Free Indiscretion by Jillian Hunter

said, "I would have hit you with a stone too if you were swearing at me like that. Goodness gracious, you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
    He didn't say another word in his own defense. What would hav e been the point? Anne was grin ning like a she-devil, and for all Auntie Nellwyn claimed he was her favorite, it was clear the two women had formed some sort of ungodly conspiracy against him.
    He stared down at the stone he held. Then he threw it into the silvery water, and defiantly, he made his wish.
    * * * * *
    A n ne smiled ruefully as she climbed back into the waiting carriag e. She remembered the day she'd learned Patrick had left Scotland. The rowan leaves along the wayside had begun to fall, and their red berries looked like pinpricks of blood from a broken heart. Eighteen years old, she wept until she was as empty as a husk. She never understood what David saw in her, w hy he would want to marry a too- thin woman with haunted eyes who rode like an Amazon and who cried whenever he touched her. He never even asked why she was crying. He just held her hand and told her he understood.
    Patrick, she supposed, remembered almost nothing of that time. He was probably carousing with the other young raw recruits, or so dead-drunk he wouldn't even recognize her while she was weeping her heart out.
    She had wished him back so hard in the days before her wedding, it was frightening. And now, seven years later, her wish had been granted, and what on earth was she supposed to do with the man?

 
     
     
     
    11
     
     
    T he huntsman raised his rifle and aimed at the hawk perched on the crag. The bird sensed the threat and stared, seemingly transfixed. The man squinted; he was aware of a rush of anticipation, and his finger tightened on the trigger.
    Before he could shoot, however, a familiar female voice blasted the s ilence of the moor with the sub tlety of canonfire.
    "Papa!" Her voice was petulant and frantic. "Papa, where have you been?" she wailed. "I need you."
    He lowered the rifle before briefly considering shooting himself in the head. The hawk had taken refuge in a crevice seconds before. "What dire emergency is it this time, Flora? Another pimple on the chin? Another unpaid bill come back to haunt you?"
    "Oh, Papa." She clumped up beside him with her hand on her chest to control her breathing. "The most dreadful thing has happened. The most ominous, the most awful—the prediction has come true."
    He removed a handkerchief from his tweed jacket and dabbed his upper lip. "Prediction?"
    "I told you, but as usual you ignored me. Black Mag predicted that she was coming back, and it's true."
    "Black Mag?" His handsome face hardened. "Haven't I warned you to stay away from that old hag?"
    "She isn't a hag. She's a genuine Scots-Romany herbwoman and she sees into the future, and she said we have a blot on our souls and that a woman of whiteness is coming back to remove it."
    "Woman?" he said, paying attention for the first time. "What woman is the old witch talking about?"
    He was awaiting her answer when a pair of ravens burst into flight from a rocky overhang. Their hoarse caws filled the air with ungodly noise. They were evil things, those birds; they brought nothing but trouble, or so weak-minded individuals such as his daughter believed, and even he felt a twinge of anxiety as he faced her and tried to make sense out of what she had said.
    "What woman?"
    "The English baron's wife, the beautiful one with black hair who was always riding across the moor at all hours."
    He blinked. His anxiety had shifted to a different kind of stirring. In his mind he saw Anne cantering through the mist like a pagan queen, her hair tangled, her slim body moving with the animal in the most unladylike, the most arousing manner he could imagine. He had always wondered how a woman of her spirit had ended up with a moth of a man like David, but she had rebuffed any discreet suggestion of a liaison years ago at the last house party she had