Daring by Jillian Hunter Page B

on the battlefield. They go all dotty in the end. All we can do is make her comfortable.”
    Maggie shuddered, fearing the prospect of death even less than she did the unnerving chill that had frosted Connor’s eyes. Streetwise eyes that offered no redemption, that had seen too much, sharpened over the years into dangerous sophistication. His mind had latched onto every condemning word that had come out of her mouth. Had she really imagined any hint of warmth in their hard hazel depths?
    Suddenly she understood his reputation for conquering his opponents in the courtroom. His gaze raked her like a sword that would lay bare her deepest secrets. He studied her with the unholy perception of a predator.
    But even worse than the cold glittering anger was the glimpse of disappointment, the death of a dream, that he had briefly allowed to show. The roguish charm, the concern, the vulnerability, all gone and crystallized into cynical suspicion.
    When he looked at her now, he didn’t see a tapestry princess. He saw a shameless little thief, a woman not worthy of his trust and tenderness.
    He still hadn’t said a word. He just stared down into her face while everyone else clucked in concern and cursed the slowness of physicians and the heartlessness of this crime.
    His silence alarmed her. She searched his face for mercy, for understanding, and found a barren plain. A frisson of foreboding crept down her back, forming sharp icicles of fear in its wake.
    She sat up without warning and threw off Connor’s hand. Her vision was a little blurry. Her ribs hurt, but the pain in her shoulder had become bearable. Everything paled in comparison to what she imagined her fate would be if this man unleashed his wrath on her.
    “I’m going home now,” she said, her voice shaking. If Hugh hadn’t taken advantage of all the furor to escape, she couldn’t do anything to help him. “I want to be by myself.”
    The old groom glanced at Connor in concern. “Dinna let her move around, my lord.”
    Connor forced her back down onto the blanket. Even though he did not hurt her, there was an underlying strength of steel in the gesture that warned her she wasn’t going anywhere without his permission.
    “Lie still, Miss …” His deep voice paused on the faintest note of irony. “I don’t believe I ever did catch your name.”
    “I thought you told me she was Elliot’s daughter,” Norah said, interrupting her distressed pacing by the gate to intervene. “Oh, thank God, here’s Ardath with the doctor now.”
    Maggie closed her eyes. She pretended that she was having a relapse and hadn’t caught the menacing undertone in Connor’s last remark. The image of his face in all its ruthless beauty blazed in her mind. She almost felt sorry for whoever had abducted his sister. Connor Buchanan looked capable of tearing them apart limb by limb.
    “The doctor is here.” Ardath glanced at Maggie in distress. “Connor, get out of the way. How can the girl breathe with you hovering over her like that?”
    Maggie stole a peep at him through her eyelashes. He stood, reluctantly , watching her in brooding silence as if he expected her to vanish like smoke if he looked away. She lifted her eyes up the seemingly endless length of his legs and torso and gazed into his face. He stared back with all the warm reassurance of a monolith, the accusation in his eyes raising gooseflesh on her arms.
    “Well, well, what have we here?”
    The cultured gruffness of the doctor’s voice struck a familiar chord in Maggie’s memory. Curious, she looked to his bearded face as he knelt to make a discreet examination of her shoulder.
    “Maggie?” He stopped in astonishment, motioning for his assistant to bring him his medical bag. “It isn’t you, is it, lass? What are you doing lying injured in Connor Buchanan’s courtyard?”
    She sucked in a ragged breath. The enormity of what had happened deepened her voice. “It’s me, Dr. Sinclair. You won’t believe what