Daring

by Jillian Hunter

  She felt the ground vibrating beneath her. From the corner of her eye she saw a large gray stallion thundering across the courtyard into the street. She recognized the rider as Lord Buchanan right away, his broad shoulders rigid, his face a study in ruthless determination. He didn’t notice her, and she was relieved. She hoped fiercely that he would hunt down and punish the men who had taken his sister.

  Her thoughts drifted into blankness, curiously detached and unafraid. It crossed her mind that she might be dying. Listen to that maid screaming. What an undignified noise to usher you into the afterlife. Shadows were closing in on her. She didn’t try to fight the loss of consciousness.

  The sounds impinged on the shadows: a muddle of voices, footsteps, the maid babbling between screams that her mistress had been abducted and that the brave woman lying dead by the gate had tried to rescue her. Maggie had no idea how much time had elapsed since she had seen Lord Buchanan cantering past her.

  Suddenly there was a crowd of people in evening clothes standing over her, lamenting her demise, Sheena’s abduction, the wicked state of the world that two innocent women should come to such an end.

  “I’m not dead yet,” she said weakly, but the party guests were so engrossed in putting together the pieces of the heinous crime that Maggie’s voice went unheeded.

  “The murderer has struck again,” one man said with a sort of grim satisfaction.

  “It might not be the murderer,” another retorted. “This could have been one of Connor’s rivals taking revenge, or warning him off. He’s Lord Advocate now and can expect this sort of thing.”

  “Is there a ransom note?”

  “Let’s take this poor lassie’s body inside. Look at the wee thing. What a tragedy.”

  “I’m not dead,” Maggie said in a stronger voice, scowling up at the concerned faces.

  “Who is she, anyway?”

  “Did the maid get a description?”

  “Norah said she was Elliot’s daughter.”

  “She’s not my daughter,” Elliot said from the back of the crowd. “Philomena’s still inside trying to get that caviar off her dress.”

  Maggie sat up, so irritated that she scarcely felt the sharp pain in her shoulder. “I’m not dead, damn it, but I will be soon if somebody doesn’t help me.”

  Lazurus rising four days from the tomb had probably not caused such a commotion. The guests gasped as if they had seen a ghost. They took a collective step back, stumbling against one another.

  From the safe distance they stared down at Maggie in dumbstruck silence.

  She sank back onto her cloak with a faint groan, aware once again of the deep pain in her shoulder. She had made her point.

  “I think I’ve been shot,” she said with a grimace of pain.

  This wrung another gasp from the guests.

  “A man in a black mask took Lord Buchanan’s sister,” she added.

  “Took her where?” someone had the stupidity to ask.

  “They didn’t say. It—it was an abduction. I was hurt trying to stop them. Lord Buchanan went chasing after them too.”

  “Oh, my God. Connor!” A large-figured attractive woman in her fifties, with auburn hair, broke from the line of stunned guests to kneel at Maggie’s side. “Don’t worry, my dear. We’ll take care of you. Where were you shot?”

  The woman smelled heavily of powder and orange water, and her raspy voice was kind and concerned. The fan dangling on her wrist hit Maggie in the face. Her sable boa floated down to tickle her nose, but the worst part was that she kept leaning all her weight against Maggie’s left shoulder, which hurt like blue blazes as it was.

  “What is it, Bella?” one of the guests said.

  Ardath abandoned Connor at the fountain to investigate. “What happened, Mother?”

  “One of Connor’s young guests was shot trying to stop Sheena’s kidnappers,” the woman named Bella answered in a whisper.

  Maggie breathed out a sigh. “I suppose you could say I deserved this, turning felon and breaking into a house, but my motives were pure. I think I was shot in the shoulder. I’m not entirely sure. My head feels awfully queer. I must be hallucinating—I thought I heard an angel singing.”

  “That’s one of the cats that got locked up in the carriage house during the confusion,” Bella explained gently.

  “Dear heaven,” Ardath said. “Somebody fetch the Lord Advocate.”

  The color drained from the older woman’s face as she gently drew open Maggie’s cloak. “Lord help us. She’s only a wee thing. Connor.” Her voice was deep and urgent, attracting the tall figure from the fish pond where he and Norah stood questioning the maid. Evidently his search for his sister had proven unsuccessful, and he had returned alone.

  Ardath stared at Maggie with tears welling in her eyes. “How bad is it, Mother?”

  “Someone send for the doctor,” Bella said gruffly. “Elliot’s daughter has been shot. To judge by her color, it doesn’t look good.”

  “I knew it,” Maggie whispered, and closed her eyes in resignation as people began running to and fro.

  The end must be very near, she thought. The head groom of Lord Buchanan’s household brought her a horse blanket and tucked her up in its smelly warmth. Patting her hand, he backed away with a tragic shake of his head.

  Then the Lion himself was kneeling over her, an intimidating man even in that humble position. Imprisoned in the perimeters of his shadow, she felt small, protected, and terrified of his latent power all at once. His presence momentarily eclipsed her own fear. A breath shuddered out of her chest.

  He was distraught and furious over his sister’s abduction—Maggie wasn’t quite so far gone that she could remain unaffected by the raw emotions that tightened his riveting features. Shock washed over his face when he recognized her from their recent encounter. His hazel eyes burned with the fires of hell’s vengeance as they met hers.

  “It’s all right,” he said quietly, touching his big hand to her forehead. “You’re a very brave girl, and I’ll take care of you. I’m going to find the men who did this. Try to rest.” He dropped his tone to a whisper. “Oh, lass, why didn’t you stay where I left you?”

  His voice sent shivers down her spine. It was a voice as warm and wonderful as whisky drunk without restraint on a winter night. His hand felt cool in contrast. His fingers were skilled and soothing, stroking her temple, evoking the most delicious sensations in her already overwrought nervous system. His strength comforted her.

  “If I’d known earlier this was going to happen,” she joked weakly, “I would have drunk another glass of champagne with you.”

  He swallowed hard. “Hush now. Save your strength, Philomena.”

  “I hate that name,” she whispered with a frown. “It’s even worse than Marguerite.”

  “You shouldn’t talk, lass.” He looked as if he were waging a fierce war within himself to contain his anger. “Just let me help you.”

  “I’m not really a recluse either,” Maggie confessed.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No. I suppose it doesn’t, does it?”

  “Ask her what the men looked like,” Norah prompted over his shoulder.

  Connor hesitated, struggling to control his emotions, to recover from the shock of realizing that not only was Sheena missing but that this was the girl who had enchanted him such a short time ago. He couldn’t think straight. His mind was reeling. His body still pulsed with outrage and the sick fear of riding across Edinburgh after the mysterious carriage that had disappeared into the night.

  He hadn’t found his sister. Was she already dead? He wanted to throw back his head and roar like an animal in frustration.

  He wanted to take action, to make everything as it was before. Sheena was the baby, the wild child of the family. She wouldn't know how to defend herself. He couldn’t bear to think of anyone harming her, or of never seeing her again.

  Guilt tore through him as he remembered wishing her out of his life only an hour ago
.

  What if she were wandering about hurt and frightened, abandoned in a dirty alley? Would someone help her?

  Someone had tried.

  He stared down in wonder at the girl lying so still before him. Her bones felt fragile beneath his fingers, like finely wrought porcelain. Her skin reminded him of moonlight, fair and translucent, without a trace of warmth. He frowned, pressing his thumb against her lower lip as if to still the sigh that fluttered out. She had been so vibrant earlier.

  “Why?” he wondered aloud.

  Why had this happened? He could understand someone attacking him, but not Sheena. And this girl who’d made him laugh and feel like a fool—had he finally found someone he could give his heart to only to lose her in a twisted stroke of fortune? For an irrational moment he almost believed the rumors of his reputation. Had he sold his soul somewhere along the way? Did tonight, his celebration of triumph, mark the beginning of the price he would have to pay?

  He set his jaw, refusing to let the irrational thoughts take root. He concentrated instead on the anger burning in his blood, a potent emotion he would use to punish the men who had done this. It made him want to kill with his bare hands to see her lying here like a broken doll, and to imagine Sheena in even worse circumstances. He could only blame himself. Because he dealt in danger, two innocent women could lose their lives.

  “Do you remember, lass?” he asked, not pressuring her, brushing back the black curls that lay against her cool ashen cheek.

  She frowned as she fought to bring back the details. “It was a large black carriage,” she said slowly. “The driver had gray-brown hair, I think. But I didn’t see the man who took your sister. He had on a mask, and—”

  She stopped in mid-sentence, biting the inside of her lip. Everything was so confused in her mind, superimposed with the memory of her parents’ arrest, the police who had stood like sentinels of death on the chateau lawn. Then that curious blankness, the gap in recall, images suppressed like tender shoots in black soil, pressing against layers of protective consciousness.

  “I can’t remember much more than that, but I won’t lie to you anymore, my lord,” she whispered fiercely. “I’m not really a criminal—we had to get the confession. Jamie Munro is a dimwit but he’s no killer, no matter what the papers say. Please don’t prosecute him. Whoever murdered those people is still running free.”

  Connor’s hand went deathly still on her cheek.

  “The poor lassie is delirious.” Jacob, the old groom, shook his grizzled head in sympathy. “ ’Tis from the shock and the blow to her head, no doubt. I’ve seen it happen on the battlefield. They go all dotty in the end. All we can do is make her comfortable.”

  Maggie shuddered, fearing the prospect of death even less than she did the unnerving chill that had frosted Connor’s eyes. Streetwise eyes that offered no redemption, that had seen too much, sharpened over the years into dangerous sophistication. His mind had latched onto every condemning word that had come out of her mouth. Had she really imagined any hint of warmth in their hard hazel depths?

  Suddenly she understood his reputation for conquering his opponents in the courtroom. His gaze raked her like a sword that would lay bare her deepest secrets. He studied her with the unholy perception of a predator.

  But even worse than the cold glittering anger was the glimpse of disappointment, the death of a dream, that he had briefly allowed to show. The roguish charm, the concern, the vulnerability, all gone and crystallized into cynical suspicion.

  When he looked at her now, he didn’t see a tapestry princess. He saw a shameless little thief, a woman not worthy of his trust and tenderness.

  He still hadn’t said a word. He just stared down into her face while everyone else clucked in concern and cursed the slowness of physicians and the heartlessness of this crime.

  His silence alarmed her. She searched his face for mercy, for understanding, and found a barren plain. A frisson of foreboding crept down her back, forming sharp icicles of fear in its wake.

  She sat up without warning and threw off Connor’s hand. Her vision was a little blurry. Her ribs hurt, but the pain in her shoulder had become bearable. Everything paled in comparison to what she imagined her fate would be if this man unleashed his wrath on her.

  “I’m going home now,” she said, her voice shaking. If Hugh hadn’t taken advantage of all the furor to escape, she couldn’t do anything to help him. “I want to be by myself.”

  The old groom glanced at Connor in concern. “Dinna let her move around, my lord.”

  Connor forced her back down onto the blanket. Even though he did not hurt her, there was an underlying strength of steel in the gesture that warned her she wasn’t going anywhere without his permission.

  “Lie still, Miss…” His deep voice paused on the faintest note of irony. “I don’t believe I ever did catch your name.”

  “I thought you told me she was Elliot’s daughter,” Norah said, interrupting her distressed pacing by the gate to intervene. “Oh, thank God, here’s Ardath with the doctor now.”

  Maggie closed her eyes. She pretended that she was having a relapse and hadn’t caught the menacing undertone in Connor’s last remark. The image of his face in all its ruthless beauty blazed in her mind. She almost felt sorry for whoever had abducted his sister. Connor Buchanan looked capable of tearing them apart limb by limb.

  “The doctor is here.” Ardath glanced at Maggie in distress. “Connor, get out of the way. How can the girl breathe with you hovering over her like that?”

  Maggie stole a peep at him through her eyelashes. He stood, reluctantly, watching her in brooding silence as if he expected her to vanish like smoke if he looked away. She lifted her eyes up the seemingly endless length of his legs and torso and gazed into his face. He stared back with all the warm reassurance of a monolith, the accusation in his eyes raising gooseflesh on her arms.

  “Well, well, what have we here?”

  The cultured gruffness of the doctor’s voice struck a familiar chord in Maggie’s memory. Curious, she looked to his bearded face as he knelt to make a discreet examination of her shoulder.

  “Maggie?” He stopped in astonishment, motioning for his assistant to bring him his medical bag. “It isn’t you, is it, lass? What are you doing lying injured in Connor Buchanan’s courtyard?”

  She sucked in a ragged breath. The enormity of what had happened deepened her voice. “It’s me, Dr. Sinclair. You won’t believe what I’ve done.”

  “Knowing you, my dear, it can’t be any great crime.”

  “Oh, yes, it can.”

  “I doubt it,” he said, smiling to distract her as he began a gentle probe of her shoulders. “But let’s worry about it later, shall we? Your well-being is the thing for now. I can’t seem to find where the bullet went in.”

  Connor frowned, looming over the tender moment like a conqueror in a Celtic legend. “You know this woman, Dr. Sinclair?”

  “Of course I know her,” the doctor snapped; while he might harbor a soft spot in his heart for Maggie, he treated everyone else, patient, prince or pauper, with unfailing rudeness.

  Ardath gave Connor a strange look. “Why did you invite her to your party if you don’t know her?”

  “I didn’t.” Connor glanced down at Maggie, feeling that same earlier spell of inexplicable attraction, tainted now by his concern for his sister and the dark thread of suspicion running through his mind. “I thought she was Elliot’s daughter,” he said in a hard voice.

  “Not that again.” Maggie vented a tired sigh. Then her heart took a frightened plunge as she saw Dr. Sinclair studying her shoulder with a look of utter bewilderment on his face.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he murmured.

  She swallowed hard. She couldn’t bear the sight of the dark stains on the cotton gauze he gently withdrew from her shoulder. “Is it that bad? Have I lost much blood?” she asked in a whisper.

  He lowered his voice so only she could hear him. “Mag
gie, my darling little dunderhead, you have a nasty cut on your head, but this isn’t blood I’m cleaning away. It’s chocolate, melted chocolate and something else that looks a bit like vanilla cream.”

  “Choc—oh, hell, the éclairs,” she whispered. “This is the most embarrassing moment of my life. I was taking them back for the children—they’ve caught Hugh, you know. We were breaking into his lordship’s house to get Jamie’s confession. Then his lordship’s sister got abducted. I tried to help her, and I’ll probably go to prison for my trouble.”

  Dr. Sinclair glanced up in reluctance at the tall figure hovering over them. “He’s a devil of a man to have made your enemy, Maggie,” he said quietly.

  Connor stared in horror at the dark-stained cloth the doctor quickly stuffed back into his bag. The thought of anyone doing that to this woman, whoever the hell she was, whatever she had done, stirred a wild fury in his soul… and terror that Sheena was in deadly danger. “What is all this whispering about?” he demanded. “Is she going to be all right or not?”

  Dr. Sinclair straightened his stooped frame, scowling up at Connor with his own brand of professional arrogance. “The woman has a serious head injury, possibly a dislocated shoulder and a bruised rib or two. She’ll need to be made comfortable and watched throughout the night. Let’s get her inside.”

  The skin over Connor’s cheekbones tightened as he glanced down into the delicate face that less than an hour ago had seemed like the vision from a dream. He couldn’t believe that her appealing innocence hid any dark motives. But neither was he naive enough to ignore what he’d heard with his own ears.

  Criminal. Confession. She’d mentioned Jamie Munro. Damn it. Damn the newspapers. Half of Scotland had already judged the old fool guilty, which meant that the real murderer might never be apprehended and brought to trial.