An enthusiastic smattering of applause greeted the end of Crispin’s reading. He took a bow, then tucked the book back on the shelf.
“As most of you already know, my long lost cousin here has spent most of his years living with that hale and hearty race known as the Scots.” As Crispin’s calculating gaze settled on Connor, Pamela felt a twinge of foreboding. “Since there is no greater pleasure than hearing a poem rendered in its native tongue, who better than my dear cousin to bring to life the words of Robert Burns—the most famous Scotsman of them all!”
As Crispin plucked a cloth-bound volume from the shelf and tossed it at Connor, Pamela felt her blood run cold. She had sought to spare him the embarrassment of her outmoded dresses, never dreaming he might endure a far worse humiliation at his cousin’s treacherous hands. She’d had every intention of teaching him how to read before anyone discovered his lack of education, but they’d certainly had no opportunity for study since arriving at Warrick Park.
She snatched the book out of the air before Connor could catch it. Glaring daggers at Crispin, she said, “I’m sure the marquess has better things to do with his time than play at these ridiculous games.”
Connor gently removed the book from her hand. “It’s all right, darling. A Scotsman welcomes any chance to enlighten an Englishman when it comes to the romance of poetry.”
His words were greeted with bemused glances and nervous chuckles. A hush fell as he rose to take Crispin’s place at the bookshelf, his imposing presence commanding the attention of everyone in the drawing room.
“May I choose my selection?”
Crispin extended a gracious hand. “Be my guest.”
Pamela held her breath as Connor flipped through the book several times before finally securing a page with his finger. Without introduction, he read:
From thee, Eliza, I must go,
And from my native shore;
The cruel fates between us throw
A boundless ocean’s roar…
The words were as simple and heartfelt as when the poet had first penned them, but Connor’s evocative burr transformed even the simplest syllable into music. He glanced at her, no longer making any attempt to hide the passion simmering in his eyes. Unlike Crispin, he was performing for an audience of only one. Pamela felt helpless tears start in her eyes as he continued:
But boundless oceans, roaring wide,
Between my love and me,
They never, never can divide
My heart and soul from thee.
As the echo of those last words faded, the entire drawing room erupted in thunderous applause. Judging by the number of handkerchiefs that suddenly appeared, Pamela wasn’t the only one who had been moved to tears. The freckled young man was even rewarded with a tender kiss on the cheek from his Emily.
Both Crispin and Byron were forgotten as a chorus of eager voices rose to beg Connor for another Burns poem.
“That’s enough for tonight, lads and ladies,” he told them, “but I promise to return after my wedding to bring you a rousing rendition of ‘O Aye My Wife She Dang Me.’”
The laughing men gathered around Connor to slap him on the back and offer him their congratulations. Pamela watched a stone-faced Crispin disappear into the crowd and decided to do the same. As Emily’s beau charmed the girl into sliding behind the pianoforte to coax a winsome Bach concerto from its keys, Pamela rose and slipped through the crush of guests, seeking an escape from the merry chatter and prying eyes.
She didn’t get very far before she heard Connor’s clipped footsteps behind her. He caught her by the hand and tugged her around to face him.
She jerked her hand from his, lowering her voice to a raw whisper as she saw several heads turn their way. “Why didn’t you tell me you could read?”
He shrugged. “You never asked. My father was a gentleman. He was the one who taught me.”
Pamela felt her lips go numb with shock. “Your father was a gentleman? I had assumed your parents were…”
“Peasants?” he offered helpfully when she trailed off.
She could feel a guilty flush creeping up her throat. “Farmers. Shepherds. Crofters perhaps?”
Connor’s voice was no longer expressive, but flat and devoid of emotion. “My father was Scots but he was born and raised in England. It was his father who sold out our clan at Culloden.”
“For thirty pieces of English silver,” she said softly, remembering those damning words from the courtyard of Castle MacFarlane.
“And an earldom,” he confessed.
Pamela’s ears were beginning to ring. “I suppose you neglected to mention the earldom as well.”
Connor’s face darkened. “That title was bought with the blood of my clansmen. My father rejected everything it stood for when he returned to the Highlands to try to reunite Clan Kincaid beneath the banner of their rightful chieftain. He gave up both wealth and privilege to live in a humble cottage and marry a penniless lass who adored him with her every breath.” He glanced back at the laughing crowd still lingering around the bookshelf. “Even if I couldn’t read, I could have recited that piece from memory. Robbie Burns was my father’s favorite poet. I can’t tell you how many times I heard him recite those very words to my mother while we sat around the hearth at night.”
Pamela shook her head helplessly, feeling like even more of a fool. “And how was I to know that?”
“You couldn’t know, because you assumed my parents were ignorant, uneducated ruffians. That’s what the English always assume about the Scots.”
She lifted her chin, stung by the unfairness of his accusation. “It wasn’t as if you did anything to disabuse me of that notion. When we first met, you were pointing a loaded pistol at my heart. Did your father teach you to do that as well?”
“No. The redcoats who hanged him did.”
They stood there, the gulf between them swelling until it was deeper and wider than any boundless ocean Burns could have described. Pamela sensed that words, no matter how eloquent or persuasive, were no longer enough to bridge it.
She took a step toward him. “What do you want, Connor?” she asked softly. “Do you want to punish me? Do you want to make me pay for their sins?”
Before he could give her an answer, the footman stepped back into the doorway. From the corner of her eye, Pamela saw a couple join him.
The footman cleared his throat forcefully to make sure he had everyone’s attention before intoning, “Sir Simon and Catriona Wescott.”
The golden-haired man standing beneath the archway was leaner than Connor but nearly matched him in both height and breadth of shoulder. He’d been blessed with the sort of effortless grace and dazzling masculine beauty that commanded every female eye in the room.
Despite the fluttering fans and lashes and the chorus of wistful sighs that greeted his arrival, it was painfully evident that he only had eyes for the woman on his arm.
Unfortunately, when Pamela glanced at Connor, she discovered to her shock that he too only had eyes for Simon Wescott’s wife.
Chapter 19
Pamela’s heart sank like a stone in her breast. Connor was gazing at the woman in the doorway as if he’d seen a ghost. A beautiful, fresh-faced ghost with upswept strawberry blond curls and cinnamon-tinted freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. As her husband leaned down to murmur something in her ear, she squeezed his arm and laughed aloud, the adoration in her gaze making her gray eyes sparkle.
Connor lifted a hand to his chest, but there was no way for Pamela to know if he was touching the locket he always wore under his shirt or the heart that was probably thundering beneath it.
As the knight and his lady started across the room, exchanging smiles and greetings with everyone they passed, Pamela realized she and Connor were directly in their path. Connor did not budge and Pamela felt as if her own feet were rooted to the floor.
She held her breath as the woman drew nearer, waiting for her to see Connor, waiting for the start of recognition
in her eyes that would shatter the secret hopes Pamela had been hoarding in her own heart.
The couple glanced at them as they strolled past, the man murmuring a greeting while the woman nodded and smiled at each of them in turn. Pamela managed to dredge up a polite smile in return, but Connor’s expression never changed. He simply watched her pass, his face so still it might have been hewn from stone.
It wasn’t until the pair had reached the hearth that the woman cast Connor a quizzical glance over her shoulder.
“Let’s get the bloody hell out of here,” he said, grabbing Pamela’s hand and starting for the door.
Given his preoccupation with the lovely stranger, she supposed she should be thankful he even remembered she was there.
“What about Lady Astrid?” she asked, forced to take two steps for every one of his long strides.
“She’ll find a way home,” he said, waiting impatiently as the footman went to retrieve Pamela’s cashmere shawl and swansdown muff. “Perhaps Lady Newton has a broom she could borrow.”
Connor didn’t say a word while they were waiting for their driver to bring the carriage around. His stony silence continued on the long ride back to Warrick Park. Pamela huddled in her corner of the carriage, growing more miserable with each passing league. By the time the carriage rolled up the long curving drive and halted in front of the house, she was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to speak again.
He threw open the door and leaped down from the carriage the minute it stopped, ignoring the flustered groomsman who was waiting to assist them. Pamela half expected him to just leave her there—forgotten and alone—but he reached back in and closed his powerful hands around her waist, sweeping her out of the carriage and to her feet just as he had on the afternoon they’d arrived at Warrick Park for the first time.
He stood staring up at the lighted windows of the house as the coach rattled away toward the stables. “I can’t bear to be locked up in a cage tonight.”
Turning on his heel, he started down the hill toward the stand of swaying willows, tugging off his cravat as he walked. Pamela hesitated for a second, then followed. She could feel the evening dew soaking through the flimsy soles of her slippers with each step. Although Connor’s stride was as steady and sure as it had been in the mountains, she began to pick up momentum as they neared the bottom of the hill, tripping over the hem of her gown and rending the delicate gauze.
Connor strode right past the graceful columns of the Doric temple beyond the willows, rejecting any claim of civilization on the land or the night. He didn’t stop until he reached the edge of the lake. Resting his hands on his hips, he stood on the bank, gazing out over the moonlit water.
Pamela trailed him all the way to the water’s edge, wrapping her arms around herself to hug back a shiver. She had left her cashmere shawl in the carriage, along with her lovely new swansdown muff.
When she could no longer bear Connor’s silence, she said softly, “She’s the one, isn’t she? The one who gave you the locket you wear over your heart.”
Connor glanced at her, bewilderment flashing like quicksilver in his eyes. “The locket was my mother’s. It was the last thing she ever gave to me.”
Pamela drew closer to him, still not daring to hope. “I don’t understand. I saw the way you looked at her. As if you were aching to touch her just to make sure she was real.”
He went back to gazing over the water, his eyes as distant as the silvery orb of the moon hanging in the eastern sky. “Oh, I know she’s real. She’s my sister.”
“Your sister?” Pamela sank down to a sitting position in the wet grass, her relief so keen she no longer cared if he found her ridiculous. “That woman was your sister?”
“Aye.” He shook his head, a bitter smile touching his lips. “Did you see her? She looked right at me and didn’t even know me. I suppose I can’t blame her though. She hasn’t laid eyes on me since the night the redcoats came.”
Pamela hugged one knee to her chest. Now that Connor’s silence was broken, she was afraid to speak; afraid to so much as breathe for fear he would retreat back into his impenetrable shell. She sensed that he wasn’t just breaking the silence of moments, but of years.
His burr seemed to deepen as if he was traveling further backward in time with each word. “When we heard the redcoats comin’, I begged my father to let me stay. I was a gangly lad of fifteen who fancied himself a man. I demanded a gun so we could fight them side by side, but my father kept insistin’ I had to take Catriona and hide, that I was her only hope. He wanted my mother to go too, but she refused to leave his side.”
“They were nearly upon us then.” Connor cocked his head as if he could still hear the swelling thunder of hoofbeats, could feel the ground beginning to quake beneath their feet. “For the first time ever, I defied my da. I shouted that I was nearly full grown and he had no right to tell me what to do. Then my father—my gentle, soft-spoken father who had never lifted a hand to me in anger—struck me so hard he broke my tooth.”
Connor ran a finger over the chipped edge of the tooth that made his smile so dear to her.
“He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. He told me that if I didn’t hide Catriona, the soldiers would do terrible things to her…unspeakable things. They wouldn’t care that she was just a wee lass of ten.
“I couldn’t speak by then. I could only nod. When I did, my father snatched me against him, nearly squeezin’ the breath out of me. Then he shoved me away, shoutin’, ‘Go! Go lad! Now!’”
Connor unfastened the top studs of his shirt, drawing forth the delicate chain with the gold locket dangling from the end of it. “That was when my mother pressed this into my hand, told me to guard it with my life so I’d always have a piece of her with me. So I’d never forget who I was.” His fist tightened around the locket. “Then I grabbed Catriona and I went. There was a hollow tree at the edge of the woods where we used to play. I dragged her inside and held her against me. I made her bury her face in my shirt and I covered her ears so she wouldn’t hear what was goin’ to happen.”
Pamela ached to cover her own ears, so she wouldn’t have to hear it either.
“The redcoats came then. The lamps were still lit and I could see everythin’ through the window of our cottage.” All of the passion left his voice, leaving it as hard and brittle as flint. The very absence of emotion gave Pamela a harrowing glimpse into his anguish, his helpless rage. “They grabbed my father, took turns striking him until he hung limp between two of them, bloody and battered but still conscious. Then they went after my mother, laughin’ and makin’ jokes about what a fine time they were goin’ to have with her.”
Connor swung around to face her, the raw hatred in his eyes chilling her to the bone. “If I could have got to them in that moment, I swear to God I’d have killed them all with my bare hands.”
“You couldn’t leave Catriona.” Pamela’s voice was equally fierce. “You made a vow to your father. In your heart of hearts, you knew he was right. If you had let the redcoats get their hands on her…” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.
“When they came for my mother, she pulled a pistol out of her skirt and pointed it at them.” One corner of Connor’s mouth slanted upward in the ghost of a smile. “She looked so beautiful standin’ there—tall and proud, facin’ them down as if she was a queen and they were nothin’ but a bunch of slaverin’ goblins. For a breath or two, I even dared to hope.” His smile faded. “But she only had one shot and there were nearly a dozen of them, circlin’ her like a pack of wolves.”
Pamela came to her feet, transfixed against her will. She wanted to throw her arms around his neck and press her mouth to his to silence him, to drag him down into the wet grass and do whatever it took to stop him from telling her what happened next.
“When she lifted the gun to her temple, I heard my father shout, ‘No!’ But she just smiled at him, the same way she always smiled at me when she was rufflin’ my hair before bedtime or scoldin’
me for wearin’ my muddy boots in the house. You see, she knew they were goin’ to kill them both and she wasn’t about to make my father watch those animals take turns rapin’ her before they did.”
Connor’s eyes were as dry and barren as a desert, but Pamela could feel hot tears trickling down her own cheeks.
“When she pulled that trigger, I felt Catriona’s wee body jerk in my arms as if she’d been the one shot. I realized then that I’d been screamin’ the whole time, but without makin’ a single sound. As my mother fell, my father broke free of the redcoats and tried to get to her, but they knocked him over the head with the butt of a pistol. Then they dragged him outside and hanged him. I buried my face in Catriona’s hair and kept it there until all was quiet.”
As quiet as a beautiful spring eve with crickets chirping and a gentle breeze blowing across the surface of a lake. On that night so long ago there would have been nothing but the muffled sound of a little girl’s sniffling, the eerie creaking of a rope and the wind sighing through the branches of the pines in a timeless lament.
“When we came creepin’ out, the cottage was a smolderin’ ruin. My father’s body was still swingin’ from the tree. I pulled Catriona into my arms one last time, tryin’ to shield her from that sight.” He bowed his head. “Then I buried my parents and put my sister on the mail coach to London with a note askin’ my uncle to look after her.”
“You were all alone,” Pamela whispered, swallowing past the knot of anguish in her throat. “How did you bear it?”
She lifted a hand but he caught her wrist in a harsh grip before her fingertips could brush his cheek. “I don’t want your pity, lass. And I sure as hell don’t need your charity.”
A helpless laugh escaped her. “Is that what you think I’m offering you, Connor? Pity? Charity? Because I can promise you that I didn’t feel particularly charitable tonight when I saw the way you were looking at Simon Wescott’s wife.”
He blinked down at her, clearly taken aback by her words. “How did you feel?”
Some Like It Wild Page 18
