The Reckless One by Connie Brockway Read Free Book Online Page B

and Favor returned the examination. Muira Dougal,
née
McClairen, had the sort of face seen on ancient Greek coins, genderless and refined, arrogant and haunted. Her eyes were heavily hooded, the narrow face hung with crepelike flesh. Her thin mouth was uncompromising. Only the bright blue eyes blazed as though lit by a fire from within.
    For a full five minutes the two women faced each other, neither willing to break the silence. Even Jamie seemed loath to interfere in their silent discourse. He shuffled uneasily on his feet, glancing anxiously from one to the other. On the one side stood the woman who had for nearly a decade, single-handedly bound the far-flung McClairen clan together. On the other side stood the girl whose brother was that same clan’s long-missing laird, in essence an uncrowned king, the girl that Muira Dougal intended to sacrifice in order to return the McClairens to their full glory.
    “Yer nineteen years old,” Muira finally said, her tone giving nothing away.
    “Oui,
Madame,” Favor answered.
    “Jamie says you improvised your escape here. Called out a warning to the English bastard you’d duped. Is this so?”
    “Oui.”
    “From here on there’ll be no more improvising. None at all. Is that understood?” The woman’s hand darted out like a striking snake and grasped Favor’s chin.
    “Oui,
Madame.
D’accord.”
    “Agree? I did not ask you to agree. I asked if you understood.”
    Favor felt herself flush.
“Oui.”
    “And there will be no more French,” Muira muttered distractedly.
“She
had only a smattering of French. Remember that.” She looked over to Jamie. “You knew her. What do you think?”
    The big man cocked his head. “I don’t see much of the McClairen in her, that’s a fact. They be a black-headed breed, like yerself. All of them taller than she by some measure. Regal, yes, but gay. This one is handsome enough but fierce-looking.”
    “Hair can be dyed, brows can be plucked,” Muira murmured. “A resemblance can be created out of gestures and habits, a way of standing, a turn of speech.”
    She twisted Favor’s chin, pulling her face this way and that in the light. “There’s not much here to work with, I grant you, but it’s there in the angle of her jaw and the purity of her skin. Her nose is all McClairen. And when I add the rest …”
    Resentment made Favor pull away from the cold, dry fingers. She disliked being spoken of as though she were unformed clay waiting the potter’s hand. She already had a set of features, individual and her own. ’Twasn’t much, true, but when one could not call her future her own; even so little was precious. Though she did have Thomas. The thought of her long-unseen brother brought an attendant wave of worry.
    “Thomas is gone?” she asked.
    “Aye, lass,” Jamie answered.
    “Good,” she said, but she could not keep the wistful note from her voice. She hadn’t even been aware her brother was alive until a few years before when his letters had begun arriving at the convent. Thomas McClairen, bondage servant, sea captain, Marquis of Donne and laird of the McClairen.
    She hadn’t seen him since he and their older brother John had been taken to London to await trial for treason. He’d been sentenced, deported, and sold into bondage for his part in the uprising of ’45. Their older, thus more “dangerous,” brother, John, had been hanged, drawn, and quartered. John had been sixteen.
    “He’ll be gone a fair length?” she finally asked.
    “Long enough for us to accomplish what we must,” Muira answered.
    Favor nodded. Thomas would be a dangerous man to defy and impossible to deceive. He’d spent his years of servitude on the deck of a ship, his master being the captain-owner of a small shipping business. He’d won his master’s respect and later his trust. After his bond had been satisfied, Thomas had bought a share in his former master’s shipping business and become captain of his own vessel.
    He’d