Free Heather and Velvet by Teresa Medeiros Page A

blow until he could feel nothing at all. He longed to pull her head down to his shoulder and let the bitterness dimming her eyes spill into the healing balm of tears.
    Old Fish stooped over the plant, his back to them. Sebastian couldn’t stop himself. He reached up and stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers. Her skin was satin cream, just as he remembered. “Some wounds take longer to heal than others.”
    She flinched as if he had struck her. Her gaze flicked downward to his cane. “Like your old war wound?”
    His hand fell, and she turned away in a crisp swish of poplin. “You’d best get back to your guests, my lord. Your fiancée is waiting for you.”
    As she climbed the steps, her back and shoulders perfectly straight, Sebastian blew out a slow breath of frustration. He swung away from the stairs and met Old Fish’s cold gaze. The butler’s thin nostrils flared at the merest scent of scandal.
    Before he could protest, Sebastian took the tin pot out of his hand and flipped it upside down. Nothing came out. He shook it before handing it back. “The tree might grow quicker, my good man, if you’d take the trouble of putting water in the pot.”
    Smiling angelically, Sebastian tucked his cane under his arm and marched back to the dining room.
    Prudence slammed the door to her bedchamber shut, twisted her key with trembling fingers, and braced her back against the door. Her chest heaved as if she had climbed a steep mountain instead of a staircase. She took several long, shuddering breaths, fighting the feeling that she was being pursued. The silence that surrounded her was broken by abright burst of Tricia’s laughter floating up the stairs. It was not her aunt’s flippant description of her papa’s death that had ignited Prudence’s hunger for escape. It was the frank sympathy in Sebastian Kerr’s eyes.
    Since Sebastian’s arrival, Prudence had somehow tolerated the walk from the drive to the house with Tricia clinging to his arm like a limpet. She had suffered through the awkwardness of tea, although the buttercrumb tarts crumbled to sawdust in her mouth each time he looked at her. She had endured supper and the maddening swing of his expression from perplexed curiosity to something bordering on hostility.
    But when he’d looked at her as if he ached to reach out and enfold her hand in his, her pretense of dignity had snapped. She pressed a hand to her burning cheek. She had never dreamed he would be so bold and foolish as to follow her, to say he was sorry about her papa, to touch her face …
    Violently, she stripped off her gown, then tore at the stays of her corset, bending them beyond repair. She was in no mood to summon a maid to undress her as if she were an invisible doll.
    Indignation flooded her. Sebastian Kerr had a surfeit of arrogance to attend one of her aunt’s dinner parties in such a bizarre manner of dress! He had worn no wig. The powder that had burnished his tawny hair was light enough to be more of an insult than if he wore none at all.
    She threw her gown in the armoire and jerked out a cotton night rail. She pulled it over her head backward, lost the armholes, and spent the next few seconds trying to extricate her head, muttering all the while. Then her head popped out and her hair came tumbling down, scattering hairpins across the faded rug.
    Sebastian’s unfashionable tan had made Sir Arlo, with his powdered visage, look like a day-old corpse. His charcoal knee-breeches had matched exactly the color of his thick lashes, and had clung to his thighs in a most unseemly manner. His cutaway frock coat had been devoid of all lace but for a narrow band around the cuffs. And most shocking of all had been his unstarched cravat. Its soft, loose foldshad framed beautifully the piquant play of emotions across his face.
    Prudence plucked the rest of the pins from her hair and dragged a gilt brush through the heavy mass. The brush caught in a tangle. She tugged, taking a perverse