“Don’t worry about that,” Connor assured her, his expression grave. “He’ll have plenty of chances to kidnap a bride while he’s in London.”
Her mouth fell open. “But we can’t allow him to…” She trailed off, beginning to recognize the twinkle of mischief in Connor’s eyes. A reluctant grin curved her own lips. “Why, you shameless—”
A deafening explosion rocked the tower, sending her careening into his arms.
“What was that?” she gasped, clutching at the soft folds of his plaid.
Connor gazed down at her, his face so grim it sent a chill of foreboding down her spine. “If I’m not mistaken, I believe the redcoats have come to rescue you.”
Chapter 8
Get the women to the vault!” Connor snapped, shoving both Pamela and Sophie into Brodie’s burly arms.
He turned and went flying down the spiral stairs, cursing himself as every kind of fool. He should have known better than to bring the women to this den of smugglers and thieves. The local authorities had been looking for an excuse to raid the ruins for months, and he’d finally given them a reason to bring the wrath of the redcoats and their cannons down on them.
A second blast rocked the tower, rattling the rusty iron bars in the windows. Connor missed a step and slammed into the wall. Biting off an oath, he dug his fingers into his throbbing shoulder. He had to stop them before one of those warning shots went astray, taking off the top of the tower before Brodie could get the women to safety.
He stumbled into the courtyard, not surprised to find it deserted. At the first sign of trouble, the outlaws who shared this haunt would have scattered like rats, disappearing into the secret catacombs beneath the castle to wait for high tide and a chance to launch their boats. By nightfall the ruin would once again belong only to night swallows and ghosts.
If not for the two women trapped in the tower, Connor might have vanished with them. Simply melted into the mist and sailed away to a place where the law would never find him.
“Hold your fire!” someone shouted as he went striding beneath the ruins of the castle gatehouse and onto the broad grassy bluff that bordered the bridge.
Just on the other side of the bridge a battalion of redcoats was swarming over the meadow. A sooty plume of smoke drifted heavenward from the mouth of a massive cannon, profaning the misty blue of the morning sky. The soldier who had been preparing to relight the cannon’s fuse looked to his commander for confirmation before dousing his torch in a bucket of water.
Even from this distance, Connor recognized the man’s short-cropped steel gray hair and squat, bowlegged stance. He felt a sneer curl his lips. Colonel Alexander Munroe was the worst sort of traitor. One born a Scot but who had sold his soul to the English for the power and privileges of military rank. He was nothing but a puppet of the local gentility. He and his regiment spent their days driving poor tenant farmers off the lands their families had worked for generations and their nights being welcomed as conquering heroes into the homes of those they served.
Munroe barked out a command. The soldiers raised their muskets to their shoulders, training them on Connor.
Munroe walked to the very edge of the chasm before shouting, “Put your hands in the air, sir, before we blow you and this wretched eyesore to kingdom come!”
Rolling his eyes, Connor reluctantly complied, wondering what Pamela would think of the colonel’s dialogue.
He waited patiently while Munroe gathered a healthy complement of his men around him and came marching across the bridge. Even though they kept their muskets at the ready, Connor saw several of the soldiers cast nervous glances at the churning sea below.
As soon as they stepped off the bridge, Connor called out, “And a good morn to you, Colonel. To what do we owe the honor of your visit?”
Monroe stopped a few feet in front of him, his men fanning out to flank him. “I’m looking for two women.”
Connor smiled pleasantly. “Aren’t we all? Although most of us have to be content with only one.”
Several of the soldiers chuckled, but their mirth was quickly stifled by a black look from their commander.
“I can certainly see why you’re still looking,” Connor added, nodding toward the cannon on the opposite side of the bridge. “Your courtship technique leaves much to be desired.”
One of the men cleared his throat and stared fixedly at the ground, having learned his lesson.
Munroe’s bushy gray eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “I’ve no time for your pathetic attempts at levity, sir. Two women were abducted from their hired carriage last night on the Stirlingshire Road. Two Englishwomen,” he added, making it clear that the disappearance of two Scottish women would have been beneath his concern. “According to a witness, they were taken by a man who perfectly matches your description.” He reached into his scarlet frock coat and pulled out a tube of paper. He unfurled the scroll with a brisk snap of his wrist, revealing the broadsheet that had been nailed up in every market square from Inverness to the Orkneys. “By this very man, according to our witness’s account.”
“Hmmm…fine looking fellow, isn’t he?” Connor leaned closer to study the crudely sketched likeness. “Though it’s a wee bit hard to tell with that mask hiding so much of his face. He could almost be anyone.” Connor nodded toward a strapping young soldier to Munroe’s left who matched him in height, breadth of shoulder and strength of jaw. “Including him.”
The soldier flushed and began to sputter. “Why, C-Colonel, I would never—”
“Silence!” Munroe barked. “I seriously doubt my lieutenant spent last night abducting and ravishing two innocent women.”
As the soldier’s flush deepened, Connor grinned. “Two innocent women? I can’t say I’m not flattered, Colonel, but you may be giving me credit for more stamina than I possess.” He started to lower his hands. Monroe’s men tensed, their fingers twitching on the triggers of their muskets. Connor kept his hands at the level of his shoulders. “There’s no need for such caution. As you and your men can see, I’m not only outnumbered but unarmed.”
Munroe’s skeptical harrumph told him what he thought about that. They both knew a man his size was never truly unarmed. “Seize him!” the colonel commanded, stepping back so the men under his command could do his dirty work for him.
As half a dozen soldiers lowered their muskets and swarmed around him, roughly jerking his arms behind his back, Connor felt a pang of regret to think of how crushed Pamela would be when she realized he would not be able to help her find her mother’s murderer or win her reward from the duke. He wondered if she would shed a pretty tear when they led him to the gallows or if she’d join the rest of the English on the lawn with their picnic baskets and parasols to watch him hang.
One of the soldiers was closing an iron cuff around his wrist when suddenly the chains went clanking to the ground. Connor jerked up his head to find the men gaping in the direction of the gatehouse in open-mouthed fascination.
He took advantage of their distraction to swing in the same direction.
His own jaw dropped. Pamela and Sophie should have been safely secured in the vault by now, awaiting their rescue by these fine young English soldiers. Yet here they came, strolling across the grass in their perky little bonnets with their arms linked and their yellow and blue skirts rippling in the breeze, looking like twin buds of English womanhood. All they lacked was a parasol to twirl.
As they meandered into musket range, Connor’s hands closed into fists. “When I get my hands on Brodie…” he muttered beneath his breath.
Munroe looked equally flummoxed. He turned his glare on Connor. “Just what is the meaning of this, sir?”
“Damned if I know,” Connor murmured, watching warily as Pamela detached herself from Sophie and wended her way through the soldiers to his side.
While the soldiers cast Sophie dazzled glances, which she received with downcast lashes and a demure smile, Pamela stood on tiptoe and pressed a chaste kiss to Connor’s cheek, h
er lips soft and warm. “Hello, darling. You didn’t tell me we had gentlemen callers.” Tucking her small hand in the crook of his arm, she beamed at Munroe and his men. “So have you come to tour the ruins as well on this fine April morn?”
Connor gazed down at her, unable to believe he had once thought her face only pleasing. With her amber eyes sparkling and that wicked little smile playing around her lush lips, she was absolutely ravishing. And ravishable.
“They wouldn’t have brought a cannon if they had come to tour the ruins…dear,” he gently pointed out.
Pamela shaded her eyes against the sun to view the distant cannon. “Are they in the middle of some sort of military exercise? Might we be allowed to watch while we enjoy our picnic?” she asked hopefully.
Munroe’s lips were pressed into a tense line. “We’re not here on an exercise or to see the ruins, miss. We’re here to rescue you.”
Pamela arched one graceful wing of a brow, giving him an incredulous look. “From what? The only thing I care to be rescued from on this fine spring day is the incessant threat of rain.”
“Bring the witness,” Munroe snapped through clenched teeth, sending one of his men scurrying back over the bridge.
He reappeared a few minutes later, dragging the wiry old coachman behind him. Feeling Pamela’s nearly imperceptible flinch, Connor covered the hand still nestled in the crook of his arm with his own and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
Munroe snatched the coachman out of the soldier’s grip and shoved him forward. “Are these the two women who hired your conveyance?”
The coachman slanted the women a nervous look, as if fearing one of them might whip a pistol out of her garter and shoot him between the eyes. “Aye, sir, they are.”
The colonel nodded toward Connor. “And is this the man who accosted them last night?”
The coachman scratched his head, eyeing Connor’s freshly shaven jaw, neatly groomed hair, and the plush wool of his kilt and plaid. “Now that I canna say for sure. It was full dark and the scoundrel was wearin’ a mask.”
A tinkling peal of laughter escaped Pamela. “Of course this wasn’t the man who accosted us. As soon as my fiancé arrived, that rascal ran off like the spineless coward he was.”
Munroe’s start was visible. “Your fiancé?” He flicked Connor a disgusted look. “Do you mean to tell me that you’re engaged to this rogue?”
Pamela’s smile vanished, her eyes going as chilly as the North Sea on a frosty December morn. “I’ll have you know that this rogue isn’t only my fiancé. He also happens to be the Marquess of Eddywhistle and the future Duke of Warrick. We had arranged to meet here to tour the castle ruins this morning. It was our extreme good fortune that he was on his way to his lodgings last night just as our carriage was being robbed on that deserted road.” She swept her reproving gaze over Munroe and his soldiers. “A road you and your men should have been patrolling so that decent Englishwomen like me and my dear sister here could travel without fear of losing our purses.” She lowered her eyes before adding softly, “Or something of even more value.”
Several of the soldiers ducked their heads or averted their eyes, shamed by her delicate blush. Connor slipped an arm around her shoulders, gently urging her face into the shelter of his shirt. “There, there, dear,” he murmured, giving Munroe a reproachful look. “I promised you we’d never speak of that grim night again.”
The colonel was all but spitting with frustration. “I’m sorry, miss, but I find this entire tale to be utterly preposterous!”
Connor edged forward, lowering his voice to a dangerous pitch. “Surely you wouldn’t be calling the lady a liar, would you? Because as a gentleman and her fiancé, I would have to demand satisfaction.”
Munroe gritted his teeth for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and persuasive and his words were directed toward Pamela alone. “I mean no disrespect, miss, but I have every reason to believe that this is the man we’ve been hunting for months.” He waved the broadsheet at her. “A man wanted by the law and condemned by the Crown to hang by the neck until dead for the heinous crimes he’s committed.”
“Heinous?” Pamela repeated softly, the slight quaver in her voice warning Connor that she was no longer acting. “Just how heinous?” She laughed nervously. “Has he spat upon the Holy Bible? Drowned a litter of kittens in a bucket?”
“Oh, he’s committed atrocities far worse than that,” Munroe replied gravely. “Atrocities not fit for the ears of a lady.”
“Indeed?”
As Pamela melted from his grasp so she could take the broadsheet from Munroe’s hand, Connor battled an overpowering urge to seize her and hold her fast. To wrap his arms around her and whisk her away to a place where no man—including this lying redcoat bastard—could ever take her away from him.
As she studied the likeness sketched on the broadsheet, he could almost hear her weighing Munroe’s words, hear the scales tipping in the colonel’s favor. There was no reason for her to doubt Munroe’s words, no reason for her to have faith in him.
Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she rolled up the broadsheet and slipped it into the pocket of her skirt. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll hang on to this so I can recognize the rogue should our paths ever cross. If this man is half the villain you say he is, then I pray you’ll find him and take him into custody very soon.” She slipped her arm back through Connor’s, smiling up at him. “Are you ready, darling? I do so love dining al fresco in the morning.”
Connor returned Pamela’s smile with a grin of his own. He’d bested the redcoats numerous times in the past few years, but never felt such a fierce rush of satisfaction.
They were turning away from Munroe and his men when the colonel’s hand shot out and ripped away Connor’s jabot and collar, revealing the faded rope burns that marred the side of his broad throat.
Munroe’s lip curled in a triumphant sneer. “And just how do you explain those marks, my lord?”
Connor lightly touched his fingers to the scars, his nostrils flaring in an aristocratic sniff. “My valet must have tied my cravat too tightly.” Plucking the jabot from Munroe’s hand and draping it around his own neck, he inclined his head in a polite bow. “If you’ll excuse us, gentlemen, our picnic awaits.”
Leaving Munroe frothing at the mouth with rage, they turned and strolled toward the castle as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Sophie fell into step beside her sister, casting a wistful look over her shoulder at the gawking soldiers.
They were halfway to the gatehouse when Munroe shouted, “You won’t be able to hide behind a woman’s skirts forever! I don’t care if you’re calling yourself a marquess or a duke or the Prince Regent himself, if you ever set foot in the Highlands again, as God is my witness, I’ll see you hanged!”
Connor inclined his head toward Pamela, speaking softly so his words wouldn’t carry on the wind. “One word from you, lass, and he would have seen me hanged today.”
“And just where would I have found another Scotsman with a thick neck and a thicker skull to impersonate the duke’s son?” She cast him a sideways look from beneath her lashes. “Besides, you just don’t seem the sort to drown a litter of kittens in a bucket.”
“If you must know, I’m rather fond of kittens. But don’t tell anyone. I’d hate to spoil my reputation.” As they passed beneath the gatehouse, he scowled up at the tower. “So just how did you convince Brodie to let you pull this incredibly foolhardy stunt? After I strangle him with my bare hands, I’d like to know how sorry I should be.”
Pamela gave Sophie a pointed look. She responded with a feline smile.
“Ah,” Connor said. “So what did she do? Promise to marry him and give him a cottage full of wee bairns?”
Sophie shuddered. “I should say not. But I did offer to teach him all the words to ‘Haughty Maude, the Banbury Bawd.’”
Pamela stole a worried glance over her shoulder, where Munroe and his men were staging their reluctant retreat. “Do you
think he meant what he said? That he would see you hanged if you ever set foot in the Highlands again?”
“I think we’d best leave for London as soon as Brodie can find that spineless coachman of yours and drag him back here.”
As Sophie went ahead of them into the tower, Connor tugged at Pamela’s arm, urging her to a halt in the cool shadows of the doorway. He braced his forearm against the stone arch above her head, shamelessly using the muscular wall of his body to imprison her there.
“Now that I’ve seen you act with such skill, lass, how will I ever know when you’re telling the truth?”
Her lips may have trembled at their proximity to his but that didn’t stop them from curving in a wistful little smile. “You won’t.”
She ducked beneath his arm and lifted the hem of her skirts to proceed up the stairs, leaving him alone to ponder her warning.
Chapter 9
I’m sorry, miss, but the duke refuses to receive you.”
Pamela leaned out of the hired carriage parked in the long curving drive of the palatial estate, eyeing the footman’s bland face in disbelief. “How could His Grace refuse to receive us? Did you tell him I’ve brought word of his son?”
The footman let out an inelegant snort that was at direct odds with his starched scarlet livery and powdered wig. “You and every other charlatan between here and Paris. Why, in the past week alone, three Frenchmen and a Belgian dwarf have come knocking on the door, claiming to be His Grace’s long lost heir. One impertinent fellow even slipped through the duke’s bedchamber window while he was sleeping. He insisted the heart-shaped birth-mark on his”—the footman’s patrician nostrils flared in distaste—“person would prove him to be the true heir. It took three footmen to drag him from the duke’s presence and toss him out on his”—he sniffed again—“person.”
Pamela leaned back in the carriage seat, struggling to hide her dismay. It had never occurred to her that there would be other attempts to dupe the duke, other imposters.
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