He raised Tavy to his shoulder. She draped herself around the back of his neck with a contented little sigh. Inclining his head, Rafe took his leave.
Fred frowned thoughtfully after him.
"Is he gone?" Fiona whispered irritably.
The self-professed master of dramatic timing, Fred didn't answer immediately. Instead, he fished in his vest pocket and pulled out another cigar.
"For now," he answered, striking a match.
"Then get rid of these bloody weeds so I can start breathing again," Fiona grumbled, tossing aside her blankets and shimmying out of her sweat-soaked nightdress.
Fred eyed his wife's matronly chest and plump thighs in a mixture of affection and resignation. She'd been a looker in her day. But then, so had he.
His lips curved faintly at the pun. If his old lady hadn't been so damned sharp-witted, he might have gotten away with more mischief over the years. But it was that mind of hers that kept luring him back to her bed. That mind and her incomparable skill as a shyster.
"We can't toss out the flowers yet, luv. The boy might still decide to bid you a proper adieu in the morning."
Fiona muttered an oath. Throwing open the window, she fanned herself vigorously, noisily dragging in the cool alpine air through her mouth. Good old Fee. She was even willing to suffer hayfever to pull off a scam. Too bad the otter had spilled all her facial powder. If Rafe returned, they'd have the devil of a time re-creating that red nose of hers. Hmm. Maybe it would be enough to keep the wagon in shadows...
"I felt like a blooming Christmas goose, sitting on that bed warmer," Fiona groused, interrupting his thoughts.
"As accomplished as you are, even you can't sweat on cue, Fee, although I must say—" he blew a stream of smoke into the air and gave her a cheeky grin "—you certainly warmed up to your role."
She tossed him a withering glare. "I should never have let you talk me into this. Consumption, for God's sake! And when columbines are out of season, and I've stopped wheezing like a bellows, how am I supposed to explain myself to the boy?"
Fred waved her concern away, leaving a swath of cigar smoke in his wake. "Mexico dries out the lungs, so they say."
"The boy's not green anymore."
"He fell for your act hook, line, and sinker."
"That's because I'm the best. And the poor sot thinks of us as family." She shivered, slamming the window shut again, and hugged her arms to her breasts. "I hope you're happy now. I'm likely to catch pneumonia, and he's still not coming back to the troupe."
"Sure he will. Right after that heiress kicks him out on his ass."
Fiona shook her head. "You're underestimating him. You always have. Just because he doesn't swing his fists and call you a bastard to your face doesn't mean he's a Milquetoast. He's got his own ways. And he's damned cagey about them. What woman can resist a man who spouts poetry and woos like a cavalier? What's more likely is he'll marry that Nichols woman and win himself a fortune. Then we'll lose him for good."
Fred cocked an eyebrow. "You're underestimating Miss Silver, luv."
Fiona snorted.
Retrieving a clean nightdress from her trunk, she tugged it over her head. "In any event," she said, moving back to the bed and yanking the warmer out from under the sheet, "he's never going to forgive you, Fred. Not this time," she added, a hint of regret tinging her voice. "I hope you've got the stomach for that."
His chin rose with a trace of its old, youthful belligerence. "He knows the way it is with creditors."
"That may be. But that doesn't mean he'll excuse you for turning him into a sap."
Fred shrugged, telling himself he didn't care. He was the boss, and business was business. Besides, if it hadn't been for him and Fiona, that wide-eyed preacher's boy would have wound up six feet under. Never in all his fifty-three years had Fred met an urchin so unschooled in the ways of the street. He'd taken advantage of the kid a couple of times just to toughen him up. Rafe hadn't been too appreciative of his education, but the way Fred saw it, he'd been doing Rafe a favor.
His gaze turned wistfully toward the wagon door and the flickering gaslights beyond.
Still, it was a bloody damned shame Rafe was harboring so many bad feelings about those years. The resentment had been unmistakable in the boy's eyes whenever Fred had gotten too close to his precious Tavy.
"It's not too late, Freddie," Fiona said more quietly. "I say we come clean. Tell him the truth before he leaves on the morning stage."
Fred got a hold of himself. Sentiment—especially maudlin sentiment—he reserved for the limelight. As far as he was concerned, Rafe owed them. Lately, the lad hadn't been paying his dues.
"Hell, no. Don't let all that boyish charm make a sucker out of you, Fee. Our young Romeo's pulling a scam of his own and cheating us out of the take."
Fiona blinked, her jaw dropping.
"How do you know that?"
Fred gave her a crooked little smile.
"I followed him to Miss Silver's balcony."
Chapter 5
Four days later, Silver was a nervous wreck—and not just because "the Earl of Chumley" had yet to check into the Windsor Hotel.
No, she'd had to postpone her worry that Rafe had scammed her, because Papa, who couldn't keep a secret to save his life, had flapped his jaw. His séance idea had become the front-page headline in the Aspen Times, and pernicious Brady had penned something inflammatory on the editorial page, too. Now her miners were convinced they worked in untenable conditions, and the Union was clamoring for a wage increase.
Silver had tried to table negotiations for two more days so she wouldn't be up to her eyeballs in lawyers while she was averting last-minute calamities for her father's engagement party. Unfortunately, this tactic had only led Union leaders to growl ultimatums. Needless to say, a strike was every mine owner's nightmare. Purported ghost sightings in Silver's Mine had already cut production quotas by half, and she just knew the whole operation would shut down if she didn't stop Papa's séance.
So here she was, forty-eight hours before her father's engagement party, trying to prevent public humiliation and financial crisis by sneaking his stupid spiritkeepers out of the office in a picnic basket festooned with pink and yellow ribbons.
Thanks to Celestia Cooper, she was now a petty thief.
Silver glanced around the corner, her heart hammering against her ribs. The building that housed the mining offices was almost deserted, thanks to the ghost sighting nearly twenty minutes ago. After a score of white-faced shovel stiffs had poured out of the mine, vowing never again to go back, Papa had dragged the superintendent and a reluctant engineer below to prove the subterranean chambers were safe for human habitation. While they'd been occupied, she'd slunk back to Papa's desk, unloaded the dinner Celestia had packed him, and dumped his worthless rocks inside the basket. The way her conscience was crying foul, one would have thought she'd robbed the safe.
Silver scowled, wishing she'd come up with some better idea to prevent Celestia's séance. Unfortunately, she'd been a bit pressed for time, what with her miners on the rampage, her father planning marital suicide, and her French chef—the one she'd so triumphantly lured away from the Chloride Restaurant for the party—threatening to quit after Papa put pigs-in-a-poke on the menu.
Yes, her life was just a bowl of cherries, she thought irritably, watching as a stout, thick-muscled charcoal burner chose that inopportune moment to leave the smelting house. Forget for a moment that she didn't consider Papa's entrapment by a booby worthy of celebration.
Forget, too, that the only reason anyone was coming to the party was to get a good belly laugh at his expense. She'd finally agreed to host the farce because she so dearly loved the man whose hand-tooled gifts had been her only source of comfort after Mama's carriage accident.
But that didn't mean she was even remotely resigned to entertaining the harpy who'd seduced her precious daddy!
Silver's jaw jutted, and she blew a lock of hair out of her eyes.
Trying to ignore her sweaty palms, Silver watched the charcoal burner stroll past her and finally enter the privy. She loosed a ragged breath. Hallelujah. The coast was clear.
Struggling to hoist her now back-breaking load, she made a break for it, hobbling at tortoise speed toward the pack mules.
Well, one thing was in her favor, she thought, huffing as she strapped the basket to a burro. Aside from the charcoal burner, the mining compound was practically deserted. The sun wasn't yet low enough in the sky for the few remaining stalwarts who manned the stamp mill to begin the evening candle parade down the mountain to their homes.
In fact, the machinery still boomed in the building behind the mule corral, making the earth tremble. She hardly noticed, though. She was used to industrial activity. When her teeth buzzed in the vicinity of her sawmill, or the china in her kitchen cabinets rattled from the dynamite blasts at her mine nearly five miles away, she figured it was a small price to pay for turning Aspen into a bona fide town. In 1878, before she'd raised the money to process silver ore locally, Aspen had been little better than a clapboard village, shipping its ore over the mountains to Leadville.
Of course, since Brady Buckholtz couldn't abide the words "woman" and "proprietor" in the same sentence, the Aspen Times had hailed Papa as the hero who'd brought the first smelter to the city. Silver had been irritated, but she'd let Papa take the credit. She'd been the first female to manage a prosperous and legitimate business in this town, and she'd had to cope with many a belligerent male.
In the face of such anger, she'd learned to pick her battles. And thanks to Aaron Townsend, she'd learned the hard way.
Shaking herself free of such hair-raising memories, Silver hurried the burro to her horse. So far so good, she thought in true criminal fashion, squinting at the sky as she mounted her mare. The sun hadn't sunk below the treetops yet, and that meant she had plenty of time to dump the rocks and ride home before dark.
Unfortunately, she couldn't take the usual route. Papa would follow her and rediscover his wretched stones. Heaven forbid she should have to go through all this slinking and skulking again.
She brightened as an idea dawned. The Roaring Fork. The river was so thick with sawdust that Papa would never find his rocks. She could dump the whole basket in the current and rest assured she'd never see the wretched thing again.
Murmuring "gee" to the mule, she spurred her mare past the pine stumps that littered the once forested compound. The dead wood jutting up from the earth made the yard look junky. What was worse, big pink weeds, like pussy paws and dogbane, had seeded themselves between stumps. She wrinkled her nose at the hearty wildflowers. She'd heard the Utes actually had a use for such eyesores, but she couldn't imagine what that might be. One of these days, she thought idly as she reached the end of the pine graveyard, she'd have to order this land cleared. Dogbane was poisonous to pack mules, and surfaced roots made treacherous footing.
A sudden, sticky chill accompanied this thought. She shuddered, her goose bumps unexpectedly visceral. Considering the fact that spring was in full flower in the Roaring Fork Valley, she couldn't help but mark the odd sensation especially after her mule, for no apparent reason, loosed an ear-splitting bray and reared. She fought to hold on to its tether, muttering oaths between her croons of comfort. Usually, burros were docile creatures unless they smelled a coyote.
"Come on, Jenny," she soothed. "It's all right. See? Liberty's not worried."
That wasn't entirely true, since her mare's eyes were now rolling. But Silver was less worried about surprising a coyote than losing a valuable pack animal. Coyotes had nowhere to hide in a stump forest. Horses and mules, on the other hand, could hurdle themselves through the debris and break a leg.
For the rest of that journey, Silver battled her uneasiness. Her animals weren't much consolation, since they spooked each time a bee buzzed or a magpie shrilled. It was downright eerie. She tried to tell herself she was being silly, that no predator large enough to hurt her could hide behind a tree stump, and that included outlaws.
Nevertheless, her shivers continued. Instinct told her that something she couldn't quite see or hear was following her—just as she'd dreamed in her nightmares about Nahele. The realization was far from comforting.
But to actually acknowledge that Nahele was real—and worse, that he was stalking her across deforested acreage that she had ordered her lumbermen to clear—was preposterous. She refused to dignify such nonsense. Even to her mule.
At last the gray-green aspen trunks closed around her. She didn't know whether to be relieved or further alarmed at that point. City-born and bred, she'd never much cared for forests. Her nerves were stretched to their limits. She couldn't enjoy the beauty of the columbines, stretching like an azure field of stars along the riverbank.
When at last she reached the water's edge, perspiration was rolling between her breasts. Her hands were damp and sticky as she fumbled with Jenny's buckles. To her dismay, the basket slid free of its straps, crashing bottom-side-up under Jenny's belly. Silver muttered an oath, envisioning a hoofprint in her forehead as she stooped to retrieve the nuisance.
"Come on, Jenny," she said, leading the animal a safe twenty feet away. "I sure wish I knew what had you so jittery."
The twig that snapped behind her was nearly her undoing.
"Maybe the ol' girl's in heat," drawled a familiar Kentucky accent.
"Jones!" She practically shrieked his name. She didn't know whether to be relieved or outraged to see him. "How dare you sneak up on me like that! Were you following me all this time?"
"'All this time'?" He flashed a lopsided grin, leaning his flannel-clad shoulder against a tree. "That all depends. How long do you think someone was following you?"
Ooh, wretched man. She would have loved to wring his neck. "Never mind," she snapped, hiding the tremor in her hands beneath the folds of her tweed riding skirt. "Just where the devil have you been? You were supposed to register at the Windsor Hotel two days ago."
"Why, Silver, I'm touched," he purred. "That you would miss me—"
"Oh, stop it."
He chuckled, his pewter eyes like polished mirrors in the slanting shafts of light. "Very well. But might I remind you of your instructions? I was supposed to purchase a conveyance suitable for a British lord. I couldn't very well do that in Aspen, now, could I? All the social-climbing busybodies would have been appalled to know that our noble Lord Chumley haggles over pennies like a horse trader."
She narrowed her eyes at him. He had a point. Still, she knew better than to drop her guard. He was as lean and lithe as a puma, and probably twice as dangerous—at least to her peace of mind. She tried not to notice how his blue jeans strained across his thighs or how the red-checkered plaid of his shirt accentuated the width of his chest. The wind-teased curl that spilled so boyishly across his forehead couldn't quell her misgivings. Raphael Jones smiled like a fallen angel. And fallen was the operative word.
"I left you more than enough money to rent a coach," she rallied briskly. "And if you would have gone to the Windsor Hotel, as we'd agreed, you would have found the bank draft waiting for you. Not to mention," she muttered with a twinge of remorse, "a score or more of sycophants all eager to meet 'a real live aristo.'"
Honestly, the stir she'd caused was disgraceful. After one bald lie to the greenhorn who operated Buckholtz's printing press, the whole town was rolling out the red carpet for her hornswoggler. The Aspen Times and the Rocky Mountain Sun were vying to run the biggest banner headline in history to commemorate Rafe's—or rather, Chumley's—arrival. Shopkeepers, restauranteurs, and whores were all hanging sig
ns of welcome, most of which were abysmally spelled.
Even Benson seemed to be getting into the spirit. He'd starting sporting a gold watchfob and cufflinks, extravagances she'd once thought alien to his nature. In fact, when she'd surprised her butler on Galena Street yesterday, emerging from First National Bank with a wad of greenbacks in his hand, he'd seemed immensely embarrassed and had hastened to divert her from his windfall.
Come to think of it, she thought fleetingly, he'd diverted her from entering the bank, too. That meant she'd have to get rid of Rafe, dump these rocks, and ride to the vault before it closed.
Silver pressed her lips together. Why was nothing simple?
"Well," she said in her best businesslike voice, "you're burning daylight, as Papa would say. The commercial district closes in about an hour, so I suggest you hurry back to town for a discreet chat with Signor Marzetti. He's Aspen's most distinguished tailor, and he can help fit you for Papa's engagement party, which, by the way, I expect you to attend Saturday evening. For dinner tonight, you'll no doubt want to put in an appearance at the Chloride Restaurant. Celestia will be most impressed. Everyone who's anyone eats there. It's rather like the 'Delmonico of the West.'"
Rafe looked amused by her haste to dismiss him. "My dear Silver, you wouldn't be trying to get rid of me, would you?"
"Certainly not," she lied, and none too elegantly. "I just assumed you'd want a hot meal after tramping through the mountains."
"Why, how very thoughtful, considering you'll be paying the tab. But in truth, I'm a bit of a sucker for home-cooked meals," he drawled. "So tell me. What's on today's menu? Goose liver pate? Salmon roe with sweet, creamed butter? Lemon crackers and champagne?"
She blinked, momentarily speechless. He wanted her to open the basket? To her consternation, she felt the blood creeping up her neck. "Uh... no. Not exactly. There's nothing edible in this picnic chest."
Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) Page 8