Page 28 of Some Like It Wild
Connor turned to find Brodie grinning at him from the doorway. With his knee breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes, he looked more like an overgrown schoolboy than a valet.
Connor pointed the poker at him. “Sneak up on me like that again and I’ll use it on your thick skull.”
His high spirits undampened by the threat, Brodie strutted across the room to the bed, clanking with every step. He opened his coat and a veritable treasure trove of booty came spilling out onto the counterpane, including a pair of silver candlesticks, a delicate gold thimble, a small bird cage, a porcelain butter dish, and a filigree clock.
Connor blinked at the impressive haul. “I don’t suppose the butler asked you to bring all that up here to polish it.”
Brodie plucked a silver spoon from the pile and admired his reflection in the shining bowl. “I’m just plannin’ for the future. If this duke o’ yers decides to toss us out on our ears tomorrow, I’ve no intention o’ leavin’ empty-handed. Besides, he has so much o’ this pretty stuff lyin’ about, it’ll be months before he misses so much as a thimble.”
Connor returned the poker to the hearth before Brodie could steal it. “I hate to point this out, but if I’m to be master of this house someday, those aremythings you’re stealing.”
“In that case I’ll just consider it a wee advance on me salary.”
“I’m not paying you a salary.”
“Then I’d best go back for that silver-plated snuff box I saw in the library.”
Brodie started for the door, but Connor stepped neatly into his path, forcing him to execute an abrupt about-face.
“Aren’t you supposed to be polishing my boots or something?” he asked as Brodie made himself at home on the bed—reclining against the headboard and lighting a fat cigar he’d no doubt pilfered from the duke’s private stock.
“Ye don’t have any boots yet. The cobbler’s comin’ first thing in the mornin’.”
Raking a hand through his hair, Connor wheeled around and resumed his pacing. “So I’ve been told. Along with the tailor, the linen draper, the haberdasher, the hatter, the stationer, the jeweler, the fencing master and some fellow whose sole purpose in life seems to be helping me pick out the right case for my toothpicks.” He swung around to glower at Brodie. “I don’t even have any bloody toothpicks!”
Brodie fished a silver toothpick from his heap of treasure and offered it to him. “I don’t know why ye’re so crotchety, lad. Ye’ve barely been here for an afternoon and ye’ve already found yerself a bride. How do ye think that makes me feel?”
Connor folded his arms over his chest. He didn’t want to confess the stab of panic he had felt in that moment when Pamela had turned to walk out of the solarium. Didn’t want Brodie to guess that his ears had suddenly echoed with the damning clang of cell doors slamming shut. “You know very well that I’ve no intention of marrying Miss Darby. I just wasn’t about to let her stroll out of here and leave us imprisoned in this gilded cage. For all I know she could be planning to make off with the reward, then send the authorities an anonymous note telling them I’m an imposter.”
“So you don’t trust the lass then?”
Connor felt his face harden. “Of course I don’t trust her. She’s English, isn’t she?”
“Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? I always thought I’d see ye hanged before I saw ye leg-shackled to some lass for the rest o’ yer life.” Brodie blew out a smoke ring, watching Connor from beneath his heavy eyelids as it floated toward the medallioned ceiling. “’Twas a wee bit odd, wasn’t it, when the duke said ye had eyes just like yer mother? Gave me a bit of a shiver, it did.”
Connor shrugged off another uncomfortable pang of guilt. “Gray eyes are common enough. Both of my parents had them. Besides, Pamela was right about one thing. People tend to see exactly what they want to see instead of recognizing what’s right in front of them.”
Pamela lost her way three times on her way to the dining room. The maid who had knocked on her door to inform her that supper was being served had pointed her in the right direction, then vanished down a back staircase. Pamela quickly discovered that Warrick Park was a maze of long, soaring corridors and immense rooms that led one into another with no particular pattern or predictability.
Her stomach growled a protest as she took another wrong turn. She hadn’t eaten since that morning and was beginning to fear that some haughty footman would find her bones months from now at the end of a dead-end corridor.
After an arduous trek through a portrait gallery lined with generations of dour Warricks who all seemed to be sneering down their aristocratic noses at her, she was finally rewarded for her persistence. As she approached a tall oak door, a bewigged footman dutifully threw it open, pausing only long enough to cast her ensemble a withering glance.
Slowing her steps, she smoothed her skirt, suddenly wishing she had remained lost until supper was over. Since she’d worn her best frock to their audience with the duke that afternoon, she’d had no choice but to don her second-best frock for supper.
The white poplin gown with its blonde lace flounce was more suited to morning wear. The gown’s deep, square-cut neckline only served to make her feel more woefully exposed. Fearing the sharp-eyed duke and his sharp-tongued sister would recognize paste jewelry when they saw it, she’d had no choice but to leave her throat and the creamy swell of her bosom unadorned. At least no one could see the toe peeping out of her ragged right stocking or would know that she’d squeezed her long feet into Sophie’s only decent pair of slippers.
Tilting her chin to a defiant angle, she swept past the footman and into the dining room. If she embarrassed Connor in front of his newfamily, he had only himself to blame. In truth, it would serve him right if she made him the laughingstock of all London!
She had time for only a fleeting impression of a long linen-draped table with the duke seated at its head and Lady Astrid at its foot before Connor rose to greet her, his imposing figure filling her vision. He was still wearing the stolen shirt, kilt and plaid he had donned that morning in the seedy inn where they’d passed the night. It galled her that he could travel most of the day, suffer any number of insults and indignities, and still look so deliciously fresh.
The burnished maple of his hair was neatly bound at the nape by a velvet queue and his jaw was perfectly smooth, which meant he’d already shaved a second time that day. Perhaps he’d ordered a footman to do it for him, she thought unkindly, already missing the surly ruffian with the wild hair and beard-stubbled jaw.
“Good evening, darling,” he murmured, taking her hand. The tender smile that tilted his lips was belied by the wary glitter of his eyes. “I was hoping you wouldn’t be too weary from our journey to join us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,pumpkin,” she replied, her own adoring smile and the voluminous folds of the tablecloth hiding the fact that she was grinding the heel of her slipper into his instep. “You know that every moment we’re apart is sheer torture for me.”
Connor hid his grimace of pain with equal skill, leaning forward to brush her cheek with a chaste kiss. She turned her head at the last moment, hoping to force his mouth into her hair. But he anticipated the move, adjusting the angle of his descent so that the very corner of his mouth brushed hers with a possessive tenderness that made her toes curl.
