“Have you no family to worry over you?” he asked. “Won’t they be frantic when you haven’t returned?”
“I’m supposed to say yes, aren’t I? So you’ll hesitate to throttle me lest they should burst in.”
He chuckled. “Perhaps you’re not such a bad liar after all. Have you heard rumors of me throttling women?”
She thought for a moment. “No. But a friend of my aunt’s, a Miss Devony Blake, claims you ravished her last summer. It was the talk of every picnic and ball for months. She swooned quite prettily each time she told the horrid tale.”
“Which I’m sure she did,” he said curtly, “in frequent and exacting detail. What do you think of this Miss Blake?”
Prudence buried her face against his collarbone. “She hasn’t a brain in her silly blonde head. It was more likely that she ravished you.”
“So only a girl without a brain would ravish me?” His fingertips traced a teasing pattern on her arm. “Tell me—will this aunt of yours be wondering where you are?”
“She had gone to a midnight buffet when I went out. Perhaps she’ll think I snuck out for an illicit tryst.” Prudence smiled at the improbability of the thought.
Sebastian did not find the idea amusing. His arm tightened around her shoulders. “Did you?”
“Aye, that I did.” Again, she mocked his burr with uncanny accuracy. “To meet the bonniest fellow betwixt London and Edinburgh.”
Sebastian’s ankle started to throb again. “Your lover?” he asked quietly.
“No, silly—my Sebastian.”
Hearing his name spoken in his mistress’s adoring tones, the kitten lifted his head with a drowsy purr. Sebastian took advantage of the distraction to slide his hip next to Prudence’s, feeling unaccountably elated at her words. The kitten deserted the crook of his elbow and climbed onto Prudence’s chest by way of her stomach.
“Fickle beast,” he muttered.
He reached over to pet the animal, and his hand found the kitten’s silky fur at the same moment as Prudence’s. Their fingertips brushed, and she laughed breathlessly.
“It seemed such an ordinary morning when I awoke,” Prudence said. “I had my bath. I put up my hair. I ate my prunes and cream.” Her voice sounded odd to her, more like Devony Blake’s than her own. “If anyone had told me I would be having such an extraordinary adventure by nightfall—I mean, lying in a highwayman’s arms—I would have thought them insane.”
He pulled his arm from beneath her and propped himself up on his elbow. “And if anyone had told you a highwayman would be kissing you?”
She swallowed. “I would have judged them a madman, lunatic, bedlamite …”
Her voice trailed off as his fingers entwined with her own. His head bent over her, blocking out the meager firelight, and he touched his wonderful mouth to hers. She shivered at the unfamiliar heat. He tenderly brushed his lips across hers, and with each tantalizing pass deepened the pressure, melding his lips to hers as if they had always been meant to be there. His mouth was every bit as smooth and firm as she had fancied.
“Delicious,” he murmured as he pressed tiny kisses along her full bottom lip and each corner of her mouth.
No one had ever called her “delicious” before. Prudence thought she might swoon, but then he might continue to kiss her. Or worse yet, he might stop. She quenched a sharp flare of disappointment as he did just that.
His lips brushed her eyelids. “Close your eyes.” His hand cupped her chin; his thumb slid sleekly across her bottom lip. “And open your mouth.”
“I—I don’t know,” she said, her words coming in nervous spurts, “if anyone has suggested this to you before, but you have an inclination toward bossiness. It is a character flaw that might be remedied if—”
Before she could close her mouth, he swooped down and gently caught her lower lip between his teeth. Her gasp was smothered by the sly invasion of his tongue. His hand tightened on her jaw, holding her mouth open until she hadn’t the will or the inclination to close it. Then his fingers slipped around to the nape of her neck in a velvety caress. His tongue swept across her teeth and delved deeper. Prudence thought she might die when she felt the shock of its warmth against her own. She should have been repulsed. Decent women did not kiss this way. But somehow having her mouth taken and stroked by this man was not repulsive, but captivating. Her own tongue responded with a tentative flick.
The highwayman groaned as if in agony, his strong fingers twisting in her hair.
She pulled back, suddenly remembering his wounded ankle. “Am I hurting you?”
“Aye, lass. You’re killing me. And I love it.”
Sebastian’s own delight deepened as he realized she had never been kissed before. He found her innocence entrancing, her awkward response a sensual charm all its own. His mind raced ahead to other experiences he would love to introduce her to.
He kissed her until their mouths melded in a hot blend of honey. Prudence could not have said when one kiss ended and another began. He was a robber born and bred, stealing her breath and will with each tantalizing swirl of his tongue. He needed no pistol or steel, but only the rapier-sharp edge of his erotic charm. As pleasure spread its guilty wings in the pit of her stomach, Prudence accepted his dark and unspoken invitation to explore his own mouth with her tongue, shyly at first, then with a growing hunger.
She did not realize what her surrender did to Sebastian, that the touch of her trusting tongue against his own drove him on to the point of madness. All she knew was that she felt as weak and helpless as a kitten in his embrace.
Prudence’s own kitten perversely chose that moment to wander away. Their entwined fingers were no longer stroking the cat, and the bandit seized the opportunity, sliding his hand across her chest until it cupped the supple swell of her breast with infinite tenderness. His fingers were both subtle and deft, and for a hazy moment Prudence was unaware of the source of this new and drunken pleasure. Her chemise had dried stiffly, but his searching fingertips easily found the taut peak of her breast beneath the crisp linen. He teased the aching bud between two fingers, sending tingling waves of sensation to every inch of her body. The shock was as great as if he had touched her bare skin.
Shame flooded her cheeks with a fresh heat. What was she doing? He would think her as brazen a hussy as Devony Blake. Guilt and panic smothered her pleasure.
She turned her mouth away from his and shoved against his chest. “Please, stop. I beg you.”
He lifted his head. His fingers froze in their tantalizing motion, but his hand still lightly held her breast. She listened to his ragged breathing for a long moment before she found the courage to face him. Even in the poor light, she could sense the tightness of his jaw, the steeliness of his assessing gaze. If he decided she was teasing him, they both knew she was lost.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispered…
His lips brushed her throat, touched her ear lobe. “Does this hurt?” His thumb grazed the peak of her breast. “Or this?”
She arched her neck, helpless to disguise her shiver of pleasure. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I just want you to stop.”
He blew gently into her ear. “Why did you come here with me?”
“Not for this.”
“Are you so sure?”
Prudence’s mind was so addled she wasn’t sure of her own name. “I came because you needed help.” It sounded unconvincing even to her.
He shook his head with maddening certainty. “You came because you were bored. Because it had been too long since anything exciting happened in your life. I saw your face in the rain. I saw the hunger in your eyes.”
The highwayman had lied, she thought. He was hurting her. The bald truth of her life cut her like a blade.
She tried to turn away, but he caught her chin in his hand. “It doesn’t take long,” he said, “for a woman like you to tire of fops in velvet and lace, with their soft hands and powdered wigs. They write poetry in your name, but they’re too timi
d to kiss you as you want to be kissed.”
Prudence felt like crying with relief. She had been wrong. He knew nothing of her life.
Sebastian drew back as he felt her shudder. At first he feared he had made her cry.
A soft hiccup of laughter escaped her lips instead. She sighed and stretched out a regal arm. “ ‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Prudence is the sun.’ ” She collapsed in giggles.
The girl was babbling, Sebastian thought, and he wasn’t a man tolerant of babbling. But he would have gladly listened to her babble as he eased her petticoat down her slim hips and pulled her chemise over her head. He buried his face in the soft, shiny mass of her hair at the tempting vision. Her hair smelled sweet and clean, like lilacs in the rain.
“You don’t need poetry, Prudence. You are poetry.”
She lay very still beneath him. Her hands lightly clasped his shoulders, neither drawing him nearer nor pushing him away. Sebastian knew he had a decision to make. A broken ankle would not stop him from taking this charming girl if he so chose. At this point, he wasn’t sure a broken neck would. Still, the urgency of his need for her warred with the lethargic stirrings of his jaded conscience.
He had promised not to hurt her. And he was wise enough to know that for some women seduction could hold as much pain as rape. If he sent her home to her aunt filled with the shame of wanton surrender to a stranger, the price of her fling with the stormy night might be too great. Then there was always the risk of a child. A bastard. Like himself. Sebastian knew of ways to lessen that risk, but his hunger for this girl was so strong, he did not trust himself to use them.
He lifted his head. “I don’t suppose,” he said earnestly, “you’d let me take off all your garments and touch you if I promise not to do anything else.”
“I’d rather you didn’t. But thank you, sir, for asking.”
He flung himself off her with a despairing groan. His ankle rolled to an awkward position, and he winced. Every ache, throb, and weary muscle of his body tingled to life, magnified by the misery of his thwarted desire.
She touched his arm. “I really am grateful. You’re very kind not to—”
He jerked his arm away and pillowed his head on it. “Keep your gratitude to yourself, unless you’d care to have no need of it.”
She fell silent. Sebastian’s flare of guilt only annoyed him further. “Oh, go ahead and talk, won’t you? Talk about something. Anything. Preferably something damned unpleasant to take my mind off my … ankle. Talk about hairy monks. Dead frogs. Quote some more bloody Shakespeare.”
“Why do you rob?” she asked musingly.
“Why does anyone rob? For money.”
“Money for what?”
He opened his mouth to make a flippant answer and was as surprised as she when the truth came out. “Money to win back my father’s land and castle from the black-hearted MacKay who stole it.”
She lifted herself up onto her elbow. He could barely make out the shape of her in the dark, but her interest and curiosity were a palpable thing. He realized he had just told her more than he’d told most of the men he’d been riding with for the last seven years.
“How did you lose your land?” she asked.
“Luck doesn’t run in our family. My grandfather threw in his lot with Bonnie Prince Charlie in ’46. When he was defeated, the English Crown stripped us of our titles. MacKay took the land. When my father died, he took the castle as well.”
“Will money buy it back?”
“No. But money will buy influence and enough respectability to fight Killian MacKay.”
“Have you ever considered honorable employment?”
“Once. When I was younger and stupider than I am now. But when you come out of the Highlands, the Lowlanders spit on you. I couldn’t afford the Grand Tour to complete my education. What could I do? I could steal, fight, and scare the hell out of people. So I put my talents to good use.”
“Have you enough money to buy another castle?”
“I want this castle. Dunkirk was my father’s only pride. I’ll do anything to win it back.”
A note of wistfulness touched her voice. “You must have loved your papa a great deal.”
Sebastian closed his eyes. “I hated the bloody bastard. I wished him dead with my every breath.” He yawned. “Good night, Miss Prudence.”
Prudence was silent for a long moment. “Good night, Mr.… Dreadful.” She smoothed the blankets over them both. “You must take better care. Robbing is a dangerous vocation. Hazardous for your soul as well as your neck.”
He opened one eye. “Would you weep if they should hang me?”
“I believe I should.”
“Then I shall take greater care than ever before.” He caught her hand and laid it gently over his heart, as if it belonged there.
Prudence stared at the ceiling until she could no longer distinguish between the pulse of the rain and the steady beat of the highwayman’s heart beneath her palm.
Sebastian awoke to find himself adrift in a pool of sunshine. For an instant, he believed himself to be in the bedchamber of his mistress’s London townhouse. But where were the fluted posts of the tester, the luxuriant softness of the feather bolsters, the smooth, cold marble walls? His mistress could not tolerate sunlight and kept the heavy drapes drawn until well after noon.
He rubbed his groggy eyes and looked around, then smiled with bemusement.
Prudence had propped the door open with a rusty poker and torn the thick sacking from the two windows. A gentle breeze stirred the heady scent of honeysuckle outside, and sunlight streamed into the hut, carrying with it the fragrant warmth of the newly washed earth. The morning sun even poked its way down the chimney to dapple the immaculate hearth. The tiny hut had been swept clean. Sebastian had little doubt that he was now the dustiest thing in it.
Prudence’s tattered broom looked more suited for riding than sweeping. Her kitten divided his bouncing energies between chasing the broom and knocking dust motes into the sunbeams. As Prudence lifted the broom to swipe the thick cobwebs from the beamed ceiling, Sebastian folded his arms behind his head, basking in the pleasure of watching her.
She caught her tongue between her teeth in a gesture of childish concentration, and hummed beneath her breath. Every few seconds, a piping note escaped. Dirt smudged her cheek. Sunlight laced the heavy fall of her hair with burgundy. She still wore nothing but the chemise and petticoat. As she passed the doorway, the sun threw the curves of her long legs and slender rump into silhouette. A pang of regret tightened Sebastian’s groin, and he cursed under his breath. Whatever had possessed him to be so damned charitable last night? But as his gaze followed her, even his lust was tempered by a strange contentment.
She made him wonder what it would have been like to be born a crofter’s child instead of the bastard son of a brutal Highland laird. How would it feel to awaken each morning to such a cozy scene? A clean-swept cottage. A humming wife. It wasn’t difficult to imagine three or four wee ones tottering after Prudence’s petticoat.
His face darkened as he banished the image. Any woman he might marry would be too rich to know one end of the broom from the other. Nor would she care to ruin her tiny waistline bearing his brats, even if she was young enough. That dream was over and best forgotten. Only Dunkirk mattered now.
He spoke, and his voice came out with an edge he had not intended. “If I’d have slept any longer, you’d probably be hanging curtains and hooking doilies.”
She jerked around, dropping the broom with a clunk. A wispy cobweb drifted down and settled over her hair like a wedding bonnet. The sight did not improve his temper.
It unnerved Prudence to have him glowering at her from beneath his low brows. She shrugged apologetically. “Cleaning is a habit with me. My mother died young. I used to look after my father when we lived in London.” She inched toward the chair where her gown hung. “How is your ankle?”
“Still broken. My man Tin
y will probably have to break it again before he sets it.”
She winced.
He struggled to a sitting position, grimacing as his stomach muscles stiffened in protest. “I was hoping you’d be gone when I awoke.”
She gestured lamely toward the floor. “There was so much dust. I thought I’d straighten things a bit.”
“I’m sure Tiny will appreciate it when he’s taking his afternoon tea. But you’d best go now. He’s a bit unpredictable. He might decide to break your leg instead of mine.”
She wavered between a smile and a frown. The vision of being tormented by someone named Tiny lacked real menace. She wished he would stop glaring at her. There must be something she could do to make him look at her as he had the night before. Her face brightened as she spotted the bowl on the table.
She scooped it up and carried it to him as if it were the Holy Grail. “I washed your pistol. It was all muddy.”
Sebastian made a small noise at the back of his throat as he peered into the bowl at the submerged weapon. He plucked it out with two fingers. Water streamed from the polished wooden barrel. She was right about one thing. The pistol wasn’t muddy anymore.
She looked so pleased with herself that his impending roar faded to a choked, “Thank you.”
Smiling lazily, he brushed the cobweb from her hair. His eyes softened to sleepy gray, and Prudence’s heart beat faster. Her aunt must be right, she thought. Men fancied brainless women. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she had washed the gun to keep him from shooting her.
As he leaned forward, shooting her was the last thing on Sebastian’s mind. She had learned her lessons of the night well. Her dark lashes swept down to shutter her eyes. Her lips parted as she tilted her face to his. He groaned and buried his hand in her hair and his tongue in the warm, wet recesses of her mouth. He wrapped his arm around her back, and the pistol dangled forgotten from his fingertips.
An angry roar from the doorway drove Prudence into his lap. “What’s it to be, Kirkpatrick? Are ye goin’ to tup the puir lass or shoot ’er?”