“I’d prefer kippers and eggs if you don’t mind,” he said.
D’Artan jerked at the sound of his rusty voice, almost overturning the acid. He steadied it, his hands trembling with annoyance.
With alarming speed, a sunny smile replaced his frown. “You don’t have to choose the menu. We’re expecting company for breakfast.”
Sebastian lifted an eyebrow, studying the table. It was spread with gunpowder, two pistols, a knife, and the vat of bubbling acid. “Who? Lucretia Borgia? Your old card-playing friend, the Marquis de Sade?”
“Wrong again. Your own loving wife. I sent her an engraved invitation.”
A lusty roar of laughter burst from Sebastian. D’Artan’s smile faded.
“My wife won’t come. After the way I treated her at our last meeting, she wouldn’t spit on me if I were ablaze.”
D’Artan stood up and advanced on him. Sebastian held himself rigid, refusing to betray so much as a flinch. “Perhaps you underestimate your charm.” His grandfather swiped a lock of hair from his brow with a tender hand. “And your prowess.”
“Perhaps I overestimate it. As my father did when he abducted your daughter and expected her to fall in love with him.”
A dark red suffused D’Artan’s face. His snarl drew his skin taut over aristocratic cheekbones. “Make no mention of that savage to me. The past is done. I care only for the future.”
Sebastian closed his eyes in mock boredom. “And a long dull future it will be if it’s just you and I sitting here for all eternity, awaiting a lady with a formula.”
D’Artan leaned close to him. “If she does not come, only my future will be long and dull. Yours will be very short indeed.”
D’Artan’s eyes glittered like shards of flint. Sebastian’s hope that misplaced sentiment might stop his grandfather from killing him died on a stale and fruity breath.
D’Artan flitted back to the table, rubbing his palms together. Drops of spittle caught on his lips. He held a glass vial up to the sunlight. “I never did see what attraction our proud Miss Walker held for you. I can’t wait for the severe little creature to stumble in, weeping and wringing her hands, babbling her precious formula to save your life. How I shall delight in her histrionics!”
“You coldhearted son-of-a—”
Sebastian’s oath was cut off by a deafening pistol blast. The thunder of hoofbeats shook the hut.
The vial slipped from D’Artan’s hand and shattered on the hard-packed floor. “If that pinched little chit has dared to bring the law …”He drew a German pocket pistol from his apron. His boots crunched the broken shards of glass as he went to open the door a furtive crack.
Sebastian had to know what was going on. He shifted more weight onto the leg folded beneath him. The devil dug a bony claw of pain into his shoulder. Sweat beaded his brow. He had to do this quickly or he would lose the courage to do it at all. His teeth sank into his lower lip as he flung himself up and around onto his knees, slamming his injured shoulder against the windowsill. Sunlight and agony blinded him. He tasted the metallic tang of blood on his tongue.
As D’Artan bit off a profane curse, Sebastian gazed out the window. Smoke from the pistol blast drifted through the trees. He blinked, seeing the vision before him through a fractured prism of pain, then gave his head a hard shake. Perhaps so much blood had trickled out of his shoulder that there was none left to feed his brain.
But Prudence was still there, armed and straddling MacKay’s gelding as if she’d been born to the saddle.
Her voice rang out in a singing brogue that would have done Jamie proud. “Open the door, ye bloody bastard, before I blow yer French arse from here to kingdom come.”
Sebastian slumped against the windowsill, banging his head and wondering if it would hurt more to laugh or cry.
Thirty-four
Prudence gave the muzzle of her pistol a dainty blow before shoving it into the sash of her skirt. The butt of another pistol protruded beside it.
Sebastian marveled at the knotting of his gut, the slow, steady beat of desire in his groin. He supposed he’d have to have no pulse at all before his heart stopped shoving blood into all the wrong places whenever Prudence was near. She was angel fire and demon ice perched on MacKay’s horse like a Highland princess, his own plaid draped carelessly over one shoulder. She had pulled her skirt between her legs and anchored it at her waist in makeshift breeches. Only the bandit’s mask was absent, replaced by an incongruous pair of spectacles. She had come garbed not for a costume ball, but for a deadly masquerade where the players were no less dangerous for being known.
Her horse pawed the ground. She tossed her hair over her shoulder. “Halloo? Monsieur D’Artan, are you home?” Her cultured tones struck Sebastian like a blow.
He hooked his arms over the windowsill to keep from sliding back down. “Get the hell away from here, you daft lass, before you get yourself killed!”
“Quiet,” D’Artan snarled, jerking him back by the hair. He had crossed the hut without a sound. An urbane smile replaced his sneer. “Good morning, Your Grace. So delighted you could drop in. Would you mind tossing your pistols on the ground and joining us?”
She smiled ingenuously. “But why, Viscount? I’m really a terrible shot.”
In reply, D’Artan shoved the pocket pistol against Sebastian’s temple and raked the hammer back. Prudence shrugged, refusing to meet Sebastian’s furious gaze, and tossed her weapons down. She dismounted, landing on the balls of her feet with an arrogant bounce.
Sebastian felt D’Artan’s nervous jerk as Prudence thrust open the door, sending it crashing against the wall. She swaggered in and sank onto a chair, then pulled a cheroot out of her plaid and leaned forward to light it with the flame of the lantern. D’Artan gaped at her as if she’d just escaped from Bedlam. Sebastian’s eyes narrowed. Christ, the lass was magnificent! he thought. But what in the hell was she trying to do?
She wielded the cheroot between two eloquent fingers and propped her boots on the table. “Good morning, gentlemen. I believe we have some business to conduct.”
D’Artan’s grip on Sebastian’s hair slowly eased. Sebastian could almost read his grandfather’s methodical mind. D’Artan despised unknowns. If he was going to have to deal with a madwoman, he wanted it over and done with.
He slipped the pistol back into his apron pocket. “I’ve booked myself passage for France. I must have your father’s formula before I go. I have all the components ready to test it. Give it to me. Now.”
“I didn’t dare write it down.” She tapped her temple with one finger. “I keep it in here.” She fished a silver flask from the plaid, uncorked it, and took a deep swig. Her eyes sparkled for an elusive instant, then cleared. She swiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “You must remember that it’s a dangerous formula. My father died for it.”
D’Artan planted both palms on the table and leaned over her. “And I am willing to kill for it.”
She took a long draw from the cheroot, betrayed by nothing but a slight pinkening of her cheeks. Pursing her lips, she deliberately blew a cloud of smoke in D’Artan’s face.
He sputtered. Tears ran from his rheumy eyes. He jerked Prudence up by her plaid, twisting it tight at her throat.
A moment earlier, Sebastian would have sworn it impossible to stand. But before he realized it, he was lurching up and away from the window, his only desire to wrap his fingers around D’Artan’s throat and squeeze the life out of him. A spear of agony shot through his shoulder. His head spun. Oddly enough, it was Prudence who caught him, her hands a gentle vise against his forearms. D’Artan hovered behind her, his eyes bright and wary.
“There now, darling,” Prudence said soothingly, guiding him back to the wall. “You mustn’t blame your grandfather for being a bit impatient. He’s waited a long time for this. Sit in the window, won’t you, and block the sun for me. Many of these components are delicate and very sensitive to sunlight.” Her hair brushed his chin.
He
closed his eyes, aching to draw her against him. “Don’t give him the formula, Prudence. He’ll only kill you once he’s got it.”
Her tinkling laugh would have made Tricia swoon with envy. “Of course he won’t, you silly dear.” She smiled at D’Artan over her shoulder. “Your grandfather is a respectable man.”
Sunlight slanted across her hair, warming it to cinnamon. Her eyes glowed with a strange fervor.
D’Artan gestured to the table. “The revolution waits for no man. Shall we begin?”
Sebastian wanted to snatch her back, but it was too late. Prudence was already sauntering toward D’Artan, her shapely rump hugged by the taut curve of her skirt.
He eased his hip onto the windowsill. Balance was tricky if not impossible with his hands bound and his head still reeling from the effects of the opium. Sunlight warmed his back.
D’Artan fussed over his pots and vials with childish glee. “I have determined that your father’s foolish accident was caused by using a mercury-based fulminate. I have taken the liberty of substituting silver for mercury.”
“How very clever,” Prudence murmured. She turned up the lantern to dispel the shadows. Her smoking cigar sat near its base. “There. Add just a touch of that ammonia, won’t you?”
“Ah!” D’Artan complied, looking absurdly pleased with himself. “I had guessed as much.” A cloud of steam rose from the table.
Prudence pointed. “Now dissolve your silver in your nitric acid.”
He beamed. “Already done.”
“Why, Viscount! I don’t think you need me at all. You’ve figured it out all by yourself.”
“I told you once that I was a bit of an amateur chemist.”
“And a professional bastard,” Sebastian murmured.
D’Artan smirked at him. “You’d know more about that occupation, wouldn’t you? You’ve been practicing it since birth.”
Turning back to the table, D’Artan mixed his ingredients with fussy precision. Prudence smothered a yawn. D’Artan looked up, his face expectant and feverish in the lantern light.
Prudence stretched and took a few steps toward Sebastian. “One final ingredient, Viscount.”
D’Artan hovered over the bench, his eyes glazed, his hands twitching in their impatience.
She gestured toward the flask on the table. An angelic smile curved her lips. “A hooker of brandy.”
A hooker of brandy.
The husky words resonated through Sebastian’s mind as Prudence inched back toward the window. D’Artan jerked up the flask, fumbling in his excitement.
He lifted it to pour. A shaft of sunlight gilded the brandy to a glittering amber stream.
Such a waste of fine brandy.
Squire Blake’s words thundered through Sebastian’s brain as Prudence hurled herself at him, tumbling them both out the window just before the crofter’s hut exploded in a roaring ball of flame.
Thirty-five
Prudence’s cheek nuzzled against something hard and familiar. She pulled off her shattered spectacles to discover it was Sebastian’s chest. They were sprawled in the grass in front of the crofter’s hut, thrown clear by the blast.
What had been the crofter’s hut, Prudence corrected herself. Only a smoldering shell of rubble and twisted boards remained. She glanced at Sebastian and saw he’d opened his eyes. Their smoky clarity unnerved her.
She dropped her head back down. She felt as if she was going to be ill. “Oh, dear. I hope you’re not angry. I’m afraid I blew up your grandfather.”
It hurt like hell, but Sebastian still managed a shrug. “A socially reprehensible, but morally sound decision.” His lips touched her hair. She winced as they found a shallow gash on her temple. “You’re quite the little actress, you know. You should hire a manager and take to the stage posthaste.”
“Can I have a bath first?” she mumbled against his chest. “I thought the cigar was going to be the end of me. Dreadfully nasty, aren’t they?”
“Terrible habit. I’ve been thinking of giving them up myself.”
Pillars of black smoke stained the azure sky, sifting sparks and ash high above the pines. MacKay’s gelding grazed placidly in the trees across the stream.
Sebastian was very still. “You came for me. Why?”
Their gazes met across his chest. She drew his plaid from her shoulders, folding it with reverent hands. “To give you this.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t to give me this?” He touched his lips to hers, not caring that they both tasted of blood, sweat, and smoke. Prudence moved against him with a small moan.
He laughed breathlessly. “Although this position has some very intriguing possibilities, would you mind untying my hands?”
He sat up with a grunt of pain as she crawled behind him. “I don’t know, laddie,” she teased. “Can ye make it worth me while?”
“That I can, lass. That I can.”
She dug at the knot with her cracked fingernails. Blood trickled down her cheek, and she swiped it away.
A spasm jerked through Sebastian’s body. His arms went rigid. “Stay behind me, Prudence. Stay behind me and close your eyes.”
But Prudence Walker Kerr had never averted her eyes from anything. A raw scream tore from her throat as D’Artan lurched out of the ruins of the crofter’s hut.
His apron and breeches hung in rags. The flesh of his face had melted and blackened against the bones. But out of that monstrous visage glinted the steely clarity of one eye. A hoarse bellow escaped his throat. He waved the pocket pistol wildly in the air.
Sebastian felt Prudence move, and scooted his body around as a shield. “Dammit, Prudence, stay behind me!”
With his hands bound, though, Sebastian was helpless, a living target for D’Artan’s twisted rage. Prudence’s own pistols lay in the grass a few feet away, and her knee crunched her shattered spectacles as she lunged for them, ignoring Sebastian’s savage oath. D’Artan waved the pistol in her direction and she was forced to freeze, stretched out on her stomach in the grass.
The viscount’s eye focused on Sebastian and narrowed. He staggered toward his grandson, the pistol dangling from his charred fingertips.
“You little bastard,” he said, his raspy voice low and vicious. “I wish I’d never laid eyes on you. You’ve been nothing but a failure all your life—a failure as a highwayman, a failure as a spy, a failure as a man. You make me ill. You’re just like your father.”
With an effort betrayed only by the skin pinching tight over his cheekbones, Sebastian heaved himself to his feet. “You’ve always hated me, haven’t you? Your loving grandfather ploy was never very convincing.”
D’Artan threw back his head with a cackle. “I despised you. I loathed you. Every time I looked at you, all I saw was him. Brendan Kerr. The dirty Scot who broke my daughter—my only little girl …” His voice cracked.
Prudence swallowed against a welling of pity even as her fingers curled around the cool butt of a pistol. Dear God, let it be the pistol I haven’t fired, she prayed, and eased it up.
D’Artan’s head lolled. “My precious Michelline, the one fine thing I ever made in my life. You!” His voice rose to a shriek as his last scrap of sanity broke away. Prudence realized with swelling horror that he believed Sebastian was Brendan Kerr. “You filthy monster. You stole and raped my daughter and that coward MacKay let you get away with it.”
D’Artan lifted the pistol and pointed it straight at Sebastian’s heart, determined to take the vengeance that had been denied him for thirty years. “I’ll blow all the Scots to hell before I’m done. All the English too.”
Sebastian tossed a lock of hair from his eyes and faced his crazed accuser with a courage that tore at Prudence’s heart. “We’ll be there to greet them at the gates,” he said to his grandfather, “you and I.”
Prudence steadied the gun against her wrist.
D’Artan pulled back the hammer on his own pistol. “You’ll never steal another man’s child.”
Prudence’s
finger tightened on the trigger. As she squinted and aimed, blood trickled into her eyes. D’Artan’s form ran into a faceless blob.
He lurched forward. “You’ll never steal another man’s bride like you stole that weakling MacKay’s bride.”
A voice as sharp as a double-edged sword rang out from the pines. “My pregnant bride, you son-of-a-bitch.”
A pistol exploded. A red stain blossomed over D’Artan’s heart. He gave his chest a baffled glance, then staggered backward, crumpling into the stream with a final splash. For a long moment, the only sound was the cheerful chortling of flowing water.
Prudence’s gun slipped from her fingers as Sebastian slowly turned. MacKay stood behind him, smoking pistol in hand. Prudence’s gaze traveled between them as the two men came face to face for the first time. Broad shoulders, stiffened with pride. Lashes long enough to embarrass even the staunchest male. Brackets around their mouths, carved by laughter and too many tears.
How could they all have been so blind? Prudence wondered, as Sebastian’s gray eyes widened with dawning realization. Not his mother’s eyes after all. His father’s eyes.
Her fingers knotted in the grass. At last she understood the strange bond she had felt from her first meeting with MacKay, the haunting recognition, the tender empathy. It was not her own papa he reminded her of. It was Sebastian. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
MacKay’s voice was matter-of-fact as he began to undo Sebastian’s bonds. “I’ve had my suspicions for years, you know. I adored your mother. I fled to Greece because I was ashamed of seducing her before the vows. I planned on returning in the fall when I could make her my wife in every way.”
“You were a bit late, weren’t you?”
Prudence winced at the bite of contempt in Sebastian’s voice.