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the gun to keep him from shooting her.
    As he leaned forward, shooting her was the last thing on Sebastian’s mind. She had learned her lessons of the night well. Her dark lashes swept down to shutter her eyes. Her lips parted as she tilted her face to his. He groaned and buried his hand in her hair and his tongue in the warm, wet recesses of her mouth. He wrapped his arm around her back, and the pistol dangled forgotten from his fingertips.
    An angry roar from the doorway drove Prudence into hislap. “What’s it to be, Kirkpatrick? Are ye goin’ to tup the puir lass or shoot ’er?”
    Sebastian lay a warning finger against Prudence’s trembling lips. “Chin up, love,” he whispered. “You’re about to make the acquaintance of my merry men.”

Three

    P rudence slowly turned to face the men. Kirkpatrick kept his arm anchored firmly around her waist.
    The two men did not look merry at all, she thought. Even the sunlight quailed before the blond giant standing in the doorway. As he ducked under the lintel, the floor shuddered beneath the booted hams of his feet. He could only be Tiny.
    He threw back his head with a laugh that shook the timbers. “I frighted ye, didn’t I? Ye taught me well, lad. Stealth before wealth.”
    His long, ratty beard and halo of blond hair made him look more like a misplaced Viking than a Scottish border raider. Prudence half expected him to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off to his longship. She pressed her back to Kirkpatrick’s chest, and his hand flattened against her stomach with a soothing stroke.
    She recoiled farther as the puckish creature perched on the windowsill gave a nasal coo of horror. “Fer shame, Kirkpatrick, where’s yer mask? Ye mustn’t think much ofthe wee lovey, do ye? Shall I take her fer a walk now or later?”
    Prudence thought he was the ugliest child she had ever seen. Then she realized he was not a child at all, but a young man, his features pinched to foxlike sharpness. His thin arms were strung with muscles like pianoforte wires. His lips smacked as he sucked the nectar from a honeysuckle blossom and leered at Prudence.
    “That won’t be necessary, Jamie,” Kirkpatrick said. “The lass is blind.”
    “Blind?” echoed the giant.
    “Blind?” repeated Prudence.
    Kirkpatrick pinched her sharply. She squinted obligingly.
    “You heard me,” he said. “She’s blind. She can see nothing but a wee bit of light and a few shapes. That’s how she came to tumble down that hill last night.”
    Jamie crumbled the blossom in his freckled fist. “And what was she doin’ on that hill? Pickin’ daisies?”
    Before Kirkpatrick could answer, Prudence said, “I was having a picnic.”
    Tiny’s brow folded in a thunderous frown. He crossed arms as big as birch trunks across his chest. “Bloody wet fer a picnic, weren’t it?”
    Kirkpatrick gave her hair a warning tug. She ignored him. “Not earlier in the day. You see, I’d been lost for hours until your laird was kind enough to rescue me and bring me here … to his castle.” She blinked at the air a full foot down and three feet over from the source of the rumbling voice.
    “Our laird?” hooted Jamie.
    “His castle?” echoed Tiny.
    Prudence felt around the floor, wincing as a splinter buried itself in her thumb. “I’d best get my things. Laird Kirkpatrick said one of you footmen would be kind enough to escort me to the road where I might await conveyance to my home.”
    “Did he now?” Tiny frowned. “Our laird is the purest soul of generosity.”
    Sebastian smirked. “So they tell me.”
    Prudence rose. Jamie vaulted off the windowsill and into the hut. Sebastian’s jaw tightened, but he refused to let so much as a twitch of an eyebrow betray him. He knew they weren’t convinced of her harmlessness yet. He hoped to God she realized it as well. He folded his arms across his chest to hide his clenched fists.
    Prudence took a tentative step forward, arms outstretched to grope the