Lois Greiman (3 page)

“I have not stolen from you,” she said evenly, “or any other.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then what is your attachment to Sir Wheaton?”

“Wheaton.” Her mind was still spinning, but she tried to steady it, to be smart. “The man that was to be executed.”

“The man that escaped!” His smile was gone and his words growled. He jerked to his feet and paced the room, limping slightly. “How did he get the knife, Megs?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The knife,” he said, and strode back to loom over her. His perfect teeth were gritted, his golden face intense. “The knife with which he killed Daniel while you stood there and watched.”

She felt herself pale, for the implications were painfully clear. He had lost a friend and believed she was to blame. “I
don’t know Wheaton,” she said, and though she had hoped for defiance, she barely managed audibility. Still, he drew back, straightening on a long exhalation.

Silence fell hastily into the room.

“Tell me where he is, lass.”

She blinked, searching for sanity. “I do not know Wheaton,” she repeated.

“So you cannot tell me.”

“’Tis obvious—”

She never saw him move, but suddenly the blankets were whipped out of her hands and she was left unclothed and uncovered.

“Then I shall have to seek my revenge with you,” he said, and reached for her.

Terror consumed her like a hungry wave. She leapt to her feet on the bed just as his fingers skimmed her arm. She squawked at the contact, almost falling onto the floor, but finding her feet and spinning about to face him. They watched each other like cornered badgers.

“Come now, lass,” he crooned, and stepped easily onto the mattress. “It will not be so bad as all that. Surely if you can tolerate Wheaton’s touch, you can bear anything.”

“I know no one named Wheaton,” she breathed, backing away, “and if you touch me again, I shall see you hanged before dawn.”

“Hanged!” He laughed and leapt.

She darted away. He was after her in an instant. She heard his feet strike the floor long before she’d reached the door. Fingers tangled in her hair, snatching her to a halt. She whirled about, slapping wildly, but he was already pulling her up against his chest, muffling her protests, stilling her movements with the strength of his arms around her naked torso.

She struggled, but there was no hope. Despite his silly
good looks, he was strong and determined. She stilled, conserving her strength, engaging her mind.

The sound of their breathing was all that could be heard. His grip eased up a mite. She didn’t move. At least here, pressed against his body, he could not see her nakedness.

Keeping one arm wrapped about her, he stroked his fingers through her hair, and she realized suddenly that it was completely undone and hung in heavy waves down the length of her back. How had that happened? How long had she been unconscious? Where were her clothes? And Ralph? Panic threatened to drown her, but she swallowed it back.

“You’re damned poor at defending yourself,” he murmured. She still didn’t move. “For a thief and a murderer.”

“Murderer!” She reared back, but he eased her against his chest again.

“Perhaps just his accomplice, aye?” he said and skimmed his fingers down her spine to the crease of her buttocks.

She quivered in spite of herself. “Cease!”

“Tell me where he is, Megs,” he said, and, leaning back, stared into her eyes. Perhaps there was anger there, but another emotion burned brighter, something far more frightening.

“I told you—” she began, but he leaned forward and kissed her.

For a moment she remained frozen in shock, then she shoved with all her might, managing to break free and stumble backward. “How dare you!”

He smiled and stepped forward. “I dare much, lass. And this is but the beginning unless you cooperate.”

She backed away, breathing hard and fighting to control her emotions, to think, to plan. “We do not deal with brigands such as you.”

He stopped abruptly. “We?”

She scowled, but continued on. “You’ll get no ransom for me. So you’d just as well let me go.”

“Ransom?” His eyes were narrowed. “Wheaton would pay for your return?”

She shook her head. Was he merely trying to trick her into admitting who she was, or did he truly think her a thief? Was her life in danger or just her pride?

“So you’re important to him,” he said.

She continued to retreat, but her thighs struck something cold. She stopped with a gasp, but dared not glance back. Instead, she thrust her hand behind her, feeling the smooth edge of a desk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about life, Megs,” he said, and took a step closer. “Your life. I’m offering it to you in exchange for a small piece of information.”

“I don’t know what you want.” Behind her, her fingers skimmed the surface of the desk. She felt smooth, unseen objects beneath her hand.

“I want to know where to find him.” His voice was soft, but the words were gritted. “And that you know.” He nodded as if to himself. “Wheaton would not waste a prize like you. You’re clever. You care about him. And…” His gaze raked her nakedness. The light in his eyes sparked brighter. “And you are bonny.”

Something cool and hard met her fingertips. She inched breathlessly along an edge.

“No.” His tone was thoughtful, his eyes narrowed. “He will use you again. Believe me, Meggie mine, ’tis what he will do. He will use you and leave you to hang.”

She merely stared, her mind racing along the edge of the unseen object, trying to conjure an image in her head.

“He has abandoned you already.”

She said nothing, and perhaps he took her reticence for disagreement, for he continued on.

“Is he here now then? Bent on saving you?”

The object was strangely shaped. Triangular almost. But not too large, and—Her breath stopped as her thumb brushed the point. It was narrow and deadly sharp.

“Were he in your spot, he would give you up in an instant,” MacTavish said. “Believe me, lass. I know ’tis true.”

She didn’t answer. Didn’t breathe.

“He will sacrifice you to save himself.” He shook his head and stepped closer still. “Tell me where he has fled.”

She remained breathlessly silent, then shook her head. “I do not know what you speak of.”

He reached for her with a curse, and in that instant she struck, snatching the instrument blindly from the desk behind her and stabbing it into his chest.

P
ain sliced MacTavish’s chest. He swore at his own stupidity and reached for the brass compass, but she had already snatched it out and dropped it like a writhing adder to the floor. Her gasp was one of utter horror—as if it were she who had been stabbed, and her eyes were tremendously wide, green as a mossy bay and filled with terror.

Behind him, the door slammed open and footsteps thundered into the room. That would be Lieutenant Peters and his entourage, nosy as aging schoolmistresses and too bored to keep to themselves.

She obviously noticed their arrival, too, for she was staring past his shoulder, her eyes wider than ever, her plump lips parted, and he realized without looking that his men had come armed and ready. He turned slowly, careful to step directly in front of her, covering her nudity.

Five men stood in an arc before him. Peters was the closest. His saber was drawn, and in his right hand he held a pistol. The others were armed in similar fashion. Triton’s balls! You would think the girl was a gorging tiger shark instead of
a slip of a thing that barely reached his chest—which ached, by the way.

“My lord!” Peters’s tone was breathless, his expression tense. “You are wounded.”

Cairn glanced down at his chest. There was a hole some five inches below his left shoulder. Blood had seeped into the soft fabric of his tunic. There were things he missed about being a sailor; the coarse material of a seaman’s clothing was not one of them. “Aye,” he said, and scowled at the wound with some fascination. He hadn’t considered using a compass as a weapon before. Intriguing. “So I am.”

“By her hand,” added Peters.

“True.” Reaching toward the Grecian statuette, Cairn pulled the silken scarf from its shoulders and handed it to the girl behind him. “Cover yourself,” he ordered.

The sheer fabric shook as she took it, and he almost smiled. So she was finally scared, but was it because of his too diligent bodyguards or because of the blood that he’d inadvertently smeared across the silken fabric? Perhaps she thought he was about to keel over from the wound she’d inflicted upon him and dreaded the consequences. He supposed even Peters’s freckled countenance could look pretty imposing in the right light.

“My lord,” said Peters again, “if you will step aside, I will see to her punishment.”

He should step aside of course. She was a thief, a liar, and most probably a murderer’s accomplice if not a murderer herself, but even now it seemed he could see her eyes—green as a mossy inlet with her hair wild and unbound about her splendid breasts. Of course, it was neither her breasts nor her terrified eyes that kept her from punishment. A bastard had no time for foolish sentiment. It was merely that he was certain he could convince her to reveal her lover’s whereabouts.
She was young, scared, and alone. Surely Wheaton’s charms were not so enthralling that she would keep silent in the face of such formidable odds. He tightened one fist, but remained otherwise unmoved, reminding himself that eventually she would weaken, and he would learn the truth.

“Go to supper, Peters,” he ordered, his mind elsewhere. “I have use of the girl here.”

“My lord—”

“And take your men with you.”

“But—”

“What’s afoot?” Burroun appeared in the doorway like a looming bad omen. One gargantuan hand was wrapped around a leg of mutton, and a bit of grease shone in the left braid of his golden beard. Cairn scowled. The giant had certainly heard the commotion sometime ago, for he had the senses of a mischievous wildcat, but, as usual, he had chosen his own leisurely course in getting there. Strange, perhaps, for a laird’s bodyguard. But then, Burr had been strange for as long as he could remember. He had the build of his ancestral Vikings, the brogue of his homeland, and the frightful strength of a seasoned smithy.

“Good of you to join us,” said Cairn to his hirsute friend. “The lads were just about to take their supper.”

Burr nodded, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and belched softly. Some might find it difficult to believe he had the fencing skills of a master and the mind of a scholar. Or that he had managed to find time between meals to save Cairn’s life on more than one occasion.

“She stab you?” he asked.

“Aye,” Cairn answered.

Burroun nodded again, his expression something between admiration and boredom before he turned to the guards. “Well, lads,” he said, his tone jovial as he slapped the nearest
shoulder with convivial heartiness. The soldier called Cormick held up commendably under the assault. “There’s a fine bit of lamb to table. What say we test it afore it’s gone.”

“My lord—” Peters began again, but Cairn quieted him with a glare. Why was it that he couldn’t find a guard with a temperament somewhere between the lieutenant’s obsessive worry and Burr’s sporadic disregard.

“All is well, Peters,” Cairn assured him. “You needn’t worry.”

“She’s dangerous, my lord.”

“Aye,” he agreed amiably. “It could be you’re right there.”

“Let me—”

“What you thinking lad!” Burr rumbled, and glared at Peters as if he were a recalcitrant hound. The Norseman wore an unbuttoned vest made of some unidentified fur and no tunic of any sort. A plaid kilt was belted tight around his girth, and despite the fact that he ate like a starved white shark, not an ounce of fat showed in the muscles that bulged like sheep’s bladders from every limb. “You gonna chew his food, too?”

The lieutenant drew himself up, affront written on his fair features. “’Tis my job to protect the lord of this isle. And protect him I will.”

“Aye, aye,” rumbled Burr. “But if the lad can’t save himself from wee woodsprite yonder”—he jerked his head toward the girl—“I’ll kill him meself and have done with it. Now get your arse gone before I take a spanking to you.”

For a moment Cairn thought Peters might actually venture a second objection, but apparently he wasn’t completely daft, because he finally left, his back painfully straight and his expression disapproving.

The room was nearly empty in a moment. Only Burr’s huge form marred the landscape.

“Stabbed you,” he said and, chuckling, shambled toward the door. “Good for her.”

They were alone in a moment. Cairn turned slowly toward the girl. The numbing shock had worn off and his chest was beginning to throb rhythmically, but one glance at the diminutive thief drove all thoughts of pain from his mind. In truth, it drove thoughts of any kind from his mind, sending all his blood pumping down to lower regions.

She stood as perfectly still as the Grecian statuette, her golden body unmoving, and draped down the midsection, like a sultan’s gossamer curtain, was the silken scarf. He hadn’t realized what an erotic picture she would make, and wondered suddenly if the sight of her might not have had something to do with Peters’s laggardly exodus. Perhaps he should not place so much stock in the man’s loyalty to himself as to the girl’s…well…He stared at her and felt his blood pressure rise with his cock. If he didn’t detest the very thought of anything that belonged to Wheaton, he might well be tempted to bed her. Then again, since when did affection have to foreshadow sex?

Perhaps his thoughts showed in his eyes, because she bunched the cloth more tightly between her breasts and backed up a step. But if she hoped for modesty, she would have been sorely disappointed, for though the scarf managed to shield her midline from view, the sheer fabric seemed to do little more than magnify her bounteous charms.

Beneath his kilt, he hardened and grew. Sometimes Hoary, as Cairn called his favorite nether part, forgot the greater good, preferring to embark on his own endeavors. Cairn stared at her in silence, taking in the wide verdant eyes, the rigid shoulders, the firm bulges beside her arms, which were pressed in an inverted v against her chest.

Hoary stirred restlessly. Cairn’s gaze flickered downward,
then up. His cock waited in taut anticipation for her reaction, but if he’d hoped for unbridled desire, he, too, would be sadly disappointed, because she did nothing but raise her chin and tighten her grip on the scarf.

“So you truly are Lord MacTavish,” she said. Her voice was low and quiet, perhaps from spending too much time in smoky taverns, waiting for her victims to drop in alcohol-induced unconsciousness.

“Aye,” he agreed amicably. ’Twas so simple to be amicable when one had the upper hand. When cornered and tortured, he tended to be more cantankerous. Luckily, she’d only had a cartographer’s tool close to hand, he thought, and smiled a little, wondering what would have happened if his interests ran toward weaponry instead of maps.

Her eyes had the slightest slant to them, but her nose was as straight as a whaler’s harpoon. Had she not been a thief and a liar, she would have made a fine lady—aristocratic, superior, cold. Aye, she might be many things, but at least she was not nobility. She stole honestly. He took a step toward her and thought it unfortunate that he hadn’t given her a handkerchief instead of a scarf, for while the silk teased and suggested, it also hid some of her more intriguing features, falling just to the middle of her thighs.

“I am MacTavish,” he said and bowed slightly. Sir Albert—Bert, as Burr called him in an ever successful attempt to peeve the narrow baron, had taught Cairn some of the accoutrements of nobility. Bowing was one of Cairn’s more successful endeavors. Language was not. “And who are you?”

She licked her lips. Hoary took note of the quick dart of her tongue, and despite that appendage’s distraction, Cairn managed to notice that she hesitated yet again. But finally she spoke.

“My name is Mrs. Mulgrave.”

He felt his brows rise. He hadn’t expected her to tell the truth at this late juncture of course, but somehow he hadn’t thought she would portray herself as someone’s wife. Perhaps because she looked so very young. Hoary tightened hard against his belly, so maybe his reasons tended to run more toward wishful thinking.

“Mrs. Mulgrave,” he said.

“Yes.”

“And your husband?”

She raised her chin again as if challenging the devil himself, which wasn’t a bad comparison. “He is dead.”

“Really?” Cairn said. “Did you kill him?”

“What! No! How—” she began, but he gestured toward the hole in his chest. It was seeping sedately into the fine fabric of his favorite tunic, widening a pinkish stain on the French linen. “Of course I did not kill him.” Her fingers tightened perceptibly in the scarf. They were slim and smooth and long for her small size. “And I would not have stabbed you if you had ceased—”

Her words stopped. Her gaze remained frozen on his chest.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I’ve known you less than a full day and already you’ve ruined more garments than I did during my entire voyage to Patagonia, including the capture of the
Maiden
.”

She swallowed and he scowled as he tugged his shirttail from beneath his belted tartan. Strange how nervous she seemed around him. True, she was naked, and he had threatened to have her hanged, but from what he had heard of Magical Megs, she had been in tighter spots. It was said she once had the hangman’s noose tight around her neck and had still managed to escape without a trace. Like a shadow. Like a cloud of dust. Like magic. But she would not be so fortunate this time. Nay, Cairn the bastard had a tendency to get what
he wanted, and this would be no different. Tossing the spent shirt onto his desk, he scowled down at his latest wound. It was small, but Bert had assured him that a sovereign laird should be able to go a full week without losing blood. Thus far, that theory had yet to be proven.

“How then?” he asked, glancing up.

She ripped her gaze from his torso to his face. Was it his chest that fascinated her or the wound? It was really Hoary that wanted to know. He had an insatiable curiosity.

“What?” she asked.

“Your husband,” he said, and, crossing his arms against his chest, settled himself upon the edge of the desk. “How’d he die?”

“Oh. He drowned.”

“Drowned.”

“Yes.”

“What was his name?”

“William.”

“When did it happen?”

“Last May. He was boating on the Thames.”

“Tragic.”

“Quite.”

“What was his occupation?”

“He was a tailor.”

Cairn smiled. Damn, she was good. “And where did you and your beloved live, Mrs. Mulgrave?”

“In London.”

Clever. London. A sea voyage and a long journey afoot unless one were foolish enough to challenge one of those damnable carriages—not somewhere accessible where he might travel easily and thereby prove her lies.

“Where in London?”

“On Craven Road, just across from the gardens.”

He paused for a moment, and she pursed her lips with regal disdain. “Might I have my clothes back now?”

“No.” He said it without thinking. True, there had been no weapons hidden in her garments. Neither had there been any stashed away in that dark bundle of hair she’d had piled atop her head, but it had been a good excuse to see her unclothed.

“Whyever not?”

“Because…” He thought for a moment and realized that he needed no reason. “You’re my prisoner. I am the laird of Teleere. You’ll have your clothes when I see fit—Miss Megs.”

“I am not Megs.” She could state the denial with absolutely no inflection of her voice.

He bowed again. Old Bert had endeavored to teach him a host of things—from judging wines to tying a cravat, but bowing was what he excelled at. God knew, Cairn was never meant to be a laird. But his mother had been young and bonny, and the king had taken a shine to her. The old wick had no way of knowing that his only remaining heir would turn out to be a ragged-assed Scot with no decent name but the one garnered from the pile of rocks where he’d been found.

“My apologies, Mrs. Mulgrave,” he corrected and shushed the old bitterness. What did he have to be bitter about, anyway? He was the acknowledged laird of the isle of Teleere. So what if he’d spent a few years amidst a bevy of sailors who were as likely to slit his throat as look at him? It had taught him the art of sleeping light. “But you see, I have a problem.”

She stared at him for a full five seconds before speaking. “The lowest of men can change his temperament if he so wishes.”