Pamela reluctantly unwound the fur scarf from her throat, shivering at the sharp bite of the night wind, and laid it across his palm. He ran his hand over it, an avaricious glint in his eye. But when he reached the end, a fat clump of fur clung to his fingers.
“What in the devil is this?” he demanded, glowering down at the offending stuff with palpable revulsion. “Rat?”
Pamela sniffed. “Of course not. I’ll have you know it’s prime Hertfordshire squirrel.”
Still scowling, he gave the garment an experimental shake. Fur flew everywhere, including up Pamela’s nose. She made no attempt to stifle her sneeze.
Tossing the rapidly balding stole over a nearby bush, he growled, “Let’s have a look at those ruby earbobs, shall we?”
“If you insist,” she replied, tugging the earbobs from her delicate lobes and surrendering them to his hand. The gemstones glowed like drops of fresh blood against his broad palm.
As he studied them, the appreciative gleam in his eyes slowly faded. He lifted his gaze to hers. “These are paste, aren’t they? Nothin’ but worthless paste.”
She shrugged. “I suppose it’s possible. Unscrupulous jewelers have been known to take advantage of their more naïve customers.”
He did not wait for her to hand over the diamond brooch adorning the lapel of her pelisse. Closing the distance between them with one step, he tucked his hand beneath her collar to hold the fabric steady while he deftly unfastened the brooch’s pin with his nimble fingers. She shivered as his warm knuckles lingered against the vulnerable skin of her throat. Their gazes met and held for the space of a ragged heartbeat before he secured his prize and stepped away.
He didn’t waste a precious second ogling the brooch. He simply tucked it between his lips and dug his teeth into it before hurling it away in disgust. “What sort of dangerous game are you and your sister playin’, Miss Darby?”
“One we’re determined to win,” she replied, her hand inching toward her reticule.
He studied her through narrowed eyes for a moment, then held out his hand. “Give me your drawers.”
Pamela’s own hand froze. Behind her, she heard Sophie gasp.
“Pardon me?” Pamela asked, eyeing him with fresh suspicion.
During their years in the theater, she’d encountered several actors who delighted in donning feminine garb and playing the female roles in the pantomime. But this strapping Highlander hardly seemed the sort to drape himself in ruffles and lace and prance across a stage warbling a suggestive ditty.
“You heard me, lass. Drop your drawers and hand them over.”
She gave him a withering glare. “How could I deny such a romantic request? With that quicksilver tongue of yours, you must be quite irresistible to the ladies.”
This time the deepening of his dimple was unmistakable. “Oh, I’ve other tricks for gettin’ them off you, but I don’t you think you want me to show you those.” He cut his eyes toward Sophie. “At least not right now.”
Gritting her teeth in exasperation, Pamela turned her back on him only to find the coachman gawping at her, his knobby hands still thrust into the air. Muttering beneath her breath, she faced the woods and reached beneath her skirts. She was determined to deny the larcenous scoundrel so much as a glimpse of stocking or well-turned ankle. After much struggle, she finally managed to extract herself from her drawers by clutching the trunk of a nearby alder and hopping up and down on each foot in turn.
She turned to hurl them at the highwayman. “There! I hope you’re happy, you odious, insufferable boor!”
He caught them neatly with one hand, no longer bothering to hide his smirk. “And just when I feared your affections for me were wanin’.”
She averted her eyes from him, heat rising in her cheeks. Despite the sheltering layers of pelisse, skirts, petticoat and stockings, she still felt woefully exposed. It was almost as if the chill night wind was deliberately whistling its way beneath her hem and between her clenched thighs.
She stole a sullen look at the highwayman. At least she didn’t wear ridiculous scraps of French silk like her mother had. Her drawers were sturdy English wool—decent, practical, and dull…just like her.
As she watched him examine the worn garment with far more care than he had shown the stole or the brooch, curiosity overcame her annoyance. “What on earth are you doing?”
“A woman can lie in a thousand different ways with her lips and her eyes, but not with her undergarments.” He ran his hand along a recently darned seam until he reached a frayed hem. When he finally lifted his eyes to her, they were darkened by a mixture of disbelief and contempt. “Why, you’re poor, aren’t you?”
Pamela recoiled. He had bitten off the word as if it were the most damning of accusations—far worse than being charged with accosting two helpless women in the wilderness.
One would have thought that being pelted with rotten cabbages and wormy potatoes while fleeing an angry mob would have squashed the last of her pride. But as she met this man’s condemning gaze, she felt her spine stiffen and her chin lift.
“My sister and I may have fallen on difficult circumstances since our mother’s death. That doesn’t mean we’re destitute.”
“Oh, no?” He balled up her drawers and tossed them into the underbrush, then began to stalk her, backing her up with each step. “Then why are you wrappin’ yourselves in dead rodents and wearin’ paste jewelry? Why have your drawers been darned so many times they’re fit for little more than the rag bin?” He kept right on coming until she backed into a tree, leaving her with no way to escape him, no way to catch a breath that wasn’t laced with his smoky, masculine scent. “And why did you venture onto these roads with only a pathetic old man to protect you?”
“Eh!” the coachman brayed in protest.
“Hush!” Pamela and the highwayman snapped in unison, still glaring at each other.
The driver subsided into a sullen pout.
The highwayman reached to tuck a tumbled coil of hair behind her ear, his voice deepening and softening until it was all velvet and thistles again. “Have you any idea what could happen to a bonny pair of lassies out here with no man to protect them?”
Pamela was trying to decide if that was a warning or a threat when Sophie piped up. “They could be set upon by a wicked highwayman and have their drawers stolen?”
He ignored her, all of his attention still fixed on Pamela. “Why are you pretendin’ to be rich, lass?”
Pamela could feel her temper rising again. “Because people treat you differently if they believe you have means. They’re kinder and more helpful and don’t look at you as if you’re about to nick the silver. They don’t mock the shabbiness of your bodice or whisper that your bonnet has been out of fashion for three seasons. Perhaps we didn’t care to be scorned—or worse yet—pitied by a man who’s probably never earned an honest day’s wage in his life.”
“Oh, I tried earnin’ an honest day’s wage once,” he replied, his face hard. “But it didn’t take much more than a day of strugglin’ to survive on the pennies they paid me to learn that I didn’t care for bein’ cold and hungry and barefoot. That I’d rather take what I wanted without the by-your-leave of some fat English overlord.”
Although Pamela was loath to admit it, his defiant words stirred her blood, as did the ruthless glint in his eye. In that moment, there was something almost noble in his bearing.
Her hand slid into her reticule. Before she could regain her sanity or lose her nerve, she drew out a pretty little pearl-plated pistol and leveled it at his chest, raking back the hammer with her thumb. “I hate to interrupt another stirring speech about Scots’ rights and the tyranny of the English, but I’m afraid it’s my by-your-leave you’ll be needing from this moment on.”
Chapter 3
The coachman squeaked in shock as the pistol appeared in Pamela’s hand. “Why, ye’ve all gone mad as March hares,” he cried, “the whole lot o’ you!” Before any of them could react, he sprang to his fe
et and went scrambling down the hillside, abandoning coach, musket, horses, and paying customers without so much as a backward glance.
“If you weren’t pointin’ that pistol at my heart, lass, I might be tempted to agree with him,” Connor said, eyeing the woman holding him at gunpoint with newfound respect.
With its dainty size and pearl plating, the pistol looked more like a feminine trinket than a weapon capable of blasting a hole through his chest and putting an end to his misspent life.
“Pamela, what on earth are you doing?” her sister demanded, looking even more shocked than the coachman had. “Have you lost your wits?”
“Hush, Sophie. I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Connor nodded toward the weapon in her hand. A hand that was remarkably steady, he noted with reluctant admiration. “Then I suppose you also know a weapon that size only holds one shot.”
She smiled sweetly at him. “At this range one shot is all I would need. So why don’t you be a gentleman and hand over your pistol?”
He smiled back at her, just as sweetly. “If you want it, you’ll have to come get it.”
Her smile faded. Eyeing him warily, she inched forward until she was just within reach of the muscular arms he’d folded over his chest. She crept closer, forced to look up at him through a tumbled skein of hair. Several sleek coils tinted a rich, warm mahogany had spilled down from their pins to frame her face.
It was a perfectly ordinary face—as oval as a cameo with a straight, slender nose, a generous rose of a mouth and full cheeks. But those eyes…they sparkled like amber gemstones beneath the arched wings of her brows—glowing with intelligence, good humor…and a tantalizing hint of mischief.
With those remarkable eyes still locked on his, she reached for the weapon tucked into his belt. As the back of her hand brushed the taut planes of his belly through the folds of his shirt, she wavered. He cocked one eyebrow, challenging her to continue. She was so close he could smell the intoxicating scent of lilac water wafting from her hair.
“Careful, lass,” he murmured. “We wouldn’t want that thing to go off, now would we?”
He felt the tensed muscles in his abdomen twitch with reaction as she closed her free hand around the heavy grip of his pistol and smoothly slid the long barrel out of his breeches.
She slowly backed away from him. He studied her, intrigued by the meticulous care she took to keep the muzzle of his pistol pointed at the ground until she could get it tucked safely into the crimson sash of her pelisse.
“What now, lass?” he quipped. “Shall I hand over my drawers?”
“No, but I’ll thank you to remove your mask.”
Connor felt all traces of humor flee his face. “What if I told you that none of my victims has ever seen me without my mask…and lived to tell the tale?”
She looked taken aback, but only briefly. Lifting her chin, she said coolly, “I’d accuse you of spouting overwrought drivel again.”
Connor held her gaze for a long moment, then reached behind his head with an impatient motion and jerked loose the strings binding the crude half mask. The scrap of leather fell away, exposing his face to the moonlight and her avid gaze.
This time she crept closer as if she were helpless to do otherwise. He stood stiffly at attention as she circled him, her pistol still held at the ready.
Sophie edged closer as well, but her horrified gaze was fixed on her sister, not on him. “I know what you’re thinking, Pamela, and you can’t be serious. This man is little more than a barbarian. Why, he would never do!”
“Do what?” Connor snapped.
“Are you so sure about that, Sophie?” Pamela asked, her eyes glowing with fresh excitement, her ripe, rosy lips parted ever so slightly. “Just look at him! He must be close to the right age. He has broad shoulders. A savage yet noble brow. A hint of arrogance in his bearing. An unmistakable air of command.”
“Rope scars on his throat,” Sophie retorted. “A chipped front tooth. Hair that hasn’t been trimmed—or possibly combed—in months. And a brutish demeanor.” She hugged the shoulder cape of her woolen cloak tighter around her shoulders, shivering. “If I’m not mistaken, he threatened to murder us both only minutes ago.”
Scowling, Connor ran his tongue over the jagged chip in his front tooth, remembering the bleak night when he had earned it. He wasn’t used to listening to two women argue his merits—or the lack of them—right in front of him. He was starting to feel like one of the savage African lions King James had once displayed in the yard at Stirling Castle for the amusement of his guests.
“You have to use your imagination, Sophie,” Pamela was saying. “After all, what separates the brute from the gentleman? The fashionable cut of his coat and breeches? The smoothness of his jaw?” Pamela eyed the wind-tossed sweep of Connor’s hair with a critical eye. “The clever way his freshly trimmed hair curls against his collar?” She reached up and boldly swiped a smudge of dirt from his jaw with her fingertips. “Why, if you polished him up in the bath, I wager he’d be as grand as any of the dandies at White’s or Boodle’s!”
“Are you volunteerin’ for the task, lass? Because if you are, you can give me back my gun. I’ll go with you freely.”
Instead of slapping him for his impertinence, Pamela simply smiled fondly up at him.
“He has a price on his head,” Sophie reminded her. “Just how do you intend to smuggle him out of Scotland?”
“You heard him. No one who can identify him has ever seen him without the mask.”
“No one alive, that is,” Sophie said glumly.
Connor could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Am I to understand you two lasses are plannin’ to abduct me?”
Pamela nodded, looking endearingly contrite. “I’m afraid so. At least for now. Once I explain our plight, I’m sure you’ll be only too happy to accompany us to London.”
A helpless bark of laughter escaped Connor. He had managed to elude the clutches of the law for well over a decade and now here he was being kidnapped by two flibbertygibbeted Englishwomen. And all because he hadn’t been able to resist stealing a kiss in the moonlight.
“Sophie, fetch a length of rope from the coachman’s box,” Pamela commanded.
Although Sophie’s gamine face was still scrunched up in disapproval, she scrambled to obey her sister.
Connor shook his head in warning. “If you think I’m just goin’ to stand here and let a wee bit of baggage like her tie me up…”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Pamela said primly. “She’s going to hold the pistol. I’m going to tie you up.”
Her movements brisk and efficient, Pamela accepted the rope from Sophie’s hands and surrendered the delicate pistol into her sister’s keeping.
Connor snorted. “The lass can’t weigh much over five stone soaking wet. I doubt she has the strength to pull the trigger.”
“Not a chance I’d want to take,” Pamela replied, disappearing behind him, rope in hand. “Unless you’re a gambling man, that is. Sophie has always had the twitchy temperament of a cat. I wouldn’t make any sudden movements if I were you.”
“If you really wanted to put the fear of God in me, why didn’t you just give her a parasol?” Connor muttered as Pamela captured both of his wrists in her small but sturdy hands and began to wrap the length of rope around them.
After securing her knot with a tidy jerk, she retrieved the elegant little pistol from her sister and pressed it against his ribs. She gave him a slight shove, urging his feet into motion. But after only a few steps, she was the first to falter.
She bit her bottom lip and peered down the darkened road. Apparently, now that she had him, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. Connor had several suggestions, any one of which would probably earn him a well-deserved pistol clout to the back of the head.
As the wind rose, sighing mournfully through the branches of the pines and bringing with it the unmistakable scent of rain, she was finally forced to turn to him, her reluctance visi
ble. “It’s only a matter of time before the coachman returns and brings the authorities with him. Is there somewhere nearby we could go to pass the night? Some sort of cottage or shelter?”
Connor ducked his head to hide his smile behind a curtain of hair, hardly able to believe his good fortune. Perhaps fate wasn’t such a heartless witch after all.
“I might know of such a place. But you’ll need to fetch all your things. I’ve a horse waitin’ in the trees over there big enough to carry you and your sister.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“It’s not far. I can walk.”
“Walk? Or run?” She narrowed her eyes at him, struggling to look menacing. “I should hate to have to shoot you in the back, you know.”
“Why would I want to run? Now that you’ve got me all trussed up, I’m hopin’ the two of you will decide to have your way with me.”
Her blush gave him a wicked thrill of satisfaction. “I think not,” she said lightly. “As I told my sister, I’ve heard you Highlanders prefer your females to be more docile.”
He leaned down, bringing his lips dangerously close to her ear before whispering, “You heard wrong.”
Apparently, not far was Scottish for “we might arrive by dawn if we don’t perish from the cold first” with big horse being synonymous with “shaggy monster the size of a small dragon.” Pamela wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the massive ebony beast lumbering beneath her and Sophie had sprouted wings and began to breathe jets of fire from his flared nostrils. Although the creature seemed perfectly content to plod along at a demure pace, Pamela feared he was just biding his time, patiently waiting for his master’s signal to buck both she and her sister over the nearest cliff.
An exhausted Sophie had already dozed off against Pamela’s back and was snoring in her ear. Fortunately, the horse was also large enough to bear the two modest trunks they’d rescued from the coach. Trunks that contained the remainder of their earthly belongings. Securing the trunks to the horse’s broad flanks had been no easy feat without the brawny Highlander’s help, but they’d finally managed it.