Some Like It Wild

by Teresa Medeiros

  Connor dabbed at his lips with his napkin to hide his smile. There were times when he found the old man almost tolerable. “I’ll take great care to heed your advice, your grace.”

  If Pamela really was to be his bride, such counsel would be a pleasure to follow. Except he would prefer it to be at least twice a day and thrice on Sundays. Judging by her eager response to his touch, he didn’t believe Pamela would object.

  “Ah, yes, my brother is a fount of wisdom on all matters matrimonial.” Astrid turned her acidic gaze on Connor. “It’s a pity you can’t ask your mother about that, isn’t it?”

  The duke snorted. “And just what would you know about pleasing a mate? Your poor Sheldon burned himself to death in his bed just to escape your nagging.”

  Connor felt the tiny hairs at the back of his nape prickle to attention. He took a leisurely sip of his chocolate, keeping his face carefully bland to hide his keen interest in their exchange.

  “My poor Sheldon was a miserable sot! If he had heeded my nagging, he wouldn’t have been swilling brandy as if it were water or smoking those foul cigars of his in bed. Papa knew he was a hopeless bounder when he forced me to marry him. He just didn’t give a—” Astrid froze, choking back whatever unladylike pronouncement she was about to make.

  She inclined her head, the skin around her mouth going pinched and white. Connor felt a flicker of reluctant pity. Her hair might be going silver and her chin soft, but a hint of tarnished beauty still hovered about her like the ghost of the girl she had once been.

  The duke dismissed her outburst with a contemptuous “harrumph” and turned his attention back to Connor. “I’ve arranged for you and Miss Darby to attend a soiree tomorrow evening at Lord Newton’s town house. The tailor assured me that he and his assistants would be working around the clock and could deliver the first installment of your wardrobe in the morning. I’m afraid I won’t be able to accompany you. I want to save all my strength for the ball I’ll be hosting next week to celebrate your official reintroduction into society.”

  Connor frowned. “A ball? I don’t suppose that would involve dancing, would it?”

  Amusement sparkled in the duke’s eyes. “It is customary to take a turn or two around the floor with the lady of your choice in your arms.”

  The lady of his choice. Connor stole another look at the clock to discover it was nearly ten o’clock. His frown deepened.

  Perhaps Pamela was simply languishing in bed, exhausted from her midnight visit to his bedchamber. And his bed. His gaze flicked from the clock to the door. During their journey from Scotland, he had discovered that she was an early and cheerful riser, eager to face each new day and the adventures it would bring.

  What if she wasn’t languishing in bed but cowering in her bedchamber, too mortified to face him? He couldn’t bear the thought that he might have shamed her with his touch. That she might have already come to regret the pleasure he had given her.

  He shot to his feet, giving his overflowing plate one last yearning look.

  “Where are you going?” Lady Astrid snapped as he strode toward the door. “Surely you’re not going to drag poor Miss Darby out of her bedchamber. That would hardly be appropriate.”

  He made an abrupt about-face and marched back to the table. He retrieved a warm roll, then proceeded on his way, leaving the duke chuckling and Lady Astrid opening and closing her mouth like a beached herring.

  By the time Connor reached the door of Pamela’s bedchamber, the roll was long gone but his misgivings were not. He pressed his ear to the door, half afraid he would be greeted by the sound of Pamela’s heart-wrenching sobs.

  But all that greeted him was silence. He lifted his fist to knock, then lowered it. This was one time when he had no intention of giving Pamela the opportunity to refuse him.

  Setting his jaw to a determined angle, he boldly threw open the door.

  Pamela had been gazing down at the heaps of taffeta and muslin scattered across the unmade bed, but when the door flew open, she whirled around to face him.

  Connor’s heart sank. It was worse than he’d feared. Her beautiful eyes were swollen nearly shut, her nose was bright pink and her cheeks were still streaked with fresh tears. Her hair was in a dreadful tangle—half up and half down with combs and hairpins sticking out at all angles. And worst of all, she was gazing at him as if he were the one who had murdered her poor mother.

  Although his feet felt as if they were weighted with lead, he couldn’t stop himself from moving toward her. “There’s no need for this, lass, and I won’t have it,” he said quietly. “You can’t spend the rest of your life weeping in your bedchamber just because you spent a few stolen moments in mine.”

  Connor heard a startled gasp. Too late, he saw Sophie standing next to the dressing table, her mouth hanging open and her astonished gaze fixed on Pamela as if she’d never seen her sister before.

  He stopped a few feet from Pamela, aching to close the distance between them if only so he could touch her one last time. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, lass. I’m the one who took advantage of you and your innocence. As you well know, I’m not an honorable man. But I can promise you that despite what happened between us last night, you’re still a virgin. You’ll bring no shame to your husband’s bed.” Although he made an honest effort, he could not quite keep the bitter note from his voice. “He’ll never even have to know you let a dirty, thievin’ Highlander put his hands on you.”

  Connor wasn’t aware that Pamela had been gripping a hairbrush until it went sailing past his head, striking the door behind him with a dull thud.

  “I’m not crying because I’m ashamed, you thick-witted Scotsman!” She glared at him, her voice rising to a wail. “I’m crying because I don’t have anything to wear!”

  Chapter 17

  What’s wrong with what you’re wearing right now?” Connor asked cautiously, prepared to duck should Pamela hurl another unexpected object at him—a lace garter or perhaps the dressing-table stool.

  He’d seen her stand down an entire regiment of English soldiers armed with nothing but a smile. He never thought he’d see her trembling on the brink of hysteria over a rumpled heap of taffeta.

  She eyed him disbelievingly. “Are you blind as well as daft? I only had two suitable frocks of my own and I wore both of those the first day we were here. I’ve already been reduced to borrowing Sophie’s gowns.”

  Sophie snorted and rolled her eyes. “Borrowing? Destroying is more like it. She returned my favorite gown with the sleeve all slashed to ribbons! And that’s not even counting the damage she did to my prettiest pair of slippers with her enormous feet.”

  Ignoring her sister’s pout, Pamela waved a hand toward the pile of garments on the bed. “I’ve tried on every one of her gowns and each one is less flattering than the last.”

  “I’ve always been more inclined to notice the female in the frock than the frock itself,” Connor admitted. “If you must know, most men would rather do away with the frock altogether.”

  “Well, I may have to do just that.” Clutching her skirt in both fists, Pamela lifted the scalloped hem of the pastel pink confection she was modeling at the moment, giving him an enticing glimpse of trim ankles and a pair of bare feet that looked incredibly dainty to him, especially compared to his own. “Because this one is at least five inches too short.”

  “Indeed,” he murmured, afraid to say more.

  “And just look at this bodice. It’s a disaster!” She dropped the skirt and cupped her hands beneath her breasts, hiking them upward. “If I so much as take one deep breath, my bosoms are going to pop right out for all the world to see!”

  Since she had invited him to look, Connor gazed his fill at the luscious globes threatening to spill over the top of the low-cut bodice. He could still remember how warm and soft they’d felt in his hands. “And that would be a bad thing?” he asked, forced to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling.

  “It most certainly would! Especiall
y since Sophie just told me she overheard the servants in the kitchen saying we’ve been invited to our first soiree tomorrow evening. I can’t even find a gown to wear to breakfast. How am I supposed to dress for a soiree!”

  “I’m not even sure what a soiree is,” Connor confessed.

  “It’s a deliciously sophisticated French word for party,” Sophie offered with a superior little smirk.

  “We’re not in France,” Connor retorted. “Why don’t they just call it a party?”

  Pamela collapsed to a sitting position on the foot of the bed, her proud shoulders slumped in defeat. “It’s going to create enough of a scandal when everyone discovers the future Duke of Warrick has pledged his troth to an actress’s daughter who was born on the wrong side of the blanket. Once I make an appearance in my ill-fitting, unfashionable gowns, no one will believe you could have fallen in love with me. Not when they can plainly see how common I truly am.” She bowed her head, her voice fading until it was barely audible. “I shall be ridiculous in their eyes and I will make you ridiculous, too.”

  Connor’s amusement faded as Pamela’s words slowly sank in. She wasn’t ashamed of him. She was afraid she would shame him. Connor Kincaid. A dirty, thieving Highlander with rope scars on his throat and a price on his head.

  He ached to touch her, but he was afraid of further bruising her already battered pride.

  Knitting his hands at the small of his back to keep them off of her, he turned to address Sophie. “Look after your sister. Get her a cool rag for her eyes and ring for breakfast.” He turned toward the door, then turned back. “Order her a hot bath as well…with some of those flowers or leaves they sprinkle in to make the water smell nice.”

  Sophie gaped at him, plainly insulted at being treated like the servant she was pretending to be. “Aye, my lord,” she said, bobbing him a mocking curtsy. “Will his lordship be requiring anything else?”

  He stole a look at Pamela, who was eyeing him with equal bewilderment. “No. You can trust me to take care of the rest.”

  Connor strode through the long corridors of Warrick Park as if he were already its master. As he rounded a corner without breaking his stride, a pair of young maidservants dusting the wainscoting exchanged a nervous glance and went scurrying out of his way.

  He arrived back at the morning room to find it already deserted. A lone footman was removing dishes from the sideboard. When Connor cleared his throat, the man jumped as if he’d been shot. The silver platter in his hand slipped through his fingers and went crashing to the floor, scattering the remnants of the coddled eggs across the priceless Aubusson carpet.

  Connor had no time to waste on apologies or pleasantries. “Where can I find the duke?”

  “Your father, my lord?” The servant stole a furtive glance at the mantel clock. “At this time of the morning, you can usually find him in the portrait gallery.”

  Connor was already striding back down the corridor when he realized he had no idea where the portrait gallery was.

  He stopped at the foot of the grand staircase in the entrance hall, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. He could pinpoint his exact location in the Highland wilderness using nothing more than the angle of the sun and the thickness of the moss growing on the side of a tree, but he couldn’t seem to navigate this damn maze of a house.

  He was about to return to the morning room to demand directions when a rhythmic squeak came floating down the stairs. Connor had heard that sound before, each time some flustered footman rolled the duke’s wheeled chair into a room with his master berating him the entire time for going too fast or not fast enough.

  Connor took the stairs two at a time, turning left at the second-story landing. His brisk strides soon carried him to a long, spacious gallery with a balcony overlooking the darkened ballroom on one side and a wall lined with formal portraits of all shapes and sizes on the other. The flickering wall lamps failed to completely dispel the gloom.

  The duke’s wheeled chair had been silenced and a footman was just disappearing through a far door, having been dismissed by his master. The duke sat all alone, huddled in his chair with a shawl wrapped around his shoulders and a lap rug draped over his wasted legs.

  He was gazing up at the wall, his attention so transfixed, he might have been the only living creature in the house.

  Connor had to steel his heart against another one of those disturbing pangs of pity. This man was his enemy, he reminded himself. If the duke was alone, it was because he had driven away everyone who had ever loved him.

  Connor’s strides slowed. For the first time since arriving at Warrick Hall, he truly felt like the intruder he was. As he traversed that seemingly endless gallery, his steps as stealthy as a thief’s, the Warrick ancestors in their ornate garments and gilded frames seemed to be sneering down their noses at him, mocking him for daring to pretend to be one of them.

  His curiosity sharpened as he approached the duke’s chair. He could not imagine any likeness that could have so captured the man’s jaded attentions. His curiosity shifted to bewilderment as he realized the duke wasn’t gazing up at a portrait, but at a large blank space on the wall between two portraits. Judging by the faded condition of the gold-flecked wallpaper that surrounded the perfect square, the space had not always been empty.

  Connor would have sworn the man wasn’t even aware of his presence, which was why he started when the duke said softly, “Everyone believes I had her portraits removed because I despised her for leaving me. But the truth was that I simply could not bear to look upon them. Couldn’t bear to be reminded every miserable day of my life that I’d been fool enough to lose her.” He shook his head. “I said such terrible things to her. Made such dreadful threats. I was trying to frighten her into not leaving me, but all I succeeded in doing was driving her away. What I should have done—what I was too young and proud and foolish to do—was fall on my knees and beg her to forgive me.”

  He sighed, his hollow-eyed gaze still devouring that empty wall. “I come here every day and gaze up at the place where her portrait used to hang and I can still see her. Those long, shiny curls she would let me brush before bedtime. Her laughing eyes. That maddening dimple that would only appear when she was teasing me.”

  Connor gazed up at the wall with equal fascination, almost able to see the woman the duke was describing.

  The duke wheeled his chair around to face him. “I suppose you find me ridiculous. She would laugh in my face if she could see me now. She never did have any patience for my pride. Or my weaknesses.”

  “After she deserted you, why didn’t you divorce her or have her declared dead so you could remarry and produce another heir?” Connor asked, genuinely curious.

  “Because I knew there would be no point in it. She would always be the wife of my heart. Do you know that I never slept with another woman after she left me? All these years I’ve been faithful to a ghost.” A bleak chuckle escaped him. “That would please her too, you know. She’d tell me I got just what I deserved for breaking our marriage vows—and her heart.” He tipped his head back to meet Connor’s gaze, his expression defiant. “How you must hate me!”

  “I don’t hate you,” Connor told him, relieved to be able to pull a thread of truth out of his own web of lies.

  The canny glitter had returned to the duke’s eyes. “Ah, but you pity me, which is even more galling to a sick old man who was once as brash and robust as you. I suppose I should be grateful to you and your Miss Darby. Until you returned and told me what had become of your mother, I was still able to pretend she might come walking back through my door someday—as young and beautiful as on the day she left me. But now that I know she’s well and truly gone, I have one more reason to welcome death. Although given the blackened condition of my soul,” he added dryly, “there’s little chance we’ll ever be reunited, even on the other side of that great void.”

  “If you had the chance,” Connor asked softly, “whose forgiveness would you seek? God’s? Or hers?�
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  “Since I’m not likely to receive mercy from either one of them, perhaps I should content myself with asking for yours.”

  Connor went down on one knee in front of the chair, putting them at eye level just as he had on the first day he’d arrived at Warrick Park. He placed one hand on the man’s bony knee, willing to beg if he had to. “It’s not your remorse or your regrets I need today, your grace, but something else entirely.”

  The duke laid his hand atop Connor’s, giving it a surprisingly hearty squeeze. “Anything, son. Anything at all.”

  When a timid rap sounded on her bedchamber door that afternoon, Pamela swung it open to find two young maidservants tittering and bobbing like a pair of fledgling pigeons.

  “G’day, miss,” chirped the plump, rosy-cheeked one with the carrot-colored curls peeping out from beneath her mobcap. “We’ve come to fetch you. Lord Eddywhistle requests your presence in the ballroom.”

  “Lord Eddywhistle?” Pamela repeated, momentarily baffled. Despite enjoying a hearty breakfast and a long hot bath, her head was still a little foggy from her embarrassing bout of tears. “Oh! You mean the marquess!”

  “Aye, miss, the marquess.” The tall, willowy maid tossed her pale yellow braid over her shoulder. “And it weren’t so much a request, really, as a demand.”

  “Or a command,” her plump companion offered helpfully. “I believe his exact words was”—she lowered her voice in a passable imitation of Connor’s burr—“‘If the lass balks, remind her I’m goin’ to be the duke someday and my word will be law.’”

  Pamela cast a disbelieving glance over her shoulder at her sister. Sophie had been stretched out on her stomach on the bed, devouring the latest issue of La Belle Assemblée, which she’d nicked from Lady Astrid’s bedchamber, but she was now watching the proceedings at the door with avid interest.