The butler gave him a disdainful look. “I am going up, sir,” he said in heavily accented French. “There is some man in the parlor, a man from the Scottish wilds, who has come to see my mistress. It is my suspicion he is a policeman in disguise. I am sure he brings trouble.”
Connor dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “Perhaps he wants to help your mistress.”
Fear darkened the man’s faded blue eyes. “That has not been her experience with such men of his profession in the past.”
A ray of understanding broke through the clouds of Connor’s irritation. The police—her enemies? Could this man be referring to Napoleon’s notorious secret police, who had mined so many Royalist families years ago? He wondered suddenly whether there was a grain of reality in the fairy tale after all. What could have so terrorized the daughter of a duke that she would seek refuge in a nest of criminals?
Connor patted the man’s frail shoulder. “I’m not a policeman. Don’t worry, I have no intention of hurting your mistress.”
“But, monsieur—”
“She’ll call you if she needs you,” Connor said reassuringly. Then curiosity got the better of him and he searched the man’s shuttered face for the truth that kept eluding him. “What did the police do to make your mistress so afraid?” he asked very softly.
But Claude only shook his head, grim-lipped and not about to reveal any personal secrets to a stranger, if indeed there were secrets to reveal.
“I will wait outside the door,” he said as if to warn Connor that Maggie was under his protection. “I will stand guard until you go away.”
By the time he reached the top of the stairs, Connor could hear her talking gently as if to a child. He traced the intriguing sound to the tiny room at the end of the hall. He didn’t know what he expected to find by barging in on her unannounced, but she was mistaken if she thought she could defy his orders. He was going to show her who was in control.
He pushed the door open to the candlelit room, hesitating as the small figure rifling through the armoire gave a startled gasp. But it was Connor who suffered the greatest shock. The sight of her in a white silk chemise with billowing lace petticoats wreaked more havoc on his composure than all the effort involved in penetrating Heaven’s Court. She looked like a beautiful white blossom. Like something fresh and pure, tempting him to touch her, to savor her innocence.
He exhaled slowly. The stress of the previous evening’s events conspired with an unwelcome shot of sexual tension to tighten his muscles. He felt like hell and probably looked it too. His head was pounding hard enough to explode. His body ached from riding half the night in a futile search for his sister. He didn’t know where he found the energy to be so aroused.
“Miss Saunders.” He clenched his jaw unconsciously as he glanced around the room to see who she’d been talking to in that beguilingly tender voice.
Maggie gave him a reproachful look. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I am wearing nothing but my undergarments.”
He’d noticed, all right. He’d noticed everything from the tiny pink silk rosebuds stitched on the hem of her petticoats to the swell of her full white breasts through her chemise. He turned to the wall, warning himself to behave. Dear Lord, what a preposterous dilemma, and here he was thinking he’d lived through just about everything.
His gaze fell suspiciously on a leather-bound trunk by the door. Feminine garments spilled like seafoam from its bulging edges, evidence of her impending escape. His anger flared, bright and hot. “Caught in the act again,” he said furiously. “I see you haven’t been wasting any time.”
“Of course not,” she said in a muffled voice as her head vanished into the gray velvet bodice of the dress she’d tugged from the armoire. “You convinced me this morning how dangerous the situation is—you don’t mind carrying that trunk, do you? It would take Claude a fortnight to haul it down the stairs and you, being such a hale and strong Highlander, could do it so much easier.”
He wheeled in astonishment. “Are you asking me to help you shirk your responsibilities as my witness? Well hell, if that doesn’t take—”
She stared at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only came back to pack a few necessities, and to get Claude and Daphne, of course. I couldn’t just abandon them, could I?”
He took a breath to cool his anger as she darted past him to the dressing table. The scent of roses followed her like a scattering of crushed petals. For a moment he was too distracted by her femininity to continue, by the movement of her hands like a pair of butterflies as she twisted her curly hair into an intricate knot. He noticed how slender her neck was, and wondered if she had recovered from her fall— Lord, had he only known her for twenty-four hours? Was it possible she had turned his world upside down in less than a day?
“Do you expect me to believe you left my home today on a rope with every intention of returning?” he said in patent disbelief.
Her eyes met his in the mirror, brimming with innocence. “It’s the truth.”
He cast a cynical glance around the room. There was a white poodle curled up asleep on the bed, nestled cozily amidst a heap of bonnets, stockings, and a pair of well-worn satin ballet slippers.
“You’re a dancer?” he asked, realizing with a vague sense of relief that she must have been talking to the dog and not a lover when he burst in.
“A private passion, not a profession. Papa would have disapproved. Robert would have been mortified.”
He raised his eyebrow at the nuance of affection in her tone. “Robert?”
“My brother, the prude. Oh dear, Daphne, you aren’t sitting on my good hat, are you?”
Connor frowned to cover his sudden fascination. A ballerina. He studied her covertly from beneath his brows. Well, that explained her alluring air of gracefulness. One piece of the puzzle in place. Against his will he pictured her practicing in his fifteenth-century Highland house, her perfect little body perspiring. Relevé. Plié. Tendu. It would be torture to watch her and not touch. There was something too erotic about a woman’s body exercising with such focused strength. A glimmer of resentment entangled with expectation flashed through him. They would be alone most of the time except for the four servants who maintained the small estate. Trouble loomed ahead in spades.
So did possibilities.
She glanced at him over her shoulder. She was even lovelier with her hair caught back, elegant with the exquisite features of a doe, her eyes wide and expressive. Connor felt some of the resentment melt away as he studied her.
“It’s all right if I bring him, isn’t it?” she asked in concern.
“Your prude—I mean, your brother?”
“My butler.”
Not exactly alone then. But alone enough—why was he having so much trouble following this conversation? “Not the old man I met on the stairs?” he said incredulously. “He didn’t look strong enough to make such a strenuous journey. I’m not going to be anyone’s nursemaid.”
“I should hope not,” Maggie said. “Claude would be mortified if you mollycoddled him. He is, however, old and unemployable, my lord. He will not survive on his own. We have to take him. We have to.”
She was so steadfast in her protective loyalty that Connor didn’t know how to refuse her without sounding like a monster. He shook his head, exhausted and at his wits’ end. He had to get away from her, and fast. She was addling his brains. “We’re obviously headed for disaster, Miss Saunders, and I can see no alternative but to make other arrangements. One of the junior lawyers who works for me should be handling this. Donaldson is my best. He has a married sister in Aberdeen where you could stay indefinitely.”
He didn’t add that Donaldson wouldn’t even notice if she danced naked on his dinner table. The young man’s work obsessed him; women did not exist in his dedicated world. “You’ll be safe with Donaldson,” he concluded—safe in ways that Connor, dangerously attracted to her, could not promise.
Maggie walked over to her overstuffed
trunk. “No.”
Connor sensed a rebellion brewing. “What do you mean ‘no’?”
“I am not going off with a total stranger.”
He smiled insultingly. “I am a total stranger, Miss Saunders, in case that startling fact has slipped your attention. One housebreaking does not a friendship make.”
She plopped down on her trunk in protest. “You’re less a stranger than a man I’ve never met,” she argued reasonably. “Besides, I have the utmost confidence in your ability to protect me. Apart from a few obvious flaws in your temperament such as beastly arrogance and a weakness for women, I believe you have an honorable heart.”
Honorable was the last word Connor would use to describe the feelings she had stirred in his black heart so far. Smoldering lust seemed more accurate. She looked like Little Miss Muffet with her skirts spread out on her tuffet, and he, like the nasty big spider, would probably end up frightening her out of her naive faith in him. She needed a lesson in reality, this woman who’d broken into his house to help a homeless old peddler.
She gave him a look of unshakable trust. “I wouldn’t feel safe going into hiding with anyone else but you.”
“In spite of my beastly arrogance and weakness for women?”
“Well, nobody is perfect.”
Connor snorted at that. Her self-composure amazed him. It made him want to master her. And he hated to admit it, but he still couldn’t shake off that silly tingle of magic he felt when he looked at her, as if a wicked fairy had bopped him over the head with her wand.
He scowled to hide that embarrassing realization. “It will not be easy, traveling together under such strained circumstances, lass. I intend to use every opportunity to look for my sister.” He paused, hoping for evidence that he’d intimidated her. If he had, she hid it well. “You and I know very little about each other.”
“I know more about you than you realize,” she said calmly.
His mouth tightened. “A kitchen maid’s gossip. I knew I shouldn’t have brought Emily into my house. I trust there won’t be any more misjudgments between us based on what is said behind my back.”
“I trust not, my lord.” She smoothed down her skirts. “If that’s understood, then we might as well be on our way.”
Connor didn’t feel like anything was understood at all. He was confused. He wanted to walk out of this room and pretend they’d never met. But then he remembered the stranger in the market asking about her. The men who’d injured her last night, the tragedy in her past that Sebastien and the old butler had alluded to. Perhaps at the moment there was little Connor could do to help Sheena. But he had the power, if not the inclination, to help this woman. She needed protection. If any harm came to her, the responsibility would lay in his hands.
For one small woman, she had stirred his life into a storm. He turned in defeat to the door. “Hurry up,” he said brusquely.
She looked worried. “You never did tell me it was all right to bring Claude and Daphne along.”
“Who the hell is Daphne?” He all but bellowed the question, then took a startled step back as the poodle bounced off the bed and hurled itself at him in a frenzy of tail-thumping friendliness.
Maggie clasped her hands, grinning in relief. “She likes you. That’s a very good sign. Daphne is an excellent judge of character. So were her parents. I feel even better about my decision to go off with you.”
Connor stared down in dismay at the dog, if you could call it that; it looked more like a hyperkinetic ball of hair, and it kept licking his hands.
He stumbled backward to open the door. Claude stared at him from the hall, pale with exertion. “Mademoiselle,” he said weakly, “there is a man in the parlor who wishes to see you, a policeman, I suspect. I’m afraid I neglected to ask his name.”
“It’s all right, Claude.” She had returned to the dressing table, adjusting a monstrous object on her head. “Will this hat do, Lord Buchanan?” she asked anxiously.
Connor glanced around, but he couldn’t see her face. It was hidden beneath a huge veil that dropped from her forehead like a curtain. “Will it do what?”
“I’m wearing it to conceal my identity. I don’t want anyone to notice me.”
He thought that she couldn’t have attracted more notice if a pelican had gotten caught in a fishing net and landed on her head. He couldn’t bring himself to comment on it though because he was in shock, just beginning to realize what he’d gotten himself into. A dog that looked like a white powdered wig with legs, a hostile old man, a woman petite enough to tuck into his pocket. Helpless, dependent on him, expecting him to play the hero. He was a traveling circus.
“Do you think I should bring a bathing dress?” Maggie asked thoughtfully.
Connor rolled his eyes. A bathing dress, she’d said. “We’re not going on a Mediterranean holiday, lass. We’ll be in seclusion.”
“I only wanted to be prepared in case you asked me to go for a little swim.”
“Miss Saunders, I am protecting you from criminals, not overseeing a playful splash in the local stream. Furthermore, a Highland autumn can be not only damn cold but downright dangerous.”
“Just like the Highlanders who survive them,” she said sadly. “I don’t know why you’re being so nasty about this. If we’re stuck together, we may as well be friends. Especially after last night.”
“Friends?” he exclaimed. “Friends? You tried to rob me. We didn’t exactly spend a lovely evening at the opera getting to know each other.”
Maggie brightened. “Do you like the opera too? I never would have guessed. Well, at least that’s one thing we have in common.”
Connor could only shake his head at what aggravation lay ahead.
“Well, I’m going to bring a parasol,” she said after a moment. “And don’t tell me the sun doesn’t shine in the Highlands. I refuse to be affected by your pessimism.”
He expelled a sigh of exasperation. “Bring a parasol. What does it matter?”
“The gray-striped silk or the ivory lace? Oh, never mind. I’ll bring them both. Will you carry down the trunk, or shall we have it sent to your house?” she asked politely as she began heaping hatboxes into his arms.
He grunted, struggling to see her over the rising mountain of millinery. “I’ll have it picked up in the morning before we leave. Is all this stuff really necessary?”
“I will not embarrass you with inappropriate clothing.”
He frowned. “There must be a fortune in hats here. How can a woman of your circumstances afford all this? Or am I carting around stolen goods?”
“Arthur has spoiled me horribly. He insists that all his boarders be well dressed.”
“Stolen goods.” Connor sighed. “I knew it. Now I’m a criminal.”
Maggie hid a grin. “What about the dog?”
Daphne’s tail started to wag.
“The dog,” he said.
Maggie stuffed her ballet shoes into a black velvet reticule. “Claude, too?”
Connor clenched his jaw as she tucked a parasol under his arm. He felt like a damned hatrack. Lord help him. “Claude too.”
There was a small crowd waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. The Chief; Janet; Auntie Mabel; Charlie Cameron, the famous jewel thief who had been released from prison last year; young Hugh, the housebreaker; and his uncle, Reckless Ronald MacTavish, the retired highwayman who’d lost an eye in the French and Indian Wars.
Maggie felt a lump rise in her throat at the sight of them, the only family she had. She remembered the times Charlie had brewed chamomile tea when she caught a cold, how Ronald would come out searching for her whenever she was a few minutes late from work, how Janet had warmed her slippers at the fire. And the Chief, the secrets they had shared late at night when no one else was listening, the tears they’d shed over losing their beloved homes.
She felt Connor behind her on the stairs, big and powerful, regarding her friends in blatant disapproval. Out of the frying pan into the fire. Why should she t
rust him? He needed her now, and she needed him. But what would happen to her after his sister was found? What was she giving up to go off with this man?
The Chief’s voice broke the silence. “Ye’ll need an escort back to his house.”
“We will not,” Connor said in horror. “The Lord Advocate can hardly be seen accompanied by the worst criminals in the city.”
“They’re the best criminals in the city,” Maggie said with a catch in her voice.
“Aye.” The Chief walked slowly forward to confront Connor until they stood chest to chest, Maggie like a wild daisy lost in the shadow of two towering oak trees. “A warning, lad,” he said in a soft growl. “If any harm comes to that lass, I’ll be sewing buttons on yer shroud and not yer coat the next time.”
“No one is going to hurt her.”
“And another thing.” The Chief’s voice dropped an octave. “If word gets out that I was mendin’ clothes in my spectacles, I’ll ken who come after.”
Connor could barely restrain a grin. “I have a feeling that information will come in handy in the future when I need a favor or two.”
“Dinna push yer luck, Connor.”
Luck? Connor turned to regard the cause of all this consternation, admitting to himself that there could be worse things in the world than guarding a beautiful young woman in his Highland hideaway.
“Are you ready, lass?” he asked.
She nodded, then sniffed, flicking her veil back to dab at her nose with a handkerchief. “This is all so sudden and upsetting, my lord. I need a moment to say good-bye in private.”
Connor looked around the hallway in disbelief. Hardened criminals were clearing their throats, blinking back tears, stepping forward to embrace Maggie in rough hugs. He felt like a wolf stealing a baby lamb from its flock.
“For God’s sake,” he said. “It’s not as if she’s never going to return. I have to be back myself before the end of the month.”
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