“Many men visit, you know that. My father is very influential. He often entertains—”
“There’s nothing wrong with my hearing. And I can read! Do you think me stupid as well as blind?” He bared his long white teeth and added acidly, “I’ve known you long enough to know when something takes your fancy.”
“That’s all in the past.”
“Is it now?” Jake seemed to be enjoying himself and smiled like a jackal ready to rush in for the kill. “For once in your life you didn’t get what you want. Captain Sterling chose that little harlot over you. You, the belle of every ball,” he crooned, “the most sought-after, most desirable debutante in New York City, thrown over by a no-count artist’s daughter. And the lengths you went to—to get rid of her.” He tsked and snickered, “Such vindictiveness.”
“I didn’t do any of those things printed in the newspapers.”
“Why are you suddenly accepting my proposal, which I might add, probably has run past some sort of statute of limitations?”
She pressed her hand harder into her stomach and tried to hide her uneven breathing. “It’s time,” she said, too quietly.
“Time?”
Bile rose in her throat. “I see now that we would make a good match.”
“What are you saying?”
“We should make it known we intend to marry.”
“Are you proposing marriage to me?” He filled his voice with scorn and a haughty note of disbelief.
“Yes.” She knotted her fingers.
One side of his lips slowly rose in a cruel smile. “Then you should do it properly and get down on your knees.” He tapped his cane on the floor where she should kneel.
“Really, I—”
He sucked air through his teeth and struck his cane against the floor with such force it drove a hole into the hardwood.
Mired in disbelief, C.C. stumbled forward. She’d anticipated an uncomfortable discussion but nothing this demeaning.
Everything in her ached with misery and disillusionment. Captain Sterling, her father’s arch competitor, had stolen her heart, only to throw her over for another. He’d dazzled her with his stories of adventure, and with his kindness, intelligence and manliness. But from the moment she told her best friend about him, malicious gossip rose up around her like a freak hurricane, uncontrollable and unstoppable.
Overnight, she’d gone from the most eligible debutante in the city to a pariah. Society suddenly disavowed any association with her or her family. Only Jake’s family would see them.
Her parents decided the only way to redeem her reputation—and theirs—would be to accept Jake’s proposal. For a week her parents took turns wearing her down until she finally promised to marry him.
Sinking to her knees, she gazed up.
Jake let his cane drop and grasped her head in a vise-like grip. She tried to pull away, but he had her skull locked painfully between his hands, squeezing, wrenching her neck up and back.
“Now ask me,” he said in a husky rasp.
Fear shot through her. The pressure in her skull became unbearable. With her head and neck pitched backward, he’d thrown her off balance. She could barely breathe and grabbed at his hands, gasping.
Hatred, distilled through years of his torment and humiliation, churned up her throat. She’d never been able to convince her parents of his cruel, controlling side. “Will you please marry me, Mr. Jacob Rives?” she wheezed.
He shoved her backward and threw himself on top. While his hard, muscular body mashed her into the Aubusson carpet, he lightly brushed the backs of his fingers up the side of her face.
“Just so there’s no confusion in that bird-sized brain of yours, I want you to understand how deeply you disgust me.” She could feel the rapid beating of his heart and see the throbbing of a blood vessel in his temple, yet his voice and expression softened to something eerily sympathetic. “You’re a useless, spoiled waste of life not worthy of cleaning manure off my boots. What made you think I’d take another man’s leavings?”
With studied care he wound one of her ringlets around a finger. “Do you know, at one time I thought I was in luh—” He tipped his head back, blinking. When he gazed down at her again his features had hardened to a controlled mask of contempt. He quickly levered himself up.
C.C. didn’t know how she managed in a heavy gown, a tightly laced corset and five layers of petticoats, but she got to her feet with his cane in hand.
She swung.
Though the cane made a satisfying crack against his thigh, he jumped in time for her to miss the intended target.
“You filthy maggot!” she screamed and raised it again to hit him in the head.
He caught it and yanked, whirling her toward the wall. Using his body, he quickly pinned her against the wood paneling, grabbed her hands and held them above her head.
The heat of his excitement radiated through her gown. “You’ve been disobedient, Calista,” he said in a wistful tone.
She squirmed against his heavy weight and tried to kick him. How she hated him and his twisted games. “Let go of me, Jake.”
To her surprise, he loosened his grip on one of her hands and bent his head, breathing cold, clipped words into her ear. “You know I like it when you play rough. But you also know I always get what I want.” His free hand trailed over her collarbone and slid toward her cleavage.
C.C. yanked her other hand free and raked her nails across his face.
He cursed and jerked back a step.
Seeing the bloody trails begin to ooze down his face was small consolation for what he’d put her through all these years.
They glared at each other like two fighting cocks ready to attack.
Slowly, he drew a handkerchief from his pocket, dabbed at his face, glanced at the blood-smeared muslin and smirked. A low snigger escaped his mouth. Without another word, he retrieved his cane and marched out the door.
She could hear her mother cry out in the hall, “Oh, my dear, dear boy what happened?”
“She attacked me,” Jake said, his voice cool and calm.
“But why?” her mother pleaded.
“I’m not sure, Mrs. Collins. I didn’t want to believe the newspapers, but I fear she truly has gone over the edge.”
Chapter 12
Beau placed a hand on C.C.’s forehead to check her temperature and softly cursed. She’d been mumbling gibberish, and now rested in a fitful sleep. Striding over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, he made adjustments to let a fresh breeze blow in off the water.
Music floated up from the Saturday dance on the terrace below. An occasional murmur of voices and barks of laughter carried on the wind. The band played a sprightly tune followed by Lorena, a pretty but rather melancholy favorite. Beau hummed softly as he watched C.C. toss and turn. Her steady decline worried him deeply.
Her skin color had gone from flushed, pale alabaster, to a sickly yellow. He kept telling himself the color—a sign the illness had invaded her liver—was the cast of the lantern. Tiny lines of dehydration had begun to mar the contours of her smooth countenance. He’d done everything he knew and the doctor advised, yet nothing seemed to help.
“Plut, Fosc, Jozi…” C.C. babbled. Her words dissolved into incoherent syllables.
Beau dipped a clean cloth into the basin, wrung it out and pressed it to her face and neck.
She opened her eyes and her fevered gaze drifted aimlessly about the walls and ceiling.
The clock chimed on the mantel. He sat on her bed and pulled her up to a sitting position. “Time for your medicine, lass.” She fought him, refusing to drink the medicine and water. When she slapped the glass out of his hand and began to weep, he gave up.
Grasping the front of his shirt, she pulled herself up to face him. Her puffy yellowed eyes brimmed with tears. She placed a hand on his cheek. “I never could tell you…I love you.”
The sincerity in her expression clutched at his heart. A deathbed confession—so she’d felt it too. From their f
irst meeting there’d been an immediate magnetism. Some called it magic. Others had told him of experiencing such sensations. He’d never understood until C.C. But as usual, their magic couldn’t be the simple kind. It came with fireworks and a whole trunk-load of complications.
“Oh please, Papa, don’t send me away.” She became more agitated as her gaze drifted to the far side of the room. “Mama, I’m sorry. You put too much store by Jacob Rives.”
Beau stared into her glassy eyes. “Jacob? Did you say Jacob Rives?”
She continued as if he’d not spoken. “In a year or so…nobody will care. All they’ll remember are your generous support of charities, your causes…good works.”
She sobbed louder and stroked the stubble on Beau’s jaw as she peered into his eyes, “We never got the chance… I loved you, thought you loved me, Merinus. Remember? You named a steamship after me. But you wanted her, not me!” She crumpled against him and cried into his shirt.
Beau cursed under his breath. So her deathbed confession hadn’t been for him. She’d been reliving a memory. By the sounds of it, the horse’s arse in her love triangle. So that was his name. Merinus.
C.C.’s full breasts pressed firmly into his chest, separated only by her nearly transparent chemise and his lightweight cotton shirt. Unwanted heat shot to other quarters. Reluctantly, he put his arms around her and held her.
What was the matter with him? The woman was missing a few teeth in her gears at the best of times. Clearly her feverish reminiscence revolved around two no-count knaves: Merinus and Jacob Rives.
Her declaration of love had momentarily lured him into examining a region he’d vowed off limits: his feelings for her. He didn’t want to admit the odd stinging sensation might be jealousy.
Perhaps his need to help and protect her had clouded his reason. He looked down at the small, very ill beauty and knew if it weren’t for him she’d be all alone in Nassau.
“You didn’t want me, Merinus,” she hiccupped, tears trickling down her cheeks.
“Now, now, luv,” he said, smoothing her hair as he rocked her in his arms. “You’ll do. You’ll do.”
He tried to get her to drink the medicine and water again, but she refused and worked herself out of his arms to fall back onto the bed. He sighed and got to his feet. “When was the last time you saw your family in America?”
She ignored his question. “Only child. Must marry a lord.” Her head rolled from side to side while her eyes wandered around the ceiling.
“Well, my dear, you were in the ideal place, plenty on the hoof, as they say. What kept you from hauling one to the altar?”
The band on the terrace below segued into a lovely, slow waltz. He hummed along with the music as he gave the cloth another twist in the basin and pressed it to her neck and arms.
Her eyes began to flutter. Working her jaw back and forth, she spat, “Dolts! They’re all empty-headed dolts.”
He almost laughed. Deathly ill and she was still a spitfire. “Who are dolts?”
“The titled men at this ball,” she whispered, as if taking him into her confidence. “Lazy dandies the lot of them, clueless about commerce…profit, deals…alliances. Always spend, spend, spend. No one thinks I can tell. Poor crazy C.C. Rather give my money to orphans and those who need it.”
She arranged her expression in an approximation of the eerie, frozen face and fisheye he had seen her make toward Falgate. Her giggle rose to a weak, deranged cackle. “Practiced in the mirror. Laws what fun.” A nostril flared as her jaw worked again. “Sent ’em packing…tiresome, drain on a fortune…itching to get their hands on my money.”
Her agitation rose. “They’d get a whole batch of babies on me, lock us away in some hovel…spend my money faster than I could make it back. If I complained, I’d be in a…in a…insane asylum, like that.” She snapped her fingers.
Beau’s mind had halted on the previous sentence. “What do you mean you make it back?”
“Papa died, then Uncle Hezekiah then Uncle Jeremiah. Mama moved back to the plantation where she grew up. Only me now.”
He pressed the damp towel to her neck and gazed into her eyes. “You know, you needn’t be alone. Men can be good for other things besides getting babies on you…and spending your money.”
“What things?”
He thought a moment. “There is companionship…loyalty…protection. Word has it a few even have good minds and big hearts. When there is mutual affection between a man and a woman, nothing can be more satisfying…or so I am told,” he added quickly.
C.C. began to moan. “Nursemaids are supposed to help their patients get well, not drive them over the brink!”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Not a road I’m meant to take.” Her lips pinched like she tasted something off. “Learned my lesson early…too much torment…and humiliation and ruin. Rather be in a train wreck.” A moment later she’d fallen back to sleep.
He sat down at the desk and ran his hand over its glossy surface. C.C. had taken the best suite in the hotel. Its sumptuous interior decorating and elegant furniture rivaled the grand hotels of Europe. Her tray of medicine sat on the delicate side table nearest her ornately carved bed.
He picked up his satchel, pulled out a stack of papers and a book: A Mariner’s Guide to Common Diseases and Their Treatment. As a ship’s captain, Beau had acted as doctor when none were aboard, but he’d never had to care for a woman. The long hours tending C.C. required an intimacy he’d experienced with only one other person—Millie.
She had nursed him through yellow fever and saved his life. When he should have been helping her and Freddie, he was off running the blockade. For that he would never forgive himself.
As Beau watched C.C. sleep, he couldn’t help comparing her to Millie. They were two very different women, yet only those two had touched something in him.
From the first, C.C. had intrigued him. Though he still questioned her stability, he now suspected her being uncommonly clever and bold. Never would he have imagined he’d be attracted to a woman with such a complicated collection of contradictions.
She was secretive yet generous, pragmatic but daring, had a highly feminine and sensual side but he was slowly learning she also had the tenacity of a bulldog. She made no apologies for being unconventional and it appeared she would sacrifice whatever it took to help those she loved. He regretted not having made the same effort.
Millie, on the other hand, had been a woman of the earth, beautiful in her own way, genuine through and through, upfront and uncomplicated. Built solid with a few rough edges, she called things as she saw them, but always softened her words with a care.
He’d never told her he was the third son of an English peer. Or that he might be a bastard planted in the nest by his mother’s lover. Millie didn’t care about such things. She cared about him, not his paternity. Her own father could be anyone. Though lightly educated, she was bright, quick-witted, honest as the day, and the most endearing of all, she truly loved him with all her heart.
He swallowed against the lump in his throat. No one had ever shown him so convincingly, proved in every word, every glance how adored and priceless he was to her. She’d filled a deep emptiness inside him with undemanding acceptance. When Freddie was born, the babe stole his heart. For a short time Beau had been the center of their universe, solid, dependable, worthy of love.
And then he’d sailed away, taking for granted they’d always be there…waiting for him.
Now back in the islands where he’d known such sweet contentment—the fragrance of the plants, the food, the clear turquoise water, the balmy trade winds—everything reminded him of them and that wondrous time. Their faces, their smiles, the love in their eyes had been the most precious sights to behold.
Beau looked over at C.C. struggling for life. By what he knew of her, she’d been consumed by a life-altering event as well. But he’d be willing to bet she’d never experienced unconditional love. As he sat at C.C.’s bedside, his grief a
nd guilt over Millie and Freddie seemed to ease. They were gone and there was nothing he could do for them. He could only hope helping C.C. the way he should have helped them might bring some kind of atonement.
The next day C.C. declined further. She muttered incoherently, then became agitated. Her limbs began to churn, and her bleary gaze flickered around the walls and ceiling. “Bugs are crawling everywhere! Get them off me! Kill them. They’ll sting me!”
“There, there now, lass. We’ll take care of those horrid bugs.” He held her up to drink some more water and medicine.
The doctor arrived midmorning for another examination. Afterwards, he grasped Beau’s shoulder and said in grave tones, “I’m sorry, Captain, there’s nothing more I can do for her. You’d best prepare for the worst.”
Frantic, Beau racked his memory. Millie had fed him something. She’d gotten it from a local apothecary. Getting the address from the front desk, he ran the whole way. When he returned, C.C.’s temperature had risen dangerously. He gave her a dose of tartar emetic before running down to the bar and restaurant. He bought all the ice available. It almost cost its weight in gold to get it hauled back to C.C.’s door. Filling the tub with ice and water, he slid her in.
Delirious, she gave a pitiful scream and weakly tried to climb out. Her wet chemise now clung to her, leaving very little to the imagination.
Beau could not help appreciate the sheer sensuality of C.C.’s naked form. He struggled to keep his exhausted mind on the business at hand and not indulge in thoughts unbefitting a proper nursemaid.
Holding her in the tub, listening to her weak invectives, he soon began to shiver as much as she. Finally, her temperature began to ease. She dozed while Beau pulled her from the tub, slipped off her wet chemise, dried her and placed her between fresh sheets.
After three more doses, C.C. rasped, “Give me your hand.”
Beau sat on the side of the bed and took her small hand in both of his.
The Trouble With Misbehaving Page 12