Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1)

by Adrienne deWolfe

  But his every instinct had warned him against it. Etched in firelight, her bodice heaving beneath the scalloped edges of her gown, her every muscle quivering like a doe poised for flight, there'd been an unmistakable alarm about her, an alarm that simply couldn't be justified by the presence of an otter in her bath.

  Rafe frowned.

  Was Silver afraid of him?

  He wracked his brain, trying to recall something he'd inadvertently said or done to frighten her, because never once had he intended to scare her. God knew, scaring her off was the last thing he wanted. He hated to admit it, but on those rare occasions when he glimpsed the authentic woman beneath the hoity-toity facade, he liked what he saw. Hell, if Max's stories could be believed, Rafe even admired her. She'd carried a thirty-pound pack and suffered flea bites to help an ailing mule, for God's sake. Maybe they had more in common than he'd thought, he mused, his memory flitting to Belle.

  He grimaced and quickly shoved the hurtful recollection aside. Was it the brandy, or was he getting maudlin?

  Still, he had to admit, he'd softened a bit toward Silver. Because she'd duped him, failing to mention Cellie's age, he'd wanted to teach her that Raphael Jones was nobody's fool. But for some reason, he'd started to waver. He liked to think it was lust, and nothing more, that made him too fascinated with the wench to make good on his vow of revenge. Silver was a rare beauty, after all. Why hadn't he seen it before he'd burst into her bedroom, he mused. Hair like sable satin, thighs like ivory silk. He nearly groaned aloud just imagining them wrapped around his hips.

  Rafe slid lower onto the cushions, closing his eyes and giving his imagination free rein. He could almost smell the lavender as he removed her hairpins, one at a time, to loose that streak of silver across her pouty breasts. He imagined the taste of dew on her rosy, bath-puckered nipples, the moist shyness of virginity as her thighs trembled open, coaxed by his patient caress. He would love her long and achingly slow, watching every crest of feeling in the sapphire pools that were her eyes.

  He loosed a shuddering sigh.

  What did a woman like Silver dream of when she fantasized about lovers? Could he play the part? Would she let him?

  From somewhere beyond the inky blackness of the French doors, a clock chimed two. The utter stillness of the house made it possible to detect faint sounds in the bedrooms above him. He heard the groan of a mattress, then the snick of an opening door. He cracked open an eye.

  Silver.

  He knew it had to be her. Max had sneaked off to Cellie's hotel room around midnight.

  For a moment, he listened, wondering with a perverse sense of irony if she'd chosen to come to his bed on the one night that he'd vacated it. His mind's eye could see her tiptoeing down the hall, her hair glinting softly in the glow of a taper, that slinky dressing gown sliding over her naked skin like a jade waterfall.

  He was seriously considering bolting back up the stairs, two at a time, when he heard the furtive creak of the first step. Then the second. His pulse quickened in understanding. Silver was coming downstairs. But why?

  His brow furrowed. He liked to think she was searching for him, but the chances of that were slim. Perhaps she was searching for Max. Since Max had timed his rendezvous well after his daughter had retired, Silver was probably unaware of her father's escape.

  Rafe strained his ears, but it was the faint whiff of lavender, not the rustling of satin, that heralded her arrival at the parlor doors. She glided past him, her hair spilling over her modest décolletage like a perfumed veil, the white muslin of her night wrapper billowing like angel wings in her wake. He thought how incongruous his carnal urges were in the face of this apparition of purity.

  More silent than the shadows that camouflaged him, he watched her intently, a predator hungry for the feast that paced just an arm's length away. He had imagined many methods of seduction; he had plotted many scenarios in which to woo her. His fondest fantasy had always been unconditional surrender, in which she'd come to him, aching, unable to resist her own need for pleasure. Was this the signal he'd been waiting for? Was this the night he would finally taste her?

  She seemed agitated. He wondered if she sensed him there. She made a brisk circle around the room before pausing before the piano. Her chest heaved, and she quivered. She appeared reluctant to linger, and yet her fingers slowly, grudgingly reached, as if drawn by some magnetic force.

  For a moment she did nothing more than touch the keys. Just touched them. The upset on her features dissolved into something wistful, perhaps melancholy. Intrigued, Rafe stilled even his breathing.

  She traced a tentative finger along the ivory. Not a single note was struck, and yet the longing in that feather-light caress tugged at Rafe's dormant conscience. He thought he should announce himself, but she suddenly sat, turning her back toward him. Her fingers spread in earnest. Low, mournful, and haunting, the first few notes she played made him think better of intruding. The melody was unmistakable to his ears.

  "Softly goes my song's entreaty, through the night to thee..." Rafe could almost hear the lyrics in every plaintive stroke of the keys. His mother had also been fond of the bittersweet Serenade by Franz Schubert. His throat constricted, and he closed his eyes, lost for a moment in the chords that plucked at his own heart. "Ah, I know a lover's longing, know the pain of love..."

  Mama would sing the song over and over, consumed by her own misery. Was that how Silver felt? Was she still in love with this Aaron Townsend? Or was the melody she played for some beau closer to home? Rafe's jaw jutted the tiniest bit. Was that why she barely gave him a second glance?

  Let thy heart as well grow tender, Sweetheart, why so coy? Anxious, fevered, I await thee. Come and bring me joy... And bring me joy.

  The repeat of the final plea reverberated in his mind as the last chord sighed into the darkness. Slowly, inevitably, the music faded into silence. Silver sat as still as a bust of her namesake, and he drew a long, winding ribbon of breath. For once, no witticism came to mind to leaven the spell.

  "Forgive me," he murmured, "for intruding."

  She started. "Wh-where are you?" she demanded, rising quickly, her anxious eyes raking the shadows.

  He sat up, and moonbeams splayed across his brandy, shirt, and hair.

  "You should have announced yourself," she accused shakily.

  He inclined his head. "I know. But I couldn't. You play so... beautifully."

  He heard her swallow. He wondered fleetingly if it was his presence or merely his compliment that had her so unsettled.

  "I often play when I can't sleep."

  "Ständchen is hardly a lullaby."

  She raised her chin, but its quiver betrayed she was not her confident self. "You are familiar with Schubert, then?"

  "That particular piece, yes. But for pianos, I prefer the Moonlight Sonata."

  "Beethoven?" She sounded incredulous.

  He smiled to himself. No doubt she thought his musical tastes ran toward "Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair."

  "Do you know it?"

  "Not well enough to play for an audience."

  "Would you allow me, then?"

  "Y-you play?"

  "Of course."

  Crossing the room, he set his brandy snifter on top of her box piano. She moved quickly out of his way, as if she was frightened of him again, and he frowned, wondering if his nearness or his half-buttoned shirt were to blame. He couldn't think what else might alarm her.

  "Where... did you learn Beethoven?" she asked tentatively.

  Her curiosity appeared stronger than her wariness. He was glad for that. Perhaps he could lure her closer.

  "My mother," he answered truthfully. "She preferred the classics to church music. It was the one other thing Jedidiah couldn't break her of."

  "Jedidiah?"

  Rafe's smile was mirthless and fleeting. He hadn't meant to crack open that powder keg, especially not tonight. "My siblings' father."

  "But not yours?" she murmured.

  H
e steeled himself against a sharp retort. He should have known better than to think she would leave that keg firmly sealed.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he cast her a veiled look. "You sound surprised. Don't tell me you didn't once suspect that I sprang from the bowels of Satan."

  Her brow furrowed. "Why would I think something so horrible?"

  "Jedidiah did."

  He lowered onto the bench, placing his feet on the pedals. She shifted the tiniest bit closer. He could feel her warmth, like springtime, hovering just beyond his range of vision. He willed her closer, but kept his back turned, rolling the overly long lace at his cuffs. As much as he wanted her sitting beside him, her muslin-swathed thigh pressed to his, he wasn't willing to open the Pandora's box of his childhood to achieve her seduction.

  "You sound angry when you speak of him."

  Sympathy throbbed beneath the unspoken question in her voice. He grimaced, then hastily smoothed the telltale irritation from his face.

  "Do I?"

  He heard the rustle of fabric. He suspected she'd fidgeted, dissatisfied by his response.

  "You're so good at hiding your feelings. I... don't think I've ever seen you angry before."

  "Ah. Well, it's terrible to behold, isn't it?" He stretched his fingers over the keys.

  "Rafe?"

  He hesitated, reluctant to yield even that small concession.

  "What happened to your mother?"

  He tensed. He hadn't expected that question.

  For a moment, a flood of feelings welled inside him, feelings that he managed to lodge somewhere between his throat and his tongue. He couldn't be funny or witty about Mama. He couldn't spin heroic yarns to absolve himself of his bastardy or make light of the shame that he'd caused her. He couldn't ever avenge the degradation she'd suffered at the hands of Jedidiah Jones. And for those reasons, he couldn't bear to speak of her.

  "She's dead," he said flatly.

  Then he struck the first note of the last piece Mama had ever taught him. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. He played it for her.

  Silver listened in perfect stillness, barely daring to breathe. The nightmare she'd suffered was temporarily forgotten, and her growing fear of ghosts—at least, the ghosts that haunted her sleep—faded from her mind. At last, Raphael Jones's playactor's mask had slipped to reveal his own, private haunting.

  Silver's stomach churned in a mixture of guilt, empathy, and relief. When Rafe first surprised her here, she feared that he would try to press his advantage, that he would capitalize on her vulnerability, the moonlight, and her utter aloneness the same way that Aaron once had.

  But the man sitting at the piano wasn't even thinking of her. His eyelashes fanned lower, as if his hands would feel their way across the ivory. To her bemusement, they did—passionately, poignantly, and without error. He was lost in the music, in the memories that flitted like specters across his chiseled features. His throat worked; his chest rose and fell to the melodic lament. Watching the tumult he struggled to keep corked inside him, she felt like a voyeur.

  But more than that, she felt foolish to have presumed he would pounce on her like some savage jungle cat. By the river, in her bedroom, and during the few times when their conspiracy had necessitated a secret rendezvous, he'd had plenty of opportunity to force his attentions upon her.

  But that wasn't Rafe's way, she realized in growing wonder. He might be wild and wicked in ways she couldn't comprehend, but he wasn't heartless. He wasn't cruel. In spite of the untold hurts he must have suffered, perhaps at the hands of this Jedidiah, he wasn't violent. And he didn't take what he wanted by force.

  No, she realized with a tiny, shivery thrill, he waited with canny patience for the thing to come to him.

  The last strains of Beethoven's masterwork shivered into silence. Silver could almost feel the perfect stillness of the mansion crowding her throat and weighting her shoulders. She knew that Rafe felt it, too. His fingers moved, impossibly slow, lifting from the now soundless keys. An aching sympathy speared her chest. She told herself that was the only reason she allowed herself to perch beside him on the bench.

  "I miss my mother too," she murmured.

  His head turned slowly, and his eyes, more haunting than the ghost that had robbed her of sleep, glistened when they touched hers. He said nothing, but she sensed that, too, was his way.

  She fidgeted on her seat. Call her a fool, but as difficult as it was for her to trust him, she couldn't bring herself to believe he was pretending grief just to woo her. Not after his chest had shuddered when he'd played. Not after the mirrors of his eyes had gone nearly black with hurting.

  "How old were you?" she whispered.

  His jaw tensed, and she instantly regretted her question.

  "I didn't mean to pry, Rafe, I just—"

  "Fourteen."

  She swallowed. She hadn't expected him to answer.

  "I was eight," she offered tentatively.

  "Your father told me."

  "He... did?"

  He nodded, and she bit her lip. Had Papa left anything about her to Rafe's imagination?

  "What else did he tell you? About Mama, I mean?" she added hastily, afraid that Aaron's name would somehow roll off Rafe's tongue. She reminded herself for at least the thousandth time that her fear was groundless. After all, the truth of that matter would never reach Papa's ears. Not unless Aaron himself had an attack of conscience.

  She prayed to God he never would.

  "Max doesn't talk about her much," Rafe said, his tone tender with sympathy.

  "Oh." She wondered if she sounded as deflated as she felt. She hated to think Papa never grieved for Mama. She hated to think... well, that anything her maternal grandfather had ever said about Papa's fickle heart was true.

  "Why don't you tell me about her?" Rafe murmured.

  She blushed. He hadn't moved a muscle, and yet she felt closer to him than ever before. She wondered if it was the heat of him, so subtly alluring, so seductively tangible. Or was it the comfort their newfound comradery gave her? She really wanted to believe he cared about her hurt, the way she cared about his.

  She raised her uncertain gaze to his. "I don't remember much. She was... Mama. And I loved her."

  His thoughts were unreadable in those moon-silvered eyes, but she sensed poignancy in his silence.

  "I never understood why God took her away." She felt compelled to keep speaking, to touch him with words in a way she dared not touch him with her hand. "I tried to convince myself she was needed in heaven. I liked to think she was an angel, because she was so beautiful. And because she laughed a lot. Not like Aunt Agatha."

  He nodded. She wondered if he was thinking of his own mother, or if Papa had told him some harrowing tale of Aunt "Hagatha."

  "Papa wasn't home when the accident happened," Silver continued, the creep of grief turning her hoarse. "But Grandfather blamed him. I remember how he came to take me away. Papa was so much like a child himself, you see..."

  She averted her eyes, recalling the bitter accusations her mother's wealthy father had made, claiming that Papa was irresponsible, that he was unfit to raise a child. Even though Mama had been wholly responsible for hitching the gig and driving out in icy weather, Grandfather had reasoned she would never have been tempted to such foolishness if Papa hadn't won the conveyance through Poker. On that horrible day, as Grandfather had dragged Silver out the door, screaming for Papa, he had vowed that Papa would never ruin Silver the way he'd ruined her mama.

  "Grandfather never approved of Papa," Silver said thickly. "He didn't like the fact that Papa's parents had been German immigrants. Grandfather convinced himself that Papa was worthless, that he'd never amount to anything, and that he had seduced Mama for her dowry."

  Silver caught her breath, groaning inwardly as the truth slipped out. She hadn't meant to unlock that particular skeleton from the family closet! Even she wasn't supposed to know she'd been conceived out of wedlock. She'd stumbled across the truth when she'd learned
how to add.

  She hastened to defend her parents' marriage. "I don't think Mama could have been very happy under Grandfather's roof. I think she fell in love with Papa because he was spontaneous and carefree, a far cry from her overbearing father."

  It had taken Silver years to understand why her mother's family had hated Papa. In retrospect, she was amazed that Grandfather had allowed Papa to visit her on holidays.

  But until she had understood Grandfather's prejudice, she had blamed herself for Papa's absence. At the age of eight, she hadn't known that a wealthy grandfather could influence a judge and prevent an impoverished father from living with his child. For the longest time, she had believed Papa had left her behind with her authoritarian grandfather and her dour, spinster aunt not because Papa had been determined to strike it rich and fight fire with fire but because she'd displeased him in some way.

  Not until her fourteenth year, when Grandfather had died and Aunt Agatha had become her sole guardian, had Papa confessed he'd been afraid to cross his powerful father-in-law. That had been the summer of 1872, and shortly afterward, Grandfather's ill-advised attorney had invested Aunt Agatha's inheritance, costing her everything but the boardinghouse.

  With Papa's savings consumed by the search for gold, even he had understood that his was no life for a fourteen-year-old daughter. He had told her she'd be better off cooking three meals a day to help care for her aunt's boarders than rubbing elbows with the hustlers, hookers, and thieves that preyed on mining camps.

  So, once again, she and Papa had been separated.

  "Aunt Agatha used to tell me my mother, her younger sister, had been an incorrigible and wayward child." Silver plucked at her gown as the hurtful memories threatened her composure. "I think Aunt Agatha hated Papa even more than Grandfather did, that she was jealous of Mama and Papa, because she'd never had many beaux. She told me once she thought it was her God-given duty to cure me of my parents' legacy."