Scoundrel's Daughter

by Margo Maguire

  “Very nicely done,” the man said quietly. “Anatomically perfect. Wouldn’t you agree?” When he turned his eyes to her, they were alight with an expression she did not understand.

  Dorothea started to speak, but no sound came out. She clapped her mouth shut, then turned around abruptly, nearly knocking a marble carving off its stand. She grabbed it, and refusing to be flustered, turned back to face the intruder. Nothing he said or did made any difference whatsoever. He did not belong here, and she was going to see to it that he left.

  “I insist that you leave this house at once, sir,” she said firmly.

  He stood up to his full height and met Dorothea’s direct gaze. When he crossed his arms against his broad chest and gave her a sidelong glance, Dorothea forced herself to refrain from doing the same. She resisted the urge to put her hands over the part of her that he’d exposed, that still felt exposed under his icy gaze. Unconsciously, she allowed her free hand to slide up her bodice, making certain all her buttons were properly closed. To her chagrin, they were not. She swallowed and tried not to think of how much he’d seen.

  “I’m not going anywhere until your conniving little poltroon of a father returns,” he said, oblivious to her discomfiture.

  “But he…I…” His height was imposing, and he suddenly felt more dangerous than anyone she’d ever encountered before. She was alone in the house, in a room that contained figures and paintings of men and women engaged in all sorts of licentious activities. They were assured to arouse the most base aspect of his masculine nature. Even she felt an odd tingle, merely from looking at the figure he’d just had his hands on…

  A hot flush heated her bosom, then crept up her neck and into her cheeks when she considered what he’d seen. What she’d seen. What they’d looked at together.

  Dorothea began to tap her foot angrily. This was absurd. This was her father’s house, and he was the invader here. She had every right to order him out of the house.

  “I will call for a constable if you do not leave immediately,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height. “Get out.”

  Jack almost laughed aloud at the sight the little termagant made. He didn’t doubt that she’d have another episode of the vapors if she knew how she appeared, with her hair dribbling down around her face, her bodice askew and her bustle listing to one side. The icing on the cake was the fifteen-inch marble phallus she wielded in her right hand, using it to point toward the door.

  He wondered if she’d faint all over again when she realized what she held in her hand.

  Though she was mighty entertaining, Jack had a purpose here, and he would not be deflected from it. Ignoring Bright’s daughter, he turned away and opened the man’s heavy oak desk.

  “I will call the constable!”

  Invoices, bills of sale, travel tickets, were all piled haphazardly under the rolltop. Jack sifted through them, searching for the one object that would even the score. Ignoring the persistent tapping on his shoulder, he pulled open drawers and thumbed through their contents. When he reached the last drawer and found it locked, he knew he’d located whatever was most precious to Alastair Bright.

  It would not be the Kohamba. Bright would have had a ready buyer for that piece, somewhere in Cairo or possibly Venice. The little man must have made a fortune off the unsuspecting Mongasa tribe.

  “This is your last chance, you…you…”

  He didn’t bother to listen to whatever indelicate name she would call him, but gave the locked drawer a good yank.

  “Damn!” he muttered when it didn’t give. He pulled it, shook it and tried to pry it open with a sharp letter-opener. But it wouldn’t budge.

  Reaching into his boot, Jack pulled out the two-shot derringer he always carried, even though O’Neill said it was a woman’s gun. Ignoring the squeal of shock behind him, he shot the lock off the drawer, then tore into its contents. It took only a second to find what he was looking for—a map.

  One night during the recent ill-fated expedition into Mongasa country, Bright had imbibed a bit too freely of the medicinal whiskey they’d brought along. Inebriated—for that was the only way his tongue would have been so recklessly loose—he’d boasted of an amazing discovery. He had recently taken possession of a map that led to the Edessa Cloth—an ancient towel that was said to have been used to wipe the face of Christ as he walked to Golgotha.

  Jack knew that the Mandylion, as the cloth was called, was of little interest to Bright, whose tastes ran to ancient erotica. If the swindler found the cloth himself, he would sell it to the highest bidder. As a result, the cloth’s scientific, religious and historic value would be lost forever.

  Jack Temple was not going to let that happen. He was no mercenary explorer caring only for the fame or financial rewards of his discoveries. No, he enjoyed the hunt as much as the discovery. He was a man with a well-developed sense of history and an interest in the foreign cultures and theories unearthed by his findings. And his academic credentials were solid, too.

  He unfolded the map and quickly verified that it was what he was looking for. Now, all he had to do was find the key to the map, and he would be able to search for the Mandylion himself.

  “Put that back!” Miss Bright demanded.

  “Not on your life, lady,” he replied, turning around to face her. For the first time since entering this house, he felt confident, exhilarated. He might have grabbed the woman and kissed her, if she hadn’t been poking his chest with the oversize, marble phallus.

  “This map is payment for the havoc your father wreaked on my expedition.”

  “Now, see here—”

  He looked pointedly at his chest, and when she glanced down and saw what she held in her hand, she squealed and dropped it. The marble piece shattered.

  “That was a fairly commonplace linga from ancient India,” he said, suppressing a smile at her shocked expression. “First century A.D. Probably worth two or three thousand pounds to the right buyer.”

  Dorothea could not believe the nightmare her life had become. Her mother had been in her grave less than a fortnight, and here Dorothea was, facing one disaster after another.

  “Where is the key?”

  Still gazing down at the green marble pieces in horror, Dorothea did not understand his question. She barely heard the question. Her life had become a fiasco that she could not control, and now the man asked about a key when he’d already shot the lock off the drawer.

  He was a madman, and the best she could do was to escape him. She hurried from the room and went down the stairs. Perhaps if she got to the street, she could call for help. But before she reached the front door, he was there in front of her, holding the ragged map in one hand.

  “All right, enough of this,” he said. His anger seemed to have returned, and Dorothea started to back away. He grabbed her arms, preventing her retreat. “Where is your father?”

  She did not respond.

  “Don’t bother trying to protect him,” Jack added. “If it takes dragging you along to—Now there’s an idea.”

  “What?” she whispered. Her mouth had gone dry and she could barely speak.

  “Taking you with me,” he said, turning her and putting a firm hold upon one arm. “Come on.”

  When the American tried to get her out the door, she dug in her heels and refused to go one step further.

  “Unhand me or I will scream!” she cried, though she did not know how she would manage it. She was frighteningly short of breath.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, ushering her outside. “I’m only taking you to the docks and you can show me where he’s hiding. Then I’ll let you go.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, “you don’t know where he is.”

  “But I—”

  “We’ll start at the docks,” the man interrupted.

  And before she had a chance to protest, he put his hands around her waist and hoisted her up onto a huge tan horse. She landed face first in the h
orse’s thick mane. She tried to right herself and slide down the opposite side, but the man mounted behind her before she could move. He put one hand around her waist, pulled her tight against him and rode off, oblivious to her pounding heart or the faintness in her head.

  “Where’s the key?” Jack asked again. He started to sweat and not from the heat of the day. He hadn’t anticipated how it would feel to have Miss Bright’s body pressed tightly against his own. It was his first tactical mistake.

  There wouldn’t be another.

  “What key?” she replied, as if she truly didn’t know. “You destroyed the lock with your nasty little gun, sir. What need would you have of a key at this point?”

  “Very convincing, Miss Bright,” he said, glad of her saucy response. It made her all the more resistible. A scoundrel’s daughter was bad enough, but one with an insolent mouth was even worse.

  She had to know that the Mandylion map was useless without its key. At least, that’s what Bright had bragged six months before, swaying drunkenly in camp. Some sort of code had been used in making the map, and the key was necessary for deciphering it. Somehow, Bright had acquired the key and hidden it separately from the map. Perhaps it was still in the house.

  Jack had given himself a bit of insurance against that. He’d unlatched one of the windows in Bright’s collection room, so he’d be able to gain entrance to the house later if he didn’t catch up with the man at the wharf. Jack wanted the satisfaction of seeing Bright’s face when Jack told Bright he no longer possessed the Mandylion map.

  “I don’t know where my father is or the key that you seek, sir,” she said. “So there is no point in taking me any further. I insist you return me to my father’s house at once.”

  She held herself away from him, as if he had some disgusting disease she might catch. But she sounded a little bit breathless—as if his proximity had an effect on her feminine sensibilities. He could not resist moving in close and putting his lips to her ear to speak. “While we’re down here, you can show me your ship.”

  Ducking her head away from his mouth and smoothing back the hair he’d disturbed with his breath did not mask the slight tremor that went through her body. He found it very interesting that the straightlaced old maid was not immune to him. Maybe he’d be able to use that attraction to get the information he needed.

  They rode in silence toward the wharf where he had disembarked from his ship just an hour before. Jack had no doubt that Bright’s daughter would have screamed and kicked to get away from him if such a public display had not been considered scandalous.

  He had her pegged as a very prim and proper miss—notwithstanding the condition of her clothes or her reaction to him. Travel was tough on a body and worse on the wardrobe. He was sure that, like him, she had just arrived in port and had not had the chance to clean up. With luck, her father was still on their ship, perhaps overseeing the unloading of all his illegal artifacts.

  Jack had to hand it to her. She was doing a fine job of protecting her father—not that it was going to do him any good. Jack had every reason to believe he could track the culprit down very soon, and when he did…Well, he hadn’t decided exactly what he was going to do to the little man.

  “If you intended to tear my arm to shreds, you’re doing a fair job of it, ma’am,” he said, sliding his arm away from her sharp fingernails. She grabbed on to his shirt and held on as if her life depended on it. He got the impression that she’d never ridden horseback before, but quickly dismissed the notion. She couldn’t be the daughter of Alastair Bright, world traveler, and not have ridden a horse. Hell, she’d probably straddled her share of camels, too.

  “You have no right to force me to accompany you this way, sir,” she said. Her voice was tighter and more prudish than ever. It made him want to remind her that he’d had his hands down her blouse less than twenty minutes ago.

  He refrained.

  “Just so you know, I plan to keep you until you tell me where your father is.”

  “But I don’t know where he is,” she replied, “as I’ve told you before! Now take me back to the house.”

  He gave a sarcastic laugh. “Not until you tell me the name of your ship.”

  “You are the most bullheaded, obstinate person I’ve ever met,” she said, scorching him in such crisp English he was surprised his skin didn’t blister. She pulled away and turned slightly to face him. “I repeat—I have never—”

  “Don’t bother to lie about this, too,” he said, using his own tactics on her. He pulled her back against him and breathed into her ear once again. “I don’t suppose you have a Christian name, Miss Bright? Something a little less…”

  “Formal?” she asked, jerking away. “No.”

  He laughed. “Mine’s Jack Temple. Of New York.”

  “Do you make a practice of accosting women in their homes, Mr. Temple,” she said with acerbity, “or is this something you do only when abroad?”

  He grinned for the first time in months. “Only when the woman’s father is a no-good, swindling thief, ma’am.”

  Jack smelled the river before he saw it and knew they were near. He steered the horse toward the quay where most of the passenger ships were moored and rode up to a hitching post.

  “Which ship?” he asked as he dismounted. He took her in hand and lifted her down.

  “How many ways can I tell you that I do not know!”

  “Then you’ll just come along with me and we’ll check them all.”

  Pulling her arm from his grasp, she hissed, “I will not, sir! I have no intention of tramping around this disgusting old dockyard with you!”

  “Then you’d better tell—” Jack caught a glimpse of Paco Fleming, Bright’s giant henchman who rarely left the old rogue’s side. He was Jack’s best chance at discovering where Bright was hiding. “Wait here!”

  He sprinted off toward the man, but the tall, bald island man caught sight of him and fled. Jack kept on his trail, running between crates of cargo and ships’ stores, dodging wagons and people as he went.

  Fleming disappeared a time or two, but Jack did not lose heart. He was fast on his feet, much faster than the bulky Fleming could ever be.

  He knew that leaving Bright’s daughter on her own was problematic, but he hadn’t seen any alternative. He wouldn’t have left her if he hadn’t thought she was reasonably safe on the dock. With so many people coming and going, certainly nothing untoward would happen to her.

  He caught sight of Fleming’s shiny brown head, towering above everyone he passed, as he turned into a street with a warehouse at its end. A cartload of luggage crossed Jack’s path at that moment, and he lost his momentum. By the time he’d gotten around it and the crowd of men that accompanied it, he’d lost Fleming.

  He ran to the street where the islander had turned and followed, but the man was nowhere to be seen on the sparsely populated street.

  Jack went inside warehouses and checked alleyways. He scoured the adjoining streets. He questioned pedestrians and dockworkers—anyone who might have seen Bright’s henchman pass. But he had no luck. He’d lost Fleming.

  Looking around to get his bearings, he realized he was at least a mile from where he’d left Bright’s daughter. Instinct told him that Fleming was the more likely path to Bright, but Jack had no choice but to return to the man’s daughter—uncooperative as she was.

  He didn’t use his speed to get back to her, but trotted at a more leisurely pace, taking note of every ship and all the cargoes, especially the ones in the vicinity where he’d first seen Fleming. He might be able to deduce which ship Bright had been on and return to question the crew after he returned the woman to her father’s house.

  Feeling more confident now than he had when he’d first stepped into the streets of London, he covered the last few yards to the place where he’d left Miss Bright. Through the crowd on the quay, he saw the buckskin mare he’d hired from a nearby livery and headed toward it.

  At least the trip down here hadn’t be
en a complete waste, and after he questioned the woman again, he was certain he could get her to tell him the name of her father’s ship. Not that her help was so essential now, but it would speed the process of tracking her father down. All he needed was that name and he’d be able to learn where his cargo had been delivered. He would then have the bas—

  The woman was nowhere in sight. Jack looked at the horse again and saw that his packs were still intact, a miraculous thing for London.

  But the woman was gone.

  Chapter Three

  This was not good. Jack had abducted the woman and now she was missing. What could have happened? Had someone else taken her?

  “You!” he called to a group of young boys tossing stones into the river nearby. “Did you see a young lady standing here next to this horse a few minutes ago?”

  “Why should I tell you, Yank?” was the leader’s insolent reply. The boy’s friends gathered around him.

  Instead of tossing them into the river one by one as he was inclined to do, Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. “Tell me what you saw, and it’s yours.”

  Without hesitation, the smallest boy spoke up. “Pretty lady, but she was all mussed up,” he said. “Wearing a blue dress and a white shirt, like. Dark hair. No hat. No gloves.”

  “That’s her,” Jack said. “Where did she go?”

  “Walked away.” The boy turned and pointed toward a street that led away from the quay. “Down there.”

  Jack flipped the coin to the boy. He mounted the mare, then headed in the direction the boy had indicated, keeping an eye out for Miss Bright, with her bare head, wearing the disheveled, dark traveling suit.

  Taking the most direct route to Bright’s house, he saw no sign of her. He wandered up and down the adjoining lanes, searching. When he had no luck on the street, he stopped in several shops along the way, places where a lady might spend the time of day, even though he sensed this was a woman who would care that she was not properly dressed for such an outing. But he had no luck. No one had seen her.

  Jack was just about to look for a constable when he remembered who he was dealing with. This was Alastair Bright’s daughter, a woman who must have traveled the world with her father. She was probably as comfortable in Singapore as she was in Tangiers. He guessed London would pose no problem for her.