Page 16 of Some Like It Wild
But she was also offering him a way to take a life without staining his hands with a single drop of blood. A way to take revenge on the ruthless redcoat bastards who had murdered his parents and the wealthy landowners who had sent them. And he would still be doing what he’d always done best—robbing the English.
His time was running out. He had left behind his ancestral lands and his clansmen almost five years ago, hoping to make a better life for himself. But all he’d done was fall in with an even motlier crew of cutthroats and smugglers. More than once in the past six months he had awakened from a restless sleep, clawing at an invisible bond that sought to strangle the life from him. It was just a matter of time before he met the end he deserved and his body was tossed in some unmarked grave where the one person who might still care if he died would never find him.
He slowly sauntered toward Pamela. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Darby. Are you sure you haven’t a drop or two of Scot’s blood runnin’ through your veins?”
“Not that I’m aware of, Mr. Kincaid,” she replied, forced to tilt back her head to look him in the eye as he stopped a scant foot in front of her.
He had to admire her courage as well as her wits. Although she looked as if she would have liked nothing better than to bolt, she stood her ground as he cupped the softness of her cheek in his callused palm. “If I’m to inherit this kingdom you’ve promised me, lass, then perhaps you’d best start addressing me as ‘m’lord.’”
Pamela sat with her back to the wall, watching Sophie sleep. A pale stream of moonlight trickled through the jagged gash in the stone, bathing her sister’s angelic face in a wash of silver. Pamela smiled ruefully as a less than angelic snore escaped Sophie’s puckered lips. She had been a sturdy seven-year-old when Sophie was born and she could still remember rocking the rosy-cheeked babe to sleep every night in her cradle while their mama took her final bows and gathered the roses thrown to her by her adoring admirers.
Pamela hugged the woolen blanket tighter around her shoulders and rested the back of her head against the wall, allowing her eyes to drift shut for a few precious seconds. Her own body was beginning to ache with exhaustion. She longed to stretch out next to Sophie on the makeshift pallet, but she had no intention of leaving her sister unguarded with that motley crew of bandits and smugglers still making merry in the vault below.
As she felt her head beginning to nod toward her chest, she jerked her eyes open and gave herself a brisk shake. She gazed around the dusty tower, wondering if it had once been a bedchamber shared by some lusty lord and his lady. Except for a crude table and chair, there was nothing left of its furnishings but piles of splintered sticks. A fretful squeaking emanated from the walls, warning her that she and her sister were not the tower’s only occupants.
Perhaps it was only fitting that she be denied the sleep of the innocent. Now that she’d convinced Connor to help her swindle the duke out of his title and riches, she supposed she was no better than a common thief herself. She sighed, envying Sophie her untroubled conscience. She had always sworn she would walk through the fires of hell to protect her sister, but this was the first time she’d felt the flames tickling her toes.
Her heavy eyelids were beginning to drift shut again when she heard the ghost of a sound outside the wooden door. She jerked, suddenly wide awake. The blanket slipped from her shoulders as she rose to her feet, afraid she was about to be rewarded for her vigilance by an uninvited visitor.
She cast about for a weapon but all she could find was the leg from a splintered bedstead. She tested its weight in her hand, grimacing in dismay. Even a toy gun would have been a better comfort.
Stealing a glance at Sophie to make sure she was still sleeping, Pamela crept toward the door. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find it locked—leaving them at the mercy of whoever held the key. But when she tugged the iron handle, the door inched open.
She pressed her eye to the narrow crack.
Connor Kincaid was sprawled in a wooden chair at the top of the stairs, his long legs stretched out in front of him to bar the passageway, and a pistol laid across his lap. His eyes were closed, but there was a lingering tension in his muscles that belied his casual sprawl, warning that he was not a man to be trifled with, even in sleep.
Pamela’s first thought was that he didn’t trust her. That he believed she might try to renege on their bargain and stage an escape.
But then she realized the mouth of the pistol wasn’t pointed toward the tower but toward the stairs. Connor wasn’t holding them prisoner. He was guarding them.
Holding her breath, Pamela gently eased the door shut, marveling at her discovery. Connor had promised her he wouldn’t let her sister come to any harm and in this—if in nothing else—he was evidently a man of his word.
She briefly considered returning to her own guard post but an enormous yawn seized her, making Sophie’s nest of blankets look even more inviting. She hesitated for a moment, then padded over and curled up next to her sister. She gently tucked the blanket around Sophie’s shoulders before falling into a deep and untroubled sleep.
Chapter 7
The future Duke of Warrick leaned back in his chair, eyeing the straight razor in Pamela’s hand with palpable suspicion. “If you think I’m goin’ to let you within an inch of my throat with that blade, lass, you’d best think again.” He reached up to massage the faded scars that marred the corded muscles of his throat. “I’d as soon trust my neck to the hangman.”
“If you don’t allow me to clean you up for our journey, you may have to,” Pamela replied. “It will be much easier to smuggle you out of Scotland if you look more like a duke’s son than an unmannered ruffian.”
He glared at her through the tangled strands of hair that fell over his brow, looking more like a man with murder on his mind.
Morning sunlight poured through a jagged gash in the stone in the tower chamber where she and Sophie had passed the night, gilding the dust motes that danced through the air. Unfortunately, the sun’s golden rays also highlighted the deadly gleam of the blade in her hand. She supposed she might have inspired more confidence in Connor if that hand had been completely steady. But his black scowl could have unsettled even the most skillful of barbers.
“Why don’t you just tell this new family of mine that I was raised by wolves?” Connor suggested, running one hand over the rugged curve of his jaw. Although less than a day had passed since Pamela had stroked that jaw herself, his crop of stubble was already blossoming into full-blown whiskers. “Then they’ll expect me to be nice and hairy.”
“Based on your fine temperament, I may tell them you were raised by badgers. Rabid badgers,” she added sweetly as his scowl deepened.
She dipped a shaving brush into the cracked ceramic mug sitting on the crude wooden table and whipped the soap within into a milky froth. Perhaps his face would be less forbidding when covered with a mask of shaving soap.
Swallowing her trepidation, she approached him with the cup and brush in one hand and the razor in the other. Unfortunately, she was so focused on keeping her hands steady that she failed to mind her feet. The toe of her boot clipped the edge of a broken flagstone and she went stumbling toward him, helpless to slow her momentum.
One minute she was on her feet; the next she was in his lap. His hand shot out to close around hers, stilling the razor’s blade a mere hairsbreadth from his Adam’s apple.
Eyeing her warily, he gingerly extracted the razor from her quaking hand. “I do believe I’ll shave myself, thank you very much. I’d hate to be decapitated before breakfast. It might spoil my appetite.”
His lap was entirely too warm. Entirely too inviting. Pamela was beset by an absurd desire to press herself against his chest like a baby cat eager for the stroke of her master’s hand. Judging by the possessive way his arm had curled around her hip, she was afraid he would be only too willing to oblige her. He had a way of looking at her with those piercing gray eyes of his that made her feel as if she was the lead actress on the stage of her life. After surrendering that role to both Sophie and her mother for as long as she could remember, it was both a seductive and dangerous sensation.
