Free Anne Stuart by Prince of Swords

could only hope it had.
    The sight was so delicious, he almost reached for her again, but the doorknob turned and Jessamine was thrust toward him unceremoniously as Lady Plumworthy barged into the room.
    He caught her arms, careful to keep her face away from Isolde’s until she recovered some of her wonderfully disordered senses. She glanced up at him, and there was such confusion, pain, and longing in her mysterious eyes that he felt the first pang of guilt he’d experienced in years. He reached out an involuntary hand to touch her, reassure her, but she had already swept around, away from him, brushing past Lady Plumworthy with no more than a murmured farewell.
    Isolde surveyed him with grim humor. “You’ve been a naughty boy again, Alistair,” she chided him, her arch tones making his skin crawl. “Don’t you know better than to interfere with the bourgeoisie?”
    “ I thought she was a Gypsy,” he drawled.
    “ You know perfectly well she’s not. She’s a decent, unimaginative English maiden whose father was a wastrel.”
    “ So I gather.”
    Isolde blinked. “You mean she told you?”
    “ Of course not. I have my own sources of information, Isolde, as do you. I’m perfectly aware of Miss Maitland’s background.”
    “ Then you should know better than to try your wiles with her.”
    “ I know better, Isolde. I just don’t choose to act on that knowledge. She’s a bit too delectable to pass by. You know I could never resist a challenge.”
    “ Silly boy. Experience is always preferable to awkwardness.” She batted her creped eyelids in a grotesque attempt at flirtation.
    Alistair was not in the mood for this. Now that he knew who Jessamine was, he no longer relied on Isolde Plumworthy for his connection, but common sense told him that she would be a dangerous enemy to make. “Come now, Isolde,” he said. “Had you the choice between an aging roué like Castleton and a young, untried buck such as Calderwood, it’s more than clear which one you’d choose. You enjoy a challenge just as much as I do.”
    “ I suppose I do,” she said with a sigh. “Still and all, Alistair, you’ve always managed to elude me.”
    “ It makes me far more interesting,” he murmured, moving toward the door. “Forgive me if I take my leave of you, my lady.”
    Isolde sank heavily into a chair, waving him away with her plump, beringed hand. There was a particularly fine emerald on her fat little finger, and Alistair wondered if he ought to break the Cat’s unwritten code and make a return visit to one of his victims. If anyone deserved it, Isolde did. “Go away, go away,” she said crankily. “But first tell me, what do you intend to do about the girl?”
    “ Seduce and abandon her, of course. What else would you expect?”
    “ You’re an evil soul, Alistair. I’ve always liked that about you. You remind me of me.”
    Alistair managed a faint smile that was just this side of a sneer. “You flatter me, Isolde. No one can even approach you for sheer malice.” And her laugh echoed in his ears as he made his escape.
    A weaker, more vulnerable soul might be close to tears, Jessamine thought as she hurried through the darkening streets of late afternoon. Another female, less certain of her lot in life, might feel shaken, overset, disturbed. But not Jessamine.
    “ You have a rare gift,” Marilla had told her years before. “You see the cards more clearly than anyone I have ever known. But there is a price to be paid. To keep that gift you need to remain pure. Untouched, unsoiled by the hands of men. You can never marry, never lie with a man. If you do, your talent will vanish and the cards will be no more than pretty pictures. Let a man touch you and kiss you, let him lie between your legs, and I will have taught you for nothing. You must choose, love, and you must choose wisely, for there will be no going back.”
    And Jessamine Maitland, who at the tender age of eleven considered the male of the species