Connor frowned, looming over the tender moment like a conqueror in a Celtic legend. “You
know
this woman, Dr. Sinclair?”
“Of course I know her,” the doctor snapped; while he might harbor a soft spot in his heart for Maggie, he treated everyone else, patient, prince or pauper, with unfailing rudeness.
Ardath gave Connor a strange look. “Why did you invite her to your party if you don’t know her?”
“I didn’t.” Connor glanced down at Maggie, feeling that same earlier spell of inexplicable attraction, tainted now by his concern for his sister and the dark thread of suspicion running through his mind. “I thought she was Elliot’s daughter,” he said in a hard voice.
“Not that again.” Maggie vented a tired sigh. Then her heart took a frightened plunge as she saw Dr. Sinclair studying her shoulder with a look of utter bewilderment on his face.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he murmured.
She swallowed hard. She couldn’t bear the sight of the dark stains on the cotton gauze he gently withdrew from her shoulder. “Is it that bad? Have I lost much blood?” she asked in a whisper.
He lowered his voice so only she could hear him. “Maggie, my darling little dunderhead, you have a nasty cut on your head, but this isn’t blood I’m cleaning away. It’s chocolate, melted chocolate and something else that looks a bit like vanilla cream.”
“Choc—oh, hell, the
éclairs
,” she whispered. “This is the
most embarrassing moment of my life. I was taking them back for the children—they’ve caught Hugh, you know. We were breaking into his lordship’s house to get Jamie’s confession. Then his lordship’s sister got abducted. I tried to help her, and I’ll probably go to prison for my trouble.”
Dr. Sinclair glanced up in reluctance at the tall figure hovering over them. “He’s a devil of a man to have made your enemy, Maggie,” he said quietly.
C
onnor stared in horror at the dark-stained cloth the doctor quickly stuffed back into his bag. The thought of anyone doing that to this woman, whoever the hell she was, whatever she had done, stirred a wild fury in his soul
…
and terror that Sheena was in deadly danger. “What is all this whispering about?” he demanded. “Is she going to be all right or not?”
Dr. Sinclair straightened his stooped frame, scowling up at Connor with his own brand of professional arrogance. “The woman has a serious head injury, possibly a dislocated shoulder and a bruised rib or two. She’ll need to be made comfortable and watched throughout the night. Let’s get her inside.”
The skin over Connor’s cheekbones tightened as he glanced down into the delicate face that less than an hour ago had seemed like the vision from a dream. He couldn’t believe that her appealing innocence hid any dark motives. But neither was he naive enough to ignore what he’d heard with his own ears.
Criminal. Confession. She’d mentioned Jamie Munro. Damn it. Damn the newspapers. Half of Scotland had already judged the old fool guilty, which meant that the real murderer might never be apprehended and brought to trial.
He looked up at the doctor. “Wait a minute. Did you just tell me that she
didn’t
get shot?”
“No, she didn’t,” Sinclair said reluctantly, with the thought crossing his mind that it might have been better for her if she had, breaking into
his
house, of all the insane schemes. Connor Buchanan might fight like a lion for justice. He might be a brilliant lawyer, but more than one of his colleagues had privately observed that black demons drove
that brilliance. A man like Buchanan would make table scraps out of an inexperienced young girl like Maggie.
He snapped his bag shut. “Why is everyone standing about? Have the servants make a stretcher to carry her inside. I didn’t say she wasn’t hurt.”
“We don’t need a stretcher,” Connor retorted. Deep beneath his anger and suspicion was a relief so sharp it made him feel weak. He didn’t know why, it was irrational, but he clung to the hope that if the kidnappers hadn’t tried to hurt this woman, then they wouldn’t hurt Sheena either. “If she isn’t shot, she isn’t dying. I’ll carry her inside myself.”
Before Maggie or the doctor could object, he knelt and gathered her into his arms. It was a spontaneous act. He wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to do it. He’d been attracted to her earlier, and even though he didn’t trust her now, he refused to let anyone else be responsible for her. If she knew anything at all about Sheena, he would soon find out. Nothing like this had ever happened in his life.
“Mind her ribs, Connor,” Ardath scolded behind him. “You’re going to crush her, holding her like that.”
“I am not,” he said in annoyance. He glanced down at Maggie. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, no doubt to avoid his. He couldn’t tell if she was in physical pain or simply terrified. He felt cold with fear himself, shock and anger clashing inside him.
Norah hurried after them. “Why aren’t the men back with Sheena? What if they can’t find that carriage? Ask her again what the kidnappers looked like, Connor. She’s the only one who got a close look at them.”
Connor remained silent as he carried Maggie across the courtyard. He was too engrossed in his thoughts to pay any attention to Norah’s anxious questioning. God knew he shouldn’t have been surprised that something like this would happen. Perhaps he’d grown immune to the occasional threats that usually amounted to nothing, except for the one defendant’s wife who’d stabbed him in the wrist with a salad fork at a dinner party after he’d prosecuted her husband for arson.
But the burglary and his sister’s abduction in one night? Were they connected? Why would anyone take Sheena except to hurt him? He swallowed over the lump of helplessness in his throat and wondered who hated him so much he would avenge himself on an innocent family.
He hazarded another glance at the woman in his arms. She weighed next to nothing; she looked soft and frightened, hidden in his shoulder, but she had condemned herself with her own words. Disappointment, regret, and wounded pride dug talons into his heart, uprooting the treacherous seeds of tenderness that had begun to sprout.
Who was she? Certainly not Elliot’s daughter.
Why had she
c
ome here tonight? Not to celebrate his success.
As he moved, his steps mechanical, he could feel her unbound hair brushing his arm, sensual, feminine, teasing. Even bundled up awkwardly against his chest, she possessed a delicate grace and dignity that reminded him of the tapestry princess. The virgin who would lure a beast to its death, who would betray the image of innocence that had attracted him. Dear God, when had he started believing in romance? His own
naivete
infuriated him. His vulnerability came as a shock.
He stopped, drawing a deep breath. “Where the hell am I supposed to take her?” he said in such an angry growl that Maggie lifted her head to stare at him.
“Take her upstairs where she’ll have quiet and privacy from curious eyes,” Ardath said in a cool voice, following behind Norah with Bella and Dr. Sinclair.
“Privacy?” Connor snorted. “Not in my life.”
His bachelor uncle came running out of the house as Connor resumed walking past the doors to the drawing room. A tall portly man in his early sixties, the Earl of Glenbrodie had spent all but the last decade of his life traveling around the world as an amateur botanist.
He’d been in the basement brewing an herbal remedy for one of the party guests when the excitement had exploded. Connor had long ago realized that the man lived in another world from everyone else.
“I just heard about Sheena.” The earl brushed a sprinkling of loose soil from the gardener’s apron he wore over his jacket; his cheeks were ruddy above his trim white beard. Then, noticing the slip of a girl in Connor’s arms, he lowered his voice in disapproval. “Well, everyone criticizes my behavior, but I must say, this is a fine time to be carrying a woman around in the courtyard with a housebreaker upstairs and your sister Sheena stolen by a stranger.”
Connor scowled. God, he could feel the start of a killer headache throbbing behind his left eye, and now people, important people, were peering at him from behind his own windows. “Apparently the girl was injured trying to rescue Sheena,” he said through his teeth. “The doctor wants her made comfortable.”
“She tried to rescue Sheena?” The earl’s face softened. “For heaven’s sake then, don’t just stand out here in the damp with her. Do what the doctor told you. Who is she, anyway?”
Connor met Maggie’s gaze, hardening his heart against the unexpected power of the innocence in her eyes. “Nobody seems to know,” he said. “All I can say for certain is that she isn’t Elliot’s daughter.”
“The poor child could be in shock,” the earl said with a reassuring smile for Maggie. “What is your name, my dear?”
Maggie sighed in resignation. There was no point in trying to hide the truth. His lordship hadn’t recovered from her earlier deception. It had to be difficult for a man of his stature to admit he could be victimized.
“My name,” she began bravely, “is—”
“Maggie!” a familiar young male voice shouted down from the balcony that led into Connor’s bedroom. “Judas, don’t tell me they’ve caught you, too? I swear I didna breathe a word. I said I was housebreaking all by myself. I didna let on for a minute that you were the mastermind. I told ’em the slipper on the balcony was mine. I said I’d stolen it.”
A dead silence met Hugh’s revealing outburst. Everyone seemed afraid to break the devastating tension that held Lord Buchanan spellbound. Maggie cringed as she felt his arms tighten around her like bands of iron, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up at his face. The anger that emanated from him like smoke forewarned her of a dangerous fury seething beneath his surface composure.
Two male servants emerged from the bedroom to try to drag Hugh off the balcony.
“Make a run for it, Maggie,” the boy shouted, adding fuel
to the fire he’d started. “Remember the rumors about him— you’re done for if you dinna get away from the devil.”
It sounded like good advice to Maggie. She wouldn’t have a lambchop’s chance once the lion dragged her into his den. “I think you ought to put me down, my lord,” she told Connor, straining against his arms.
There wasn’t a flicker of cooperation on his face. “Who the hell are you?” he said in a low, furious voice.
Ardath tugged on the tail of his evening jacket. “Just put her down, Connor. You’re probably hurting her. You don’t know your own strength. I’ve told you that before.”
“The girl might have sustained internal injuries, Lord Buchanan,” Dr. Sinclair said in a ste
rn
tone. “I can’t allow you to manhandle her like this. She requires careful treatment.”
“Put the girl down, I say.” The earl had taken Maggie’s side along with the others. “As far as I can make out, she’s the only one who lifted a damn finger to save Sheena. The family owes her an enormous debt.”
Maggie’s pulse began to pound in panic. He was backing away from his friends and family like a cornered animal. Clearly he didn’t give a damn what anyone said. The cruel gleam in his eyes foreshadowed unimaginable punishments. The most powerful man in Scotland, and she was at his mercy. He wasn’t going to listen to reason. He wouldn’t care that she’d only wanted to help a friend. All the dreadful things she’d heard about him were true.
The situation called for desperate measures.
She broke out of his arms with such an unexpected burst of energy that Connor, taken off guard, almost lost his hold on her. For a breathless moment she believed she had a chance at freedom. She actually thought she could escape him. Then he snagged a handful of her cloak just in time.
Maggie’s toes never even touched the ground. He lifted her in the air with the amount of effort it would have taken him to pluck a daisy from a flowerpot.
She gasped, her feet dangling between his legs, his large hands clamped around her waist. To make matters worse, Dr. Sinclair hadn’t stuffed the stolen
éclairs
back into her pockets and they were sliding free. Fortunately, in all the commotion, an insignificant thing like a few pastries falling to the ground went unnoticed.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t say the same for the other bottle of champagne she’d crammed in the pocket of her cloak. It was a wonder it had survived her fall from the carriage.
His mistress was right. The man obviously did not know his own strength.
When he yanked her back toward him, and into the darkness, the bottle finally dislodged and hit the stone walkway with the force of a lead ball hurtling from a cannon. The cork exploded in midair. The silence amplified the deafening pop.
Ardath uttered a startled shriek. “Good Lord, a gunshot! Someone’s shooting at us.”
“The boy on the balcony,” Norah cried. “I thought I saw something in his hand!”
The earl threw his arms around Ardath’s mother and began dragging her down the steps. “Everyone on the ground! Connor, protect that girl—we need her help. Guard her with your life.”
The old groom came running up from the courtyard, drawn by all the shouting. “What’s the matter? Are the kidnappers back?”
“Someone is shooting at Connor,” Ardath said breathlessly, picking up her skirts to run. “Take cover, Jacob.”