Read Online When a Scot Loves a Lady by Katharine Ashe - Free Book Online

which shall be mended shortly.” She smoothed her palms over her skirt. “Thank you for your assistance, my lord.”
    â€œMaleddy.” He nodded and moved into the corridor toward the stair. The two great beasts lumbered after.
    â€œKitty?” Emily looked after the earl. “What were you and Lord Blackwood doing in here with the door nearly closed?”
    â€œNothing at all.” And yet not one iota of her pounding blood and quivering insides believed that.
    L eam scrubbed a palm over his face, considering the snow and the great good it might do him poured into his breeches. Her skin was soft as silk, her eyes lustrous, her generous mouth a pure fantasy. A man need only catch a glimpse of her pink tongue to imagine a great deal he oughtn’t to be imagining about a woman of her caliber. Imagining what her tongue could do to him and precisely where.
    He hefted the shovel, an unhandy tool intended for manure, but it must do.
    The moment he had touched her skin, and her eyes shaded with longing, he realized his mistake again. Je reconnus Vénus et ses feux redoutables . He recognized Venus and her dangerous fire. Very well indeed.
    He had gone to her chamber to touch her. For no other reason than that.
    She was not afraid of mice. Not afraid of mice . Not afraid of anything, Lady Katherine Savege. Very little , she had said.
    Then fear the madman who must ply the shovel through thigh-high snow to drive the sensation of a woman’s skin from his hands.
    On the other side of the stable Hermes let out a yowl, echoed by the donkey inside. The snow fell lightly now and Bella’s shadowy shape came into view around the corner of the building. Haunches bunched, head high, she barked.
    Setting the shovel aside, Leam moved toward her. The drifts grabbed at his legs but he trudged the distance swiftly. He needed activity and Bella never alerted him lightly. She waited for him, then flanked him around the corner of the building. Her pup, already larger by a stone, leaped about a depression in the snow.
    Leam slipped the knife from his sleeve.
    The trough was roughly the size of a man’s prone body, half-filled and covered by several inches of new snow, with foot holes moving from it and a hoofmarks as well. He cast a glance at the scrubby trees flanking the Tern, sparse, gray with white sleeves, shifting forlornly in the wind. Nowhere to hide in there, but the tracks were lost in any case.
    He slid the knife back into place. Bella nudged his arm. In thanks he ran his hand around her ears, but she bumped her long muzzle against his chin.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    She pawed at the edge of the depression. Leam pushed the snow aside, his breath frosting in damp clouds. Buried beneath was a brown clump of fabric. He shook it out. A man’s muffler made of fine cashmere.
    Cashmere did not come cheap. If this was the man who pursued Leam he was not, it seemed, a hired sniper, unless he was exceptionally good at his trade and demanded much for his services. But the fellow had had plenty of opportunities to attack, if not in London, then on the road from Bristol and even this morning.
    Beneath the muffler, tucked in the snow, were a handful of coins and a broken chain of thick gold links. The man had dropped them, apparently when he’d fallen, perhaps off his horse, or perhaps simply due to the driving wind and blinding snow. But he hadn’t come to the inn only a few yards away.
    He plucked the objects out of the packed ice and pocketed them, then straightened and pushed through the snow to the stable door. Inside all was crisply cool and scented of straw and horse. Hermes went straight to the Welshman lying on his back across a bench, a bottle propped in one hand.
    Passing the somnolent carriage horses and squat ass, Leam moved toward his horse’s stall. “Knitting the ravelled sleeve of care?”
    â€œI’ve no care. However, I do have whiskey.” Yale’s voice was heavy.