“You threw a tomato at me!”
He raised both hands as if to ward off an attack. “I was foxed out of my head on cheap gin that night! If I hadn’t been, I would have remembered it before now.”
She snorted. “Ah yes, because you’ve been waiting your whole life to find me. You would have known me anywhere. Anytime. Except for the night you and your horrid friends bombarded me with rubbish and ran me out of town!”
He shook his head, helpless to defend the indefensible. “Well, you have to admit you were a really awful actress.”
She sucked in an outraged breath. “I’d rather be an awful actress than an awful man!” With those words, she snatched a glass of champagne from a footman’s tray and tossed its contents right in his face.
She spun around and went storming off, leaving behind a trail of shocked gasps and muffled titters.
“Lovers’ quarrel,” Crispin muttered to the man nearest to him, earning a knowing and sympathetic nod as he used his cravat to mop his face.
By the time he had swiped all the champagne from his eyes, the exquisite Comtesse d’Arby had vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared.
When the musicians struck up yet another infernal Viennese waltz, Connor grabbed Pamela by the hand and began to drag her toward the middle of the floor. He’d had just about enough of watching her wistfully moon over the couples sweeping gracefully around the ballroom. He’d already decided that there would be none of those ridiculous country dances or stately minuets for him. If he was going to make a complete ass of himself in front of half of London, it was going to be with her in his arms.
“Where are we going?” Pamela asked, alarmed by Connor’s ferocious scowl. He looked as if he were ready to do murder.
“I’m going to dance with you,” he growled. “But if I break your toe as I did my mother’s, you have only yourself to blame.”
Her heart soared in time to the music as he drew her into his arms, cupping one of her gloved hands in his much larger one and pressing his other hand firmly to the small of her back. As he swept her into the waltz, other couples eager to spy on them rushed to join the dance.
For a dizzying moment it was as if they were right back in her bed, their gazes locked, their bodies moving in perfect rhythm.
Until his foot came down firmly on her toes.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, making an involuntary little leap of protest.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Connor said grimly as their next giddy turn nearly bumped a couple right off their feet.
It quickly became apparent that they were posing a danger not only to themselves but to the other dancers as well. Pamela laughed aloud, marveling that a man so graceful both on his feet and off of them could be such a wretched dancer.
She tugged him to a halt. “We can practice later,” she told him. “In private.”
Her husky promise wiped the scowl right off of his face. Instead of releasing her, he splayed his powerful hand at the small of her back and urged her closer. As he gazed down at her, his eyes going smoky with want, it was as if the two of them were suspended in time while the world continued to spin around them in a whirling kaleidoscope of color and motion.
Pamela would have been content to remain that way forever if the music hadn’t lurched to an abrupt halt, leaving the dancers milling about in confusion.
Before they could regain their composure, the footman’s resonant voice reverberated from the arched doorway of the ballroom on a note of pure triumph. “His Grace, the Duke of Warrick.”
A stunned gasp went up from the crowd as two young, burly footmen appeared in the doorway, bearing the duke’s wheeled chair between them as if it were a pasha’s litter or the throne of some mighty and ancient king.
“I do believe someone is trying to upstage you,” Pamela murmured, shooting Connor a wry glance.
He snorted. “I’m surprised he didn’t have heralds dressed as angels announce his arrival with a fanfare of trumpets.”
They watched along with the rest of the guests as the footmen carried the chair across the ballroom, then gently lowered it to the floor. Two more footmen followed in their wake, staggering slightly beneath the weight of a tall velvet-draped object. Those in the back of the room were craning their necks to get a better look at the infamous recluse and the footmen’s mysterious burden.
The duke’s gaunt cheeks were flushed, but it was impossible to tell if his sunken eyes were glittering with fever or excitement. His hair had been neatly combed and lay in a shining curtain over his shoulders. The kiss of hoarfrost at his temples lent him a dignified air. Despite being confined to the chair, he was sitting with his back ramrod straight. His elegant evening clothes masked how wasted his frame had become.
As he surveyed the crowd through his shrewd hazel eyes, Pamela caught a glimpse of the man who must have once commanded every room he entered. The man who had won his duchess’s heart, and then been foolish enough to toss it away like so much refuse.
“Most of you already know why you were invited here tonight,” he said.
Although an expectant hush had fallen over the crowd, Pamela was still surprised by how well his voice carried.
“After many long years of wandering this world alone, my son—and heir—has finally come home.”
That statement produced several surreptitious glances at Connor and a smattering of polite applause.
“At this time I would like to ask him to take his rightful place by my side.”
The duke stretched out his hand toward Connor, its palsied trembling betraying the weakness he was trying so hard to hide. Pamela could feel the tension arcing through Connor and knew he would have liked nothing better in that moment than to bolt for the door. But instead, he laced his fingers through hers and started forward, making it clear that this was one ordeal he had no intention of facing alone.
The crowd eagerly parted to clear a path between the two men. As she and Connor approached the duke, Pamela felt a peculiar chill shoot down her spine. She glanced over her shoulder to find Lady Astrid watching them from the gallery, her eyes glowing nearly as feverishly as her brother’s.
Pamela frowned, disconcerted by the woman’s gloating expression. But there wasn’t anything she could do at the moment except obey the duke’s summons.
Connor reluctantly surrendered her hand as they approached the wheeled chair. She stepped back a respectful pace, executing a graceful curtsy. Connor bowed as well, but the duke quickly caught him by the hand, urging him to straighten.
Pamela glanced behind them again, sensing movement in the crowd for the first time since the duke had made his grand entrance. There seemed to be several new arrivals slipping past the footmen and into the ballroom. Before she could blink, they had disappeared into the crowd, fanning out in all directions.
Her sense of unease growing, she returned her attention to the duke, praying his speech would be over quickly so she could warn Connor that something might be amiss.
Still gripping Connor’s hand, the duke drew him to his side so that they were both facing the crowd. “Ever since the day my son returned to Warrick Park, I’ve been trying to come up with the perfect gift with which I might welcome him home. As most of you know without my boasting, my fortune is such that I could lay many of the world’s greatest treasures at his feet. But by watching him with his lovely fiancée in the past fortnight, I have learned that my son is a much wiser man than I was at his age. He has already come to recognize the value of the dearest treasure of all.”
Pamela felt the sting of unexpected tears in her eyes as the duke paused to give her a gracious nod.
As if by prearranged signal, all four footmen moved to station themselves around the object draped by the velvet curtain.
“After searching my heart—or what’s left of it—I decided to give my son a gift that would honor not only him, but also the memory of his dear mother.”
The duke waved his hand in a dramatic flourish. The footmen tugged a qua
rtet of gold cords and the velvet curtain went rippling to the floor.
An astonished gasp went up from the room as an enormous portrait propped up on a gilded easel was revealed. A portrait of a lady in the first tender bloom of womanhood.
Her hair was piled high on top of her head and lightly powdered in the style of a generation ago, making it impossible to determine its hue. Some might have said it was her striking gray eyes, her ripe lips, or her fine straight nose that made her beauty so uncommon, but Pamela believed it to be the mischievous dimple tucked deep into her right cheek. There was also a beguiling hint of stubbornness to the lift of her jaw, giving the impression that she was not a woman with whom a man would want to trifle. Pamela sighed, thinking how very tragic it was that the duke had learned that lesson too late.
Judging by the tears shining in the man’s eyes, he was probably thinking the exact same thing.
Tugging his hand from the duke’s, Connor took one step toward the portrait, then another, gazing up at it as if hypnotized. For an elusive moment, Pamela would have almost sworn she saw the glint of tears in his eyes as well.
“That’s my mother.”
Pamela shot a nervous look at the duke, puzzled by Connor’s expression and the lack of color in his face. “Yes, dear, of course it’s your mother,” she said carefully. “That’s why the duke had the portrait put on display. To honor you and her memory.”
“No,” he replied, his lips barely moving. “You don’t understand. That really is my mother.”
When she continued to gaze at him as if he’d lost his wits, he swung toward her, the look in his eyes so fierce she took an involuntary step backward. Ignoring her dismayed gasp, he reached down and carelessly snapped the delicate gold chain holding his mother’s locket.
He pried open the locket with his thumb and handed it back to her, his expression grim.
Pamela gazed down at the miniature within. The woman in this likeness had light brown hair gathered at the nape in a much simpler coif. Her face was suffused with a glow of happiness. She looked riper, wiser, more at peace with herself and the world. Different somehow yet still unmistakably the same woman in the duke’s portrait.
Pamela lifted her disbelieving eyes to Connor’s face, stunned comprehension slowly dawning. If he was this woman’s son, then he was also the duke’s son…and the man’s true heir. He was everything he had been pretending to be while she was nothing at all.
Without even realizing it, she began to back away from him.
She had been right all along. She was the one who didn’t belong here, the one who would never truly belong here. She might have set this absurd little farce in motion, but hers was a role she was never meant to play. She should have remained backstage, far away from the glare of the footlights and the avid gazes of the audience.
Connor watched her retreat from him, bewilderment darkening his eyes.
By the time Pamela saw the shadows come creeping out of the crowd to surround them, it was too late.
Lady Astrid’s shrill voice rang out from the gallery, shattering the reverent hush that had fallen over the ballroom. “Arrest that man immediately! He’s an imposter!”
Chapter 26
The duke sat behind the immense desk in his study in his wheeled throne—judge, jury and executioner all wrapped up in one. The flames leaping on the hearth behind the desk might as well have been springing from the yawning mouth of hell itself.
Not even the constable Astrid had summoned to arrest Connor and Pamela dared to defy his authority, although judging from the disapproving set of the man’s thin lips, he would have liked nothing more. He stood stiffly at attention by the door, ready to intervene at the slightest encouragement from the duke.
At the duke’s command, the constable’s battered and bloodied men had been banished to the corridor, where they were passing the time nursing their bruises and testing for loose teeth.
Connor had not gone down without a fight. Especially not after he had seen the men wrench Pamela’s delicate wrists behind her and clap them in irons. It had taken almost a dozen men to subdue him and if one of them hadn’t had the foresight to wrest away the loaded pistol he had whipped from his plaid before he could aim and fire, someone would have been carried from the ballroom feet first.
Connor and Pamela were sitting in the leather wingback chairs in front of the desk like a pair of disobedient children awaiting a scolding.
Pamela rubbed her tender wrists, thankful that at least the duke had insisted their irons be removed. Judging by the murderous glances Connor kept throwing the constable, it might not have been his wisest decision.
She was still having difficulty looking at Connor. Still couldn’t quite comprehend that he wasn’t her highwayman after all, but the heir to a vast empire. How such a thing could have happened was beyond her comprehension. She smoothed her rumpled skirt to give her trembling hands something to occupy them. Her pretty new gown had been torn and stained when the constable’s men had dragged her out of the ballroom in front of their shocked guests.
The duke steepled his fingers beneath his bony chin and gave them both a long, hard look. “Let me make sure I have this perfectly clear. The two of you came here to Warrick Park to deliberately swindle me out of both my fortune and my title. You shamelessly used lies and trickery to gain my trust and affection and to rob my nephew of his rightful inheritance.”
“That pretty much sums it up,” Connor said, managing to look utterly unrepentant as he leaned back in the chair and folded his brawny arms over his chest.
The duke’s shrewd gaze locked on him. “And now that you’ve been caught with your greedy little hands in the till, you claim to have miraculously discovered that you’re exactly who you were pretending to be all along—Percy Ambrose Bartholomew Reginald Cecil Smythe, Marquess of Eddywhistle and heir to the duchy of Warrick.”
Connor visibly winced. “Why in the name of God would any man in his right mind name his firstborn son Percy?”
The duke stiffened. “It was my father’s name. And I’ll have you know that Percy has been a proud name along the northern border of England for generations. Why, the Percys spent years routing the Scots and…” He trailed off at the look in Connor’s eye.
Connor sat up straight in the chair, gripping its armrests. “I’m not any happier about this than you are.” He pointed at the door. “If the woman in that portrait is my mother, then that means you’re—”
The duke eyed him coolly, daring him to continue.
Connor swallowed before saying softly, “It means you’re the miserable cheating bastard who broke her heart.”
“I’ve never denied that, have I, son?”
“Don’t call me that! You haven’t the right!”
When the echo of Connor’s shout had faded, the duke said quietly, “Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” He turned to Pamela, his voice dispassionate. “I hear that once again it is you, Miss Darby, who will provide me with the proof I need to convince me not to turn the both of you over to the constable for a quick trial and an even quicker hanging.”
The constable perked up at the prospect of a hanging, earning a fresh glare from Connor.
“So what’s it to be this time, my dear—a letter from the king himself vouching for the lad’s parentage or perhaps a wailing visit from the shade of his mother?” The duke snorted bitterly. “God knows the woman has haunted me nearly to my grave in the past twenty-nine years.”
Pamela reached into the bodice of her gown. It had been no easy feat hanging on to the locket when the constable’s men had seized her. But she had clenched her fist tight and held on for dear life, remembering how his mother had told Connor to guard it with his life.
She rose and moved to the desk. The duke stretched out his hand, but still she hesitated. Once she surrendered the locket into his keeping, there would be no going back. For any of them.
She slowly let the trinket slip through her fingers and into his hand. “I believe this w
ill prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that this man is your son.”
She returned to her seat, still avoiding Connor’s eyes.
The duke’s hands were trembling so badly it took him three tries to pry open the locket. He sat gazing down at the miniature within for several minutes, his expression unchanging.
But when he lifted his eyes to Connor’s face, they were burning with an unholy fire. “Where did you get this?”
“My mother gave it to me. Right before she died. My father had it painted when a fair came through our village.”
“So she didn’t die on the road to the Highlands?”
Connor shook his head. “She didn’t die until I was fifteen.”
“How?” the duke demanded querulously. “How can any of this be possible?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Connor snapped, his own voice rising. “Perhaps my father found her when she was ill. He had a tender heart and a habit of taking in strays. Perhaps he took her and her babe in as well. All I know is that I never knew the woman in this portrait as anything but my mother and his wife.”
“She was my wife!” the duke roared, pounding his fist on the desk. “He had no right to her!”
Connor gave him a long level look. “Apparently, neither did you.”
The duke seized the iron wheels of his chair and wrenched the chair to the side, as if he could no longer bear to look upon any of them. His hair fell in a lank curtain around his face. “So you came here to swindle an old fool out of his fortune only to discover that you were exactly who you were pretending to be.”
“Aye,” Connor confessed. “That seems to be the way of it.”
The constable stepped forward, hat in hand. “You’ve suffered enough of this pair’s nonsense, your grace. Why don’t you allow me to summon my men and have them locked up until you can determine what should be—”