He scoffed. He didn’t believe in miracles.
Exhausted from the events of the day, he dropped the rag back into the basin and crawled onto the bed beside her, being careful not to touch her and staying on top the counterpane. He mocked himself. He rarely had problems enticing women into his bed, but they were usually willing and conscious. He wearily closed his eyes, wanting only to rest for a few minutes without thinking about anything – not about who the mysterious woman was, or why he had been the one to rescue her. And particularly, he did not want to contemplate her almost flawless, naked presence next to him.
He dreamed, not the nightmares of his past that continually haunted him, but about the beautiful woman with blonde hair and green eyes, who expressed her gratitude at being rescued in the most elemental act in which men and women engage. He awoke minutes later to find himself curled around the woman, one arm draped over the curve of her waist.
“Simon?” Her whisper was deep and scratchy, the result of too much river water.
Jake quickly removed his arm just as she rolled over and her eyes fluttered open. Clear blue searched his face. She turned her head and he watched as her gaze slid across the room and back.
“I thought your eyes would be green,” he murmured as he scrambled from the bed and grabbed a shirt from the clothespress, tucking it into his trousers before he turned back to her.
“Where am I?”
“In my stateroom.”
“In your…who are you?” Her voice rose in volume but Jake decided it was well below panic. It wasn’t like they had actually done anything.
“Jake Worth. I dragged you out of the river. Do you remember what happened?”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Well, I wasn’t in the river, that’s for sure. I was working on the Arabia—”
“Working?” He didn’t understand why the captain wouldn’t recognize a member of his own crew, but then perhaps there were too many. From her dress, this woman was not a member of the service staff, but perhaps the maintenance staff. It would seem appropriate to disguise her gender if that were the case, although he had never heard of a female boiler tender.
“Then you did fall overboard.”
“I did not fall overboard.” Indignant, she sat straight up in bed. The sheet he had tucked around her fell to her waist, exposing generous pale breasts. A gentleman would have averted his gaze. Jake was anything but. He stared. She clutched the sheet back to her bosom and shrieked, “Where are my clothes?”
“They were wet; I removed them.”
“Of course they were wet. It was pouring and the water couldn’t be pumped out of the pit fast enough. That doesn’t give you the right to remove them. I don’t even know you.”
He smiled. “I just introduced myself, so we are not complete strangers. Perhaps it wasn’t totally wrong of me.”
Her mouth gapped open and a disbelieving look crossed her face. “You’re not a member of the crew or I would have seen you before now.”
“No, but I travel the river on a regular basis, and often aboard the Arabia.”
“No, that can’t be right,” she contradicted him yet again. Even though he heard a hint of hesitation, she seemed determined not to believe anything he said.
“I want my clothes.”
A knock on the door diverted Jake’s attention. “Come in,” he called without taking his eyes off her. When the steward entered, he nodded to the sodden pile. “Take those below and get them dried out. It probably wouldn’t hurt if they were washed first.”
“Yes, Mr. Worth. Will you be joining us for supper tonight, or are you going ashore?”
Jake glanced from the steward back to the woman in his bed. He pursed his lips. “Would it be possible to have supper served here?” At the man’s nod, he added, “For two?”
“As you wish, Mr. Worth. I’ll see to it personally.” The door closed quietly behind him.
“Those were my clothes.” Her hesitation could work to his benefit he thought. Any sensible woman would run from him, but not without clothes. Although he had no deliberate designs on her, one could never tell what the night would bring.
“You won’t need them for awhile. Besides they’re unwearable in their present condition.”
He watched her survey the cabin as she spoke, her gaze pausing on each piece of furniture, her brow furrowing. “You seem well known here.”
“More often than not, money speaks well for anyone.”
Her gaze jerked back to his. “Did you pay for me?”
It took him a moment to understand her meaning and then he laughed. “Sweetheart, I don’t want to sound like a braggart, but I never have to pay for a lady’s attentions.” He turned back from pouring himself a drink just in time to duck.
The glass lamp sailed past his head to crash against the corner of the dresser. Jake looked from the shattered glass to the woman and back. The whale oil pooled onto the wood floor near his feet as he took a sip of his drink.
“You are lucky it’s still daylight and that lamp wasn’t lit.”
Her extremely inventive curse had him turning her way again.
She swung her legs over the bed, twisted the sheet around her slim body and stood up. She swayed from side to side, opened her mouth to speak, and promptly fell toward him in a dead faint.
Chapter 2
Okay, so maybe I over reacted by throwing the lamp, but I’m in a strange place and the man took my clothes. If that’s not bad enough, he says we’re on board the Arabia and I can’t come to terms with that. I’ve spent my entire life in Boston, in the midst of history, and am more than familiar with antique furniture and the accessories of the past. And the thing is, everything around me screams vintage – the clothespress instead of a closet; a porcelain bowl and pitcher in place of a bathroom sink; the glass chimney lamp I threw across the room. If what this man says and what I see are true…
Bri woke to darkness except for the weak glow of a lamp on the dresser – far across the room from where she lay. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she breathed a sigh of relief to realize she was alone. She looked toward the small rectangular window but it was dark. Cautiously, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, leery of becoming dizzy again. She looked at her bare body as the sheet slid down her curves.
Things came back to her in a rush and she jerked her head to the left, reaffirming that she was in bed by herself. The man—she couldn’t remember his name though she was sure he had told her--was nowhere in the room. His presence when she had awakened the first time had been so strong, so assured, that he overpowered her. Finding herself stripped naked and in a room with a stranger was totally out of her realm of understanding.
He had undressed her. Okay, so it had been in the interest of getting her warm, but still. A quick glance around the room assured her that her clothes hadn’t been returned. She needed to get dressed. She could think more clearly with clothes on. And she really, really did need to figure this out. Mentally assessing herself, she didn’t think she would faint again, but there was a heaviness to her body like a weight bearing her down. She couldn’t tell exactly where it originated – it was all over. Even her arm felt heavy as she lifted her hand to the knob on the clothespress.
Well, one good turn deserves another, she thought as she slowly opened the door and surveyed an impressive array of shirts and trousers. Since he had taken her clothes, whatever the reason, she would use his. His shirt was too large for her, but she turned back the cuffs. He was slim, and she had long legs, so when she pulled a pair of his trousers over her hips, they were snug but fit her just right in the length. She smiled as she buttoned them. She had taken what looked like the most expensive pair.
A vest buttoned up the front would conceal the fact she didn’t wear a bra, but his shoes were far too large so she decided to go barefoot. Padding over to the dresser, she used his hairbrush and comb to bring some semblance of order to her hair. She managed to wrap a few strands around the whole to form a pony tail at her na
pe. Wearing clothes too large was enough, but if her hair was flying all over, people would notice.
She only had a fuzzy recollection of the man who had brought her to this room and even less recollection as to why. He was tall, broad shouldered but slim in the hips. Dark hair had curled around his ears, but in her mind his face was indistinct. She didn’t think he had taken advantage of her, regardless of the fact she was naked and the comments he had made about not paying for a woman.
All she could remember well was that it had started raining hard at the dig site and she had tried to get to the ladder for someone to pull her up and out of the pit. Everything else seemed like a bad dream. Why Simon, or anyone from the dig site, would have taken her to a hotel instead of her apartment, she couldn’t fathom. If she had been hurt, it would have been a hospital, and this room certainly wasn’t that.
She decided not to wait around for anyone to return. Her head hurt as she dropped the comb back onto the dresser and rubbed her temples. Since she had awaken and for the entire time she was dressing, something nagged in a dark corner of her mind, demanding attention, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what. The constant chug-chug noise wasn’t helping her headache either. She certainly wouldn’t recommend this hotel to anyone, although there was an antique flair to the furnishings. She ran her hand along the beveled edge of the dresser as she wandered to the door. Reproduction, no doubt.
Opening the door with care, she peeked out to discover not a hall, but a deck. That can’t be right, she mused, warily taking a few steps beyond the door. She was in a hotel somewhere in Kansas, not on a boat. She reached the railing and grabbed hold with both hands, staring into the gloom which was dissipating as day broke. Her heart began to pound and her headache worsened.
What had that man said? Something about working on the Arabia? She suddenly didn’t think he had meant working on the excavation of the Arabia as she had. Disbelief had her knees shaking even as she leaned over the railing. Below was a wider deck, crammed full of people and cargo, cords of wood stacked as high as the railing where she stood. Gruff words floated toward her as people awakened to a new day. A bell clanged in the distance and ever so slowly, the boat began to move away from a dock.
“No. I have to get off. I don’t belong here.” She spun in a circle but sank, her knees giving way and her bottom hitting the wooden deck with a jar. Something was terribly wrong. She brought her legs up, hugging them tight and dropping her head to her knees. She closed her eyes and tried to think but there was this black hole in her memory. She gave a self-decrepitating laugh – it wasn’t her memory; her entire body had been sucked down a black hole.
“What are you doing out here?”
The agitated question brought her head up but all she saw were dark trousers. She tipped her head further back. The sides of a long coat were swept back with hands planted on hips. The fingers were long, nails clean and trimmed, and Bri got the impression this man didn’t have a manual job. By the time her gaze slid the rest of the way up his body, she found him scowling at her. The sun had risen just enough behind him that his features were in shadow, but there was an aura around him. Was he her guardian angel?
“Did you have to steal my best linen shirt and trousers?” Now frustration edged the agitation. No, he was definitely not any one’s angel.
What right did he have to be …anything? Bri thought. She was the one who didn’t have the foggiest idea of what was going on. At least he appeared to know his way around; to belong here.
She surged to her feet, swayed, then grabbed the rail with one hand to steady herself; putting the other out when he would have reached for her. With precarious balance, she turned when he opened the cabin door and carefully walked back into the small room. As soon as she felt capable, she turned on him.
“You…you…” Her brain was a mess along with the rest of her and she couldn’t think of what she wanted to tell him.
She looked down at her hands where she was absently twisting a ring on her pinkie finger. It was an artifact she salvaged that day, just as the rain came. It was rather plain in design with a small flat square in the center and some scroll work on either side. She remembered putting it on her finger to keep from losing it in the rain. Now, she jerked it off and flung it across the room.
Nothing happened. She wasn’t again standing in a downpour waiting to be hauled up and out of the pit. She didn’t return to the present. “I don’t want to be here! I’m not supposed to be here!” she shouted, dropping to her knees and sobbing. Her mind processed her fear in the only way it could. It blanked, allowing her to tip over in a faint.
* * *
Bri awoke to find herself once again in bed. She really had to quit doing that.
“You probably wouldn’t be hysterical, or keep fainting, if you ate something. Unless, of course, you are in the family way.”
She shook her head slightly, not even bothering to look in the direction of the voice. “If I was pregnant, why do you think I would have ended up in the river?”
“That is not my concern. My unease stems from the fact you keep ending up in my bed and I don’t even know your name.”
She did glance his way at the humor in his voice and found a very sexy, totally masculine smile gracing his lips. “I suppose that’s a natural occurrence for you.” She tried to give him the evil eye, but his smile just grew.
“When I wish it.” His left shoulder lifted in a shrug. It made her notice the width of his shoulders and how defined his body was in the white linen shirt. He turned and began to remove covers from several dishes on a cart.
“I appreciate what you have done for me, Mr…,” she hesitated, not remembering his name. There were so many holes in her recent memory.
“Jake. And you are?”
Who was she? Was she the same Briana she had been a day ago? A week? She certainly wasn’t about to give away too much information until she knew what was going on and where she was.
“Brianna Blake.” At her pronouncement, he nodded slightly in acknowledgement but made no response.
“Well, Miss Blake. I would suggest that if you don’t want to end up in my bed yet again, you partake in some breakfast.”
It was then the smell of coffee reached her and her stomach growled. How long had it been since she had eaten?
She slowly stood. Though a little lightheaded, she felt she wasn’t about to faint again. Her mouth watered as she sat in the chair he had pulled out by a small table. Delicious smells of bacon and ham made her nostrils flair. She began eating as soon as he set a plate before her and was nearly done before he sat with his own plate.
“Eating too much too quickly when you haven’t had substance for a prolonged period can cause stomach cramps or vomiting.” He stopped abruptly as though angry – at her or for having spoken?
She finished her eggs and carefully put her knife and fork across her plate. “Are you a doctor; a nutritionist?”
“No, of course not,” he snapped almost before she had finished speaking. An intense frown marred his handsome features.
“Fine. I’ll leave you to eat your breakfast leisurely.” She stood, grabbing some apples out of a bowl on the table and shoving them into her pockets.
“Like I said, thank you for your help, but I need to be on my way.” She had opened the door and stepped through when she paused at his parting words.
“The hurricane deck is at least respectable, whereas the decks below are for those who cannot pay full fare. Most often they are made to feel the degradation of poverty, even if they have occupation and means. Beware of the petty officers for they have been known for brutal and disgraceful treatment.”
Bri quietly closed the door behind her. She could take care of herself, couldn’t she?
* * *
After hours of walking around the steamboat, Brianna could only conclude as true what the recesses of her mind and niggled at all day. She was indeed on the Steamboat Arabia as it plied the waters of the huge river. The Ara
bia was a side wheeler, which she had known, but to see the huge paddle wheel slowly revolving through the water was beyond her imagination. She knew it could travel at over five miles per hour, yet as she stood by a railing it felt as though they weren’t moving at all.
She couldn’t recall how many passengers the boat carried on this particular trip, but they were all over. The main deck held clusters of people scattered among the boxes and barrels of cargo. There were high stacks of logs the boilers and engines would use to convert river water to steam.
As she walked along the upper deck she peeked through a window to an eloquent salon. Nicely dressed women and men sat at tables or on small couches enjoying conversation. She sadly glanced down at her oversized borrowed clothes and felt totally out of place.
On the upper deck, women were in long dresses and carried parasols and the men were in what she would call formal attire, but for them it was probably just normal dress. All wore long black coats and trousers. White shirts with stiff collars were circled with some sort of black tie. So very unlike the tee shirts plastered with slogans, khaki shorts and sandals she was used to seeing. People walking along the promenade stared at her strangely. She looked down. Well, who wouldn’t? Though the vest covered her shirt and she had tucked her hair up, it was still obvious she was a woman. She had even stooped to borrowing a pair of ladies shoes set outside a door but regardless of how tight she laced them, they still made a clomping sound.
Jake had been right about the treatment of people on the lower decks. They had no shelter from the wind or sun. If they were sitting, it was on their own luggage, as there were no chairs or benches. There was the stench of unwashed bodies that even the river breeze couldn’t dissipate. More than once a gruff voice beckoned her with crude names, but she kept her eyes forward and didn’t acknowledge anyone until she moved beyond the ruffians to where there were more women. Children shifted restlessly near mothers, as there was no place to run and play. She tried to make conversation, but no one seemed inclined to talk, until she pulled out the apples.
The Lost Knight of Arabia Page 2