Free Patricia Rice by Devil's Lady

me the names of your parents. It won’t hurt to try.”
    Faith cast his dark features a quick look. “And will you tell me your name too? Must I always know you as Jack?”
    She was quick. He would grant her that. Making a
formal bow though she sat at his feet, he introduced himself. “James
Morgan O’Neill de Lacy, milady. I’ll answer by any and all of the above.
May I have the pleasure?”
    She smiled at this game and scrambled to her feet to
offer a proper curtsy. “Faith Henrietta Montague, sir. Shall I call you
Morgan? I like that much better than all the rest. I fear my name is
bigger than myself, but yours fits very well.”
    Jack chuckled, and the room shifted back to normal.
“Yours is a mouthful, but no more so than my own. Morgan is the name I
was known by most often. Your father was French?”
    “A descendant of the early Normans. He once said his father’s title traced back to William the Conqueror.”
    Title. That discovery would be almost laughable if
not so close to heartbreaking. He had already figured her father to be
the younger son of gentry, but he had not imagined a title into the
picture. So here they both were, the blue-blooded descendants of the
world’s most civilized countries, living in a hovel with only his sword
and pistol to provide for them. God had a wicked black sense of humor.
    “A Lord Montague should not be hard to find. When
the weather clears, I shall look into it. You may have grandparents
looking frantically for you.” And if they found her here, they would
have him hanged. How damned blind could any man be? He was imagining his
twelve-year-old sister instead of recognizing an aristocratic female of
uncertain but quite possibly marriageable age. They would emasculate
him before they hanged him.
    She looked disbelieving, as very well she might. If
her relatives were truly noble, he could find them easily enough, but
she had no reason to know that. She did have every reason to believe
that he might hold her for ransom once he discovered them. An excellent
idea that was, too, if he were certain he could keep her safe. With the
return of Tucker, he couldn’t guarantee any such thing.
    “Until then,” he announced firmly, “you will need to
learn to protect yourself. This house is not so well hid that none know
of it.”
    The terror returned to her wide eyes. “I’d rather die,” she replied almost as firmly as he.
    Exasperated, Jack glared down at her obstinate features. “Just how old are you, Miss Faith Henrietta Montague?”
    Her bottom lip went out stubbornly as she placed her
hands on her hips. “That’s for me to know, Mr. Jack Morgan de Lacy. Do I
ask you such personal questions?”
    He almost laughed at this typically female response
from his normally docile housekeeper, but the matter was too serious to
encourage her rebellion. “If you’re old enough to be taught what being a
woman means, you’re old enough to know that it is not your death a
villain will seek. You might only wish you were dead when he is done
with you, but you will have to live with the black memory of that
humiliation for the rest of your life. And so would I.” This last he
added more softly as he watched first the puzzlement, then the horror,
cross her face.
    “Nothing is as final as death,” she insisted,
although she looked pale enough to have comprehended his meaning. “I
could just pretend the gun was loaded, couldn’t I?”
    “No!” The word exploded out of him in fury. “If you
point a gun, you had better intend to use it, or you’ll be worse off
than if you had not.”
    At her look of pain, Morgan ran his fingers through
his uncombed hair and tried one more argument. “If you cannot do it for
yourself, lass, think of me. I would not have your harm on my
conscience. There is enough there as it is.”
    Jack watched her disbelief, understood her doubt that a hardhearted highwayman would even have a conscience.
    And then to his shock, she