Too Wicked to Tame Read Online Free Page B

inside.” Probably snoring soundly, Portia thought as she lifted her reticule. “I need someone to retrieve both here.
    Naturally, I’ll pay you for your ser vices—”
    “‘Course, Miss.” The blacksmith turned and called to someone inside the barn. A young man garbed in a matching leather apron joined them. “My son and I will ride out and fetch them for you.”
    Portia sighed, feeling some of the tension ease out of her shoulders and neck. “Thank you.”
    The blacksmith gestured across the yard. “I’ll find you at the inn, then?”
    “Yes,” she answered, already visualizing the dry taproom where she could wait and warm herself.
    With a nod for the blacksmith, the man at her side took her arm and led her—cautiously, with care for her ankle—to the inn.
    Once inside the nearly empty taproom, he settled her at one of the tables, the one nearest the large, crackling fireplace. Her belly rumbled at the tantalizing smells drifting from the kitchen.
    She mentally counted the coins in her reticule and debated whether she could afford a hot meal.
    Grandmother had given her only what she deemed necessary for a journey to Yorkshire and back. Recovery and repair of a carriage had not been part of the calculation.
    A few figures sat huddled over their tankards, waiting out the storm. One man lifted his head to shout in greeting, “Heath!”
    Heath? Well, she had a name now. Whether she wished to or not, she would forever remember her darkly handsome rescuer by name.
    “Clive,” Heath greeted.
    Clive snatched a knife from the scarred wood tabletop. His thick fist waved it at Heath encouragingly. “Give us a show, eh?”
    Heath shook his head. “Another time.”
    She looked at Heath, a frown pulling her lips. He must have felt her stare. His gaze slid to hers and he shrugged. “It’s just a game I played as a lad.”

    Portia arched an eyebrow at him, curious to see what kind of “show” the locals regarded so highly.
    “C’mon,” Clive bellowed.
    Sighing, Heath strode across the room and plucked the knife from Clive’s fist. She watched as he straddled the bench, splayed his large hand flat on the table, and proceeded to stab between each finger in a frenzied blur of movement. She jerked at each thud of the knife in the wood table, certain that he would cut his hand at any moment. Her shocked gaze lifted to his face, to the bored expression there.
    What kind of boyhood had he led?
    Finally, he stopped, and she remembered to breathe again. He rose and sent the knife slicing cleanly through the air. It landed square in the center of a faded and smoke-mottled painting above the hearth.
    Clive chortled and slapped the table in approval.
    “Do you have a death wish?” she demanded upon his return to their table. “Reckless riding, reckless”—she waved a hand at the table where he had conducted his perilous demonstration, groping for the appropriate words and arriving at—”knife play!”
    He replied with aggravating equanimity, even as something furtive gleamed in his gaze, ” ‘The worst evil of all is to leave the ranks of the living before one dies.’ ”
    She shook her head, frustrated—mystified—at the man before her who quoted Seneca.
    “Ain’t nothing,” Clive called out. “You should see him climb Skidmoor with his bare hands. In winter, too.”
    “Skidmoor,” she echoed.
    “It’s just a hill,” Heath explained.
    “A hill?” Clive guffawed, shaking his head. “Right. More like a mountain.”
    He climbed mountains in the dead of winter?
    “Heath,” a serving girl squealed from across the taproom.
    Portia eyed the woman’s scandalously low bodice and instinctively drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders as if she could hide her lack of similar attributes.
    “Mary, you’re looking well.” Heath grinned in a way that made him look suddenly young, boyish. Not nearly so intimidating as the stranger from the road.

    Mary sashayed across the room, rolling her hips in what