by Robin Gideon
“We’re not out of here yet,” Pamela said sharply, for a moment forgetting where she was. “What makes you think you wouldn’t—won’t—get caught?”
“I trust my own abilities. I test them all the time. I know precisely who and what I am, and what I am capable of accomplishing.”
“You’re conceited. People don’t know themselves that well.”
“It’s a mistake to assume that your limitations are my limitations,” Phantom explained, speaking as though he was declaring an irrefutable fact.
Pamela wanted to slap him, and she would have if they weren’t hiding from the guards.
She glowered at him. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You always twist my words around. I don’t trust you.” She tried to position herself so that her body wasn’t touching his.
Then turning away from Phantom, she peered around the edge of the brick chimney. All she could see of the guards below was shadows, so she knew they couldn’t see anything at all of her. Now she felt safe from them, but not from the infuriating stranger in the black mask and cape who had already saved her life once that night and had shown her that her body wasn’t as unfeeling and unresponsive as she’d always assumed.
“Is it me that you don’t trust, or yourself and how you behave when you’re in my arms?”
Pamela glared at Phantom. Why did everything he said make her want to slap the smile from his lips or kiss them?
“I don’t think you’re one to talk about trust. You don’t trust me enough to give me my revolver back.”
“Oh?”
Pamela held her hand out. “Then give it to me. If we get in a fight with those men down there, you’ll need my help.”
“I can’t give you back your pistol again.”
“What do you mean, you can’t? Did you leave it in the bedroom?” Pamela exclaimed, her voice rising dangerously. She wasn’t certain the gun could be identified as hers, but the risk of it was enough to send a chill through her.
Then, seeing the half smile curling Phantom’s far-too-tempting lips, she thought about his words, paying a bit more attention to them this time.
“What do you mean, again?”
Without looking, Pamela placed her right hand down to her holster. The hard, smooth, reassuringly familiar walnut grip of the Colt greeted her palm. Somehow, Phantom had slipped the revolver back into the holster without her ever becoming aware of it.
“When did you…How?”
“I had tucked it into my waistband. When we were kissing, I didn’t want anything separating us, so I gave it back to you,” Phantom explained. “You see, I trust you more than you think.”
He reached out to brush his fingertips against Pamela’s soft cheek. His gaze dipped down briefly to her breasts, which rose and fell with her deep, ragged breathing. Pamela felt her nipples tighten even more, her body responding instinctively to this wicked man’s seductive charm and heated gaze.
“Now it is time for you to trust me a little,” Phantom continued, his throat tight with sexual tension as his fingertips passed along her cheek and throat. “I’ve got a plan to get away from here without anyone seeing us. Follow me, and you’ll get out as well. Continue to fight me, and you can take your chances with Darwell’s bodyguards. Incidentally, most have a price on their head in one territory or another. That’s the kind of man Jonathon Darwell likes to hire to carry a gun for him.”
Pamela had known that the men working for Darwell were dangerous, though she hadn’t known exactly how dangerous until this moment. Studying Phantom, she wondered how he could have learned so much about the Darwell mansion and the men on the Darwell bankroll. The Midnight Phantom was, beyond doubt, a most enigmatic man. He’d opened the safe in Jonathon Darwell’s bedroom quickly, without knowing the combination, he’d returned a revolver to her holster without her being aware of it, and he’d kissed her and made her enjoy it and made her want more.
“I’ll go with you,” Pamela heard herself say.
“All the way?” Phantom asked, reaching out to take Pamela’s hand in his own, his fingers curling around hers.
Pamela nodded, quite certain she was getting herself into something she couldn’t back out of, but she knew a strange sense of freedom at having someone else make the decisions for her.
* * * *
Pamela was surprised at Phantom’s ingenuousness choice of an escape route. Holding her hand, he led her along the roof to the rear of the mansion and there, where the servants’ quarters were, he slipped them both down from one balcony to the next until they were on the ground.
“All the servants are working,” Phantom observed, “so this whole area of the mansion is completely deserted.”
“How did you know this side of the mansion contains only servants’ quarters?” Pamela asked, kneeling on the ground beside Phantom to search the shadows for guards that might still be around.
When he did not reply, she did not press the point. There was only so much information Phantom would allow her, she decided, and it would be in her best interests not to push him beyond that limit.
“Here, put this on,” Phantom said, taking off his black Stetson and handing it to Pamela. “Tuck your hair up inside. You’ve got beautiful hair, but it shines in the moonlight like a beacon.”
Pamela smiled, despite her fear, now that she was on the ground. The voices of the security guards and of the guests at the celebration in the ballroom were clearly audible.
He thought she had beautiful hair? Pamela wasn’t certain how she should respond to the statement, so she said nothing at all. She wanted to make a comment, but she wasn’t nearly as confident in her words at Phantom, and she didn’t want to say something that would make her appear as naive as she felt.
As she tucked her long blonde tresses up beneath the Stetson’s headband, she looked at Phantom. His hair was jet black, perfectly parted on the left side, not overly long. Though he was once again in shadow—wasn’t he always?—it seemed to her that his haircut was an excellent one. Did that mean he was a man of wealth? Poor men, she had noted, tended to have poor grooming habits, and the Midnight Phantom was impeccably groomed.
Everything about the Midnight Phantom intrigued her.
“Come on, and stay low,” he instructed, once Pamela had his hat in place.
This time Pamela reached out for his hand. For an instant, they stood motionless in the moonlight, looking into each other’s eyes, their fingers laced together, their hearts racing with excitement.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “I’ll get you out of this.”
“I won’t be afraid if you hold my hand,” Pamela said, with significantly more honesty than she had intended.
She immediately wished she hadn’t said a word. The last thing in the world the arrogant Phantom needed was someone else having confidence in his abilities—and letting him know it.
They moved away from the mansion, racing across the lawn until they reached the high surrounding wall. Here, at the rear of the estate where security was most likely to be breached, the wall was almost twice as high as it was on the street side. Pamela’s heart sank. How in the world could she scale such a high wall? She doubted that even Phantom could.
But instead of stopping at the wall, he banked sharply left, following the wall to the livery stable. Pamela’s heart was pounding and her mouth felt bone dry as they pressed their backs to the livery’s side wall and listened to the conversations of the hired men within.
She could hear laughing and arguing. The coachmen of the wealthy guests at the celebration were responsible for getting their employers back into their respective carriages and home.
“This way,” Phantom said, placing his hand at the small of Pamela’s back and urging her along the stable’s exterior wall. Across from them stood the security wall.
His hand warmed Pamela’s shirt, then her chemise, and as her skin responded, it was as if she were in his arms again, feasting upon his probing, intimate kisses.
They’d t
aken only three steps when the sound of a woman’s laugh stopped them in their tracks. A second later, a man and woman appeared in the shadows. They were in their forties, were well dressed and jovial, and both had drunk more than a glass or two of champagne.
“Walter, what has gotten into you tonight?” the woman asked, laughing softly as she tried to sound annoyed.
“Give me half a chance, and I’ll show you,” Walter replied.
The woman’s laughter was suddenly silenced as he kissed her.
Pamela stood less than twenty feet away. Horrified at the thought of being caught, but astonished at what she was seeing, she recognized the couple now: Walter and Margarite English. Citizens of Whitetail Creek, they’d made a fortune by bringing lumber and building materials to the territory. Both had earned prominence by spending time and money with local church and charitable organizations. Three summers earlier, when Pamela had sprained her ankle, it had been Margarite English who’d appeared unexpectedly at the Bragg house with a large kettle of stew and three hearty loaves of bread. It had been a simple act of kindness, but one Pamela had never forgotten.
Now Pamela was on the verge of being caught by that very same altruistic woman, and the thought of it distressed her. “Stop it now,” Margarite continued, making only a half-hearted attempt to scramble out of her husband’s ardent embrace. “This champagne has turned you into a wolf.”
“A wolf that wants to eat you alive!” Walter replied, pulling his wife of more than two decades back into his arms and firmly placing a hand over her breast.
Pamela was shocked that the Englishes were still so passionate. For reasons she did not at all understand, she had believed them too old and much too genteel to still be involved with something as tawdry as sexuality.
The moan of passion from Margarite told Pamela the woman’s feelings were not those of a long-suffering wife who had to bear up under her husband’s ardent demands.
Suddenly, Phantom took Pamela by the elbow, spinning her so that she faced him. He pulled her tightly into his arms and kissed her hard on the mouth.
Pamela balled her hands into fists and jabbed them into his chest. How dare he kiss her at a time like this!
The commotion drew the attention Phantom had planned. His back was to Margarite and Walter as he said in a growl, “Go find your own love nest. This one’s spoken for.”
“Sorry, good fellow, didn’t know,” Walter said, snickering. Margarite pulled frantically at her bodice, trying to get her dress properly arranged and buttoned.
After the couple had stepped out of the darkness and moved back toward the ballroom, Pamela heard Margarite say, “I’m so embarrassed. I hope they didn’t recognize us. I’ll never have another glass of champagne again. I’ll never go for a midnight stroll with you. Not as long as I live, Walter English.”
Alone once more, Pamela breathed a sigh of relief. Phantom’s quick thinking had saved them from discovery once again. How truly unprepared she was for this attack on Jonathon Darwell and his criminal empire!
“That was close,” she whispered. “You think fast.”
“I was going to kiss you anyway. Margarite and Walter just gave me the excuse,” he said with a boyish smile that was very seductive. He was apparently unfazed by how near they’d come to being discovered.
Once again with no idea of what kind of response she should make to his devilish teasing, Pamela said nothing.
They went to a ladder built into the rear wall of the livery stables and climbed up into the hayloft. Phantom unlatched the small door and eased himself inside. Pamela followed him, crawling on hands and knees to peer down over the edge at the men below.
There were nine of them, five playing cards, and four throwing dice. All were drinking heavily. This was a night when liquor was provided for everyone, and these men seemed determined to drink all they could.
Phantom tapped Pamela on the shoulder then moved away from the edge of the hayloft. She followed him toward the rear of the loft then knelt in the darkness, facing him. The loft was dusty, but she sensed they were safe in it. None of the hired hands would be feeding the horses this late at night, and there was no other reason for coming up here.
“Now what?” she asked in a whisper, distinctly aware of her proximity to Phantom. She doubted that she needed to work so hard at whispering. She was very close to Phantom, but she figured it was best to be safe.
“Now we wait. It’s nearly one o’clock. By about three o’clock, Tyler Napki will be drunk as a skunk, and his coachman will toss him into his carriage and take him home. Mrs. Napki and the children were already taken home, around eight-thirty, I believe.”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
“We’ll be riding on the roof of the carriage. Once we’re outside the gates, we’ll jump off. Napki and his coachman are both notorious drinkers on Saturday night. Neither one will hear a thing.”
“You’ve planned everything, haven’t you?”
“I didn’t plan on you.”
His gaze met hers, and Pamela looked away. When Phantom looked into her eyes, it seemed he could see right through the defenses that she had erected to keep herself safe from the world. When she looked at him, she saw nothing but shadows, both literally and metaphorically. He was all light and darkness, part of him revealed, part of him concealed, his identity and his essential, intrinsic self elusive and enigmatic and tantalizingly seductive to the responsive female Pamela had never before realized she was.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to cause you any bother. I just wanted…I had to strike out at Jonathon Darwell, don’t you see? Somebody has to. He’s gotten away with everything, absolutely everything…and the law never touches him. He owns the law.”
Garrett listened carefully to Pamela and wondered how many people shared her sentiments. He also wondered what Darwell had done to her to make her hate him so much. Her contempt for Darwell was based on more than principle. Garrett hated Darwell because he’d witnessed the havoc left in the wake of Darwell’s greed, but Pamela hated the man for personal reasons.
Though Garrett Randolph’s legal expertise told him not to get involved, Pamela’s unexpected intrusion into his life had delighted him too much for him not to pursue the answer.
“He owns a judge and a businessman who one day might be the governor of this territory, but he doesn’t own the law, Pamela. Nobody can own the law,” Phantom said quietly.
She looked at him, shaking her head. “You just don’t understand.”
Garrett reached out, removing his Stetson from her head. Her long, honey-blonde hair tumbled down around her shoulders in waves of satin. He smoothed some of it over her shoulders, wanting to touch both her hair and her body. She did not move away from his touch.
“How did he hurt you?”
Pamela looked away, shrugged, seemingly unaware that the move caused her heavy breasts to rise and fall beneath the well-washed blue cotton shirt. It appeared that this was not something she wanted to think about, much less talk about.
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered quietly after a long pause. “It happened a long time ago. It really doesn’t matter anymore.”
“I think it does,” Phantom observed softly. He reached out to brush the backs of his knuckles lightly against Pamela’s soft cheek. When she turned her gentle green eyes toward him, he felt a strange tightness in his chest, a reaction that mystified him since he’d known the gazes of many a beautiful woman in the past and had never before reacted quite this way. “Jonathon Darwell has done something to you that he shouldn’t have, but I won’t force you to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“Thank you,” Pamela replied.
She closed her eyes and rolled her head back on her shoulders, suddenly feeling very tired. It wasn’t a sleepy kind of fatigue, though, since she was still far too energized by excitement to even consider sleep. She had spent days thinking about how she would break into the Darwell mansion during the charity hospital cere
monies, and as it turned out, she had done almost everything wrong. If it hadn’t been for the Midnight Phantom, she would now be in the custody of some sheriff, sitting in a jail cell, or be the captive of Darwell, being tortured.
The thought made Pamela shiver.
“What’s wrong?” Phantom asked.
“Nothing.” She shifted positions in the hay, curling her legs beneath her. Sometimes she wished he wasn’t quite so perceptive.
Phantom unknotted the tie at his throat and then removed his cape and spread it out on the hay. Pamela ran her hand lightly over the black silk, enjoying its texture. She thought it a shame that he would put such exquisite material upon hay.
“Sit on it,” Phantom prodded, taking Pamela by the upper arm and urging her onto the cape. “We’ve got a couple hours yet to kill, so you might just as well get comfortable.”
Pamela knelt on the cape, though she was careful to keep her boots off the fabric as she sat with legs curled beneath her and to the side.
“Why is it you hate Jonathon Darwell?” Pamela asked then, at last feeling a certain sense of safety after so many hours of unremitting emotional strain. “You seem to know an awful lot about him, his house, and all the people in it.”
Beneath the mask that covered his eyes, Phantom’s mouth curled into a smile that touched Pamela deep inside.
“I like your dimple,” she whispered.
In a bold gesture for her, she touched his face lightly with her fingertips. That night he had reached out to her, but she’d never been the one to bridge the chasm that separated them physically.
“You won’t tell me why you want to destroy Jonathon Darwell,” Pamela continued. “And you’re embarrassed about your dimple.”
Phantom tossed his Stetson aside. He’d had women tease him flirtatiously before, to be sure, but he’d never had anyone accuse him of having a double standard. He didn’t like the accusation, though he couldn’t blame Pamela in the least for voicing it.
“I don’t mean to,” he said quietly. “For reasons that are crucial to me, I must keep my identity a secret. And because I must, I am in a position where I might be able to help you, but you can do nothing for me.”