Then she’d turned, and smiled, and spoken to him. Simple words, polite mannerisms, and each one seemed to portend a thousand things more than their minimal syllables should have, as if each bare word that passed between them was one of cupid’s arrows, sinking in deep, binding them together. As if he’d spent all those years searching, looking, hunting in far corners of the world, and all along what he sought above all was in a Philadelphia garden, waiting for him to find her.
Peace had flooded him. And a lighthearted joy like he’d never known. He’d kissed her—he hadn’t thought, hadn’t considered. Just kissed her, because he couldn’t do anything else, because every step he’d ever taken in his life had brought him to this moment. And, miracle of miracles, she’d kissed him back.
He’d been lost. And found, a hundred times more so than he’d ever been on top of a mountain, more exhilarated than when he laid eyes on a treasure no man had seen for a thousand years. So much so that it hadn’t registered at first that she was struggling in his arms, fists pushing ineffectually at his chest, squeaks of protest barely escaping his kiss.
It took him longer than it should have to let her go. Moonlight fell through the elaborate fretwork of the gazebo, throwing lacy patterns across her perfect face. Her eyes were wide, wild; her lips, kiss-bruised, parted with her staggered exhalation. Where the moonlight illuminated her skin, it gleamed pale as marble.
Damn. He’d been away from society too long, forgotten that something as innocent—though, it had hardly been innocent, he admitted to himself—as a kiss could send a young maid into palpitations.
“My apologies,” he murmured, slipping more easily into the conventions than he would have thought. “It’s not such a terrible thing, I—”
“God help me, but it is.” She backed away from him, until the handrail against her rump halted her flight. “Oh, God.”
Damn, he thought again. She looked right on the edge of panic. This was a different world than he’d grown accustomed to—still not the one he’d grown up in, thank God, where he’d known men married off for far more minor trespasses. Still, if he didn’t get her to calm down, no telling what she might do. “Really, no one needs to know, I—”
“Hush!” With frantic, jerky motions, she yanked at the neckline of her dress, silk the color of Ceylon sapphires. A bit of one nipple showed above the edge and his mouth went desert-dry. It had been only the briefest instant, but he knew with perfect and knee-weakening clarity how her flesh had felt in his palm.
“Miss—” He fumbled for what to call her. How could he not have learned her name?
“Oh, please.” Her voice broke as she whirled, presenting him with the fine, tense line of her back. “He’s almost here. Can’t you hear him?”
And then the bellow, above the sprightly dip and sway of the orchestra. “Where the hell are you?”
Jim smiled in automatic nostalgia. “The doc, he never did mince words—” And then he stopped, all the lingering heat in his veins suddenly frozen.
Doc’s daughter. Nora…Nel…Oh, no matter. How old was she?
It couldn’t be. How such an exquisite creature could have sprung from someone with doc’s…unique…features—it was impossible. Still…“Ahh…”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, three silver blond curls that had been tucked delicately among the rest drooping over her left eye, her lips still soft, blushing deep. If a father—even one less than doting—saw his daughter in such a condition, there’d be only two choices: an altar, or Jim would have to disappear into the jungles forever.
“I’ll go delay him. You”—he waved vaguely—“repair. We’ll say that—”
“Goddammit!” The exclamation was so close Jim started.
“Just go,” she begged.
“But—”
“Go!”
Jim leaped off the steps and met Doctor Goodale a mere three feet from the gazebo, charging down the stone path with the same determined alacrity with which he’d once clambered up the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.
“You there, have you seen my—” He frowned, squinted into Jim’s face. “That you, Bennett?”
“Didn’t think your eyes failed you that much, Doc.”
“Hoo-hoo!” The doctor whacked him on the arm, then frowned and pinched him through his shirtsleeve.
“Ouch!”
“Hold still.” He probed urgently beneath Jim’s ears, lifted an eyelid and peered into his pupil. “Got the Amazonian fever, did you?” He tsked unhappily. “Couldn’t you at least gotten yourself here in time for there to be some symptoms left? I’ve an idea it might be treated with the extract of an orchid I brought back from that trip up the Branco.”
“I suppose experimental subjects are in somewhat short supply here.”
Doctor Goodale sighed. “That is only too unfortunately true.” Arms clasped behind him, he rocked back on his heels, thin mouth pursed. “Gads, but I miss the field!”
“Come back, then,” Jim said, hoping the hearty good cheer he’d affected masked his doubts. The field was often hard on a man, aging him years for the months he spent in the wild. Doctor Goodale, however, had always seemed immune to its ravages, striding hearty and ruddy-cheeked through dense savannah or high desert. But now every year he’d escaped seemed to have returned to him a hundredfold. He appeared to have shrunk inches even as his waistline bulged in tandem. His skin had thinned, sagging from his bones as if it no longer fit him just right.
“Can’t. Promised Elaine before she died that I’d stay here with the young ones. For all the good I do them; they’re not much interested in my interference. And now”—he stamped the cane Jim hadn’t noticed until then against the slate path and shook his head, as if refusing to finish the thought—“thought you’d never come. Must have invited you a dozen times.” The lines that bracketed his thin mouth deepened. “Time used to be when you’d jump if I hinted.”
“I’d still jump.” Guilt tugged at him. From the looks of it he’d nearly delayed this visit too long. But who’d suspect three years in Philadelphia would take such a toll?
Doctor Goodale chuckled. “So why the hell are you lurking out here in the garden?”
“Ah—” Images assailed him, a sweet vital woman against him, and his head reeled. He cleared his throat and took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. Next time he headed into the jungle for months on end, he was hauling a woman with him, he promised himself. For clearly he’d been far too long without a woman.
He indicated his sorry clothes, which had already given their best for the cause. “Seems like you’ve got the entire top slice of Philadelphia society in there. And I’m not exactly party fare at the moment.”
“Oh, hell, why would I care about that? Besides, the ladies always did like it best when you were roughed up a bit. A little excitement for them. God knows, we could use some around here. I—”
“Excuse me. I apologize for the interruption, but Summers said that you were looking for me?”
She came from the direction of the house—how she’d slipped through the gardens and come the other way so quickly, Jim couldn’t guess. Particularly as no evidence of her rush—nor, he realized with a twinge of dismay, of his kiss—remained on her. Her hair swept back, not a strand out of place, the severe style leaving nothing to compete with the pure, perfect lines of her face. Her bodice was in place, low but not extreme, the flurry of lace artfully arranged. She looked as if her maid had just spent hours fussing over her. And Jim had never wanted anything so much as, at that moment, to muss her up again. This woman, cool and perfect, was too far from the warm and vibrant one he’d held moments ago.
“Where the hell have you been?” Doctor Goodale growled.
She held out a fistful of delicate white lilies. “A few of the arrangements in the entry were drooping a bit and I thought that I—”
“Never mind,” he broke in. “Who the hell cares about the flowers? Norine is whimpering in the ladies’ retiring room again.”
S
he hadn’t looked at Jim. Still didn’t, her attention was fixed on the doctor in a way too careful to be accidental. Embarrassed, concerned, insulted? He couldn’t tell. It bothered him. He thought he should have been able to read her. And then that made him chuckle, to think that just because he knew her taste, knew the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest, knew the way her breath staggered in passion, that he would know her.
He knew nothing about her.
“Oh, dear. Was it that young Meriwether boy, then?”
The doctor shrugged in complete unconcern. “Just go fix it. I’m not going to have her moods spoil my party.”
“Of course,” she murmured, eyes downcast, shoulders pulled in.
Norine, the doc had said. Go in and look after Norine. Which meant that this was not his daughter. Jim released a sigh of relief and then harrumphed loudly, wondering if three years in civilization had improved the doctor’s manners enough so that he’d pick up on the hint.
“Something in your throat? Let me get my bag—”
“No,” Jim put in quickly. The woman was a full step away by now. “I was hoping for an introduction.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” By then the woman was nearly fleeing down the path, rich blue silk drifting behind her. “Hold up!” Doctor Goodale shouted after her.
She froze but didn’t turn, the line of her body as tense as a hunting cat preparing to spring.
She spoke directly to Dr. Goodale as he approached. “I’d assumed you wanted me to address the issue as quickly as possible, so I—”
He waved aside her protest. “This won’t take long.”
Annoyance spiked into Jim’s stunned intrigue. He could understand her being disconcerted by what had passed between them—hell, he was unsettled more than a bit—but couldn’t she at least look at him?
“Jim, Kate. Kate, Jim.”
Jim looked at him blankly.
“What, didn’t I tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“About my wife.”
“Wife.” Jim shook his head, dug a finger into his ear to improve his hearing. “What did you say?”
“My wife, of course.”
It hadn’t helped. His gaze swung to her, her face paper white, skin drawn and tense. Panic? Guilt? Both, he hoped on a surge of anger that had his hands shaking against his side. Wife.
“There.” Doctor Goodale made a shooing motion. “You’re introduced. Run along now and plug up Norine’s wailing before she curdles the milk punch.”
And then she looked at him—in one brief instant when the moonlight caught her eyes and glimmered wetly—before she turned and dashed off down the path. Ready to drag her back and demand answers, he took a half step after her before he caught himself. Ready to…God, he scarcely knew what he was ready to do. Blood pumped through him, scalding hot.
“She’s a lovely thing, isn’t she?” Doctor Goodale said. “Not much else, a pity. Thought at least she’d manage the children for me, but she’s not much good at that.”
Then he shrugged, dismissing the topic as easily as he’d shrug off a soiled waistcoat.
Jim studied his old…not a friend, exactly. He doubted Doctor Goodale claimed any of those, nor cared to. But a mentor, yes, one who’d opened the world to him. What did he owe him?
Where did his duty lie? How did you tell a man his wife had nearly cuckolded him in his gazebo…most likely had already cuckolded him a hundred times over, given how easily she’d yielded herself to a stranger.
Fury clouded his brain, making it impossible to think clearly. Anger for Doctor Goodale, anger for himself. Was it kinder to spare the doctor, or better to hear it now? Doctor Goodale was ever unpredictable; his reaction to such messy things as human emotions never easy to gauge. The doctor might already know of his wife’s peccadilloes and not care. Jim would only do him a disservice by laying it out where his pride could no longer ignore it.
“Enough of this.” Doctor Goodale rapped his cane to gain Jim’s attention. “Tell me about Brazil. You found a new river, did you not?”
Forget it, Jim had told himself then. Forget every single sigh, every square inch of skin he’d savored, every trembling moment.
Now, a dozen years later, rigid, breathing hard, standing in the middle of his hotel room, he knew he never had.
He shuffled through the litter of papers on the table, snatched up his invitation to the race, and tore it into a thousand pieces.
Chapter 3
There were those who said the ballroom at the Rose Springs Grand Hotel had been inspired by the great hall at Versailles. Some even said it put Versailles to shame, with gilded ceilings that seemed to soar to the sky. The walls of mirrors, perfect and polished, reflected so accurately that a party rarely passed without some unfortunate guest, unable to discern the difference between reality and a mere likeness of it, walked straight into the wall. And, always, the air seethed with the inevitable, heady scent of thousands of roses.
Today, however, it seemed as if a circus, a Bedouin camp, a country fair had all been wedged into the space. Kate was perched on the small trunk she’d wrestled in two hours ago. She clutched her precious invitation in stiff fingers as she sat square in the middle of the chaos and watched the world swirl around her.
She’d never felt so out of place in her entire life. Not as a young girl who’d ended up a proper wife before she’d ever been a bride, not out in that desolate wasteland her youngest sister now called home.
From her left came a burst of incomprehensible language. Some Asian ruler, she thought, with an entourage that took up a full corner and spilled out into the room, all circling around the small, dark man in saffron robes. At his shout, three other men scurried out of the room as if in fear for their lives. There were at least a half dozen women in the group, young, exotic, and silent. Kate couldn’t even hazard a guess as to whether they were wives, daughters, servants…or something else entirely.
A tall, raw-boned woman in trousers—trousers!—strode by. She nodded in Kate’s direction, acknowledging another female, and kept right on, her cheeks wind-burned, her floppy brown hat pulled low, her bearing utterly confident.
There was only one other competitor completely alone. A young man, Kate judged, although it was hard to tell. So many yards of white fabric swathed him that only a slice of his face showed, his deep, dark eyes scanning the room with intense interest. He hadn’t spoken to a soul.
She’d lived with the stares of men since she was no more than thirteen. They rarely bothered her. Why should they? Only a silly girl couldn’t use a man’s interest to her advantage. But now, under this one’s steady regard, she shifted uncomfortably. Too hard to gauge what he thought underneath the shield of his costume.
Shouts exploded from the far corner. There was a flash of movement, flailing limbs. Two burly men muscled out of the scuffle, dragging a round balding figure by his arms.
“Look at that,” said a man who appeared at her elbow, dressed in dapper tweed. “From the Journal or the World, I’d wager.” He chuckled. “Caused them quite a dilemma when we announced the contest. Do they ignore it completely and get scooped or report on it and give the Sentinel more publicity?” He inclined his head toward the man, now being towed out the door. “Joseph Kane clinched it when he declared no reporter from another newspaper would be allowed in here. They had to try, then.”
“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Charlie Hobson, ma’am. The Daily Sentinel.” He checked the watch that dangled from his vest pocket. “Only fifteen minutes to go. I’ll be collecting credentials.” He stared pointedly at her invitation. “And you are…?”
“Not willing to hand this over until I’m able to ascertain whether you are precisely who you claim to be.”
That made him grin, a flash of straight white teeth beneath the deep black swoop of a luxurious handlebar mustache. “You’re only the second to ask, do you know
that? You and him.” He pointed to the still figure of the man swaddled in white robes. “Son of the Amir, I’m told. Couldn’t get another word out of him.” He bent his smile toward her again. “Now…I helped put the list of competitors together, and I’m pretty certain I would have remembered you. Just where did you get that invitation?”
“Does it matter?” she clipped. “I read the rules quite carefully, and it was quite specific that the holder of the letter should be allowed to enter.”
“Huh.” He rummaged in an inside pocket and pulled out a pad and a stubby pencil. “I’d be interested to hear how you got it. I’m sure my readers would, too.”
“I hope you’re not telling stories again, Katie my girl.” Kate’s back stiffened even before Jim’s hand came down, heavy and possessive, on her shoulder. “And I hope you’re not planning on writing a story based on anything she tells you.” Jim leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Fond of pretending she’s a society woman, she is. Can you imagine?”
“Really,” the reporter said, flatly neutral. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I—” he narrowed his gaze thoughtfully—“Lord Bennett?”
Jim nodded as regally as any prince accepting his due. “The same.”
“I hadn’t heard you’d be attending.”
“There’s something you didn’t hear? Hard to imagine. Too much time at the desk, not enough out and about reporting, eh?”
“I doubt it.” Hobson tucked the notepad into his suit pocket. “I was having a most delightful conversation with your…”
“I’m sure you were,” Jim said smoothly. “My Katie’s nothing if not…entertaining.”
“I can imagine. Still, we do need to know who’s participating.”
“Katie Riley. My…assistant.”
Kate opened her mouth to protest, but Jim squeezed her shoulder hard enough to make her wince.
A Wedding Story Page 3