By the time she was done, her eyes were nearly swollen shut and she was too exhausted from weeping to lift her head from her sister’s lap.
“Let me see if I have this straight,” Sophie murmured, gently raking her fingers through Pamela’s disheveled hair. “As long as Connor was a dangerous ruffian with a price on his head who was highly likely to get you both hanged before all was said and done, you were willing to marry him. But now that you’ve discovered he’s a wildly wealthy nobleman who can give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of, you’ve tossed him aside like an old boot.”
Without lifting her head, Pamela nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again.
“And all because you’re so desperately noble and unselfish that you’re determined to throw away your happiness—and his—just to prove it.”
Pamela slowly lifted her head to look at her sister.
Sophie wrinkled her pert little nose at her. “Don’t you see, Pamela? Connor is the best thing that ever happened to you. He makes you greedy. And selfish. And willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want. And judging by the noises that have been creeping beneath my door every night for the past week, I’d say that what you want is him.”
“Of course I want him! I want him more than life itself! But I’m hardly duchess material.”
“Oh, please! The man clearly adores you. He doesn’t care if you’re a princess or a milkmaid. And besides,” she added firmly, “if you won’t marry him, I will.” A vengeful little smile curved her lips. “And wouldn’t that just serve his miserable cousin right!”
She rose, stretching and yawning like a graceful little cat, and padded back toward the dressing room. “If you manage to lure him back to your bed after you’ve told him what an idiot you’ve been, try to keep it down, won’t you? I need my beauty sleep.”
When her sister was gone, Pamela scrambled to her feet, joy surging in her heart. Suddenly, she felt deliciously greedy. And wildly selfish. And willing to do whatever it took—no matter how devious or wicked—to get what she wanted. And what she wanted was Connor. In her arms. In her bed. And in her life for every day—and night—that remained of it.
She started for the door, then stopped dead, letting out a terrible shriek when she came face to face with her own reflection in the cheval glass.
Somehow Connor knew he wouldn’t find the ballroom deserted. Yet he ended up there anyway, traversing the alternating squares of moonlight and shadow until he stood before the portrait of the elegant young duchess he had known only as “Mother.”
The duke wasn’t gazing up at the portrait but down at the open locket in his hand. “I wish I could have known this woman,” he said softly. “She looks so peaceful. As if she’d finally stopped striving for all the things she could never have.”
“Like your fidelity?”
The duke snapped the locket closed. “She probably paid that old crone in Strathspey to tell everyone she was dead. She was a clever girl.” A wistful smile touched his lips. “Too clever for the likes of me. After all—what better way for her to disappear and to protect you than to create another life for herself? With another name. Another family. Another man…”
“A good man,” Connor assured him. “They had a daughter together. My sister Catriona.”
The duke squinted up at him. “Was she happy then? Truly happy?”
Connor nodded. “I rarely saw her without a song or a smile on her lips.”
“I’m glad for that. I wanted her to be happy. I’m only sorry I wasn’t the man who could…” The duke trailed off, rubbing his thumb gently over the front of the locket. “She did love me, you know. Once.”
“Of course she did. If she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to break her heart.”
“Did she…die well?”
Connor briefly squeezed his eyes shut, seeing that last tearful smile his mother had given the man she loved, hearing the distant echo of a pistol shot in his memory. “She would say so. And in the end, I suppose that’s all that matters.”
The two men gazed up at the lovely young woman in the portrait who had shaped both their lives—first by her presence, then by her absence.
It was Connor who finally broke the silence. “You should be amused. It turns out that I’m my father’s son after all. Pamela is leaving me.”
The duke’s face crumpled in genuine dismay. “Oh, no, lad! You mustn’t let her do that!”
“And just how am I to stop her?” Connor raked a hand through his hair, his frustration finally erupting in a bitter oath. “If we were back in Scotland, I could just kidnap her and force her to marry me at gunpoint, then keep her chained to my bed until I could persuade her that she belonged there. But what the hell am I supposed to do here among you civilized folk? Browbeat her? Threaten to sue her for breaching our betrothal contract?”
The duke grasped both arms of his chair and slowly leveraged himself to his feet. Connor watched in amazement as he took one unsteady step toward him, then another, finally drawing close enough to clap a hand firmly on his shoulder.
The man’s shrewd hazel eyes were glittering with emotion. “Don’t make the same mistake I did, son. Don’t let pride stand in your way. Don’t browbeat her. Don’t threaten her. Love her. Simply love her.”
Pamela sat on the stool in front of the dressing table, muttering to herself and frantically daubing rice powder on her nose with a hare’s foot. She’d never been a pretty crier like Sophie, and her protracted episode of weeping had left her both swollen and splotchy.
She’d been trying to repair her face for nearly half an hour with indifferent results. She leaned back on the stool with a sigh, tossing the hare’s foot back in the dish of powder. There was simply no help for it. If Connor was going to love her, he was going to have to love her even when she looked like a puffy-eyed lobster.
With any luck he would have already extinguished the candles in his bedchamber. She hugged back a delicious little shiver of anticipation, smiling to imagine his surprise when she slipped into his room and into his bed. She could only hope he wouldn’t shoot her. Although given how much of a dunderhead she’d been earlier, she probably wouldn’t blame him if he did.
She was rising from the stool when she heard a peculiar scritching noise coming from behind her. Her heart leaped with joy when she realized the sound was coming from the window.
She should have known a stubborn Scotsman like Connor wouldn’t surrender that easily. Especially not to an equally stubborn English lass.
She flew over to unlatch the window and drag up the sash with eager hands. “Get in here this minute, you fool Highlander, before one of the footmen sees you and you ruin my reputation. Of course my reputation is probably in tatters anyway, after half of London watched me being hauled off in irons, so you might as well finish making a social pariah of me.”
She backed away from the window, grinning in anticipation, as a figure garbed all in black climbed through it.
But when he straightened, her smile faded. The intruder was a good half foot shorter than Connor. And squatter—broad in both the shoulders and hips. He wore a crude burlap mask draped over his head with jagged slits for eyeholes.
He lunged for her, clapping a hand roughly over her mouth and cutting off her scream before even Sophie could hear it.
Connor stood outside of Pamela’s door, gazing down at the crystal knob in his hand in disbelief. He gave it another experimental twist, followed by a violent jiggle. Nothing happened. This time the stubborn little minx had not only locked the window, but the door as well.
Connor sagged against the door, heaving a sigh. When he was handing out his sage advice, the duke might have warned him he was going to be reduced to begging outside a locked door. The old man had probably had ample experience at it.
“Pamela?” he said softly, trying to keep his voice low so that every nosy servant in the house wouldn’t hear him. “I know you can hear me, so there’s no point in pretending you can’t.”
Silence greeted his words.
“I know you’ve somehow gotten it into your bonny head that you’re not good enough for the likes of me. But the truth is I’m not fit to polish your boots. Being born a nobleman doesn’t make me a noble man. You can call me your lord all you like, but I’m still that same thieving, no-count Highlander who stole your drawers.
“I’ll never be worthy of a woman like you, but if you’ll let me, I’d like to spend the remainder of my days striving to be.” Remembering the duke’s admonition not to let pride stand in his way, he rested his brow against the door. “I’m not my father. I love you, lass, and I’ve no intention of going through the rest of my life being the man who was fool enough to lose you.”
He held his breath to listen, but didn’t hear so much as a whisper of sound coming from within the room. He lifted his head to scowl at the door. He’d never judged Pamela to be so heartless.
He could feel his temper rising. “Damn it all, woman, I’m a marquess and I’m going to be a duke someday. This is my house and I order you to open this door at once and bloody well marry me!”
Reaching the limits of his rather limited patience, Connor lifted his foot and kicked the door open, sending it crashing against the wall on its broken hinges.
The room was deserted. For a staggering shard of time, Connor thought Pamela was already gone. But her trunk was still sitting open on the floor; the bed was still littered with dresses and shoes. Before he could go striding over to the dressing room door to demand some answers from her sister, it came flying open.
A bleary-eyed Sophie was jerking a knot in the sash of her dressing gown, her motions brisk and furious. “Just because you two lovebirds have better things to do than sleep, that doesn’t mean the rest of us poor lonely souls don’t need to…” She trailed off as she spotted Connor standing there all alone. A bewildered frown creased her brow. “Where’s Pamela?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” he said grimly. “Her door was locked. From the inside.”
Sophie gazed up at him, a gentle breeze ruffling her hair.
Connor slowly turned, a chill of foreboding coursing down his spine. The window, which had been so carefully latched earlier, was standing wide open.
Chapter 28
When Crispin opened his eyes to find Sophie hovering over him like a celestial angel in a filmy white gown, he knew he must still be dreaming. Her blue eyes were quizzical and a gentle glow haloed her short golden curls.
Grinning sleepily, he reached up to draw her into his arms, eager to travel wherever this dream might take him.
A pair of hard hands jerked him out of the bed and slammed him against the nearest wall. His cousin’s face loomed in his vision, its rugged features set in ruthless lines. “Where is she?”
Crispin blinked frantically, trying to figure out how his beautiful dream could have turned into a nightmare with such bewildering speed. He was still half drunk from sleep and all the champagne he’d imbibed after Sophie had doused him in the stuff. Shortly after she’d stormed out, he’d left the ballroom with a full bottle in each hand. He had made short work of them in the solarium, then stumbled off to his chamber to fall into bed with his clothes still on.
He was still incapable of forming a coherent thought—much less a word—when Connor slammed him into the wall a second time, making his already pounding head pound even louder.
“Where is she?”
Crispin gave Sophie a perplexed glance. “Why, she’s right there beside you. Can’t you see her?”
“I’m not talking about Sophie,” Connor snarled. “I’m talking about Pamela. Where in the bloody hell is she?”
“How in the bloody hell am I supposed to know? She’s your fiancée, isn’t she?”
Crispin’s nightmare worsened when a hulking figure separated itself from the shadows. He was wearing a long nightshirt and a tasseled nightcap. Copper braids poked out from beneath the nightcap like a writhing horde of Medusa’s snakes. A gold tooth winked from the front of his mouth.
He leered at Crispin, cracking his massive knuckles as if he wished they were Crispin’s spine. “Give me ten minutes alone with the lad and I’ll make him talk.”
Flummoxed anew, Crispin clutched at the front of Connor’s shirt. “Isn’t that your valet?”
Sophie blew out a sigh. “You two are hopeless. Why don’t you let me talk to him?”
She was forced to edge under Connor’s arm when he refused to relinquish his grip on Crispin’s cravat. Despite his befuddled state, Crispin had no trouble focusing on her lovely face.
“My sister Pamela is missing,” she said, enunciating each word as if speaking to a child. “We have reason to believe she may have been taken against her will.”
“Your sister? Ah ha! I knew you weren’t her maid!”
“Yes, I’m afraid that was a bold-faced lie. Now we were hoping that you—or perhaps your mother—might have some information as to her whereabouts. Unfortunately, we can’t question your mother because her bed is empty.”
A helpless giggle escaped Crispin as he imagined them bursting into his mother’s bedchamber and manhandling her in such a manner.
Connor shook him until his teeth rattled, forcing Sophie to beat a hasty retreat. “If you can’t tell us where to find Pamela, then I’d strongly suggest you tell us where to find your mother.”
Crispin snorted with laughter. “She’s probably out collecting eye of newt or skinning some kittens to make a new pair of gloves.”
Growling beneath his breath, Connor lifted him clean off his feet. For a dizzying moment, Crispin feared he was about to go sailing through the nearest window—without the benefit of having it opened first. But Connor simply tossed him back onto the bed before raking a hand through his hair in disgust.
Crispin’s dream grew even stranger when a breathless footman in full livery came charging into the room. “There you are, my lord,” he said, sketching Connor a hasty bow. “We’ve been searching the entire estate for you. This missive just arrived. The man who delivered it claimed it was urgent—a matter of life and death.”
Connor snatched the folded piece of vellum from the servant’s hand. While he scanned the lines scrawled on the paper, the footman eyed their odd little party with some trepidation. Connor’s valet winked at him, which only seemed to worsen his agitation.
Sophie stood on tiptoe to peer over Connor’s shoulder, a frown clouding her pretty brow. “I know this address. It’s the Crown Theatre on Drury Lane. The one where Maman died.”
Ignoring the throbbing protest of his head, Crispin sat straight up in the bed. “I know that address as well. I took my mother there once so she could see Marianne Darby on the stage. Mother went to take tea with her a few times after that. I believe she saw her last on the very day she died.”
Crispin finished his cheerful recitation to discover they were all looking at him as if he’d sprouted a second aching head.
Even after all these months, the smell of char and ruin still lingered in the air. Connor stepped over a crumbling timber, marveling that such a wasteland could have once been a thriving theater. The roof had collapsed in the flames that had devoured the building, leaving three towering walls still open to the sky.
Dawn would be coming soon, but judging from the dark bellies of the clouds brooding over the theater, it would bring with it not sunlight but rain.
Connor edged his way around a blackened column to find himself staring into the hollow eyes of a plaster cherub, its once elegant gilt veneer now blistered and peeling.
From behind him, Brodie let out a low whistle. “If e’er there was a place for ghosts, laddie, this is it.”
Connor glanced back at the cloaked girl gingerly picking her way after them, knowing she had more reason to fear the ghosts that haunted this place than they did. He’d brought Sophie along against all of his best instincts. The note he’d received had warned that Pamela’s life would be forfeit if he notified the duke or the authorities that she was miss
ing and Sophie had threatened to throw the tantrum of all tantrums if left behind. He could only pray that Pamela would have a chance to yell at him for letting himself be bullied by such a spoiled slip of a girl.
A footfall sounded to the left of them. Connor swung around, drawing his pistol.
Crispin slowly emerged from the morning mist that was creeping through the shattered beams of the collapsed galleries. He lifted his hands in the air, looking sober in more ways than one.
“What are you doing here?” Connor asked without lowering the pistol.
“I want to help. She’s my mother. I might be able to reason with her.” When Connor cocked a skeptical eyebrow, he added, “There’s always a first time.”
“Are you armed?”
Crispin nodded, opening his coat to reveal a rapier and two dueling pistols.
Sophie sniffed. “What? Was the greengrocer all out of rotten cabbages?”
Disregarding Connor and the threat of his loaded pistol, Crispin lowered his hands to glare at her. “So you’re willing to overlook the fact that my mother may very well have burned your mother to death in her bed, but you won’t allow me to forget that bloody turnip, will you?”
“It was a tomato.” Folding her arms over her chest, Sophie presented her back to him, her slender shoulders stiff.
Connor slid his pistol back into his belt with a sigh. “You can stay. But I’ll expect you to do as I say.” He nodded toward Sophie. “And if you get in my way, I’ll let her shoot you.”
Crispin nodded grimly, then fell into step behind them. When he tried to help Sophie over a splintered board, she jerked her elbow out of his reach.
As they ventured deeper into the blackened heart of the theater, measuring each step as if it would be their last, Connor could feel his own heart begin to pound in a painful rhythm. Since watching his parents die, he hadn’t known a moment’s fear over his own well-being—not even when the hangman had slipped that shoddily knotted noose over his head. No matter how desperate the situation, his hands had always been steady, his aim ever keen. But now there was something more precious at stake. Something he valued far beyond his own misbegotten life.
Some Like It Wild Page 25
