Page 50 of Some Like It Wild
The laughing men gathered around Connor to slap him on the back and offer him their congratulations. Pamela watched a stone-faced Crispin disappear into the crowd and decided to do the same. As Emily’s beau charmed the girl into sliding behind the pianoforte to coax a winsome Bach concerto from its keys, Pamela rose and slipped through the crush of guests, seeking an escape from the merry chatter and prying eyes.
She didn’t get very far before she heard Connor’s clipped footsteps behind her. He caught her by the hand and tugged her around to face him.
She jerked her hand from his, lowering her voice to a raw whisper as she saw several heads turn their way. “Why didn’t you tell me you could read?”
He shrugged. “You never asked. My father was a gentleman. He was the one who taught me.”
Pamela felt her lips go numb with shock. “Your father was a gentleman? I had assumed your parents were…”
“Peasants?” he offered helpfully when she trailed off.
She could feel a guilty flush creeping up her throat. “Farmers. Shepherds. Crofters perhaps?”
Connor’s voice was no longer expressive, but flat and devoid of emotion. “My father was Scots but he was born and raised in England. It washisfather who sold out our clan at Culloden.”
“For thirty pieces of English silver,” she said softly, remembering those damning words from the courtyard of Castle MacFarlane.
“And an earldom,” he confessed.
Pamela’s ears were beginning to ring. “I suppose you neglected to mention the earldom as well.”
Connor’s face darkened. “That title was bought with the blood of my clansmen. My father rejected everything it stood for when he returned to the Highlands to try to reunite Clan Kincaid beneath the banner of their rightful chieftain. He gave up both wealth and privilege to live in a humble cottage and marry a penniless lass who adored him with her every breath.” He glanced back at the laughing crowd still lingering around the bookshelf. “Even if I couldn’t read, I could have recited that piece from memory. Robbie Burns was my father’s favorite poet. I can’t tell you how many times I heard him recite those very words to my mother while we sat around the hearth at night.”
Pamela shook her head helplessly, feeling like even more of a fool. “And how was I to know that?”
“You couldn’t know, because you assumed my parents were ignorant, uneducated ruffians. That’s what the English always assume about the Scots.”
She lifted her chin, stung by the unfairness of his accusation. “It wasn’t as if you did anything to disabuse me of that notion. When we first met, you were pointing a loaded pistol at my heart. Did your father teach you to do that as well?”
“No. The redcoats who hanged him did.”
They stood there, the gulf between them swelling until it was deeper and wider than any boundless ocean Burns could have described. Pamela sensed that words, no matter how eloquent or persuasive, were no longer enough to bridge it.
She took a step toward him. “What do you want, Connor?” she asked softly. “Do you want to punish me? Do you want to make me pay for their sins?”
Before he could give her an answer, the footman stepped back into the doorway. From the corner of her eye, Pamela saw a couple join him.
The footman cleared his throat forcefully to make sure he had everyone’s attention before intoning, “Sir Simon and Catriona Wescott.”
The golden-haired man standing beneath the archway was leaner than Connor but nearly matched him in both height and breadth of shoulder. He’d been blessed with the sort of effortless grace and dazzling masculine beauty that commanded every female eye in the room.
Despite the fluttering fans and lashes and the chorus of wistful sighs that greeted his arrival, it was painfully evident that he only had eyes for the woman on his arm.
Unfortunately, when Pamela glanced at Connor, she discovered to her shock that he too only had eyes for Simon Wescott’s wife.
Chapter 19
Pamela’s heart sank like a stone in her breast. Connor was gazing at the woman in the doorway as if he’d seen a ghost. A beautiful, fresh-faced ghost with upswept strawberry blond curls and cinnamon-tinted freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. As her husband leaned down to murmur something in her ear, she squeezed his arm and laughed aloud, the adoration in her gaze making her gray eyes sparkle.
Connor lifted a hand to his chest, but there was no way for Pamela to know if he was touching the locket he always wore under his shirt or the heart that was probably thundering beneath it.
As the knight and his lady started across the room, exchanging smiles and greetings with everyone they passed, Pamela realized she and Connor were directly in their path. Connor did not budge and Pamela felt as if her own feet were rooted to the floor.
She held her breath as the woman drew nearer, waiting for her to see Connor, waiting for the start of recognition in her eyes that would shatter the secret hopes Pamela had been hoarding in her own heart.
The couple glanced at them as they strolled past, the man murmuring a greeting while the woman nodded and smiled at each of them in turn. Pamela managed to dredge up a polite smile in return, but Connor’s expression never changed. He simply watched her pass, his face so still it might have been hewn from stone.
It wasn’t until the pair had reached the hearth that the woman cast Connor a quizzical glance over her shoulder.
