Perfect Romance

by Duncan, Alice

  Loretta would have loved to throw the punch in his face, but she couldn’t humiliate her mother by doing so. Besides, she was thirsty after that energetic waltz. “Thank you.” She pushed the words out through her teeth.

  “I should love to have some punch,” Mrs. Linden said, happily unaware of the tension roiling in waves from her daughter and bouncing off the captain as if it didn’t exist.

  Loretta didn’t like the way her mother’s bright blue eyes were twinkling. She’d seen that look on her mother’s face before, generally when Mrs. Linden was about to foist some young man upon her peppery daughter in the hope that Loretta would forget about her causes, get married, start a family, and stop embarrassing the family. If it hadn’t worked with any of the other young men in San Francisco, it sure as the devil wouldn’t work with Captain Malachai Quarles. Loretta wouldn’t disappoint her mother by saying so, at least not right here, right now.

  Mrs. Linden took the punch from Malachai with a charming smile and turned to her daughter. “I was going to bring Captain Quarles over to you so that I could introduce you, dear, but he said the two were already acquainted.”

  Loretta pried her teeth apart. “We weren’t exactly introduced. Captain Quarles tried to strangle me in the soup kitchen several days ago.”

  She regretted her sarcastic statement as soon as she saw the color leave her mother’s face and a bewildered expression consume it. In fact, Mrs. Linden’s expression was evolving into one of shock and horror when Loretta, feeling guilty, decided to ease her mind. She hated doing it. She wanted the world to detest Malachai Quarles as much as she did. “That was only a joke, Mother.”

  Blinking first at Loretta and then at Malachai, Mrs. Linden said, “Oh? I . . . uh . . . don’t think I understand, dear.”

  Before Loretta could speak again, Malachai took over. “Perfectly understandable, Mrs. Linden. Your daughter is something of a joke smith, I gather.” He looked reproachfully at Loretta. “You shouldn’t tease your mother, Miss Linden. She might take you seriously one of these days.”

  “Indeed,” murmured Mrs. Linden, whose expression now evidenced hurt.

  Loretta wanted to take a blackjack to the both of them. “It wasn’t really a joke.” Her jaw was aching from having clenched her teeth so tightly, and it was difficult to speak for the rigidity of her face muscles. “The captain broke into the soup kitchen because he thought one of his men was there.” Which reminded her of something. She turned on Malachai. “Just exactly who told you Mr. Peavey was there, anyhow?”

  “Perhaps we should discuss then at another time, Miss Linden. It doesn’t seem appropriate conversation for so pleasant a party.”

  “Why, you—”

  ”Indeed, Captain Quarles,” said Mrs. Linden, lightly stepping on and squashing her daughter’s irate retort. She’d become an expert at thwarting Loretta in exactly that way years earlier.

  Loretta shut her mouth with a snap and vowed never to speak to Captain Malachai Quarles or her interfering mother again. She sniffed and downed the rest of her punch.

  With a worried glance at her daughter, Mrs. Linden said, “It’s about time for the buffet to be served. Will you escort Loretta to the buffet, Captain Quarles?”

  “But—”

  Again Loretta was thwarted, this time by the captain. “I’d be delighted to do so.” Taking Loretta’s hand and placing it on his arm, he leaned over and spoke in an undertone. “I’ll tell you all about how Peavey got to where he was coshed.”

  “That’s lovely, dear.” Mrs. Linden smiled brightly on the ill-matched couple and tripped off, Loretta presumed to find her father.

  Having vowed only seconds earlier never to speak to Malachai again in this lifetime, Loretta now broke her vow. Scowling hideously at him, she snapped, “You’re a big bully, Captain Quarles. I presume you know that.”

  His eyebrows lifted so high they nearly got lost in his hairline. “Your mother seems to like me.”

  “She doesn’t know you.”

  “A shame, that. Here, let me take you in to the buffet. I meant what I said. I’ll tell you all about Peavey.”

  Indignation warred with curiosity for only seconds before it suffered a humiliating defeat. For all her anger at the captain and all her outrage that he should manhandle her and embarrass her and make her feel small and insignificant, she still felt a strange reluctance to part from him.

  Although she didn’t want to admit it, especially to herself, she wondered if her reluctance stemmed in part from her not caring to see him dance with other ladies, some of whom were younger and more beautiful than she. Of course, they were all idiots who had no conversation, but Loretta had noticed that men generally didn’t care if a woman was stupid as long as she was pretty.

  Men. She despised most of them. Almost all of them, in fact.

  She had a dismal feeling that one of the reasons she so hated men was because no man, as of the current date, had ever attempted to seduce her. The notion was so depressing that she decided to encourage her wrath in an effort to conquer it.

  “Have a seat, Miss Linden. I’ll fetch you a plate.”

  She sat and remained mute, her lips pressed so tightly together, her cheeks ached.

  “Is there anything in particular you like?” He smiled sweetly at her.

  She glared back at him and spake not.

  With a knowing grin and a devilish twinkle, the captain then asked, “Is there anything in particular you don’t like?”

  Finally, she couldn’t keep silent another second longer. Glaring up at Malachai, she whispered harshly, “I hate you.”

  He shook his head sadly. “And here I thought we were getting along so well.”

  If she’d had anything in her hands, Loretta would have thrown it at his insolent back as he strolled away from her to pick up a plate. It was fortunate for her such a satisfying gesture was denied to her. She’d already made a exhibition of herself and would inevitably hear about it from her father in the morning.

  What she should probably do was get up and leave the blasted captain with his blasted plate full of food. Loretta glowered at the buffet table, thinking that will teach him.

  If she did that, however, she’d never learn about Mr. Peavey and why he’d been knocked out in the soup kitchen.

  On the other hand, Captain Quarles deserved to be abandoned. Interesting scenarios, most of them involving the captain standing alone in a church and waiting for his bride—Loretta, naturally—who never came to take the wedding vows, entertained her for a few seconds before she told herself not to be an idiot. No woman would ever leave the captain at the altar, for the simple reason that no woman would be fool enough to agree to marry him in the first place.

  So the best thing to do would be to get up and leave.

  She frowned, recalling the Peavey problem. There was no way to ensure that she’d ever meet Captain Quarles again, much less that he’d talk to her about Mr. Peavey if they did meet. She wanted to hear about Peavey. And that, blast it, meant that she’d have to sit here and wait for him to come back to her.

  Curse her curiosity. It was forever getting her into trouble.

  # # #

  Malachai was halfway through the buffet line before he realized he wasn’t bored. He frowned when he then realized he wasn’t bored because he was having so much fun tormenting Loretta Linden.

  He didn’t like the notion that a woman was entertaining him. On the other hand, Loretta probably wouldn’t be so much fun if she weren’t such a magnificent target for teasing. If he were, say, to hold a sensible conversation with her—not that such a thing was possible with a woman—she’d undoubtedly turn out to be just as boring as all the other women he’d ever met.

  Looking around, he saw that there were a lot of them present, too. Women here and women there. Women, women everywhere, nor any one he wanted. Coleridge had got his poem wrong.

  Unfortunately, many of them wanted him. If Malachai had still been a young man—a younger man, that is to say—he�
�d have appreciated the attention. As it was, he’d long ago had his fill of silly, brainless women who only wanted him to spice up their lives while their husbands entertained their mistresses. After you’d done the one thing worth doing with a woman, what did you do then? Malachai always wanted to go home, and they always wanted him to stay and listen to them complain about their husbands. High society wasn’t Malachai’s cup of tea.

  But Loretta Linden . . . well . . . Malachai glanced at her surreptitiously as he plopped crab cakes onto his plate and grinned. She sat there seething like a geyser about to blow, clearly weighing her options. Should she walk off and show him how much she hated him or wait so that she could learn about Peavey?

  He wasn’t surprised to find her where he’d left her when he returned to her chair, holding a plate heaped high with delectable things to eat. He’d taken a lot because Loretta might be small, but she wasn’t skinny, bless her. She had flesh on her. Malachai liked his women with flesh.

  Executing another bow, mainly because he knew it would annoy her, he then took the chair next to her. He had to run off a young cub in order to do it, but one glare had been enough. The poor fellow jumped up as if he’d sat on a hot rock and run away with his tails flapping behind him. The younger generation had no grit in them.

  “You’re a brute,” Loretta said in greeting. “That poor fellow did nothing to you.”

  “I did nothing to him, either,” Malachai pointed out. “Besides, he was in my chair.”

  “You’re worse than a brute. You’re an arrogant fiend.”

  He gave one of his standard shrugs. “He could have stayed if he’d wanted to. Fellow has no gumption.”

  “Honestly!” Loretta ignored the plate he held out for her, turning her head away and glowering at the crowd surrounding the buffet table. Two young ladies, catching her baleful look, started and hurried away from her.

  Malachai chuckled and popped an olive into his mouth. “Why’d you wait for me if you hate me so much?”

  She transferred her glower to him. “You know very well why I waited. I want to know what happened the other night. How did Mr. Peavey get into the soup kitchen after I’d locked it up? How did the other men get there? Why was he there? How did you find him?”

  So Malachai told her. He was pleased to note that she became engrossed in his tale, momentarily forgot she hated him, and began taking things from the plate and nibbling them. She had the brightest eyes. Her eyeglasses—he’d been surprised to see them at first, before he realized she’d worn them to irk her parents—only magnified her beautiful brown eyes, which were plenty large enough to begin with.

  When he was through with his tale, she continued to stare at him for a moment, then said, “That’s it? He hid behind the counter, some men broke in, and then you broke in, and then I came in, and you tried to throttle me?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And you’ve looked for Mr. Peavey’s dungeon since then?”

  “I’ve looked. Every blasted day.” Malachai cast his weary gaze at the embossed ceiling, recalling what seemed like a thousand San Francisco houses he and Peavey had investigated during the past week. He was sick to death of climbing up and down hills and ogling rich men’s estates. Damn it, he wanted a house of his own; he didn’t want merely to stare at those belonging to other people. He was getting too damned old for the adventurer’s life.

  Or . . . well . . . not too old, exactly, but he was . . . tired of it. Yes, that’s what his problem was. It wasn’t age. It was a certain fatigue that came with doing the same thing year after year. He felt better after he’d cleared up the age issue in his mind.

  “But why?”

  He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “But it makes no sense! Anyway, how did you know to look in the soup kitchen?”

  “I’d been searching for Peavey and Jones, and I asked people as I went along. A Chinaman who’d worked for me once told me somebody sounding like Peavey and talking about Moors had eaten lunch in the soup kitchen.”

  She frowned, and two tiny lines furrowed her brow right above her nose. They were cute, those lines. Malachai had a sudden and, fortunately, brief urge to kiss them away.

  Lord, what was the matter with him? Just because he thought Miss Linden was a spicy dish, there was no reason on earth to want to kiss her. Anywhere. He’d been avoiding respectable females for nearly forty years now, and he wasn’t about to be snagged by one at his age.

  Damn. There he went again, focusing on his age. And he wasn’t old, dammit.

  Anyhow, Loretta Linden didn’t appear to want to snag him. In actual fact, she seemed rather more inclined to shoot him. And then kick him after he fell down dead. The truth rankled even as it tickled him, although he didn’t know why it should.

  She shook her head, still frowning. Malachai appreciated the way her pink ball gown left so much of her skin exposed. Her shoulders were soft and white, and he itched to caress them.

  Borrowing from Loretta, he shook his head, hard, and decided he was losing his mind.

  Loretta smacked a fist against her pink-satin knee. “I tell you, it’s Mr. Tillinghurst. He’s involved in the villainy somehow.”

  It was probably the best thing she could have said under the circumstances because it was so absurd, it made Malachai forget all about Loretta’s skin and how soft and enticing it looked. “Damnation, will you stop being stupid? That’s the most imbecilic accusation I’ve ever heard!”

  Chapter Six

  The morning after her parents’ party, Loretta was still fuming about having been called an imbecile by Malachai Quarles. “Damn him!”

  “Damn whom?” asked Marjorie, who had resigned herself to Loretta’s cursing. She held an ankle-length, rust-and-white-striped cotton day dress that Loretta had asked her to fetch from her closet.

  “Captain Quarles,” Loretta growled, tugging a knee-length, yellow silk chemise over her head and smoothing it over her hips. She squinted at those hips in the mirror, wondering if she ought to lose weight. Perhaps Captain Quarles would like her better if she weren’t so—

  She didn’t allow herself to finish the thought. She also gave herself several hard mental slaps for almost having had it in the first place.

  As if she gave a rap what Malachai Quarles thought of her! Why, the thought was not merely idiotic, but was certainly doomed to failure, even if she allowed herself to have it, which she wouldn’t. Malachai Quarles was nothing to her but a minor thorn in her side. He wasn’t worth the snap of her fingers.

  “Hold your arms up,” Marjorie told her, opting not to comment on Loretta’s feelings about the captain.

  Loretta eyed her narrowly in the instant before Marjorie dropped the dress over her head, but discerned no emotion on her secretary’s face. Marjorie was an expert at hiding her feelings, thanks to her years as a White Star Line stewardess. Loretta often suspected her of harboring rebellious thoughts, but so far, Marjorie had remained stoic.

  This morning, unlike most mornings, Loretta appreciated her for her forbearance. If Marjorie had said anything nice about Malachai Quarles, Loretta might have been pushed into throwing a temper tantrum.

  As Marjorie pulled the dress over Loretta’s arms and body, Loretta’s voice was muffled by the fabric. “But I’ll show him.”

  “You’ll show who what?”

  Loretta’s head popped through the neck opening of the dress, and she adjusted it around her hips—which were not too large—as Marjorie shook out the rust-colored cotton top with a detachable shawl collar that went over the striped dress. Marjorie herself was clad in a olive tailored suit with a collarless jacket and an ankle-length skirt that Loretta had given her for her birthday.

  Although Loretta believed that a slavish devotion to fashion was both unseemly and ridiculous, she appreciated nice clothes and made sure her secretary always dressed as well as she herself did. It had taken, literally, months to convince Marjorie to wear the clothes Loretta’d had made for her. The stubborn woman had some n
onsensical notion that it was improper for an employer to supply her secretary with a fashionable wardrobe.

  Loretta had finally shut her up by telling her she refused to employ a frumpish secretary because Marjorie’s dowdiness would reflect poorly on her as an employer. Although Loretta still had her doubts as to whether or not Marjorie approved of taking clothes as part of her salary, at least she no longer quibbled about wearing them.

  Taking the rust-colored top from Marjorie’s fingers, dropping it over her head, and tugging it past the various obstacles in its way, Loretta answered, “I’ll show Captain Quarles that I’m right.”

  Marjorie sighed and picked up Loretta’s hat, a felt number with an upturned brim that matched the rust of her top and which had a nice plump, brown ostrich feather as trim. Loretta had searched her heart and her conscience for a long time before she’d allowed the ostrich feather to be used as an adornment on her hat, but the milliner had assured her that the ostriches lived on a nice, tidy farm in Pasadena, California, and weren’t mistreated when their feathers were being harvested, so Loretta had allowed it. She didn’t believe in slaughtering animals for the sake of fashion.

  “What are you going to be right about?” Marjorie asked, handing Loretta the hat.

  Loretta plopped it on her head, adjusted it—her hair was so thick, this operation sometimes took a bit of maneuvering—and secured it with a long, sharp hat pin. “I’ll show him that I’m right about Mr. Tillinghurst.”

  Holding out Loretta’s gloves, Marjorie asked, “What about Mr. Tillinghurst?”

  Turning away from the mirror, satisfied with her appearance, Loretta took the gloves. “I’ll prove to him that he’s a villain, is what.”

  “Captain Quarles is a villain?” Marjorie sounded startled. “I know you didna care for him, but—”

  ”Not Quarles,” Loretta interrupted. “Tillinghurst is the villain.” She sniffed. “Although it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that Captain Quarles is right behind him in the villainy department.”

  Since she’d brought her own hat to Loretta’s room when she came in to help her dress, Marjorie now stood before the mirror and put it on. Loretta envied her secretary that brilliant red hair of hers. Wouldn’t she just love to have Marjorie’s hair? Captain Quarles wouldn’t call her an imbecile if she had hair like that.