He was dressed like some ruffian from a Wild West show.
The only thing missing was a pair of ornate six-shooters that Dorothea imagined all those cow-fellows wore.
“Where is he?” the man demanded as he pushed past Dorothea. “Get Bright out here! Pronto!”
“Sir,” she said in her fiercest voice, “I demand that you leave my father’s house at once—”
“Your father!” He let out a bark of a laugh and pierced her with his steely blue gaze. “Don’t tell me the old bastard has a partner in crime!”
“I should say n—Crime?” Dorothea sputtered. “What on earth are you—”
There was a murderous gleam in his eyes. He was not a man to be taken lightly, and a shudder of apprehension skittered down Dorothea’s back. The men she knew in Oxford were all civilized men.
Dorothea had no idea what to expect from this one….
Scoundrel’s Daughter
Harlequin Historical #656
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Deborah Hale
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Margo Maguire
SCOUNDREL’S DAUGHTER
Available from Harlequin Historicals and MARGO MAGUIRE
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Scoundrel’s Daughter #656
This book is dedicated to my daughter, Julia Maguire.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Prologue
Africa
December, 1882
It couldn’t possibly get any hotter or more desperate, Jack Temple thought as the son of the Bahisi chief yanked the ropes tighter around his wrists. Jeering women and children had gathered around, and the village witch doctor pranced in circles around them, shaking a rattle made of lions’ teeth in one hand, while he screeched incantations.
Distracted, the chief’s son didn’t notice when Jack turned his hands back to front before being tied. Jack managed to keep a small space between his hands so the twine would be easier to slip off. It was his only hope of getting himself and O’Neill out of this mess.
Christ, he was getting too old for this!
The warrior jerked Temple against a tall, wooden stump that stood upright in the center of the village and tied him to it. Sweat poured from his forehead, running into his eyes, and he was powerless to wipe it away.
Unfortunately, sweat was the least of his worries.
When the drums began their ominous beat and the warriors started dancing, Jack knew that trouble had just begun.
“Where in hell is Alastair Bright?” O’Neill muttered. Jack could feel the older man twisting his arms against the ropes that tied them to each other’s backs. If Bright did not return and mount a rescue effort, O’Neill and Jack were certain to die. Miserably.
On the other hand, anything Bright managed would have to be nothing short of a miracle. They were outnumbered at least twenty to one, and that was counting only the men. Looking at the people gathering around him, Jack knew he wouldn’t want to have to do battle against any of the women, either.
His eyes burned with the blistering heat while his head pounded with whatever drug they’d poured into him earlier in the day. His tongue felt thick, and it stuck to the roof of his mouth, to his teeth. Half-naked men and women swayed before him, their colorful figures becoming blurry as the drug took effect.
Even so, Jack’s wits were still at least somewhat intact. He might be slow, but he wasn’t dead yet, and he had no intention of departing the land of the living without a fight. Even as the Bahisi people waved their rattles and bangles threateningly before him, he actively worked to get free.
Twisting his hands to loosen his bonds, he forced himself to keep his focus, to ignore the witch doctor’s pointed taunts and the sharp spears carried by each of the warriors.
“Kizushi! Majiza! Wauaji!” sputtered the prancing, brightly painted man. He was naked except for a bright red sash tied around his waist and wide armbands made of leopard fur. His legs and chest bore bright slashes of paint, intricate patterns of blue and white contrasting with his black skin.
“What’s he saying?” O’Neill croaked. Jack’s old friend never learned any of the local languages of the exotic places they traveled. He hired the bearers and sailors and managed to procure lodgings, food and medical services when necessary—always using a kind of pidgin-English that somehow got him by.
“He says the tribal gods are angry that the Kohamba figure was taken.”
“Yes, but we don’t have it, do we?” O’Neill said petulantly.
“No, Bright’s got it,” Jack replied.
“And it didn’t belong to the Bahisi tribe anyway!” O’Neill’s voice was an angry rasp. His words were beginning to slur, but they were still tinged with the indignation of an idealist.
“You want to clarify the situation for them, O’Neill?” Jack said through gritted teeth. “Tell them that we came into deepest, darkest Africa only to photograph the powerful Kohamba, but that one of our party decided to steal it?”
“Can’t we?” O’Neill asked desperately. “After all, it was Alastair Bright who double-crossed us and took it. And the statue belongs to the Mongasa tribe, so—”
“So the Mongasas should be the ones to kill us?”
“Kill us?” O’Neill sounded even more panicky than before. “They m-mean to kill us?”
Jack loosened his tongue and tried, unsuccessfully, to moisten his lips. For all the miles they’d traveled together, O’Neill was painfully naive. “When all this hoopla is over—the drums, the chanting—they’re going to torch the brush at our feet and burn us.”
“Christ, sir!” O’Neill cried. “We’ve got to do something! How long will the dancing last?”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied. “But I’m working on these bindings around my wrists. You might want to do the same.”
“Then what?” O’Neill asked and Jack could feel him struggling frantically to yank his hands free. “We’re surrounded by an entire village of naked heathens! They have spears! And knives!”
“I don’t have a plan yet,” Jack replied with as much calm as he could muster. “Go easy on the bindings, O’Neill. Use your fingers and see if you ca
n feel a rough edge on this stump that we can use to cut the ropes.”
“All r-right, all right,” O’Neill said, and Jack could feel the man’s hands moving less frantically than before. He didn’t think it would be possible to saw through the ropes in such a short amount of time, but the task would give O’Neill something to think about while Jack got his own bindings off.
And then what?
Jack squinted his eyes against the painful light and looked around him. Their situation was as hopeless as any he’d ever been in. If they managed to escape their bonds, they’d have to get out of the village. Once out of the village, they would be in jungle so deep, they’d be lucky if they traveled a mile without being attacked by wild animals or captured by another hostile tribe.
Damn Alastair Bright!
Jack should never have trusted him. The man called himself professor, but Jack now knew he was a charlatan—certainly he was no academic man of any reputation.
It seemed like years since Jack had met Bright in a tavern on the isle of Unguja. Jack’s instincts had warned against trusting the man, but he hadn’t been able to get around the Englishman. Bright was the one who’d learned the location of the Mongasa tribe from a slave working on a Persian steamer out of Mombasa. Bright was the only white man who knew how to find the village of the Mongasa people, where the tribesmen most certainly kept the obsidian carving of their god, Kohamba.
Jack hadn’t been able to resist going on the expedition deep into Njiri territory. Few white men had ever ventured so far into the jungle, and even fewer had returned. Enough, however, had spoken of the Kohamba Legend, to pique the intense interest of archaeologists and explorers all over the Western world. Jack Temple had not been immune.
“The ropes won’t budge, sir,” O’Neill said, his voice edgy with panic, but thickly drugged. “If you have any other ideas, you might share them with me now.”
Jack was out of ideas beyond catching Alastair Bright and beating him to a pulp. When he got out of this mess, he was going to hunt the man down and flay him within an inch of his life. Then he was going to take the Kohamba from him and see it returned to the Mongasa tribe.
He shook his head to clear it. Planning his revenge against Bright was not going to break them out of their fetters, nor see them safely away from the village. He would have to try something drastic. Something completely unexpected.
The drums stopped and an eerie silence ensued. Jack could practically hear O’Neill’s heart beating as loudly as the drums had pounded. Or was that his own heartbeat?
“Munga hasira kupanda Bahisi!” Jack yelled to the head man. It was an impulse, a delaying tactic, and nothing more.
“What did you say?” O’Neill croaked.
“I think I told him that the gods believe the Bahisi stole Kohamba from the Mongasa tribe.”
“What? Now, they’ll just kill us outright! We don’t stand—”
“Kodi ukami gunduliwa tena yenu majana karema,” Jack shouted.
He had only the barest inkling of a plan, and a slim hope that he’d know what to do next—that is, if the Bahisi didn’t decide to torch them immediately.
Four men approached, gathering around the stake. None of them spoke, but all eyed him suspiciously. One held up a gourd, painted and decorated with animal hair, and shook it. The others bared their glistening, white teeth. They were angry, but they were also afraid. They had probably never encountered a man like Jack before, and certainly never a red-haired fellow like O’Neill, with his ruddy face and bushy mutton-chops. Jack had to make the most of their ignorance.
He didn’t dare move. He would not flinch, nor blink an eye. He hoped he had spoken the Njiri words correctly, telling these men that the gods would be angry with them for stealing Kohamba. That they would have drought and their women would be barren. He hoped his words might make them a little bit afraid of him—as if perhaps he had some power to call down the wrath of the gods.
There was a sudden, significant give in the bindings around his wrist, and Jack worked at them as he spoke quietly and slowly to O’Neill, as if he were chanting. “I might have rattled the chief enough to get us out of these ropes. If they free us, keep quiet and let me do the talking. Act as if you know something they don’t.”
The quiet words were meaningless to the chief and his sons, but Jack wanted O’Neill to be prepared for anything. “Are you making any progress?” Jack asked.
“Maybe,” O’Neill replied. “I’ve got one hand entirely free. But I don’t know if I can stand up unassisted.”
The Bahisi tribesmen stepped away, eyeing Jack suspiciously. The gourd-rattling continued, but the drums remained silent and Jack thought the warriors didn’t look as confident, or as belligerent, as they had only a minute before.
Still, Jack had to remember his perceptions were probably skewed by the drugs in his system. These men might be wielding machetes and he would not know it.
“How’s your head, O’Neill?” he asked. Something snapped and he felt the rope give way. Both hands were loose. He kept them still, holding on to the rope so it wouldn’t slip down and gain the warriors’ notice.
“I—I’m not sure,” O’Neill replied. “I feel like someone’s taken an ax to it, sir.”
“I’m going to untie you. But stay where you are,” Jack said. “Lean against the stump for balance.”
One of the Bahisi tribesmen ventured closer to the prisoners. Hissing through his teeth, he squinted his eyes and gave Jack a sidelong glance. Jack wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to be frightened or impressed. Standing stock-still, he furiously tried to wrap his mind around a plan.
A wild shriek pierced his ears, and the tribesmen scuttled away. Fighting waves of dizziness, Jack took advantage of the moment, turned and grabbed O’Neill’s hands. He tore at the ropes until the man was free, then propelled him toward the closest hut. They had difficulty walking, but continued on out of sheer force of will. Reaching the cover of the hut, Jack turned and saw that their captors were trying to repel an all-out attack. Spears flew, and grass huts were in flames.
Jack could not be certain, but it looked like the Mongasa warriors had come.
Chapter One
London
Late spring, 1883
The crush of the crowd and all the disgusting smells of London assailed Dorothea Bright as she rode toward her father’s house atop a wagon carrying her belongings. She lifted a clean linen handkerchief to her nose and sniffed daintily. No wonder her mother had chosen to live in Oxford. Honoria Bright would never have allowed Dorothea, with her delicate constitution, to live in such a horrible place.
The train ride had been noisome, her fellow travelers rank and offensive. Dorothea could not understand how anyone would tolerate traveling by rail more than once in a lifetime.
She would never have come to London, but circumstances had dictated the move. Her dear mother had recently passed on, and their house in Oxford was to be occupied now by its rightful owner, a distant cousin, the earl of Groton. Dorothea tried not to harbor any resentment against the earl, who had allowed Honoria and Dorothea to reside in the Oxfordshire house for nearly twenty years, ever since their ignoble abandonment by Alastair Bright.
For those twenty years past, Dorothea had seen neither hide nor hair of her father. She knew little more of him than his credentials as a scholar and his reputation for wanderlust. The latter was responsible for her parents’ estrangement. Honoria could not abide a husband who was away more than he was present, and therefore she did without any husband at all.
Mother and daughter fared very well in Oxford. As long as Dorothea avoided any upset, she did not suffer the shortness of breath and palpitations of the heart that had resulted from a terrible illness when she was a child.
Honoria was well respected in town. And Dorothea, by virtue of her surprising head for ancient languages, became a highly regarded consultant to several of the professors of antiquity at the university. She earned a respectable allowance through these en
deavors, along with the esteem of Albert Bloomsby, a young master whose primary academic interest was in the written languages of ancient India. Dorothea happened to be quite expert in Avestan, Pali and Pakrit, and Albert made use of her fluency in these ancient languages whenever he came across a particularly sticky translation.
He’d been a suitor of sorts, as well, though his aptitude for courtship rivaled his talents at translations of ancient texts.
Still, Dorothea had been surprised when he had not offered for her hand upon her mother’s death. Surely he had known that she had nowhere to go, no other family to help her. None but her father, whom she had not seen in twenty years and could easily have gone another twenty before meeting again. Dorothea would have been the perfect wife for an aspiring academician—intelligent, poised, well-bred. She was, after all, the granddaughter of an earl. Surely Albert knew he would not do better.
Unless he had somehow learned of her heart condition. Her mother had always warned her never to discuss her condition, or she’d find herself left out of the few activities that were allowed. So Dorothea had learned early on, to keep her little sufferings to herself. As long as she did not engage in any activity that taxed her weakened heart, she remained mostly free of symptoms.
Sighing, she straightened her sagging spine and gave her attention to the buildings she passed, to the overcrowded omnibuses and to the men digging at the roadways. Activity and industry was everywhere she turned. She felt tired, but not overly so. It felt strangely good, in fact, to exert herself, even to this small extent. Of course she’d never done such things in Oxford, or she’d have caught a terrible scolding from her mother.
“Comin’ up to it, ma’am,” said the driver. “On yer left.”
They reached a neighborhood of residential buildings, and it seemed decent enough to Dorothea. The streets were clean and the houses neat and tidy. Road traffic was not quite so heavy here. Porter Street seemed an acceptable location for her father’s home.
Dorothea straightened her jacket of dark blue, then brushed the worst of the dust from her skirt of the same material. She wished she’d had proper mourning attire, but there hadn’t been enough money to purchase anything new. She hoped her father would not notice its wilted condition. Not that she cared what he thought, exactly, but he hadn’t laid eyes on her since she was five years old. She would not have him thinking she look anything less than the perfectly bred lady her mother had reared.
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