“When I told you I found you fascinating and irresistible. It might amuse you to know I broke about ten of my own rules in doing so. I imagine, though, I would have foolishly broken ten more if you had taken me up on my offer.”
A single eyebrow arched delicately. “Mr. Tarrington … have you been enjoying too much of the baron’s whiskey?”
“On the contrary, I probably haven’t had enough. You’re almost too quick for me. And bloody convincing. All that righteous indignation. The hell, the oranges, even the little homily this afternoon about crops and fields and slaves. And asking me if we’d met before—that was a nice touch. As cool as ice too, where most women in your position would likely have fainted dead away.”
“Mr. Tarrington—!”
“Please—” He held up a finger and pressed it to her lips. “Call me Michael. And I shall call you Amanda. I far prefer it over ‘Mrs Caleb Jackson.’ And ‘Montana Rose’ sounds like the design of a teacup.”
She pushed his hand aside. “Mr. Tarrington… I have no idea what you are talking about. I thought you were surly and presumptuous this afternoon, but this … this goes beyond patience. For Dianna’s sake, I will endeavor to forget this entire meeting took place, and in the future, I would appreciate it if you never ventured to speak to me again. Now, as you can plainly hear by the approaching commotion, my mother appears to be searching for me.”
He bowed sardonically as she pushed past him and she heard the chink of metal hitting the wood slats.
“A moment, Mrs. Jackson. I believe you dropped something.”
Amanda turned, her jaw clenched with exasperation. He was holding up something small and glittery—a locket—its burnished gold surface gleaming brightly in the light that streamed across the width of the balcony.
“Amanda?” A swirling bell of yellow chinz floated past the doorway, halted, and backed up a pace. “Amanda! Is that you? Did you not hear me calling?”
Sarah Courtland flounced through the door like a woman unaccustomed to wide skirts and frilly ruffles around her neck, tripping over the one and blowing the other off her chin with little puffs of breath. “Where have you been? I’ve been searching high and low and—” Her words and her forward momentum stopped abruptly as she caught sight of the tall, boldly handsome stranger sharing the evening shadows with her daughter. “Good heavens … a man!”
Tarrington laughed easily. “Indeed, madam, I was the last time I looked.”
“Oh.” Sarah’s hand covered her mouth and her giggle, then stifled her gasp as she leaned forward and peered more closely at his face. “Why … you’re the gentleman who came with the Moores. The, er, Northern cousin.”
“Guilty as charged,” he admitted. “I have been staying with them for a few days while I conducted some business in town. I am also a business associate of your new son-in-law and have had the very great pleasure of being able to share this happy occasion with them. Michael Tarrington, ma’am, at your service.”
He bowed gallantly over Sarah’s hand, and she rolled her eyes in Amanda’s direction. When he straightened, the thought that was bubbling on her lips was cut short as she noticed the heart-shaped locket twined around his fingers.
“Amanda … is that not your lavaliere? The one you thought you mislaid?”
Amanda’s mouth went bone dry. Her face drained of all warmth and color and her stomach took a slow, sickening slide downward.
“I found it a short while ago,” Tarrington explained, flashing his most disarming smile at Sarah. “But for the life of me, I could not recall being introduced to anyone whose name began with M I was hoping Mrs. Jackson could help me identify the owner.”
“Why, it is hers, of course,” Sarah said promptly.
“So I have just discovered. She was just about to explain the mystery of the M.”
Sarah waved a hand airily. “It is no mystery at all, Mr. Tarrington. It was a gift from her dear departed grandfather. He always called her Mandy.”
“Mandy.” The reflective gray eyes turned to Amanda again. “Yes. I think I like it.”
Sarah’s overtaxed brain instantly reverted to her reasons for searching out her daughter. “Amanda, you simply must come inside at once. Your father has vanished and I fear he may be up to his old tricks. You know you are the only one who can stop him if he is”—she caught her tongue in time and glanced pointedly at Tarrington—“at it.”
“Yes, Mother,” she murmured, her eyes held prisoner by the Yankee’s dark arrogance. “I will be along in a moment.”
“A very short moment, Amanda Elizabeth. You know how I worry.”
“Yes. I know Mother. I will be right there.”
Sarah managed three complete steps before her maternal instincts reasserted themselves. “I don’t suppose you are free next Monday evening, Mr. Tarrington?”
“Monday?”
“Yes. I was about to invite the Judge and Dianna to dinner, and if you have’ no prior commitment, we would be delighted to have you join us.”
“Mother!” Amanda gasped.
“Oh, hush, Amanda. It isn’t as if your Mr. Brice is too anxious to complete a foursome of whist anymore. Do you play cards, Mr. Tarrington?”
“I … have been known to call a trump or two.”
“Good. Then it is settled. Amanda … are you all right? You’re looking altogether too piqued to be standing out here in the damp without a shawl.”
“I will see she comes inside at once,” Tarrington promised.
Sarah sighed and swirled away again, the folds of yellow chintz creaming out behind her like the wake of a ship.
Amanda stood absolutely still, aware only of the deep throbbing beat of her heart. She dared not look at the Yankee. She dared not move or speak or even breathe. Her gaze was fixed on the glittering links of the gold chain as Tarrington slid it through his fingers.
"I had the catch fixed in town," he murmured. "It should be fairly secure now...Montana"
This last word was whispered against her ear and she was still of half a mind to deny it despite the damning evidence of the locket, but instead she exhaled the pent up breath she had been holding along with a few choice words of self-condemnation.
“Now, now. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Your secret is perfectly safe for the time being … ah … assuming it is a secret, that is. Or do all these fine people …?”
“No!” she cried in alarm, her head jerking around to look at him. “No. No one knows. No one can know, Mr. Tarrington. It would … it would kill my mother, ruin our family completely…”
She sounded frantic even to her own ears, and she bit her lip again, trying to quell the panic.
Tarrington watched her, studied her as he would a fly with its wings torn off.
“How did you know?” she finally asked in a whisper.
“To be honest, I didn’t until a few minutes ago. Not for sure, anyway. I thought I had it figured out a few days ago, the afternoon following our friendly little game. I was coming out of my hotel and saw a young woman who looked remarkably like Montana Rose walking bold as brass down the street. I trailed her out of curiosity for a while and asked for a name at one of the shops she went into. The shopkeeper couldn’t identify her, but he told me her purchases were charged to Karl von Helmstaad. As it happened, I already had an invitation to the wedding—the baron and I, as I mentioned to your mother, share some business interests. And while I hadn’t originally planned on attending …” He shrugged and left Amanda to surmise the obvious reasons why he had changed his mind.
“You can imagine my surprise when I saw the two of you walking into the garden,” he murmured, his eyes taking full measure of the smooth sloping shoulders, the slender arch of her neck, the hint of a tremor in her chin. Light from the ballroom frosted her hair and caused the folds of her gown to glimmer like water. The laurel of withered and crushed bluebells she wore tucked in her hair was even sadder than it had been in its prime earlier in the day; the fact she wore it at all made it that much more difficult to equate t
he woman who stood before him now with the one whose every detail of her appearance had been calculated to icy perfection on the deck of the Mississippi Queen.
“I don’t suppose there are too many people who can tell you and your sister apart at first glance,” he added.
“You didn’t seem to have too much trouble.”
Tarrington wanted to smile at the mutinous set to her mouth. It was as deliciously seductive as the shallow breaths that kept the flesh plumping over the edge of her bodice.
“I will admit you kept me guessing for a while. I will even admit you weren’t my first choice.”
“Really. Why ever not?”
“A mother with a small child?” He tsk-tsked and shook his head. “Not exactly a prime candidate for Queen of the Mississippi.”
As mortified as she was already, she managed to blush an even deeper shade of red. “Then how did you know?”
“Instinct,” he said. “Yours, not mine. When we were first introduced you reached up for the familiarity of something that wasn’t there. The locket. You did it again—and you’re doing it now—when I startled you a few moments ago.”
Amanda dropped her hand away from her throat. “That’s hardly enough proof to hang someone on,” she said stubbornly.
“Your mother’s timely arrival, however, was.”
Amanda continued to scowl at him for a moment, then conceded with a sigh. “I wanted to die. This afternoon, when I saw you with Dianna and the Judge, I just wanted to turn and run … as far away and as fast as I could. But then you would have known for sure. I had to take the chance you might be confused long enough for me to think of a way out. Or at least a way to explain what I did and why I did it.”
“And? Have you?”
“No,” she admitted miserably, her eyes too bright and too liquid for him to feel safe staring into them for too long. “Nothing you would understand, at any rate.”
“Try me. My ability to grasp the truth might surprise you.”
She shook her head. “I have no excuses, Mr. Tarrington. I have no one to blame for my folly but myself. Ryan warned me, begged me, threatened me—”
“Ryan?” The dark eyes narrowed. “He was in on it? He knew what you were doing?”
“He begged me not to go. He said … well, it doesn’t really matter what he said. I wouldn’t listen. I told him I was going to do it whether he agreed to help me or not. I thought it was the only real chance we had."
"Chance for what?"
She shook her head. "It doesn't matter any more."
A sudden gleam came into Tarrington’s eyes. “Your brother ... he was your ‘escort’?”
Amanda nodded again and looked down at her hands. One of the dispirited bluebells tumbled off a curl and landed in her palm. It made her think of Verity, of the pride that had shone from her eyes when Amanda had insisted the wreath was pretty enough for a princess to wear …
She curled her fingers around the trumpet-shaped blossom and squared her shoulders. “So, Mr. Tarrington, now that you know my dirty little secret … may I ask what you plan to do with it?”
“What did you mean when you said you thought it was the only real chance you had? Chance to do what?”
She swallowed hard and he thought he heard her whisper the word “Survive,” but her voice was too soft and Sarah Courtland’s high-pitched plea for smelling salts came sailing out into the night air, followed by a raucous burst of male laughter.
“You had better go,” he advised. “We can talk more later.”
“I trust, sir, as a gentleman you will allow me an opportunity to explain. You have no idea of the damage that would result”—her voice faltered briefly—“from anything untoward you might say.”
“I am crushed to think you hold me in such low esteem. I am a reasonable man, however, and you have my word as a gentleman that not one breath of this will escape my lips … for the time being, anyway.”
There was nothing more she could do or say. He held all the cards and it was another royal flush. She was not foolish enough or naive enough to doubt what he would expect in return for maintaining his silence—he had made that plain enough on board the Mississippi Queen.
“Until later, sir,” she whispered, and turned to leave.
“Mandy?”
She froze and her shoulders stiffened at the intimate use of her name.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
She did not want to look back at him. She suspected she had made enough of a fool of herself already without giving fuel to his scorn by letting him see the threat of tears in her eyes.
But she did not have to look at him. She only had to endure the shock of feeling his hands against her skin, brushing her hair aside so that he could refasten the locket around her neck. His fingers lingered a moment on her shoulder, hinting at a forgone possessiveness as they traced the length of a slippery blonde spiral.
“Until Monday, then,” he murmured.
Blood was rushing through her veins so fast her thinking process was blurred. "Monday?"
"Your mother's generous dinner invitation."
Oh my God, she thought, forcing her legs to carry her back into the crowded ballroom. He was coming to Rosalie on Monday and by then Wainright would have foreclosed on the loan and they would likely be dining on wild onions out in the field, homeless.
The games were over. She knew what had to be done and she knew she had to do it if she wanted to protect her family and safeguard Verity’s future.
And because she simply didn’t have any options left.
Alisha von Helmstaad settled deeper into the plush softness of the feather mattress and stretched languorously. Her head was spinning from the amount of wine she had consumed. Karl was still in the dressing room and she could hear the faint shuffling sounds he made as he tiptoed around removing his clothes, folding them just so. She could picture him rinsing his mouth and gargling with mint water, though he would have to chew mouthfuls of the leaves before the thought of kissing him would become palatable.
She giggled and hoped she had blunted her senses enough with the wine to make whatever he did to her seem to be the height of bliss and ecstasy. It was not the first time she had required a performance of such magnitude, nor the first time she had used her body to barter for favors.
The nightdress she had selected was sheer enough she could have read the pages of the Mississippi Gazette through it. Her skin flowed like pale cream beneath, leaving little to the imagination. Her breasts gleamed round and firm, crowned in pink rosettes; her limbs stretched out long and lithe, bridged by a thatch of soft golden fur that betrayed just a hint of the dark cleft between.
Alisha smoothed her palms over her breasts, cupping their heaviness in hands that trembled with impatience. She thought of Josh and how he loved to take each nipple into his mouth and suckle her until she thought she would come right out of her skin. He would not have wasted time in a dressing room. He would have torn her clothes off and torn his clothes off and probably not even bothered about having a bed beneath them. He would have known by a single glance how ready she was.
Her fingers crept lower and she mewled softly. Just thinking of Josh had started the juices flowing, making her limbs ache with tension and her body too restless to remain still. She glanced at the door of the dressing room and saw a shadow cut back and forth across the sliver of light at the bottom.
What in God’s name was the old fool doing?
She drew the snow-white coverlet up over her hips, dragging the hem of the nightdress with it. She checked the door again and swore softly as her fingers slid between her thighs, wishing with more savagery than she could have imagined that she had let Josh talk her into sneaking into the garden for a few minutes alone together. She had suspected he had wanted one more attempt to talk her into leaving with him before it was too late, and she had refused, not wanting to fight, not wanting to spoil what had been an otherwise perfect day.
It had been perfect. She was somebody to
reckon with now. She had position and wealth. She had a rich husband and a grand house filled with every luxury she could possibly want or need. Josh would come around. He couldn’t stay angry with her forever. After all, she was doing it for them. For the child they had conceived together. He wouldn’t be able to stay away from her forever either; he needed her as much as she needed him, and he had too big of an appetite to deny himself the banquet he had found in her arms.
She curled her lower lip between her teeth and stifled a groan. Her hips began to arch off the bed and she twisted her head into the softness of the pillow, wishing it was Josh she was waiting for, wishing it was Josh’s fingers dancing between her thighs.
A belch followed by an ejection of an even more alarming pfert! of trapped air came from the direction of the dressing room. The door opened and the bridegroom padded into view, his corpulent body swathed neck to knee in a tent-shaped cotton nightshirt.
He stopped by the side of the bed, clearly awed by the sight of his beautiful new wife swathed in silk and satin, waiting for him in breathless anticipation, her cheeks flushed red, her lovely moon-shaped breasts heaving in virginal trepidation.
“My dearest Alisha. My bride. My precious beauty. You are more exquisite than—”
Alisha pulled the sheets aside, effectively tying his tongue around whatever poetic comparisons he had been about to make.
“Karl,” she said brokenly. “You were taking so long, I thought you had forgotten about me.”
“Forget about you?” He moistened his lips and his eyes bulged as they fastened on the sharply defined peaks of her breasts. “It was because I revere you, my lamb, my lovely, my … my most astonishing goddess of Virtue … that I could not dream of rushing at you like some beast of the forest.”
“You could rush … a little,” she suggested dryly. “I would not think any less of you, I promise.”
“You are as eager as I?” he dared to ask.
“More so,” she assured him. “I … ache for you, Karl. We have waited so long for this moment, I think it cruel and beastly you should make me wait a moment longer.”
Straight For The Heart Page 14