Some Like It Wild (13 page)

“Yes, but how cowardly is the heart that won’t even risk that blow?” she quoted back to him. Shooting a wary glance at the terrace, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “Besides, where was I going to find another imposter if Crispin ran you through? You know actors aren’t to be trusted.”

Connor wrested the
fleuret
from her hand, studying it through narrowed eyes. “Apparently neither is the duke’s nephew.”

“For a minute there, I thought you were going to cut off his head,” she confessed.

“For a minute there, so did I. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to collect my prize if they carted me off to Newgate and hanged me.”

“Your prize?”

“Aye…have you forgotten, lass? You owe the winner of the contest a kiss.”

He leaned closer, his smoky gaze dropping to her lips. For a dazed moment, Pamela thought he was going to collect his prize right there in the garden in front of the duke, Lady Astrid, the gawking footmen and God.

But he simply plucked an apple blossom from her hair with his deft fingers before gently tugging her to her feet.

Crispin ducked into a back stairwell, determined to reach the haven of his bedchamber without any more of the servants witnessing his disgrace. He knew the two smirking footmen from the garden would waste no time telling everyone in the servants’ quarters what they’d witnessed. By nightfall, it would be all over London that the Duke of Warrick’s nephew had been bested in a fencing match by a Scots barbarian wielding an antique broadsword. His uncle wouldn’t be the only one laughing at him then.

He dragged himself up the stairs, wiggling his aching jaw between two fingers to make sure it wasn’t broken. His ears were still ringing and a vicious devil of a headache was just beginning to throb at the base of his skull.

He’d faced many a man over both swords and dueling pistols in the past few years, but he’d never stared death directly in the eyes before. Somehow his cousin’s mercy had been even more galling than his wrath. If he had been cut down where he stood, at least his uncle wouldn’t have been able to deny him a place in the family tomb. His former lovers would have wept prettily into their handkerchiefs and his friends would have gathered at their favorite gambling hell to toast his fine head for liquor, his skill at the faro table and his droll wit.

Perhaps once he was gone, his mother would have understood how badly he had wanted to protect her after his father’s death and his uncle would have realized how very hard he had tried to be a son to him. And how deeply it cut to watch while he embraced a stranger. Crispin snorted, his amusement at his own folly as bitter as the metallic tang of the blood in his mouth.

He rounded the corner of the second-story landing only to crash right into someone hurrying down the stairs. They bumped heads, then both sat down abruptly, a shower of rumpled linens tumbling around them.

Crispin clutched his brow, the sudden change in position setting off a hellish chorus of bells between his ears. “Bloody hell!” he swore as a ruffled mobcap bobbed in his bleary vision.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going, you clumsy oaf?” a musical female voice snapped. “Are you blind?”

Still gripping his head, Crispin scowled. He’d never before been spoken to in such an insolent manner by a servant.

But when his vision cleared and he saw her cornflower blue eyes and lush Cupid’s bow of a mouth, he felt as if he had been struck not only blind, but deaf and mute as well.

Her impertinent little nose and the golden curls peeping out from beneath her mobcap also gave him a peculiar start of recognition. “Do I know you?”

“I should think not. I’m Pamela’s s-s-servant. I’m
her maid. Her maidservant. Yes, that’s what I am. Her maidservant.”

“Pamela?” It took a dazed minute for his mental faculties to reassert themselves. “Ah, yes—my cousin’s fiancée—the ever so charming Miss Darby. Yet you address her by her Christian name. Tell me—does your mistress encourage such familiarity?”

“Does yours?”

At her cheeky retort, Crispin quickly discovered that it hurt to smile. But he still couldn’t stop himself. “My mistress encourages all manner of familiarity. That’s why she’s my mistress.”

The girl’s mouth curved into a reluctant little half smile. “You’re bleeding,” she announced.

“I am?” He reached toward his face but her hand was already there, dabbing at his cheekbone with the corner of a sheet. Her touch was far gentler than her voice.

He welcomed her assistance, grateful for the opportunity to study the creamy curve of her cheek and the beguiling sweep of her honey-colored lashes at such an intimate range. He frowned, his bewilderment deepening. “Are you certain we haven’t met before? It’s not like me to forget a face as lovely as yours.”

“I’m sure you’ve forgotten more lovely faces than you’ve remembered.” She slanted him a provocative look from beneath those lashes, her parted lips only a tantalizing breath away from his.

He leaned forward, suffering a pang of regret when she quickly retreated. She began to gather up
the scattered linens, her motions once again brisk with purpose. He scrambled to his feet to assist her, piling the sheets so high in her slender arms she could barely see over the top of them.

“Thank you for being such a gentleman,” she said primly.

He chuckled. “I’ve been accused of many things in my day, but rarely that.”

He stood back, allowing her to brush past him on the narrow stairwell. He watched her go, bemused by the proud tilt of her head and the saucy sway of her round little rump. He hadn’t been so tempted to dally with a maidservant since his fifteenth summer when he’d lost his innocence to a buxom young chambermaid who had crept into his bedchamber each night after the candles had been extinguished.

“Wait!” he called after her as she reached the foot of the stairs. “Do you have a name?”

“Yes,” she replied without slowing her steps. “I most certainly do.”

Then she was gone, leaving him to sag against the wall and wonder why the ringing in his ears suddenly sounded like cathedral bells.

That night Pamela once again found herself tossing and turning as if the mattress of her cozy half-tester had been stuffed with stones instead of feathers. She was still haunted by the genuine horror she had glimpsed in Crispin’s eyes while she sat bleeding at his feet. Perhaps he was simply dismayed that his plan to kill Connor had gone awry. But what
if losing the
fleuret
from the tip of his epee really
had
been an accident? What if they were no closer to finding her mother’s killer than they had been yesterday?

She rolled to her back, gazing up at the half-tester’s canopy. The sooner they exposed her mother’s killer, the sooner she and Connor could put an end to their travesty of a betrothal. She would be free to break off their engagement and disappear with her sister and the reward and he would be free to court a more suitable bride—some earl’s pampered daughter or the haughty niece of a marquess, perhaps.

She flopped to her side, wincing at the sting of the scratch on her forearm. The sash window was safely secured, misty beams of moonlight the only intruder on this restless night.

The room suddenly felt unbearably stuffy. Pamela kicked away the blankets. After lying there for a few more interminable minutes, she rolled out of the bed, marched over to the window and threw up the sash. A cool night breeze poured into the room, caressing her fevered brow. She leaned out the window and searched the shadows below but detected no hint of movement.

Sighing, she returned to the bed. Folding her hands beneath her cheek, she lay gazing at the open window. Perhaps in the most secret corner of her heart, she had hoped Connor might come to collect his prize. If she drifted off to sleep now, would she awaken to find his shadow looming over her in the moonlight? And if she did, would
she have the strength to send him away or would she open her arms to welcome him into her bed?

Groaning, Pamela scrambled back to her feet. She snatched up her faded dressing gown from the back of a nearby chair and shrugged it on over her nightdress. If they were going to trap her mother’s killer, then she and Connor had much to discuss, did they not? And it was nearly impossible to do so beneath the watchful eyes of the duke, his suspicious sister and their nosy army of servants.

She eased open the door and peered both ways down the deserted corridor. Perhaps it was time to show Connor Kincaid he wasn’t the only one who could sneak into someone’s bedchamber in the dead of night.

As Pamela slipped into Connor’s bedchamber, she had to resist the urge to let out a low admiring whistle. The bedchamber was so vast it made her own generous suite look like servants’ quarters. She drew in a deep breath, savoring the masculine scents of leather and fine wood.

As she drifted across the gleaming cherry floor, she realized the mischievous moon had followed her from her room. It was peeping through one of the tall sash windows on the far wall, bathing the bed in a wash of silver.

The towering four-poster with its turned bedposts and ornately carved headboard crowned the center of the room. It wasn’t the spectacularly overwrought bed that engaged her fascination, but
the man who lay on his back with his long limbs sprawled among its rumpled bedclothes.

Pamela crept closer, swallowing a knot of trepidation.

Too late it occurred to her that Connor hardly seemed the sort to don a long nightshirt and tasseled nightcap. Instead, he reclined on his back with a mere ribbon of bedsheet draped carelessly over his hips.

Her mouth went dry. If she had any moral fortitude whatsoever, she would beat a hasty retreat straight back to her own bedchamber, her own lonely bed. But curiosity was already overcoming her caution, tempting her to draw within touching distance of Connor’s sleeping form.

With his hair spilling across the pillow and moonlight bathing the rugged planes of his face, he no longer looked like a gentleman but like some mythical creature of the forest—more satyr than man. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him chasing down some squealing maiden who would beg him for mercy while secretly welcoming the forbidden pleasure only his touch could bring her.

She inched nearer to the bed, her treacherous fingertips itching to explore the silky whorls of hair dusting his chest. Moonlight caressed those broad planes, reminding her that he didn’t sleep completely nude after all. He was still wearing the gold locket she had glimpsed in the ruins of Castle MacFarlane. And he was still wearing it over his heart.

He stirred in his sleep, drawing her gaze to the
sculpted muscles of his abdomen, his powerful thighs. When he shifted again, sending that fragile ribbon of sheet into a dangerous slide, she jerked her mortified gaze back to his face.

His thick, spiky lashes rested flush against his high cheekbones. He must have been dreaming, because a roguish hint of a smile deepened the dimple in his right cheek.

Pamela shook her head, a wry smile curving her own lips. She still couldn’t resist that dimple. It had proven itself her downfall, from the first time she’d seen it sketched on that handbill.

Reaching out her trembling fingers, she tenderly stroked his cheek.

She heard a click. One minute she was standing beside Connor; the next she was beneath him, both of her wrists manacled over her head by one of his powerful hands and the mouth of his cocked pistol pressed to the underside of her jaw.

P
amela’s voice came out of the darkness, strained and breathless. “If you pull that trigger, I’m guessing a bouquet of flowers won’t burst out of the muzzle.”

For a bewildered moment, Connor thought he was still dreaming. How else to explain the intoxicating scent of lilacs, and Pamela warm and soft beneath him in his bed? But if he was still dreaming, then why wasn’t she as naked as he was? Why was there a worn layer of cotton separating the beguiling softness of her plump breasts from his bare chest? Why was his rigid arousal nudging her thigh instead of being buried deep inside of her? And why was the mouth of his pistol rammed against the tender underside of her jaw?

He felt her graceful throat convulse in a swallow.
“If this is how you greet every woman who comes to your bed, Mr. Kincaid, I can see why you might have to pay for your pleasures.”

He carefully uncocked the weapon that was under his control, but could do nothing about the one pressed to her thigh. Nor did he relinquish his grip on her slender wrists. “You’d sleep with a loaded pistol under your pillow too, lass, if someone in this house was trying to kill you.”

“I can assure you that I didn’t sneak in here to smother you with a pillow. Although I must confess the prospect has its merits.”

He gazed down at her, fighting the temptation to silence her saucy little mouth with a kiss. But with her beneath him and completely at the mercy of his superior strength, he couldn’t trust himself to be satisfied with a mere kiss—no matter how delectable.

Silently cursing himself for a fool, Connor freed her wrists and rolled off of her, dragging the sheet over his lap as he did so. Unfortunately, that only succeeded in making a rather pronounced tent. Hell, at this point even the counterpane wouldn’t have helped.

He slipped the pistol back under his pillow, then scooted backward to lean against one of the bedposts at the foot of the bed. He figured the more distance he put between them, the sooner his boiling blood would cool.

Pamela sat up and rubbed her wrists, giving him a reproachful look. “I must say your hospitality leaves a little to be desired.”

“How did you get in?” he demanded. “Did you climb through the window?”

“No. I walked through the door.”

He scowled. “Damn that worthless valet of mine. Brodie was supposed to have locked the door when he came in. He must still be out making calf’s eyes at the cook.”

Pamela’s eyes widened. “The squat woman with no neck and the ham hocks for hands?”

“That would be her. She chased him out of the kitchen with a meat cleaver this afternoon when he offered to show her his tattoo, but he insisted she was just toying with his affections and will make him a bonny wife someday.”

Pamela shook her head ruefully. “Perhaps we should be more worried about the cook mistaking you for Brodie and cleaving you to death in your sleep than Lady Astrid poisoning your tea or Crispin pushing you down a flight of stairs.”

As Connor remembered the raw panic he had felt when the point of Crispin’s epee went whipping toward Pamela, he felt his face harden. “Oh, I think I can take care of young master Crispin. All you have to do is let me hold him down and pummel him until he confesses.”

“I’m afraid you might enjoy that a little too much. Even if he turns out to be innocent.”

Connor snorted. “Men like him are never innocent.”

“Are you saying that because he’s English or because he reminds you of yourself at that age?”

“At his age, I was still riding with my clansmen,
trying to fulfill my father’s dream of reuniting Clan Kincaid.”

“Why did you give up on that dream?” she asked softly.

“Because I finally realized we weren’t the heroes we’d always fancied ourselves to be. That we’d become the very thing we despised—common villains preying on the weak.”

Pamela arched one eyebrow. “So you decided to pursue the more virtuous vocation of highwayman?”

“A highwayman doesn’t have to lie to himself to make himself believe that all of his efforts are for some noble cause when the only worthwhile cause is filling his own purse. He doesn’t have to play the hero and spend half his life pretending he can save his men and his clan when he can’t even save himself.”

Pamela should have been alarmed by the ruthless glint in Connor’s eye, but she found herself creeping closer to him instead of fleeing. She already knew there was nowhere she could hide to escape his piercing gaze.

“Why did you come here tonight, Pamela?” he demanded in a low growl. “What do you want?”

No one had ever asked her that question before. Not her mother. Not Sophie. She’d been too busy tending to their wants and needs to consider her own, which was why she still had no answer for him. At least not one she could trust to words. All she could do was return his gaze and pray her heart was not in her eyes.

He reached out and idly stroked his thumb over her lips. “I was hoping you’d come to deliver my prize.”

His touch coaxed a smile from her lips. “If Crispin had won the fencing match, were you going to let him kiss me?”

“If I had believed Crispin had a chance in hell of winning, I wouldn’t have agreed to the wager. Because if he had kissed you,” Connor told her solemnly, “I would have had no choice but to cut off his head.”

There it was again. That thrilling note of possessiveness that made her feel as if she belonged to him. As if she would always belong to him.

She blew out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, you did win, so I suppose I have no choice but to honor the wager.” She leaned toward him and pressed her eyes shut, already anticipating the tantalizing brush of his mouth against hers.

“Oh, no you don’t, lass.” Her eyes flew open to find him leaning against the bedpost with his hands folded behind his head and a lazy smile curving his lips. “The kiss is
my
prize.
You
have to give it to
me
.”

“Oh!” Pamela had no idea why she suddenly felt so ridiculously shy. He had already kissed her numerous times and she had kissed him back with an alarming lack of restraint. But somehow that wasn’t the same as initiating the kiss.

Judging from his smirk, he was probably expecting her to give him a virginal peck on the cheek. Pursing her lips into a tight little rosebud, she
touched them to the very corner of his mouth. But then that rosebud flowered, her mouth going soft and inviting against his smooth, firm lips.

Connor sucked in a hissed breath but held himself utterly still, allowing Pamela to sample him to her heart’s content. One kiss soon melted into another. And another. Until his ragged groan emboldened her to trace the seam of his lips with the tip of her pert little tongue, to lick into his mouth with a tender hunger he ached to satisfy.

He threaded his hands through her hair, tugging her mouth away from his. Her lips were still parted, her eyes misty with longing.

“Were you planning on kissing Crispin with such unbridled enthusiasm?” he demanded, his breath coming hard and fast.

“You’re the one who agreed to the wager. If he had won, I was going to make
you
kiss him.”

He shook his head. “I always knew the English weren’t to be trusted.”

“Then don’t trust me,” she whispered, lifting a hand to his cheek. “Just kiss me.”

Pamela didn’t have to ask him twice. Connor slanted his mouth over hers with a ferocity born of desperation, mating her with the warm, rough sweetness of his tongue. For a breathless eternity, she could only cling to him, could only take what he would give her and wish for more.

It seemed he was only too eager to oblige her unspoken wishes. While continuing to lay claim to her mouth with long, lavish kisses, he cupped her bottom in his big warm hands and lifted her into
his lap. Her dressing gown fell open and her nightdress rode up as her knees slid down on either side of his powerful thighs, leaving her straddling the firm ridge of flesh beneath the sheet. As he arched upward, pressing himself to the tender mound between her thighs, her head fell back and a moan of raw pleasure tore from her throat.

That moan turned into a whimper as he shifted her again, urging her around until she sat between his sprawled legs with her back to his chest. He reached around her, his sun-bronzed hands gently smoothing the skirt of her nightdress up to her waist, exposing her threadbare drawers to the silvery kiss of the moonlight and his touch.

Their encounter in the Highlands had given him an unfair advantage. He knew he only had to tug at her drawers and the frayed seams would give way. As he did just that, Pamela gasped a protest.

“I’ll buy you more,” he vowed, his voice a husky whisper in her ear. “Or better yet, you can just stop wearing them altogether. Then I could touch you whenever I wanted. Wherever we happened to be. You can’t tell me it wouldn’t make those long, horrid meals with the duke and his asp of a sister more bearable.”

A wicked little shiver raked Pamela as she imagined Connor slipping his hand beneath the tablecloth and beneath her skirts to stroke her there, without their fellow diners ever suspecting a thing.

His hands were chapped and callused from hours of riding, which only made their tenderness more
impossible to resist. His large fingers parted her curls, then her delicate folds, touching her in that wild and secret place with an exquisite care that made her want to weep.

As he stroked and petted her, she shuddered with longing, a sob of pure pleasure wrenched from her trembling lips.

“Shhhh, lass,” he murmured in her ear, desire thickening the musical cadences of his burr. “I just want to touch you. I’ll not hurt you. I swear it.”

How could she tell him he was already hurting her? That he was carving off a piece of her fragile heart with each nimble stroke of his fingertips, each deft flick of his thumb over the throbbing little bud nestled in the crux of her silky curls? As he wrapped one arm around her waist, imprisoning her in a vise of delight, she could feel his unabated desire for her, riding high and hard against the cleft of her rump.

She stole a furtive glance downward, captivated against her will by the forbidden wonders his fingers were working in the moonlight. There was something both shocking and erotic about being in his arms while bared all the way to the waist. As she watched his longest finger glide toward the very heart of her while his thumb continued its maddening rhythm, her treacherous body betrayed her deepest secret—that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.

Connor groaned, nearly undone by the thick tears of nectar Pamela’s body was weeping for him. He wanted nothing more than to accept her unspoken
invitation. To whisk away the sheet that separated their naked flesh and urge her forward and to her knees, where she could better accept what he was aching to give her. He wanted to rub himself in the delectable cream welling up between her legs, then bury himself so deep inside of her she would no longer be able to tell where her body ended and his began.

But this wasn’t some stranger he had paid to couple with him. This was Pamela. Brave, bonny Pamela who was bold and foolish enough to defy an armed highwayman with a toy gun, throw herself in front of Crispin’s sword, and take the biggest risk of all by coming to his bed in the middle of the night, her feet bare and her hair unbound.

As he dipped his finger into her, marveling at how tight and hot she was, she arched into his hand. He wished it was his mouth—wished he could sample her musky sweetness, nip that swollen little bud with his teeth and use his tongue as a whip to drive her over the edge of ecstasy. But for now he had to satisfy himself with capturing her chin in a fierce grip and tilting her face to the side so their mouths could meld in a hot, hungry kiss.

As Connor’s finger glided in and out of her, pushing deeper with each foray, Pamela writhed against him. He was persistent yet patient, and she was terrified he was just going to leave her teetering on the cusp of bliss until she expired from anticipation.

“There’s no rush, sweetheart,” he whispered against the corner of her mouth. “I’ve got all night to make you come.”

But he wouldn’t need all night. All it took was a second finger added to the first and a flick of his thumb and rapture went spilling through her in shuddering waves. She opened her mouth to cry out his name, but his hand was there, muffling her broken wail before she could wake the entire household.

As Connor felt the fevered silk of Pamela’s body grip his fingers, he arched against her bottom, clenching his teeth against a spasm of raw lust. He was on the verge of losing control and spilling his seed without even being inside of her, something he hadn’t done since he was a lad of sixteen.

It hardly helped his predicament when she wiggled around in his lap and threw her arms around his neck. As she rubbed her smooth cheek against his beard-stubbled one, he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear the angels singing. What he heard instead was:

“Oh, hell,” Connor swore as the muffled voice came drifting through the door. He buried his face in Pamela’s throat, his own voice so hoarse with lust he barely recognized it as his own. “If Brodie walks through that door right now, I swear to God I’m going to shoot him.”

Pamela pushed against his shoulders, her hands gentle but firm. “I should go.”

“Oh, no, you shouldn’t. If you stay, I promise I won’t shoot him.” His mouth glided down her throat, savoring the salty sweetness of her sweat-dampened flesh. “I’ll just hit him over the head with something very heavy. Maybe an iron poker or the clock from the mantel. We can hide his body in the window seat. It’ll be days before they find him. The cook will thank us.”

She cupped his cheeks in her hands, forcing his head up so he could meet her glowing gaze. “I don’t want him to find me in your chamber.”

“You could hide under here.” Giving her a hopeful grin, Connor reached to lift the sheet covering his lap.