Chapter 27

I f Connor were dressed all in black and gripping a pistol, he would have looked exactly as he had on that moonlit road in the Highlands on the night they had met. "Did you really think latching the window was going to keep me out?"

She stiffened. "You'll be the master of this house someday. I suppose you can go wherever you like."

He started forward and she took a wary step backward. He stopped, eyeing her incredulously. "What do you think I'm going to do, lass? Lift my hand to you?"

She couldn't tell him that she was more afraid of him putting his hands on her. She knew just how persuasive and irresistible those hands could be.

Resting them on his hips, he surveyed the untidy room, taking in the open trunk sitting on the floor, the battered valise perched on the settee, the gowns and shoes scattered across the bed. His gaze finally returned to her. She wasn't wearing her elegant ball dress or her nightdress, but a simple copper merino gown with frayed seams and a high neck that had been out of fashion for at least three seasons.

The sight obviously did not improve his temper.

He shook his head. "I should have known it would come to this. It's just like the English to cut and run at the first sign of a battle."

She sucked in a sharp breath. "And I should have remembered that the Scots are notorious for not fighting fairly. In case you didn't notice, the battle has been won. The duke's beloved son has been restored to the bosom of his family. He's now free to take his rightful place in society."

"Free?" Connor shook his head in disgust. "I'll never be free again. I'll spend the rest of my life behind bars—imprisoned in this gilded cage."

She drew closer to him, unable to help herself. "That's not true, Connor. You'll be truly free now. Free to travel the world. Free to study. Free to move through society without always looking over your shoulder because the hangman might be one step behind you." She inclined her head, adding softly, "Free to choose a bride who will do honor to your station in life."

"I already have."

She lifted her head. Whatever he saw in her eyes made him close the distance between them in two strides. His fingers dug into her upper arms, giving her a rough little shake. "Dammit, Pamela, I'm still the same man! The man you took to your bed only last night. The man who had to put his hand over your mouth to keep you from waking the entire household when he—"

"No, you're not!" she cried, the words pouring straight out of her lacerated heart. "You're not the same man at all. That man was a rogue—an imposter, just as I was. You're a marquess. And someday soon you'll be a duke, while I'll never be anything more than the bastard daughter of an actress. You've had two fathers now. I'll never even have one!"

Connor released her and moved back a step to put some space between them. Pamela eyed him warily, unnerved by his quick surrender and the dangerous gleam in his eye.

He folded his arms over his chest, the motion accentuating the natural arrogance she had noted in his bearing upon their very first meeting. "If you no longer fancy yourself fine enough to be my bride, then you can be my mistress." His smoky gaze drifted lazily down her, then back up again, heating everything it touched. "You've already proved you have the skills to please me."

She gasped, unprepared for such a blow.

He lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. "You needn't look so shocked. It would hardly be unheard of for the daughter of an actress to warm a marquess's bed. I'll be well equipped to provide for you and Sophie. I can buy you a modest house somewhere, some bonny jewels, perhaps even a wee dog to help you pass the time when I'm too busy with my duties—or my wife—to pay a visit to your bed."

She lifted her chin. "And just what would I be expected to offer in exchange for the privilege of becoming your mistress?"

"Whatever I wanted." He leaned down to bring his mouth close to her ear, his husky whisper sending a shiver of longing through her soul. "Whenever I wanted it."

"Very well," she said coolly. "I accept your offer. I couldn't have become your bride tonight, but there's nothing to stop me from becoming your mistress."

He straightened, his face going so still it could have been carved from granite. "There isn't?"

"Of course not. All you have to do is tell me what pleases you." She tossed her head, with a low, throaty laugh. "Don't worry. I know how to play the role of strumpet. I saw my mother do it often enough—both on the stage and off of it. Shall I lie down on the bed and lift my skirts? Or should I bend over the settee?"

"Stop it," Connor growled.

"Would you prefer to have me on my back?" She slanted him a provocative glance. "Or my knees?"

"Stop it, Pamela. Now!"

"I was only trying to please you."

He seized her face in his hands, his gaze as raw as his voice. "If you want to please me, lass, then stop all this nonsense and marry me."

Connor's fierce tenderness was far more difficult to bear than his cruelty or his mockery. Pamela inclined her head, not wanting him to see the tears welling up in her eyes. "I am afraid I can't do that, my lord. I have no choice but to set you free from any promise you made to me before we knew the full circumstances of your birth, any obligation that might prevent you from assuming your title and all of the privileges and duties that go with it, including the duty of finding a suitable bride and producing an heir of your own."

As Connor withdrew his hands from her, she could do nothing to stop the tears from spilling down her cheeks.

His laugh was short and rueful. "This was our plan from the beginning, wasn't it? That you would beg off our engagement and break my heart. I'm sure I'll cut quite the tragic figure in the eyes of society. There will probably be no shortage of sympathetic women eager to console me."

His words cut to the heart, but Pamela knew she had no right to rebuke him. He wasn't being cruel now, only honest.

"You're still entitled to the reward, you know," he said.

She drew in a shuddering breath, forcing herself to lift her head and meet his gaze. "I don't want it."

His eyes were as silvery and distant as the moon. "You may not want it, but Sophie deserves it. Why don't you just consider it payment for services rendered?"

As Connor turned and walked out of the room, gently closing the door behind him, she collapsed to her knees beside the settee, burying her face in the cushions to muffle her sobs.

Pamela had been crying for a long time when she became aware that someone was softly stroking her hair. She jerked up her head, her heart leaping with a wild and undeserved hope.

Sophie was curled up on the settee next to where she'd been resting her head, her golden curls rumpled and her eyes puffy from sleep.

Her sister touched a hand to her tear-ravaged cheek. "What ever is the matter, Pammie? I've never seen you cry like this. Not even when Maman died."

"I couldn't," Pamela confessed, croaking out a hiccup. "I had to be strong for you."

"There, there, dear," Sophie crooned, giving her hair another tender stroke. "Why don't you let me be strong for a little while?"

Although she would have sworn she didn't have a single tear left to weep, her sister's compassion opened a brand new floodgate. The whole story came spilling out of her then—between sobs and snuffles and hiccups and several brief pauses to honk loudly into the worn handkerchief Sophie held up to her nose.

By the time she was done, her eyes were nearly swollen shut and she was too exhausted from weeping to lift her head from her sister's lap.

"Let me see if I have this straight," Sophie murmured, gently raking her fingers through Pamela's disheveled hair. "As long as Connor was a dangerous ruffian with a price on his head who was highly likely to get you both hanged before all was said and done, you were willing to marry him. But now that you've discovered he's a wildly wealthy nobleman who can give you everything you've ever dreamed of, you've tossed him aside like an old boot."

Without lifting her head, Pamela nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again.

"And all because you're so desperately noble and unselfish that you're determined to throw away your happiness—and his—just to prove it."

Pamela slowly lifted her head to look at her sister.

Sophie wrinkled her pert little nose at her. "Don't you see, Pamela? Connor is the best thing that ever happened to you. He makes you greedy. And selfish. And willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want. And judging by the noises that have been creeping beneath my door every night for the past week, I'd say that what you want is him."

"Of course I want him! I want him more than life itself! But I'm hardly duchess material."

"Oh, please! The man clearly adores you. He doesn't care if you're a princess or a milkmaid. And besides," she added firmly, "if you won't marry him, I will." A vengeful little smile curved her lips. "And wouldn't that just serve his miserable cousin right!"

She rose, stretching and yawning like a grace ful little cat, and padded back toward the dressing room. "If you manage to lure him back to your bed after you've told him what an idiot you've been, try to keep it down, won't you? I need my beauty sleep."

When her sister was gone, Pamela scrambled to her feet, joy surging in her heart. Suddenly, she felt deliciously greedy. And wildly selfish. And willing to do whatever it took—no matter how devious or wicked—to get what she wanted. And what she wanted was Connor. In her arms. In her bed. And in her life for every day—and night—that remained of it.

She started for the door, then stopped dead, letting out a terrible shriek when she came face to face with her own reflection in the cheval glass.

Somehow Connor knew he wouldn't find the ballroom deserted. Yet he ended up there anyway, traversing the alternating squares of moonlight and shadow until he stood before the portrait of the elegant young duchess he had known only as "Mother."

The duke wasn't gazing up at the portrait but down at the open locket in his hand. "I wish I could have known this woman," he said softly. "She looks so peaceful. As if she'd finally stopped striving for all the things she could never have."

"Like your fidelity?"

The duke snapped the locket closed. "She probably paid that old crone in Strathspey to tell everyone she was dead. She was a clever girl." A wistful smile touched his lips. "Too clever for the likes of me. After all—what better way for her to disappear and to protect you than to create another life for herself? With another name. Another family. Another man…"

"A good man," Connor assured him. "They had a daughter together. My sister Catriona."

The duke squinted up at him. "Was she happy then? Truly happy?"

Connor nodded. "I rarely saw her without a song or a smile on her lips."

"I'm glad for that. I wanted her to be happy. I'm only sorry I wasn't the man who could…" The duke trailed off, rubbing his thumb gently over the front of the locket. "She did love me, you know. Once."

"Of course she did. If she hadn't, you wouldn't have been able to break her heart."

"Did she…die well?"

Connor briefly squeezed his eyes shut, seeing that last tearful smile his mother had given the man she loved, hearing the distant echo of a pistol shot in his memory. "She would say so. And in the end, I suppose that's all that matters."

The two men gazed up at the lovely young woman in the portrait who had shaped both their lives—first by her presence, then by her absence.

It was Connor who finally broke the silence. "You should be amused. It turns out that I'm my father's son after all. Pamela is leaving me."

The duke's face crumpled in genuine dismay. "Oh, no, lad! You mustn't let her do that!"

"And just how am I to stop her?" Connor raked a hand through his hair, his frustration finally erupting in a bitter oath. "If we were back in Scotland, I could just kidnap her and force her to marry me at gunpoint, then keep her chained to my bed until I could persuade her that she belonged there. But what the hell am I supposed to do here among you civilized folk? Browbeat her? Threaten to sue her for breaching our betrothal contract?"

The duke grasped both arms of his chair and slowly leveraged himself to his feet. Connor watched in amazement as he took one unsteady step toward him, then another, finally drawing close enough to clap a hand firmly on his shoulder.

The man's shrewd hazel eyes were glittering with emotion. "Don't make the same mistake I did, son. Don't let pride stand in your way. Don't browbeat her. Don't threaten her. Love her. Simply love her."

Pamela sat on the stool in front of the dressing table, muttering to herself and frantically daubing rice powder on her nose with a hare's foot. She'd never been a pretty crier like Sophie, and her protracted episode of weeping had left her both swollen and splotchy.

She'd been trying to repair her face for nearly half an hour with indifferent results. She leaned back on the stool with a sigh, tossing the hare's foot back in the dish of powder. There was simply no help for it. If Connor was going to love her, he was going to have to love her even when she looked like a puffy-eyed lobster.

With any luck he would have already extinguished the candles in his bedchamber. She hugged back a delicious little shiver of anticipation, smiling to imagine his surprise when she slipped into his room and into his bed. She could only hope he wouldn't shoot her. Although given how much of a dunderhead she'd been earlier, she probably wouldn't blame him if he did.

She was rising from the stool when she heard a peculiar scritching noise coming from behind her. Her heart leaped with joy when she realized the sound was coming from the window.

She should have known a stubborn Scotsman like Connor wouldn't surrender that easily. Especially not to an equally stubborn English lass.

She flew over to unlatch the window and drag up the sash with eager hands. "Get in here this minute, you fool Highlander, before one of the footmen sees you and you ruin my reputation. Of course my reputation is probably in tatters anyway, after half of London watched me being hauled off in irons, so you might as well finish making a social pariah of me."

She backed away from the window, grinning in anticipation, as a figure garbed all in black climbed through it.

But when he straightened, her smile faded. The intruder was a good half foot shorter than Connor. And squatter—broad in both the shoulders and hips. He wore a crude burlap mask draped over his head with jagged slits for eyeholes.

He lunged for her, clapping a hand roughly over her mouth and cutting off her scream before even Sophie could hear it.

Connor stood outside of Pamela's door, gazing down at the crystal knob in his hand in disbelief. He gave it another experimental twist, followed by a violent jiggle. Nothing happened. This time the stubborn little minx had not only locked the window, but the door as well.

Connor sagged against the door, heaving a sigh. When he was handing out his sage advice, the duke might have warned him he was going to be reduced to begging outside a locked door. The old man had probably had ample experience at it.

"Pamela?" he said softly, trying to keep his voice low so that every nosy servant in the house wouldn't hear him. "I know you can hear me, so there's no point in pretending you can't."

Silence greeted his words.

"I know you've somehow gotten it into your bonny head that you're not good enough for the likes of me. But the truth is I'm not fit to polish your boots. Being born a nobleman doesn't make me a noble man. You can call me your lord all you like, but I'm still that same thieving, no-count Highlander who stole your drawers.

"I'll never be worthy of a woman like you, but if you'll let me, I'd like to spend the remainder of my days striving to be." Remembering the duke's admonition not to let pride stand in his way, he rested his brow against the door. "I'm not my father. I love you, lass, and I've no intention of going through the rest of my life being the man who was fool enough to lose you."

He held his breath to listen, but didn't hear so much as a whisper of sound coming from within the room. He lifted his head to scowl at the door. He'd never judged Pamela to be so heartless.

He could feel his temper rising. "Damn it all, woman, I'm a marquess and I'm going to be a duke someday. This is my house and I order you to open this door at once and bloody well marry me!"

Reaching the limits of his rather limited patience, Connor lifted his foot and kicked the door open, sending it crashing against the wall on its broken hinges.

The room was deserted. For a staggering shard of time, Connor thought Pamela was already gone. But her trunk was still sitting open on the floor; the bed was still littered with dresses and shoes. Before he could go striding over to the dressing room door to demand some answers from her sister, it came flying open.

A bleary-eyed Sophie was jerking a knot in the sash of her dressing gown, her motions brisk and furious. "Just because you two lovebirds have better things to do than sleep, that doesn't mean the rest of us poor lonely souls don't need to…" She trailed off as she spotted Connor standing there all alone. A bewildered frown creased her brow. "Where's Pamela?"

"That's what I'd like to know," he said grimly. "Her door was locked. From the inside."

Sophie gazed up at him, a gentle breeze ruffling her hair.

Connor slowly turned, a chill of foreboding coursing down his spine. The window, which had been so carefully latched earlier, was standing wide open.