Sooner or later he was going to have to do something about Hope Bennett. What, and when, was another question. One that demanded contemplation.
Drake scowled darkly. He’d delayed her leaving by buying her services as his wife. The job was unnecessary. He could just as easily have ruined his brother and sister-in-law without Hope’s help. But when it had come time to send her on her way to Virginia, Drake found he couldn’t do it. He didn’t stop to ask himself why, or question his motives, he’d simply invented a need for a temporary wife. To his surprise, she’d agreed.
At the same time, Drake had told himself that his reasons were completely chivalrous, motives his grandfather would have been proud of. Now he wasn’t so sure. True, he couldn’t bear the thought of Hope making the last leg of the journey alone, but if he was honest with himself, he would also have to admit that his reasons were much more than mere concern. After all, he could easily have put her on the next stage for Virginia the second they’d reached civilization.
But he hadn’t. He’d offered her a job and dragged her, not totally unwillingly, back to this godforsaken place.
Why?
The answer hit him like a fist smashing into his gut, and he staggered with the blow. He leaned heavily against the door, his eyes flickering shut as his thoughts were barraged with unbidden memories.
Hope, drunker than a river rat as she collapsed in his arms, awarding Drake his first real look at her enticing curves and innocent profile. Hope, her face draining of color when Oren Larzdon’s knife had slicked toward his shoulder. Hope, her hair a tousled mass of chestnut curls upon a bed of sawdust. Hope, her skin moist with the water he’d sponged on her perfect body while she raged with fever. And, at last, Hope, as he had left her, curled and despondent in the large bed that had once belonged to his grandmother.
When did I fall in love with her? he wondered as his fingers crushed the lock of hair in his fist. He remembered her dark eyes flashing with fire that first night in his hotel room. He’d denied the feeling for months, but his love had started then, and had grown over the weeks that followed.
“As always, Frazier, your timing is poor,” he mumbled to himself, running the lock of hair against his stubbled cheek. It smelled of dirt and the leather strap that held it tight, but it felt like heaven as it stroked his flesh.
His heart tightened when he realized he couldn’t confess his feelings to Hope and still pretend to be obsessed with Angelique. Once the words were spoken, he’d be lost, and too many years of hard work counted on him being able to convince Angelique he wanted her back. Unfortunately, recognizing his feelings for Hope now would only complicate matters. But it was already too late for that, wasn’t it?
There was only one solution.
With a ragged sigh, he shoved the key back in his pocket and stalked to the desk. He snatched up the two bits of crumpled paper as well as the bid, folded them over twice, and stuffed them in his vest pocket. Although he’d planned to prolong Charles’s suffering for as long as possible, suddenly that prospect held no appeal. There was no telling how long he could keep Hope waiting before she grew tired of the game and moved on. He couldn’t let that happen!
No, his former plan would have to be abruptly revised. He would ruin Charles, he’d worked too hard not to, but he’d do it as quickly as he could and take time to savor the victory later. Then, as soon as he was free....
He didn’t permit himself to complete that thought as he stormed from the room and into the hall. The door was slammed closed behind him and locked. Turning on his heel, he was surprised to find the hall empty.
A scowl furrowed his golden brow. He hadn’t expected his brother to give up so easily. Three times Charles had come to the study door, banging and demanding entrance, all the while shouting accusations that Drake had stolen his key. Of course, he was right. Each time he’d shown up, Drake had sent him away. Now, he’d half expected to find his brother camping out at the foot of the stairs, pouting the way he had as a child when their grandfather insisted the two boys go out on the Mary Elizabeth.
“Damn him!” Drake muttered as he stalked down the hall. He’d see the generous donations returned to their benefactors if it was the last thing he ever did!
Hope eyed Drake cautiously as she slipped a spoonful of oyster stew into her mouth. The oysters were soft and succulent, the potatoes firm, but the spicy concoction might have been made of sand for all she tasted of it.
All day she had been avoiding Drake; an easy task, since he’d been locked in the study all morning and gone most of the afternoon. This, she’d heard from the servants who’d brought her morning and afternoon meals on a tray, as she helped herself to the leather-bound books she found in the library.
On the best of days, Dickens could hold her interest like no other. Today she might as well have been reading a two-bit western. When she thought of it now, Hope couldn’t recall if she’d read A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist, and she didn’t care. Right now about the only thing that interested her was the way Angelique insisted on pressing intimately against Drake’s upper arm as he reluctantly recounted some of his tamer adventures in California.
Charles sat at the head of the table glowering. He made no attempt to eat, instead contenting himself on glaring at his brother with an angry, sullen stare as he drank glass after glass of brandy.
And what the hell had gotten into Drake!? All evening he had commented on the wonderful hard rolls, so much like his great-grandmother Bradfield’s. Then he’d praised the spices in the stew as exactly the ones his great-grandmother Stillwell would have used. Over and over the two names were bandied about.
Never in all the time she had known Drake had Hope heard these two women mentioned. At first she’d taken his observations as idle chatter used to fill the awkward pauses. Then she’d glanced at Charles. He seemed to pick up on the insinuations—if, indeed, there were any—immediately, and his expression grew more grim with each mention.
“You bluffed?” Angelique gasped with false astonishment. “Why, how clever. I would never have thought to do such a thing.”
Drake repressed a surge of disgust and smiled down on her. “Then we should play poker sometime, you and I. It would make an interesting game.”
Angelique batted her thick lashes and Hope’s grip tightened on the spoon as it clattered to her bowl. “You’d have to teach me, of course.” Again, the lashes batted as she smiled coyly. “And, I warn you, it may take a good deal of time. Charles says I am a slow learner, that I have no gift for cards. Isn’t that right, dear?”
Charles grunted in reply and looked down at his untouched bowl. His gaze was steamier than the hot stew.
Angelique fixed her attention on Hope. “Do you play?” she asked, then just as quickly answered her own question. “Why, of course you do. I don’t know what made me ask. After all, you did live in California, didn’t you?”
She stressed the words in such a way that Hope could feel her spine bristle. In spite of herself, she fixed the woman with an innocent glance. “Of course,” she said with a wave of her spoon. “It’s a state law. Anyone crossing the Nevada border must know how to play a good hand of poker. They won’t let you enter California otherwise.”
“Isn’t that interesting?” Angelique replied, apparently oblivious to the sarcasm of Hope’s words. “So tell me,” she continued, dismissing Hope as she turned her attention back to Drake, “what else did you do in the West? Surely you did something besides play cards.” Her eyes sparkled with a sadistic twinkle that was belatedly concealed. “Did you get into many gunfights? Or fistfights? Did you ever kill a man? Or two? Or three?”
“I was known as a hired gun, for a while,” he admitted reluctantly. His gaze locked with Hope’s and there was an emotion shimmering in the green depths, unreadable as it was undeniable. “I think we’ll skip over that part of my life. It’s not a dinner table topic, and I don’t want to upset you.”
Angelique pouted prettily, but still Drake refused. She gave up
quickly, launching into a soliloquy of the people who had attended last night’s ball.
Hope recognized none of the names flung so casually about, but inferred, by Angelique’s awe-inspired tone, that they belonged to people of prominence. She averted her gaze to the rapidly cooling oyster stew. The silver spoon hesitated beside the bowl. She had suddenly lost her appetite.
“Mutton?” Charles came out of his self-enforced silence to offer Hope the tray piled high with lean meat.
Although her stomach rebelled at the thought, she thanked him and accepted the platter with a wooden smile. Moving the bowl, which was quickly whisked away by a servant, she placed only one succulent slab on her plate. It was one more than she wanted. Passing the tray to Angelique, she resisted the temptation to tip the juicy contents into the other woman’s lap.
“Mutton?” she stiffly repeated the offer, holding the heavy platter out until the muscles in her forearm screamed in protest. She had to offer three times before the woman reluctantly acknowledged her, and even then it was with a sigh of impatience.
With a look bordering on disgust, Angelique took the tray. She stabbed several pieces of the aromatic meat for herself, then chose only the most tender slices to ease onto Drake’s plate.
He showed no obvious protest at the overly courteous gesture, and that fact galled Hope all the more. Politely, she declined the bowl of mashed sweet potatoes as well as the tender boiled onions. Normally, the small, sweet onions were a favorite she’d longed for in the secluded gold mines of Thirsty Gulch. Today, she had no taste for them.
I have to get out of here! she thought desperately as she watched Angelique rub against Drake for what had to be the fiftieth time this hour. Although she couldn’t stand the woman’s blatant manipulation, it was Drake’s apparent immunity to it that bothered her more.
Hope decided she couldn’t sit idly by and watch Angelique use Drake, then cast him aside again—as, she suspected, was the woman’s intent. The first time had almost destroyed him. She might not have known him immediately after his affair with Angelique, but she had seen the result of it. She didn’t want to see what a second disappointment would do to her proud, arrogant gunslinger.
It will break him, she thought, and break me right along with him.
If there was one thing Hope knew she could not stand, it was more heartbreak. Losing her family to the fire had been bad enough. This on top of it would destroy her. Deep down, she suspected the reason why, but she’d be damned if she’d admit it, to herself or anyone else!
With an aggravated sigh, she lifted the bright orange dinner napkin from her lap, folded it, then placed it beside her plate. She stood with such force that only luck kept the delicate chair from crashing to the floor.
“Leaving? So soon?” Angelique purred, a glint of victory glistening in her cat-like eyes as she affixed her arm to Drake’s elbow.
“Stay,” Charles insisted with a wave of his hand. “If the food isn’t to your taste, you can at least join us in an after-dinner brandy.”
Hope shuddered. The last time she had tasted liquor she had collapsed, drunk, in Drake Frazier’s arms. It had been the biggest mistake of her life.
“No,” she said, patiently but firmly. “I’m tired, I have a headache, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I think I’ll retire early.” It was a lie, but a forgivable one. The last thing she intended to do was “retire,” early or otherwise. But there was no good reason they had to know that. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand for effect. “If you’ll excuse me....”
“Why of course,” Angelique purred. She patted Drake’s arm and sent him a knowing smile. “She does so need her beauty rest, you know.”
Hope thought that if Drake leapt to her defense, she might just stay for that brandy after all. He didn’t. Instead he laughed as though the slut had made the most humorous comment he’d ever heard in his life. Hope fumed, caught between anger and betrayal. She hid her churning emotions behind the fists clenched tightly in the pockets of the worn trousers that she refused to trade in for one of Angelique’s cast-off dresses. Holding her head high, she swept from the room with as much dignity as the situation—and her ragged attire—would allow. It wasn’t until she reached the hall that she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.
She blotted the hated moistness away as she placed her foot on the first carpeted stair. The hand that wrapped suddenly around her arm prevented further progress. Angrily, she spun on her heel, pooling all her hostility into the palm that slapped Drake Frazier’s arrogant cheek.
His head snapped back with the blow, but no recrimination glimmered in his eyes. “I guess I deserved that,” he said, his hand straying up to the handprint that stood out in scarlet against his sun-kissed cheek. “After last night, I wouldn’t blame you if you shot me in my sleep.” His eyes darkened. “I’m sorry about what I said, Hope. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
Her lips thinned, her gaze narrowed. “I told you I didn’t want to talk about that!” She tried to pull away, but his grip was too tight.
“You’ll damn well have to talk about it sometime,” he growled, annoyed with her stubbornness. “You can’t go around with these feelings bottled up inside you for the rest of your life. One day, you’re going to have to let them out. If you don’t, they’ll destroy you.”
“You’re a fine one to talk! What about the feelings you’ve harbored for your brother all these years? Or don’t they count?”
He let her arm go, positive she was too angry to flee. Crossing his arms over his chest, he scowled at her angrily. “Oh, they count all right, but the situation is completely different. At least I’m doing something with Charles. And what are you doing, sunshine? You wallow in self-pity over the family you can never have back instead of just dealing with their deaths. You push away anyone who tries to get close. You run in fear every time someone strikes a match without telling you! That’s one hell of a way to live, if you ask me.”
“No one asked you!”
She spun on her heel, determined to mount the stairs. Again, Drake’s hand prevented her. She fixed the strong fingers with a look of utter contempt, which seemed to have no effect on Drake as he abruptly whirled her back around.
“You’re getting my advice anyway, like it or not.”
She swallowed hard. His face was so close she could see each golden whisker on his sun-kissed jaw. A shiver rippled up her spine as she remembered the scratchy feel of them beneath her palm. She forced the thought away.
“Go ahead,” she prompted. “You’re so damned fired up to have your say that I don’t think anything I could say would stop you. So say it. Get it over with.”
“All right,” he growled, his grip loosening enough for the circulation to return to her fingers. “I want to know what the hell happened to the spitfire that burst into my hotel room, drunker than a skunk, desperate to find someone—anyone—who would fight in her brother’s place. What happened to the girl who was willing to do just about anything to save her precious brother’s life? And don’t tell me she’s standing in front of me now, because I’ll be the first one to call you a damn liar.”
She flinched when his grip turned hard, his gaze dark and unyielding. “That girl died in Thirsty Gulch, Frazier,” she whispered hoarsely. “She found out what it was like to lose everything she ever had and she grew bitter. You’d better get used to me as I am now, because she won’t be back.”
Drake dropped his hands and stepped away, shaking his head in disgust. “Pity,” he said through clenched teeth, “because that’s one thing I’ll never get used to.”
Turning on his heel, he stalked away.
His bootheels clomped over the finely polished floor long after his broad back had disappeared from view. Only when she was sure he was gone did Hope let her shoulders slump in weary defeat. She clutched the mahogany banister, her eyes misting over in tears she refused to shed.
No, she thought. I won’t cry. I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction of
knowing his words upset me so much.
She dashed the moistness from her eyes. Again, she realized just how desperately she needed to leave this place. She couldn’t tolerate Drake’s pursuit of Angelique for another minute, and if forced to endure another confrontation like this one, she would lose what little control she still had.
Hope ran for the front door and threw it wide. Her gait was not unlike a woman running from a collapsing building. She didn’t know where she was going as she stepped into the cold, dark night and she didn’t care. Anywhere had to be better than here!
Chapter 19
Angelique’s black wool coat hung from Hope’s shoulders and her head was concealed beneath the generous folds of the hood. Hope looked about the wharf in confusion. Stretching out before her was a profusion of masts, spars, and crisp white canvas. Merchants hustled in all directions, clogging the wide street—Commercial Street, she thought—which seemed to be a dock in itself.
Salt spray kissed her cheeks and neck, scenting the air with a pungent aroma as it mixed with the tang of citrus, figs, raisins, and the constant odor of fish.
Except for a few odd glances, her presence went unnoticed. And why not? The people milling about this seaswept place were as varied as the people cloistered safely in their grand homes on the hill. Hope would have blended with them even if she’d left the black cloak at home.
No, she quickly corrected herself. Any woman visiting the docks at this hour of the night, decked out in faded trousers and a flannel shirt, was begging for trouble. At least, that’s the way the merchants would see it.
Hope sighed in frustration. She’d bolted from the house so quickly that she’d given no thought to what she would do once she reached the waterfront. She was lucky common sense had overrun her when it had. Having reached the stables, panting and breathless, she’d realized that, no matter what her destination, she would need money to get her there. Stealthily, she’d returned to the house, picked the lock on the study door, and, almost childishly quickly, located the drawer containing the safe. The lock there was convinced to open as easily as the one on the door. She had taken only as much money as she thought she would need, appeasing her guilt by telling herself the total was less than what Drake owed her for services rendered, then followed her nose to the docks.
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