The Devil Wears Plaid by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online Page A

offering her no purchase and no hope. A shriek escaped her lips as she slid over the edge of the bluff and into thin air.
    J AMIE FROZE IN HIS tracks, his ears echoing with a cry so sharp and brief he might have imagined it. Or it could have simply been the night cry of some animal, either predator or prey.
    He cocked his head to listen but heard only silence, unbroken except for the mournful sigh of the wind through a nearby copse of pines.
    That’s when he realized something was wrong. He had been tracking Emma for nearly an hour, tracking her with his ears and eyes but also with some sense deeper and more primitive than hearing or sight. No matter how far or fast he traveled, he’d known she was there… somewhere ahead of him, out of his reach but still within his grasp. But now that awareness of her was gone. It was as if an invisible thread had been cut, leaving him dangling over a dark precipice with no bottom in sight.
    Biting off an oath, he broke into a run, heading in the direction of that helpless cry. He paid no heed to the branches that slapped at his face or sought to trap him in their thorny embrace. He’d gone charging through these same woods dozens of times before, usually with a pack of Hepburn’s men hot on his heels.
    This time he wasn’t running away from something but toward something. Unfortunately, that something turned out to be a downward slope that came to an abrupt end when the earth tapered off into nothingness.
    Jamie staggered to a halt a few feet away from that deadly drop, his heart plummeting in his chest. He knew that particular bluff only too well, knew more than one man who had plunged to his doom theredue to ignorance or carelessness or a fatal combination of both.
    He drifted forward, his steps robbed of their confidence now that he knew his worst fears had been realized. He closed his eyes briefly before peering over the edge of the bluff, already dreading the sight that awaited him.
    E MMA WAS GOING to die.
    If the thin shelf of dirt and rock that had broken her fall didn’t soon crumble beneath her, sending her plummeting to a stony grave, then she was going to freeze to death. As the fruits of her exertion faded, the chill hanging in the air began to worm its way deep into her bones. She huddled against the stony wall of the bluff and hugged the tatters of her wedding gown around herself, fearing her uncontrollable shivering might further damage the fragile soil holding the shelf in place.
    She cast a despairing glance upward. She was only a few feet below the top of the bluff but the distance might as well have been a hundred leagues. Even if she could manage to make it to her feet without sending the entire ledge crashing to the gorge below, the rim of the bluff would still remain just out of her reach. There wasn’t even a stray rock or root protruding from the damp wall to use as a hand or foothold.
    It was probably a poor testament to her strengthof character that she was feeling in that moment not grief or prayerful resignation, but anger mixed with a petty dollop of satisfaction. It appeared she was to have the last laugh after all, she thought with a faint edge of hysteria. Once she was dead, she would be of no value to Sinclair, her papa or the earl. They would no longer be able to barter her back and forth as if she was some prize sheep or sow at the local market. She wondered if Sinclair would go to the trouble of burying her or if he’d just leave her body to rot on the ledge and go riding off to abduct another bride.
    “Halloo down there. Is anybody home?”
    Emma started violently, sending a fresh shower of dirt skittering to the gorge floor below. She slowly tipped back her head to find Jamie Sinclair grinning down at her from the rim of the bluff.
    Her heart betrayed her with a wild surge of relief. To hide it, she narrowed her eyes to glare up at him. “You needn’t look so smug, sir. As far as I’m concerned, you can go straight to the devil.”
    Her