Love and Adventure Collection - Part 2

by Jennifer Blake

  He poured a pale-golden liquid into a glass and brought it to her, then returned to the sideboard, where he splashed rye whiskey into a tumbler. Serena set her sherry to one side, removed her right glove and placed it in her purse, then took up the glass once more. As she tasted the wine, she watched Ward. His hands were brown and strong as he pushed the stopper back into the decanter and picked up his tumbler. His dark-brown hair curled sleekly to the back of his neck, and it seemed the broad width of his muscled back was a darker hue than she remembered. Even when he was not facing her, she was aware of the force of his male presence. Involuntarily, her stomach muscles contracted, and a sensation like the apprehension of pain ran along her nerves.

  Ward turned to face her, his gaze catching and holding hers. He lifted his glass in a toast of silent irony and drank. Serena hastily lowered her lashes, making a show of sipping her sherry.

  The silence grew acutely uncomfortable. She cleared her throat. “You — you don’t appear to have suffered much from your stay with the Indians.”

  “I was well treated,” he answered. “The only hardship was being unable to get a message out from the encampment.”

  However stilted, the conversation must be kept going. “Your leg, it healed as it should?”

  “Perfectly. Broken bones are no novelty to the Indians. And the bump on my head, in case you were going to ask, caused no great damage either. I had a headache for a while, but it healed itself without help or hindrance. I expect that’s more than could be said for it if I had had the services of one of our local practitioners.”

  “There have been few ill effects then, for you.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” he objected.

  “What?” He had moved to take a seat on the opposite end of the couch where she was sitting. Serena looked up, a questioning wariness in her blue-gray eyes.

  “I came back to find that Pearlie had taken over my quarters, and that far from accepting the end of our partnership, had taken possession of the deed to the Eldorado and hawked a half interest in the place all over town. I found also that by some peculiar twist of circumstances, my best friend not only had snapped up the offer at a bargain, but had also gained you as his wife. I don! call that beneficial, precisely.”

  “Oh, come,” Serena began with an impatient gesture of her wineglass.

  “That’s right. I was forgetting. You think I was bought out instead of being sold out.”

  “I know who was sold out,” Serena countered, her voice tinged with bitterness, “and it wasn’t you. Did you know that Nathan bought the Eldorado for the express purpose of having me put out? That he then saw to it that Consuelo, the one friend I could turn to, was unavailable so he would be the only one who could come to my aid when I had nowhere else to go? The man who is my husband is many things, both good and bad, but he knows well the value of money.”

  Ward stared at her, his brows drawn together in a straight line over his eyes. “I was under the impression that Nathan bought the interest Pearlie was offering in the saloon to keep anyone else from taking what he knew to be a false deed, causing trouble when I got back.”

  “Knowing you would reimburse him, I suppose?”

  Ward gave a short nod.

  “How marvelous. He achieved what he wanted, having me put out on the streets, and it didn’t cost him a penny.”

  “Yes, marvelous,” Ward repeated. The planes of his face were smooth once more, the look in his eyes closed-in and secretive.

  Serena leaned forward, clenching one small hand on her knee. “Doesn’t it matter to you what he did? Don’t you care that Nathan lied to you and used Pearlie as his dupe to take what was yours?”

  “Were you mine, Serena?”

  “What difference does it make?” Serena cried, lifting her fist. “We were talking about Nathan!”

  “So we were. The answer to your question is, no. No, I don’t think it does matter, not even if it’s true.”

  “I should have known!” Serena set her wineglass down with a sharp bang and sprang to her feet. Tears of rage rose into her eyes and she turned her head to keep Ward from seeing as she snatched up her purse and swung toward the door.

  Ward came erect in one lithe movement, blocking her path. Serena sidestepped, but he was before her, reaching to close his hard fingers around her forearms.

  “Let me go.”

  He shook his head, staring down at her flushed face and tear-bright eyes. “I told you, I don’t give up what is easily.”

  “I’m not yours!”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I won’t be treated like some pawn in a game between you and Nathan. You’ve made it clear enough that you despise me. Why should you care where I go, or what I do?”

  “I care,” he said, his eyes dark and unreadable.

  Serena pulled back from him, her hands braced against his chest and her lovely mouth set in a look of scorn. “How can you, when you don’t mind what Nathan has done?”

  “It’s because I care that I can understand what made Nathan do what he did for the sake of having you. I’m even glad he went about it the way he did, since it makes what I’m about to do that much easier.”

  The grim tone of his voice and the strain in his face were so marked that Serena went still. She was aware of the frantic beating of her heart against her stays, and the corded muscle in the lean line of his jaw. Her fingers seemed to burn where they rested on his chest. She touched the tip of her tongue to her lips. “Ward—”

  He released her so abruptly she swayed. Swinging from her, he moved to the sideboard and poured himself another drink. “I’m not going to force myself on you, if that’s what you think. At least, not quite.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “In a word, blackmail.”

  Serena took a deep breath, gathering her composure around her like the shreds of a garment. “I suppose,” she said slowly, “that you mean to explain?”

  “Certainly, if it’s necessary. Somehow, I was positive you would guess my meaning.”

  She could. And yet, it seemed so unbelievable that she could not bring herself to face it. “By no means.”

  Ward drained the glass in his hand, set it on the sideboard, then turned to face her. “Four days ago you shot a man on the road between Cripple Creek and Bristlecone. To my certain knowledge, I am the only witness to your — crime.”

  Otto, lying in the road. The bloodied, tattered edges of the hole where the bullet had entered his body. The yellowed, waxen look of his skin studded with the bristles of his beard and excessive, animal-like body hair. Serena lifted a hand to her lips, then lowered it to clasp her fingers tightly together over her purse. She raised her blue-gray gaze, liquid with pain, to meet the brooding green light in Ward’s eyes.

  “I will grant you that,” she said through stiff lips. “What of it?”

  “There haven’t been many women in this part of the country who have been hanged for murder, but there have been a few.”

  “I murdered no one. I shot Otto in self-defense.”

  “Really, Serena, I hardly think you can claim that Otto meant to kill you. I would say that was the last thing he had in mind.”

  “You know very well—”

  “Yes,” he said, cutting her short. “I know, but will the sheriff believe you, will a jury? Will they, all things considered?”

  It was a polite reminder of what she knew all too well, that her background would be weighed in the balance if she should claim to have killed in protection of her honor.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Oh, Serena, trusting Serena. I am offering you my silence in return for — your presence? Your time? Your compliance?”

  She lifted her head. “You are saying that if I — comply with what you ask of me, you won’t go to the sheriff?”

  “I did warn you it was blackmail,” he pointed out.

  “So you did. Have you considered that it may strike the sheriff as strange that you disposed o
f the body, or that it took you so long to come forward?”

  “As for the time, I had to overcome my feelings for you based on our past relationship, a difficult thing, even with your desertion of me for a more wealthy client and the bliss of matrimony. The body, now, I don’t think I disposed of it at all. I only saw the deed done at a distance. I expect you hired some passerby to get rid of it for you, paying him well for the dirty job. If a thorough search is made of the area, no doubt the corpse will turn up somewhere.”

  “I could tell them you were my accomplice.”

  “Not without admitting your guilt. Even so, where is your proof? Can you point out the old Dragon Hole mining claim where I took the corpse? No, there is nothing to connect me with the affair at all, except as witness. It will not help your case to try to involve me in the hope of discrediting my testimony.”

  He was so certain of himself and the position in which he had placed her. The desire to flay him, to tear and rend, to obliterate the sure and gentle mockery of his smile, rose up within her with such violence she felt dizzy. It took an extreme effort of will to open her lips and speak calmly.

  “Who will believe you, a gambler? You may get in deeper than you imagine.”

  “You forget, I was once a lawyer. The language of the law, and its methods, are second nature to me.”

  She spun around on her opera heel, her heavy skirt swinging in a bell shape with the force of her agitation. She was half blind with rage, and it was a moment before she realized she was moving in the direction of the bedroom. With a sharp turn, she changed her objective, coming to a halt near the warmly glowing nickel-plated stove.

  “Let me understand you,” she said over her shoulder, her voice stifled. “By requiring my — compliance, you are demanding that I be unfaithful to my marriage vows, to Nathan?”

  “It seems only fair, all things considered,” he answered, his tone clipped, relentless. “Besides, you’ll forgive me if I doubt your loyalty to a marriage that has yet to be consummated.”

  Serena went still. After a long moment she spoke a single word. “Consuelo.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How could she?” Serena whispered.

  “She seemed to think I would be interested.”

  Serena stared at the nickel grill, seeing the dark blue of her velvet dress reflected there, seeing her pale face, distorted in the rounded surface. Would he go through with it? Would Ward actually lodge information about the shooting with the sheriff? She could not believe he would. The mingled contempt and desire he seemed to feel for her was a strange combination. If she did not do as he said, he might well prefer to see her humiliated by being taken off to jail; he might enjoy knowing that she would not be able to keep the wealth he thought she wanted, that Nathan would be denied access to her as surely as he would himself.

  “Ward—” she began, then stopped. What use were appeals? Even if she could bring herself to make them, he would not listen. What was she to do then? It seemed she had no choice.

  “Yes, Serena?”

  “Nothing.”

  She thought he made a movement toward her, then stopped, drawing back. She did not turn to look. Her anger was a cold thing inside her. Ward Dunbar thought he could do with her as he pleased. He thought he could lend her to Nathan for gain, and finding himself dissatisfied with the arrangement, use circumstances to rescind it, restoring their relationship to something approaching its original status, and all this without regard for her feelings. Compliance. That was all he required, that and her physical presence, her time. It was the bargain a man struck with a whore, a bargain without love, without tenderness, without respect. Very well. If that was what he wanted, that was what he would get.

  She still wore the kid leather glove on her left hand. With silent deliberation, she began to remove the bracelet she wore over it, then the glove itself. Undoing the pearl wrist buttons, loosening the fingers, she stripped it from her hand, then tucked bracelet and glove into her purse and snapped the catch. Moving with fluid grace, she dropped the purse on a table, the table that had once held her foodstuffs, but now carried only a coating of dust.

  Without looking at Ward, she raised her arms and, grasping the jet-teardrop-tipped hatpin, drew the long bodkin from the draped velvet of her toque. The hat joined the purse on the table with the hatpin thrust like a dagger into its soft folds. Face impassive, she removed the pins from her hair, letting it fall in shimmering black waves about her shoulders. She let the pins spill from her hand onto the table beside her, then turned her attention to the small buttons down the front of her velvet jacket. Unlike her old cheviot, this jacket-and-skirt costume was made in two pieces that had to be removed separately.

  There came the clink of a bottle neck on the rim of a glass. Serena slanted a swift glance from under her lashes at Ward. There was a white line around his mouth, and his eyes were shuttered, but his hand was steady as he poured whiskey into his tumbler once more. As he picked up the glass and began to turn toward her, Serena looked hastily down at her buttons.

  The jabot of her blouse gave her a bit of trouble until she remembered that it was held in place by a stickpin. Beneath the blouse, she wore a cream chemise of tucked raw silk threaded with apricot ribbon over a corset of apricot satin with cream lace. Her petticoats, heavily ruffled about the hem, matched her chemise.

  In the recesses of her mind, Serena had half expected Ward to stop her. He did not. The realization that he was going to stand and watch her undress without a word or gesture served to stiffen her wavering resolve.

  Her silk drawers in the French style were extremely brief, showing the length of her white thighs. She thought she heard Ward’s swift intake of breath as she stepped from the last of her petticoats, but his expression was so rigid it was impossible to be certain. In the silence she could hear the sound of the wood hissing in the stove and the slosh of rye whiskey as Ward slowly swirled the liquid in his glass.

  Spurred by an impulse as demonic as that Consuelo attributed to her, Serena trailed the petticoat over the nearest chair, then with the swish of silk-clad legs, moved to stand before Ward.

  “You’ll have to help me with my corset,” she said, her voice low.

  For an instant their eyes met. Serena’s gaze was steady, unsmiling, faintly challenging, his as hard and unfathomable as jade. He made no reply, but put his glass aside, and as she turned slowly to present her back, began to release her from her tightly laced prison.

  When he was done, Serena stepped to the couch and sat down. Holding the corset beneath her breasts with one hand, she began to unbutton her black leather shoes.

  Abruptly Ward went down on one knee. Taking her foot in his hands, he stripped the buttons from their holes and drew off her shoe. He removed the other, then, his warm touch gliding over her silk-clad legs, he unfastened her garters and gently pulled away the stockings.

  His movements stilled. He rested his hands on her thighs as he knelt before her. A shadow of torment lay in the still green depths of his eyes, and then he moved, slipping his hands under the edges of her corset, spreading them, expanding the width of the stays. With firm fingers, he removed her hand from its hold and raised her arms above her head. Seeing his intention, Serena lifted her other arm, allowing him to slide the corset off over her head as he rose to his feet.

  Ward flung the undergarment aside and, stretching out his hand, took Serena’s fingers and pulled her upright. He encircled the narrow circumference of her waist, using his thumbs with a light pressure to massage the red marks left on her skin by the squeeze of the corset. Without hurry, he drew her against him, his chest swelling as he smoothed his hands upward over her back. He bent his head and found her lips.

  His mouth held the heady taste of whiskey and the firm sweetness of desire. Serena stood disarmed in his close embrace, enthralled by the cool touch of his flesh on hers, enraptured by the sure strength of his arms that held her and the devastating tenderness of his touch. Her heightened senses crowded
out thought and reason in the recognition of pleasure long denied, long despaired of.

  He shifted his hold, sliding one hand beneath her hair, pushing his fingers into the silken softness to tilt her head, preventing movement. The realization of her weakness swept over Serena like a rush of cold air. It was no part of her plans to submit meekly to the dictates of Ward Dunbar, melting into a dream of unappeased hunger. If she was so affected by his touch, then the reverse must also be true.

  Serena pressed the palms of her hands to his chest, pushing them upward, stretching on tiptoe to lock them behind his head. She thrust the firm points of her breasts into him, moving slowly, sliding the silk of her French drawers across the heated hardness of his pelvis.

  She heard the sharp rush of his indrawn breath. He drew back slightly to consider her, a frown between his brows.

  “Coals of fire, Serena?” he asked, his voice rough.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted?” Serena tilted her head, her gaze limpid and innocent.

  “Beyond the dream of a doubt, but are you sure it’s what you want?”

  “I wasn’t aware my wishes entered into it. You have the means to command me, and like any woman of the street, I perform.”

  He stiffened. “I never meant it to be like that.”

  “Didn’t you, Ward? Then why the ultimatum?”

  “I didn’t think you would come to me any other way.”

  “No more would I. But since I am here, I may as well please you, if not myself. After all, my future is at stake.”

  “Be careful your ante isn’t too high. In this game, the winner takes all. I can promise no mercy if you overplay your hand.”

  Did he mean that in pretending to passion she might succumb to her own emotions? “There is risk in all things,” she answered. “You have to calculate the odds.”

  “A calculated risk will sometimes pay off, but the greatest reward comes from those that are undertaken on nothing more than a feeling.”