Perfect Romance

by Duncan, Alice

  “So you were right and all.” Marjorie still sounded disbelieving. “Whoever would credit it?”

  Loretta sniffed. “Anyone with half a brain.”

  “I’ve got an entire brain, and I didn’t believe you,” Jason pointed out. “Tillinghurst had been one of San Francisco’s leading citizens for years.”

  “Leading?” This time Loretta snorted. “He’s one of the richest, but do you honestly believe him to have been a leader?”

  Jason and Marjorie exchanged a glance, and Jason said, “Uh . . .”

  Fired up now, Loretta declared vehemently, “He was a scoundrel and a beast who ran sweat shops and oppressed his workers, particularly the women who worked for him. Anybody who does that isn’t any kind of leader, in my book. And, what’s more, if a man is dishonest and despicable in that way, he certainly can’t be above committing other crimes.”

  This time, it was Malachai and Jason who exchanged a glance. She elbowed Malachai in his tummy. She didn’t do it hard, because she wanted to remain on his lap, but she made sure he felt it. He let out a startled whuff, so she was satisfied.

  “Did they find the missing artifacts?” Marjorie asked quickly, as if hoping to avert all-out war.

  Malachai tackled this one before Loretta had drawn breath. “Some of them, at least. I don’t know yet if they’ve recovered all of them. I’m pretty sure Tillinghurst sold some of the more valuable items—”

  “The rat,” Loretta interrupted, believing Malachai’s narrative to be a trifle lacking in colorful commentary.

  With a grin, Malachai went on. “Right. Anyhow, I think Jones is helping the police take an inventory. He was locked in the room where Tillinghurst had stashed the stuff. We won’t know for sure what’s there and what isn’t until we compare this inventory with the master list.”

  “Why did he keep it here on his estate?” Jason wanted to know. “It seems a rather foolish hiding place to me.”

  “Humph,” snorted Loretta before Malachai could go on. “Mr. Tillinghurst doesn’t trust anyone, and I think he liked to keep his ill-gotten gains close at hand so that he could gloat over them.”

  “You’re making the man out to be a villain in a Gothic novel, Loretta. He isna that gormless, surely.”

  Malachai preempted Loretta’s rebuttal. “I don’t know about that, Miss MacTavish—”

  “Whatever gormless means,” Jason thrust in. Marjorie frowned at him.

  After chuckling, Malachai went on, “From everything I’ve learned so far, I believe he was planning to stow most of the stolen loot elsewhere, but something went wrong and he didn’t get the chance. I know for certain that he didn’t anticipate that the original theft would be witnessed by two of my sailors. He reacted by having them kidnapped, although I doubt he’d have done that if he’d considered the matter longer. No one would have connected the thieves to him, as long as they weren’t caught. And then when Peavey escaped, his nerves started to go. He’s not a brave man.”

  “Seems to me he went into the wrong business, then,” said Loretta with another significant sniff. “A criminal ought to be fearless. Or stupid. And as much as I detest the man, I know he’s not stupid.”

  “No, he’s not,” agreed Malachai. “Until now, he’s done very well for himself, both legally and illegally—”

  Naturally, Loretta couldn’t let that pass by without comment. “Even his legal activities are immoral.”

  A short pause preceded Malachai’s, “Right. At any rate, both his legal and his illegal careers are over now.”

  “What will happen to his businesses?” Jason said. “This might throw a lot of people out of work. Even if it’s lousy work, they probably need their wages.”

  “Oh, my!” Loretta struggled to sit upright. Losing the battle against Malachai’s greater strength, she nevertheless kept on subject. “I hadn’t thought about that, Jason, but you’re right. I shall take care of them.”

  “You?” Malachai stopped her elbow on its way to his stomach by catching its sharp point in a big hand. “How the devil are you going to take care of them?”

  She shrugged. “Why, I shall take over his businesses, of course. Buy him out, if necessary. I’m sure my father will assist me with the details.” A trifle disgruntled, she added, “He’ll probably be glad to think that I’m turning my energies away from social causes and onto the pathway of business, although I’m sure he won’t like it that I aim to run the businesses according to modern, enlightened precepts. And by myself. But he’ll be wrong. I shall right the evils Mr. Tillinghurst perpetrated while at the same time proving that a woman can be a sound businessman . . . er . . . person.”

  “Lord God protect us all,” muttered Marjorie.

  “He’ll have to,” Jason said with a laugh. “With Loretta at the helm, those poor workers will need all the mercy they can get.”

  “Jason!” Loretta hated when her friends laughed at her. She didn’t have time to berate him, because the sergeant of police entered the parlor at that point to question them.

  Loretta was pleased to explain herself. She persevered even in the face of the sergeant’s astonished cries and questions.

  # # #

  Loretta thought she could get used to being in bed with Malachai. In fact, the notion was quite comforting. And exciting. It was the excitement that claimed her now.

  “I was afraid he’d shot you when I heard all that gunfire,” she said, stroking his ear and fingering his earring. It was quite dashing, that earring. Loretta hoped he wouldn’t stop wearing it once he left the seafaring life for settled calm in San Francisco.

  Malachai paused in his ministrations to her body. They’d thrown off their clothes as soon as the door closed behind them and they fell onto Loretta’s bed, leaving Jason and Marjorie belowstairs and shocked. Well, Marjorie had been shocked. Loretta doubted that Jason was, since he knew her so well. “How the devil could he shoot me? He wasn’t armed.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She didn’t look, but she was pretty sure he was rolling his eyes. “He was in his dressing gown, for God’s sake.”

  “Well, he might have had a derringer.”

  “Jones told me that it was some of Tillinghurst’s men who were trying to escape who’d started shooting at the police. No one was hurt.”

  “That’s a silly thing to do. It would be bad enough to be caught in the perpetration of a theft. But if a fellow actually shot a policeman—”

  “Shut up, Loretta.” To assure himself that she would follow his command, he covered her mouth with his.

  Loretta gave herself up to the marvelous sensations he elicited from her body. She particularly loved his hands on her breasts. When he caressed her nipples, such a bolt of lust shot through her, she wasn’t sure she could contain herself. Then she decided she didn’t need to.

  “Oh, Malachai!” she cried, and with a lunge she wrapped her legs around his and climbed on top of him. She didn’t even object to his knowing grin.

  “You like that, do you?” he asked smugly.

  “Yes,” she said. “And so do you.” To prove it, she reached for his long, hard, silky shaft and derived great pleasure from his moan of delight and the drifting shut of his eyelids. His hands closed over her buttocks, and he guided her to where they could do each other the most good.

  Before meeting Malachai, Loretta had attempted by various means to learn about the sex act, but she’d never quite envisioned anything like this. She hadn’t believed it would be so wonderful. When she felt her dark wetness slide over him, she imagined herself as a pagan princess. And when she rode him, his hands on her buttocks guiding her, and when he lifted himself so that he could feast upon her breasts, she thought that life couldn’t get much sweeter than this.

  “God, Loretta, you feel so good.”

  Yes, by gum, she did, although she sensed he meant something else by his comment. Throwing her head back, her hair streaming over her shoulders like a silky veil, she gave herself up to the sensation of bein
g gloriously, absolutely, and completely loved. Since she was on top, she also felt a good deal of control for a few moments. Then, when the pressure began building to a heated climax, and when Malachai, with a mighty heave, turned her over with him on top, she guessed the feeling had been illusory. And she didn’t even care.

  “God, you’re wonderful, Loretta,” Malachai mumbled into her ear.

  “So are you,” she mumbled back.

  And then everything in her exploded in a burst of pleasure so great, her body bucked both herself and Malachai up off the mattress. She hadn’t known she had that much strength.

  With a wild cry, Malachai joined her in completion with spasm after spasm of release.

  They both lay on her bed panting like racehorses for several minutes afterwards. Then, with a mighty groan of effort, Malachai turned onto his side, stroked her sweaty breasts and stomach, and grinned. “What say we visit the justice of the peace tomorrow, Loretta? You don’t want a big ceremony any more than I do, do you?”

  Exhausted and feeling utterly spent, Loretta couldn’t bear the thought of having her peace interrupted. Therefore, she opted not to argue with him now. “Let’s talk about it later.” She was so tired, the words were slurry.

  “All right, sweetheart. We’ll decide later.”

  Bother. Right before she slipped into slumber, Loretta mentally smacked Malachai upside the head for continuing to deny her principles.

  # # #

  “What do you mean, you won’t marry me?” Malachai hadn’t exactly meant to bellow, but Loretta was such an exasperating woman, he couldn’t help himself.

  Loretta covered her ears with her hands. “Please, Malachai, there’s no need to shout. I’ve told you before that I won’t marry you. Why do you keep bringing up the subject? Why do you keep insisting I deny my principles?”

  She looked good enough to eat this morning. He’d slept late, for the first time in a long time completely relaxed and without a worry in the world.

  Last night, before he and she had returned to Loretta’s house, they’d all accompanied the police to the station and signed various reports and on-site inventory lists. Malachai had made arrangements for the recovered artifacts to be locked away pending the final inventory. Then they’d taken care of Peavey and Jones, making sure the two men were safely bestowed in their respective hostelries.

  The result of all this activity was that they hadn’t returned home until the early hours of the morning. Then Malachai and Loretta had left Jason and Marjorie to their own devices and gone upstairs where they’d made spectacular love.

  And now the woman, standing before him in a peach brocade robe of Chinese design, with her gorgeous hair spilling down her back and her dark eyes bright and beautiful, was once more refusing to marry him. She drove him crazy!

  Lowering his voice but not his intensity, he growled, “Because your principles are insane!”

  He snatched the hairbrush from her hand and turned her around. He’d been wanting to brush her hair since the moment he’d seen her in that damned soup kitchen.

  “They are not,” she said, indignant.

  Her hair gleamed. Because he wanted to see it in the sunlight, he picked her up—she gasped in surprise, but he didn’t care—and carried her to the window, where he flung the curtains aside. Ah, good. No fog. Late morning sunlight streamed in through the sparkling panes—Loretta’s staff was good about keeping the windows washed—and brought out all the red and gold highlights in the thick dark mass.

  “God, I love your hair,” he said. Then he mentally chastised himself for using the word love. A man couldn’t be too careful with that word around a woman.

  Although, he thought suddenly, it probably didn’t matter anymore. Not with Loretta. Hell, a man was supposed to love his wife, wasn’t he? He opened his mouth, thinking to declare himself, but the words wouldn’t come. They were too frightening for a man who had avoided entanglements for almost forty years to blithely fling around, even at the woman he wanted to marry.

  “Thank you.” She sounded sarcastic, although Malachai couldn’t imagine why. “I still won’t marry you.”

  “Dammit, why not?” He’d hollered again. Hell, the woman frustrated the daylights out of him!

  “Because I believe in free love, and I won’t violate my precepts for you or anyone else, Malachai Quarles.” She hesitated for a second or two. “However, I should like us to continue to be lovers.”

  “That’s something, anyhow,” Malachai said scathingly.

  “Yes, I quite like having you as a lover.” And, turning into his arms, she proved it.

  # # #

  Various conflicting emotions sparred with each other in Malachai’s breast as he strode away from Loretta’s Russian Hill abode shortly after noon on the day after William Frederick Tillinghurst’s arrest.

  He was glad Tillinghurst had been caught. He wasn’t glad that Loretta had been proved correct about him.

  He was delighted that Loretta enjoyed the physical aspects of their relationship. If she didn’t agree to marry him, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but he was very much afraid he’d lose his mind. What was left of it.

  He was overjoyed that his men, Peavey and Jones, had been found and were safe and healthy. He wasn’t sure what to do with them now. Sure, he knew they were grown men and grown men were supposed to be able to take care of themselves. And Jones could. Peavey was another matter entirely. Malachai wasn’t sure what the poor man would do now that Malachai was retiring from the treasure-recovery business. They’d been together for twenty years or more, and Peavey depended on him.

  “Damn it,” he muttered as he stormed along, scattering dithery old ladies and frightened young men as he went, “if she’d only agree to marry me, Peavey could work in our home. I could find something for him to do.”

  Of course, since Malachai aimed to set up housekeeping in San Francisco, Loretta or no Loretta, he supposed Peavey could still work in his home.

  The notion of setting up a bachelor establishment in the same city in which Loretta lived gave him a cold, achy feeling in his chest. He thumped on it a couple of times in an effort to make the pain go away. He succeeded in startling a young Chinese man so badly, he fell off his bicycle. Absently, Malachai bent and plucked him off the pavement with one hand, righted the bicycle with another, said, “Careful there, man,” and walked on.

  There had to be a way to get her to marry him. Malachai, not accustomed to failing at things, pondered possibilities as he made his way to the Fairfield Hotel to see how Peavey was getting along. He’d meant to do so earlier, but Loretta had distracted him. The ache in his chest gave way to a brief spate of delicious remembrance before kicking in again.

  Curse the woman. And curse him, too. Why had he fallen for a damned feminist do-gooder?

  The notion that he’d fallen for any woman stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t stay stopped for long, but it was sufficiently long enough for a young mother to panic, snatch her son up from the walkway, and dart off in the opposite direction. Malachai stared after her, frowning, and decided that was the reason, right there, in the form of that obviously weak-minded woman and her sailor-suited son.

  Loretta wouldn’t be frightened by the sight of a large man standing still in front of her. If such a thing happened in Loretta’s vicinity, she’d just shove him aside, or try to. And she’d never dress a son in so silly an outfit as that blue-and-white sailor suit. Or allow the lad to run around with his golden curls long enough for him to be mistaken for a girl. God bless the woman, Malachai didn’t know how he’d survived this long without her.

  It was a dismal certainty in his mind that he’d have a hard time surviving without her now that he’d found her. What a calamity! He, Malachai Quarles, a man who’d survived an orphanage, life on the streets, and twenty-five years at sea, had been laid low by a woman. He shook his head, marveling at how the mighty had been felled—and not by a sweet-tempered, empty-headed blonde, either. He’d been singularly unimpressed
by all the females of that description he’d met over the years.

  He sighed lustily, sending a young lad who had been sweeping the sidewalk scuttling inside the store he worked for. Deciding he could use a cigar, Malachai swerved into the same store.

  “What the devil are you doing cowering there behind the counter?” he demanded of the lad, who peeked out at him with huge, alarmed blue eyes.

  “N-nothing, sir,” the boy stammered.

  “Then pick yourself up and sell me one of those Havanas.” Malachai pointed.

  Trembling, the boy did as he’d been commanded, laid the cigar on the counter, and backed up against the shelves behind him. Malachai, concerned for the boy’s nervous state, slapped a silver dollar on the counter next to the quarter for which he paid for the cigar. “Here, boy, get yourself something to eat.” It was obvious to Malachai, if not to the store’s owner, that the youngster helping him was shaking from fatigue and hunger.

  The boy’s quavery, “Th-thank you, sir,” followed Malachai out onto the sidewalk again.

  As much as he hated to acknowledge it, he guessed Loretta was right about the general lack of caring demonstrated by San Francisco’s business community, if that pathetic child was anything by which to judge. Malachai couldn’t imagine employing a boy like that and not making sure he was fed properly.

  “Hell, I suppose I’ll have to talk to her father,” he grumbled, biting off the end of the cigar since he didn’t have his cigar-clipper with him. He spat the end into the street, causing a milk-wagon driver to pull his steed up abruptly.

  Malachai glared at the man. “Careful with that horse, man!” He hated seeing animals mistreated.

  Animals and children. And women. The notion that a business partner of his had taken unfair advantage of his female employees galled Malachai. He ought to have seen Tillinghurst for the villain he was long before the truth had slapped him in the face. Any man who could abuse women and children was as foul a creature as lived on earth. Malachai had bitter experience with such, and he was ashamed that Tillinghurst’s name should even remotely and in another context be linked with his.