Pamela drew as close as she dared and pressed her back to an apple tree in full bloom, her nerves shredded by the unbearable suspense.
Now that he had an audience, Crispin seemed to have regained both his confidence and his footing. He went on the attack, his blade a steely blur in his capable hand. But Connor continued to block him at every turn, finally landing a blow of his own that came close to wrenching the epee from Crispin’s hands.
Something came skittering down the path toward Pamela. She bent to pick it up only to discover it was the fleuret from the tip of Crispin’s sword. The fleuret he had slid onto his blade while his back was still to them.
Her breath froze in her throat. Without the fleuret, the deadly point of the epee was exposed. If some terrible accident should befall Connor now, no court in the land would be able to convict Crispin. There would be no way to prove he had sought to do his opponent deliberate harm by improperly applying the fleuret.
He wouldn’t even have to run Connor through the heart. Piercing one of his lungs would kill him just as quickly.
As her imagination conjured up a stark image of Connor sprawled in the grass, gasping for breath as his life’s blood soaked through the pristine white of his shirt, she felt as if an invisible blade had pierced her own heart.
She lunged forward, shouting Connor’s name.
He glanced in her direction, a puzzled scowl clouding his brow, and she realized that distracting him had been a terrible miscalculation. Time seemed to slow until Pamela could see every delicate white petal of the apple blossoms drifting down from the boughs above, the hint of cruel satisfaction in Lady Astrid’s expression, the fierce concentration on Crispin’s lean face as he drew back his blade for the fatal thrust.
Without giving herself time to think, she threw herself between the two men. Crispin balked at the last second, pulling back on his thrust. The razor-sharp point of the epee whipped across Pamela’s forearm, slicing open both fabric and flesh.
Then Connor’s strong arms were there, breaking her fall as she stumbled to her knees.
“You wee fool!” Connor sank to the ground with her, his voice hoarse. “What are you tryin’ to do? Get yourself killed?” His hands were no longer as steady as they’d been on the hilt of his sword, but shaking with reaction as he tugged up her sleeve to reveal the bloody welt on her arm.
She offered him a brave little smile. “My sleeve bore the brunt of it. It’s nothing—just a scratch. Although Sophie’s going to have my head for ruining her gown,” she added beneath her breath.
Crispin was gazing down at them, a bewildered expression on his face. He shook his head. “I’m so sorry…I never intended…”
“Oh, really?” Pamela replied coolly, squinting up at him. “Just what did you intend?”
She held out her hand, slowly opening her clenched fingers to reveal the fleuret. The fleuret that was essentially useless unless applied with the greatest of care.
Both Crispin and Connor’s gazes flew to the tip of the epee in Crispin’s hand. Its lethal point seemed to sparkle in the sunlight.
Pamela felt every muscle in Connor’s body go rigid. Despite that tension, his hands were astonishingly gentle as he removed her from his lap and settled her on a nearby carpet of apple blossoms.
He reached for his sword and rose to face Crispin, his expression resolute.
Crispin began to back away from him, shaking his head helplessly. “I swear it was nothing but an accident. I never meant to hurt her. Surely you can see that.”
Connor paced him step for step, his momentum never slowing.
Lady Astrid came to her feet, the color draining from her face. “Archibald! Do something! You must stop them!”
But the duke simply retrieved his cup and took a delicate sip of tea, his dark eyes bright with fascination as he watched the proceedings. The two footmen rushed to peer over the edge of the terrace, no longer able to maintain their own pretense of indifference.
As Connor drew back his sword, Crispin lifted his own weapon to block the coming blow, but did nothing else to defend himself.
Connor’s two-handed blow severed the thin blade in two. The basket-hilt of the epee went tumbling from Crispin’s hand, leaving him unarmed and at Connor’s mercy.
Connor just kept coming. Even as Crispin scrambled backward, nearly losing his footing in the slick grass, Connor drew back the massive broadsword a second time.
“Oh, Lord,” Pamela whispered. “He’s going to cleave his head clean off.”
Although her every instinct urged her to hide her face, she could not take her eyes off of Connor. His eyes burned in a face as beautiful and terrible as the visage of an avenging angel cast down from heaven to deliver God’s wrath.
Crispin’s eyes widened as Connor swung. At the last possible second, Connor turned the blade to its flat side, striking Crispin a jarring blow to the side of the head.
Crispin went down like a stone, howling an oath. Lady Astrid sank back down in her chair, pressing a napkin to her bloodless lips.
It took Crispin several minutes to shake off the initial effects of the blow and sit up. He glared at Connor, clutching his left ear.
Connor offered him a hand but he smacked it away. “Monsieur Chevalier was right,” he snarled. “You’ll never be anything more than a barbarian.”
“And you’ll never be anything more than the nephew of a duke and a drunken ne’er-do-well who cheats at dueling as well as cards.”
“Bravo, lads!” The duke’s dry applause echoed through the garden. “Such dramatic flair, such delicious melodrama! I haven’t been so entertained since Mrs. Siddons played Portia in The Merchant of Venice.” He made a shooing motion with his hands. “If I were you, I’d take your bows and exit stage left now. You should always leave your adoring audience clamoring for more.”
Shooting his uncle a look of pure loathing, Crispin climbed to his feet and went staggering back down the path.
Propping his sword against a tree, Connor returned to Pamela’s side. He knelt beside her, checking the shallow scratch on her arm for any sign of fresh bleeding. “Why would you do anything so foolhardy, lass? Weren’t you the one who told me that one careless blow can destroy even the most steadfast of hearts?”
“Yes, but how cowardly is the heart that won’t even risk that blow?” she quoted back to him. Shooting a wary glance at the terrace, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Besides, where was I going to find another imposter if Crispin ran you through? You know actors aren’t to be trusted.”
Connor wrested the fleuret from her hand, studying it through narrowed eyes. “Apparently neither is the duke’s nephew.”
“For a minute there, I thought you were going to cut off his head,” she confessed.
“For a minute there, so did I. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to collect my prize if they carted me off to Newgate and hanged me.”
“Your prize?”
“Aye…have you forgotten, lass? You owe the winner of the contest a kiss.”
He leaned closer, his smoky gaze dropping to her lips. For a dazed moment, Pamela thought he was going to collect his prize right there in the garden in front of the duke, Lady Astrid, the gawking footmen and God.
But he simply plucked an apple blossom from her hair with his deft fingers before gently tugging her to her feet.
Crispin ducked into a back stairwell, determined to reach the haven of his bedchamber without any more of the servants witnessing his disgrace. He knew the two smirking footmen from the garden would waste no time telling everyone in the servants’ quarters what they’d witnessed. By nightfall, it would be all over London that the Duke of Warrick’s nephew had been bested in a fencing match by a Scots barbarian wielding an antique broadsword. His uncle wouldn’t be the only one laughing at him then.
He dragged himself up the stairs, wiggling his aching jaw between two fingers to make sure it wasn’t broken. His ears were still ringing and a vicious devil of a headache was just beginning to thro
b at the base of his skull.
He’d faced many a man over both swords and dueling pistols in the past few years, but he’d never stared death directly in the eyes before. Somehow his cousin’s mercy had been even more galling than his wrath. If he had been cut down where he stood, at least his uncle wouldn’t have been able to deny him a place in the family tomb. His former lovers would have wept prettily into their handkerchiefs and his friends would have gathered at their favorite gambling hell to toast his fine head for liquor, his skill at the faro table and his droll wit.
Perhaps once he was gone, his mother would have understood how badly he had wanted to protect her after his father’s death and his uncle would have realized how very hard he had tried to be a son to him. And how deeply it cut to watch while he embraced a stranger. Crispin snorted, his amusement at his own folly as bitter as the metallic tang of the blood in his mouth.
He rounded the corner of the second-story landing only to crash right into someone hurrying down the stairs. They bumped heads, then both sat down abruptly, a shower of rumpled linens tumbling around them.
Crispin clutched his brow, the sudden change in position setting off a hellish chorus of bells between his ears. “Bloody hell!” he swore as a ruffled mobcap bobbed in his bleary vision.
“Why don’t you look where you’re going, you clumsy oaf?” a musical female voice snapped. “Are you blind?”
Still gripping his head, Crispin scowled. He’d never before been spoken to in such an insolent manner by a servant.
But when his vision cleared and he saw her cornflower blue eyes and lush Cupid’s bow of a mouth, he felt as if he had been struck not only blind, but deaf and mute as well.
Her impertinent little nose and the golden curls peeping out from beneath her mobcap also gave him a peculiar start of recognition. “Do I know you?”
“I should think not. I’m Pamela’s s-s-servant. I’m her maid. Her maidservant. Yes, that’s what I am. Her maidservant.”
“Pamela?” It took a dazed minute for his mental faculties to reassert themselves. “Ah, yes—my cousin’s fiancée—the ever so charming Miss Darby. Yet you address her by her Christian name. Tell me—does your mistress encourage such familiarity?”
“Does yours?”
At her cheeky retort, Crispin quickly discovered that it hurt to smile. But he still couldn’t stop himself. “My mistress encourages all manner of familiarity. That’s why she’s my mistress.”
The girl’s mouth curved into a reluctant little half smile. “You’re bleeding,” she announced.
“I am?” He reached toward his face but her hand was already there, dabbing at his cheekbone with the corner of a sheet. Her touch was far gentler than her voice.
He welcomed her assistance, grateful for the opportunity to study the creamy curve of her cheek and the beguiling sweep of her honey-colored lashes at such an intimate range. He frowned, his bewilderment deepening. “Are you certain we haven’t met before? It’s not like me to forget a face as lovely as yours.”
“I’m sure you’ve forgotten more lovely faces than you’ve remembered.” She slanted him a provocative look from beneath those lashes, her parted lips only a tantalizing breath away from his.
He leaned forward, suffering a pang of regret when she quickly retreated. She began to gather up the scattered linens, her motions once again brisk with purpose. He scrambled to his feet to assist her, piling the sheets so high in her slender arms she could barely see over the top of them.
“Thank you for being such a gentleman,” she said primly.
He chuckled. “I’ve been accused of many things in my day, but rarely that.”
He stood back, allowing her to brush past him on the narrow stairwell. He watched her go, bemused by the proud tilt of her head and the saucy sway of her round little rump. He hadn’t been so tempted to dally with a maidservant since his fifteenth summer when he’d lost his innocence to a buxom young chambermaid who had crept into his bedchamber each night after the candles had been extinguished.
“Wait!” he called after her as she reached the foot of the stairs. “Do you have a name?”
“Yes,” she replied without slowing her steps. “I most certainly do.”
Then she was gone, leaving him to sag against the wall and wonder why the ringing in his ears suddenly sounded like cathedral bells.
That night Pamela once again found herself tossing and turning as if the mattress of her cozy half-tester had been stuffed with stones instead of feathers. She was still haunted by the genuine horror she had glimpsed in Crispin’s eyes while she sat bleeding at his feet. Perhaps he was simply dismayed that his plan to kill Connor had gone awry. But what if losing the fleuret from the tip of his epee really had been an accident? What if they were no closer to finding her mother’s killer than they had been yesterday?
She rolled to her back, gazing up at the half-tester’s canopy. The sooner they exposed her mother’s killer, the sooner she and Connor could put an end to their travesty of a betrothal. She would be free to break off their engagement and disappear with her sister and the reward and he would be free to court a more suitable bride—some earl’s pampered daughter or the haughty niece of a marquess, perhaps.
She flopped to her side, wincing at the sting of the scratch on her forearm. The sash window was safely secured, misty beams of moonlight the only intruder on this restless night.
The room suddenly felt unbearably stuffy. Pamela kicked away the blankets. After lying there for a few more interminable minutes, she rolled out of the bed, marched over to the window and threw up the sash. A cool night breeze poured into the room, caressing her fevered brow. She leaned out the window and searched the shadows below but detected no hint of movement.
Sighing, she returned to the bed. Folding her hands beneath her cheek, she lay gazing at the open window. Perhaps in the most secret corner of her heart, she had hoped Connor might come to collect his prize. If she drifted off to sleep now, would she awaken to find his shadow looming over her in the moonlight? And if she did, would she have the strength to send him away or would she open her arms to welcome him into her bed?
Groaning, Pamela scrambled back to her feet. She snatched up her faded dressing gown from the back of a nearby chair and shrugged it on over her nightdress. If they were going to trap her mother’s killer, then she and Connor had much to discuss, did they not? And it was nearly impossible to do so beneath the watchful eyes of the duke, his suspicious sister and their nosy army of servants.
She eased open the door and peered both ways down the deserted corridor. Perhaps it was time to show Connor Kincaid he wasn’t the only one who could sneak into someone’s bedchamber in the dead of night.
As Pamela slipped into Connor’s bedchamber, she had to resist the urge to let out a low admiring whistle. The bedchamber was so vast it made her own generous suite look like servants’ quarters. She drew in a deep breath, savoring the masculine scents of leather and fine wood.
As she drifted across the gleaming cherry floor, she realized the mischievous moon had followed her from her room. It was peeping through one of the tall sash windows on the far wall, bathing the bed in a wash of silver.
The towering four-poster with its turned bedposts and ornately carved headboard crowned the center of the room. It wasn’t the spectacularly overwrought bed that engaged her fascination, but the man who lay on his back with his long limbs sprawled among its rumpled bedclothes.
Pamela crept closer, swallowing a knot of trepidation.
Too late it occurred to her that Connor hardly seemed the sort to don a long nightshirt and tasseled nightcap. Instead, he reclined on his back with a mere ribbon of bedsheet draped carelessly over his hips.
Her mouth went dry. If she had any moral fortitude whatsoever, she would beat a hasty retreat straight back to her own bedchamber, her own lonely bed. But curiosity was already overcoming her caution, tempting her to draw within touching distance of Connor’s sleeping form.
With h
is hair spilling across the pillow and moonlight bathing the rugged planes of his face, he no longer looked like a gentleman but like some mythical creature of the forest—more satyr than man. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him chasing down some squealing maiden who would beg him for mercy while secretly welcoming the forbidden pleasure only his touch could bring her.
She inched nearer to the bed, her treacherous fingertips itching to explore the silky whorls of hair dusting his chest. Moonlight caressed those broad planes, reminding her that he didn’t sleep completely nude after all. He was still wearing the gold locket she had glimpsed in the ruins of Castle MacFarlane. And he was still wearing it over his heart.
He stirred in his sleep, drawing her gaze to the sculpted muscles of his abdomen, his powerful thighs. When he shifted again, sending that fragile ribbon of sheet into a dangerous slide, she jerked her mortified gaze back to his face.
His thick, spiky lashes rested flush against his high cheekbones. He must have been dreaming, because a roguish hint of a smile deepened the dimple in his right cheek.
Pamela shook her head, a wry smile curving her own lips. She still couldn’t resist that dimple. It had proven itself her downfall, from the first time she’d seen it sketched on that handbill.
Reaching out her trembling fingers, she tenderly stroked his cheek.
She heard a click. One minute she was standing beside Connor; the next she was beneath him, both of her wrists manacled over her head by one of his powerful hands and the mouth of his cocked pistol pressed to the underside of her jaw.
Chapter 16
Pamela’s voice came out of the darkness, strained and breathless. “If you pull that trigger, I’m guessing a bouquet of flowers won’t burst out of the muzzle.”
For a bewildered moment, Connor thought he was still dreaming. How else to explain the intoxicating scent of lilacs, and Pamela warm and soft beneath him in his bed? But if he was still dreaming, then why wasn’t she as naked as he was? Why was there a worn layer of cotton separating the beguiling softness of her plump breasts from his bare chest? Why was his rigid arousal nudging her thigh instead of being buried deep inside of her? And why was the mouth of his pistol rammed against the tender underside of her jaw?
Some Like It Wild Page 14
