Daring

by Jillian Hunter

  He looked up at the doctor. “Wait a minute. Did you just tell me that she didn’t get shot?”

  “No, she didn’t,” Sinclair said reluctantly, with the thought crossing his mind that it might have been better for her if she had, breaking into his house, of all the insane schemes. Connor Buchanan might fight like a lion for justice. He might be a brilliant lawyer, but more than one of his colleagues had privately observed that black demons drove that brilliance. A man like Buchanan would make table scraps out of an inexperienced young girl like Maggie.

  He snapped his bag shut. “Why is everyone standing about? Have the servants make a stretcher to carry her inside. I didn’t say she wasn’t hurt.”

  “We don’t need a stretcher,” Connor retorted. Deep beneath his anger and suspicion was a relief so sharp it made him feel weak. He didn’t know why, it was irrational, but he clung to the hope that if the kidnappers hadn’t tried to hurt this woman, then they wouldn’t hurt Sheena either. “If she isn’t shot, she isn’t dying. I’ll carry her inside myself.”

  Before Maggie or the doctor could object, he knelt and gathered her into his arms. It was a spontaneous act. He wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to do it. He’d been attracted to her earlier, and even though he didn’t trust her now, he refused to let anyone else be responsible for her. If she knew anything at all about Sheena, he would soon find out. Nothing like this had ever happened in his life.

  “Mind her ribs, Connor,” Ardath scolded behind him. “You’re going to crush her, holding her like that.”

  “I am not,” he said in annoyance. He glanced down at Maggie. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, no doubt to avoid his. He couldn’t tell if she was in physical pain or simply terrified. He felt cold with fear himself, shock and anger clashing inside him.

  Norah hurried after them. “Why aren’t the men back with Sheena? What if they can’t find that carriage? Ask her again what the kidnappers looked like, Connor. She’s the only one who got a close look at them.”

  Connor remained silent as he carried Maggie across the courtyard. He was too engrossed in his thoughts to pay any attention to Norah’s anxious questioning. God knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that something like this would happen. Perhaps he’d grown immune to the occasional threats that usually amounted to nothing, except for the one defendant’s wife who’d stabbed him in the wrist with a salad fork at a dinner party after he’d prosecuted her husband for arson.

  But the burglary and his sister’s abduction in one night? Were they connected? Why would anyone take Sheena except to hurt him? He swallowed over the lump of helplessness in his throat and wondered who hated him so much he would avenge himself on an innocent family.

  He hazarded another glance at the woman in his arms. She weighed next to nothing; she looked soft and frightened, hidden in his shoulder, but she had condemned herself with her own words. Disappointment, regret, and wounded pride dug talons into his heart, uprooting the treacherous seeds of tenderness that had begun to sprout.

  Who was she? Certainly not Elliot’s daughter.

  Why had she come here tonight? Not to celebrate his success.

  As he moved, his steps mechanical, he could feel her unbound hair brushing his arm, sensual, feminine, teasing. Even bundled up awkwardly against his chest, she possessed a delicate grace and dignity that reminded him of the tapestry princess. The virgin who would lure a beast to its death, who would betray the image of innocence that had attracted him. Dear God, when had he started believing in romance? His own naivete infuriated him. His vulnerability came as a shock.

  He stopped, drawing a deep breath. “Where the hell am I supposed to take her?” he said in such an angry growl that Maggie lifted her head to stare at him.

  “Take her upstairs where she’ll have quiet and privacy from curious eyes,” Ardath said in a cool voice, following behind Norah with Bella and Dr. Sinclair.

  “Privacy?” Connor snorted. “Not in my life.”

  His bachelor uncle came running out of the house as Connor resumed walking past the doors to the drawing room. A tall portly man in his early sixties, the Earl of Glenbrodie had spent all but the last decade of his life traveling around the world as an amateur botanist.

  He’d been in the basement brewing an herbal remedy for one of the party guests when the excitement had exploded. Connor had long ago realized that the man lived in another world from everyone else.

  “I just heard about Sheena.” The earl brushed a sprinkling of loose soil from the gardener’s apron he wore over his jacket; his cheeks were ruddy above his trim white beard. Then, noticing the slip of a girl in Connor’s arms, he lowered his voice in disapproval. “Well, everyone criticizes my behavior, but I must say, this is a fine time to be carrying a woman around in the courtyard with a housebreaker upstairs and your sister Sheena stolen by a stranger.”

  Connor scowled. God, he could feel the start of a killer headache throbbing behind his left eye, and now people, important people, were peering at him from behind his own windows. “Apparently the girl was injured trying to rescue Sheena,” he said through his teeth. “The doctor wants her made comfortable.”

  “She tried to rescue Sheena?” The earl’s face softened. “For heaven’s sake then, don’t just stand out here in the damp with her. Do what the doctor told you. Who is she, anyway?”

  Connor met Maggie’s gaze, hardening his heart against the unexpected power of the innocence in her eyes. “Nobody seems to know,” he said. “All I can say for certain is that she isn’t Elliot’s daughter.”

  “The poor child could be in shock,” the earl said with a reassuring smile for Maggie. “What is your name, my dear?”

  Maggie sighed in resignation. There was no point in trying to hide the truth. His lordship hadn’t recovered from her earlier deception. It had to be difficult for a man of his stature to admit he could be victimized.

  “My name,” she began bravely, “is—”

  “Maggie!” a familiar young male voice shouted down from the balcony that led into Connor’s bedroom. “Judas, don’t tell me they’ve caught you, too? I swear I didna breathe a word. I said I was housebreaking all by myself. I didna let on for a minute that you were the mastermind. I told ’em the slipper on the balcony was mine. I said I’d stolen it.”

  A dead silence met Hugh’s revealing outburst. Everyone seemed afraid to break the devastating tension that held Lord Buchanan spellbound. Maggie cringed as she felt his arms tighten around her like bands of iron, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up at his face. The anger that emanated from him like smoke forewarned her of a dangerous fury seething beneath his surface composure.

  Two male servants emerged from the bedroom to try to drag Hugh off the balcony.

  “Make a run for it, Maggie,” the boy shouted, adding fuel to the fire he’d started. “Remember the rumors about him— you’re done for if you dinna get away from the devil.”

  It sounded like good advice to Maggie. She wouldn’t have a lambchop’s chance once the lion dragged her into his den. “I think you ought to put me down, my lord,” she told Connor, straining against his arms.

  There wasn’t a flicker of cooperation on his face. “Who the hell are you?” he said in a low, furious voice.

  Ardath tugged on the tail of his evening jacket. “Just put her down, Connor. You’re probably hurting her. You don’t know your own strength. I’ve told you that before.”

  “The girl might have sustained internal injuries, Lord Buchanan,” Dr. Sinclair said in a stern tone. “I can’t allow you to manhandle her like this. She requires careful treatment.”

  “Put the girl down, I say.” The earl had taken Maggie’s side along with the others. “As far as I can make out, she’s the only one who lifted a damn finger to save Sheena. The family owes her an enormous debt.”

  Maggie’s pulse began to pound in panic. He was backing away from his friends and family like a cornered animal. Clearly he didn’t give a damn what anyone said. The cruel glea
m in his eyes foreshadowed unimaginable punishments. The most powerful man in Scotland, and she was at his mercy. He wasn’t going to listen to reason. He wouldn’t care that she’d only wanted to help a friend. All the dreadful things she’d heard about him were true.

  The situation called for desperate measures.

  She broke out of his arms with such an unexpected burst of energy that Connor, taken off guard, almost lost his hold on her. For a breathless moment she believed she had a chance at freedom. She actually thought she could escape him. Then he snagged a handful of her cloak just in time.

  Maggie’s toes never even touched the ground. He lifted her in the air with the amount of effort it would have taken him to pluck a daisy from a flowerpot.

  She gasped, her feet dangling between his legs, his large hands clamped around her waist. To make matters worse, Dr. Sinclair hadn’t stuffed the stolen éclairs back into her pockets and they were sliding free. Fortunately, in all the commotion, an insignificant thing like a few pastries falling to the ground went unnoticed.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same for the other bottle of champagne she’d crammed in the pocket of her cloak. It was a wonder it had survived her fall from the carriage.

  His mistress was right. The man obviously did not know his own strength.

  When he yanked her back toward him, and into the darkness, the bottle finally dislodged and hit the stone walkway with the force of a lead ball hurtling from a cannon. The cork exploded in midair. The silence amplified the deafening pop.

  Ardath uttered a startled shriek. “Good Lord, a gunshot! Someone’s shooting at us.”

  “The boy on the balcony,” Norah cried. “I thought I saw something in his hand!”

  The earl threw his arms around Ardath’s mother and began dragging her down the steps. “Everyone on the ground! Connor, protect that girl—we need her help. Guard her with your life.”

  The old groom came running up from the courtyard, drawn by all the shouting. “What’s the matter? Are the kidnappers back?”

  “Someone is shooting at Connor,” Ardath said breathlessly, picking up her skirts to run. “Take cover, Jacob.”

  The groom stumbled down the steps, shouting back at the servants who were spilling out of the house. “Someone is trying to assassinate the Lord Advocate! Save yourselves.”

  Maggie never had a chance to explain. All of a sudden she was flying backward, sailing over the steps, with Connor’s big hard body breaking the fall. She credited his reflexes that he reacted so swiftly. She’d been too stunned to do anything but stare.

  He rolled her beneath him, cushioning her head with his arm. The impact knocked the breath from her body. A monument of muscle, bone, and sinew smothered her, making it impossible to move. The man might have been sculpted out of stone. His straight blond hair tickled her chin. His massive chest crushed hers, their hearts beating in wild harmony. She groaned to protest her discomfort.

  “Lord Buchanan—”

  “Don’t talk.”

  “But there isn’t—”

  “Damn it, be quiet, would you? This is a life or death situation. Someone wants to kill us.”

  The others had all taken cover under the row of topiary animals that surrounded the darkened terrace. Ardath and her mother were crouched arm-in-arm under a spread-winged evergreen dragon; Norah, the earl, and Dr. Sinclair huddled together in fear of their lives under a bush trimmed to be a pair of Minoan bulls.

  Maggie winced inwardly as she heard the champagne bottle roll down the terrace steps toward them, where it began spinning like a Chinese firecracker.

  Champagne sprayed through the air in a bubbling mist. Connor raised his head, muttering, “What the hell?” just as a final jet of yellow-label hit him full in the face.

  Mortified, Maggie watched his expression of alarm transform into outrage as he realized what had happened. He pushed up on his elbows, allowing her the space to gasp for a breath, but not to escape. A shudder of apprehension seized her as he stared down at her in silence. She almost wished an assassin would appear.

  Time stopped, ticking by in a slow agony of seconds. Even if he had released her, she couldn’t have broken the power of his heartless gaze. She was his prisoner in more ways than one, enwrapped in a web of suspense.

  Champagne dripped down his lean cheek to tremble in the cleft of his chin. She could hear the scrape of footsteps behind them—the other guests emerging from their hiding places. She could hear the harsh rhythm of Connor’s breathing, as if words failed him, as if the anger that consumed him had pushed him beyond the point of coherent speech.

  Brazen it out, bairns, that master criminal, the Chief, would say as he shoved his little band of pickpockets into the streets. Never admit your guilt to the law even if you’re caught red-handed. Maintain your innocence to the end.

  So, with a self-possession that would make her venerable Highland friend proud, she slipped her hand inside Connor’s vest pocket to remove his handkerchief and soak up the Clicquot-Ponsardin on his jaw. His body stiffened in reaction. His facial muscles felt like granite under her fingertips.

  In fact, if he glared any harder, his face would probably crack.

  “Oh, my.” Ardath dipped her knuckle in the effervescent puddle on the step and tasted it with a baffled look. “It’s champagne. I believe you’ve just been christened, Connor.”

  “Help the girl up, Connor,” the earl called down the steps. “Neither of you can be comfortable in that position.”

  “Champagne?” Bella said in a puzzled voice, plucking a leaf from her boa. “You mean that someone was trying to assassinate Connor with a bottle of champagne? What will these criminals think of next?”

  Connor didn’t answer. He was terrifyingly still.

  Maggie drew a breath. Her gaze lifted for an instant to the balcony where Hugh was hanging over the railing laughing his head off at the scene below. The two male servants who’d been ordered to restrain him were having a hard time controlling their own sniggers of amusement.

  Connor still hadn’t moved. She could feel the imprint of his body through her clothing. Intimate, angry, invasive. She wondered if they were going to stay all night in this humiliating position.

  She dabbed at the spot of champagne on his chin that she’d missed. It seemed like the least she could do. “Well, you were right about one thing, my lord,” she said in a confidential tone. “It did keep its fizz.”

  For the first time in a decade Connor’s mental faculties failed him. All he knew about this woman was that she had broken into his house, in an incredible act of daring, captivated and deceived him, and apparently played angel of mercy to his sister. Now, to add insult to injury, she was dabbing stolen champagne off his chin and damn if deep down in that irrational male part of his psyche, he didn’t find the act mildly arousing.

  His face forbidding and cold, he peeled the soggy handkerchief from her fingers and lifted her to her feet, glancing down hard at the pastry that had fallen between them. He bent to pick it up, studying it in disbelief.

  “What the—God above, it’s one of my own damned éclairs.”

  The earl stepped a little closer, shaking his head in admonishment. “I can’t believe you’d eat dessert at a time like this. Don’t you care about anything except your own selfish pleasures?”

  Connor vented an uncivilized curse.

  Ardath straightened slowly, her voice placating and low. “Connor, it was only champagne.”

  He ignored them all, rounding on the petite girl who stood in a puddle of moonlight. God help him, she was exquisite, her eyes huge in that fragile face. But he should have known better. Life had taught him that much. A tapestry princess was too good to be true.

  “Who are you?” His voice blasted across the terrace like a blizzard as he strode toward her. “Damn it, you will answer me if we have to stand here all evening.”

  She raised her chin, eyeing him with the aristocratic disdain which reduced him to the social equivalent of a snail
, and which, over the past few decades, had gotten most of her ancestors beheaded. “I am Marguerite Marie-Antoinette de Saint-Evremond. In deference to the Scottish side of the family, I go by the name Maggie Saunders. Not,” she added as an afterthought, “that it’s any of your business.”

  Chapter

  6

  Connor squeezed back against the railing to allow the procession of servants to pass him on the stairs. He, the master of the house, had ceased to exist. His staff barely spared him a glance. They were too busy vying for the honor of serving the courageous woman who had single-handedly taken on the kidnappers. It was the talk of the whole street, if not the city. Her brave act had taken on epic proportions.

  Towels, heated water, pots of tea, Norah’s nightclothes. Not a luxury was denied the dubious heroine who, against Connor’s ignored complaints, had been installed in the recently refurbished guest chamber.

  “Oh, sir, would you mind carrying these before I ruin ’em?” a chambermaid said over a mound of pillows, struggling to thrust a bouquet of scraggly Michaelmas daisies at him. “It’s the best we could do at such short notice to brighten the poor mite’s room. You must be so proud of her, sir, trying to save your sister.”

  Stunned, Connor stuffed the flowers under his arm as the maid barreled around him. “This woman has had a very unsettling effect on my entire household,” he explained to the bewildered young Welsh police inspector who tried to follow him up the crowded stairs. “Not that either my family or my staff go out of their way to respect my wishes, but her presence has definitely made things worse.”

  “I can see that, my lord.” The inspector leaned his halberd against the banister. “Were she and your missing sister acquainted by any chance?”

  Connor paused. “Not that I know of, but you’ve brought up a good point. A connection between the housebreaking and Sheena’s abduction did cross my mind. You’ll have to question the girl in depth. I’m afraid my first reaction was impulsive, and probably not wise. I tried to follow the carriage on horseback, but it had already disappeared. No one I questioned on the way had even seen it. I should have kept my head and summoned help right away.”