Heather and Velvet Read Online Free PDF

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