Scarlet Lies (Author's Cut Edition): Historical Romance

by Jo Goodman

  Phillip ignored her, running his palm over Ryland throat and chest. He glanced quickly, furtively, at Brook, saw that she had returned to her task, and went back to his own, untying Ryland from the chair. "Get dressed, Brook."

  "I'm not getting dr—" She stopped as her hand closed over an oilcloth packet at the back of one of the drawers. "What's this?" she asked, holding it up for Phillip to see.

  "It's mine. Pack it."

  "What is it? I don't remember unpacking it."

  "That's because you didn't. I put it there. Now stop asking so many goddamned questions and do as you're told."

  Brook gave a small start at the roughness of Phillip's command. She turned her back on him and scored the packet with the edge of her fingernail. Her breath caught in her throat. Bills. Thousands of dollars. Brook spun on her toes. "Where did you get this money, Phillip?" she demanded.

  "I told you not to open that."

  "Damn it! Answer me! Where did you get this money?"

  "In New Orleans. My dealings went exceptionally well."

  "Your business dealings? But you told me... you lied."

  "Guilty," he said without remorse. "I'll explain it later. Right now I need your cooperation." He pointed to Ryland. "Or had you forgotten?"

  Brook blanched as her eyes dropped to Ryland. The blood on the floor looked like ink now. She dragged her eyes away and tossed Phillip's packet into an open valise. "What do you want me to do?" she asked, keeping her back turned.

  Phillip decided he wasn't going to press the issue of her state of dress. As long as she kept her cape closed no one would be the wiser. "Put our bags by the door, then step onto deck and tell me if anyone's about."

  "What are you going—"

  "For God's sake, just do it!"

  Brook hefted the bags and dropped them by the door. Clutching the throat of her cape, she stepped outside.

  The wait seemed interminable to Phillip. He hefted Ryland's body on his shoulder and straightened. Finally Brook ducked her head back inside and told him the sole couple at the rail had taken their leave. "There's no one around now."

  "Good." He started for the door.

  "Oh, Phillip, no! You're not going to—"

  "I most certainly am. I'm doing this for you, Brook. You murdered him."

  Brook's throat simply closed. She couldn't have spoken if Phillip had held a gun to her head and demanded it of her. She opened the door wider and let him pass, then held her hands over her ears as Phillip dropped Ryland's body over the side of the Mary Francis.

  Phillip pushed Brook back inside the cabin long enough to clean the bloodstains off the floor and put the chair back in its place. He straightened the bed, made certain the dresser and wardrobe were empty, and buried Brook's gun in the side pocket of one of their bags. "Now we're ready to go ashore," he told her between clenched teeth. "Take one of the bags and keep your damn cape closed. If anyone sees you, I'll be arrested for rape."

  The following morning Phillip watched the Mary Francis take her leave without incident, whipping the Mississippi River water through her huge paddle wheel in an effortless rhythm. His breath came a little easier now that he was sure no one had missed Ryland North. He turned away from the second-floor hotel window and studied Brook's hollow-eyed expression. She was still lying in bed, the covers up to her chin, staring at the faded print wallpaper on the opposite wall.

  "You didn't sleep well last night," he said. He sat beside her on the bed. When he tried to take her hand she retracted it almost immediately, burying it beneath the comforter. "I suppose I was rather terse with you, but you did put my patience on edge, Brook."

  "Without a doubt," she said dully.

  "We have to leave this morning. I inquired about the next boat when I had breakfast downstairs." He checked his pocket watch. "There's one due to pass here in two hours. It won't stop unless it's signaled. I've already arranged that. Can you be ready by then?"

  "I'm not going anywhere with you."

  "What?" Phillip's brows rose nearly to his hairline. "You don't seriously expect me to believe you."

  "I expect nothing less." She turned on her side, away from him. "I'm not going with you. Our association is hereby ended, Phillip."

  Phillip grabbed Brook by the shoulder and forced her on her back. "I saved your neck back there," he said harshly, under his breath. "Much like I did nine years ago when I found you in the brothel on Grant Street."

  Brook shrugged her shoulder to remove Phillip's hand. She was glad when he let her go without an embarrassing struggle. "The circumstances were not at all the same," she reminded him. "It was eight years ago. I was nine. And I was in that place through my own ill luck. You truly could save me then, Phillip. Unlike last evening when you willfully set me on a collision course with Ryland North. No, don't deny it. I've had a lot of time to think, and I've pretty well figured out what happened."

  "Brook." Phillip drew out her name cajolingly, almost making two syllables of it.

  "Don't, Phillip. Let me say my piece. You led me to believe we had no money when in truth you had been quite successful in New Orleans. I don't know why you wanted to keep it a secret. Greed comes to mind first. The excitement of bilking an unsuspecting mark comes on its heels. You easily gulled me into accompanying you on the Miss Alice, knowing I wouldn't want to be left alone in New Orleans and knowing that I cared about your welfare. Then you spotted Jake Geary and, God help you, Phillip, you weren't satisfied with his money. You had to have Ryland North's as well. I don't believe even you would have wanted so much if you had known North and Geary were friends."

  "Were they?" he asked thoughtfully. "That's interesting and potentially dangerous."

  "I've already thought of that." Geary would have his suspicions quickly roused when he didn't hear from Ryland again. If Ryland's body washed up on the bank it would only be a matter of time before Jake heard, put two and two together, and came up with the proper sum.

  "Then I take it that North was on the Mary Francis to set us up."

  "Precisely," she said and continued with uncharacteristic bitterness. "But you were still setting me up."

  "Oh?"

  "You never intended to lose that game to him. You wanted me to believe you were protecting me. And I might have believed that if you hadn't cheated so openly."

  "But you never saw me do it," he pointed out with maddening calm.

  "No, but you made certain Ryland did. I think you hoped he would call you out at the table and I would be forced to use my gun then. You know me well enough to know I wouldn't have let anything happen to you."

  "I thought I knew you that well. These last minutes have been fraught with surprises."

  "When Ryland chose to ignore the opening you gave him, you realized he would attempt something later. Your only miscalculation was to run into him on the way to the bar. It seems likely to me that you thought he would come to our cabin in your absence, you would give him some moments alone with me, then you would make a timely entrance, probably accusing him of rape and killing him there. Have I sorted it out correctly?"

  "With remarkable clarity. I never meant for you to murder him. I would have done it myself had things turned out differently."

  "That is small solace to me and none whatsoever for Ryland North. Why, Phillip? Why was it so important that he die? You're not a murderer, and until last night, neither was I."

  "Let's say that North is not the sort of man I wanted trailing me for the rest of my life and leave it at that."

  "It's not good enough for me. Who is he? Why were you so afraid of him?"

  Phillip's mouth closed in a tight line, indicating he had nothing further to say on the subject. He got off the bed and opened one of the valises on the nearby table, taking out clothes for Brook to wear. He laid out a traveling dress at the foot of the bed and smoothed out the wrinkles. Stockings and fresh but heavily creased undergarments joined the gown. "Put these things on. You need to get ready."

  "Haven't you heard anything I've
said?" Agitated, Brook sat up. "I'm not going with you."

  "Like hell." Phillip ran his fingers through his hair impatiently. "Listen to me, Brook. You can't stay here. North's body is bound to wash up. You know what that means?"

  "Of course I do. I don't plan to stay here. I'll make my own way back to New Orleans."

  "Be reasonable. Half this money's yours, darlin'. Even half of what I got in the city. That's yours, too. But you'll never live to spend it around here."

  "I don't want any part of any money."

  "You're not thinking clearly."

  "I'm thinking just fine, Phillip."

  Phillip's face softened, and he shook his head gently from side to side. "No child, you're not thinking at all." He saw Brook bristle at being called a child, but from Phillip's perspective that's what she was. In his mind's eye he could see her as she had been eight years ago: sick with fright and too hostile to show it. He pulled a chair to the edge of the bed and sat down. "Look at me, Brook. More importantly, listen to me. Come back to New Orleans with me. We'll take the first steamer back to Frisco. We'll go around the Horn this time, just like you wanted before. We won't have to worry that the train across the isthmus might not be running. No longboats, no pack mules at Panama. We won't have to spend a single night in one those dirty little huts, flicking at mosquitoes. We'll have the comfort of a luxurious cabin from New Orleans to the Golden Gate. It will take longer, but you need to do a lot of thinking, and you'll have plenty of time to do it in. If you decide you still want to part ways when we get home, I won't stop you. Only come back with me. You won't be safe here." Brook was so long in replying that Phillip thought she was going to snub him completely.

  "I'll go with you," she said eventually. "But there are conditions. Break any of them and I leave you now or at the first opportunity that comes my way."

  "Name them."

  "We sail around the Horn."

  "Haven't I already said we would?"

  "Promise," she said tightly.

  "I promise."

  "I want my own cabin. I won't share a room with you again."

  "Done."

  "Other than my passage home I want no money from you."

  "Brook," he drawled.

  "None."

  Phillip held up his hands in surrender. "All right. I won't give you two bits if you beg me for it."

  "Not even one bit," she said seriously. "And when we arrive home I'm going to leave you. I don't want you to try to persuade me to do anything else."

  "If that's what you want." He stood and leaned over her, gripping her chin in his hand. "But tell me something. How do you plan to make your own way in Frisco without two bits to rub together?"

  " I'll think of something," she said. "I won't be your concern then, so don't give it another thought."

  Phillip released her face, his mouth curling derisively. "There's only one way for you to earn a living without my protection. But you should know all about that. Your mother did it for years."

  "Shut up."

  "That's what you're going to be, Brook. A whore. Just like your mother."

  "Get out of here."

  "Gladly. I'll meet you downstairs." He picked up two of their bags and opened the door. "You'll change your mind," he said, pausing in the doorway. "If you think about the inevitability of what I've said, you'll change your mind."

  Brook didn't even flinch as the door slammed closed in Phillip's wake. "I won't," she vowed softly, fiercely, once she was alone. "I won't be a whore. I'll kill myself before that happens." She glanced at the door, still vibrating, she imagined, with Phillip's anger. "And I won't change my mind."

  She didn't. When Brook stepped off the Pacific Mail Steamer two months later in San Francisco Bay, she said goodbye to Phillip Sumner, walked away, and never looked back.

  Chapter 3

  New Orleans, 1872

  Ryland North paused briefly before pushing open the wrought-iron gate. His eyes were drawn to the shifting blind at the second-floor window, and he realized someone in the house was watching him. So, it hadn't been a mistake. He was expected. The high carriage gate snapped into place behind him. Crossing the courtyard he observed that the flower garden was carefully nurtured and the shrubbery pruned to a pained exactness that nature had never intended. The centerpiece of the yard was a three-tiered marble fountain that poured water from the mouths of four perpetually gleeful cherubs balanced on tiptoes at the top.

  Ryland nodded a greeting to the black caretaker as he passed, pruning shears in hand. Ryland watched the man step lively to his own tuneless whistling as he targeted a shrub that had grown slightly out of control. Shaking his head ruefully, Ry took the three steps leading to the veranda in one short leap and knocked briskly on the door before he stood back.

  The door swung open slowly and the butler, for all his solemn airs, had a face that Ryland thought was peculiarly reminiscent of one of the gurgling cherubs.

  "Ryland North," he introduced himself. "Mrs. Gordon has asked to see me."

  "Come in, suh." The; door opened a little wider. "You're expected. May I take your hat?"

  Ryland handed the servant his slouch hat somewhat reluctantly. It had taken him months to get the brim turned down in exactly the right manner so that it shaded his eyes and still left everything and everyone open to his observation. He held his breath, waiting to see if the butler was going to mangle it, and sighed softly when the man simply set it on the table behind him.

  "Mrs. Gordon is in the drawing room. She asked me to show you in directly."

  Ryland had fully expected to spend several minutes cooling his heels in the foyer. He had arrived early just to make certain of it. Obviously Mrs. Gordon was more anxious to make his acquaintance than even her hastily scrawled note had indicated. As the butler parted the heavily polished sliding doors to the drawing room, Ryland felt as if he were stepping back in time to the antebellum splendor the wealthy in Old South had once enjoyed.

  Old money was his first thought, money that had somehow survived not only the devastation of the war but even more miraculously, had survived the subsequent army of Yankee carpetbaggers and speculators. Gilt-edged frames held portraits of family members that, judging by the dress, extended back at least a hundred years before the Louisiana Purchase, when the population of the city was predominantly Spanish. Two gold-and-maroon-striped loveseats faced one another at right angles to the sculpted green-veined marble mantelpiece. All the woodwork was white, making the room seem larger and the ceiling even higher than it actually was. Gold drapes billowed at the pair of open windows, and a warm autumn breeze circulated in the room, carrying fragrances from the courtyard on its back.

  "Don't just stand there," came a strident, no-nonsense, yet undeniably feminine voice. "Come in and let me get a good look at you."

  Ryland stepped past the threshold and turned to his right. The doors whispered closed behind him, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being inexorably drawn into a spider's web. And in Mrs. Gordon's case, a black widow's web.

  She was standing beside a small oval table, one pale hand resting on the curved handle of a silver teapot. The back of her hand was crossed by blue veins that no longer had the look of delicacy but had acquired the ribbed, knotty look of strength. Ryland placed Mrs. Gordon somewhere in her early seventies, but he knew that if he had not seen her hands he would have missed his mark by a score of years. Her complexion was clear and virtually unlined, her skin stretched tautly over fine high cheekbones that held tenaciously to a certain mature beauty. It was impossible to say what color her hair had been in her youth, for though it retained its thickness and luster, it was now completely white. She wore it in a coil at her nape, but the way it was drawn back at her temples gave her eyes an almond shape that Ryland had seen only once before.

  Unconsciously he touched his forefinger to the scar that curved from the arch of his cheek past his temple and disappeared into his hair.

  "War wound?" Mrs. Gordon asked bluntly, h
er pale eyes riveted on Ryland's face.

  "Of a sort," he admitted ruefully, dropping his hand.

  "Well, you don't have to hide it from me. I can respect a thing like that. Gives your face character, anyway, and I've lived long enough to know the quality of man's character."

  "Yes, ma'am," Ryland said gravely.

  "And don't 'ma'am' me. I'm known as Abby to my friends. You can address me as Miss Abigail and we'll see how matters proceed from there." Before Ryland could acknowledge her statement, Abby indicated the silver service in front of her. "Tea?"

  Ryland hesitated. He didn't care at all for tea, but politeness dictated that he at least accept the first offer.

  "No, it won't do, will it? I suspect you'd rather have bourbon. I prefer scotch myself. Scotch and plain speaking. So don't think you'll bruise an old lady's feelings because you don't want her tea." Abby swept her black skirts to one side as she turned gracefully on her heel and went to the cabinet where the liquor was kept. "It is bourbon, isn't it?"

  "Yes." Ryland was tempted to ask her for the bottle and forget about the tumbler she was pouring him. He was amused and not a little disconcerted to find that everything he had heard about Abigail Gordon prior to this afternoon's meeting was not ill -founded rumor. Ryland accepted his drink with a small murmur of thanks. "You're not having that scotch you prefer?" he asked as Abby returned to the tea tray.

  "I'm indulging my doctors at the moment. And my grandsons. I can't bear their harassment when they discover I've had a drink." Her lip curled in disgust. "They always find out, too. Taken it in their heads, the lot of them, to see that I live to be a hundred. What they don't understand is that a shot now and again hasn't harmed me so far."

  "The absence of alcohol could be a shock to your system," Ryland said in grave tones.

  Abby gave it a moment's thought until she saw Ryland's eyes were alight with mirth. "You shouldn't encourage me," she laughed, raising her china cup in mock salute. "Please, sit down." She indicated the loveseats. "It was good of you to make time for me. George Baker tells me you're much in demand."