The Prince Kidnaps a Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

through the small crowd. “Gunpowder.” “Gunpowder?” “Dear holy Jesus, save us. Gunpowder.”
    “Wow. Really? Gunpowder?” Arnou said loudly.
    Mother Brigette knelt beside Sorcha. In a low tone, she said, “Whoever set your cell on fire also intended to blow up the wall.”
    Sister Dierdre recoiled from Sorcha. Wide-eyed, she crossed herself.
    “Who would do this?” Sister Theresa whispered. “There’s only that young half-wit here, and he’s been underfoot all day.”
    “Why would someone do this?” Sister Mary Simon was slightly deaf and considerably louder. “What does he want? We’re a convent. We have no valuables to steal.”
    Of course not. Whoever had done this wasn’t after valuables. He was after... Sorcha.
    Mother Brigette was right. It was time to leave—before Sorcha brought disaster on the convent that had sheltered her for so long.

Chapter 3
 
    S unset found Sorcha inside the quiet glass greenhouse, kneeling, holding a trowel, her eyes fixed on the grooved brown stems and lacy green leaves of a valerian plant. Yet her hands, clad in rough garden gloves, were idle. She had come here to be alone, to think, to plan.
    She had to leave Monnmouth as soon as possible, yet her mind was petrified with fear—fear of the stranger who stalked her.
    Who was he? How had he found her? Had he left the island or was he lurking out there, waiting for darkness to fall so he could do harm to one of the nuns? Or to her?
    Yet what was the alternative?
    A long, treacherous road filled with danger.
    She shivered as the sun slid behind the naked branches of the trees and cast long, fingerlike shadows groping through the glass.
    To get back to Beaumontagne, she had to somehow cross the rugged Highlands of Scotland to Edinburgh, take passage on a ship to a port in France or Spain, then travel into the mighty peaks of the Pyrenees, and from there to her home. In the normal run of things she would be beset by discomfort, robbers, and the onset of winter. Now, with a possible assassin chasing her, the difficulties doubled and tripled until she couldn’t imagine how she would take the first step.
    She halfheartedly stirred the dirt around the valerian. She, who was so soft-hearted she could scarcely bear to pull a plant up by its roots, might have to use force against another human being.
    She used to love twilight: the vivid blue sky turning to purple, the golden clouds, the anticipation of a quiet evening spent reading and in prayer. Now the skin between her shoulder blades prickled. She glanced nervously about her. And jumped.
    A man stood behind her, his face pressed against one of the windowpanes. The glass distorted his nose. His breath painted the glass with frost, hiding his features, but his single brown eye was almost black.
    She gasped. Her heart slammed against her chest.
    Then he pulled back and waved frantically.
    It was Arnou.
    The dolt. He had startled her again. She glared at him. It almost seemed as if he were trying to spook her into leaving.
    He gestured toward the door and, after a grudging hesitation, she nodded her permission.
    Viciously she rammed the trowel into the ground and uprooted the valerian plant without a thought to its death.
    Since the time she was a child, she had hated to be startled. Prince Rainger had known it, too, and taken pleasure in jumping out at her from behind closed doors or lurking beside the stairways and unexpectedly grabbing her skirt. The last time she’d seen him, he had drawled he was too old for such silliness; he had given her to understand he was too sophisticated to be bothered with her.
    Too bad. There had been times when she had liked the rascally boy-prince. But she had despised the affected young man.
    And she was sorry that Arnou and her return to Beaumontagne brought Rainger to mind, for Rainger’s death at the hands of the revolutionaries reminded her of her own possible fate. Royalty was supposed to face adversity with equanimity; Sorcha’s