Page 71 of Some Like It Wild
Sophie wrinkled her pert little nose at her. “Don’t you see, Pamela? Connor is the best thing that ever happened to you. He makes you greedy. And selfish. And willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want. And judging by the noises that have been creeping beneath my door every night for the past week, I’d say that what you want is him.”
“Of course I want him! I want him more than life itself! But I’m hardly duchess material.”
“Oh, please! The man clearly adores you. He doesn’t care if you’re a princess or a milkmaid. And besides,” she added firmly, “if you won’t marry him, I will.” A vengeful little smile curved her lips. “And wouldn’t that just serve his miserable cousin right!”
She rose, stretching and yawning like a graceful little cat, and padded back toward the dressing room. “If you manage to lure him back to your bed after you’ve told him what an idiot you’ve been, try to keep it down, won’t you? I need my beauty sleep.”
When her sister was gone, Pamela scrambled to her feet, joy surging in her heart. Suddenly, she felt deliciously greedy. And wildly selfish. And willing to do whatever it took—no matter how devious or wicked—to get what she wanted. And what she wanted was Connor. In her arms. In her bed. And in her life for every day—and night—that remained of it.
She started for the door, then stopped dead, letting out a terrible shriek when she came face to face with her own reflection in the cheval glass.
Somehow Connor knew he wouldn’t find the ballroom deserted. Yet he ended up there anyway, traversing the alternating squares of moonlight and shadow until he stood before the portrait of the elegant young duchess he had known only as “Mother.”
The duke wasn’t gazing up at the portrait but down at the open locket in his hand. “I wish I could have known this woman,” he said softly. “She looks so peaceful. As if she’d finally stopped striving for all the things she could never have.”
“Like your fidelity?”
The duke snapped the locket closed. “She probably paid that old crone in Strathspey to tell everyone she was dead. She was a clever girl.” A wistful smile touched his lips. “Too clever for the likes of me. After all—what better way for her to disappear and to protect you than to create another life for herself? With another name. Another family. Another man…”
“A good man,” Connor assured him. “They had a daughter together. My sister Catriona.”
The duke squinted up at him. “Was she happy then? Truly happy?”
Connor nodded. “I rarely saw her without a song or a smile on her lips.”
“I’m glad for that. I wanted her to be happy. I’m only sorry I wasn’t the man who could…” The duke trailed off, rubbing his thumb gently over the front of the locket. “She did love me, you know. Once.”
“Of course she did. If she hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to break her heart.”
“Did she…die well?”
Connor briefly squeezed his eyes shut, seeing that last tearful smile his mother had given the man she loved, hearing the distant echo of a pistol shot in his memory. “She would say so. And in the end, I suppose that’s all that matters.”
The two men gazed up at the lovely young woman in the portrait who had shaped both their lives—first by her presence, then by her absence.
It was Connor who finally broke the silence. “You should be amused. It turns out that I’m my father’s son after all. Pamela is leaving me.”
The duke’s face crumpled in genuine dismay. “Oh, no, lad! You mustn’t let her do that!”
“And just how am I to stop her?” Connor raked a hand through his hair, his frustration finally erupting in a bitter oath. “If we were back in Scotland, I could just kidnap her and force her to marry me at gunpoint, then keep her chained to my bed until I could persuade her that she belonged there. But what the hell am I supposed to do here among youcivilizedfolk? Browbeat her? Threaten to sue her for breaching our betrothal contract?”
The duke grasped both arms of his chair and slowly leveraged himself to his feet. Connor watched in amazement as he took one unsteady step toward him, then another, finally drawing close enough to clap a hand firmly on his shoulder.
The man’s shrewd hazel eyes were glittering with emotion. “Don’t make the same mistake I did, son. Don’t let pride stand in your way. Don’t browbeat her. Don’t threaten her. Love her. Simply love her.”
Pamela sat on the stool in front of the dressing table, muttering to herself and frantically daubing rice powder on her nose with a hare’s foot. She’d never been a pretty crier like Sophie, and her protracted episode of weeping had left her both swollen and splotchy.
She’d been trying to repair her face for nearly half an hour with indifferent results. She leaned back on the stool with a sigh, tossing the hare’s foot back in the dish of powder. There was simply no help for it. If Connor was going to love her, he was going to have to love her even when she looked like a puffy-eyed lobster.
With any luck he would have already extinguished the candles in his bedchamber. She hugged back a delicious little shiver of anticipation, smiling to imagine his surprise when she slipped into his room and into his bed. She could only hope he wouldn’t shoot her. Although given how much of a dunderhead she’d been earlier, she probably wouldn’t blame him if he did.
She was rising from the stool when she heard a peculiar scritching noise coming from behind her. Her heart leaped with joy when she realized the sound was coming from the window.
She should have known a stubborn Scotsman like Connor wouldn’t surrender that easily. Especially not to an equally stubborn English lass.
She flew over to unlatch the window and drag up the sash with eager hands. “Get in here this minute, you fool Highlander, before one of the footmen sees you and you ruin my reputation. Of course my reputation is probably in tatters anyway, after half of London watched me being hauled off in irons, so you might as well finish making a social pariah of me.”
She backed away from the window, grinning in anticipation, as a figure garbed all in black climbed through it.
