Free Devil's Mistress by Heather Graham Page A

lords who had sent him to Scotland had recently sent ambassadors to Holland, inviting William of Orange to invade England—and force James to abdicate his throne.
    On June twentieth, James II’s wife had given birth to a son. While the English people had tolerated their Catholic monarch as long as they assumed his heir apparent to be his oldest daughter, Mary, a staunch Protestant and the wife of William of Orange, they were not likely to tolerate the possibility of their king’s leaving the throne to a Catholic son. There was trouble ahead; of that Sloan was keenly aware. He knew the king. He knew that James would so implement his power that he would enrage his barons, as well as the English people. Sloan also knew William of Orange and understood that he was very ambitious and determined.
    Sloan winced slightly. There had been a time when he had liked James. A time when James had been a bold and brave man, a careful thinker, and a fine admiral. But that time was past. James had grown older, and fanatical—unbending, and sometimes cruel. He had executed his own nephew. Over the crown.
    James, the Duke of Monmouth—“Jemmy” to his friends—had been the illegitimate son of Charles II. He’d possessed a full quota of Stuart charm; he’d been reckless, daring, and adventurous.
    To Sloan he had been much more. When he was ten years old, his father had died—and he’d been sent to live in Jemmy’s household. When Sloan was young, Jemmy had been his hero. As he grew older and wiser, Sloan recognized his good points as well as his lack of prudence over the matter of the crown. But knowing his recklessness had done nothing to change the emotions that had grown over the years, and when Sloan heard that Jemmy had lost his head after his fruitless rebellion to gain the throne, he felt the deepest loss and fury. Jemmy had pleaded for his life but James had refused him—and executed him.
    Sloan cast his head back and drank another long, long draft of the rum. The things he’d learned in the tavern that day had been interesting. William of Orange had assumed the Scots would be solidly against him. Some of them would be, but not all, Sloan knew now. If William and Mary secured their position in England, it was quite likely that the northern country would accept them too.
    He laid his head back, brooding about politics, and then about the ties that bound him to Wales with webs spun of pity and honor.
    Then he started suddenly, hearing a rustle from the bed. He had forgotten the Scottish lass in the gloom of his thoughts.
    He smiled and pulled his boots from his feet, setting them beneath his desk before stripping methodically and casting his clothing over the chair. Then he stood over the girl again, debating whether to move her to a more comfortable position or let her be.
    It was not surprising that she had been labeled “witch”—she was incredibly beautiful. The loveliest ladies were usually marred in some way; minus several teeth, perhaps, or scarred in face or form by pockmarks or the like. This girl was nothing less than perfect. It was easy to believe that a less fortunate person might enviously decide that only a pact with the devil could create such flawless beauty. But that didn’t matter now. He would keep her safe. He found himself shuddering slightly, warmed by the thought of her. He wanted to sleep with her again—and again. He wanted her to touch him and practice her brand of witchcraft upon him. He could lose himself so easily within the midnight web of her hair, the soft mystique of her cream-and-rose flesh.
    His thinking should have surprised him—perhaps even worried him. He had never before been so enamored of a woman as to worry about their future together. But he thought of permanency when he looked at this girl. And as he was of high-ranking nobility, Sloan possessed the inevitable ego of his rank. He was the Fourteenth Duke of Loghaire and a Scottish country lass should be quite content as his