Daring by Jillian Hunter Read Free Book Online

under her cloak. Her heart pounded against her breastbone.
    There was something a little familiar, a little unsettling about the woman—oh, blast, she looked like a paler version of Connor Buchanan. She must be another one of his sisters, judging by that tall thin frame and Nordic elegance.
    The woman didn’t seem to have Connor’s self-confidence, though. In fact, she struck Maggie as rather sad and anxious, a woman with worries enough of her own. The impression deepened as she asked, “Who are you?” in a high-pitched voice that sounded as if she were on the verge of tears.
    Damn. “I’m—I’m Elliot’s daughter.”
    “Philomena?”
    “Yes. Philomena.”
    A puzzled frown farrowed the woman’s brow, but then it was gone, her own troubled thoughts clearly taking precedence.
    A maid came out of the house to bring the woman a shawl. Maggie stared up thoughtfully at the house. She could throw a stone at his lordship’s window and break it, but that wouldn’t be enough of a distraction for Hugh to make it downstairs. She could—
    She pivoted in alarm. A large black carriage careened around the corn er and barreled into the courtyard. The driver narrowly missed colliding with the gate. Panic gripped her, paralyzing her reflexes. What if Lord Buchanan had already sent for the police to take Hugh away?
    The woman glanced at Maggie, her voice shrill and unnatural above the clatter of wheels. “Look at the way that coachman is driving. Doesn’t he realize he could hurt someone?”
    A chill of apprehension darted down Maggie’s spine. There had been a large black carriage in her own past. A carriage commissioned by Napoleon’s police, who had arrived in the middle of the night to arrest her aristocratic parents for treason.
    Papa had died of a heart attack on the front lawn of the chateau, struggling to stop the police from dragging Maman away in her nightclothes. But they had taken her anyway, and they had taken Papa's body with her in that carriage. Maggie had been left on the steps, in shock, with her older brother, Robert. Her sister, Jeanette, had remained in the house with Papa’s secretary; Maggie had run inside to warn them.
    The rest of that night remained a mysterious blank in her memory, a void of darkness with shadowed figures and voices too distant to make out.
    The de Saint-Evremond butler, Claude Vilhers, had whisked Maggie off before morning to his brother’s cottage in LeHavre. She never found out what had happened to her brother and sister. They had completely vanished from her life. From France, Claude and Maggie had escaped across the Channel, smuggled between brandy barrels, to Scotland. Maggie’s elderly Aunt Flora had given them a home until her death five years ago. She had changed Maggie’s name and kept their whereabouts a secret for fear their political enemies would find her. To this day Maggie had never discovered why anyone would bother to hunt her down. She knew nothing of spying. In fact, this past year she had de cided she would no longer try to hide her identity.
    She forced herself to take a breath. From habit she suppressed the sorrow and rage that welled up—a black wave of overwhelming emotion. For the most part she refused to let resentment over life’s injustices ruin the present. She was alive. She had her friends, and faithful Claude, who was getting on in years. She had found love and loyalty in unlikely places.
    But then at the most unexpected moments the smallest thing would trigger a memory. A woman walking down the street wearing a bonnet like Maman’s. A young boy who looked like Robert hurrying off to school. A girl with Jeanette’s beguiling grin.
    Where were her brother and sister now? she wondered. The pain of not knowing their fate had grown unbearable over the years. Did they think of her, remember her? Were they even alive? Not an evening passed that she didn’t remember them in her prayers. Several times she had tried, unsuccessfully, to trace them, but