The Runaway McBride Read Free Page B

they all made sure that they each had their turn with Burnett. And why not? It was easy money, and fair was fair.
    That’s how she thought of him now: easy money. Not so the first time she’d set eyes on him when she was the new girl. Her calloused heart had damn near melted. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with the harshly sculpted features that she’d seen in pictures of medieval knights. Someone had told her that he was a baron, and she could well believe it. As it turned out, he was one of those barons who had made his fortune in railroads, quite an achievement for a man in his early thirties. But his money didn’t seem to bring him happiness. For all his wealth and good looks, he was still a dour-faced Scot.
    An openhanded dour-faced Scot, she reminded herself, and if she wanted to earn her money, she had better do her job.
    “You’re not leaving already?” She edged off the chair and let her chemise slip to the floor. “You’ve only just got here.”
    He looked up with a distracted air. “What?”
    She was beginning to lose her temper. She had her pride. She wasn’t a common prostitute. She was a high-class lady of pleasure whose beauty and talents were much in demand by the well-heeled clients who patronized the Golden Fleece. A girl couldn’t just walk in off the street and get a job here. Beauty was commonplace. She’d had to learn how to walk with an air, talk without an accent, dress and undress so that her clients would know they were paying for quality. Burnett paid more attention to the quality of the whiskey than he did to the girls.
    She jiggled her shoulders and thrust out her breasts. “Look at me, Burnett.”
    He looked.
    She hadn’t met the man yet whom she couldn’t bring to a quivering climax just by jiggling her well-endowed anatomy. This time, she jiggled her hips. That was better. Now she had his full attention. But just when she thought she had him, he took a step back.
    He pressed a hand to his brow. “This isn’t going to work.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “It’s not you. It’s me.”
    She thought she understood. “Burnett,” she chided, “don’t you know that the best way to forget one woman is to lose yourself in another? I can help you forget.”
    He shrugged into his coat. “Tell that to my granny,” he said.
    She was puzzling over his words when he pulled a wad of notes from his pocket. After peeling off two, he slapped them into the silver salver on the dresser and left without another word.
     
     
    It was only a five-minute walk to his house in St. James’s Square, and he made straight for home like a fox going to ground. In the last little while, he’d been plagued by nightmares, but this was the first time he’d hallucinated when his eyes were wide open. He gave himself the same lame excuses—he was drinking too much; he was working too hard; he wasn’t getting enough sleep—but deep down he feared the worst. Either he was going slowly out of his mind, or Granny McEcheran had sunk her teeth into him, and she would never let go.
    He knew what Alex would say. His cousin would point out that this was the age of progress and that there had been amazing advances in every field of knowledge, including medicine. He should consult one of those new doctors who called themselves psychiaters and who studied the workings of the mind.
    He didn’t need a psychiater to tell him what was wrong with him. He’d been perfectly well until Granny McEcheran had whispered her prophecy in his ear: “Your bride is in mortal danger. You must find her, or she will surely die.”
    He hadn’t understood until the nightmares started. Not his bride, but McBride, Faithless McBride, as he’d taken to calling her in his own mind. She’d promised to wait for him, but her promise turned out to be worthless. For the last eight years, he’d deliberately suppressed all thoughts of her, but that was before the nightmares started. Now he couldn’t get her out of his mind.
    His