Daring

by Jillian Hunter

  Connor gazed into the fireplace, more disturbed by the conversation than he showed. Cutthroats, murderers, arsonists. His uncle was frightening the girl to death. Still, Connor couldn’t deny there was a chance, a slim chance, that she might be in danger, depending on who had taken his sister, and why.

  His instincts told him that Sheena had not been kidnapped by someone with a past grudge against him. Still, once, a long time ago, only once, his instincts had betrayed him, and the cost had been a helpless old woman’s life.

  The memory haunted him even now, eight years later. The shock of learning how wrong he could be. That power gave him the ability to not only help people, but to hurt them.

  He rarely thought about that time in his life, it was a painful wound, but he’d never forgotten the details of his first and only legal failure.

  Early in his career he had defended a brash newspaper editor named William Montrose against a charge of brutally murdering a prostitute. A rose had been found in the abandoned warehouse where Montrose had left the woman’s body. Connor fought passionately to prove that the highly educated Montrose was innocent.

  He had nearly burst with pride at his first legal victory. He’d paraded his exonerated client around like a trophy. He’d even invited Montrose to his home and granted him an exclusive interview—until the night the police caught the man strangling his landlady, claiming she had tried to cheat him.

  The woman, frail and in her seventies, had died with a black silk rose in her hands.

  Over the years that black rose had become an emblem of revenge for Connor’s rivals, a cruel blow at his recovering confidence. They would never let him forget his one mistake, no matter how high he climbed.

  Neither would he. He would never forgive himself for what had happened to that old landlady. A prickle of cold sweat broke out on his back at the thought of his sister meeting a similar fate. Sheena was so blasted impetuous, too much like him for her own good.

  He released his breath, refusing to let the dark thoughts dominate. His spirits lifted unexpectedly as he sent an unwilling glance at the girl ensconced in his bed. How ridiculous, how unfair for Miss Saunders that by a quirk of timing and character she alone held the key to identifying the men who’d taken Sheena.

  She looked infinitely vulnerable as their eyes met, and he experienced an unwelcome stab of raw longing, remembering how her lithe body had fit so snugly into his last night. She might be an amateur thief, but in sexual matters she was still an innocent. Connor would stake his reputation on that. Her response to him had been artless and infinitely arousing.

  But a duke’s daughter? He doubted it.

  Perhaps she’d grown up as the offspring of a favored servant in a fine household, which would account for the airs she gave herself. A diamond in the gutter made for a nice fairy tale, but he questioned her story. The Chief was known to protect his “clan” of criminals, and she was apparently under Arthur’s protection. Connor was surprised the man hadn’t already put in an appearance, demanding her release.

  Still, he had to admit Miss Saunders was standing up well, all things considered. She had borne the shock of everything better than he had, in fact. His embarrassment over his behavior last night made him cringe. Trying to impress her with the merits of his imported champagne while she was stealing bottles of the stuff under her cloak. Seducing her like a bastard when she lay injured and defenseless under his alleged protection. No wonder she watched him with those wide eyes like a little girl being chased by a wolf in the woods.

  All of a sudden it wasn’t seduction he had to worry about. It was survival.

  “We don’t know anything yet,” he said, his voice deliberately impersonal as he came to his feet. “The ransom notes have all turned out to be fraudulent.”

  “There’s Rebecca to worry about now,” the earl said quietly. “I can’t bear to think of her so isolated, physically incapable of running from an attacker who might stalk her.”

  “Neither can I,” Connor said.

  The image slashed through his composure like a serrated dagger, reminding him that his influence only reached so far. And even if the note threatening Rebecca’s life was a hoax, the kidnappers could easily target her as their next victim. The carriage had been spotted headed for the Highlands. Was it on the way to his home in Kilcurrie even now?

  Who was he up against?

  Fortunately, after a hellish night of following false leads and interviewing trusted sources from the docks to the upper-class districts, he had reassured himself that it was not a ghost who had returned to wreak revenge.

  William Montrose, the murderer who had fooled and betrayed him, was dead. Connor had derived vicious satisfaction from watching the man’s body being lowered into a grave eight years ago. He had cursed Montrose’s soul with every clod of Highland dirt that condemned him to eternal darkness.

  He set his jaw. No one had noticed his lapse in attention, no one except the girl who stared at him with shadowed blue eyes that held too much sadness for him to ignore.

  All right. He would be fair. What if Miss Saunders had embellished the facts of her background? It was still to her credit that she had survived in the underworld among the hardened criminals whom Connor had sworn to sweep from the city like dirt. It was to her credit that she’d managed to retain that aura of absurd innocence like the lopsided halo of an angel who had fallen a little short of heaven.

  Despite everything, he was unwillingly touched by her silly scheme to help a friend in trouble. He valued that sort of stubborn loyalty. And no matter how much chaos she had added to his life, he had no desire to see her hurt.

  She was an innocent drawn into a bad situation, or so he hoped. To his astonishment, something inside him wanted to believe the best of her. Just as he wanted to believe that Sheena was still alive.

  Ardath’s voice pulled him abruptly from his thoughts. “Tell her about the Arrangement, Connor, before you leave for the courthouse. Explain what you and she will have to do to escape the kidnappers.”

  Chapter

  11

  For a moment Maggie couldn’t move, mesmerized by the look of raw anguish she had glimpsed in Connor’s eyes. It eclipsed her own emotions, the confusion and embarrassment of finding herself in this wretched situation with no one to blame but herself.

  He might behave like a heartless scoundrel, but even she could see he was genuinely worried about his sister. He was a hard man, but not inhuman. Even if he deserved his reputation, he didn’t deserve to suffer like this.

  Suddenly she felt obliged to help him, to atone for her misjudgment. His concern for Sheena was rather endearing. It was an emotion she fully understood. Wouldn’t she give anything just to know her own brother and sister were safe?

  She frowned, ignoring the bands of tension that tightened around her temples. She had to think, concentrate, remember. She tried to picture the courtyard, Sheena standing beside her, to recall any minute detail about the kidnapping.

  “What is the matter?” Ardath asked in concern, but her voice was as distant and indistinct as wind blowing across the end of a tunnel. A tunnel of darkness.

  Maggie groped through that darkness. The images became sharper and sharper. But suddenly she was no longer in the room. She wasn’t in Connor’s courtyard. She was ten years old and running up the vast stone staircase of the old chateau; she was calling her sister’s name in panic as Napoleon’s police ransacked the vast rooms below for documents to incriminate her father.

  The staircase seemed endless. Her heart threatened to burst as she stumbled up the last step; she realized she’d been followed. She hesitated, staring down the long hallway to Jeanette’s room. Candlelight showed through a crack under the door. Maggie felt a man’s hand grab her skirts.

  A light flared, bright as the sun, engulfed her in heat, then was hastily extinguished. Darkness enveloped her again like a blast of black wind that drove its cold breath into her bones.

  “For God’s sake,” Connor said, leaning
over her in alarm, tempted to shake her out of the frightening trance. “What’s the matter with her? Why does she look so white?”

  The concern in his voice broke through the darkness. It drew her out of the ice-cold shadows and back to the safety of the present. She gazed around the room. Then she raised her eyes to the tall figure at the foot of the bed.

  Her heart was beating wildly; she was still transfixed with the distant terror of standing at the top of those stairs. Fire and ice. A fear so profound it left her shaking over a decade later.

  “You remembered something?” he asked, straightening as the color began to return to her face. “Something about Sheena?”

  She tried to swallow over the constriction in her throat. “No. Nothing beyond what I told you. I’m so sorry. I really tried.”

  He nodded stiffly. Perhaps he was even a little relieved. He had not wanted that traumatized fear in her eyes to be associated with Sheena’s disappearance. He couldn’t help wondering what had caused it; for an instant he had wished to step inside her mind to protect her from whatever seemed to threaten her.

  He said none of this, of course. It perplexed him that he had even entertained such an outlandish thought. “I have to leave for the courthouse now,” he said stiffly. “I have to change my clothes.”

  Maggie thought he looked just fine the way he was, a little scruffy and disreputable, a distraction from the chilling memory she had just escaped. She wondered if he would take the time to shave before he left the house. His dark shadowed jaw made him look more like a pirate than a public prosecutor. She could just imagine the women in the courthouse gallery sighing in pleasure as they watched him. She of all people understood the importance of keeping up appearances. It was practically a de Saint-Evremond family code.

  But last night had thrown both their lives into turmoil. She had awakened this morning from a dream into a nightmare.

  In fact, she should be neatly making her own little bed right now, her poodle nibbling at her toes. Claude, her elderly butler, would be laying coals on the fire; as usual the task wouldn’t be completed until she was flying out of the house, choking down the cup of hot chocolate he insisted she drink for sustenance.

  To save cab fare she would walk all the way to where the Kennedy sisters lived in a house that was a mausoleum from the previous century. No one would dare bother her on the way because she was under the Chief’s protection.

  The two old women would insist she take tea. Their false teeth would clack like castanets while they conjugated French verbs. Their time-worn clothes would smell of camphor and lavender. They dreamed foolish dreams, but they were kind, unlike Maggie’s other younger pupils and their demanding parents, who treated her like a menial. Still, having to work for a living had brought her a sense of humility, which was definitely not a family trait.

  “I shouldn’t stay here,” she said awkwardly, the challenges of the real world closing in around her. “I do have obligations to meet.”

  The earl made a sound of distress. “It’s out of the question.”

  Ardath had found a comb in the dressing table and began to tug out the tangles in Maggie’s hair, glancing sharply at Connor as he returned to the chair for his rumpled evening jacket. “Aren’t you going to tell her about the plan you and Inspector Davies worked out, Connor?”

  Maggie watched him as he turned, the movement wooden and reluctant. He looked as if the burden of the world had fallen on his powerful shoulders, but if anyone could bear the weight, surely he was the man.

  “I was hoping that your memory would have returned this morning, or that my sister would have been found.” His unsettling hazel eyes held her spellbound. “Since neither is the case, it seems that you and I might be forced to go into seclusion, Miss Saunders. As the sole witness in a capital crime, you are entitled to protection, and by law your full cooperation is required.”

  Seclusion. Protection. Cooperation. The solemn words spoken in his deep Scots burr sounded so grave they gave her the shivers. She struggled to make sense of what this would mean in practical terms, the impact on her simple life. Her mind could not grasp the enormity of it.

  “Are you saying that I won’t be able to give French lessons for a living?” she finally managed to ask, trying not to sound too hopeful.

  “I’m afraid not.” His voice was very formal, giving Maggie the impression that he had been coerced, perhaps even tortured, into making this decision. “Naturally,” he added with the coolest nod, “your needs will be taken care of.”

  “I see,” she murmured, wiggling her toes under the silk-lined comforter. She hadn’t slept under silk since she was a child in the chateau. She doubted that his lordship would consider such a thing a need. How did he intend to protect her, anyway? Would she be carted off to some castle tower and kept under guard? Hidden in a potato cellar?

  “We realize this is a tremendous sacrifice,” the earl said. “But you do need protection, and we would do anything to have Sheena home safe in the bosom of her family where she belongs.”

  “And is Lord Buchanan himself going to protect me?” Maggie asked, unwillingly intrigued by the thought.

  Connor gave her a look which indicated he would rather eat a breakfast of live worms every day for the rest of his life. “I’ve been advised that it is necessary.”

  Maggie stared up at the ceiling, considering her options. She could grow accustomed to this kind of existence. After all, she had been born into it. She thought again of her other life, the people who cared for her. The Chief would be dead to the world at this hour, unless Claude panicked at her absence and woke him up, in which case Claude was the one who would end up dead. Hell broke loose in Heaven’s Court when the Chief wasn’t allowed to sleep off his whisky. Had anyone missed her yet?

  “Would I have to stay inside this house with Lord Buchanan all the time?” she asked thoughtfully.

  “Of course not,” the earl replied. “Connor has a splendid estate in the Highlands where he’ll keep you safe and entertained.”

  A deep scowl darkened Connor’s face. “I will keep her safe. I am not a traveling circus.”

  Maggie slowly lowered her gaze, her heartbeat accelerating. All alone with him. The scene between them last night on this same bed played through her mind. Her pulse began to race as she remembered the rough gentleness of his mouth against hers, the latent power of his body. She had never let a man touch her like that before. Wouldn’t she be safer on the streets than in his house?

  “His lordship doesn’t look very happy about it,” she murmured.

  “One does what one must,” Ardath retorted, giving Maggie’s hair a final flick of the comb. “I know this is a lot to ask of you, disrupting your life, but even Connor believes it’s for the best, and he was going to the Highlands anyway.”

  Maggie hesitated, aware of the tension building in the air. Disrupting her life. What life? “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  “Take your time to consider,” the earl urged her.

  Connor stirred, his voice sardonic. “Yes, by all means don’t rush into making a decision, Miss Saunders.”

  She frowned at the derision in his voice, his pose as languid and impatient as a Viking conqueror’s as he leaned against the door. Heavens, what was there to decide?

  Hidden away in the Highlands, guarded by the most powerful (and probably the most handsome) man in Scotland. No more nasty children mangling the French language. No more pinching pennies. Servants at her beck and call instead of petty criminals parading through the lodging house at all hours. Chocolate éclairs instead of stale digestive biscuits, and silk sheets. There were definite advantages, if she chose to look at the bright side of a bad situation.

  It wouldn’t last long. Only until his poor sister was found, and the men who had abducted her were caught. But, oh, how she needed a rest from the hardships of real life. She vented a deep sigh. She was awfully tempted.

  “We’ve overwhelmed you,” the earl said gently. “Is there anything we
can do, any questions we can answer to reassure you that this is the wisest decision for everyone involved?”

  Maggie ran the tip of her tongue over her teeth, trying her best to look overwhelmed and in need of reassurance. The Lion at the door was watching her, waiting to spring on her answer. But she was less afraid of him now than last night. In fact, she’d grown rather fond of him, bless his beastly heart.

  Still, the point was that he needed her, and she certainly did need his protection. She shuddered at the thought of being pursued by the men who had abducted his sister, men who thought nothing of using a girl as a tool for revenge. But for all the danger Maggie had placed herself in, she wasn’t sorry she had tried to help. At least she didn’t have that burden on her conscience.

  “I won’t be back until early evening.” Connor opened the door as if he couldn’t wait to escape. “Miss Saunders can give me her decision then.”

  “I’ve decided.” She bit her lip; she hadn’t meant to sound so eager, but she didn’t want to give him time to change his mind.

  “What?” He turned in mock astonishment and gave her a look that should have turned her to stone. “You’ve decided already? My, my, what a surprise.”

  Maggie swallowed at the unnerving look he gave her, reminding herself they would be dependent on each other’s company for an unspecified time under the most strained circumstances. It was highly improper, but then Heaven’s Court was hardly a haven of social decorum. “Sometimes one has to make a sacrifice for the greater good,” she said somberly. “If everyone else believes it’s for the best, I suppose I’ll have to go with you to the Highlands.”

  Connor snorted softly. She made it sound as if he were dragging her to the guillotine. “The lady has spoken,” he said, his voice laden with irony. Then he glanced at Ardath and his uncle. “I am leaving now. I’m sure you won’t let anyone harm a hair on our precious little houseguest’s head.”