by Bella Bowen
She looked surprised. “You are?”
If he were honest, he’d have to tell her he was much happier about it after he’d caught a glimpse of her through the tower window, before she’d wrapped herself in the robe. In fact, he’d repented for his earlier wish that she would be homely and convinced himself that a woman who could turn heads might be able to turn votes someday.
“I had almost given up hope,” he confessed instead.
She stopped abruptly and turned the face him. “Please, sir. If you wouldn’t mind. Will you tell me why you haven’t simply chosen a bride from the young ladies of Portland?”
He understood her curiosity, and was pleased, frankly, that she was able to express herself clearly. A wife with a head full of fluff would be detrimental to his ambition. He could have found a way to adjust, but it would be so much easier not to.
“I have political ambitions, Miss McClintock, and marrying a local woman would mean marrying into her family’s politics. I want to have no one influencing my judgment.”
She nodded. “It’s Lady Darby McClintock, by the way.”
“Really? Why was I not told?”
She shrugged and they began walking again. “If my fellow seamstresses would have addressed me that way, how long do you suppose it would take for an employer to resent me?”
Rand nodded and grinned. “You see? We’re both in politics.”
“You won’t have to disclose it, of course, if you so choose.”
“Why?”
“Because you would hold the courtesy title of Lord. And that might not be…politic. Here in the colonies, I mean.”
“The colonies.” He laughed. “Clever and beautiful. I admit I feel like a very lucky man.”
“Truly?” She seemed genuinely surprised.
He nodded and his attention caught on her lips. Heaven help him. “And you? How do you feel, Lady McClintock?”
“Honestly?”
“Please.”
She shrugged. “To steal a term from your Mr. Jacobs…”
From the driver? “Yes?”
“Like a veritable bounder.”
He laughed all the way to the church doors, but stopped the second he laid eyes on Jez. By the scowl on her face, he guessed she’d been standing in the open doorway for quite some time. She wasn’t scowling at him, though, but at his bride.
“Lady McClintock,” he said. “I’d like to introduce you to my dear friend, Jez. Jez, this is Lady Darby McClintock.”
“Lady?”
“Yes.” He tried to warn her by raising his brows that she’d better keep a civil tongue in her mouth. Darby wasn’t the type of woman Jez was used to dealing with.
Jez narrowed her eyes. “Red hair? McClintock? And you’re not a Scot? I’ll eat my hat—”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” The woman held out a glove-covered hand.
Jez tried to hide a smirk while she ignored the offered hand, pulled a bouquet of roses from behind her back, and held them out.
“Jez was kind enough to make the arrangements for today,” he said, and glanced at the flowers. “They’re lovely.”
“I shall never thank you enough,” Darby said. “But be a dear and hold them for me, would you, until the ceremony’s over?” She reached out with both hands and gave Jez’s black glove a squeeze.
Jez sucked air through her teeth and sputtered, then threw the bouquet away from her. When they hit the paving stones, he noticed large thorns between the ribbons that tied the roses together. Their wicked tips glinted in the afternoon sun.
His bride had the gall to look surprised. “Oh, what a pity. And it looked as if you’d arranged them so carefully, too.”
Jez yanked off the glove and sucked on the meat of one finger, then another. Rand thought it best to keep his body between the women while he and Darby stepped inside the church.
The ceremony was brief and uneventful. When the minister invited anyone to object, Rand looked around for Jez, but she wasn’t there.
Probably off licking her wounds—literally.
He looked his bride over once again, wondering if she’d seen the glint of a mean thorn before she’d given Jez’s hand a squeeze, or if she simply led a charmed life. When she glanced up at him, he couldn’t tell if she was nervous or guilty.
The impending wedding night aside, he had the feeling it was guilt that opened her eyes just a tiny bit wider than they might have done otherwise.
He gave her a wink.
She grinned back.
Definitely guilt.
CHAPTER TEN
Darby felt rather lucky herself. Not only was she able to hide her guilt by admitting to Judge Beauregard that she was a bounder, he seemed to suspect the truth, that she’d thwarted that wicked woman’s attempt to wound her with the roses, and he hadn’t cared a whit.
If she knew women, and she did, she was sure the judge and this Jez had been more than just dear friends. And yet, he took Darby’s side over hers. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. Of course, in there somewhere was the fact that she had won her new husband’s loyalty but—
Saints preserve her, she was married!
As the carriage rolled through town, she examined the unusual ring on her finger. Tiny leaves of silver filled in the gaps between larger ones of gold and copper. The heart-shaped foliage was delicate to begin with, but the tiny veins on them made the entire piece look alive, as if those leaves might flutter and wave if the wind blew across them.
Determined not to fidget like the nervous bride she was, she folded her hands in her lap and pretended not to notice each and every time the man at her side breathed in and out. She found herself breathing along with him but had to take shorter breaths once she realized she was growing light-headed.
Was he so silent because he was nervous too?
The carriage wound its way back and forth, turning half a dozen times in its climb up the western hillside. Though the mountain range now blocked the late afternoon sun and left the road in shadows, they turned the last bend and found the house lit from hundreds of candles, both inside and out. A small staff waited on the steps, all smartly dressed in black and white. The pinafores on the maids were as crisp and clean as snow in the Highlands.
She was just about to say so when she remembered to bite her tongue. Summoning her new accent, she said, “It steals my very breath, my lord.”
He laughed. “Oh, this is all their doing.”
~ ~ ~
After their suppers were laid out and the servants had all been thanked profusely, Darby was left alone with her new husband. They ate in relative silence, though every now and again, they would laugh for no particular reason. As far as Darby was concerned, she suffered from a dire case of giddiness—a combination of delight and relief—that she chose not to examine too closely. For tonight, she would just enjoy it.
She sensed his laughter came from the same place.
He lifted the champagne and pointed the opening toward her half-full glass, but she shook her head. She needed her wits about her…as long as they both shall live.
“I’ve been thinking about this night for a very long time, Darby.”
The sound of her name wrapped in his dark, rumbly voice made her shiver.
He got to his feet and she utterly froze while he made his way to the sideboard. He reached into a drawer and closed it again. When he turned, he held a small box in his hand. He settled beside her again, and opened the box. It was empty but for a small slit in a bed of velvet. A bed meant for a ring.
“Here,” he said. “Your ring once belonged to my sister. And before that, it belonged to my grandmother. The ring is yours, now, but I’d like you to take it off and put it in the box.”
She quickly did as he asked and tried to hide her disappointment.
He closed the box and pressed it into her hands. “It’s yours, Darby. And when you’ve known me for a little while, after we’ve spent a few weeks under the same roof…” He laughed nervously and rubbed the back of his ne
ck. “What I’m trying to say is that I don’t expect to consummate our marriage until you’re ready. And when you’re ready, you put the ring on your finger. Then I’ll know.”
She blinked and rubbed fingers over her eyes to make certain her head was clear. “You’re saying…” She shook her head, unable to find a better way to say he was not going to—
“I’m granting you a stay of execution, Darby. You will let me know when you’re ready to be my wife in every way, and you’ll tell me by slipping that ring back on your finger.”
She opened the box and took a long look at the precious creation that had been hers for just a little while.
“Please.” He forced the lid closed again. “I beg you, don’t tease me. I don’t want to even glimpse that ring again until you’re sure.”
She giggled. “What if I’m never sure?”
He grinned. “Then I’ll just have to seduce you.” He sobered and shook his head. “Forget I said that. Too much champagne, obviously.” He stood and walked to the large window that looked out on the wilderness behind the house. “I think it is only right to allow you a few weeks to get used to me. A month maybe.”
He strode to the chair by the door and lifted his suit coat from it. “I don’t think I can stand sleeping here tonight. I don’t trust myself, and I don’t want to scare you. I’ll sleep at the office and see you for breakfast.” Before she could speak, he was at the door. “I’ll send some of the staff back so you’re not here alone. All right?”
She was tempted to whip the little box open and slide the ring on her finger just to keep him from leaving. But she was also grateful for the reprieve. She couldn’t lie about that. No matter how much time she’d thought about this night, she hadn’t put a real face to it until that afternoon.
“A little time is a generous gift, sir. Thank you.”
His smile was more of a grimace, which she took to mean that he was a little disappointed too. But he nodded and disappeared, leaving her alone with a hundred sputtering candles.
Darby opened the box again and watched the candlelight winking along the edges of the tiny silver leaves, giving the impression the ring was on fire. She wondered what would happen if she were to wear it to breakfast in the morning, but when her imagination made her feel like she was burning along the edges too, she shut the box with a snap.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
After sending one of the maids back to the house, changing costumes twice and modes of transportation three times, Rand finally arrived at his lair in the underground between Ankeny and Ash. He rapped on the small window, and after Nero got a look at him, the door opened enough to sidle inside. Shadow was sprawled out on the davenport with his woman, Abigail, on his lap. His eyes widened.
Rand waved a hand. “Don’t let me interrupt,” he said. “I’ve just come to change.” He had yet one more outfit that would transform him into the Phantom.
“No need,” Shadow said. “The cages be empty tonight.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to make the rounds anyway, to be seen. Everyone has a good idea of where Rand Beauregard is tonight, so he can’t possibly be the Phantom, can he?” He smiled, pleased with his strategy, and even more pleased that it seemed like he’d planned his walkabout all along. Of course, he hadn’t. And he hadn’t planned to leave his bride all alone on their wedding night either.
It would have been so much simpler if she’d been a plain young Englishwoman—a proper girl who knew her duties and expected to consummate her marriage that night whether or not she was comfortable with the stranger she’d married. It happened all the time in England, didn’t it? Women were betrothed to whomever their fathers chose for them. It was all just business.
But as soon as he’d glimpsed his bride in the tower window, everything had changed. It wasn’t her beauty that complicated things, though she was a beauty. And it wasn’t that she had turned out to be more intelligent than he’d expected, though she had. It was just that blasted image he carried around of his future wife, like a photograph with the shape of a woman cut out of it. And while she’d stood there in the window, marveling at the wild western forest, like a gift he’d prepared for her—which it practically had been—it was as if she’d stepped easily into that void and filled it perfectly, all the way to the edges.
That was what spooked him—that Fate knew him so well. And the fellow standing in that picture next to her? What if he wasn’t up to snuff?
Maybe, with the little bit of time he’d bought himself, he could make sure he was. He’d made a good start. In the past two years, he’d become a different man entirely. Too bad it had taken the death of his sister to give him some perspective.
He opened the wardrobe, moved the clothes aside, then opened the secret panel in the back where half a dozen black cloaks hung below half a dozen masks. The faces had been covered in silver leaf. The comic smiles reflected the light of the room at his back. The black eye holes stared as if reading his mind.
His favorite was the first mask he’d ever made, two years before. Damaged with dents and scratches, he chose it this time for sentimental reasons, for the times he’d mistakenly believed everything was perfect.
Rachel had married the perfect man. Rand’s house had been the perfect symbol of the perfect success he’d made of Portland, creating businesses, selling them, and starting the next, all while practicing law and climbing to the top of his field.
But then Rachel had died and he’d gone off on a tear. He’d wound up falling through the trapdoor at Bangor Joe’s. And if Jez hadn’t found him and rescued him from that cage, he would have disappeared like thousands of others had in the past forty years.
If Rach hadn’t died, he might have never known what an unspeakable underbelly slithered along beneath the streets of the city he had loved so dearly. If she hadn’t died, his traditional ambitions might have grown like a wildfire and consumed him.
If his sister had lived, she would have hand-picked a wife for him. But without her, he’d been left with Jez as the only female in his life, and given his new ambitions, she wouldn’t do. But luckily, he’d happened upon a copy of The Grooms’ Gazette and seen firsthand that respectable men were allowed to ask for exactly the kind of woman they needed.
So he’d asked. And Lady Darby McClintock—no, Lady Beauregard was his.
And he was terrified.
Shadow stepped into the bedchamber and closed the door behind him. Rand traded the last of his cowboy trappings for the Phantom’s black ones.
“And what does Mrs. Beauregard think of you leaving the bed cold this night?”
Rand shrugged. “We have an understanding.”
Shadow snorted. “I doubt the lady understands what you think she understands.”
“I will not force myself on her. We’re strangers. It will be different...in a week or two.”
His friend gasped. “A week or two? You take Shadow’s advice, and hurry back up the hill. You make an impression, that’s what you do. If not, she be making a fool of you. Mark my words.”
Rand pulled the cool metal of his mask against his heating face and hoped it would cool his thoughts, too. “Like I said, we have an understanding. She didn’t run me off. It was my idea—”
“No good will come of this.” Shadow shook his head and opened the door. “Mark my words.”
Rand refused to worry. He’d shown Darby consideration. She’d been grateful. It was a fine start to their marriage. And while she got used to the idea of sharing his bed, he’d get to work making sure he was worthy of sharing it with her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Shadow slipped into the seat across from Rand in Bangor Joe’s Saloon and glanced nervously around the room. “Something be wrong,” he said.
The hairs on the back of Rand’s neck rose beneath the ties of his mask. Except when his dark friend was giving marital advice, Rand knew better than to second guess Shadow’s intuition.
“Any idea what?”
Shadow hunched his shoulders and
leaned in, even though no one dared try to eavesdrop on the Phantom. They had the back of the room to themselves.
“We know Harrigan suspects the judge and the Phantom are one man,” he said.
Rand nodded.
“So, if he believes the judge is occupied at home, he would do his foul deeds without fear this night, yes?”
“When the cat is away,” he mumbled. “You’re right. The cages should have been full tonight, and they’re not.”
His friend’s eyes widened. “Perhaps selling flesh to the captains is not what he wishes most to do in your absence?”
“But what? What would he do tonight that he could not do if he feared the Phantom’s interference?” His heart fell. “Jez!”
In two seconds, the pair of them were outside and running flat out for The Port Queen, Jez’s primary brothel where she kept her own apartments.
When they came up on the building, Rand waved Shadow to hold back. “We don’t want to go barreling in there before we know where she is.”
They slipped around to the rear of the cathouse and found one of Harrigan’s men standing guard—over Jez’s home—and Rand’s stomach dropped again. Harrigan was the Phantom’s rival for the King of the Underground in Portland. He believed Jezebel was both the Phantom’s weakness and what gave him the edge over the competition. He’d been trying to get her to change sides from the beginning. But every time he got near her, the Phantom stood in his way.
It was common knowledge that the Phantom always watched out for her and her girls, as she watched out for the man behind the mask. No one was fool enough to give one of them grief and not expect trouble from the other.
Harrigan had no idea the Phantom had once been caught in his cage, or that Jez had been the one to spring him. But he did know the woman had eyes for his mysterious rival. And like most men, he made the mistake of believing that any whore would change her allegiance for the right price. So he made her offers regularly.
She’d mentioned, only a week ago, that it had been a long time since Harrigan had sent her any gifts. They’d laughed about it then. But maybe they should have seen it as a sign that the man was done negotiating.