“Charl…Mr. Hobson, you did say you wanted to reach the next inn before full dark, didn’t you? And that you must begin to write shortly if you are to wire your story on time?” He was moving slowly but surely toward his buggy, blinking around him when he reached it as if he didn’t quite know how he’d arrived there. “I simply couldn’t impose on you any longer.”
“It was no imposition.” She looked up at him and somehow he found his foot on the running board.
“We will be seeing you again along the way, won’t we?”
The slightest pressure of her fingertips on Hobson’s elbow seemed to lift him up to the seat. “You can count on it.”
He turned around a half dozen times as the buggy rolled away, his expression half-bewildered, half-suspicious. Each time Kate waved brightly after him, encouraging him on his way. The instant he rolled over a slight rise out of sight, she whirled on Jim with all the fury of an uncaged badger.
“You left me,” she said bluntly.
“And you damn well should have stayed left.”
“We had an agreement.”
“Which I altered to what it should have been in the first place, if you’d been willing to be reasonable.”
“Reasonable?” Her voice pitched higher. “It’s reasonable to let you go off, grab all the glory and the money, and leave me wallowing behind, hoping you’ll be charitable enough to pitch a few pennies my way when it’s all over? No, thank you. I’ll earn my way.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” He’d no time for this, no energy. He was a half day behind the bulk of the competitors as it was. She would only slow him down. And so he raked her head-to-toe with as offensively insolent a gaze as he could manage. His brother had worn this expression more often than not. Though he’d tried to forget that, and every other thing about his vicious and brutally self-centered sibling and sire, he’d never quite been able to do so. First time it had ever come in useful, though.
“Truly, your skills are not…well, not to be insulting, but I’d just as soon conserve my energy.”
He’d expected anger. Hoped she would go flouncing off in an offended huff, ridding himself of the problem. Instead, she betrayed no umbrage at all, as if crudities no longer had the power to shock her. “Yes, and your skills have been such an advantage up till this point.” She waved her hand dismissively. “For all you know, we’re headed for Newport. And I’d wager I’ll be far more effective there than you.”
“Newport? Yes, I’m sure that’ll be a challenge.”
“Oh, you have no idea, to so underestimate the treacherous and complicated waters of society.”
He drew himself up, falling back on the role he’d spurned so long ago. “So much more difficult than English society, then?”
“As if you’d know.”
“Excuse me?” After years of being accorded higher rank than he’d deserved, hearing that rank dismissed brought him up short.
“I’ve been considering.”
“God save us.”
She paid him no mind. “I’ve met a few lords in my time, a baron or two. Philadelphia is hardly the frontier, as you know.”
“I know.”
“Each and every one of them owned a refinement of manner, a courtesy that seemed as native to them as their accents. Not to mention an air of inherent nobility, all of which are remarkably absent in you.”
“They are?” He could sketch a bow as well as anyone, dance attendance as if she were the queen herself if the situation required.
She didn’t quite roll her eyes. “Well, obviously. So I’ve come to the conclusion that you’ve overstated your lineage.”
“And why would I do that?”
Her expression bordered on pity, as if only a fool would need something so obvious explained. “Why does anyone? Pursuit of gain. Would all those books, all your lectures be quite as well received if you were, say, the son of a mere gamekeeper? Or a footman?”
A footman? Somewhere, his father’s rotting carcass was rolling like a log downhill. He almost wished the old bastard were still alive, just so he could hear that insult. “I don’t suppose they would.”
“There. You see?” she said, satisfied at having proved her point.
He decided—quite generously, he thought—to allow her her fun. “So how did you find me?” he asked, then lifted a hand to gainsay her answer. “No, no, let me guess. Someone in the stables—someone male. A stableboy, or the stablemaster himself?”
She smiled, the first one since Hobson had trundled off into the sunset. “The stablemaster, of course. He was quite proud of the horse he sold you. He simply pointed me down the road…. If you’re trying to avoid discovery, Bennett, following a straight path without ever turning off is not terribly effective.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He hadn’t bothered because he’d figured she’d wake up, realize he’d abandoned her, and commence to howling. And give up. In the future he’d take what was obviously her ridiculously cursed stubbornness into consideration. For the moment it appeared that dragging her along until she gave up might be less trouble than trying to shake her. “And Hobson giving you a ride?”
“I believe that Mr. Hobson considered the contest, and thus his future articles, more interesting with me in it than me out of it. He positively scrambled to assist me.”
“No doubt. Having a neophyte die a spectacular death always makes for good copy.”
She didn’t even blanch. “Unless you don’t want all those readers to think you too inept to keep me alive, you’d best help me stay that way.” She squinted down the road. “Do you know where we’re going? Or are you simply following the trail the others left behind?”
“I know where we’re going.” He grabbed his dirty green pack from the ground, slung it over his shoulder, and started for the shack.
She waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she scurried forward to place herself between him and the sagging door. “Well?”
He glared at her for a moment, then sighed. “There’s a place on the coast of Massachusetts, a day’s ride north of Boston. Eighty years ago or so a shipping magnate brought an old castle from England stone by stone and rebuilt it on the highest point in a hundred miles. Cost him a good chunk of his fortune. Most people thought he was crazy.” He shrugged, figuring it was no crazier than trying to search out a mythic temple or climb a glacier-sheathed mountain. “Locals call it the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“Hmmm.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Amazingly versed in American history, aren’t you? Considering I’ve never heard of it.”
“I’m sorry your education is so inadequate.” He tsked sadly. “Actually, the most fascinating young woman is employed at the Rose Springs. Well acquainted with nearly all points of interest in the entire northeastern United States. Very fond of rising early for energetic strolls. A highly intriguing woman.”
She glared at him with decided heat—enough to be flattering if he were susceptible to being flattered by her jealousy.
“You didn’t offer her part of the prize in exchange for her information, did you?”
“I most certainly did not. You’re not the only one whose charms are occasionally appreciated by the opposite sex.”
“Hmm.” She rocked back on her heels, sending her skirts swaying. “I thought you objected to my using my…charms for personal gain.”
“I don’t care one bit how you use your charms.” There was too much of an edge to the words, enough bite that she had to suspect the lie beneath them. And right up until he uttered them, he’d no idea just how much of a lie they were. “I object to your attempting to use them on me.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she assured him, a flash in her eyes that a wiser man would have taken for warning. God save him, he couldn’t help but view it as a challenge. “I’ve no intention of wasting my wiles on you.”
“See that you don’t. Not that they’d work anyway, but it’s very…”—he paused just long enough for her temper to flare—“time-consuming.”
“Time-consuming,” she repeated.
“Of course. Think of all I could have accomplished if I hadn’t wasted the last half hour listening to you babble.”
“And clearly I was the only one talking.”
“Yup,” he said cheerfully. Too cheerfully. He should have been running in the other direction. He should have been ignoring her completely, making plans to leave her behind—for good this time. Or working out some sort of practicable agreement for the remainder of the trip, one that allowed him to pretty much overlook her existence ninety-nine percent of the time.
Instead he stood in the gathering gloom, trading barbs with the woman who’d betrayed both him and the doc, and likely destroyed dozens of lesser men along the way. Because it made him feel alive, tingly and edgy, alert with the kind of anticipation he used to feel when he was right on the verge of discovering something extraordinary.
“What do we next, Jim?”
“We go to bed.”
Chapter 6
He studied her expression as she entered the shack. He knew what she saw: a half dozen tools, rusted beyond recognition. A stack of splintery boards, a pile of moldy hay, gaps in the walls as broad as her wrist. Any one of her gowns was worth more than ten times the place.
She looked lovely in the shadows, every bit as bewitching as she did in sunshine. Her hair shimmered softly, her eyes growing darker, mysterious as twilight. Some women seemed made for moonlight, others for the clear, bright day. She seemed a dozen women in one, different in every light, every situation, multifaceted as a gem, each one as beguiling as the next.
Perhaps that was her essential allure. A changeling seductress, all colors flashing in one—one moment all tender innocence, heartrendingly pure; the next the blatant sexuality of a practiced temptress.
He kept searching for remnants of that girl he’d known. He knew she was gone. Knew she’d never really existed anywhere but in his starved imagination. Yet he couldn’t help but look for her, as thirsty for a glimpse of the girl he’d thought he’d known as he’d been for water when he’d first left the desert.
Her lip curled, only a slight hint of revulsion, smoothing into a cool smile in an instant.
She looked up at him then, too quickly for him to glance away. Caught, he felt the crackle of electricity, the air so charged that he half expected the pile of hay to ignite.
Her mouth waited. Half open, ripe as a summer berry, a soft gleam of moisture and temptation. He could only guess at the number of lovers she’d had in the intervening years. A dozen? A hundred?
It should have repulsed him. She was a woman who had betrayed not only him but Doctor Goodale as well. But oh, the wicked things she must have learned to do with that mouth. There was powerful excitement in the knowledge that she knew how to use it.
She saved him. She looked away, as if unable to hold his gaze any longer. In profile, she was pretty. Lovely, even, jawline cleanly defined, nose a perfect slope. But resistable; without the animation of her face, the light in her eyes, she was only another beautiful woman.
“It’s getting dark,” she murmured, gesturing to the open window. Outside, evening was sliding toward night, the sky bruising to deep purple.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Cloudy.”
“Yes,” he said again, as irritation tightened the corners of her mouth. Was it so easy for her, then? A hint and men leaped to do her bidding? Well, if she wanted something from him, she’d have to ask.
And maybe not even then.
“Don’t you think we should get my luggage in?”
He shrugged. “You want it in, you move it.”
“Excuse me?” she said, with enough disbelief he laughed aloud.
“You heard what I said.”
“But—”
“Do I look like a porter to you?”
She slowly eyed the width of his shoulders, and his breath staggered. Damn, shouldn’t this be wearing off by now? He simply couldn’t spend the next few months aroused to the point of pain every time she came within a few feet of him.
But her gaze skittered away like a scalded cat. She seemed as unsettled by his presence as he was by hers. Perhaps it was guilt that disturbed her, though he wouldn’t have considered her the guilty type. Or simple annoyance—they seemed unable to pass a word together without sniping at each other, and she was obviously accustomed to bending men to her will with the snap of her fingers.
His pride wanted him to believe it was ardor, the same incendiary passion, unwelcome and ungovernable, that blew through him with the force of a hurricane. But in that way lay certain disaster; if he dared accept that the same desire simmered in her, they wouldn’t make it through the night unscathed, much less through the entire contest.
Would that be so bad? The thought was insidious, a whisper of potent temptation. He indulged it for a moment until his vision blurred and blood pumped in his temples.
Of course it was bad. Not to mention downright stupid. One kiss from her had haunted him for years. God only knew what a whole night might do.
She shook her head slowly. “You’re really not going to bring them in?”
“There’s no point in it. We’re going to have to leave them all behind anyway.”
“Hmm.” She wasn’t a bit convinced. Her mouth was pursed, the smooth arches of her brows drawn together in concentration. “It can wait until morning, I suppose. It doesn’t look much like rain, and it’s not as if a thief’s likely to stumble across us in the dark.”
“True.”
“I need a few things, though.”
“Go ahead.”
She returned dragging a trunk that had to weigh more than she did, and pulled up short when she saw him settled in his pallet on the lone stack of hay.
“Why do you get the bed?”
“It’s hardly a bed,” he replied, and turned over with as much rustling and crackling as he could manage.
“It’s as close as we’ve got.”
“We’ve got nothing.” He tugged a blanket over his shoulders and snapped his eyes shut. “I found a reasonably comfortable place to spend the night. It is not my problem that you decided to come barging in.”
He heard the swish of her skirts as she approached, followed by the impatient tapping of her feet near his own.
“Did your mother teach you nothing?”
“She taught me all kinds of things.” Mustiness filled his nostrils and his nose twitched. The old straw prickled in all sorts of uncomfortable places. Had he been alone, he would have already surrendered to the floor. But now it had become the principle of the thing. “But the field taught me a fair amount, too. And your husband even more.”
“Well, now, that explains a great deal.”
He dared to crack open one eye. She had both fists on her hips—and lovely, curvy things they were—and blood in her eyes. And he’d have pulled her right down with him if it wasn’t guaranteed she’d fight him every step of the way.
Then her posture eased. “I’ll play you for it,” she said, such suggestion in her voice that she might have been proposing something else entirely.
“Play me?” He pushed himself up to his elbows.
“Play you for it.”
“Play what?”
She shrugged, as if it meant little. “Whatever. Cards, dice…riddles?”
There was no way in hell he was going to get tangled up in word games with her.
“I don’t gamble,” he told her.
She arched a brow. “Ever?”
“No.” He knew the night was warm. And yet he pulled the blanket closer around him. “My father and my brother did enough of that for a dozen families, thank you very much. And lost enough for ten dozen, for they’d been as rotten at the tables as they’d been good at taking out their losses on anyone within reach.”
“Oh.” Her head tilted as if she didn’t know quite what to make of his admission. “So you’ve never tried it?”
“For twigs or stones, around a cam
pfire now and then. Nothing that mattered.” When he couldn’t talk his way out of playing without the explanations becoming more painful than the game.
She smiled broadly, a flash of even white teeth, a seductive curve of mouth. “Well, this should be fine, then. A night’s use of that pile of straw is scarcely worth more than a handful of twigs.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “If you get me started…who knows where I might end up, once you nudge me down that slippery slope.”
“Would I lead you astray?”
Their mood had been light, verging on playful. It darkened in an instant, pulsing with seduction.
“I imagine you’ve done your fair share of leading astray.”
She swallowed hard and took a step back, putting a strip of packed earth between them, and focused her gaze on the battered wood of the wall above his head. The cords of her neck stood out tautly above a soft ruffle of lace.
She couldn’t be hurt, not by such a simple remark. She was not a young, sheltered girl to be wounded by the merest slight. He reminded himself that she was as capable of playing on his sympathies as playing on his passions.
“I would be willing to bet,” she said softly, “that you’ve done your own share of leading astray, too.”
Damn.
“Fine.” He could not lay at her feet a moment longer and surged to his feet. “I’ll play you for the bed.”
“No.” She backed away farther, shaking her head. “It was a silly idea. You were here first. The floor will suit for tonight.”
“I said I’d play you for it,” he snapped, more sharply than he intended.
“You should enjoy it while you can,” she said. “Because you won’t be beating me to the prime spot from here on out, I promise you.” Her smile was bare of its usual dazzle. Interesting; this smile did not make his heart go thump, his breath bellow in and out of its own accord.
“I couldn’t sleep at the moment anyway. I wouldn’t mind the distraction.”
A Wedding Story Page 6