Page 15 of Some Like It Wild
Connor’s blunt question unsettled her. “I haven’t really thought about it. I suppose I could purchase a small cottage with the remaining money and retire to the country or the seaside.”
“To do what? Bake shortbread and collect cats?’ ’Tis a bit tame for a lass like you, don’t you think? Especially after a career of kidnappin’ bandits and swindlin’ wealthy gentlemen out of their inheritances.” One corner of his mouth quirked upward in a lazy smile. “You might just decide a life of crime suits you.”
She gave him an icy look.
“What are you really after, lass?” He tilted his head to the side, studying her through narrowed eyes. “You just don’t strike me as the sort who would make off with what doesn’t rightly belong to her.”
“Why, Mr. Kincaid,” she said lightly, “you of all people should understand the irresistible temptation of ill-gotten gain.”
“You’re forgettin’ one thing, Miss Darby. A man who lies, steals and cheats for a livin’ can usually tell when someone else is lyin’.”
Pamela swallowed but his frank gaze made it impossible to keep choking back the truth. Lifting her chin to meet his gaze squarely, she said, “You’re absolutely right. I’m not a thief by nature but by necessity. I do desperately need the means to protect my sister, but I’m also after the monster who murdered my mother.”
Chapter 6
Now that the dam was broken, the words came pouring out of Pamela in a steady stream. “Sophie doesn’t know. Shecan’tknow. It would break her heart. But my mother’s death was no accident. Someone set the fire that killed her. And when her solicitor gave us this letter—the one he’d been protecting for all these years at my mother’s request, I knew why. Because—”
“—someone wanted to destroy the letter and anyone who might have known about it,” Connor finished for her. “Someone wanted to make sure the duke’s heir was never found.” He scowled at her, haunted by a grim image of what might have happened had she and her sister been in the theater when that fire was set. “Once you knew, why didn’t you go straight to the law?”
“I’m the illegitimate daughter of an actress, Mr. Kincaid. What was I supposed to do? March up to the nearest constable and accuse someone in the duke’s household of burning my mother alive? Why, they would have laughed in my face and thrown me into Newgate! Or Bedlam!”
“So you decided to take matters into your own hands.”
She nodded. “And what better way to foil this murderer’s plot and lure him out of hiding than to show up on the duke’s doorstep with the man’s long lost heir in tow?”
Connor shook his head, torn between disbelief and admiration. “’Tis a crafty plan, lass. And it might even have worked if the duke’s heir had been long lost instead of long dead.”
“Which is why I need you to help me resurrect him.”
Pamela crumpled her mother’s fragile letter in her white-knuckled fist, her gaze both fierce and pleading. It had been a long time since a woman had looked at him like that.
A lifetime.
Connor’s voice came out far brusquer than he intended. “Last I heard, there was only one fellow who could raise the dead. And he came to a very bad end at the hands of the law.” He shook his head with genuine regret. “I’m truly sorry about your mother, lass, but my services are not for hire. I can’t help you.”
Pamela’s lips tightened. “If you won’t help me, then why don’t you help yourself? Have you thought about whatyouwould stand to gain?”
“What? Another date with the hangman? One I won’t be able to wiggle my way out of this time?”
As Pamela took one step toward him, then another, he sat up straight in the chair. Her voice softened, hypnotizing him with a beguiling note of huskiness he hadn’t noticed before. “What about wealth and power beyond your wildest imaginings? What about never having another door slammed in your face but being welcomed into the drawing rooms of noblemen and the palaces of kings? What about having your opinion lauded and your approval courted by everyone you meet? You could have respectability, admiration”—she dared to draw within his reach, leaning close enough to whisper in his ear—“and all the willing women you care to woo.”
Connor surged to his feet, his hand shooting out to seize her wrist. She tried to twist away from him, but he bent her arm up between them, drawing her roughly against his chest. The lush lips that had courted him so boldly only seconds ago were now trembling just a few inches away from his.
He gazed down into her eyes, noticing for the first time how thick and dark her spiky lashes were. “It sounds like you’re tryin’ to trap me in a cage, lass. A gilded one, but a cage all the same. At least if I die swingin’ at the end of a hangman’s noose here in these mountains, I’ll still be free.”
He allowed his gaze to linger on her lips for a dangerous moment before releasing her wrist and turning his back on her.
He was striding toward the door, eager for a breath of fresh air to drive the enticing scent of lilac from his nostrils, when she said, “There’s one more thing you stand to gain.”
He didn’t slow or turn around. “And what would that be?”
“Revenge.”
Connor stopped and slowly turned on his heel to face her.
This time she was wise enough to keep her distance. “You can’t honestly believe I’ve already forgotten all of your impassioned speeches about the oppression of your people by the English. If you agree to play this role for me, you’ll still be a thief. You’ll simply be stealing an Englishman’s birthright just as Jacob stole Esau’s. It will be your ultimate joke on your enemies.”
Connor studied her through narrowed eyes. However lovely and clever she might be, she was still one of those enemies.
