Heather and Velvet by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online Page A

started to babble. Sebastian was determined not to give him that satisfaction. He clenched the gold-claw handle of his cane.
    D’Artan, however, knew Sebastian as well, if not better, than Sebastian knew him. The faint twitch of Sebastian’s fingers only deepened his smile.
    His mellifluous French poured over Sebastian as smoothly as his silvery cap of hair poured over his scalp. “Your wound? Does it trouble you?”
    “No. It’s nearly healed.”
    Sebastian was lying. Before a hard rain, the throbbing of his ankle could bring tears to his eyes. He still awoke trembling and sweat-drenched from nightmares of the sunny morning when Tiny had rebroken the bone. The opium Tiny had forced him to smoke had dulled the pain, but not the memory. Nor had it dimmed the memory of a girl’s voice, as soft and alluring as velvet crushed against the nap. Sebastian did not care to speak of that night. He did not want D’Artan’s sneer to sully it.
    He tapped his cane on the carpet. “Quite an elegant retreat you have here.”
    D’Artan crooked an eyebrow. “Lord Campbell was kind enough to grant me use of his country estate while he is residing in the city.”
    “Still the darling of Edinburgh, are you? Playing upon Lord Campbell’s sympathies for the tragic French émigré fleeing the terrors of the revolution?”
    “The British are notorious for their lack of imagination except when it comes to their own thick skins. They see in me their fate should the revolution cross the Channel.” D’Artan uncorked a decanter and poured two brimming hookers of Scotch. He handed one to Sebastian. “That’s one of the reasons I summoned you here. Lord Campbell’s admiration has finally culminated in something more substantial. I leave for London tomorrow for an appointment with the King. I’m to be elected to the British House of Commons and gifted with a tidy annual pension of five thousand pounds.”
    Sebastian choked. The whisky seared his throat as he threw back his head and laughed. “Old George must be going daft again. How would the King and Lord Campbell react if they knew they were harboring not an émigré but a revolutionist, and that your tidy pension will be sent to Paris to buy gunpowder and guns?”
    D’Artan shrugged. “No gunpowder. No revolution.”
    “No revolution. No war with England. I doubt the King will be so hospitable when he finds his own country looking down the barrels of those guns.”
    “The spread of the new order is inevitable.” D’Artan lifted his glass. “All for the glory of France.”
    Sebastian hiked his own glass. “All for the glory of D’Artan. Just how high are your aspirations? Chief Citizen of Great Britain perhaps?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in an uncouth gesture he knew D’Artan would despise.
    D’Artan drummed his long, tapered nails on the desk, eyeing Sebastian’s cane with distaste. “It was very unfortunate, this accident of yours. But not as unfortunate as the indiscretion that followed, eh? Your man spoke to me of a certain young mademoiselle.”
    Damn Tiny anyway, Sebastian thought. He was as protective as a wolf bitch guarding her pups. He braced himself for the blow he sensed coming.
    “Far be it for me to begrudge you your liaisons,” D’Artan continued, “but don’t you think it unwise to reveal your face to some gibbering little light-o’-love?” Reproach dusted his voice, but did not alter his expression. Sebastian had always thought D’Artan’s face was eerily unlined for a man his age. “Was it not you who told me the mask added the attraction of danger and immediacy to your … romantic interludes?”
    Sebastian wondered if he had ever really said anything so callous. He must have been feeling smug after the Devony Blake encounter. “I did not choose to reveal myself. My mask fell away. As for the girl, she neither gibbered, nor was she my light-o’-love.”
    D’Artan cleared his throat. “That’s even more unfortunate.