"There's not?"
Her cheeks were growing warmer by the second. She figured she'd now thoroughly telegraphed her guilt. "No, there's not," she retorted, striving for firmness. "This basket's full of rocks."
"Rocks, huh?"
She fidgeted beneath his mocking gaze. Well, they were rocks. Of the most common variety. He didn't have to know the importance Papa attached to them.
"That's right." She raised her chin. "I put rocks in this basket to... uh, train Jenny. Yes, that's it. She's still learning to be a pack mule. Aren't you, Jen?"
Silver patted the burro's nose. Actually, she had no idea what the mule was called. She'd never seen this animal until she'd forced the poor thing to become a four-footed felon. But since female donkeys were called jennies, she'd figured the name was close enough...
She blew out her breath. Why was Rafe smirking at her that way?
"You know, Silver." His voice lilted, actually lilted, damn him. "I've heard a thousand lies, and I've made up at least as many. But yours is truly inspired. So tell me. Where is Romeo? Running late for your romantic tryst, is he?"
Her jaw dropped. "T-tryst?" Really. Leave it to Raphael Jones to leap to the most sordid conclusion. "I'll have you know there is no tryst, romantic or otherwise."
"Is that so?" he taunted softly.
Her face felt hotter than a four-bell fire now. For heaven's sake, what was the matter with her? She should have just confirmed she had a lover. The threat of his arrival would have been the fastest way to get rid of Raphael Jones.
"Must you read artifice and scandal into everything I do? Nothing but rocks is in that stupid basket."
When he arched a tawny brow, she blew out her breath.
"Oh, for heaven's sake. See for yourself."
She marched over to the basket, intent on turning it over, but when she shoved, the straining wicker split open. A mini avalanche tumbled onto her skirt, pinning her where she knelt. It also made her prey to the ugliest arachnid she'd ever seen. She took one look at all those bristling black legs, racing toward her over the rubble, and she lost what was left of her reason.
"Spider!" she shrieked, making Jenny bray, the aspens quake, and Rafe come running to her side.
"Kill it. Kill it!" she squealed, struggling frantically to free herself.
He swept up the spider and knocked the rocks to the ground. She scrambled to her feet, clapping a hand to her mouth.
"Is... is it dead?"
He had the good grace not to laugh. Still, the mirth in his eyes was hard to mistake. "Perhaps the more pressing question," he countered, his gaze caressing the bodice of her silk vest, "is are you hurt?"
"N-no," she croaked, her knees knocking uncontrollably. That deathlike chill was all around her again, and for the life of her, she couldn't shake it off.
"Good. Then I want you to see something."
He stepped closer. She gulped. She would have run for her horse if her legs had thawed. Instead, she could do nothing more than watch, speechless with horror, as he opened his fist. The night crawler had hunkered down in his palm, not squashed and harmless, as she'd hoped, but rather fat and hairy, and as ominous as a ticking bomb.
"See? It's quite tame."
"It is not. It bites! I had one crawl into my bed once and... and my ankle swelled up for a month!"
"That must have been painful," he murmured.
"It was." Reason was starting to burn its way back into her brain. For God's sake, why was she so cold? She felt like the very arms of death were wrapped around her, even though the sun was shining full on her back.
Rafe cocked his head. "Are you going to faint?"
"No." The humiliation of such a notion had the force to heat her toes. Still, the uneasiness lingered—the same uneasiness that had plagued her ever since she'd decided to raze the dogbane. Inexplicably, she remembered her nightmares, in which Nahele always seemed to be stalking her with a dead plant or animal. She shuddered. It's a damned good thing I don't believe in ghosts.
"Well, since you're not going to faint..." His lips quirked. "Can I tell you a secret?"
She swallowed, nodding.
"You're not ever going to get over your fear of spiders if you don't learn to understand them."
She grimaced, tossing him a daggerlike glare. "Don't you even think of putting that creepy-crawly thing on me."
"I wouldn't dream of it." His eyes captured hers. "But you live in the wild and woolly west now. And you've got to learn to live peacefully with bugs and varmints.
"The good news is," he continued, an uncharacteristic edge creeping into his voice, "most things don't deserve their bad reputations. Take spiders, for instance. They eat pests, like mosquitoes. And they feed a lot of birds. Most of them are completely harmless to humans.
"In fact, on the average, I daresay spiders are more afraid of you than you are of them. I know I would be"—his dimples peeked as his playful demeanor returned—"if I were the size of this wolf spider, and something your size tried to stomp on me."
Silver's lip jutted as she hugged her arms to her chest. Maybe he was right. Then again, maybe he wasn't. The point was, no matter what their reputation, she had good reason to dislike spiders. Just as she had good reason to distrust handsome, smooth-talking men.
She watched narrowly as he guided the spider to an aspen and let it crawl safely up the trunk. It occurred to her then that she might have made a fatal mistake, hiring a scoundrel who had a soft spot for things most people considered despicable.
"Do you intend to seduce Celestia?" she blurted out.
He started, turning toward her again. "Why? Are you having second thoughts?"
"No," she lied again, wanting to kick herself for being so transparent. "But it's clear to me you've been stalling."
"Is it indeed?" A smile teased the corner of his lips.
"Well, sure. Rather than hastening to make her acquaintance, you've spent the better part of—what, three days?—prowling around this godforsaken valley. Just what are you doing out here, when you could be dining on caviar and sleeping on eiderdown at the Windsor Hotel?"
He arched a brow. "You think the Roaring Fork Valley forsaken?" He glanced incredulously toward deforested Aspen Mountain, toward the cattle now grazing on ancestral buffalo ground, and the wheat struggling where prairie grass once had grown. "You should have seen this valley eight years ago," he murmured, "when Aspen was nothing more than the name of a tree."
She shifted uncomfortably. His wistfulness had been hard to mistake. "You... prefer the wilderness?"
His jaw hardened. "To razed forests and poisoned rivers? Indeed I do."
A glimmer of accusation harshened his stare.
"Oh, for heaven's sake." She marched past him, intent on disposing of the spiritkeepers, in the river, as planned. "You act as if we're standing in a desert instead of a veritable forest of aspens." She squatted, starting to chuck rocks into the current. "And obviously, you've never taken a drive down Main or Center Streets. Unlike other clapboard towns across the west, you'll find we actually have shaded sidewalks. The Ladies' Aid Society organized a tree-planting campaign four years ago. As for waterways, you'll find Crystal Creek as pure as its name."
"But for how long?" His gaze was dire as he focused on the pasty yellow crud that clung to the reeds and muddied the shallows. "Isn't your sawmill near Crystal Creek?"
So what if it is? She pressed her lips together, refusing to shoulder one more ounce of guilt for the day. He had some nerve, bilking her out of five hundred dollars per week and then criticizing the way she earned the money to pay him!
"Perhaps it will come as some consolation," she said tartly, "that your wage is dependent upon dirty little nuisances like my sawmill. And my sawmill, of course, is necessary to my mines, which, by the way, also help to pay your inflated fee.
"Then again," she said dryly, pushing closed the flaps of the basket, "I could cut production entirely, save a couple of trees, make you and a herd of elk happy, and watch
the four hundred and fifty people I employ lose their homes and all their possessions—assuming, of course, they don't starve to death before the bank forecloses on them."
Rafe winced, averting his gaze. She had a point. He had to admit, he liked civilized conveniences as much as any man. God knew, he hadn't come to the Roaring Fork Valley to condemn free enterprise—not that his opinion would have mattered to anyone here if he had. Wherever he looked, he saw what the wealth seekers touted as "progress." And maybe it was.
All he knew was he'd come to this river to teach Tavy to swim. And she'd been less eager than he to wade into the cheesy, yellow filth that choked the water.
"I stand corrected," he conceded with a touch of irony. "Heaven forbid I should stand in the way of progress."
"Or your bank account."
"Just so." This time, his mockery was directed solely at himself.
She rose, cool and dignified once more despite the incongruity of the basket, which dangled in strawlike tatters from her elbow. As her gemstone gaze clashed with his, he had to admit that he preferred this callous Silver to the one who'd nearly swooned at his feet. Silver the Ice Princess was easier to dislike than Silver the Damsel in Distress. And the Ice Princess would be easier to jilt, too, when the timing was right.
"What a relief to know we can actually agree on something," she said, her sarcasm thinly veiled. "I trust I'll see you—or rather, Lord Chumley—at my father's party promptly at eight o'clock?"
"I shall count the hours."
"Good."
Inclining her head in dismissal, she strode to the mule and strapped the basket in place. Courtesy winning out over his irritation, he offered her a hand, but she refused it, just as she refused his offer to boost her into the saddle. If she hadn't grown so stiff as he'd moved closer, he might have been annoyed by her snub. But her pinched cheeks and white lips struck him oddly. To watch her shy out of his reach, he wouldn't have described her so much as haughty as... well, unnerved.
His eyes narrowed speculatively as he watched her ride off. Silver Nichols was proving more human than he'd expected. For one thing, she'd grown endearingly flustered after he'd accused her of entertaining a lover. For another, she'd turned appealingly vulnerable as she'd recounted the spider bite story. He was almost tempted to believe there was another, warmer Silver lurking beneath all her frost.
A wicked smile quirked his lips. Just what would happen, he wondered, if the Ice Princess met the heat of his kiss?
Chapter 6
Peering out his coach window, Rafe gazed in awe at the Nicholses' massive, Romanesque mansion. Its unflappable stone face and metal roof were practical in design, no doubt to prevent one of the fires that had helped to wipe out other mining towns.
Of course, since Midas Max hadn't built his legend on practicality, the Peachblow sandstone had probably been chosen by Silver, Rafe mused. No doubt hers had been the sparing hand that had decorated it, too. Frilly curtains, flowerpots, and gingerbread trims were nonexistent in the ponderously squat, solid shape. In fact, the only frivolous element of the mansion's design, if one could call it frivolous, was the upper story's stained glass windows. Glittering blue, green, and red jewels seemed to wink from every casement, and a rainbow of fire spilled out upon the immaculately manicured lawn.
Rafe cocked his head and smirked. Judging by the lights, music, and laughter, the party was well underway. He'd taken great care to arrive last.
Timing was everything in the theater.
Giving the coach roof a whack with his walking stick, a shiny new acquisition that amused him to no end, he displayed the bored manner of a British blue blood. His demeanor was no small feat, considering the result of his whack. The vehicle lurched; the wheels bounced; and he was nearly flung from his seat as the coach listed, jolting to a shuddering halt in a rut.
Jimmy, God love him, had finally located the coach's brakes.
Rafe heard a thump and the eager pounding of boots. A heartbeat later, his driver, an impossibly gullible youth whose vocabulary was roughly limited to exclamations, flung open the door.
"Man alive, your worship sir," Jimmy panted, his ruddy cheeks bulging above the collar that he, in his less auspicious job as a cantaloupe picker, was unaccustomed to wearing. "That house sure is some pumpkins!"
Rafe gazed fondly at the youth. Jimmy was decked out in a red livery that had cost Rafe—or rather, Silver—at least twice as much as every item of clothing Jimmy had ever owned. Jimmy was another new "acquisition" that amused Rafe to no end, and he couldn't wait to spring the lad on Little Miss High Society.
"That house?" Rafe gestured toward the grand edifice with a limp hand. "'Some pumpkins,' you say?" He sniffed disdainfully. "Lud, my boy. You have yet to see my kennels."
Jimmy's eyes bugged out, making him look like a guppy with spikey blonde hair. "Golly!"
Rafe hid his smile. Tossing his cape back with a flourish, he stepped briskly up the cobbled walk that wound toward the door. He'd been waiting two excruciatingly long days for this moment. For the last forty-eight hours, he'd been holed up in a hotel bathtub, surrounded by kettles of fish. Somehow, it seemed inanely appropriate that of all the motherless otters in the world, he had adopted a defective one. The minute Tavy hit the water, she sank like a cannonball. She was quite possibly the only webbed-footed creature on earth who didn't have a clue what to do with her paws.
He'd had some fancy explaining to do each time the hotel clerk knocked on his door, sheepishly mentioning the complaints of his neighbors, who swore they heard some kind of "dog" yapping in his quarters. He couldn't very well admit he'd smuggled an otter inside, much less that he was teaching it to swim. As eccentric as he'd been painting Lord Chumley, he suspected there was a limit even to his retinue's gullibility.
He groaned to himself. How was he supposed to return Tavy to the wild if she couldn't even paddle her way across a bathtub?
But that was the least of his troubles.
When he'd agreed to seduce Celestia Cooper, he'd assumed Silver was matching him up with a modern-day Jezebel. He'd conjured in his mind a woman so sinful, so voluptuous, that no mortal man could possibly have resisted her. Silver had never bothered to correct his misconception.
Well, yesterday morning, while he'd been sneaking fresh fish up the back stairs for Tavy, he'd glimpsed the inimitable siren herself. In fact, he'd nearly collided with Midas Max as he was boyishly stealing a kiss from his lover in her doorway. Rafe was sure his jaw had dropped to the carpet when a short woman with plump arms, a double chin, and wild blonde corkscrews hastily gathered her sheet and ducked out of sight. Max's affaire d' amour was no smoldering, pert-breasted fantasy. What was worse, Celestia Cooper was old enough to be Rafe's mother.
Rafe halted before Silver's door, scowling at the memory.
He'd been so furious—disappointed, too—to learn that his conquest was no tempestuous beauty, that he'd had half a mind to vanish into the wilderness and let Silver sweat out her father's engagement.
Unfortunately, his finances wouldn't permit such rash behavior.
Even if he could have mustered the lust to woo a woman who reminded him so forcefully of Fiona, he'd be loathe to try. He had one or two scruples left, despite his every effort to purge them, and they were both adamantly against tricking old women and breaking their hearts.
Of course, he wasn't about to let Silver know that. No, his cohort-in-crime had a little lesson to learn about bamboozling Raphael Jones. He'd thought long and hard about his options, and he'd finally decided on the only sensible alternative: revenge. That's why he'd scoured the valley for a suitable retainer. Hiring Jimmy had been integral to Rafe's plan. Spending a king's fortune on Silver's credit had also been part of his mischief. But best of all...
Rafe snickered to himself.
Best of all were the character improvements he'd made in the role Silver had scripted for him.
Rapping his cane on the Nicholses' glass-and-mahogany door, Rafe envisioned the look on his cocon
spirator's face when he unveiled the new Lord Chumley. To his surprise, though, Silver didn't greet him on the threshold. Instead, a pine tree of a manservant, in impeccable swallowtails, appeared at the entrance. The man barred his way, looking down his hooked nose.
"Hullo, my good man," Rafe said in his best British fop's voice. "Do step aside and tell Miss Nichols the Duke of Chumley has arrived."
The manservant arched an eyebrow. One sweeping, flesh-scoring glance later, he'd masterfully conveyed what he thought of Rafe, Rafe's attire, and all of Rafe's ancestry.
"The Duke of Chumley, you say?" the servant repeated in an unmistakably British accent.
Rafe started, and the back of his neck turned blistering hot. Damn Silver anyway. She'd also neglected to tell him she had an English butler!
"That's correct." Rafe fixed the servant with his haughtiest stare and vowed to make Silver the Shyster pay double—no, triple—for this second breach of contract. "Run along and fetch your mistress."
"And I suggest, sir, that you run along before I have you thrown into the gutter."
A heartbeat later, the wooden portal slammed, and Rafe was left staring at his reflection in the quivering opaque glass.
Silver, my love, that's another one I owe you.
For her part, Silver nearly dropped an entire tray of champagne glasses when she heard Rafe's voice—and her butler's threat. Hurrying into the entrance hall, she rounded the corner just in time to see Benson slamming the door on her long-awaited guest.
"Benson!" she choked, certain she'd blanched. For once heedless of the proprieties, she made a beeline through the couple who was signing her guest register and tried to console herself that this night couldn't possibly get worse. First, her illustrious chef had arrived tipsy, an empty bottle of cooking sherry jutting from his coat pocket. Next, her pricy Denver orchestra had turned out to be little more than a tone-deaf oompah band. Then, her father's bride-to-be had grabbed the mayor's hand and started predicting his reelection returns.
But these had only been the preamble to disaster. Five minutes after her guests had started arriving, members of the Miners Union had staged a rally on her lawn. With a scribbling reporter in tow from the Rocky Mountain Sun, they'd announced to anyone who would listen that they had never agreed to work in a haunted mine and that the only fair alternative was to double their wages.
Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) Page 9
