Page 7 of Some Like It Wild
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 youcan’tbe 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’mgoing to tie you up.”
