Read Online Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue by Stephanie Laurens - Free Book Online

riffled the delicate hairs at
her nape.
    Abruptly he raised his head, straightened, stepped
back. “Come on.”
    Grabbing her elbow, he bundled her unceremoniously
around the corner and on up the corridor before him. Her temper—always close to
the surface when he was near—started to simmer. If they hadn’t needed to be
quiet, she would have told him what she thought of such cavalier treatment.
    Breckenridge halted her outside the door to his
bedchamber; he would have preferred any other meeting place, but there was no
safer place, and regardless of all and everything else, he needed to keep her
safe. Reaching around her, he raised the latch and set the door swinging. “In
here.”
    He’d left the lamp burning low. As he followed her
in, then reached back and shut the door, he took in what she was wearing. He bit
back another curse.
    She glanced around, but there was nowhere to sit
but on the bed. Quickly he strode past her, stripped off the coverlet, then
autocratically pointed to the sheet. “Sit there.”
    With a narrow-eyed glare, she did, with the haughty
grace of a reigning monarch.
    Immediately she’d sat, he flicked out the coverlet
and swathed her in it.
    She cast him a faintly puzzled glance but
obligingly held the enveloping drape close about her.
    He said nothing; if she wanted to think he was
concerned about her catching a chill, so be it. At least the coverlet was long
enough to screen her distracting ankles and calves.
    Which really was ridiculous. Considering how many
naked women he’d seen in his life, why the sight of her stockinged ankles and calves should so affect him was beyond his
ability to explain.
    Turning, he sat alongside her, with a good foot of
clear space between them. “So what have you learned?”
    She studied him for a moment, then said, “Not as
much as I would have liked, but they did let fall that their employer hired them
in Glasgow, that he’s paying for everything, and they seem happy with the
financial arrangements, suggesting that he’s at least reasonably wealthy, but as
yet I haven’t been able to drag from them any further detail about where they’re
taking me.” Huddling into the coverlet, she frowned across the room. “The only
other thing I dragged from them was more by way of an impression.”
    When she didn’t go on, he prompted, “What
impression?”
    The line between her brows deepened. “They—Fletcher
and Cobbins, at least, they’re the ones who met him—view him, their employer,
with a certain . . . I suppose you’d say wariness.”
    “Respect?”
    Her lips twisted. “Yes, but more in the physical
sense. He might simply be a nasty, dangerous sort.”
    Breckenridge thought for a moment. “Where in
Glasgow did they meet him?”
    “In some tavern. Apparently they do work like this
for others, for hire. He heard of them from someone else they’d worked for, and
approached them through some contact they have in place.”
    “So they don’t necessarily know much about
him?”
    “I gathered not—they gave me a name, but before you
get excited, Fletcher made it clear that they’re certain it’s not his real
name.”
    “What was it?”
    “McKinsey.”
    “Scottish—so he’s most likely a Scot.” Still far
too aware of her perched on the bed—his bed—beside him, Breckenridge stood. He
started to pace back and forth.
    Heather looked up at him. “I’m not sure we can
assume that. It might be that the reason Fletcher’s so certain McKinsey isn’t
his real name is because he—their employer—is English.”
    Breckenridge grimaced. “True. And there are
Englishmen aplenty in Glasgow.”
    Beneath the coverlet, she straightened.
“Regardless, it’s clear I need to learn more.”
    The dark look Breckenridge slanted her wasn’t
encouraging. “We’re already a long way from London, and we’re still on the Great
North Road. We have no notion how far north they intend taking you, but every
mile takes you further from your family, further