DARE THE WILD WIND (26 page)

Fresh wrath gathered in her eyes.  "Have the grace to show some shame.  If not for you,
Cam would be safe in Scotland, and so would I.  It was you who ordered him into irons.  Or didn't you think I knew?"

Drake was stunned at her accusation.  Who had told her the story, and why hadn't she been given the right of it? 

"I don't have any cause for shame," he said in a curt, clipped voice.  "Your fine
Highland coxcomb tried to overthrow the King."

"And he's paid dearly for it," Brenna shot back.  "It's up to me to see that he doesn't pay a higher price.  I have to get to the Tower, even if I go on foot."

"The Tower?" Drake echoed.  Was she angling for him to order his coach along Eastcheap to the Tower gates? 

"Your lover isn't important enough to be held in the Tower," he told her.  "Most likely, he's rotting in the Tilbury Hulks."

He had expected a tart retort.  Instead, her face went
abruptly still, and she looked mutely back at him for a second.    

"Then take me there."  It was suddenly a plea.  Desperation and anxiety had replaced the hostility in her gaze, and he almost wavered.  Then Drake curbed the impulse.  She was a chameleon, suiting her tactics to the moment and the weakness of any man who stepped into range of her smoky hypnotic eyes.

He reached out to fasten the morocco leather curtains securely over the windows of the coach.  "I have no intention of taking you anywhere but to my house on the
Strand.  And no plans to allow you out my door again until your brother arrives to claim you."

           *****

Brenna paced the length of the bedchamber.  Indifferent to the stares of the servants, the Earl had pulled her up the curving staircase of his townhouse and thrust her unceremoniously inside.

"Your boudoir, milady," he said with mock formality.  "The cook will send you a meal once your hysterics subside."

Then he turned the key in the lock.  She was a prisoner.  Disbelieving, Brenna heard his footsteps echo down the marble corridor.  She called out to him, screamed at him to come back, beating on the carved walnut door, to no effect whatsoever.

Summoning Malcolm could take a fortnight and more, and her brother would only drag her back to Lochmarnoch. 
Cam needed her now. 

A vision of the gibbet flashed before her.  She told herself
London couldn't muster gallows or juries for all of the Rebels taken on Culloden Moor.  She had to hope that Cam and Iain would be banished or transported.  But if Cam were sent in chains to the Colonies, she might never see him again. 

At least Fenella had eluded both their pursuers and Drake Seton.  In the diversion the Earl had created, Fenella had dodged into the crowd, slipping out of sight of the angry men halted by the Earl's drawn sword.  Over the shoulders of the mob, Brenna had mouthed three words.
 
I'll meet you...
Then Fenella had vanished.

Surely Fenella would go on to the Tower alone, to try to find
Cam and Iain.

Brenna searched the room for some escape.  An extravagant mix of the Rococo and Baroque, nudes and cupids sported on the vaulted ceiling, and a mural of reclining nymphs circled below it.  An enormous walnut panel carved in writhing leaves and flowers reached from the mantel to the molding above, a small octagonal oil of a pastoral scene at its center. 

A rose and blue Persian rug lay on the highly
  polished floor, and shot silk covered the walls, matching hangings of champagne silk at the windows and canopied bed.  A velvet  upholstered chaise longue sat at its foot, in the exact blush shade of the carpet, a low backless bench cushioned in the same velvet before the hearth. 

Every appointment spoke of sybaritic license and pleasure.  Waspishly, Brenna wondered how often Drake Seton had brought his amours from court to this silken seraglio.

The paned window overlooked the
Thames, three stories above the street.  If the drop didn't prove fatal, she could break a leg in the fall.  She was trapped.  When the serving girl brought her midday meal, Brenna tried to enlist her aid, but her pleas were useless.  And the Earl's butler locked the door securely after her.

Exhausted by her pacing, wincing at the swelling bump on her knee, Brenna sank onto the bed.  By the slant of the afternoon sun, it was growing late.  The clatter of coaches and carts and the sound of foot traffic dwindled on the street below. 

Then she heard shod feet ring on the cobblestones as a rider reined in his mount.  Brenna sprang to the window.  Thomas Wolcott dismounted from a bay cob at the wide steps to the house.  Drake Seton's aide in
Scotland had struck her as a man of principle, and he might listen to her now.  She had to catch his attention.  But the casement of the window was tightly stuck.  And Wolcott quickly strode out of sight up the steps.  There was nothing to do but keep a vigil by the window until he took his leave. 

The last scattered rays of the sun shimmered across the dark water of the river before he reappeared.  She called out, rapping frantically on the glass.  But he mounted his horse without glancing up, to ride away.  Brenna nearly gave way to tears. 

"Damn you, Drake Seton."  She seized the untouched tray and threw it into the fireplace with a crash.  And heard the door swing open behind her. 

"I can see we can't serve your meals to you on china."

She whirled to confront the Earl.  Carelessly dressed, Drake had discarded the coat he had worn earlier, and his wheat
colored hair was unpowdered, drawn back from his bluntly  chiseled features and clubbed at his sinewy neck.  The fine lawn of his shirt strained against his broad shoulders, the wide cuffs shot, and he had cast aside his frilled jabot.

Shattered shards of glass had splintered onto the rug, and for a wild second Brenna thought of salvaging one as a weapon.  As a final humiliation in the coach, the Earl had relieved her of the dirk she wore at her ankle.

"I don't want food from your kitchen," Brenna spat back.  "I want  my freedom."

His mouth twitched irritably.  "No more than I'd like to be free of you.  I don't enjoy playing jailer to a crackbrained girl."

"Then you're the one who's mad.  You have no right to keep me here, and I promise I'll be endless trouble as long as you do."

Unyielding lines hardened in his face.  "And a constant danger to yourself if I allow you to wander the streets."

"That's hardly your concern," she snapped.

He took a stride toward her.  "Do you think I stepped in with that rabble just to amuse myself?  Do you imagine I care to see your body fished out of the
Thames?"

Brenna recoiled at the suggestion the crowd might have killed her.  Silence hung between them for a second.  But her encounter with the mob didn't excuse him for dragging her here against her will.

"The danger is over," she reminded him coldly.

"Are you really such a wrongheaded fool?"  His topaz eyes traveled from her face to the soft curve of her throat and the high swell of her breasts above the low scooped neckline of her gown.  "Are you bent on provoking and tempting every man in your path?"

Brenna felt heat rise in her cheeks.  She had forgotten the torn sleeve of her dress.  The stitching had shredded when she fell.  She looked down to see the lace and satin hung in tatters, making the fashionable, daring decolletage of the gown even more revealing.  She fought the urge to snatch it up over her shoulder.

"All I require is a cloak from one of your servants," she said stiffly, refusing to give him the satisfaction of a gesture she knew was futile.  Without a needle and thread, nothing would hold the sleeve in place.

"What else do you expect to requisition?" he asked sardonically.   "My coach?  A troop of my servants as your personal bodyguard?" 

He righted a porcelain pitcher on the washstand, a casualty when she threw the tray.  "I'm afraid I can't oblige.  Much as I deplore Lord Dalmoral's notions of discipline, you are your brother's ward.  And you've demonstrated your bent for wild schemes too often to be trusted on your own."

Brenna glared back at him.  How he must enjoy this.  She had humbled him the first afternoon they met, and he hadn't forgotten.  She longed for just one moment to be a man, for the strength to knock him aside and stalk from his house.

But she already had learned he was far too dangerous to be casually struck from anyone's path.  His height was balanced by the breadth of his wide shoulders, and the
open collar of his shirt revealed a golden mat of hair and the sun browned skin of a deep, muscled chest.  Tight knee breeches displayed the saddle muscles and powerful thighs of a man who had spent most of his life on the back of a horse, and soft kid boots too fine to serve outside a drawing room gloved well turned legs to the calf.   Despite the impractical luxury of the boots, he was quick, and Brenna knew she could never outrun him.  How she hated his easy arrogant strength.  But her defiance had only made him implacable.

"Is there nothing I can say to you, nothing that will persuade you to let me go?"

A flicker of surprise and something predatory played across his rough
  cut features.  "Take care you don't find me too agreeable to persuasion," he said in a different, warning voice.

Now Brenna colored in earnest.  Did he think she was suggest
ing some amoral bargain? 

"You misunderstand  me, my lord," she said with a small angry jerk of her chin.  "I appeal to your chivalry, if that word is still in use in
England."

He closed the distance that separated them, a sudden dangerous glitter in his eyes.  "I think you're searching for a simpler, older word.  And that I've let you lead me on a string."

The barely
  leashed menace in his tone made Brenna shrink back a step.  She bumped into the post of the high canopied bed and let out a small startled sound.  A half  amused smile pulled at the corners of his mouth, and his gaze was suddenly lazy and appraising.

"I won't hold your games against you."  His voice softened, caressing and almost hypnotic.  "All I demand is honesty."

His deep
set eyes caught and held her unwilling mesmerized gaze, and he reached out with a finger to lightly and tauntingly trace the delicate line of her throat.  A wild and unexpected shiver of sensation ran through Brenna, and she tried to jerk away.  But his arm shot out to bar her escape.

His mouth was dangerously close to hers.  Desperately, she cast in her mind for withering words to repel him.  But speech deserted her.  He laughed softly
, as if he read her intent.   

"Sweet Brenna," he said, almost breathing her name.  "Don't trifle with me now."

He bent to capture her lips with his.  But not as he had that day on the moor.  Questing, his mouth lightly brushed one corner of hers and traced the vulnerable outline of her lips with a feathery teasing expertise.  Steeled for a brutal assault, Brenna trembled, and an unbidden tingling raced through her every nerve.  The hands she had raised to push him away spread uselessly against his thick
muscled chest. 

Her lips parted under his tantalizing gossamer exploration, and his tongue darted inside her mouth.  At her gasp, the pressure of his mouth increased, taking possession of hers.  The arm that had barred her way caught her by the waist, drawing her close against the hard strength of his body, and his kiss deepened, suddenly demanding. 

Some distant part of her brain whispered to Brenna to resist, but the scalding insistent seduction of his mouth disarmed her defenses and scattered all her senses.  Slow and skillful and insistent, his kiss ravaged and dizzied her.  His tongue invaded again, and shamelessly,
wantonly, her own twined and curled instinctively around it.  With a low sound in his throat, he pulled her body closer against the hard muscled maleness of his, burying a hand in the tumbled silk of her fiery hair.

The force and redoubled passion of his kiss dazed and devoured her, and the earth dissolved under her feet.  Brenna felt as if she was drowning, swept down in a whirling current to the bottom of the sea.  Helplessly, her arms slid up around his neck, and she clung to him for support, for breath and life.

Giddily, she was aware of Drake swinging her up in his arms, of being lifted to the bed.  A fierce primitive wave of joy crested over her at the feel of his long, powerful body over hers.  He rained a searing path of kisses down her throat to the hollow of her neck, and Brenna shivered and cried out at each new shock of pleasure.  Relentlessly, his mouth ventured down the ivory curve of her shoulder, brushing and trailing across the first
exposed swell of her breasts. 

Clinging to him, she gave way to sheer  madness.  Her fingers dug into the rippling, bunching muscles of his back, and her body arched without thought against his.  His mouth traveled lower, and his fingers traced and then caressed the tender curve of one upturned breast.  Through an intoxicating veil of sensation, alarm woke in Brenna, but Drake silenced her brief cry of protest with the ruthless hungry pressure of his mouth.  His palm grazed and then glided over the taut erect bud straining against the satin of her bodice, and a quivering spasm of pleasure radiated like a shower of sparks through every part of her.