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Chapter Twenty-Five

Twenty-five

S ebastian 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.

Prudence 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 against 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.

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 feathery 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.

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