Some Like It Wild Page 6

  “Including you?”

  “I don’t have a grandmother. So tell me, lass, just what do you hope to gain from this balmy scheme of yours?”

  She clasped her hands beneath her breastbone and offered him a benevolent smile. “The joy of reuniting a dying father with the man he believes to be his long lost son.”

  Connor cocked one eyebrow, inviting her to tell him another lie.

  She sighed, feeling her smile fade. His gaze was entirely too sharp. It was going to take every acting trick she’d ever learned from her mother to shield her secret from him. “Is it so unthinkable that I might just want the reward? You’ve seen my sister, Mr. Kincaid. I’m sure you can imagine the challenges of being responsible for such a ravishing young creature.”

  “She’s comely enough, I suppose, if you fancy the type.” His frank gaze skated lower, deliberately lingering on her generous hips and the swell of her bosom before returning to her face. “I happen to prefer a lass with a wee bit more meat on her bones.”

  Although Pamela knew she should probably scold him for his insolence, she felt a perverse little thrill of pleasure. Hoping to hide it, she paced a few steps toward the hearth as she spoke. “If Sophie had a father or an uncle to look after her, her beauty would be a blessing. But in our circumstances, it’s nothing but a curse. I already have one married viscount desperate to seduce her. If we return to London even poorer and more helpless than when we left, I’m afraid he’ll try something even more nefarious.”

  “Would you like me to kill him for you?”

  Pamela jerked her head around to meet his steady gray gaze. She would have laughed, but she wasn’t entirely sure he had made the offer in jest.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m hoping that won’t be necessary. With the reward I could provide a dowry for Sophie and find her a decent husband—not a nobleman of course, but some nice young man in trade. Or perhaps a second son in the militia or the clergy.”

  “What about you? What’s to become of you once you have your sister safely tucked away in some pious vicar’s bed?”

  Connor’s blunt question unsettled her. “I haven’t really thought about it. I suppose I could purchase a small cottage with the remaining money and retire to the country or the seaside.”

  “To do what? Bake shortbread and collect cats?’ ’Tis a bit tame for a lass like you, don’t you think? Especially after a career of kidnappin’ bandits and swindlin’ wealthy gentlemen out of their inheritances.” One corner of his mouth quirked upward in a lazy smile. “You might just decide a life of crime suits you.”

  She gave him an icy look.

  “What are you really after, lass?” He tilted his head to the side, studying her through narrowed eyes. “You just don’t strike me as the sort who would make off with what doesn’t rightly belong to her.”

  “Why, Mr. Kincaid,” she said lightly, “you of all people should understand the irresistible temptation of ill-gotten gain.”

  “You’re forgettin’ one thing, Miss Darby. A man who lies, steals and cheats for a livin’ can usually tell when someone else is lyin’.”

  Pamela swallowed but his frank gaze made it impossible to keep choking back the truth. Lifting her chin to meet his gaze squarely, she said, “You’re absolutely right. I’m not a thief by nature but by necessity. I do desperately need the means to protect my sister, but I’m also after the monster who murdered my mother.”

  Chapter 6

  Now that the dam was broken, the words came pouring out of Pamela in a steady stream. “Sophie doesn’t know. She can’t know. It would break her heart. But my mother’s death was no accident. Someone set the fire that killed her. And when her solicitor gave us this letter—the one he’d been protecting for all these years at my mother’s request, I knew why. Because—”

  “—someone wanted to destroy the letter and anyone who might have known about it,” Connor finished for her. “Someone wanted to make sure the duke’s heir was never found.” He scowled at her, haunted by a grim image of what might have happened had she and her sister been in the theater when that fire was set. “Once you knew, why didn’t you go straight to the law?”

  “I’m the illegitimate daughter of an actress, Mr. Kincaid. What was I supposed to do? March up to the nearest constable and accuse someone in the duke’s household of burning my mother alive? Why, they would have laughed in my face and thrown me into Newgate! Or Bedlam!”

  “So you decided to take matters into your own hands.”

  She nodded. “And what better way to foil this murderer’s plot and lure him out of hiding than to show up on the duke’s doorstep with the man’s long lost heir in tow?”

  Connor shook his head, torn between disbelief and admiration. “’Tis a crafty plan, lass. And it might even have worked if the duke’s heir had been long lost instead of long dead.”

  “Which is why I need you to help me resurrect him.”

  Pamela crumpled her mother’s fragile letter in her white-knuckled fist, her gaze both fierce and pleading. It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him like that.

  A lifetime.

  Connor’s voice came out far brusquer than he intended. “Last I heard, there was only one fellow who could raise the dead. And he came to a very bad end at the hands of the law.” He shook his head with genuine regret. “I’m truly sorry about your mother, lass, but my services are not for hire. I can’t help you.”

  Pamela’s lips tightened. “If you won’t help me, then why don’t you help yourself? Have you thought about what you would stand to gain?”

  “What? Another date with the hangman? One I won’t be able to wiggle my way out of this time?”

  As Pamela took one step toward him, then another, he sat up straight in the chair. Her voice softened, hypnotizing him with a beguiling note of huskiness he hadn’t noticed before. “What about wealth and power beyond your wildest imaginings? What about never having another door slammed in your face but being welcomed into the drawing rooms of noblemen and the palaces of kings? What about having your opinion lauded and your approval courted by everyone you meet? You could have respectability, admiration”—she dared to draw within his reach, leaning close enough to whisper in his ear—“and all the willing women you care to woo.”

  Connor surged to his feet, his hand shooting out to seize her wrist. She tried to twist away from him, but he bent her arm up between them, drawing her roughly against his chest. The lush lips that had courted him so boldly only seconds ago were now trembling just a few inches away from his.

  He gazed down into her eyes, noticing for the first time how thick and dark her spiky lashes were. “It sounds like you’re tryin’ to trap me in a cage, lass. A gilded one, but a cage all the same. At least if I die swingin’ at the end of a hangman’s noose here in these mountains, I’ll still be free.”

  He allowed his gaze to linger on her lips for a dangerous moment before releasing her wrist and turning his back on her.

  He was striding toward the door, eager for a breath of fresh air to drive the enticing scent of lilac from his nostrils, when she said, “There’s one more thing you stand to gain.”

  He didn’t slow or turn around. “And what would that be?”

  “Revenge.”

  Connor stopped and slowly turned on his heel to face her.

  This time she was wise enough to keep her distance. “You can’t honestly believe I’ve already forgotten all of your impassioned speeches about the oppression of your people by the English. If you agree to play this role for me, you’ll still be a thief. You’ll simply be stealing an Englishman’s birthright just as Jacob stole Esau’s. It will be your ultimate joke on your enemies.”

  Connor studied her through narrowed eyes. However lovely and clever she might be, she was still one of those enemies.

  But she was also offering him a way to take a life without staining his hands with a single drop of blood. A way to take revenge on the ruthless redcoat bastards who had murdered his parents and
the wealthy landowners who had sent them. And he would still be doing what he’d always done best—robbing the English.

  His time was running out. He had left behind his ancestral lands and his clansmen almost five years ago, hoping to make a better life for himself. But all he’d done was fall in with an even motlier crew of cutthroats and smugglers. More than once in the past six months he had awakened from a restless sleep, clawing at an invisible bond that sought to strangle the life from him. It was just a matter of time before he met the end he deserved and his body was tossed in some unmarked grave where the one person who might still care if he died would never find him.

  He slowly sauntered toward Pamela. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Darby. Are you sure you haven’t a drop or two of Scot’s blood runnin’ through your veins?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, Mr. Kincaid,” she replied, forced to tilt back her head to look him in the eye as he stopped a scant foot in front of her.

  He had to admire her courage as well as her wits. Although she looked as if she would have liked nothing better than to bolt, she stood her ground as he cupped the softness of her cheek in his callused palm. “If I’m to inherit this kingdom you’ve promised me, lass, then perhaps you’d best start addressing me as ‘m’lord.’”

  Pamela sat with her back to the wall, watching Sophie sleep. A pale stream of moonlight trickled through the jagged gash in the stone, bathing her sister’s angelic face in a wash of silver. Pamela smiled ruefully as a less than angelic snore escaped Sophie’s puckered lips. She had been a sturdy seven-year-old when Sophie was born and she could still remember rocking the rosy-cheeked babe to sleep every night in her cradle while their mama took her final bows and gathered the roses thrown to her by her adoring admirers.

  Pamela hugged the woolen blanket tighter around her shoulders and rested the back of her head against the wall, allowing her eyes to drift shut for a few precious seconds. Her own body was beginning to ache with exhaustion. She longed to stretch out next to Sophie on the makeshift pallet, but she had no intention of leaving her sister unguarded with that motley crew of bandits and smugglers still making merry in the vault below.

  As she felt her head beginning to nod toward her chest, she jerked her eyes open and gave herself a brisk shake. She gazed around the dusty tower, wondering if it had once been a bedchamber shared by some lusty lord and his lady. Except for a crude table and chair, there was nothing left of its furnishings but piles of splintered sticks. A fretful squeaking emanated from the walls, warning her that she and her sister were not the tower’s only occupants.

  Perhaps it was only fitting that she be denied the sleep of the innocent. Now that she’d convinced Connor to help her swindle the duke out of his title and riches, she supposed she was no better than a common thief herself. She sighed, envying Sophie her untroubled conscience. She had always sworn she would walk through the fires of hell to protect her sister, but this was the first time she’d felt the flames tickling her toes.

  Her heavy eyelids were beginning to drift shut again when she heard the ghost of a sound outside the wooden door. She jerked, suddenly wide awake. The blanket slipped from her shoulders as she rose to her feet, afraid she was about to be rewarded for her vigilance by an uninvited visitor.

  She cast about for a weapon but all she could find was the leg from a splintered bedstead. She tested its weight in her hand, grimacing in dismay. Even a toy gun would have been a better comfort.

  Stealing a glance at Sophie to make sure she was still sleeping, Pamela crept toward the door. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find it locked—leaving them at the mercy of whoever held the key. But when she tugged the iron handle, the door inched open.

  She pressed her eye to the narrow crack.

  Connor Kincaid was sprawled in a wooden chair at the top of the stairs, his long legs stretched out in front of him to bar the passageway, and a pistol laid across his lap. His eyes were closed, but there was a lingering tension in his muscles that belied his casual sprawl, warning that he was not a man to be trifled with, even in sleep.

  Pamela’s first thought was that he didn’t trust her. That he believed she might try to renege on their bargain and stage an escape.

  But then she realized the mouth of the pistol wasn’t pointed toward the tower but toward the stairs. Connor wasn’t holding them prisoner. He was guarding them.

  Holding her breath, Pamela gently eased the door shut, marveling at her discovery. Connor had promised her he wouldn’t let her sister come to any harm and in this—if in nothing else—he was evidently a man of his word.

  She briefly considered returning to her own guard post but an enormous yawn seized her, making Sophie’s nest of blankets look even more inviting. She hesitated for a moment, then padded over and curled up next to her sister. She gently tucked the blanket around Sophie’s shoulders before falling into a deep and untroubled sleep.

  Chapter 7

  The future Duke of Warrick leaned back in his chair, eyeing the straight razor in Pamela’s hand with palpable suspicion. “If you think I’m goin’ to let you within an inch of my throat with that blade, lass, you’d best think again.” He reached up to massage the faded scars that marred the corded muscles of his throat. “I’d as soon trust my neck to the hangman.”

  “If you don’t allow me to clean you up for our journey, you may have to,” Pamela replied. “It will be much easier to smuggle you out of Scotland if you look more like a duke’s son than an unmannered ruffian.”

  He glared at her through the tangled strands of hair that fell over his brow, looking more like a man with murder on his mind.

  Morning sunlight poured through a jagged gash in the stone in the tower chamber where she and Sophie had passed the night, gilding the dust motes that danced through the air. Unfortunately, the sun’s golden rays also highlighted the deadly gleam of the blade in her hand. She supposed she might have inspired more confidence in Connor if that hand had been completely steady. But his black scowl could have unsettled even the most skillful of barbers.

  “Why don’t you just tell this new family of mine that I was raised by wolves?” Connor suggested, running one hand over the rugged curve of his jaw. Although less than a day had passed since Pamela had stroked that jaw herself, his crop of stubble was already blossoming into full-blown whiskers. “Then they’ll expect me to be nice and hairy.”

  “Based on your fine temperament, I may tell them you were raised by badgers. Rabid badgers,” she added sweetly as his scowl deepened.

  She dipped a shaving brush into the cracked ceramic mug sitting on the crude wooden table and whipped the soap within into a milky froth. Perhaps his face would be less forbidding when covered with a mask of shaving soap.

  Swallowing her trepidation, she approached him with the cup and brush in one hand and the razor in the other. Unfortunately, she was so focused on keeping her hands steady that she failed to mind her feet. The toe of her boot clipped the edge of a broken flagstone and she went stumbling toward him, helpless to slow her momentum.

  One minute she was on her feet; the next she was in his lap. His hand shot out to close around hers, stilling the razor’s blade a mere hairsbreadth from his Adam’s apple.

  Eyeing her warily, he gingerly extracted the razor from her quaking hand. “I do believe I’ll shave myself, thank you very much. I’d hate to be decapitated before breakfast. It might spoil my appetite.”

  His lap was entirely too warm. Entirely too inviting. Pamela was beset by an absurd desire to press herself against his chest like a baby cat eager for the stroke of her master’s hand. Judging by the possessive way his arm had curled around her hip, she was afraid he would be only too willing to oblige her. He had a way of looking at her with those piercing gray eyes of his that made her feel as if she was the lead actress on the stage of her life. After surrendering that role to both Sophie and her mother for as long as she could remember, it was both a seductive and dangerous sensation.

  Scrambling awk
wardly to her feet, she peered into the cup. “I don’t know why you’re complaining. I didn’t spill a single drop of the shaving soap.”

  He confiscated the cup from her hand before scooting his chair around to face the jagged spar of mirror propped against the wall. “I don’t know why the Brits bother sendin’ the redcoats to drive us off our lands.” He rested the cup between his thighs and brushed shaving soap along the curve of his jaw. “If they armed you with a razor and your sister with a parasol, they could conquer us without firin’ a single shot.”

  Pamela leaned against the edge of the table, observing his reflection in the mirror. “Why do you hate the English so much?”

  “Does a Scotsman need a reason to hate the English?”

  “No. But I believe you do.”

  He flicked her the briefest of glances, his eyes flashing silver in the sunlight. The razor looked far more menacing in his grip than it had in hers. Dismissing her question, he frowned at his reflection. “What if I don’t look anythin’ like this Warrick fellow?”

  “That’s the beauty of my plan. No one knows what he would look like. He was only a few weeks old when he disappeared. He was as bald as an onion and his eyes were still that muddy blue all babies are born with. Besides, it’s all in the art of illusion. If growing up in the theater taught me anything, it was that people will see what they want to believe and believe what they want to see.”

  Connor drew the blade down his cheek, clearing away a patch of bristling whiskers to reveal a swath of smooth, sun-bronzed skin. “So what will my new name be?”

  Pamela straightened. “You shall henceforth be known as Percy Ambrose Bartholomew Reginald Cecil Smythe, Marquess of Eddywhistle and future Duke of Warrick.”

  Pamela had expected him to be intimidated by such an impressive list of monikers and titles. She did not expect his striking face to curdle in an expression of horror. “Percy? The duke named the poor lad Percy? Why, you were right about the rotter! His wife should have shot him. If anyone calls me Percy, I’ll shoot them myself!”