“You see, my dear Bertha,” he addressed her, “all has worked out as it should, after all. I would even venture that, once you have safely tucked away that bit of pocket change into your reticule, you will no longer feel the need to plunder any other of my accounts.”
It was a neatly veiled warning, Halia knew, but she chose to overlook the threat. Much as she would have enjoyed relieving him of all his ill-gotten riches, she had what she needed now. Besides, once their business together was concluded, she had no intention of ever setting eyes on the Englishman again.
“You are quite right. I promise that this is the first and last time I shall trouble you this way.”
So saying, she settled back in her seat, her gloved hands tightly clasped around her reticule strings while the three of them silently awaited the clerk's return. After a seemingly interminable delay, the young man reappeared with a brick-sized packet neatly wrapped in brown paper.
The banker rose to take the packet; then, with an almost courtly bow, he settled it into Halia's waiting hands. “Ten thousand dollars, Miss Jones-Smith.”
“Thank you, Mr. Burnett,” she breathlessly managed and stuffed the bundled cash into her reticule. Then, fearful lest Malcolm or the banker might think twice about this unorthodox transaction, she hurriedly stood.
“I do believe I must be about those errands that we spoke of,” she explained and with a final nod for Burnett started toward the door.
“One moment, luv.”
With that drawling command, Malcolm rose from his own chair. He moved with swift grace so that, quite before Halia realized what had happened, he stood between her and the glass door.
“Bertha, my dear,” he chided her in a light tone as she reluctantly met his gaze. “Surely you did not intend to leave without one last word to me?”
The chill smile he gave her held nothing of “Sir John's” bland charm. Rather, it reflected a certain triumphant satisfaction, as if he and not she had been the victor here.
And why did she harbor a sudden, unsettling fear that such might well be the case?
With a mental shake, she dismissed her uncertainties. “Indeed, how thoughtless of me. Good-bye, then,” she replied and unthinkingly offered her gloved hand.
Malcolm promptly grasped her fingers and pulled her toward him, so that she now stood inches from the starch-fronted expanse of his chest. Yet this time, it was not the touch of his hand that affected her, so much as the way his dark eyes glinted with some unnamed emotion that sent an answering shiver through her.
“My dearest Bertha,” he countered in a caressing tone as he caught her by the shoulders, “is that any way to bid your intended farewell?”
She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could manage a word, Malcolm bent and claimed her lips with his.
The kiss was no formal token of affection but instead a heated demand that sent her reeling. His mouth against hers was hot, insistent...as if he might draw the very breath from her and leave her quite senseless, she thought in sudden alarm.
She made as if to pull free, but the abrupt tightening of his grasp recalled her to the role that she was playing. She must endure this indignity, she realized, or else risk unwelcome questions from Burnett. But even as she steeled herself to accept this barbarous treatment, a stirring of unfamiliar feminine awareness rippled through her.
And, suddenly, she was kissing him back.
An inner voice frantically reminded her that this was madness of the worst sort. .. that she had no love for this man... that she was making a public display of herself over a rogue, a thief. Yet here she was, pressed against him in a wanton manner, eagerly parting her lips so that he could better taste her. It was uncalled for, illogical.
Whatever could be wrong with her, that she was behaving in such a fashion?
But barely had such thoughts registered in her mind than Malcolm abruptly drew back and released his hold. She swallowed a small cry of protest and took a stumbling step back, aware now that Malcolm's expression of triumph had given way to something closer to uncertainty.
For her own part, her heart was pounding like a mare at full gallop. The hot rush of blood she could feel rising in her face was no doubt staining her cheeks a lamentable shade of red. As for her breathing, it was none too steady now, as if she had walked much too far and fast.
But even as she struggled for composure, Malcolm favored her with a bland smile. “And that, my dearest Bertha, is what I would call a proper farewell,” he commented and then stepped aside, his tone as light as if he had done nothing more scandalous than tweak her nose.
Halia was saved from a reply—if, indeed, she had been capable that moment of making one—by a muffled sound from Burnett that might have been a cough. Gathering what remained of her dignity, she turned her back on the Englishman a final time and smartly marched back past the glass door.
Barely had she gained the main lobby than a smattering of applause stopped her short. She glanced about her to see that the attention of all six young clerks and a good dozen of the bank's customers was fixed upon her. Some leered good-naturedly, while the others wore expressions of righteous disapproval. Sudden suspicion took hold, and she glanced back the way that she had just come. Burnett and Malcolm both were clearly visible behind the glass door that led to the banker's office.
Which meant, she realized in horrified embarrassment, that the men standing before her had been an audience to Malcolm's audacious kissing of her just moments before.
The blood in her cheeks burned hotter still. It was all Halia could do not to gather up her skirts and make an undignified run for the main door and the street beyond. As it was, she made her departure at a pace slightly faster than might be considered decorous.
It was with an acute sense of relief that she pulled open the door and plunged out into the blaze of hot sunlight once more. Blinking against the glare, she saw that Lally and Christophe still waited with the hired coach.
“The money, you be gettin' it, den?” Lally demanded of her as Christophe held open the carriage door.
Halia did not pause for conversation but merely nodded and then clambered inside. “Let us return to the docks again, Christophe,” she instructed him as Lally settled opposite her. “We must see about hiring a ship for the next leg of our journey.”
With a nod, the man shut the door after them and took his place atop with the driver. The coach lurched forward, rejoining the numerous other carriages, carts, and riders on the busy thoroughfare.
Once the coach was well embedded within the swell of vehicles, Halia allowed herself a sigh. She had accomplished what she had set out to do, after all. She was more than halfway to her destination and possessed of an ample sum of cash, to boot! Moreover, everything—well, almost everything—had gone quite the way she had planned it. If only the remainder of her journey would unfold so smoothly.
“The spirits, they be right, again. Dat man, he be castin' a spell of his own on you.”
“A spell?”
Puzzled, Halia glanced at the other woman to see her dark features set into lines of ill-concealed loathing. Why, it was as if Lally knew that some exchange besides a monetary one had happened inside the bank.
Memories of Malcolm's kiss taunted her, and she fought back a guilty blush. Even to herself, she would not admit that his ungallant gesture had ignited within her psyche a flicker of attraction quite at odds with logic. But she could not deny the purely feminine response he had somehow drawn from her body...a hot curl of restless energy that still lingered within her.
Perhaps the rogue had worked some sort of sorcery on her, after all!
Firmly, she shook off such fancies. “Spell or no, we finally are rid of Mr. Northrup,” she replied, instead. “And as I do have his money, though perhaps not as much as I had hoped to lay hands on, it should be a simple enough matter to find a ship. So do not fret, Lally. All is well.”
“Humph.”
The single syllable held a Greek chorus's worth of doom, bu
t Halia feigned deafness. No point in lingering over what was past, she decided. Once they had resumed their travel, she would soon forget all about the man.
For, surely the vague excitement she'd felt at the single bold kiss of a rogue Englishman would pale before the thrill of discovering the lost continent of Atlantis.
###
“I will be but a few minutes, Mr. Burnett.”
With that assurance, Malcolm took a chair at the broad table that was the only other item of furniture in the windowless chamber. Plainly paneled and lacking any decoration, the tiny room bore more than a passing resemblance to a monk's cell... though the business undertaken within was decidedly worldly. Here, the better-heeled of the bank's customers conducted their own private transactions, safe from the common eye.
Malcolm waited until the banker had shut the door after him. Then, with the eagerness of a lad on Christmas Day, he applied a small iron key to the lock of the safety deposit box set before him.
The hinges gave but a whisper of protest as he raised the narrow lid to reveal its contents. Methodically, he began sorting out the objects...among them, a ribbon-tied bundle of stock certificates, authentic-looking if quite worthless; half-a-dozen gold pocket watches; a pair of diamond cuff studs.
He picked up a gold dollar piece. With a careless bit of legerdemain, he maneuvered it along the knuckles of one hand before tossing the coin back with a score more like it. Then, with a wry shake of his head, he drew forth a stack of bills the equal of the sum he had just relinquished.
The loss, while galling, had been a small enough price to pay for gaining the upper hand in the game. He might as easily have given up ten times that amount and not noticed the damage.
What had the more lasting impact on him, he reluctantly conceded, was his reaction to their kiss.
Malcolm gave himself a mental shake, but he could not quite dislodge the memory. He'd intended the kiss as a final, mocking reminder to Halia that he had, in the end, bested her at the game. What he had not expected was the unsettling physical reaction he experienced...a fierce, odd sort of hunger quite removed from anything as simple as pure lust. It wasn't just that he had felt in sudden need of a woman, having denied himself that particular pleasure for some time now in the face of more pressing matters. What unnerved him was the fact that, at that moment, he had wanted only one certain woman.
Deliberately, Malcolm shoved aside that moment of self-realization and its possible ramifications. He had more important issues facing him now, and but a short time in which to make his decisions.
With that in mind, he tucked away the cash into his jacket pocket, and then reached back into the iron box to pull forth yet another prize. His fingers closed on a black velvet pouch securely bound with a sizable length of gold cord. Unraveling those knots, he spilled forth a blaze of cold green fire into one outstretched hand.
Poseidon's Tear.
Malcolm gazed with outright reverence at the rough-cut emerald that nestled in his gloved palm. The size and shape of a plover's egg, the gem had earned its name almost a century earlier from its discoverer, an elderly Englishman with a penchant for Greek mythology. Within six months of his find, however, that gentleman had died quite suddenly...and quite mysteriously, it was claimed, though the details of his passing had been lost with time.
The emerald had changed hands two dozen or more times since then, Malcolm knew, accumulating with each new owner yet another bit of legend and superstition. Some tales claimed that Poseidon's Tear was but a cursed rock, bringing those who possessed it little better than misery—and, sometimes, death. Still other stories attributed great good luck to the gem and to those fortunate enough to lay hands on it. Needless to say, Malcolm subscribed to that latter body of superstition.
He allowed himself a small grin. That promise of good fortune, combined with the emerald's intrinsic worth, was what had led him to steal the stone from its most recent owner. The fact that this man had been one Seamus O'Neill, modern-day buccaneer and Malcolm's sometime partner, had only made the acquisition that much sweeter.
Malcolm admired the brilliant green jewel a moment longer. The coincidence of the sea god's name in connection with both the emerald and his enforced association with Halia was not lost on him. Gambler that he'd always been, he had learned not to ignore such omens. Fate had dealt him a new and quite interesting hand, and he'd be a fool not to play it.
Thoughtfully, he returned the gem to its velvet wrappings. Then, loosening his collar and cravat, he looped the gold cord over his head and tucked the pouch so that it settled beneath his shirt. Thus concealed, the emerald would be safe from theft yet close enough at hand to bring him its legendary good fortune. Chances were that in the days to come he was going to need all the luck he could find.
With that thought in mind, Malcolm finally plucked from the strongbox the object for which he had come.
It was an unprepossessing document, merely a ragged-edged sheet of paper torn from a journal of sorts. Well-creased and liberally smudged with dirty finger marks, it bore signs of having been carried about for some time. He'd only given it a single, cursory read the night he had bought it, having assumed the claim it made was but a hoax. Now, however, he read the few inked lines with care.
—best of my knowledge. The coin, while admittedly a compelling exhibit, is hardly proof enough to support my claim. But my preliminary study of the formations in question convinces me that they are man-made, and not merely a function of Nature.
As for Plato's account, it does not prohibit the Bimini Islands as being the possible locale of the lost continent. Rather, an enlightened reading of the original Greek supports this argument. All in all, it is my informed opinion that further exploration of the site is warranted and that such an endeavor will ultimately yield an archeological find unmatched in this or any other century.
Malcolm paused, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. The reference to a coin brought to mind the gold disk that Halia wore about her neck. Perhaps her pendant was the same artifact the writer of this journal page had seen, or maybe there was a whole bloody cache of them lying about. But more telling than the mention of the coin was the series of numbers penciled beneath the text... a navigational coordinate, if his guess was correct.
He returned his attention to the page. Accompanying those numbers was a crude rendering of what he presumed to be the Biminis...an untidy cluster of two main islands, one of them little more than a sliver of coast, combined with several smaller islets to form a ragged C. Just off the northwest shoreline was sketched a series of squares laid out like a section of cobbled lane. In neat block letters beside those squares was written a single word.
Atlantis.
His frown eased into a chill smile. No doubt Miss Davenport would give much to possess a map that detailed the location of the supposed Atlantis site. Without these coordinates, she would be forced to plumb every inch of Biminian coastline, a task that might take weeks. With the proper heading, however, she could begin immediate recovery of the treasure trove buried beneath the Caribbean.
Momentarily, he considered simply taking the coordinates, hiring his own crew, and recovering whatever spoils there were to be had—without Halia's help. Just as quickly, however, he dismissed that plan. He had no love for the ocean, and the idea of his swimming beneath the waves in search of some elusive treasure held no appeal for him. Moreover, he hadn't the faintest idea of how to direct such an archeological expedition on his own.
Halia, however, did.
Partners, it is to be, then, he wryly told himself. Deliberately, he refolded the page and tucked it away with his cash, then returned the rest of his belongings to the strongbox. The time had come to take the offensive in the matter of Miss Halia Davenport. The chit owed him, she did...and he was bloody well ready to collect on that debt.
By the time he quit the bank and was strolling down the cobbled lane, he already had decided upon a rudimentary plan of action. With luck, the ever-resourceful Wilkie would
have swiftly determined the reason for Malcolm's disappearance several days earlier. Chances were that he was already en route to Savannah and would be meeting Malcolm at the boardinghouse that was their prearranged rendezvous. Once that happened, the pair of them had only to learn on which ship Halia had booked passage for the next leg of her journey, so that they could make the same arrangements.
Sidestepping a pile of rubbish, Malcolm allowed himself a smug grin. Catching up with her again would be the easy part of his job. After all, how many beautiful blond young women bound for the Biminis could there be in this city? Moreover, how many of said young blond women were accompanied by a surly giant of a butler/coachman and a Haitian lady's maid who likely was equally handy pinning up hair or casting voodoo curses?
Idly, Malcolm ran more details of his plan through his mind. Once at sea, he would confront the chit and make his offer...the Atlantis coordinates, in exchange for half of whatever treasure she might discover. She could hardly deny him, especially considering that it was his money she was using to fund her expedition. And if that argument did not convince her, he had another method of persuasion at his disposal, one that had served him quite well in the past.
If Halia refused to relinquish his share of the find, he simply would seduce his half right out from under her.
~ Chapter 8 ~
” 'Tain't fair by ‘alf,” Wilkie grumbled with a longing look at the retreating shore. “‘Ere, I just 'opped off one boat, an’ I'm right back on another.”
“I quite concur,” Malcolm acknowledged his companion's plaint with a wry twist of his lips. “The last place I care to be right now is aboard ship, particularly in light of my most recent sea voyage. Unfortunately, a carriage will not get us to the Biminis.”
He plucked a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the perspiration that ringed his brow as the morning sun ripened. In another hour or so, the temperature would be all but unbearable, even with the brisk sea breeze that tugged at his hat with briny impertinence. But the heat would not be the worst of it.
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