Chapter 30

F or an agonizing moment Connor thought his heart was going to stop, sparing the redcoats the bother of hanging him. He strained against the irons, desperate to wrap his arms around Pamela, even though he knew he ought to be shaking her insensible for taking such a terrible risk.

He lowered his mouth to her ear, his own voice a frantic whisper. "Have you lost your wits, lass? If Munroe recognizes you, he'll have no qualms about hanging you right alongside me."

Her lips moved against his throat, their irresistible softness caressing the old rope scars they found there. "Which is exactly where I'd want to be… if you were going to hang." She let out a muffled sob for the benefit of the soldiers, tightening her grip on his waist and burying her face in his chest.

Connor nearly laughed aloud. Here he was standing at the very gates of hell itself and she still had the power to arouse him. Never more so than when she slipped the key to the irons she had pilfered from the hapless soldier at the bottom of the steps into his hand.

He clenched his fist around it, shielding it from the soldiers' eyes. "And just what am I supposed to do now?"

"Wait," she whispered. She tipped her head back again, eyeing him with open longing. "What about that kiss I was promised?"

Connor knew he should brush her cheek with a brotherly peck. That's what everyone would expect of him. But he'd spent too many long days since the redcoats had dragged him away from her dreaming of this moment. Too many lonely nights dreaming of other moments he'd spent in her arms…and her bed. If this was to be their last kiss, he had every intention of making it one she would remember for the rest of her life.

Knowing he was risking everything, he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers, coaxing her to open for him so he could drink deeply of her sweetness. She kissed him back with a tender fierceness that tasted of love and hope and all the dreams he'd surrendered on the night his parents had died.

As the crowd on the lawn hooted and whistled, one of the soldiers on the platform nudged his wide-eyed companion. "Two of them must have been close."

"That's enough," Munroe shouted in disgust. "Remove the woman at once. It's savage rabble like this who give decent, God-fearing Scots a bad name."

Before the soldiers could lay their hands on her to drag her away, Pamela separated herself from Connor. With the dignity befitting a soon-to-be-bereaved sister, she adjusted the hood of her cloak, bowed her head and retreated down the stairs.

She melted back into the crowd without a backward glance. If not for the icy metal of the key burning a hole in his fist, Connor might have believed he'd imagined her. That the hangman had already pulled the lever, leaving his air-starved brain to conjure up one last beautiful, feverish dream.

"Let's have done with this!" Munroe shouted, flexing his hands on the balcony rail. "My tea is cooling."

The soldiers retreated to either side of the platform. The hangman rested his hand on the lever. For the first time, Connor saw the familiar tattoo of a serpent writhing on the bulging muscles of his upper arm. Hope surged in his heart, forcing him to bite back a grin.

That grin faded with the first ugly call of "Hang the bastard!"

"Stretch his miserable neck!"

"Hang him! Hang him! " the onlookers began to shout in unison, the virulence of their rising chant making even the soldiers look uneasy.

Connor watched as one of the gawkers reached into his picnic basket and retrieved a shiny red tomato. As it came sailing through the air, he braced himself, helpless to avoid its impact.

But the tomato hit the soldier closest to him square in the face, eliciting a startled yelp. The man was still swiping pulp from his eyes when a fat cabbage flew past Connor, striking the second soldier so hard it knocked him clean off the platform. Suddenly the air was full of flying produce, all of it aimed at the hapless redcoats. Before long, they were all staggering about, half blind and cursing.

That quickly, Connor had the irons unlocked. As the chains clanked to the platform, Brodie jerked off his hangman's hood and tossed him a pistol, his gold tooth winking in the middle of his familiar grin.

Connor watched in amazement as the crowd took advantage of the chaos they had created. They dropped their parasols and whipped off their hats and bonnets in one smooth motion to reveal that most of them were men. This time when they reached into the picnic baskets, their hands didn't emerge with produce but with pistols. Pistols they quickly trained on the English soldiers.

Connor swung his own pistol toward the balcony only to find it deserted. Munroe had always been a coward when not backed by a battalion of soldiers. When Connor saw a single horse with a lone red-coated rider go thundering down the road in a cloud of dust, he knew that the colonel had beat a wise and hasty retreat, preferring to run so he could live to fight another day.

As Connor and Brodie descended the steps, the redcoats reluctantly tossed down their weapons, realizing they were both outnumbered and out-armed. After that, it only took a handful of men to round them up and herd them toward the gatehouse, where they could be safely secured before they had time to gather their wits and decide to hang the whole lot of them.

As Connor tucked his pistol in the waistband of his breeches, a woman appeared at the bottom of the hill. Throwing off her cumbersome black cloak, she came sprinting up the hill and into his arms, her face alight with joy.

Connor lifted her clean off the ground, crushing her to his chest while sweeping her in a wide circle. "You wee fool! I always said you had more courage than common sense and now you've gone and proved it."

She beamed up at him as he reluctantly set her on her feet. "We didn't have any choice. The duke is on his way here with a full pardon from the king, but we knew he wouldn't arrive in time to save you. We had to do something."

He glowered at her. "So you decided to just rush in and rescue me all on your own."

"Well, not exactly…"

She stepped aside, giving him a clear view of the rest of his rescuers for the first time. He spotted Crispin first, surrounded by a dozen or more cocky young bucks, most of them still grinning with delight.

Crispin sauntered forward, jerking a thumb at his friends. "Most of them were bored with the brothels and the gambling tables and wanted a more scintillating challenge than just dunking some hapless stranger in a horse trough."

"And what about you?" Connor asked. "Were you bored as well?"

Crispin shrugged, keeping his face carefully bland. "I figured it was the least I could do after what my mother did to you."

"We won't have to worry about Lady Astrid anymore," Pamela assured him, shooting Crispin an awkward glance. "When the duke found out what she did, he had her committed to Bedlam. She has private quarters with a private nurse. He believed it would be kinder than Newgate."

Connor studied the fresh tomato spattered across Crispin's cheek and down the front of his shirt. "Did you suffer from friendly fire, lad?"

"I wouldn't exactly call it friendly." Crispin's eyes narrowed. "I'm afraid some of us don't have very good aim."

"On the contrary," Sophie said, twirling her ruffled parasol as she sashayed forward. "Some of us have perfect aim."

"Does this make us even then?" Crispin asked her, swiping tomato pulp from his cheek.

"I should say not. You still called me an awful actress."

"Well, you called me an awful man."

"You are an awful man."

"I'm a better man than you are an actress."

Biting off a strangled shriek of rage, Sophie spun around and went storming off, with Crispin fast on her heels.

Pamela sighed. "Do you think she'll ever forgive him?"

"Not if she's smart," Connor replied with a knowing smirk. "Although maybe we should have warned him about the parasol."

His smile faded as a second group approached and he began to recognize many of his own clansmen. They were men he had ridden with for years before becoming a highwayman. Young Callum, no longer a gangly boy, but a man. Handsome Donel, whose sly tongue was always getting him into trouble. Cocky, rawboned Kieran—the dearest friend he'd ever had. And a host of others who had once been as close to him as brothers.

"How?" he whispered hoarsely. "How did you come to be here?"

Pamela stepped aside as the men parted to reveal a woman in a stylish pink bonnet. She shyly came forward, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered, golden-haired man who was eyeing Connor with more than a hint of wariness.

Connor's breath caught in his throat as the woman lifted her chin, revealing the face beneath the bonnet. He had once known her as a freckled moppet with a wild tangle of strawberry curls. Now she was a striking young woman with an adoring husband and two freckled moppets of her own.

"My wee kitten," he whispered, touching a trembling hand to her cheek.

"You're the only one I've ever allowed to call me that, you know," Catriona said, tears shining in her misty gray eyes. "I thought I was going mad when I saw you in London. I thought I'd conjured you up out of thin air because I still missed you so badly. But when we ran into Pamela and her men when we were on the way here to try to stop them from hanging you, I discovered that you had been real all along."

Her pretty face crumpled as she threw her arms around his neck just as she used to do when she was a little girl. Connor squeezed his eyes shut and crushed her against him. The last time he'd held her like this, they had been two terrified children with only each other to cling to in a world gone mad. Now when they stepped out of each other's embrace, there would be other arms waiting to enfold them.

Connor reluctantly surrendered her to her husband, watching as the handsome Englishman whisked a perfectly starched handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to her.

The two men sized each other up for several minutes before Simon finally said, "I'm relieved to know I won't have to worry about you returning from beyond the grave to haunt me."

Connor studied him through narrowed eyes. "If you ever treat her badly, I can haunt you even more easily from this side of the grave."

Simon gave him a lazy grin. "You know—I can't wait for you to meet your namesake. Our own little Connor can scowl just as fiercely when we make him wash behind his ears."

Still chuckling, he led his wife to the shade of a nearby elm, leaving Connor standing there with his mouth hanging open.

When Pamela slipped her arm through his, he said, "They have a lad named Connor. Did you know that?"

"I did. And a little girl named Francesca," she gently informed him.

"Francesca ," he whispered.

It was the name he and Catriona had known their mother by. She had kept her secrets close to her heart, preventing him from knowing her as well as he would have liked. And she had died far too young, preventing him from knowing her as long as he would have liked. But to have known her at all had been a great privilege.

He turned to Pamela as something occurred to him. "If Catriona was here the whole time, then why did you pretend to be my sister?"

"Oh, please! I knew I could play the role of your sister far more convincingly than she could."

"Ah, yes, that kiss was very convincing."

She rested her hands on her hips. "You were the one who kissed me."

"Only after you begged. And I should point out that you kissed me back. With a great deal of sisterly enthusiasm."

"Well, I have always wanted a brother," she admitted.

He cupped her cheek in his hand, stroking his thumb over the softness of her lips. "What about a husband? Would you care to have one of those instead?"

"Hmmmm…I'm not sure. Since your father is doing so well and has even abandoned his chair for a walking stick, you may not be able to make me a duchess for quite some time." She sighed. "I'm just not sure I could settle for being a mere marchioness."

Connor tugged her into his arms with a growl. "Have you forgotten that we're back in the Highlands, you wicked lass? If you refuse my suit this time, I'll just get Brodie to help me kidnap you and force you to marry me at gunpoint. Then I'll keep you chained to my bed until I can persuade you that you belong there."

"Which, if memory serves me correctly," Pamela replied breathlessly, "would probably take about three minutes." She lowered her eyes shyly. "If you must know, I was thinking that we should probably stop at Gretna Green on the way back to England and let one of those blacksmiths marry us. I wouldn't want our first babe to be born on the wrong side of the blanket."

"Our first babe?" Connor scowled down at her until comprehension slowly dawned, leaving him slack-jawed with astonishment.

He nudged her chin up with his finger and Pamela nodded, joyful tears shimmering in those extraordinary eyes of hers. "I'm afraid your devoted efforts to get an heir on me as quickly as possible have met with success."

He reached down to cup a reverent hand over her belly, marveling that the child they had made could be growing inside her slender body.

She grinned up at him through her tears. "If it's a boy, do you think your father is going to insist that we call him Percy?"

"If he does, I'm afraid I'll have to shoot him."

Pamela laughed aloud as he swept her into a dizzying embrace, raining kisses down on her upturned face.

A disgusted voice interrupted their joyful reunion. "Now, there's somethin' I never thought I'd live to see."

Connor reluctantly lifted his head. "And what's that, Brodie?"

The Highlander shook his head, his braids waggling in mock disapproval. "Connor Kincaid surrenderin' to the English without even puttin' up a fight."

"Oh, he put up quite a fight," Pamela assured him, patting Connor's chest.

"I most certainly did," Connor said. "But even the bravest and boldest warrior knows when it's time to lay down his arms."

Ignoring Brodie's snort, Connor crushed Pamela's lips beneath his in a tender and fierce kiss, joyfully surrendering his freedom and his future to the bonny English lass who had captured his heart.