Teresa Medeiros - [FairyTale 02] by The Bride, the Beast Page B

resumed his pacing. “Is it any wonder I’m not fit company for civilized folk?”
    Tupper fell into step beside him. “That’s not preciselytrue, you know. My great-aunt Taffy is quite fond of you. She says you put her in mind of this magnificent, high-strung stallion her father owned when she was a girl.” Tupper shook his head, sighing sadly. “Of course, they eventually had to shoot the poor fellow in the head after he took three fingers off one of the grooms.”
    The Dragon paused in his pacing to give him a withering look. “Thank you for sharing that. I feel so much better now.”
    He covered the remainder of the courtyard in three long strides, forcing Tupper to scamper to keep up with him. “You really shouldn’t berate yourself so,” Tupper tried to console him. “It wasn’t as if you had tossed her nightdress over her head and were having your way with her on the table. You simply stole an innocent kiss. What harm can there be in that?”
    The Dragon couldn’t very well explain to his friend that the kiss had been anything but innocent and that he feared the harm had been done to him, not her. That shy flick of Gwendolyn’s tongue against his own had stirred his blood more deeply than any bold embrace of a London bawd ever had. He had thought to give her a taste of dragon’s breath, but it had been he who’d ended up burning for her.
    He came to a halt in front of the statue that still reigned over the ruins of the courtyard. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, seemed woefully out of place in this courtyard where no love had dwelled for nearly fifteen years. If her head hadn’t been blown off by one of Cumberland’s cannonballs, he mused, he might verywell have heard a mocking ripple of her laughter on the wind.
    “I must be away from this place,” he said softly, running a hand along the bared curve of the goddess’s shoulder. “Before I lose my own head.”
    “We did give the villagers a fortnight to come up with the gold,” Tupper reminded him.
    “I know we did,” the Dragon said, turning his back on Aphrodite’s ravaged beauty. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t hasten them along, does it? Light some smoke pots in their fields. Flash some torches in the castle windows. Play the bloody bagpipes until their ears bleed. I want them at each other’s throats until they’re begging to bring me the bastard who’s been hoarding that gold all these years.”
    Tupper snapped off a smart salute. “You can trust me to put the fear of God into them.”
    The Dragon swung around, his face set in such ruthless lines that even Tupper took a hasty step backward. “It’s not God they have to fear. It’s me.”

Chapter Ten

    T UPPERCREPTTHROUGH the Highland night, his stealthy footsteps guided by the dappled light of the rising moon. As he picked his way over a shelf of loose rocks, taking care not to dislodge a single one, his pulse quickened with exhilaration.
    He’d never cared much for danger, but he thrived on drama, something that had been in short supply in his life until he’d met the Dragon in that gaming hell two years ago. It had been as much boredom with his aimless existence as fear of scandal that had prompted him to put the mouth of that dueling pistol against his temple. Although neither of them had brought up that night since then, he suspected that the Dragon knew he would have never had the courage to pull the trigger.
    Had it not been for his friend’s intervention, he’d either be rotting away in debtors’ prison or drinking himself to death in his elegantly appointed London town house with nothing to look forward to but the occasional romantic entanglement with a bad actress andthe legacy of gout and dyspepsia bequeathed to him by his father. The viscount’s one attempt to purchase him a commission in the Royal Navy had ended in disaster when Tupper had gotten seasick on his very first voyage and cast up his accounts all over the braided coat of an admiral who just