Free The Passionate One by Connie Brockway

right. Prime horseflesh to ride as well. Fine fellows to be my companions.
And damn pretty girls.”
    “To ride?” St. John snickered.
    “Aye!” Watt
laughed, a shade too loudly.
    Ash’s wandering
attention abruptly sharpened on Watt. The bloody fool would probably give
Rhiannon a case of the pox on their wedding night.
    “I agree with
Phillip,” John Fortnum put in. “Not about the ladies.” His ears turned pink.
“About the other thingies. I hear London is a dangerous place these days. Packs
of young aristos roving the streets like mad dogs, assaulting good people.
Damned impertinent.”
    St. John shrugged. “It’s not as though violence hasn’t found its way here.
Watt’s own bride-to-be was nearly killed not long ago.”
    Ah, yes, Ash
remembered. The shallow furrow across her cheek. Another inch and the eye
socket would have shattered, the clear hazel green eye rendered sightless.
    “They never
apprehended the man who did it?” he asked.
    “No. He hasn’t been
caught,” Phillip answered tersely.
    “Shouldn’t wonder
that he will be soon,” Fortnum said. “Stupid bugger.”
    “How so?” Ash
asked.
    “Well, look at who
he picked to rob.” Fortnum’s face was alive with disgust. “An open carriage
carrying two ladies on a fine afternoon. What did he hope to get? Tiaras?”
    “I thought Mrs.
Fraiser was well-to-do,” Ash said.
    “Aye,” Fortnum
answered, “she is. But she wouldn’t be sporting what finery she owns in the
afternoon. Maybe they do so in London, but in Fair Badden we keep out glitter
for candlelight.”
    St. John , openly bored with the turn of conversation, picked at a hangnail.
    “Perhaps he thought
they carried deep purses,” Ash suggested, his thoughts whirring.
    “Why would he think
that?” Fortnum asked. “Simple carriage. Unescorted ladies. What raises my
hackles is that even after the driver whipped up the horses, the bastard shot
at the ladies. He needn’t have done that.”
    Ash allowed that he
had a point.
    “The blackguard had
a mask on,” Fortnum continued. “He wasn’t going to be identified. If me and my
dad hadn’t been on the road and heard the pistol shot...” He trailed off,
shaking his head.
    Incredibly it
sounded as if the carriage carrying Rhiannon and Mrs. Fraiser had been
specifically targeted. Ash frowned.
    He sighed gustily,
as though the ways of evil men were beyond the ken of his civilized
understanding, and rose from the table. Casually he collected his jacket and
depleted purse. But as he took his leave of the others, he was already
composing a letter to Thomas Donne.
    Scottish
expatriate, enormously wealthy, suave and perennially bored, Donne had little
allegiance to anyone or anything. But he did have a supreme desire to find ways
to fritter away the hours. He just might consider the challenge of finding out
what he could about a Highland orphan interesting enough to accept.
     
    The afternoon sun
glanced off the whitewashed wall of the Fraiser’s manor, warming the garden. On
the grassy path separating vegetables from herbs, Rhiannon sat rolling Stella’s
silky ear between her fingers.
    The young bitch
yawned hugely, displaying large white fangs and a long, curling pink tongue.
Then, grumbling, she stretched her great gangly body across Rhiannon’s lap,
moaned in contentment, and fell asleep once more. Rhiannon smiled. So fierce a
bloodline this hound had, yet so tamed by simple kindness.
    Like Ash Merrick.
    For a moment,
earlier that day, when she’d struggled beneath him, she’d been truly afraid.
Yet when she’d called to him and touched his face he’d shivered,
shivered.
She wondered when last he’d been touched without violence or threat of pain.
    Which was absurd.
He was a London gentleman and a very handsome one at that. Many women must have
explored the texture of his glossy black hair and caressed his lean,
beard-shadowed cheeks. Yet, where had those scars on his wrists come from? How
to account for