Heather and Velvet (29 page)

He straightened and threw his heaving shoulders against the wall, staring blindly at the broken thread dangling from his fingers.

“You haven’t an ounce of grace in you, you clumsy, stupid boy.”

Sebastian’s features hardened. At first he thought it was his father’s voice, thick with whisky, hoarse with contempt. But his father did not speak French. The falling snow frosted his lashes as he lifted his gaze to find not the spectre of his father, but his grandfather shivering beneath a lush beaver cloak.

D’Artan was arrogant, but not arrogant enough to come alone. Sebastian could sense the dark shapes crouched behind the box hedges.

“I knew I’d find you here,” D’Artan said. “Your predictability is almost boring.” His thin nostrils flared. “Scenting after her like a stag after a doe in heat. You can’t help yourself, can you? You’re just like your father. It’s in your blood.”

Sebastian refused to show D’Artan how deeply the words cut. “At least I have blood pumping through my veins. Not ice water.” He took a step toward his grandfather. “I believe you and I have business to tend to.”

“Oui
, it seems we do.”

D’Artan’s amused gaze and a rush of warm air warned
Sebastian. He spun around to find Prudence standing just outside the French doors. His oath was unutterably profane and as tender as an endearment. Christ, he thought, the little fool was barefoot.

“Sebastian? Is that you?”

Her voice was husky with sleep, and she was shivering in a thin silk wrapper. She looked as if she hardly knew where she was, much less whether she was awake. Snowflakes floated down to dust her dark hair. She was soft and disheveled in all the right places, a rumpled dream come to life. Even as Sebastian struggled to hate her, he moved toward her, forgetting he no longer had his plaid to wrap around her shoulders.

Her puffy eyes narrowed as she focused on the second dark shape. “Viscount?”

Sebastian’s cold tone snapped her to immediate wakefulness. “Go back to your room, Prudence. Now.”

The twitch of D’Artan’s lips was more grimace than smile. “Oh, do stay,
ma chérie
. The party is just beginning. ’Tis only a pity it must be so brief.”

Sebastian forced an amused sneer. “Won’t you have trouble explaining our untidy corpses on the Campbells’ pristine lawn?”

Prudence stared at the two men as if they had both gone mad.

D’Artan shrugged. “
Au contraire
. The wicked robber returns in the night to ravish the young lady he found so enchanting. But his attentions become a trifle …” He tapped his pursed lips, “… shall we say, rough, and his little death tragically becomes her big death. I burst in, too late to save my young charge, but not too late to wield justice against her cruel attacker.”

Prudence had gone the color of the snow. With one fluid movement, Sebastian shoved her behind him. His hand eased toward the pistol in his breeches.

“Scream, Prudence,” he ordered.

He held his breath, awaiting her scream, half hoping it would come. He was weary of running, weary of aching with cold and hunger.

“What should I scream?” she asked stupidly.

He swung on her. “Dammit, lass, just scream!”

His hissed command made Prudence jump. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. One scream from her would bring the house down on them all. Sebastian would hang. She didn’t utter a sound. She just stood there, barefoot in the snow.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” D’Artan said. “To contemplate how far you could push her before she betrayed you with a scream …”

Sebastian’s heart lurched. He averted his eyes, afraid Prudence might read within them a reflection of his own dark fantasies.

D’Artan burst into a silvery peal of laughter. “Such fools you are! I could have killed you both a thousand times over by now.”

Sebastian’s hand remained poised over his pistol. “I know how you hate to dirty your own lily-white paws.”

“Did you really think I would kill you?” D’Artan sank down on a stone bench, wheezing slightly. He wiped his moist lips with a dainty lace handkerchief. “Even if you are a besotted, bumbling fool, you are still my grandson.”

Sebastian scowled, but he took his hand off his gun.

Prudence sat down abruptly on the low terrace wall. Snow melted into a wet circle on her wrapper, but she didn’t seem to feel it. Shocked awareness dawned in her eyes. “One of you might have bothered to mention this to me,” she said dazedly. “A simple introduction would have done nicely. ‘Hello, Prudence, I’d like you to meet my grandfather,’ for instance, or ‘What a delight to meet you, Miss Walker. My grandson has spoken of you with great regard.’ ”

They both ignored her. D’Artan pulled a leather pouch out of his cloak and tossed it to Sebastian. It landed at his feet with a solid clink.

Sebastian cocked an eyebrow in disdain. “I don’t want your blood money. I won’t hurt her.”

D’Artan slanted Prudence a look. “Oh, I think you would. After what she did to you, you can’t tell me you haven’t dreamed of fastening your fingers around her silken throat and squeezing—”

Prudence absently stroked her neck.

“Stop it, old man!” Sebastian turned away, hands on hips, seeing from Prudence’s wary gaze that he had betrayed himself. His grandfather still knew him too well.

D’Artan’s voice shifted to petulance. “But it’s such a pretty throat. I’ve come to appreciate its beauty myself in the last few months. She is a charming companion. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” He paused, certain he had Sebastian’s full attention. “Your Prudence and I share many interests. Such as chemistry.”

“Chemistry?” Sebastian echoed.

“Oui
. It seems our dear girl is the only one who knows the formula to those fulminic detonators her father was working on when he died. But out of misguided nobility, she refuses to share it with me. The shortage of gunpowder is crippling our revolutionists. Such a substitute would be invaluable, especially when the new regime declares war on England.”

Prudence stood, desperate to halt this sudden tumble of secrets long enough to let her think. “The revolutionists? I thought you were a royalist.”

Sebastian’s laugh was low and unpleasant. “My grandfather is many things, but a royalist is not one of them.”

D’Artan strode to Sebastian, hissing him to silence. He picked up the pouch of gold and shoved it into Sebastian’s hand. “Take it!”

Sebastian carelessly tossed the pouch into the air, catching it with the other hand. “Why? If she has more merit to you alive than dead, why do you want me to kill her?”

Prudence backed toward the French doors, her gaze fixed on Sebastian’s face. It was as beautiful and merciless as Satan’s.

D’Artan scowled at Sebastian. “I don’t want you to kill her, you fool. I want you to marry her.”

T
he pouch fell flat against Sebastian’s palm. A chill swept over him. His gaze met Prudence’s and held. She looked as if he had thrust a knife through her heart.

D’Artan rushed on. “Think of it. We would have both her silence and her cooperation. I could smuggle the two of you to Paris tonight. By day, she could be your devoted little wife. But by night, oh, by night …” His eyes rolled in twisted ecstasy. “You could take your revenge, not once, but each and every time the urge struck you.”

Although the cold should have made it impossible, Sebastian’s groin tightened. A succession of images flashed in his brain, as cold and mercilessly erotic as a Caracci engraving. But drawn over them with the delicate brushstrokes of a master were other images: Prudence squatting in the mud with his pistol, grinning like an imp; Prudence brushing the rain from his lashes; Prudence thrusting the gold spectacles at him, her eyes amethyst fire in the candlelight.

What did he read in her eyes now? Regret? Longing? Fear? He reached for her. His hand dug into her forearm,
callused fingers snagging on the sheer fabric of her wrapper. Despair brushed him with cold wings. Like a confection of silk and cream, she symbolized everything he could never have. The man he could never be. Was this how his father had felt when faced with the ethereal temptation of his mother’s beauty? Did he feel compelled to crush what he could never truly possess?

Without warning, tears spilled down Prudence’s cheeks. He wanted to catch them on his tongue, to mingle them with the whisky-scented heat of his own mouth.

He groaned deep in his throat, shaking her roughly. “Damn you, lass. Save your tears for Tugbert or your other fancy beaux. They’ll not work on me.”

Yet even as he spoke, he pulled her into a fierce embrace, holding her face against his shoulder so she couldn’t see his expression. He rocked her gently, pressing his mouth to the fragrant softness of her hair, remembering all the cold, lonely nights when he had hungered to hold her against him or hear the husky ripple of her laughter. This wasn’t some brittle society belle or even the heartless bitch he wanted to believe she was. It was Prudence. She trembled, but she did not beg. Within him still lay the grudging admiration he had sheltered like a live coal in his heart. His stubborn, silly, brave Prudence.

Prudence couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. But when she gazed into Sebastian’s shadowed eyes, all the feelings she had fought to bury rose in a torrent, choking her with tears—her shame and sense of failure at her own betrayal, the need to make him understand how deeply he had hurt her by choosing Tricia’s wealth over her love, the hollow emptiness of her life without him. But words abandoned her, and all she could do was snuffle like a child.

Sebastian tilted her tear-streaked face to his. Her eyes had gone misty, like fog-shrouded stars. Forgetting his grandfather, forgetting everything, he touched his lips to hers. Their mouths melded, their tongues entwining with an eloquence beyond words.

“Go on,” D’Artan whispered, his voice demon-soft. “Take her back into the room. I can’t blame you for wanting
a taste before you buy. I’ll stand guard. If she changes her mind about screaming, you can use this.”

Sebastian slowly lifted his head to find D’Artan’s handkerchief fluttering from the old man’s fingers. Prudence stiffened in his embrace, but instead of stepping out of his arms, she pressed herself closer to him, her breasts warm and soft against the rigid muscles of his chest.

He searched her upturned face. A muscle twitched in his jaw. How dare she look at him with such trusting eyes? Didn’t she know what kind of man he had become? What would she do if he dragged her toward the door? Would she scream? Struggle? And if she did neither, but let him work any dark wickedness he desired on her sweet young body, would he ever be able to live with himself again?

He pushed her away as if she’d scorched him, steeling himself with yet another image—Prudence walking away into a beautiful summer morning, leaving him in the stench and confinement of Tugbert’s jail.

He turned on his grandfather, his expression as dangerous as a smoking pistol. D’Artan backed away without realizing it.

The old man had baited his trap with diabolical care, Sebastian mused. He weighed the pouch of gold in one hand, calculating how many hot scones it would buy. His stomach knotted at the thought.

He threw the pouch, refusing to look at Prudence. It struck D’Artan squarely in the chest. “If you’re so bloody fond of her, why don’t you take her to Paris? The two of you would make a charming pair.”

Prudence sucked in a choked breath. As Sebastian strode away from them, her quiet words echoed down the narrow alley after him. “You’ve underplayed your hand, Viscount. Sebastian’s affections don’t come cheap.”

Sebastian stopped, on the dangerous verge of striding back, pushing her into her room, and showing her until dawn just what his affections would cost her. D’Artan’s henchmen rustled in the hedges. He started walking again, waiting for a pistol ball to smash between his shoulder blades. But from behind him came only the whisper of the falling snow.

As Sebastian disappeared into the snow-swept night, Prudence hugged herself. Her body was throbbing to miserable life. The wet wrapper clung to her thighs. She stared down at her numb feet as if they belonged to someone else.

D’Artan touched his finger to his lips. “Quiet, my dear, You mustn’t awaken your aunt. I shouldn’t want her to discover the extent of her fiancé’s … shall we say … indiscretions. I should hate to see him hang for them.”

Prudence fumbled behind her for the icy door handle. The cold burned her throat. “As much as you’d hate to hang for your own
indiscretions
, I’m sure.”

“I’m delighted we understand each other.” He bowed with flawless grace. “Sleep well, Your Grace.”

He ambled off into the night as if he’d simply chosen the garden for a midnight stroll. Three dark shapes melted after him. Prudence shivered against the door, her only warmth the tingle of her skin where Sebastian had touched her.

Prudence stepped out of the bookshop and tucked her hands deep into her muff. Her reticule dangled against her hip. The cold wind whipped roses into her cheeks, but she was soon warmed by brisk exertion as her kid boots crunched the snow in long restless strides.