by Jo Goodman
Brook stiffened and sat up jerkily, dislodging his hands. Her eyes opened wide, and she stared in the mirror at Ryland North's reflection. "You're not Phillip."
Chapter 2
One corner of Ryland's mouth lifted in a wicked travesty of a smile. "You noticed."
Brook drew in a breath, released it, and said calmly, "Get out of here."
"I don't think so," he returned matter-of-factly. "There are still these buttons."
She twisted away as his hands made to reach for her again and stood, facing him this time with the backs of her thighs pressed against the edge of the vanity. "I want you to leave. Phillip will be coming back—"
"When I allow him to come back." Ryland lifted his right hand to show Brook scratched and bleeding knuckles. "Sumner and I had a difference of opinion."
Brook's eyes fell away from Ryland's hand to rest on Phillip's walking stick leaning against the doorjamb. Poor Phillip. He wasn't a fighter, not with bare knuckles, anyway. He needed an advantage, and stupidly he had left it behind. "What have you done with him?"
"Your concern is admirable." Ryland shook out his hand as he dropped it to his side. "He's sleeping comfortably in my cabin." He saw the hope he had raised in her eyes and dashed it. "And when he wakes he's still not coming here until I allow it. It has something to do with the way he's tied to the bed."
"Is that what you're going to do with me? Tie me to the bed?"
Ryland's cinnamon eyes darkened as they swept insolently over Brook. "That idea is not without some merit. I don't usually make love that way, but if it's what you prefer..." His voice dropped off as his eyes measured her reaction. "No, I don't think it's the lady's preference after all."
"You're crude."
"When I have to be."
Brook impatiently tossed her head to one side, and the lock of hair that had fallen across her shoulder slipped down her back again. "What is it you want?"
"Several things. Shall we take them in order?"
Brook's lips pursed and she said nothing, waiting for him to proceed.
"We both know your partner cheated at cards tonight."
"Do we?"
"I would have been well within my rights to call Sumner out earlier."
"If you're so certain he cheated why didn't you do that?"
"I wanted to avoid a public confrontation. Credit me with some sensibilities. Inevitably the final marker I accepted from Sumner would have been common knowledge. And no, it wasn't your reputation I was considering, but my own. What men would play me for money if they knew I would settle for a whore?"
Brook flinched at the icy resonance of contempt in his tone but remained silent.
"I've come for what's owed me. First, the money. Where is it?"
"Phillip took it with him when he left."
Ryland watched her intently and said nothing for a moment. "I don't think you often make mistakes, but that was one."
"Mistake? I don't understand."
"You're an excellent liar. Very little expression. No wavering. And you think quickly." He reached for her chin and cupped it in his hand, examining her face. "But it's always a mistake to lie when the other person knows the truth. It gives away your best secrets, and now I have yours. Sumner didn't have the money. I checked."
"Then you should check again. He had it when he left. Perhaps he spent it all on drinks for the house," she said airily. "Phillip's careless with money."
Ryland chose to ignore Brook's flippancy. "He never reached the bar. I dealt with Sumner almost as soon as he left this cabin. He wasn't carrying the winnings. Where is my money?"
Brook's fingers circled his wrist and pushed his hand away from her face. She never doubted that he released her because he wanted to. "I don't know where the money is," she said tonelessly.
"Now, why don't I believe you?" he asked. "Sweet, sweet liar. It appears I'm going to have to conduct a search."
Brook had had enough. She pushed away from the vanity and took a step forward only to have Ryland block her path. Far from being intimidated, she raised her chin and glared at him. "Let me pass."
"Do you know, Miss Hancock, I regret we're not on the same side. You have brass. In different circumstances I think I could admire your brash and bluff."
"I'm not flattered."
Ryland shrugged. "You're also not going anywhere." He put a finger to her lips as she opened her mouth. "Don't even think about screaming. Not unless you want to be gagged like your partner."
That was the last thing Brook wanted. "I won't scream."
"Good." He stepped backward and waved his hand to the side, indicating the bed. "You can stand over there."
"Why should I do anything you say?"
Ryland unbuttoned his formal evening jacket and pointed to the shoulder holster that held his derringer.
"I see."
"I wonder if you do." He took out his gun and pointed it at Brook. "Now stand over by the bed." When Brook complied, Ryland kicked at the chair Phillip had been sitting in earlier so that it now faced the bed. He sat down, stretching his long legs in front of him and crossing them at the ankles.
Brook waited, wondering what he intended. She was not misled by his casual posture or his sleepy-eyed gaze. There was a certain watchfulness about him, a readiness that was visible in the taut line of his body. There was tension in the set of his jaw and an almost feline quality in the manner in which he studied everything around him. "You're going to conduct your search from there?" she asked.
"I think so," he said pleasantly. "Take off your gown."
Brook blinked. Once.
It was not the reaction Ryland had wanted. He had hoped to shake her maddening poise and make her acknowledge his command of their present situation. "Take off your gown," he repeated. Perhaps she thought she hadn't heard him correctly.
"You seem to have forgotten that I require some assistance," she said.
He had. "All right. Come here." Ryland uncrossed his legs and spread them apart as Brook approached. When she was standing between them he brusquely ordered her to turn around. He did not replace his gun in the holster until he took out the knife sheathed inside his sleeve.
Brook felt Ryland give a little tug on the back of her gown, pulling the material away from her undergarments. Before she understood what he was about her gown was rent from neckline to waist. Gritting her teeth, Brook told herself she should be glad she had discovered that Ryland had a weapon in addition to the derringer. "Have you found Phillip's money?"
"My money," Ryland corrected. "And no, I haven't found it."
"Then perhaps you'd better make short work of my corset as well."
Damn, but she was a cool one. Ryland's fingers slipped under the top of the corset and with his other hand sliced through the lacing in a single sweep. He repeated the motion with her shift and parted the material. The smooth skin of her slender back was marred by the stiff whalebone stays. For a moment he considered touching her, drawing a single finger along one of the indentations in her skin. Heat surged through him, and he liked himself a little less for even wanting her. "You should thank me," he said, replacing the knife.
"Thank you?"
"For being able to breathe again," he said, a rough, gravelly quality in his voice. "Go on. Get back over by the bed."
Brook did as she was told. When she turned to face him Ryland was leaning forward in his chair, elbows resting on his knees. She almost smiled then, knowing what he was trying to hide from her. Almost. She couldn't goad him beyond all reason, and she couldn't show Ryland how frightened she was. The question forming on the fringes of Brook's conscious thought terrified her even more than Ryland. She wondered if she was going to cry.
It seemed incredible that the idea should come to her now. She hadn't cried since she was nine, hadn't thought about it since then. She held her gown, corset, and shift to her breasts not so much for modesty's sake as to give her hands something to do. "Are you satisfied?" she asked brittlely.
"Not yet." His
eyes rested narrowly on her face. "Tell me why Sumner won that last hand tonight."
The question startled Brook because it seemed to bear no connection to what he had just done to her. Was that his plan? To unbalance her into some sort of an admission? "Why shouldn't he have won? Surely that's the purpose when one plays poker."
For a second Ryland believed he had seen uncertainty in Brook's eyes. Her recovery was so quick that he began to doubt his own senses. "It's usually the purpose," he said. "But I don't think you and your partner normally play it that way. Isn't that so?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Step out of your gown."
Brook hesitated, her face pale. She held onto her corset and shift with one hand and pushed down the gown with the other. She stepped backward and kicked the puddle of silk at her feet to one side. Perspiration trickled down the inside of her thigh. She resisted the urge to tug at her shift and drawers and pull them away from her skin.
Ryland shifted in his chair, throwing one leg over the arm. His jacket opened, and the shoulder holster lay in full view of Brook, "You and Sumner were most recently passengers on the Miss Alice."
"If you say so."
Ryland chuckled, finding himself amused by Brook's unwillingness to admit anything. "I do say so. I also say that you and your partner met a certain gentleman on board and took him for everything he had. How would you respond to that?"
"I never heard a question."
"Get rid of that damn corset."
Brook bit down on the sensitive inner skin of her lip, hoping that Ryland wouldn't notice. Somehow Ryland North knew about Jake Geary. The thought made her stomach roil. She and Phillip had been the marks this evening. Ryland had been waiting for them to make a move so he could turn the tables. Had Phillip suspected? Was that why he had satisfied himself with only a small portion of Ryland's wealth and cheated to prevent her from being alone with Ryland? Little good it had done either one of them. Ryland was not going to let a change in Phillip's plans change his own. Brook yanked at the stiff corset and dropped it on top of her gown. She could feel his eyes boring through the thin linen shift that covered her breasts. One of its straps fell over her shoulder, and Brook let it remain there as defiant proof that she didn't care.
"Jake is a good friend of mine," Ryland said conversationally. "He pulled my butt out of the fire on more than one mission during the war."
"I'm certain that makes one of us happy."
Ryland laughed again. "Indeed. Tell me, Miss Hancock, do you know anything about loyalty?"
Know anything? Brook felt as if she could have taught Ryland something about the meaning of the word. "A little," she answered.
"Then you might be able to understand that when Jake comes to me with a tale of how he had been bilked on the Miss Alice by a gambler and his mistress, I may take it in my head to set the incident to rights?"
"Revenge is not beyond the scope of my understanding," she said calmly.
"I was speaking of loyalty, not revenge."
Brook shrugged, and the other strap of her shift fell over her shoulder. "I beg your pardon. Loyalty, then."
"Sit down!"
Ryland's command was so rough that Brook found herself obeying quickly in spite of her wish to do otherwise. She sucked in a sharp breath and sat on the edge of the bed.
"According to Jake," Ryland began in a reasonable tone, "Sumner made the same wager he did this evening, and my friend also accepted it. Only, unlike tonight, Sumner lost the hand and Jake had the money and you. Jake was feeling rather full of himself by then so he didn't object when you brought him to your cabin instead of joining him in his. You offered him a drink. Even took one yourself, he said. Poor Jake, he didn't even realize he'd been drugged until he woke up a few hours later. By that time you had collected your belongings and his winnings while Sumner took what remained from Jake's cabin. The Miss Alice was on its way upriver and you and Summer were safe on shore, waiting for another boat—the Mary Francis, as things turned out. I realize it all happened a week ago, but I believe I've refreshed your memory enough that you can recall the events."
"It's a fantastic story," she said noncommittally.
"Take off your shoes and stockings."
Brook's task was made difficult by the fact that she had to hold her shift in place. When she finally was able to kick off her shoes after working the buttons free, she cast Ryland a look of triumph, certain he hadn't seen anything he shouldn't have. That included not only her breasts but the derringer strapped to her thigh beneath her shift and over her drawers. She rolled off her stockings with the dainty rose stitched on each ankle and dropped them with a small flourish into the growing pile of garments.
Ryland stood and shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it over the back of the chair. He approached the bed with the feline menace of a jaguar and stopped only when he was directly in front of Brook. His knees almost touched hers, and she had to raise her head at an uncomfortable angle to see his face. "Tonight I won the right to have you, you know."
"As I recall, you lost the right," she said.
"Sumner cheated."
"I don't know anything about that. As far as I'm concerned you have only the rights given to you by that gun."
"I don't like being cheated."
"I would think in this case it would delight you. According to you, if you had won I would have drugged you, robbed you blind, and fled. Haven't you got the better part of the bargain? You only lost a little money."
"Perhaps we were at different games tonight. I recall losing three thousand of my own money as well as what Sumner had thrown into the pot. And that included one night with you, Miss Hancock. Sumner placed a lot of value on your skill in bed."
Brook said nothing. The muscles in her neck ached from staring up at Ryland.
"Of course, perhaps Sumner's intention was to lure me into another game tomorrow night. To recover my losses, as it were. He knows I have a considerable amount of money with me."
"How would he know that?"
"Because he was in my cabin this afternoon while you kept my attention on deck. Remember? Sumner was clumsy, though. He dislodged the scrap of paper I inserted in my door when I left the cabin. He went through my things and found the money. I might have been angry if I hadn't intended that he should know. I wanted the opportunity to play cards with him as much as he wanted to play me. The question is, why didn't he attempt to go for everything with me as he did with Jake Geary?"
Phillip was the only one who could answer that, Brook thought. She honestly didn't understand what he had intended. Not that Ryland would believe her. Admitting that she didn't know Phillip's purpose would have been tantamount to admitting everything that Ryland suspected. "I think your friend may have been confused in his story, Mr. North. I don't—"
"Lie back on the bed." he said tersely.
Nothing of Brook's frustration showed on her face. She cautioned herself to be patient as she lay back and made certain her weapon was hidden from view. If he touched her right thigh he would find it. Brook knew she would have to keep his eyes and hands occupied elsewhere. She edged away from him, trying to move toward the center of the bed, but Ryland stopped her by placing his hand on her hip. Brook thought she would come out of her skin.
Ryland sat on the bed, one leg under him, and leaned over Brook, his hands on either side of her shoulders. "I'd be willing to listen to anything you could tell me about Sumner's plan for this evening—as long as it's the truth." he said softly, his eyes on the curve of her mouth.
Brook said nothing.
One of Ryland's hands shifted to Brook's hair, idly fingering it and then spreading it over the pillow. "Your hair is lovely," he said casually. "What color do you call it?"
"Brown."
Ryland gave a short chuckle. "That hardly does it justice. More of a chestnut, I would think." His fingers sifted through the hair at her temple. "You even have a streak of red here and there. Interesting. Perhaps there's a little fi
re in you after all."
Brook rolled her eyes in disgust. She'd heard Ryland's sort of lines before, and they had made just as little impact. "And perhaps you'll get burned," she said, honeyed sarcasm dripping from her voice.
Ryland felt the agitation beneath her tone and decided he was making progress. "Perhaps." His fingers brushed her cheek then whispered across her throat, pausing in the soft hollow. "Where's my money?" he asked.
Though his fingers barely touched her Brook felt as if a weight were resting on her neck. She couldn't swallow, couldn't breathe. "You should have asked Phillip."
"I did. The pity was he couldn't answer then. That's why I'm here now. Conducting a search of my own." His head lowered. "In my own way." Ryland's mouth pressed against Brook's mutinously set lips. He lifted his head a fraction so that when he spoke she would still feel the warmth of his breath, the brush of his mouth tickling hers. "You're not being very cooperative."
"Go to—" Brook cursed herself for falling into such a blatant trap. Before she could finish her thought Ryland's mouth covered hers again, this time tasting the parted sweetness of her lips. Her teeth clamped together, forming a barrier to his tongue. One part of her mind noted he was quite content to play with her slowly, to tease her with his patience. Brook withdrew into herself, closing her conscious thoughts to the feel of his mouth and the sensations he provoked up and down her skin.
"Oh, no," Ryland said, pulling away as he sensed her withdrawal. "None of that. I want a response, Miss Hancock. Your response. I won you tonight."
"You lost."
"Sumner cheated."
"I don't know that."
"Explain those cards lying on top of your vanity, then."
Brook had forgotten about the cards she had taken from Phillip's vest and tossed aside. Ryland hadn't missed anything during his earlier appraisal of the cabin. "They're part of another deck laying around here somewhere," she said calmly.
"Take your hands off the shift."
Brook's fingers were stiff from holding her shift so tightly in place. She stretched them and slid her hands down to her side, placing one hand over the outline of the derringer against her thigh.