He grimaced, the old bitterness lancing his chest.
Once upon a time, he'd been so desperate for love that he'd let hope worm its way into his heart. He thought back to his first romantic role, young Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing. Although he'd only been sixteen, he'd been stunned by the number of sighing, swooning females who'd crowded backstage. Regardless of his bastardy, they'd offered him their favors, and in his naiveté, he'd thought they loved him.
Only after they'd grown bored with Raphael Jones had he come to understand that women were infatuated with romance—the heroism of Hotspur, the poetry of Lysander, the tragedy of Romeo. Thus, he'd learned to answer late-night invitations with a bouquet of roses and Shakespeare's best love sonnets.
Such would be his approach with Silver. She was no angel, and he was no saint. But Silver, being female, would want to believe she was virtuous. She'd want to feel desirable and experience the grand romantic gesture: to be swept off her feet.
Rafe wasn't opposed to the idea; after all, he was a dramatist. Pirate, poet, prophet, prince—whatever she wanted, he could play the part. And if Silver preferred to pretend her lover was a real-life nobleman rather than some fictional character, then so be it. Imposters were his specialty.
He hadn't played himself in years.
The thought made him wince. Shaking himself, he chose to forget it. He saw no sense in dwelling on the injustices of his life. Long, hard experience had taught him to concentrate on the present. The past was too painful, and the future—an eternal captaincy in Satan's army—was too bleak. Only in the moment could he ever hope to find relief. And if Rafe didn't use that precious moment to examine his feelings too closely, he could convince himself he was happy. After all, the moon was full, the wind was alpine fresh, and the mountain laurels smelled like summer wine. He had an heiress in his back pocket, and the promise of wealth to sweeten his dreams. For now, these were enough.
Whistling as he strolled, Rafe passed through Leadville's business district, with its respectable, cobbled streets and glowing gaslights. He set his sights on the dusty, moonlit alley where his own lodgings lay. Unlike the opulence of Silver's Grand Hotel suite, his room was cramped and shabby, a virtual closet above a noisy gambling hall. He hadn't had much choice in accommodations, though, not with threadbare pockets and a traveling companion like Tavy—
Damn. Tavy. He'd left her with Fiona.
Sighing, he turned in midstride only to collide with an elegantly dressed man who was hurrying—slinking, actually—out of the alley leading to the Tabor Opera House.
"Damnation," the man muttered as his top hat tumbled into the gutter.
"My middle name," Rafe countered dryly, thinking to make amends by retrieving the hat.
But the man shoved him aside. "Clod," he snapped, wading through the refuse himself. His accent was unmistakably eastern.
"As you say," Rafe murmured, noting the scar that arched above the tenderfoot's left temple.
Brushing off the brim, the easterner tossed him a malevolent look, jammed on his hat, and hurried in the direction of the Grand Hotel. Rafe shook his head. With that scarlet-lined cape flapping out behind him, the easterner could have been Tabor's own phantom of the opera—except, of course, his leading-man good looks hadn't been marred badly enough for that role. Too bad about the scar, Rafe mused. Fiona's stage makeup could have fixed him up in a heartbeat...
Damn. He made a face, thoughts of Fiona reminding him of his mission. The last thing he wanted to do was face his foster parents again. Fiona was bound to wheedle, and Fred would undoubtedly ask questions. The less those two old hucksters knew about Silver's scheme, the better. Rafe couldn't very well extort a lifetime worth of savings from the Nicholses if he had to split his take with Fred and Fiona.
No, he'd have to come up with some kind of reasonable explanation to throw them off his trail. The question was, what?
Rafe was still searching for an answer when he rounded the corner of the magnificent brick edifice that shopkeeper Horace Tabor had built after he'd grubstaked enough miners to earn his fortune. Rafe hardly glanced twice at the opera house, though. Instead, he wound his way through the debris of its rear alley until he came to what was left of a fire-ravaged livery. Fred's Piccadilly Players had parked their wagons here in a semicircle, Injun-fighting style, around the wreckage.
An inexplicable pang of homesickness seized him when he glimpsed the same lantern that had drawn him out of the snow, fifteen years earlier, to Fred's door. He didn't want to be bound to his former employers, yet he didn't know how not to be. Despite all of Fred's bullying and Fiona's manipulation, the Brits had been better parents to him than Jedidiah Jones.
Scheduled for a six-week engagement, the theater troupe had turned the blackened lot into a miniature neighborhood. Rafe ducked a clothesline, smiled crookedly at a pair of patched bloomers, skirted a water barrel, and paused wistfully before a rocking horse before he finally climbed the wagon's step and beat his fist on the foot-long likeness of Fred's nose.
The door cracked, and the master prevaricator himself appeared.
"Well, ho! If it isn't the conquering hero," the Brit boomed in a voice that, Rafe was certain, rattled the windows in each of the six other wagons. "Fee, my sweet, you'll never guess who's come to call." He tossed this sally over his shoulder, even louder this time, before turning to squint once more at Rafe through his ever-present fog of smoke. "What a rare treat, to see you after midnight—and after Miss Silver's gone abed too. You must have missed the company of us regular folk. Either that, or your high-falutin' heiress threw you out on your ear."
Rafe endeavored not to glare.
"You're awake late," he parried in his best offhand manner. "I didn't interrupt anything between you and Fiona, did I?"
"Bloody hell. I can't remember the last time me and Fee were doing something we could get interrupted at. She's a sick woman, lad. A bloke can't go around demanding conjugal rights from a sick woman—unless, of course, he doesn't mind losing a favorite piece of his anatomy."
Rafe winced inwardly. Only sixty seconds after he'd arrived, and Fred was already heaping the guilt on uncomfortably thick. "Words to live by I'm sure. And how is Fiona?" he asked dutifully.
"Hacking her lungs out." Fred seemed to remember his cigar and abruptly extinguished it against the door. "'Course," he added sheepishly, "I'm sure she feels a whole lot better knowing you've come to keep her company."
As if to corroborate this statement, a shriek ripped from the rear of the wagon, followed closely by a noise that sounded like a shoe striking the wall. Fred started, turning, and Rafe could finally see beyond his bulk. An enormous cloud of facial powder was rising behind the red-and-white checkered curtain that dissected the cluttered wagon and hid Fiona from his view.
"Fred!" she shouted ominously.
He cleared his throat. "Fee, honey, good news," he called in placating tones. "You've got a visitor. It's Rafe."
"Rafe?" Her angry vibrato immediately steadied, lowering in pitch to a martyr-like groan. "God has answered a dying woman's prayers. Come in, my boy, come in."
Rafe bolstered himself against another breaker of guilt and, pushing past Fred, parted the curtain. Through the settling dust, he spied Fiona on a narrow cot, her nightcap askew and her cheeks pasty white against the backdrop of yellowed linens. She managed to look weak and pitiful, despite the fact that only moments earlier she'd been yelling at the top of her lungs and hurling shoes.
Then he noticed many of her vases were overturned on the floor. Spilled water and petals mixed with clumps of red, green, and blue stage makeup, toppled containers, and the broken pieces of glass from the hapless powder jar. Beneath her window, an auburn braid had been happily chewed, while on top of Fred's trunk, a second, straw-colored hairpiece had been trampled by tiny, rouge-stained paws.
Tavy had been busy.
Narrowing his focus, Rafe tracked his pet's webbed prints—in all their various colors—around her circular path of dest
ruction. After a moment, he spied a trail that cut straight across the wagon, making a bee-line for Fiona's bed. He knelt and raised the quilt.
There, trembling in the back of her cage, was his four-month-old otter pup.
With her tail tucked between her legs, her ears squeezed shut, and her snout pressed contritely to her forepaws, Tavy looked the very picture of misery. Rafe suspected that things had been pretty bad between Fiona and Tavy if his pet had voluntarily placed herself behind bars.
"Come here, Tavy," he crooned, stretching out his hand.
The otter baby gave a chirp of relief. Scrambling past her prison's open door, she threw herself at his feet and wrapped her length around his ankle. He could feel her body quivering through his boot leather.
Fred chuckled. "Well now, you see? Fee and Tavy are getting along much better than they were this morning, aren't you, Fee?"
Fiona muttered something about "stinkin' rodents." Tavy blinked big wounded eyes at Rafe as if to say, "Grandma's being mean to me."
"I'm sorry she was such a bother," Rafe said, prying his pet's paws free so he could lift her into his arms. "Otters are supposed to be tidy, like cats."
"Well, they're not," Fiona grumbled, giving Tavy a look that, if she'd had nine lives, would instantly have snuffed out five or six.
"Aw, the little tyke's just curious," Fred said magnanimously, patting Tavy's head. "Once she starts learning tricks, she'll be too busy keeping the kiddies entertained to ransack any wagons. Why, I figure she could work for peanuts, kind of like one of those circus monkeys—"
"Otters don't eat peanuts," Rafe said pleasantly, disguising his irritation, "and the only trick Tavy is going to learn is how to swim. We've got a one-way ticket to the high country, where there'll be plenty of otters to help me teach her how. In fact, we're leaving Leadville in the morning. Say good-night, Tavy."
Fred snorted. "You expect me to believe you'd rather teach some orphaned otter how to survive in the wild than hump the richest, unattached female in the state? Hell, lad, what's the matter with you? You can lie better than that. I taught you how."
Rafe flashed a well-rehearsed grin. "Who says I didn't already satisfy Miss Nichols?"
Fred eyed him speculatively.
"So that's it with the heiress?" Fiona demanded. "No fancy dispensation? No souvenir for your poor, sick Fee?"
"I didn't steal her hairbrush, if that's what you mean."
"Here now," Fred growled, "you watch that tongue of yours. You're talking to a dying woman."
Fiona wheezed.
Rafe fidgeted, averting his eyes to Tavy. She gazed adoringly back at him. She was always glad to see him, whether he brought her trinkets or not. She never made him feel like his only real worth was the money he brought in.
"Sorry to disappoint you, Fiona," he said dryly. "My pockets are as empty now as the day you took me in."
Fred snorted. "They would've been a whole lot fuller if you hadn't let a blooming bluestocking sniff out our con. Hell, lad, you've gone rusty. And then to let the chit slip through your fingers without pinching as much as a silver dollar off her—"
"Freddie, luv, the boy can't very well go and force himself on the woman if she doesn't have any use for him."
Rafe smiled blandly at Fiona's dig. "My sentiments exactly."
He took a step toward the door, but Fred folded his arms, barring his way.
"And you're not going to do a bloody thing about the way she made a jackass out of you tonight?"
"Which time?" Rafe asked evenly.
For a moment, Fred's brows lowered in a thunderous expression. Silence fell so fast and thick that Rafe couldn't even hear Fiona's breathing.
Then the old huckster laughed, a loud and hearty sound. "I've got to hand it to you, lad. You had me going there. 'Which time,' indeed. So what's the plan? Are you going to break her heart? Or are you just going to rob her blind?"
"That will all depend on my mood, I suppose," Rafe said, playing along. To pretend his business with Silver was that of a spurned suitor bent on revenge was, ironically, one of the few businesses in which Fred wasn't likely to interfere. At least, that was Rafe's gamble. If Fred caught the scent of profit wafting out of Aspen, there'd be no keeping him in Leadville. Fred might have a certain fondness for him, but that fondness wouldn't keep him from employing every wile—including extortion—to get his hands on Nichols silver.
Fiona, meanwhile, was shooting furtive, daggerlike glares at her husband. Pasting on a motherly frown, she turned back to Rafe. "And how do you think you're going to keep yourself in champagne and caviar long enough to get this heiress to notice you? You don't have a blooming dollar to your name, lad. Forget the bluestocking. Like as not, she'll be as lively as a wet dishrag in bed anyway.
"'Sides," Fiona continued, wheezing faintly, "my physic says I'll be pushing up daisies by year's end. This may be the last chance my fading old eyes get to watch you tame the shrew. You were the best Petruchio we ever had, Rafe. And we've always been guaranteed a full house when you bare your soul as Romeo. Then there's your Benedick—you know Fred's too old to play the role—and your Hotspur always makes the ladies swoon—"
"No deal, Fiona. I've had enough. After Fred's little improvisation tonight, the prospect of hanging around Leadville has taken on a whole new meaning for me."
Fred scowled, his bottom lip jutting. "I already told you how it was. Baiting those suckers with pyrite would have gotten us both lynched."
"Face it, Fred," he retorted. "You can't help yourself. You'll be a showboater 'til the day you die. I need a stage of my own."
Fred's chest swelled up with wounded pride. "So that's the way of it, eh?"
"That's right," Rafe said more quietly, cursing himself for feeling the old twinge of guilt. If Fred and Fiona had cared about him rather than the money they thought he'd bring in, he would have been tempted—sorely tempted—to bail out on Silver and forfeit her fortune.
But when one faced an eternity in Hell, he reminded himself bitterly, one had to take what little comfort one could get. His foster parents should be pleased to know they'd tutored him so well. Money was all he cared about.
He glanced down at the baby dozing so trustingly in his arms.
Well... money and Tavy.
Fiona was making distressed rasping sounds. "What's the matter with you two, bickering over a dying woman's bed? I won't stand for it, you hear me? I want my last days to be happy ones, with my family gathered 'round me. Fred, you tell Rafe you're sorry. Rafe, you apologize to Fred."
The two men glared at each other.
Fiona made a hiccupping noise. When the threat of her sobs didn't work, she promptly burst into tears. Fred blew out his breath.
"Now Fee, honey," he murmured gruffly, groping for his wife's hand, "don't work yourself up. It can't be healthy in the delicate state you're in. Besides, the boy and I aren't feuding." Fred shot Rafe a warning glance. "Isn't that right, Rafe?"
He sighed. "We're not feuding, Fiona. It was a difference of opinion, that's all."
"So...?" She sniffled, peering up at him with watery eyes. "You'll make an old woman's last days happy? You'll join our theater family again?"
Rafe gritted his teeth. "I told you how it was, Fiona. I'll be hanged if I'm recognized here."
"God have mercy, God have mercy," she wailed, throwing herself into Fred's arms and rocking back and forth. "How will we survive? The creditors, they're camped out at our door, and we can't afford my medicine..."
"I'll send you some of Silver's money," Rafe ground out.
"You will?" she whimpered. "When?"
"Just as soon as I can get my hands on it, okay?"
She sniffed again. Fred solemnly handed her a handkerchief, and she blew her nose loud and long.
"You were always a good boy, Rafe," she said wistfully, dabbing her eyes with the corner of her sleeve, "a better son than our own turned out to be. I knew you wouldn't let us down."
"There now, Fee," Fred soothed. "You li
e back and rest yourself. No more worrying about money, you hear?"
She nodded contritely, settling into her pillows once more. Rafe looked away, swallowing bile. He didn't know whether to be outraged or heartsick. That she would use her illness as a weapon against him was perfectly in character for Fiona. That she would rank him in favor higher than her own son was not. Damnation. Rafe didn't think he could bear it if he had to watch her waste away the way his mother had.
"I should be going," he said gruffly.
"What about Tavy?" Fred demanded.
Wariness quickly bolstered his defenses. "What about her?"
Fred shrugged, giving Fiona's hand a last squeeze before rising from the bed. "I wouldn't think otters and bluestockings mix well socially. 'Course, I don't mean anything personal by that, Miss Tavy," he added gallantly, winking at the pup. He reached out to stroke her silken fur, and she gave a sleepy chirp.
"As far as I'm concerned, the world could use a lot more otters and a lot less bluestockings." He gave Rafe a sideways glance. "As hoity-toity as that Nichols chit is, I suspect you're going to need a couple of weeks at least to bring her down a peg and woo some money out of her. Tavy's welcome to stay here until you do."
Rafe's chin hardened, and he eased Tavy away from Fred's petting. He remembered only too well how Fred had sneaked off a mere two weeks after they'd left Blue Thunder and had sold Belle to pay off creditors. The next day, Belle's well-whipped, well-lathered carcass had been found in a roadside ditch with a broken leg and a bullet through her brain. Rafe might have killed Belle's new bastard of an owner if he'd had the vaguest inkling how. At the time, Fred had acted just as furious as Rafe had felt, but he'd never apologized for stealing the filly. And he'd never given Rafe one penny from her sale.
"Thanks, but I think Tavy'll be just the thing to break the ice with Silver Nichols."
"You do? Really?"
Not at all, Rafe thought. But he'd be damned if he'd let Fred get his hands on Tavy. The man might start out with good intentions, but greed and debt invariably whittled them away.
"Fiona needs her rest," Rafe hedged, "and Tavy's been enough excitement for one day. I'll wire you in a week or so, once I get settled. I trust your show will run at least that long," he added dryly.
Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) Page 7