Some Like It Wild (4 page)

Letting out a moan, Sophie clutched at Pamela’s waist and buried her face against her back. “Tell me when we arrive. If we do.”

Given the battering force of the wind and the dizzying height of their perch, Pamela should have been equally fearful they were about to plunge to their deaths. But their mount started forward with brisk confidence, no less sure-footed than his master.

They were halfway to the castle when icy needles of rain began to spill from the sky. Before Pamela could tug up her bonnet to cover her hair, both the rain and the cloud that had spawned it were gone, blown on their way by a chill gust of wind. Instead of cursing the mercurial weather as she might have done earlier, Pamela threw back her head and laughed aloud, feeling a strange exhilaration at the
beauty and wildness of it all. It was as if they were riding straight into a fairy tale on the wings of a dragon.

As a second cloud passed over the moon, bathing the highwayman in shadow, her smile slowly faded. It still remained to be seen if their guide was prince or ogre.

The great chasm between castle and land should have formed a natural moat impenetrable to men and the brutality of their cannons. But as they passed beneath what must have once been the castle gatehouse, Pamela saw that it had failed miserably in its duty.

The highwayman drew their mount to a halt in the courtyard of the mighty fortress. The once gentle moonlight now seemed harsh and unforgiving, spilling without mercy over the shattered walls and heaps of crumbled stone. It seemed the fairy tale castle was only an illusion after all, no more real than a painted backdrop in a production of
King Lear
. As she surveyed the ruins of what must have once been one of the crown jewels of the eastern coast, the pang beneath Pamela’s breastbone felt oddly like grief.

Even in its advanced state of decay, there was no denying the melancholy beauty of the place. Although some chambers and towers appeared to be intact, all that remained of the castle’s chapel was a lone wall overlooking the sea, its stark silhouette standing guard over a crumbling white cross hewn from limestone. Moss had crept over every inch of
exposed stone, softening the jagged edges with a thick veil of green.

A gaping window that must have once housed a bell was set high in the wall. Pamela could almost hear the ghostly echo of its pealing, calling those who were long dead to worship or battle.

With nothing but the endless indigo sweep of sky and sea beyond the wall, it was as if they’d reached the edge of the world itself.

“What is this place?” she asked, lowering her voice to a reverent whisper without realizing it.

The rich timbre of the highwayman’s voice paid its own respects to any lingering ghosts. “This is where Clan MacFarlane made their last stand against the forces of Cromwell’s army over a hundred and fifty years ago. Rather than let the castle fall into the hands of their enemies, they blew it up themselves—set the charges and went marchin’ off into the night, their bagpipes wailin’ a final farewell.”

As she gazed around them at the heaps of rubble and the shattered dreams they represented, Pamela wanted to weep at the tragic waste of it all. “Are you one of these MacFarlanes? Were they your clan?”

A cloud skittered across the moon, casting a fresh shadow over his face. “I’m afraid my grandfather lacked both the courage and the scruples of old Angus MacFarlane. He sold out our clan at Culloden for thirty pieces of English silver.”

An involuntary shiver danced down Pamela’s spine. She’d never heard the word
English
uttered
with such icy contempt. Before she could consider digging her heels into the horse’s sides and making a mad dash for freedom, the clouds parted to reveal the highwayman gazing up at her, his expression guarded.

“So here we are,” he said. “All the comforts of home. I’d help you down but…” He shrugged his broad shoulders to remind her of his bound hands.

“That’s all right. We can manage,” Pamela assured him, throwing one leg over the horse’s neck and sliding to the ground.

She would have kept right on sliding until she landed on her bottom if the highwayman hadn’t stepped forward to brace her with his weight. She hadn’t taken into account how long they’d been riding or how unaccustomed she was to such exercise. She clutched at his shirt, her thigh muscles quivering like a pot of jam. His chest felt as sturdy as a rock beneath her trembling hands, reminding her of those dizzying moments back at the coach when she had clung to him while he sipped tenderly from her lips.

“Thank you,” she murmured, keeping her eyes lowered. She quickly untangled her fingers from his shirt, telling herself it must be the near tumble that had left her so breathless. As she stepped away from him, the bitter wind whipped stinging strands of hair across her eyes. “It’s no wonder you Scots are such a hale and hearty lot. If you weren’t, you’d never survive this climate.”

“Once you get a wee dram of Scot’s whisky in
your belly, you’ll discover the wind is nothin’ more than God’s breath whisperin’ against your cheek.”

He watched through heavy-lidded eyes as she lifted her arms to Sophie, hoping to spare her sister a similar embarrassment.

As soon as Sophie was settled safely on her feet, she drew the little pistol out of her sash and leveled it at him, hoping to regain their only advantage. His pistol was safely secured in the horse’s saddlebag. “If you would be so kind as to lead the way, sir.”

“’Twould be my pleasure, lass,” he drawled, offering her a mocking bow before turning away and striding into the shadows.

As they fell into step behind him, Sophie slipped a hand into hers and whispered, “Are you certain we’re not making a terrible mistake?”

“No,” Pamela whispered back, her own courage faltering as they followed him down a grassy path that brought them closer to the churning sea with each step.

At first she thought he was going to lead them right over the edge of those towering cliffs. But he shifted direction at the last minute, guiding them beneath a stone arch to a set of flat, narrow stairs that seemed to disappear into the earth itself.

“Watch your step,” he warned them. “I can’t catch you if you fall.”

Nor could he catch himself if he stumbled, Pamela realized, fighting a twinge of guilt. But as he disappeared into the murky gloom, his steps were as sure and steady as they’d been in the forest.
She and Sophie exchanged a nervous glance before following. The roaring of the wind soon faded. As they descended deeper into the earth, they were enveloped by an oppressive hush broken only by the steady drip of water on stone and the shallow rasp of their own breathing.

Pamela was beginning to wonder if the steps led straight down to the bowels of hell itself when she spotted a thin sliver of light below. The highwayman paused, waiting for them to catch up.

He nodded toward the broad oak door set deep in the stone wall. “Would you mind doin’ the honors?”

Pamela closed her icy fingers around the iron handle and gave the door a push. It swung open easily, inviting them inside.

She brushed past the highwayman without a second thought, unable to resist the seductive lure of warmth and light. The chamber was no rat-infested dungeon as she had feared, but simply a long-forgotten vault to a tower that no longer existed. A fire crackled on a stone hearth set against the opposite wall. Pamela breathed a sigh of relief. The long, low-ceilinged room was not only warm and dry, but also cozy and welcoming.

That is, until the air resounded with the echoing clicks of a dozen pistol hammers being drawn back at once.

One by one, the men holding those pistols emerged from the shadowy corners, their eyes gleaming with lust, their lips twisted into delighted leers.

The largest of those men wore a silver hoop in one ear and a leather vest hanging open over his sun-bronzed chest. He looked Pamela and Sophie up and down with a jovial familiarity that made Pamela’s blood curdle with dread.

Firelight glinted off the gold tooth set in the front of his mouth as his meaty lips split in a grin. “Och, Connor, and what have ye brought us tonight?” he inquired of their guide. “Bawds or brides?”

N
either,” Connor replied, shaking the length of rope from his wrists as if it were a silken ribbon and neatly plucking the pistol from Pamela’s hand. “If you want bawds or brides on this night, you’ll have to hunt them yourself.”

Pamela gaped at him in disbelief.

He tucked her pistol into his breeches and tipped her jaw closed with one finger. “Don’t blame yourself, lass. I once used the same skills to escape the hangman’s noose and his knots were much better than yours.”

Pamela began to sputter. She couldn’t have said why she was so outraged that he had foiled her one pathetic attempt at a kidnapping by leading them straight into a trap, but she was. “Why, you—you—”

“Blackguard?” one of the men provided.

“Rapscallion?” offered another.

“Swivin’, whoremongerin’ son of a—”

“That’s enough,” Connor snapped. “I doubt the young lady needs any help comin’ up with a vile-enough insult for me.”

Pamela snapped her mouth shut and folded her arms over her chest. “He’s right. There’s no need to waste your breath. There is no insult vile enough for the likes of him.”

The giant who had perused her and her sister with such glassy-eyed lust chortled with glee, a cloud of copper braids bristling around his head. “Oh, she’s a spirited one, isn’t she? I do love a spirited lass. I’ll give ye a jar o’ whisky and a pouch o’ tobacco for an hour alone with her.”

Pamela instinctively edged closer to Connor, preferring the devil she knew to this leering ogre.

Connor snorted. “And just what do you plan to do with the remainin’ fifty-seven minutes, Brodie?” When the rest of the men burst into raucous laughter, Connor included them in his glare. “I’ll thank you all to get your tongues back in your mouths and your pistols back in your breeches. The lass belongs to me.”

That bold claim silenced the men and sent a peculiar shiver rippling across Pamela’s flesh. One by one, both the grins and the pistols disappeared.

“What about the wee one, then?” Brodie asked, his voice rising to a childish whine that seemed at odds with his impressive girth and the beefy slabs of muscle that composed his upper arms. “I’ve no doubt ye could handle the both o’ them with yer
hands still tied behind yer back, but there’s no need to be greedy, is there?”

Connor’s face went so still that Pamela feared he was actually considering the cretin’s request. She curled her hands into claws, fully prepared to launch herself at the first man who dared to lay a finger on her sister—even if that man was Connor.

Especially if that man was Connor.

“What I’d like you to do, Brodie,” he finally said, “is take the ‘wee one’ into the next room and fix her a nice cup of hot tea with a splash of whisky to warm up her blood.” When Brodie’s expression brightened, he narrowed his stormy gray eyes in warning. “The lass is a lady and I’ll expect her to be treated as such.”

Brodie’s broad face fell. Connor reached to draw Sophie forward. She dragged her feet and cast Pamela a beseeching glance, her eyes huge and her beautiful face as pale as wax.

“She won’t come to any harm,” Connor murmured, his smoky voice dangerously close to Pamela’s ear. “You have my word on it.”

Pamela had no idea why she was so inclined to believe him. Especially when he wasn’t offering her any similar promises.

For Sophie’s sake, she managed to dredge up a comforting smile. “He’s right, dear. You must be chilled to the bone. Why don’t you go and have a hot cup of tea with the nice man?”

“What about you?” Sophie asked, shooting Connor a worried look.

Pamela held her breath, waiting for him to proclaim that she too was a lady and would be treated with all the tender regard due to such a delicate and refined creature.

As his stony silence stretched, she was forced to fill it with a burst of high-pitched laughter. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about me. This will give me and Mr….” She slanted him a questioning look.

“Kincaid,” he volunteered.

“…me and Mr. Kincaid a chance to discuss our business in private.”

One of the men nudged the fellow next to him, his stage whisper clearly audible throughout the room. “The lass’ll be walkin’ bow-legged for a fortnight after discussin’ her
business
with our Connor.”

His friend nodded in agreement. “Aye, there’s some that say the hangman had to let the lad go after he realized he couldna hang him no better than he was already hung.”

As several of the men snickered, Pamela bowed her head, wishing desperately that she could sink through the stone floor.

At Connor’s curt signal, Brodie stepped forward and offered Sophie his burly arm. One would have thought he was about to escort her into supper at a private ball in Mayfair.

“So are ye married, lass?” he inquired of Sophie as she gingerly tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. When she shook her head, still eyeing him warily, he beamed down at her, his gold tooth winking in the firelight. “Would ye like to be?”

Pamela sighed. She had rescued her sister from the viscount’s lascivious offer just so Sophie could receive her first legitimate proposal from a randy bandit with a silver hoop in his ear and a tattoo of a wriggling serpent on his upper arm.

Connor sent the other men fleeing from the room with little more than a look. Although they muttered beneath their breaths and scuffed the stone floor with their booted toes as they filed out, they didn’t seem any more inclined to defy him than the coachman had been. Apparently he didn’t even require a loaded pistol to impose his will on others.

Which didn’t bode well for her own future, Pamela thought grimly.

A future that grew even darker when Connor bent to scoop up the length of rope she had used to bind him. When he came for her, she stood her ground, knowing it would only embarrass them both if she tried to flee. She held herself stiff as a plank as he wrapped one powerful hand around her upper arm and backed her toward the wooden chair nearest the hearth with a grip that warned it would brook no disobedience.

One minute she was standing on her own two feet; the next she was landing in the chair with an undignified
plop
. He looked even larger looming over her in the firelight. She had to tilt back her head just to shoot him a defiant glare.

As he studied her through narrowed eyes, his capable hands toyed with the rope, wrapping one end around his right fist, then taking up the slack with his left. Pamela swallowed back an icy lump of
fear, waiting for him to whip the rope around her wrists—or more likely her throat. She was helpless to hide her start of surprise when he tossed it to the hearth.

“I don’t really think we’ll have need of that, do you?” he asked, his voice as gentle as if he was speaking to a child.

Pamela let out a shuddering breath, knowing he was right. Given his superior strength and size, she could fight him to her dying breath and still be utterly at his mercy.

“Especially not when I have this,” he added, drawing her delicate pearl-plated pistol from the waist of his breeches.

As he held the weapon up to the firelight, turning it this way and that, Pamela couldn’t quite take her eyes off of it. Or him.

He admired the pistol’s gleaming beauty from all angles. “’Tis hard to believe such a bonny wee thing could be an instrument of death, is it not?”

She held her tongue, afraid to let out so much as a squeak. If he had bound her to the chair hand and foot, she would have been no less paralyzed.

He leaned closer, covering her with his shadow. She gasped aloud at the cool kiss of the pistol’s mouth against her temple.

His voice deepened to a husky whisper as he stroked the barrel down her cheek to the curve of her jaw. “It’s so beautiful, yet so dangerous. Much like its mistress.”

The barrel brushed her trembling lips so softly she might have imagined it, then glided slowly
downward to the delicate hollow at the base of her throat. She closed her eyes, feeling her flesh betray her by heating beneath that steely caress.

Her eyes flew open as the barrel of the pistol continued its downward slide, nudging the lapel of her pelisse aside until the mouth of the pistol was resting against the soft swell of her breast, directly over her stuttering heart.

Connor looked her dead in the eye.

And pulled the trigger.

A bouquet of colorful feathers burst from the pistol’s muzzle while the music box concealed within its grip lurched into a bright and tinkling tune. Pamela flinched and let out a muffled shriek, her nerves completely undone by his wicked game.

Connor leaned back and blew across the mouth of the gun, ruffling the plume of feathers. His gray eyes sparkled with devilish amusement.

Pamela glared up at him, her heart still on the verge of pounding its way out of her chest. “How long have you known?”

“I began to suspect it was nothin’ more than a toy when you were so squeamish about pointin’ my own pistol at me.”

“And if you had been wrong?”

He shrugged. “We wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation, now, would we?” As if unable to resist the temptation, he tickled her beneath her chin with the plume of feathers like a doting uncle trying to coax a smile from a surly baby.

Infuriated by his cavalier attitude, she smacked the gun out of his hand. It went skittering across
the floor and struck the stone wall, its last tinkling note dying on an off-key whine.

“If you knew the gun was only a prop, then why did you allow yourself to be taken captive?”

He grinned. “I was still holdin’ out hope you and your sister might ravish me.”

The reappearance of his dimple only made her feel more peevish. “Why? Did your favorite sheep run away?”

The dimple vanished. He folded his brawny arms over his chest, deliberately deepening his burr. “Oh, we only dally with the livestock when we canna find a willin’ woman.”

“Or an unwilling one?” she snapped, regretting the words the instant they left her lips.

Their gazes collided and held until the smoldering heap of logs on the fire collapsed in a cascade of fiery sparks. Pamela was the first to look away.

When she finally spoke, her voice was low but steady. “Set my sister free. She doesn’t deserve to be punished for my folly. See her to safety and I won’t fight you. I’ll…I’ll…”—she swallowed and closed her eyes—”I’ll do whatever pleases you.”

Connor gazed down at Pamela’s averted face, his wayward imagination providing lurid images of all the things she could do that might please him. A faint blush graced her cheek. She was an English rose, never meant to bloom in the stony soil of this wild and brutal land. And here he stood with the power to crush her tender petals—and her prickly pride—in his fist. The realization should have made him feel strong, invincible. Instead, he
felt dirty and dangerous. Like a man who would tear a flower from the dirt just so he could watch it wither in his hand.

“That’s a noble offer indeed, lass. And a very temptin’ one as well. But I’ve no intention of throwin’ your wee lamb of a sister—or you—to that pack of wolves in the next room.”

He had to admire her nerve as she mustered up the courage to look him in the eye. “What about the wolf in this room?”

The wolf in this room had spent too many years paying for his pleasures with stolen coins and was starved for a morsel of something tender.

Afraid she would catch a glimpse of that hunger in his eyes, Connor dropped to one knee at her feet and began to unlace one of her kid half boots.

“What are you doing?” Pamela demanded of her captor, half afraid he would answer.

But he held his tongue and all she could do was watch helplessly as he tugged off her boot and set it aside. He rested the sole of her foot against his muscled thigh, the firelight picking out the streaks of honey in the warm maple sugar hue of his hair.

Her stockings were in even more shameful condition than her drawers had been. Her little toe was peeping out of the shattered silk, rosy with mortification.

As he tugged off her other boot, then encircled one of her slender ankles with his hand, she could feel her cheeks growing equally pink. Men weren’t even supposed to see ankles, much less touch them. That’s why so many of them delighted in coming to
the theater, where they could gawk at the scantily clad opera dancers to their heart’s content.

Pamela hadn’t realized how cold and numb her feet were until Connor began to briskly massage the feeling back into them. Heat seemed to radiate from his touch, penetrating the threadbare silk of her stockings. As he pressed the broad pad of his thumb into the sole of her foot, she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from betraying herself with a moan.

He stole a glance at her face, a knowing smile playing around his lips. “You English never take the dangers of the Highlands to heart,” he said as he began to subject her other foot to the same irresistible torture. “You may think your feet are just a wee bit chilled, but add the damp to the cold and before you know it, you’ve lost a toe or two.”

Pamela sank deeper into the chair, her eyes drifting out of focus as the tension oozed out of her body and into his capable hands. If he kept stroking his thumb down the center of her foot in that provocative manner, she was going to be in danger of losing more than just a toe.

Her eyes snapped into focus. She sat up with a jerk, going as stiff as a marionette. It had happened again. She had succumbed to the lure of the sensual just as her mother would have done.

Yanking her feet out of his grasp, she tucked them beneath the hem of her skirts. “I’d rather lose a toe or two to the cold than have them nibbled off by a wolf.”

Amused by Pamela’s wary scowl, Connor rose
and began to circle her chair. “And I’d rather be branded a wolf than a wolf in sheep’s clothin’. Especially one wearin’ fake furs, fake jewels and carryin’ fake pistols. Is there anythin’ real about you, Miss Pamela Darby?” He reached down to rub a shiny coil of her hair between his fingers, wishing he could forget how warm and real her mouth had felt beneath his when she had opened it to welcome his kiss. “Or is that even your name?”

“Of course it’s my name! Our mother was the great stage actress Marianne Darby. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”