by Laura Parker
Eduardo urged himself to remain patient but her distant voice and manner were beginning to annoy him. “I don’t want your gratitude.” He reached up and snagged her chin in his fingers to lift her face to meet his gaze. “Don’t you see? Without you, without your fearless search for the truth, it would have been lost to my people forever. You have done what you set out to do. In finding the stolen Blue Madonna, you have cleared your father’s debt. May he now rest in peace, menina.”
Philadelphia gazed at those dark eyes, so full of promise, and denied what she saw there. “If only it were that simple.”
“But it is.” He nodded slowly. “It is.”
I will never forget this moment, Philadelphia thought as she marveled at the happiness on his face. He could and had absolved her of every grievance he had once held against her father. But even if he could accept what had happened, she could not. When she looked at him in love, her feelings were tainted by thoughts of the scars on his back and wrists, and she felt again her father’s guilt as strongly as though it were her own.
“What will you do now?”
“Once you are well enough to travel, I want you to come with me to Brazil. I must return the Blue Madonna to its rightful place. After that …” He shrugged, the wicked gleam of dazzling sensuality replacing the joy in his eyes. “I am yours.”
“No, you must make that journey alone. I have no place in what you must do. Surely you can understand that.”
Eduardo could not pinpoint the cause of the reluctance he heard in her voice but he sympathized with the sentiment. “Perhaps you are right. You can stay at my estancia while I journey inland. You will like it there.”
Philadelphia shook her head. “I do not want to travel to Brazil or anywhere else. I want to go home. And soon.”
“Then I will wait, until you are ready to go with me.”
“No, you mustn’t.” She reached out to touch him for the first time, her hand settling on the warm skin of his neck left exposed by his open shirt. “You must take the Blue Madonna home. This will never be finished until it is back where it belongs.”
Eduardo searched her face, plumbed the depths of her eyes for an understanding of her real thoughts. “Very well. I am anxious to do this.”
“Then leave at once. Today.” She smiled to take away the suspiciously anxious tone of her words. “Think of it. There will be great rejoicing. You will be a hero.”
Though she could not know it, she had touched on a truth Eduardo had been thinking of himself. “It will exonerate my father’s name, as well. The curse will be lifted.”
Philadelphia did not ask him what he meant for the resolution in his face could carry him to Brazil, and far away from her.
When he kissed her she clung to him with every bit of her strength. His heat and passion were like embracing the sun, and she knew she would bear the scars of his love upon her soul for the rest of her life.
When he lay her back against the sheets, a groan of pain escaped her. “Oh, love, I mustn’t hurt you,” he said regretfully. He framed her face in his hands, his thumbs propping up her chin so that he could more easily kiss her. “You are too bruised for me to make love to properly. But when I return, menina, I will make a most thorough job of it. I promise.” And then he was gone, his final kiss still tingling upon her lips.
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
Tyrone was standing by her bedside, naked to the waist but for the expanse of linen strapping the left side of his chest. He had just waved good-bye to Eduardo, who had ridden out at first light, and he was now in her room for an explanation.
“I couldn’t.” Philadelphia met his hostile gaze with equal enmity. She had gone as far as the balcony to watch Eduardo leave, afraid that if she went down to his horse, he would see her tears and remain. “How can he look at me and not think of his dead parents?”
“Can you look at him and not think of your father?”
“Yes, of course, but it’s—”
“That you are a woman and therefore a fool!” Tyrone finished without a speck of consolation.
His voice sounded strained. Beneath his heavy tan his complexion was gray from the loss of blood but Philadelphia thought she would still rather take her chances with a rabid dog than Tyrone if it came to a fight. He was alive, no thanks to her.
He lowered himself onto a nearby chair with an appropriate expletive and then caught her again in his crystal-bright stare. “Dios! Women. You are all alike. He is better off without you. I said so at our first meeting.”
“You did,” Philadelphia agreed, more wounded than she cared to admit by his words. Eduardo was gone. She had let him go. She was a fool.
Tyrone put a hand to the wound over his heart and grunted. “And you told me to mind my own business.” What might have been the beginning of a rare smile tugged at his mouth. “You had more courage then than now, and with far less reason. So, you are a fool.”
“Yes, of course,” she answered, her gaze sliding away from his.
Tyrone watched her a moment, more in tune with her feelings than she would ever know. Her face revealed every nuance of her emotions, as he had cause to know. Each time he had approached her, he had been able to gauge the exact degrees of fear, distaste, and sexual excitement he inspired. She would never have admitted to the last, and to be honest he knew it was less than the other two emotions. But it had registered with him, and it remained a tantalizing marker of what might have been. Just the reminder tightened the knob of desire at the base of his belly but he clamped down on his lust for her this once. Jesus! This was hard. Ha! He was hard.
He began to rhythmically massage the burning pain lodged in his shoulder. What he did not understand was why she had let Tavares leave without her. The suggestion that he could not separate his feelings between father and daughter was unreasonable, considering he had fallen in love with her knowing who she was. That left her own feelings to be explored.
“Most women have a fairly high opinion of their powers of persuasion. What’s wrong with yours?”
Philadelphia blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said most women who have snared a man of Tavares’s worth would not have let him go.”
Philadelphia pinkened under his razor-sharp regard. “I was not attracted by his wealth.”
“Then it must have been his pretty face. Of course, the women I’ve seen him with were more impressed by his hidden assets. What’s the matter? Weren’t you satisfied with his skill in bed? Or was it the equipment? You need something to compare it to, you just say the word.”
“You’re a rude and crude man, Tyrone.”
He nodded. “Only I don’t ever lie to anybody, especially myself. You’re lying to yourself right now. Hell, if I know what this is about. But if you lose Eduardo, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.” He rose to his feet with another, louder grunt of pain.
Philadelphia noticed he was wearing his pistol slung low on his hips. “Where are you going?”
“To kill a varmint.” Once more his voice had lost its animation, his clear gaze again fathomless.
“MacCloud?” she whispered, as if invoking a spell.
He nodded. “He didn’t wash up dead on the riverbank. I won’t again make the mistake of believing he’s dead until I’ve kicked dust in his face myself.”
“Why?”
She thought, then, he would revert to type. His eyes turned icy, his face a study in granite. She braced for ugly words, but they did not come. The ice began to melt, the granite softening into almost tender emotion. “Come with me, Philadelphia Hunt, and I just might tell you.”
“I—” She never finished the syllable. He turned and walked out. Was it something in her expression, she wondered even after his boot steps on the stairs had faded.
Yes, he could have told her. It was fear.
She left Tyrone’s residence the next day. While Eduardo sailed into the Caribbean and Tyrone rode north along the M
ississippi to look for clues to MacCloud’s continued existence, Philadelphia took a steamboat to Natchez where she caught a train heading east toward New York.
19
New York City, November 1875
“I distinctly remember telling you not to wear that dress again in my presence,” Hedda Ormstead said in her most censorious voice. “You look like a dying bat in all that black.”
Philadelphia bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ormstead. I will go up and change.”
“Change into what, I’d like to know? It’s too much to hope, I suppose, that you would change into a cheerful companion. No doubt, you’ll come floating down in another gothic horror.”
She picked up the bell by her plate and shook it like she hoped to dislodge its clapper. When a footman scurried in a bit belatedly, she pinned him with a hawk-eyed stare. “You took your time, didn’t you? Were you sparking behind the cupboard door with my new parlormaid?”
“Oh no, ma’am!” The poor young man turned red as a beet but did not know how to defend himself. The call of nature had come at a most inconvenient moment but he could not very well tell her that.
“If it occurs once more, you’re out of a job. I demand promptness. Oh, how I miss Akbar. Now there was a servant worth his weight in gold!”
She did not miss Philadelphia’s wince at the mention of the name but she was determined, once and for all, to exorcise that ghost. The girl had been back with her nearly two months. During the first week she had done nothing but talk about her father, and Senhor Tavares, and a highly suspicious individual named Tyrone. Now Philadelphia could not even bear for the Brazilian’s name to be mentioned in her presence without going pale.
After careful consideration, she had decided to take matters into her own hands. Today, for instance, the girl’s mourning for her father would be dispensed with. The man might not have been a thief, but from what she gathered from Philadelphia’s sketchy explanation, he still had much to answer for in Purgatory. Yet the present was for the living, and it was high time Philadelphia got on with it!
She addressed the footman. “I want you to go up to Miss Hunt’s room with the parlormaid and help her remove every bit of mourning drapery in Miss Hunt’s closets. Understand me. If she is left with even one black-bordered handkerchief to weep in, I’ll sack the pair of you!”
“Very good, ma’am.” The footman bowed and hurried away.
“An excellent young man,” Hedda pronounced with a sly smile. “You’ve always had an eye for men in household service, Miss Hunt. Wouldn’t you say my new footman is worth a glance?”
“You’re being very provoking this morning, Mrs. Ormstead,” Philadelphia said quietly.
“And you’re spoiling my breakfast. Just look! You’ve curdled the cream in my coffee with your sour face.” She dropped her cup back into its saucer and rose. “That does it! Either you must change, or you must go.”
She bent an unkind gaze on Philadelphia’s startled expression. “You heard me. One week! I thought when I agreed to take you back that I was hiring a companion to enliven my last days. What I did not expect was a preview of the silence of the grave. Your expression is fit only for the mortuary. Perhaps one of them will give you a job.”
Hedda ignored the younger woman’s stricken expression. “In the meanwhile, I’ve set a task for you. Nephew Henry is coming round at eleven. He’s back in one piece, thank heavens, after that interminable European tour his mother insisted he embark upon soon after you left New York. Why she thought a series of views from musty castles and strolls through dim museums to squint at ancient art would rid him of his infatuation with you, I can’t imagine. But then his mother always was one to connect pain with learning. Recall his riding lessons. Ah well. I’ve explained a few things to Henry about the reasons for your return, but he’s hopelessly confused. Don’t attempt to set him straight. Just smile at him and he’ll be too besotted to think of questions.” Without another word, she left the room.
Philadelphia rose from her dining room chair to go up to her room on the third floor of the Ormstead’s Fifth Avenue mansion, but her mind and heart were, as always, thousands of miles away. In the peace and quiet of the Ormstead library, she had read a great deal about the country called Brazil. She now knew the names of the major rivers, cities, and mountain peaks. She could even put her finger on the spot where the Rio Negro and the Amazon converged and knew that somewhere nearby Eduardo had once lived. What she did not know was where he was now.
When she reached her bedroom she waited patiently while the parlor maid and footman collected and removed her mourning attire. The chill of an early winter had found entrance through the solidly built walls of the house. As she changed out of her last black gown, while the maid waited in the hallway to take it away, she found herself beginning to shiver uncontrollably.
She had come to Mrs. Ormstead because she could not think of any other place where she would be welcomed. She could not go back to Chicago, as she told Eduardo she would, because she could not in truth clear her father’s name of bank fraud without pointing a finger at Eduardo, and that she would not do. But now she realized that she was a burden even here. She had failed to be the companion Mrs. Ormstead so generously paid her to be. She had tried, but joy was not something to be demanded of oneself. Yet, in recent weeks, even contentment escaped her. She would try harder, she owed Mrs. Ormstead that much. And if trying to please meant entertaining Henry Wharton in the parlor, she would do even that.
She glanced at herself in the mirror. She had not cared about the sudden demarcation of dark roots as her blond hair grew out though it would be more than a year before the new hair would be long enough to permit her to cut off the blond. But, at Mrs. Ormstead’s insistence so that she could go about in public, she had resorted to henna to blend the two shades. The reddish highlights were particularly attractive when she wore lavender, as she did now, and the fact lifted her spirits a little.
At the appointed time she heard the jangle of the doorbell below. Henry was certainly punctual. She hoped, with a sinking heart, that he had gotten over his infatuation with her. It would make the next hour so much easier.
She waited for the maid to announce her visitor and then she descended the stairs at a leisurely pace. What would she say to Henry? What should she say? Now that she thought of it, Mrs. Ormstead had not given her a single clue as to what she had told the dear young man. Did he know that she was not Felise de Ronsard? Did he know that her disguise had been part of a scheme to sell jewelry at inflated prices? Did he know who she really was?
She entered the drawing room, as the footman opened the door for her, with a smile of greeting. “Good morning, Hen—” But the man standing with his back to the door was not Henry Wharton. His hair was black and his shoulders …
He turned to her slowly with a smile full of brilliant sunshine and seductive shadow. “Hello, menina.”
She stared at him as though he were an apparition. He is no different, she thought wildly. He had not changed a hair in the months since she had last seen him. He looked as fit and heartbreakingly beautiful as ever. The eyes still held black fire, his mouth designed for kisses. The dimple, that shameless flirtation of nature, lay tucked in his cheek as before. She thought her heart would burst. Blood roared in her ears. She had not allowed herself to think of ever seeing him again. It would have driven her mad.
“Have you no greeting for me, menina?”
“I thought—I thought Henry Wharton … was here.”
She saw quick humor alter his expression. “And I thought I had driven that man from your mind once and for all. I see I must work harder in future.”
As he came toward her she nearly turned and fled, and then he touched her, a hand to her cheek, and she knew that nothing less than death would ever again part them.
“Did you miss me, menina?” She nearly wept at the sound of his voice. “I’m sorry I have been away so long. But there were things I had to
do before I was free to come back to you. For instance, you’ll be glad to know that the Blue Madonna has been safely returned to her rightful place.”
Philadelphia shook her head in bewilderment. He had not left her. She had run away from him, and had been hiding ever since.
Eduardo saw her confusion but he did not try to relieve it. There would be the rest of their lives to sort out the details of the last months. He had found her at last, and that was all that was important.
“Did I say that Tyrone sends you his regards? No, and it’s just as well. He is still very angry that MacCloud escaped. Sim. But that need no longer concern us. Tyrone has had to leave New Orleans. MacCloud was smart enough to alert the city to his alias, and it seems Tyrone is wanted by the authorities in half a dozen places. Don’t frown, menina. Tyrone thrives on opposition. He said he thought he would go west, perhaps to Colorado.”
He brushed a thumb lightly across her trembling lips. “Let’s talk about us. I brought you a gift.”
He reached inside his waistcoat and withdrew a long slender jeweler’s box. “Open it.”
Philadelphia took the box but her eyes never left his face. “I don’t need gifts.”
“And because it’s true, I’ll take great pleasure in giving you many of them,” he answered. “Pleasure me, now. Open the box.”
Because it was no longer so easy to look into his eyes full of erotic promise, she looked down at the box and opened it.
Three strands of perfectly matched pearls lay inside the satin-lined box; the treasure of Mei Ling.
“For your wedding day, menina.”
Philadelphia glanced up and saw what she dared not hope for. He still loved her, after everything, in spite of everything. “How did you come to possess them?”
“I will admit that I didn’t know until you told me that they were to be your wedding dowry. But I knew as I listened to you tell the tale of Mei Ling that they meant a great deal to you.” He brought both hands up to frame her face with his warm fingertips. “As you mean a great deal to me, menina.”