Page 10 of Some Like It Wild
Nor could he catch himself if he stumbled, Pamela realized, fighting a twinge of guilt. But as he disappeared into the murky gloom, his steps were as sure and steady as they’d been in the forest. She and Sophie exchanged a nervous glance before following. The roaring of the wind soon faded. As they descended deeper into the earth, they were enveloped by an oppressive hush broken only by the steady drip of water on stone and the shallow rasp of their own breathing.
Pamela was beginning to wonder if the steps led straight down to the bowels of hell itself when she spotted a thin sliver of light below. The highwayman paused, waiting for them to catch up.
He nodded toward the broad oak door set deep in the stone wall. “Would you mind doin’ the honors?”
Pamela closed her icy fingers around the iron handle and gave the door a push. It swung open easily, inviting them inside.
She brushed past the highwayman without a second thought, unable to resist the seductive lure of warmth and light. The chamber was no rat-infested dungeon as she had feared, but simply a long-forgotten vault to a tower that no longer existed. A fire crackled on a stone hearth set against the opposite wall. Pamela breathed a sigh of relief. The long, low-ceilinged room was not only warm and dry, but also cozy and welcoming.
That is, until the air resounded with the echoing clicks of a dozen pistol hammers being drawn back at once.
One by one, the men holding those pistols emerged from the shadowy corners, their eyes gleaming with lust, their lips twisted into delighted leers.
The largest of those men wore a silver hoop in one ear and a leather vest hanging open over his sun-bronzed chest. He looked Pamela and Sophie up and down with a jovial familiarity that made Pamela’s blood curdle with dread.
Firelight glinted off the gold tooth set in the front of his mouth as his meaty lips split in a grin. “Och, Connor, and what have ye brought us tonight?” he inquired of their guide. “Bawds or brides?”
Chapter 4
Neither,” Connor replied, shaking the length of rope from his wrists as if it were a silken ribbon and neatly plucking the pistol from Pamela’s hand. “If you want bawds or brides on this night, you’ll have to hunt them yourself.”
Pamela gaped at him in disbelief.
He tucked her pistol into his breeches and tipped her jaw closed with one finger. “Don’t blame yourself, lass. I once used the same skills to escape the hangman’s noose and his knots were much better than yours.”
Pamela began to sputter. She couldn’t have said why she was so outraged that he had foiled her one pathetic attempt at a kidnapping by leading them straight into a trap, but she was. “Why, you—you—”
“Blackguard?” one of the men provided.
“Rapscallion?” offered another.
“Swivin’, whoremongerin’ son of a—”
“That’s enough,” Connor snapped. “I doubt the young lady needs any help comin’ up with a vile-enough insult for me.”
Pamela snapped her mouth shut and folded her arms over her chest. “He’s right. There’s no need to waste your breath. There is no insult vile enough for the likes of him.”
The giant who had perused her and her sister with such glassy-eyed lust chortled with glee, a cloud of copper braids bristling around his head. “Oh, she’s a spirited one, isn’t she? I do love a spirited lass. I’ll give ye a jar o’ whisky and a pouch o’ tobacco for an hour alone with her.”
Pamela instinctively edged closer to Connor, preferring the devil she knew to this leering ogre.
Connor snorted. “And just what do you plan to do with the remainin’ fifty-seven minutes, Brodie?” When the rest of the men burst into raucous laughter, Connor included them in his glare. “I’ll thank you all to get your tongues back in your mouths and your pistols back in your breeches. The lass belongs to me.”
That bold claim silenced the men and sent a peculiar shiver rippling across Pamela’s flesh. One by one, both the grins and the pistols disappeared.
“What about the wee one, then?” Brodie asked, his voice rising to a childish whine that seemed at odds with his impressive girth and the beefy slabs of muscle that composed his upper arms. “I’ve no doubt ye could handle the both o’ them with yer hands still tied behind yer back, but there’s no need to be greedy, is there?”
Connor’s face went so still that Pamela feared he was actually considering the cretin’s request. She curled her hands into claws, fully prepared to launch herself at the first man who dared to lay a finger on her sister—even if that man was Connor.
Especially if that man was Connor.
“What I’d like you to do, Brodie,” he finally said, “is take the ‘wee one’ into the next room and fix her a nice cup of hot tea with a splash of whisky to warm up her blood.” When Brodie’s expression brightened, he narrowed his stormy gray eyes in warning. “The lass is a lady and I’ll expect her to be treated as such.”
Brodie’s broad face fell. Connor reached to draw Sophie forward. She dragged her feet and cast Pamela a beseeching glance, her eyes huge and her beautiful face as pale as wax.
“She won’t come to any harm,” Connor murmured, his smoky voice dangerously close to Pamela’s ear. “You have my word on it.”
Pamela had no idea why she was so inclined to believe him. Especially when he wasn’t offering her any similar promises.
