Daring (9 page)

Maggie sat forward, gesturing with the drumstick to make her point. “Look, I don’t care if you
are
the Lord Advocate. Just because Jamie was found at the scene of the crime with the murder weapon in his hand doesn’t mean he stabbed two people to death.”

“Do you mind not waving that turkey leg in my face while I question you, Miss Saunders? I feel like I’m talking to Henry the Eighth.”

“Turkey—” Embarrassed, Maggie carefully placed the drumstick on the tray between them. “I didn’t even realize. I’m not at all myself tonight.”

He gave her a droll look. “And who precisely are you— when you’re being yourself, that is?”

“I told you before.”

“You claim to be French, but you do not have any discernible accent. How can this be?”

“My mother was Scottish,” Maggie said. “And when I came here, my aunt forbade me to speak any French for fear I’d be recognized.” Her voice sounded suddenly thin and unconvincing. The beast was making her doubt her own identity. He intimidated her, sitting there on the bed in all his riveting masculinity and using the courtroom demeanor that had won so many cases before his rivals could strike a blow at his strategy.

“My name is Margue
rite Marie-Antoinette de Saint-
Evremond, but everyone calls me Maggie Saunders. Saunders was my mother’s maiden name. She was from Inverness, actually.”

An infuriating smile played across Connor’s face. “Let’s try again. We’re all alone now. I’m not going to eat you. I probably won’t even press charges, as long as you cooperate. In fact, to those who trust me I can be a very good friend.”

“That isn’t what I’ve heard,” she muttered, trying covertly to tug the comforter out from under his massive thigh.

“Did you know my sister?”

“Which one?”

“Sheena, the one you allegedly tried to rescue. Would you please stop putting your hand under my leg, Miss Saunders?”

“I’d never seen her before in my life. I wish I’d never seen you either. This is a nightmare.”

“We’ll try again,” Connor said patiently. “What exactly did the carriage driver say to you during the abduction?”

“I’m not exactly sure.” She subsided back against the pillows, surrendering the comforter with a belligerent sniff. “I think he asked the man in the carriage what he was supposed to do with me. It all happened so fast. The man inside the carriage called you a devil—”

“Yes.”

“Well, that would indicate to me he knew who you were.”

“An act of revenge against me,” he said as if reluctant to admit the possibility aloud.

“It’s a distinct possibility,” she said. “It’s a widely known fact that quite a few people dislike you.”

“Thank you for the reminder, Miss Saunders.” His voice was cynical. “It does go with the profession.”

“Some of them really hate you,” she added innocently.

“Obviously.”

“Quite frankly, my lord, if you treat others in the same fashion you have treated me tonight, I’m not surprised.”

“Neither am I.”

The grim resignation in his voice aroused her compassion. She realized suddenly how hard it was for him to admit he was helpless.

“Could the abduction—could it have anything to do with the murderer?”

He frowned as if he regretted having revealed even this small facet of his feelings. He narrowed his gaze on her face, reminding himself she couldn’t be trusted. “More to the point—did my sister’s abduction have anything to do with you and Jamie Munro?”

Maggie’s face looked endea
ringly earnest beneath the top-
heavy bandage. “Not as far as I know. How could it? I
know Jamie confessed, but he didn’t understand what he was saying. He’s a bit dicked in the nob, as they say.”

The nightrail she’d borrowed from Norah was several sizes too large for her slight frame. Connor stared in unwilling absorption at the curve of her shoulder where the end of the bandage had entangled in her hair. She had such a pale creamy complexion. He resisted the urge to run his hand up her arm, to learn the texture of her skin. He imagined that she would bruise easily. Her delicacy, however, hid an astonishingly forceful personality. Did it also hide a deceitful heart?

He noticed the tiny purple-blue vein that fluttered in the base of her throat. She was agitated, afraid of him. In fascination he traced the path of her pulsebeat with his gaze until it disappeared between the cleft of her breasts. She had generous curves for a slender woman. She was made for seduction, not thievery.

“Dicked in the nob?” he said, forcing his gaze back to her face.

Maggie stared down into her cleavage as if she wondered what he’d found so interesting. “Jamie shouldn’t even have been allowed to confess until the court appointed a lawyer to defend him,” she said passionately. “At least that’s what the Chief said, and Lord knows his lodgers have been in prison for every crime under the sun.”

Connor leaned another inch closer only to put his elbow down on the tray between them. The turkey drumstick rolled across the bed. They both pretended not to notice.

“The
Chief.” Connor looked incredulous, suddenly realizing what she had said. “Don’t tell me you work for Arthur Ogilvie.”

Maggie hesitated, unsure of how to explain her peculiar association with Arthur. “I don’t exactly work for him. I live with him. In his house, that is. I’m one of his boarders. Actually, he’s been like a godfather to me.”

Connor didn’t know how to react as he struggled to forge a connection between a tapestry princess and the clanless Highland chief whose old town sanctuary housed the bulk of Edinburgh’s criminal underworld. Heaven’s Court, as it was known, provided a haven for both retired and working criminals who had pledged their allegiance to Arthur Ogilvie. Connor battled the old rascal in court on a regular basis—he as a prosecutor, Arthur as either a heckler or hostile witness; the Chief was too crafty to get caught himself.

The two men were always trying to outwit each other. They were both the best at what they did, icons of influence and power, on opposite sides of the law. Now they had this unusual girl in common, a guttersnipe who claimed she was the daughter of a duke. His mouth twisted into a faint smile at the irony of it.

“Are you all right, my lord?” Maggie asked, watching him as warily as you would a wild animal that might attack at any moment.

He could only shake his head. Dear God, he’d met the woman less than two hours ago. Yes, he had wanted her on sight—he had wanted her badly, in his bed, to be blunt. But not like this. Not with her lying before him injured, under a cloud of suspicion, and his sister stolen on the night he hoped to celebrate his success with his closest friends.

His friends.

A spark of realization broke his reverie.

His
friends.
His friends, the silly bastards, must have done this to him. They had been threatening to pull a trick on him ever since he’d made the news of his appointment public.

It hit him like a thunderbolt, the absurdity of it, so obvious he was embarrassed not to have caught on earlier. A boyish grin broke across his face. The creases in his cheeks deepened in amusement, easing his expression. A joke. The evening must have been one extended joke. What else could it have been? Relief surged through him as he reviewed the events of the past few hours in a humorous light. He’d been duped.

“God, I should have seen it all along,” he said with a low chuckle of appreciation. “I’m always telling them they have no sense of humor at the courthouse. This was their way of proving me wrong.”

Maggie smiled uneasily, wondering what on earth had come over him. She was distracted by his change in attitude as much by the seductive warmth of his laughter, and the shock of sensation she felt as he casually began to untangle the bandage from her hair. She looked down suspiciously at the long elegant fingers he laid on her forearm. Then she
glanced up again into his face, his chin practically touching her cheek, and a warning tingle shot down her spine.

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” She eased out of his grasp and tried to slide to the other side of the bed. “But I do know that you can’t keep me here by force. It’s against the law.”

Connor caught her by the wrist before she could disentangle herself from the comforter. “You did a wonderful job, Miss Marguerite Mari
e-Antoinette Whatever de Saint-
Evremond Saunders.” The deep Scots burr had crept back into his voice. “I’m very impressed.”

“You’re a little unbalanced too, my lord.”

She pressed herself back against the headboard, preparing to defend herself as he fell backward across her lap in a paroxysm of deep uncontrollable laughter. His big shoulders shook with a rich rumble of uninhibited sound. In fact, the whole bed shook with it. She stared down at him in alarm.

“Oh, you’
re…
very good.” He could barely force the words out for laughing to himself. “Chocolate
éclairs
, confessions, trying to assassinate the Lord Advocate with a champagne cork. You must be a professional.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t look so upset—you’ll st
art me laughing all over again.”
He wiped a tear from his eye, grinning and in good spirits. “This is too clever—I meant professional actress. Ardath and Donaldson put you up to this, didn’t they?”

Maggie stared past him, judging the distance to the door. The poor man was delusional, cracking under the strain. She felt sorry for him, but who knew what he might take it into his head to do next? “I think we ought to call Dr. Sinclair in now,” she said carefully.

Connor wagged his finger under her nose. “Sinclair, you naughty girl. I can’t believe you got that old curmudgeon to play along. I wouldn’t have dreamed he had a humorous bone in his body. No wonder he pretended to know you, and that police inspector.”

“They do know me,” Maggie said curtly.

“I want to know you too.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.” His voice had deepened to a rough baritone.
Sensuality smoldered in his eyes like smoke. “In every sense of the word.”

Maggie’s heart began to pound in panic. “I think you’re sitting on the turkey,” she whispered.

“I’m going to start by kissing you,” he said, touching his thumb to her lower lip.

Maggie shivered. “No, you aren’t.”

He grinned seductively. “Oh, but I am.”

Chapter

7

H
e slid across the bed, drawing her resistant little body into his arms. “I wanted to kiss you before I found out how talented you are, but now I’m obsessed with the idea. I’ve been thinking about you all night. You have the most tempting mouth in the world.”

Maggie felt
heat flooding her face. “Stop it right now,” she whispered. “Stop this nonsense before I—”

He brushed his mouth back and forth across hers, his long hair falling a
cross her cheek. He parted her li
ps before she could order him to stop. A jolt of unadulterated pleasure shot through her as his tongue touched hers, slipping inside her mouth to silence her tiny gasp. This man knew exactly what he was doing. The unexpected power of his kiss stole Maggie’s breath from her body.

It stilled the clamor of her thoughts. Sinful. Delicious. She resisted the urge to relax deeply into the pillows and enjoy herself as he eased his arms around her, possessively tilting her to him. Kissing him was more decadent than stolen champagne and chocolate
éclairs
. She felt her eyes drifting shut. She was a feather floating in a storm of sensations, gliding on an air current a
bove the clouds. For a dangerous
moment, she lay unmoving, immobilized by terror and temptation, by the shameless assault of his mouth moving down her jaw.

Decadent, a voice whispered in her brain in belated warning. The Devil’s Advocate.

She pushed at his chest, her hands encountering an immovable w
all, his hair tangling with hers
. But Connor waited until he was good and ready to break the kiss. He waited until desire flashed like wildfire through his veins, until he was satisfied that he had made his mark on her, that she would never forget what it felt like to be kissed by him. The sensation of her soft body in his arms intoxicated him. He had to force himself to stop. He suppressed a shudder of physical reaction as tenderness and black lust mingled inside him, ebbing away to a painful ache.

“There,” he said, drawing an uneven bre
ath. “That was the first thing I
felt like doing when I found you alone in the drawing room.”

Smiling slightl
y at her dazed expression, he released her to fall back like a windblown petal from a flower against the pillows. He was certain she’d never been kissed like that before, if at all. Unfortunately, the way his belly had twisted into a knot, you’d think he was the one experiencing his first kiss. He hadn’t expected her to affect him like that.

He studied her with renewed interest, his mood lifting at the thought of the evening ahead. “I wouldn’t put it past Donaldson to come barging in here to cause more mischief,” he said in amusement. “God, what a great joke. I can’t believe they went to so much trouble. I hope they paid you well for your performance. You certainly deserve it.”

She sat up stiffly, burning with humiliation and not certain she would ever recover from the events of the past hour. “They didn’t pay me anything, you big overbearing idiot
.
Get off my bruised rib. I’m not an actress. I’m just a poor working girl with bad judgment and the wrong friends.”

“I imagine Ardath picked you because you look like the princess in the tapestry.” His dark eyes dancing with appreciation, he curled his forefinger around the ribbon loosely threaded in the collar of her nightrail. “You have very delicate bones,” he said quietly. “I’ll have to be careful when we make love. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re going to feel very stupid in a few minutes, Lord Buchanan,” she whispered, unable to express a shudder when he touched her.

“Take that silly bandage off your head,” he commanded gently. “It looks uncomfortable.”

“A concussion is uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

He nudged her chin upward with his knuckles, forcing her angry face to his. “I just had an idea—would you like to go to the Highlands with me for a month?”

“Would I—”

He was dead serious. “Do you like to go hunting?”

“I detest everything about it,” she said through her teeth.

“Good.” He gave her a lazy, heart-stopping smile, and dipped his head to nuzzle her soft white neck. “Then we’ll spend all our time in bed.”

For the first time in her life, Maggie’s power of speech failed her.

Her eyes widened as he tugged the nightrail off her shoulder, exposing the swell of her breast. He groaned as he drew his head lower, his lips teasing the nerve endings of her skin. She froze in fascinated apprehension. Lord, the man did sinful things with his mouth. Interesting, inventive, wonderful things that she had never experienced before. She floundered for a moment in a haze of humiliation and unabashed anticipation, afraid to imagine what could happen if she didn’t stop him.

She didn’t
understand this man at all, torn
between reluctant sympathy for his situation and the sheer terror of her own. Again she thought of the lion in the tapestry, a big beast who rarely showed the world his vulnerability. She remembered t
h
e hunter in the background, the sense of evil that surrounded him. Was it possible that she, like the princess, was playing an unwitting part in luring Lord Buchanan into danger too?

She didn’t know at first what made him stop. Only gradually did she become aware of his unnatural silence, then the mechanical stiffness of his movements as he levered up onto his elbow.

A frown furrowed his brow as he stared at the length of blood-flecked gauze in his hand. His gaze flickered to hers, both accusing and brimming with guilt.

“No,” he said thickly. Then he threaded his long fingers into her hair, lifting it to stare in dread at the knot on her scalp. “Dear God, you
have
been hurt.”

“Of course I’ve been hurt,” she practically shouted. “I fell on my head.”

It was a moment before he could speak again. “It wasn’t a joke, after all. I’m a fool.”

He turned his head to the wall; he looked so bereft of hope that Maggie felt tears of remorse sting her eyes. “I wish it
had
been a joke,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, for both of us.”

“But it wasn’t.” His voice fell on a note of finality. He sounded stricken, shaking his head in shocked denial. “Oh, lass, I’m sorry too.”

She brushed away a tear. “It’s sorry I am for breaking into your house. I knew it was wrong. But I also know Jamie isn’t a murderer, and I
…
I believed the things I heard about you.”

He ran his hand through his tousled blond hair, the realization of what he had to face slowly sinking into his dazed mind. “In future you might try coming to me personally rather than believing what is said behind my back.”

“It’s probably a good idea,” she agreed meekly.

Not content to accept her contrite attitude at face value, he dug the knife of his disapproval a little deeper. “It would have spared us both a load of embarrassment if you had, for example, simply knocked upon my door last night and requested a private interview.”

Maggie nodded miserably. “Isn’t that the truth, my lord?”

He glanced back at her, swallowing a groan as she scrubbed another tear from her cheek. He couldn’t believe that he had almost seduced a hurt and helpless woman. A few more minutes, and he would have taken her innocence and dear Lord, he shuddered to imagine the scandal that would have ensued. “Don’t cry, damn it,” he said stiffly.

There was a knock at the door, Dr. Sinclair asking, “Is everything all right in there, Maggie?”

“Everything is fine,” Connor said in a toneless voice.

“No, it is not,” she whispered, raising her knees to hide her ravaged face.

Connor observed her in bewildered silence, reaching his hand out to comfort her before he could stop the impulse. “There, there.” He patted her awkwardly, amazed that a common little thief could arouse his protective instincts. Innocence, or ingenuity? He grunted, deciding it didn’t matter. She looked so upset that he couldn’t help himself. “Hell,” he thought aloud. “What a mess, and you and I are in it together now.”

She nodded again. “I only broke into your house to steal the confession. I suppose you have every right to put me in prison.” She hesitated, her voice a thread of sound. “Do you mind not patting me so hard? I know you mean well, but that’s the shoulder I hurt when I fell.”

Connor released a sigh and pulled his hand back to his side, rising as if in a daze to his feet. “You’re not going to prison.” God, what was he saying? What kind of example was he setting? He took a step away from the bed, hitting his own shoulder against the bedpost. Was this really happening to him? He caught an unwelcome glimpse of himself in the mirror. Long hair disheveled. Cravat pulled loose. Shirttails hanging around his hips. This—this was the man who bore sole responsibility for the safety of Scotland? He looked like a barbarian. He felt like one. He frightened himself.

Ardath pounded on the door. “It’s too quiet in there, Connor. What on earth is going on?”

He forced out a breath and took a moment to tuck in his shirt. He pivoted slowly, stumbling over a pillow on the floor. “I’ll still need your cooperation, lass,” he said heavily. “And by the way, I am the senior advocate the Crown appointed to advise the young lawyer who is handling Munro’s defense. That confession was never intended to be used against him. He’s only being held for his own protection. I was working to help him for free.”