Suddenly, Duncan’s fingers tightened at the side of Maggie’s waist and, startled, she looked up into his eyes. They were serious and angry, even though his mouth was smiling.
“Would you mind letting me in on this little debate,” he asked coldly, “or is it one-sided?”
Maggie flushed, thinking back on her disappearance earlier in the evening and all that had happened in the garden. She did hope that no one had seen and reported the sordid details to Duncan Kirk. “I was just thinking,” she said somewhat defensively.
“You’ve been doing a lot of that since you vanished from the ballroom a little while ago,” Kirk replied without missing so much as a step in the sweeping waltz they were engaged in. He looked around, and when his eyes came back to Maggie’s face, they were angry. “Were you with McKenna? It’s the oddest thing, but I haven’t seen him since he danced with you.”
Maggie resented not only Kirk’s implication, true as it was, but his tone as well. Besides, she was still nettled at the pinch he’d given her in the receiving line when she’d refused to curtsy to the governor. “Mr. McKenna,” she said, “has asked for my hand in marriage.”
Duncan Kirk suddenly went rigid, stopping there in the middle of the ballroom, his face going crimson and then ghostly pale all in the space of a moment. “What?” he rasped.
Maggie regretted speaking so rashly, for there was something dangerous in this man’s bearing and in his eyes, but she had no choice now but to carry on. She lifted her chin. “I believe you heard me,” she said, and her voice was remarkably even, considering that she was quaking inside.
Without another word Duncan half propelled and half thrust her through the crowd, his grip painful on her arm. He nodded tersely at the governor and his wife, then fairly hurled Maggie into the great entryway. There were two maids there, fussing with cloaks and coats, but Maggie doubted that Duncan had even noticed them. To people like himself, such lowly creatures were all but invisible.
“What did you tell McKenna?” he demanded in a raspy whisper, and now both his hands were clasping Maggie’s upper arms, hurting her.
She tried to squirm free and Duncan’s grip tightened so harshly that she winced. Dear heaven, what she wouldn’t have given to have Reeve appear then, but he was nowhere in sight. “Please,” she said breathlessly.
Duncan loosened his grasp slightly, but instead of releasing Maggie, he gave her a fierce little shake. “Margaret,” he warned her.
“I—I told him I couldn’t m-marry him,” Maggie faltered, tears brimming in her eyes. “Y-you see, he doesn’t love me.”
As if he’d somehow sensed that Maggie’s tears had their root in Reeve’s honest admission that he cherished no deep feelings for her instead of in the pain he was causing her with his hands, Duncan spun her about and virtually hurled her toward the door.
The two maids were watching with wide, sympathetic eyes, their color high. But Maggie knew that they couldn’t help her, to Duncan, they were no more important than the pattern on the wallpaper. The door was open to the warm summer night and Maggie stumbled through it.
She would have lifted her skirts and run if Duncan hadn’t retained his hold on her, dragging her toward the long line of carriages waiting at the base of the broad lawn. Within minutes Maggie was flung into one of the rigs.
“Home, sir?” she heard the driver ask of Kirk, who lingered at the doorway of the carriage, his eyes strange and colorless in the moonlight that shone directly onto his face.
“No,” Duncan said crisply after what seemed to Maggie a small eternity of indecision. “The lady and I will take a ride. A long, leisurely ride.”
The driver chortled in the darkness. “Yes, sir!” he said jubilantly. Fat lot of help he’d be, Maggie thought, folding her arms and trying to melt into one shadowy corner.
Duncan climbed into the vehicle and slammed the flimsy door behind him, taking the seat facing Maggie’s and glaring at her. “You have sorely taxed my patience, Maggie,” he said finally, when the vehicle had been under way for some time.
“Miss Chamberlin to you,” Maggie said. She might have sounded saucy and flippant, but inside she was terrified. Making her own way in the world for so long had taught her that bravado was more advisable than whimpering.
Duncan reached out suddenly, clasping her wrist in one hand and wrenching her out of her seat. She bumped her head on the low roof of the carriage and landed unceremoniously on his lap.
Instantly, she began to struggle, but she could not escape those iron hands which had caught her wrists together behind her back. “I’ll scream!” Maggie threatened in a breathless whisper.
“That,” said Duncan flatly, “would amuse my driver very much. Why don’t you do it?”
Maggie had never been so suddenly, searingly angry in all her life. Her fear was displaced by a pounding sense of outrage and, without thinking first, she spit into Kirk’s face.
He went rigid and, in that awful moment, Maggie realized what a dreadful mistake she’d made. She squirmed to be free, but Duncan restrained her with only one hand, taking a handkerchief from the inside pocket of his coat with the other and slowly drying his face.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said lamely.
Duncan tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket. “I seriously doubt that, Maggie, but you will be sorry shortly. No question about it.”
A shiver went through Maggie. How on earth did she manage to get herself into these situations? First she’d traveled halfway around the world to marry a man who’d only been toying with her affections. Then she’d spent not one night but two in Reeve McKenna’s bed. And now she was trapped inside a darkened carriage with a brute whose sole aim in life seemed to be to make her sorry she’d ever been born.
“I’m willing to forget that this ever happened,” she said reasonably, “if you’ll just let me go.”
She felt the hoarse laughter ripple through Duncan Kirk’s powerful body before she heard it escape his throat in a grating burst that was quickly stilled. “That is very generous of you,” he said.
Maggie bit her lower lip. She’d exhausted all her bravado; now she was just plain scared. Not only that, but his grip on her wrists was making them hurt. “Why are you doing this?” she asked softly.
The question seemed to reach Kirk as none of her struggling or her impudence had. He let go of Maggie, even allowed her to leap back to her own seat, where she sat shivering despite the warmth of the night.
“McKenna was right,” he muttered, “passion becomes you.”
The man was insane. Maggie reached subtly for the handle of the carriage door, mentally calculating her chances of escaping a moving vehicle without breaking every bone in her body. They didn’t add up to a comforting figure. “P-passion?” she echoed, still groping for the little lever couched somewhere in the padded leather interior of the door.
Duncan gave a ragged sigh and Maggie saw him lift one hand to his face. The motion was almost despondent. “Never mind. Miss Chamberlin, will you forgive me?”
Not until the day I die, Maggie thought, but she wasn’t fool enough to say that out loud. It seemed wiser to go along with whatever Kirk might say, then leap to freedom and make a run for it if the carriage slowed at all. She couldn’t think of a single thing that would be safe to say, so she kept her peace, still fidgeting for the door handle.
Finally, she found it. Realizing that she’d been holding her breath, she let it out.
“I won’t try to make excuses for my behavior,” Kirk went on, “for there are none.”
Maggie was only half listening; her attention was focused on the sounds of tinny piano music and raucous laughter coming from outside. Underneath, she thought she detected the gentle whoosh of an incoming tide. She was near the harbor then, and in an area where men came to drink and revel. She remembered that part of Sydney that she and the maid, Sally Crockett, had ridden through on the trolley car. If this place was like that one, she was probably safer inside the carriage.
On the other hand …
Suddenly, the rig came to a lurching stop and the driver began shouting at someone who had gotten in his way. Without taking another moment to consider, Maggie wrenched open the door and leapt out.
As luck would have it, the toe of her slipper caught in the hem of her gown, and she went rolling across a hard-packed dirt road instead of landing at a dead run as she’d hoped to do. Finally, when she’d stopped trundling end over end, she came, bruised and scraped and rumpled, to a stop against a pair of scuffed and muddy boots. Untangling herself from her skirts, Maggie looked not at the wearer of the boots, but back over her shoulder.
Duncan was striding toward her, and while he might have felt sorry minutes before, there was no sign of remorse in his moon-washed features now. He resembled a devil, and his plans for Maggie would be worked in hell.
Hardly daring to hope, she looked up at the man against whose boots she’d landed with such dash and flare. He was tall and he wore a slouchy leather hat and a vest, but that was about all Maggie could tell about him from her position. She did catch a glint of brass or gold at his throat, and for a moment her heart did a wild leap, but instinctively she knew that, whoever this man was, he couldn’t be Reeve.
He bent and, with one work-hardened hand, hauled Maggie to her feet. She huddled against him, staring at Duncan, who reached out for her with a grasping motion that made Maggie remember how he’d hurt her inside the carriage.
“No,” she whispered, and the stranger held her close to his chest.
“Let her go,” Duncan ordered peremptorily. “This is a private matter!”
The stranger’s arm was hard as steel, though he held Maggie gently. “Did you throw her out of that carriage, mate,” he asked, “or did she jump?”
Maggie turned her head and felt a cold metal circle press against her cheek. The man’s chest was hairy and warm and hard, and she clung to him mostly because of the medallion he wore. “I jumped,” she whispered miserably.
Duncan’s rage pounded against Maggie’s being like a hot tide threatening to drown her. “Margaret,” he said, “come here.”
Maggie shook her head, and the hair on her rescuer’s chest tickled the end of her nose.
“It doesn’t look as if she wants to do that, now, does it?” the stranger asked, the words rumbling from deep inside his chest. “I’d advise you to go on about your business, mate, before I’m forced to knuckle your head.”
Behind Maggie, Duncan gave a raspy, exasperated sigh and then swore. He hadn’t minded manhandling her, but it was clear enough that he had his reservations about fighting the man with the medallion and the floppy hat.
“Maggie, think of the children,” he said, trying to sound reasonable.
The man holding Maggie stiffened. “Children?” he asked.
Maggie knew what he was thinking, that Duncan was her husband and that they had little ones at home and that he was interfering in something very private. She grabbed hold of the leather vest with both hands and shivered, refusing to let go.
“The boys love you, Maggie,” Duncan went on, pressing his advantage. “You can’t desert them now.”
Slowly, the stranger’s hands came up to cover Maggie’s and gently pry them from his vest. He was about to abandon her, she knew it, and she wailed desperately, “You don’t understand! I’m not his children’s mother, I’m their nanny!”
The reluctant guardian angel stepped back and Maggie could see that his face was hard and handsome, his hair slightly too long, his eyes a clear azure blue. He assessed her dress, with its abundant view of her cleavage and its glittering beads of crystal. “I’ve never seen a nanny who owned a dress like that,” he said.
“Exactly,” agreed Duncan.
The tall man’s blue eyes narrowed in a leathery face. His teeth were even and white as a Massachusetts snow. “What are you meaning to do to her, mate?”
Duncan sighed a husbandly sigh. “For starters,” he said, “I believe I’ll blister her bustle for nearly getting herself killed like that. She tends to be dramatic, our Maggie.”
“I’m not your Maggie!” the object of this idiotic conversation shrieked.
Unbelievably, the stranger chuckled. “I can see she’s a spirited sort,” he agreed, and he stepped away, leaving Maggie vulnerable to Duncan.
“Please!” she cried.
Duncan was too smart to be rough with her, though his fingers bit into the flesh on her elbow where he grasped her. He was smiling and speaking in soothing tones as he ushered her back toward the carriage.
In a last-ditch effort to save herself from God knew what, Maggie looked back at the stranger, her eyes fixed on the medallion he wore around his neck. She hadn’t been able to get a good look at it in the darkness, but if there was the remotest chance …
“I know a man named Reeve McKenna who wears a brass talisman around his neck!” she called back over one shoulder as Duncan propelled her along.
Even in the darkness Maggie saw the man’s body go rigid. “Wait a minute,” he said in a low voice.
Duncan pretended not to hear. The carriage door was hanging open and he virtually flung Maggie through it. Before he could follow, however, the stranger came forward and spun Duncan around with one easy motion of his hand.
“I said wait,” he repeated.
“I’m in love with Reeve McKenna,” Maggie spouted from inside the carriage. “This man hates him for some reason, and he’s bound and determined to keep us apart.”
Duncan cursed roundly.
“Are you married to this man or not?” the man demanded of Maggie, his stubbly jawline tight in the dim light flowing from noisy saloons and the moon itself.
“I swear I’m not. It’s—it’s Reeve I want to marry.” That was true enough. Maggie did want to marry Reeve McKenna, even if it was impossible.
“If you’re lying to me, miss,” the rescuer warned, “there’ll be no need of this bloke turning you over his knee, for I’ll do it myself.”
Just then Duncan reached the end of his patience. He took a wild swing at the man, and then the driver, who had been content to look on until now, leapt down from the box to enter the fray. It was two against one, but the fellow wearing the medallion like Reeve’s held his own easily. He sent Duncan slamming backward against the carriage and brought the driver low with one fierce thrust of his knee.
Maggie hurled herself out of the carriage and into those sturdy arms. He immediately dragged her off toward one of the saloons, pulling her up the outside stairs after him and flinging her into a room there. The damage to Duncan and his driver must have been serious, for neither of them gave chase.
But Maggie was past thought of Duncan now, wondering what new scrape she’d gotten into by throwing herself to the mercy of an utter stranger. She might have imagined the gentleness with which he’d held her, after all, as well as the chivalry he’d shown in defending her. Her heart was beating double time when he lit a lamp, and a small, seedy room dominated by a messy brass bed leapt into view.
She turned to face her unlikely champion with a nervous smile, her heart wedged into her throat, making it quite impossible for her to speak.
Her host pulled off his hat and Maggie saw that his hair was a very light brown. He made no move to come toward her.
“Tell me how you know Reeve,” he demanded.
Maggie’s bravado was returning, even though her hair was falling down around her shoulders and her dress was torn. Remembering how low cut it was, she raised her hands to cover her breasts, just in case. “First,” she said imperiously, “you must tell me who you are.”
The stranger hesitated for a very long time, so long that Maggie began to fear that he’d rescued her from Duncan just so he could ravish her himself. This little room would be the perfect place for it, and even if Maggie screamed, no one would come to her aid. “James,” he said finally. “My name is James.”
Remembering what Reeve had told her at Parramatta, Maggie gasped, “Jamie?”
>
Jamie let out a long sigh and leaned back against a grimy wall, his arms folded across his broad chest. “Aye,” he said very reluctantly. “Jamie McKenna.”
Maggie forgot all the danger and sank down to sit on the rumpled bed, her knees weak. “Do you know,” she began in a whisper, “that your brother’s been searching for you for twenty years?”
“I know.” Jamie sighed. “Believe me, it hasn’t always been easy to keep from being found.”
Maggie thought of Elisabeth, but some instinct warned her not to mention Jamie’s little girl just yet. She stared at him, baffled. “But why would you hide from your own brother? Do you hate him?”
“God, no,” Jamie breathed. “I could never hate Reeve.”
“Then, why—”
“I ’ave me own reasons,” Jamie broke in, lapsing into that lilting brogue the way Maggie had once heard his brother do. “Now, you’ll be answerin’ a few questions for me, lass.”
Maggie’s lower lip was protruding; she folded her arms stubbornly and fidgeted a little. “I asked first,” she complained.
Jamie threw back his head and shouted with laughter, and even when he’d recovered himself, his eyes were still glistening with amusement. The brogue, with Reeve a sign of stress or passion, was gone as quickly as it had come. “Where are you from, anyway?” he demanded. Before Maggie could answer, he waggled an index finger and said, “No, wait—I know. You’re from the rebel colonies. By God, you’re a Yank!”
Maggie jumped, startled, then sagged. She was always irritated when Reeve called her “Yank,” but now she’d give anything to hear him say that word. “Will you take me to your brother?”
“Not on your life,” Jamie answered immediately. “Right now my big brother is the last person on earth I want to see, with the possible exception of that heavy-handed no-gooder you were sharing a carriage with tonight. We ain’t seen the last of him, I’ll wager.”
“It’s ’haven’t,’” Maggie pointed out primly, “not ’ain’t.’”
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