Page 76 of Some Like It Wild
He shook his head in wry disbelief as they spread out their lap rugs and settled down to unpack their afternoon tea. If he wasn’t fortunate enough to break his neck in the initial fall, they could savor the added delight of watching him gasp and twitch and kick his last while they sipped their wine or nibbled a freshly baked biscuit.
He glanced at the man calmly watching the proceedings from the balcony of the jail, knowing that Colonel Munroe would be delighted to have an audience for their little farce. Perhaps he could even use it to wrangle a promotion from his superiors.
The soldiers guided him to the trap door while the hangman took up his position at the lever, his eyes glittering through the eyeholes of the dark sack covering his head.
When they offered Connor a similar mask, he shook his head. After watching his parents die, he wasn’t about to hide from his own death. He would leave this life as he’d lived it—with eyes wide open and fixed on the freedom promised by the sky.
One of the soldiers was draping the noose over his neck when a disturbance broke out below.
Connor squinted against the sun to find a slender woman shoving her way through the crowd of gawkers. She wore a long black hooded cloak as if she was already in mourning.
She ran up to the soldiers stationed at the foot of the platform and caught one of them by the front of his scarlet coat, her voice rising on a note of hysteria. “You have to let me see him! He’s my brother and I haven’t seen him in nearly fifteen years.” Her voice caught on a heartrending sob. “Oh, please, you have to let me say good-bye!”
Connor felt as if his own heart was being rent in two. He’d had no way of knowing if his letter would reach Catriona before he was gone. As he witnessed her anguish, he was almost sorry it had.
When the young soldier firmly detached her hands from the front of his coat, shooting the other soldier a disgusted look, she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around his thighs. “Please, sir, I beg you! If you’ve an ounce of Christian mercy in your soul, you’ll at least let me give him a kiss of farewell.”
“Let the poor chit say good-bye!” someone called out from the crowd.
“One kiss won’t hurt,” a man shouted. “After all, ’twill be his last.”
A chorus of catcalls quickly rose from their audience as the woman’s piteous pleas shifted the mood in Connor’s favor.
“Colonel?” The young soldier looked to his commanding officer, his face flushed with uncertainty.
Both Connor and Munroe knew exactly what harm it might do to the colonel’s reputation should word get out that he had denied a condemned man’s sister her last chance to say good-bye. “Oh, very well,” Munroe snapped. “But tell her to make it quick. Kincaid has wasted enough of my time already.”
The crowd fell into a respectful silence as Catriona slowly climbed the steps with her head bowed and the hood still shielding her face. Connor hadn’t wanted his sister’s last memory of him to be with his wrists in irons and his neck in a noose, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now.
He stiffened as she slipped her slender arms around his waist, filling his nostrils with the impossible fragrance of lilac water. She tipped her head back, revealing an impish smile and a pair of sparkling amber eyes.
“Hello, brother dear,” she said in a husky murmur. “Miss me?”
Chapter 30
For 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…ifyou 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.
