare this. Knowing your fondness for lacing things with laudanum, perhaps you should have the first taste.” He held the meat to her lips.
Her eyes crossed as she glared at it. “And if I’ve given up laudanum for arsenic?”
He shrugged. “Then I shall have to find another duchess to marry. There’s always the Duke of Gleicester’s widow. She’s a bit plump and slovenly, but pliable.”
Prudence snapped the meat from his hand with her teeth, nearly taking off two of his fingertips. The mutton stuck in her throat like a rock.
When she didn’t fall into foaming convulsions, Sebastian tore into the meager fare with abandon.
Prudence found she had lost her appetite. “I should have let Arlo hang you.”
“You’re too civilized for that. Too English. Of course, we must never forget it was the civilized English who slit the Scots’ throats while they lay wounded on the field of Culloden.” He grinned at her. “By the old clan laws, I wouldn’t have claimed you as my bride, but as my slave.”
His frosty eyes warned her of the myriad of possibilities that word held.
She tucked her reddened nose into her cape. “Then it’s fortunate we are now under English law.”
“Look again, angel.”
He slipped an arm around her shoulders, guiding her gaze across snow-swept peaks broken by patches of Caledonian pine and the indigo splash of a loch.
His breath was warm against her. “You’re under my law now.”
A pale moon rose in the twilight sky, and the mountains melted into the velvety gray of impending night. The saddle rocked between Prudence’s thighs as she followed Sebastian’s horse up the steep path. They rounded a rocky ledge, bringing her her first glimpse of Dunkirk.
Anger swept her, followed by a numbing sense of desolation. How could Sebastian have traded her love for a shattered ruin?
To Prudence, who had lived her entire life among the rolling green hills of England and the misty coast of Northumberland, the stark rock looked as forbidding as a goblin’s lair. The moonlight cast a silver wash across its shadow. She shuddered to think how wildly the wind must blow through the castle on its peak.
Their shaggy mounts pawed their way up the rocky slope and into the courtyard. An air of emptiness hung over the small castle, as if it awaited the loving touch of a master who was never coming back. Dead lichen crept up the crumbling stone walls. Jamie’s wagon sat in a corner of the courtyard, but there was no sign of Jamie.
Without profaning the eerie silence, Sebastian dismounted and offered her a hand. Prudence flexed her legs while he touched a flint to the wick of a candle stub. The wan light flickered over his handsome face, gone as closed and still as the deserted castle. For the first time, she wondered what he might be thinking, might be remembering. As they passed beneath an oaken door that creaked on broken hinges, she shrank into his side, thankful for his presence.
“Great hall” was too kind a description for this cavernous dwelling. Sickly moonlight crawled through the arrow slits, illuminating the magenta and white of bird droppings spattered across a sea of stone. Gnawed bones and moldy bits of things best left nameless huddle
d in piles. The twin hearths at each end of the hall were empty of all but heaps of gray ash. Cobwebs shrouded the tarnished bronze of the torch sconces.
A strange emotion seized Prudence. She had a sudden vision of Sebastian dining at Tricia’s table, garbed in casual yet elegant splendor. He had not so much as let a crumb fall on his frock coat without brushing it away. Was it any wonder he found civilization a seduction as well as a trap? Who was she to judge him for seeking to escape such squalor forever?
He gently disengaged her fingers, and she realized she had been clinging to his hand. He pressed the candle into her palm and gestured to a set of stone stairs that curved up one wall.
“Go. I’ll tend to the horses.”
She trailed after him, hesitant to surrender the comfort of his broad shoulders. “I can help.”
He shook his head and gently shoved her toward the stairs. “Don’t be afraid.”
His husky burr gave the words the effect of a charm, a magical incantation that straightened her spine and sharpened her resolve. She wasn’t afraid. She was terrified. But she wasn’t about to let him know it.
The door opened behind her, and a blast of cold wind deepened the chill of the hall. Then the door closed, and Prudence was left alone in the flickering candlelight. She wondered if another girl had once stood in her place, her hands trembling, her gray eyes brimming with frightened tears, alone in a strange country with a brutal stranger. Prudence shook herself out of her reverie. Sebastian was not his father. And Prudence Walker was made of sterner stuff.
Prudence Kerr, she reminded herself.
The warmth of the candle melted against her palm. If she didn’t find a candlestick soon, her hand would be swimming in tallow. She started for the stairs, grimacing as her shoe crunched something small and delicate.
The frail light cast ghosts of shadows on each crumbling step. She stumbled and reached for the wall to steady herself, then jerked her hand back as her fingers sank into damp mold.
There was no corridor at the top of the stairs, only a narrow landing with a single door. The tower must serve as it had five centuries ago, as sleeping quarters for the entire castle.
A bead of hot tallow spattered on her wrist. Prudence drew in a deep breath and shoved at the splintered door.
Twenty-seven
Prudence held her breath, half expecting to find iron bars on the window and a horde of slavering rats to greet her.
Instead, warmth and light billowed onto the landing. She gaped. Torches set in wall sconces scattered pools of light on the clean-swept stone floor. Crackling tongues of flame licked at a yew log on the hearth. A kettle of herbs simmered over the fire, scenting the air with the pungent aroma of pine. A spray of holly nestled on the windowsill, its red berries gleaming like rubies amid glossy green. Tears came to her eyes when she saw her own night rail draped over the rickety bedstead.
She glided into the tower like a sleepwalker, unable to resist a chamber prepared so artfully for comfort and welcome. Now she knew why Sebastian had sent Jamie ahead. The seductive coziness of the chamber was undeniable. It would be easy to pretend it was not a ruthless mercenary who would come to her bed, but a cherished lover, intent on her delight.
She undressed and slipped the night rail on with trembling hands.
She padded to the window. A sparkling blanket of frost veiled the warped glass. She unlatched the window and pulled it open. Icy wind whipped tears into her eyes. The corner of the chamber jutted over the cliff itself, giving her the curious impression that she was suspended in mid-air. She snatched a breath of the wind, fighting the sensation that she was falling, spinning helplessly into the vale below. Jamie had once told her Dunkirk was perched on the edge of heaven itself. It was easier to believe hell lurked at the bottom of the dark abyss.
She tried to imagine the vale below drenched in the myriad greens of summer. Closing her eyes, she could almost smell the heather, its aroma sweeping through the window on a summer breeze. Then the tower would be a nest for lovers, a comforting haven standing sentinel over the harsh peaks and rolling moors.
She propped her hip on the windowsill, hugging away shivers that had little to do with the cold. Her fear ran deeper than any she had known before. She had fought for control her entire life, swallowing her passions and building an icy shell no man could breach. Until a gray-eyed bandit had tumbled off his horse and into her heart.
What did Sebastian want from her? Was she nothing to him now but a road to respectability? Did he want a wife or a duchess? A hostage or a lover? Was he going to keep her imprisoned in the tower like some triumphant Scottish chieftain of a century ago? Would he come to her in the dark, velvety folds of midnight, weaving his erotic sorcery until she was driven to her knees, helpless to resist and begging for any scrap of affection he might toss her way?
The wind swept her hair from her face. She had known there were risks when she and MacKay had fostered their scheme. But she had felt she had nothing to lose. Nothing but herself.
She leaned farther out the window, drinking in the sustenance of the crisp air, letting it blow through her brain to wash away the stale fog of betrayal and fear.
• • •
Sebastian climbed the steps with a weary tread, the triumph of his homecoming marred by a dismal pall of memories. He expected to hear his father’s laughter come rolling down the narrow stairwell, echoing with the bite of cruelty.
His breath caught in his throat as he slipped through the door and saw the window across the chamber ajar.
His frantic footsteps had carried him halfway across the tower before his panic shamed him. Prudence lay on the still-made bed, her dark hair rippled across the thin heather tick, her lashes flush against her cheeks. He walked toward her, drawn by the innocent sprawl of her limbs, and gazed down at her. Did he only imagine it or were her lashes damp with tears? The night rail was tangled around her long legs. The soft cotton cupped her breasts and outlined the slender curve of her waist.
She stirred. A gentle fragrance wafted up from the heather tick. He ached to ease himself over her, to mold her body to his own. She was his bride. Not a man in England or Scotland would decry his possession of her. But did having the power to take her give him the right? A cold wind buffeted his back. Prudence curled into herself. He drew the thick quilt up over her and tucked it under her chin. His lips brushed her temple, but she did not stir again.
He turned to latch the window. How long had he dreamed of this moment? he wondered. To stand in the bastion of his own castle. To have Prudence in his bed, her soft hair unhampered by pins, her delectable body free of petticoats and corsets and stays. He craved nothing more than to bury his face in her hair and hold her tight against his pounding heart.
Would she even want him? He had dragged her away from her tidy comforts and brought her to this dirty hole. He had insulted her, embarrassed her, and stolen her precious innocence on a coarse blanket in an animal’s den a few feet away from a score of sleeping thieves.
He couldn’t promise not to do worse, though, if she pushed him away. If his advances met with anger, or worse yet, a cringe of fright, would he have the courage to take her in his arms and gently allay her fears? Or would he push on, bewitched by a sensual hunger that obliterated both common sense and decency? A fierce urgency rocked him. Time hung over his head like the executioner’s noose. How long would he have her? A week? A fortnight? His baser urges goaded him to go to her, to part her smooth thighs and take her like a captive princess on a bed of furs, his to take at his will, as leisurely and as often as he chose.
She’s yer wife now, lad. Show her what women are made fer. Make her beg like I made yer mother beg. As Brendan Kerr’s voice thundered through his head, Sebastian’s knuckles whitened against the windowsill.
He used to sleep under that window, head shoved beneath a moth-eaten blanket to muffle the sounds from the bed. But he could still hear them. Even now.
Without daring another glance at Prudence, he started down t
he stairs at a brisk pace. Halfway down, his steps faltered. He had come to Dunkirk to banish his demons, only to find them clamoring around his head. With a sigh, he sank down on a dusty step and ran his finger over the scar beneath his chin.
Prudence’s nose crinkled, as she was lured to wakefulness by the tantalizing scent of tea wafting to her nostrils. She nestled into the mattress. The heat of her body had warmed it to a cozy nest. She clung to the seductive comfort of sleep, rolling on her back in an attempt to ignore the odd sensation of someone biting her hair. A needle-sharp claw sank into her elbow. She bit back a yelp. Opening her eyes, she was puzzled to find not the starched canopy of her tent-bed, but a sooty expanse of gray stone.
A pair of green-gold eyes filled her vision. She sat up, wiggling her feet to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. A ball of gray fluff and muscle teetered down her legs and pounced on her toes with the ferocity of a starving lion.
She laughed and scooped up Sebastian-cat, holding him to her cheek. A paw shot out to bat her hair. She pressed a kiss to the furry swell of his tummy, then looked shyly around the tower. A well-stoked fire crackled on the iron grate.
She sobered, stroking the cat’s tousled fur. “It seems our mysterious benefactor wishes to remain anonymous.”
She swung her feet to the floor, rubbing her bleary eyes. A cold, gray curtain of rain washed down the windowpane, but the tower was warm and cozy. She traced the irresistible fragrance of the tea to a dented brass kettle hooked on an iron spit over the flames. A chipped porcelain cup warmed on the stones of the hearth. She shook her head at the richness of the bounty.
Beneath the patter of the rain, she slowly became aware of another sound—the steady scrape of metal on earth. She walked over to the window. Her warm breath fogged the glass, and she wiped it clear with two fingers. Still she could see nothing but the cliff below. Only by unlatching the window and leaning out could she glimpse the muddy flat at the back of the castle.
Heather and Velvet Page 28
