Free My Seduction by Connie Brockway Page B

been evidently watching her alarmed her. What thoughts and considerations moved behind MacNeill’s enigmatic visage?
    “I was thinking of coffee,” she said, with forced brightness.
    “You must be right fond of coffee then,” he said.
    As Kate wasn’t certain how to take that, she ignored it. Maybe he couldn’t help intimidating people. He just looked threatening, the physical embodiment of menace. And she had learned that the best way to eliminate a menace was to make its agent your ally.
    MacNeill, her ally? She swallowed, though objectively she knew the idea had merit.
    Besides, there was good material for her book to be plumbed here. How often did one get to interview a ruffian? Possibly someone with bona fide connections to the dark underbelly of society? He might prove a veritable font of information on how one might circumnavigate the dangers of the lower economic orders. The opportunity was too good to pass up.
    “Ahem.”
    His gaze remained locked on the road ahead.
    “So.” She clapped her hands together in the manner of one embarking on a pleasurable conversational voyage. “What have you been doing for the last three years?”
    His head turned slowly in her direction. “I beg your pardon?”
    “How have you been occupying your time? Done anything criminal? Where have you been living? In a rookery?”
    He hesitated, as though trying to gauge the dangers of answering, and oddly, that comforted her. How could she pose any danger to such as him? “In India.”
    “Ah, yes. Where the gelding came from.”
    “Aye.”
    “Were you a spy there, too?”
    His gaze snapped, startled, to hers. “No!”
    “You needn’t look so off-put. When you came to York, you quite clearly intimated that you had been spying in France when you were caught and imprisoned.”
    “Not caught,” he corrected flatly. “Turned in.”
    A long moment of silence followed.
    “Did you spend the entire three years in India?” Kate finally asked. Her father had told them stories about the deprivations and hardships soldiers faced in India: heat and dust and sickness. “It must have been terribly hard. How did you endure it?”
    Her sympathy was lost on MacNeill. He looked, in fact, amused. “My choices were somewhat limited, Mrs. Blackburn. A Rifleman goes where he’s sent.”
    So he was a soldier in the new Rifleman’s regiment. Chosen Men, she believed the soldiers who served in that unit were called. Surely he was not an officer. How could he be? A Scottish orphan without name or money would not have the wherewithal to buy a commission.
    But if he was only a simple soldier, what was he doing here? A soldier enlisted for life unless wounded. He didn’t look injured. He looked in the prime of health.
    “What about the others? Did they enlist, too?”
    “Others?” His brief glance was quizzical.
    “The two young men who came to York with you. Mr. Ross and Mr. Munro. Are they soldiers too?”
    The flint returned to his green eyes. “No.”
    “Where are they?”
    “Last I heard Munro is in London, teaching boys to prick each other for sport. Dand …I do not know where Mr. Ross is. I’ll find out, though.” Darkness invested his voice.
    “And when you find him?”
    “We’ll have a conversation,” he said. “Talk over old times.”
    The words themselves were innocuous, but the way he said them made Kate shiver. So much for her momentary ease. Too much about MacNeill made Kate afraid. She hated being afraid. She reacted badly to it. She reacted badly now.
    “Do you do that on purpose?” she blurted out.
    He frowned without looking at her, his eyes on the road. “Do what?”
    “Intimidate people? Because if you do, I think it exceptionally bad form.”
    His brows flew up. “Bad form?”
    “Yes.Very bad form. I should think it beneath you to intimidate helpless widows into a state of abject terror.”
    “Abject terror?”
    “Yes! It can hardly be worth your effort. I am far too easy a mark to waste such a talent