Daring

by Jillian Hunter

  “I think it’s a good thing after all that we won’t be staying here tonight,” he said in a low, tortured voice as he tore his mouth from hers.

  Maggie opened her eyes to look at him, breathless and unbalanced. “Why?” she whispered. “Are you ill?”

  “Am I ill?” he said in a strangled voice.

  Maggie studied him in concern. “I hope you haven’t caught something. Perhaps you ought to lie down.”

  He removed her hands from his neck. “I definitely should not lie down. And you—”

  A hard knock at the door interrupted them. “This is Isabel’s father. Lord Buchanan,” a gruff voice announced. “A guest has just told me he saw a woman sneak into your room, but I told him it couldna be true. I told him there was not a woman in your room.”

  “I’ll handle this.” Maggie stepped toward the door before Connor could stop her. “The man needs to be put in his place.”

  Connor, shaking off the sensual lassitude that had immobilized him, stared at her in disbelief. “What are you doing?”

  She turned to him briefly before raising the bolt. “You might be a famous lawyer, my lord, but you clearly lack experience in dealing with people in day-to-day affairs. The line between our inferiors must be delineated, gently, but delineated all the same. This man must be reminded of his position on the social ladder.”

  He looked horrified. “You’re in your nightclothes. You— You’re only a girl. Do not open that—”

  She did. She opened it with the practiced annoyance of a princess disturbed by a peasant.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” Connor sputtered, hopping backward over Daphne. “This is the Highlands, not the French court. We’ll be tossed out on our ears.”

  Maggie shook her head, dismissing his concerns, and smiled with beguiling sweetness at the irate man who faced her.

  “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” she said in the same voice she used when Daphne had made a puddle in a bad place. “Do you have any idea who you are disturbing?”

  Connor swallowed a groan and sank to the bed in surrender, covering his eyes. Isabel’s father was too astonished to reply. Not that Connor really wanted to hear his response. He’d suffered enough embarrassment for a lifetime.

  Chapter

  19

  Thomas Donaldson, junior counselor, felt like kicking up his heels in excitement. He made do with a low chuckle of self-satisfaction that went unnoticed in the tavern’s din of drinking and conversation. Finally. He’d finally unearthed some crucial evidence on his own. He couldn’t wait until the Lord Advocate heard about this. Thomas only wished he could tell Connor he’d found his sister too.

  But Sheena Buchanan had vanished without a trace. Donaldson would have given his right arm to find her. He lived to please Lord Buchanan.

  He finished his ale and threw several coins down on the tavern table. The two informants he’d just met had already melted into the crowd. He wasn’t surprised. It didn’t help to be seen consorting with the public prosecutor’s assistant in this part of town.

  He sauntered outside, too pleased with himself to notice the damp chill in the air. Or the shadows that fell into step behind him.

  He wouldn’t call a cab. He wanted to walk. His mother was visiting and would be waiting up for him to celebrate his birthday. He needed an hour alone to savor his success.

  Motive.

  He’d discovered the Balfour murderer’s motive. Connor had been convinced of the man’s identity all along, and now Donaldson had learned that Connor’s prime suspect, a middle-aged nobleman, was being blackmailed for a sordid crime he’d committed against a child in the past. Lord Montgomery, pillar of the nobility, devoted husband, friend to the royal family. Secret gambler, child molester, and killer, had needed money. Desperate enough to murder his own banker and clerk and frame a disoriented vagrant who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.

  Proving this would be Connor’s job. Montgomery, despite wealth and connections, didn’t stand a chance once Connor got him in the witness box.

  Donaldson began to whistle. It was later than he realized, but he had never felt so awake, so hopeful for the future.

  He became aware of the footsteps only a few seconds before the club struck the side of his head. He staggered into a parked carriage. The club fell again.

  “That was for not minding your own business.”

  Pain exploded through his temple. He tried to speak. Blackness sucked him into a void. Another blow. He barely felt it this time. An impassive voice hissed in his ear.

  “And that one was for Buchanan.”

  He sank gratefully into the numbing darkness. He never heard the carriage wheels scrape over the cobbles. He never saw the gentle giant of a man who found him in the gutter a few minutes later and hefted him into his huge arms.

  A young girl in trousers stepped off the pavement. “Who is it, Papa?” she whispered.

  “I think it’s Donaldson, the silly bugger who works for Connor. Someone has beaten the lad half to death.”

  “Connor’s friend?” Her eyes grew wide with alarm. “Do you think that he’s in danger too?”

  “I dinna ken, Janet, but he’s man enough to take care of himself. It’s Maggie we should be worrying about.”

  Chapter

  20

  It was as black as the bowels of Hades in the carriage, but Maggie didn’t need a light to see the look on his lordship’s face. Features cast in stone. Hazel eyes smoldering with anger. She’d thought he was going to suffer an apoplectic fit when Isabel’s father had invited her to spend the night. And told Connor to find lodgings elsewhere.

  She leaned forward. She would probably be wise, under the circumstances, to keep her thoughts to herself. But she had to break the tension building between them.

  “Try and look at the bright side, my lord.”

  “The bright side.” His voice could have cut through granite. “By the ‘bright side’ I assume you mean that traveling through a thunderstorm in a leaky coach being driven by a half-drunken man, in the wee small hours over an unmarked road, that cramped between a poodle, a butler, and a hysterical woman prone to hallucinations, is preferable to the privacy and comfort of the room we just left?”

  Maggie shook her head in admiration. “You do have a way with words. What I meant, though, is that we’ll be at your sister’s cottage that much sooner. Think of the time we’re saving.”

  He grunted, turning his face to the window, clearly not in a mood to be reasoned with. Maggie settled back against the squabs, sighing as Claude covered her legs with a tartan blanket.

  “More cheese and biscuits, my lady?” he asked solicitously.

  “Yes, please, Claude. I’m famished. What a night.”

  “Another meat pie and glass of wine? Isabel’s father insisted you should eat before setting out. He was most concerned about your health.”

  Maggie darted Connor a glance. “If his lordship doesn’t want it.”

  Connor refused to acknowledge her. He had closed his eyes, folded his arms over his chest, and settled into a forbidding silence.

  “Don't bother him again, Claude,” Maggie said in a loud whisper. “His lordship is having his little pout. Can you imagine? A man his age.”

  Connor opened his eyes. “I am not pouting. I am exasperated.” He nudged Daphne away with his shoulder. “Stop licking my damn face.”

  Maggie gasped. “Now you’re swearing at my dog. You are heartless. Why, you’ve hurt her feelings. Look at her. She has big fat tears in her eyes. Just look at her.”

  “For the love of God.” Connor turned his head to examine the poodle, feeling like a proper idiot. “She does not.”

  Claude leaned down. “I know it is not my place to say so, sir, but I have looked at that dog’s face every day for a decade, and those are genuine tears.”

  “Apologize to her, my lord,” Maggie said.

  “Apologize to a poodle? I will not.”

  “Please
, sir,” Claude said, sotto voce. “If not for the heartbroken little animal, but for the sake of peace in the carriage.”

  “Heartbroken?” Connor said. “Her damn tail is wagging like a windmill.”

  “He swore again!” Maggie scooped the creature protectively into her arms. “Did his lordship scare you with his nasty-wasty voice?” She nuzzled Daphne’s wet black nose. “Shall we have Claude give the bad, bad man a big, big spanking with a spoon?”

  Connor covered his eyes. “Dear God.”

  “Don’t let pride stop you from doing the right thing,” Maggie urged him. “Apologize, and we’ll forget the entire ugly incident ever happened. Daphne is willing to make friends.”

  Connor shrank down into the seat, a conquered man. What was the use? “Please accept my apologies, Daphne,” he said gravely.

  “Give her a kiss,” Maggie said.

  There was utter silence. Maggie smiled uneasily, holding the dog up like an offering. Claude watched with bated breath.

  Connor’s grin was menacing. “I will kiss the hind end of a hippopotamus before putting my lips to that poodle.”

  Maggie lowered the dog back into her lap. “I don’t think he’s going to do it, Claude,” she whispered.

  The old man nodded unhappily. “Even worse, he’s made her cry again.”

  She wondered where they were, if Lord Buchanan would continue to ignore her the entire way. She flipped aside the leather curtains to look, leaning over him. She didn’t expect to recognize anything in the dark, rain-washed landscape.

  She certainly didn’t expect to see a large black carriage lumbering down the road behind them.

  Or was it only a circle of standing stones shimmering in the rain at the wayside? Goosebumps rising on her skin, she reached blindly back across Connor’s lap for the field glasses on the seat.

  “Wake up, my lord,” she said urgently. “Wake up and look out the window.”

  Connor didn’t need to wake up. There wasn’t a nerve, muscle, or bone in his body that wasn’t standing at attention after she’d slid across his legs, then groped his lap for the blasted glasses. He was a smoldering volcano of suppressed lust waiting to erupt.

  “It is two o’clock in the morning, Miss Saunders.”

  “I realize that,” Maggie replied, her bottom hitting his chest as she pressed her face to the window, “but we’re being followed. See for yourself.”

  She thrust the field glasses back at his chin. Releasing a slow hiss of exasperation, he pushed her derriere out of his line of vision and lifted the field glasses to the window. Then he started to swear.

  Maggie was more relieved than frightened by Connor’s outburst. Now, at last, he would believe her. Now he would take protecting her more seriously.

  “You see it, don’t you?” She tried to subdue the triumphant note in her voice. After all, he’d brushed off her warnings like so many flies that annoyed him. “You realize that I’ve been right all along.”

  His mouth tightened into a thin white line. “What I realize,” he ground out, flinging the glasses down beside her, “is that the idiot driver has wandered off the road. We’re heading straight into McGonigle’s bog. Almighty God, he’s going to kill us.”

  “Sir,” Claude said, “I know it is not my place to say so, but I couldn’t help noticing that you haven’t eaten a thing all evening. Would you care for that meat pie now?” Connor started to bang with all his might on the roof. The carriage shook with the force of his blows. It slowed, descending down a shallow incline. Then it began to sink, a foot at a time, into the murky depths of McGonigle’s bog.

  The farmer’s wife wrung her chapped hands in agitation at the bottom of the steep wooden staircase. “I wish I’d known to expect ye, my lord. I’d have cleaned up properly, but the bairns have been sick with coughs, and my husband’s away buyin’ sheep.”

  Connor gave her a reassuring smile. “We’re the ones who should be apologizing, Mrs. Pringle, begging shelter like gypsies in the dead of the night. By the way, this is—” He glanced questionably at Maggie, uncertain how he should introduce her.

  “There’s no point in keeping it a secret,” Maggie said quietly. “This kind woman deserves to know who she is sheltering in her home.”

  “Are you a princess?” Mrs. Pringle wondered, staring at the mud-stained Maggie in awe.

  “Not quite,” Connor said wryly. “She is, however, the daughter of a French duke.”

  The woman studied Maggie in dismay. “Look at the wee lassie, a duke’s daughter no less, covered in stinkin’ bog mud up to her knees. What could a lovely innocent like you have done to deserve such an unkind fate?”

  Connor opened his mouth to explain, then closed it as a small boy in a nightshirt appeared at the top of the staircase. “Peggy’s hackin’ like a horse again, Ma. I canna sleep.”

  “Get back to yer bed,” the woman said in embarrassment. “I’ll be up as soon as I see to her ladyship’s comfort.” She turned back to Maggie, clearly awestruck that a member of the French nobility had descended on her humble home. “Just let me run up to make sure the room is suitable for ye. ’Tis as cold as a tomb to be certain. Dear me. I’ll have to fetch some coals from the cellar. And towels—people like ye want them clean, I warrant.”

  “I’ll take care of the coals, Mrs. Pringle,” Connor said. “Please don’t put yourself out.”

  The woman started up the stairs, shaking her head. “It doesn’t seem right, my lord, making the likes of ye sleep out here in the barn wi’ the beasts. I’ll have the bairns move down to the parlor.”

  “You can’t do that,” Maggie said in alarm. “Not with those bad chest coughs. Why, they’ll catch pneumonia.”

  Connor nodded in agreement. “I’m so tired I could sleep in a tree.”

  The woman bustled off. Maggie started up the stairs, then turned to regard Connor, swaying on her feet with fatigue. “I don’t know, my lord. Perhaps she’s right. The barn will be awfully damp and unpleasant in this weather. I’m really worried. Perhaps I should sleep there instead.”

  Lightning flickered behind the windows, illuminating her drawn features in a flash of brilliance. Connor found himself unwillingly touched by her offer, even though privately he blamed her for getting them in this absurd predicament. But he couldn’t let her sleep in a bed of moldy straw, haunted by her mysterious nightmares. Without realizing it, he felt compelled to protect her again, and she cared about his comfort. He liked that.

  “I’ve slept in worse places.” It was true. Once as a child, he had hidden his orphaned family in a Highland cave for an entire summer. The girls had thought it an adventure, much like Miss Saunders did. Women, he thought, rarely had a grasp on reality, which was one of the things he liked about them. And she didn’t want him to be cold. It was too sweet, especially in view of the fact that he had practically bitten her head off a few minutes ago. Absurd, the stab of affection he felt at that nurturing quality. Toss a few crumbs of concern his way, and he was ready to grovel at her feet. “The barn will do us for the few hours left until morning,” he ended gallantly.

  Maggie hesitated. “Actually, I was thinking more of Claude and his arthritis. I know you’ll be all right, a man as strong as you. By the way, it was amazing how you lifted those horses from the bog. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so impressed.”

  She stripped, teeth chattering, and washed with a bucket of water behind the crude wooden screen in the tiny dormer bedroom. As she was toweling off, the door opened and footsteps tromped across the room.

  “Is that you stomping about, my lord?”

  “Yes.” He sounded understandably irritable. “I’ve brought the coals so her ladyship can toast her aristocratic toes for the few minutes left until morning. It is, after all, only five o’clock.”

  “How kind of you… but do try to make a little less noise. You sound like the giant at the top of the beanstalk.” She shivered, rubbing briskly at her chilled skin. “Would you mind tossing me my nightdress? It’s lying on
the bed.”

  “I am on my hands and knees, groveling in the dark to get these wretched coals lit. Fetch your own nightdress.”

  Maggie looked up. “Fine. I only asked. I wouldn’t want nasty soot marks on it anyway. You should be careful lighting that coal. Men who aren’t used to menial chores often hurt themselves doing them. My uncle burned his beard off lighting coals. He was a count, a brilliant man like you. I think he scorched his eyebrows too. Perhaps there’s a correlation between intelligence and clumsiness. Don’t look.” She streaked past him to the bed, the skimpy towel clutched to her breasts. Connor, who had been deliberately ignoring her, glanced up just in time to see her bare white buttocks disappear under the covers, a heart-shaped moon vanishing behind the clouds during a total eclipse.

  The sight jolted through his exhaustion like a spear thrust.

  He grinned shamelessly; hoping for an encore, he rested his hand back down on the grate, and the tiny pile of coals that had just begun to glow. Small flames arrowed up his jacket sleeve. The intense shock of pain wiped the grin from his face. It made him leap up with a string of curses that could be heard throughout the house.

  She pulled down the covers, struggling on with the nightdress as she threw her bare leg over the bed. “You looked, didn’t you?”

  “Hell’s bells!” he shouted. “Maggie, fetch me the basin of wash water. I’m on fire!”

  She shrank back as he jumped up and plunged his arm into the basin, splashing at the flames. “Well, thanks very much for the help,” he said in a disgruntled voice. “I suppose you couldn’t rouse yourself from the bed for laughing so hard. It’s all right, though. I don’t mind becoming a human bonfire as long as it entertains her ladyship.”

  He turned in annoyance, shaking his dripping sleeve. Maggie had left the bed and stood pressed with her shoulder blades against the wall. She wasn’t laughing though, as he expected. Instead she looked panicked, the same pallor on her face as the morning she had fainted in his town house.