The Other Guy's Bride (7 page)

“Find me some clean clothes by the time I’m done here and there’ll be another
piaster
in it for you. Here.” Jim flipped the kid some coins to make the purchase. He caught them in midair before bowing his way backward out the door, leaving Jim alone in the public bath’s private room.

It was growing late, and the small window high in the tiled wall had darkened over, leaving the room in a misty semidarkness illuminated only by the sconce over the door. Wisps of steam rose from the raised pool in the room’s center to collect on the ancient tiled ceiling and drip back to the slick stone floor. The room was hot and sour-smelling.

But then, Jim thought, that could be him.

He raised his arm and sniffed. Fine. Pomfrey’s future bride had a point; he did smell. Though why she’d informed him of it in that insulted, haughty manner was a mystery. She couldn’t have taken exception to his saying she was safe with him? Most unmarried ladies would be only too grateful to be so reassured that their guide would be conscientious with their reputations, reputations being stock and currency in the English marriage mart.

But then, she was not your standard-issue English miss.

Oh, without a doubt she was a young lady. The mellifluous upper-class accent, the haughty wing-shaped brows, the imperious angle of her chin: they were all the products of a first-rate finishing school. As was her unquestioned superiority to all other people and cultures. Which meant she wasn’t different at all.

But how had she escaped with so much intensity intact? Her stride was too long and too purposeful, unseemly in a member of the leisured class. And no headmistress would have tolerated that open-mouthed smile. And the lithe, tensile waist he’d held was not the product of sitting in drawing rooms pouring tea. She was an enigma…

Why was he wasting time wondering about her? She was Pomfrey’s enigma, not his.

He peeled off his shirt, wadded it up, and tossed it with more force than necessary onto one of the stone benches. Then, hopping first on one foot and then the other, he stripped off his boots. He’d just unbuckled his belt and had it halfway drawn from the loops when he saw the wisps of steam above the pool shiver. He ducked as a wooden club whistled by his face.

He spun to face his assailant and instantly recognized a swarthy, well-muscled man with thin lips and a scarred chin: Vincent LeBouef.

He glanced around for a potential weapon. There was nothing. LeBouef leapt forward and Jim twisted, jerking back, but the club caught his shoulder. Pain lanced down his arm; his fingers went numb. He pitched sideways, slipping on the slick tiles and crashing to his knees. He caught himself with his good hand and looked up. LeBouef sauntered forward.

“You know, James” the Frenchman mused, “I find myself wondering just how many times a man would need to be attacked to make him so adept at avoiding being struck from behind? It must be a great number.”

Jim struggled to his feet. “You’d be surprised.”

LeBouef shook his head. “On the contrary. If the man is you, then no, I don’t think I would be.”

“That hurts, Vincent,” Jim said, making a show of grabbing at his back and wincing. With numb fingers, he managed to tug his belt free of another loop.

“You do not make yourself popular with your confederates, Jim. They do not like you.”

“Maybe I oughta stand a few more rounds at the local pub?”

LeBouef laughed. It was a pleasant, amused laugh, a drawing room laugh. That was the frightening thing about LeBouef. He seemed so reasonable. So civil.

He wasn’t.

“How did you know I was here?” Jim asked, buying time.

LeBouef shrugged, seeing no reason not to answer. “The boy that folds towels.”

Jim nodded, unsurprised. LeBouef mined information from a huge population of “little birds”: snitches, eavesdroppers, and rumormongers. He would have paid especially well for information regarding James Owens.

LeBouef’s smile stretched. “You can imagine my surprise when I heard you were back in Cairo. It is so rash, and you, James, are not a man one would call rash. Do you have some sort of perverse death wish?”

“No,” Jim said. “I am profoundly interested in remaining alive.”

“Are you? I wonder,” LeBouef mused, regarding him as though he were a puzzle for which he’d not been given the proper pieces. “You have nothing. No family. No home. You belong nowhere.
N’est-ce pas
? We are not so unalike in that, are we?”

Jim didn’t answer. The longer LeBouef waxed philosophical, the more time Jim had to regain the use of his hand.

“I,” LeBouef pointed the club at his chest, “was hounded from France by a tragically corrupt government. And you were hounded from…?” He raised a brow invitingly.

“Name a country. Chances are, I’ve been thrown out of it.”

LeBouef laughed again, shaking his head with something approaching affection. “I do not understand. You could have been a rich man had you joined me when I asked. Yet you refused. It is as if you do not want wealth. But then, one must ask oneself, what other reason besides the acquisition of wealth would you have to be here?”

Jim didn’t answer.

“You are something of a mystery, James. And I, to my great sorrow, am a romantic. What is your story? Tell me.”

“I’m flattered, Vincent, and I hate to disabuse you of this little fiction you’ve built up around me, but look around. Egypt is full of men without countries, names, or families.”

For a long moment LeBouef regarded him, the steely intelligence evident in his dark gaze. Finally he sighed. “It is as you say,” he said, sounding mildly disappointed. “So. Where is my collar?”

Jim glimpsed a sliver of hope: LeBouef didn’t know he’d already sold the pharaoh’s ancient jeweled collar to another buyer.

“Oh, I wouldn’t look so relieved, James. I really wouldn’t. Where is it?”

“Look,” Jim said. “I’m not going insult you by saying there’s been some sort of misunderstanding or that things aren’t what they appear to be because we both know they’re exactly what they appear to be. I came into possession of a certain item—”

“You ‘came into possession of it’ because I alerted you as to its whereabouts,” LeBouef cut in, his voice chill.

“
Whereabouts
you were unable to access but I was,” James said, bringing his hands up in a placating gesture. As he did so, his finger caught his belt and dragged it clear of another loop. “I know I promised it to you for a certain sum, but another buyer appeared.”

“He undoubtedly
appeared
because you informed him of what you had in your possession.”

“True.”

The corner of LeBouef’s lips curled.

“I’m a businessman. You’re a businessman,” Jim said in his most reasonable tone. “What would you have me do?”

“Do as you promised and deliver it to me.”

“Promised?” James repeated. “For the love of God, Vincent, we’re thieves,” he said, and seizing the end of his belt, he jerked it free of the last loop and whipped the buckle straight at LeBouef’s face. It caught him across the forehead.

Blood erupted from a deep gouge, spilling down LeBouef’s face. He gasped, but he was too seasoned a fighter to drop his weapon. He swung hard, catching Jim full in the ribs. Jim doubled up, grimacing, but he bulled his way closer in, robbing LeBouef’s next blows of some of their power. The Frenchman battered at him, raising his club to hammer it down on Jim’s head, but Jim lashed his belt around LeBouef’s arm, catching the free end and twisting it in a tourniquet around his wrist. He jerked hard, and the club dropped from LeBouef’s hand.

Jim reared back on his heels, letting his feet slide out from under him on the slick tiles, causing LeBouef to lurch forward. He seized LeBouef’s shirt collar, dug a foot into his gut, and pitched LeBouef over his head and straight into the stone bench behind.

LeBouef’s head hit the marble with a sickening crack, and he collapsed like a marionette whose string had been cut.

Grimacing, Jim rolled over and climbed to his feet. He probed the corner of his lip with his tongue and tasted blood. LeBouef had gotten in more than a few good licks. His side ached, his shoulder throbbed, and his left eye was already swelling shut. He limped over to where the Frenchman lay and prodded him with a toe. Satisfied he wasn’t feigning unconsciousness, Jim stripped off LeBouef’s shirt and shrugged into it because he was betting the kid he’d sent to buy him clothes wouldn’t be coming back.

With any luck, if he stowed him somewhere out of the way, LeBouef wouldn’t be found until morning. By which time Jim should be far away.

He jerked LeBouef’s wrists behind his back and lashed them together with strips he ripped from one of the towels. He should light out east, maybe head for India. The only reason he was still alive was because LeBouef didn’t know the heavy gold and gem-encrusted collar was already out of the country, probably gracing the neck of the wealthy Austrian count’s bullmastiff. The count had seemed inordinately fond of that dog.

LeBouef was going to wake up with murder in mind. Jim’s painful murder. And he was going to hunt for Jim until he found him. The only way Egypt would be safe for him was if LeBouef was dead, a happy but unlikely occurrence unless…Jim gazed down at the unconscious man for a moment before sighing. Nope. He couldn’t do it. He’d just have to write Egypt out of any future plans.

Resigned, he looped LeBouef’s feet together and then hogtied them to his wrists. He stood up. His only problem was Mildred Whimpelhall. If he didn’t take Mildred Whimpelhall to Pomfrey, he doubted Pomfrey would ever give him another chance to repay his debt. And that meant he’d die beholden to Colonel Lord Pomfrey.

And that ate at him.

He shouldn’t care, but he did. The question was did he care enough to risk his life by taking the time to deliver Mildred Whimpelhall to Fort Gordon? It was stupid to even consider.

Someone else could take her to her fiancé. Someone else could see to it that nothing bad happened to her out there where “bad” was one’s daily companion. He wasn’t the only man capable of guiding her to Fort Gordon. He was just the best.

At his feet, LeBouef moaned. Jim deliberated a few seconds, shrugged, and clipped him across the jaw, knocking him unconscious again.

So what if he failed some test that only he cared if he passed? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d failed, and it wouldn’t be the last. Maybe he’d head to Asia or go north to the Baltics. There were still a few places left in the world where a man could lose himself. And if just the thought of that exhausted him down in a place far deeper than muscle and bone, well, at least he’d be alive.

Seven years ago he’d promised himself he’d never do anything stupid because of a woman again.

Taking Mildred Whimpelhall to her fiancée definitely fell under that category.

“Time to get up, Miss Whimpelhall.”

Ginesse struggled out from the depths of an uncomfortable dream featuring a tall, disreputable-looking outlaw and blinked, her eyes adjusting to the darkened hotel room. She shook her head. She must still be dreaming because there was no other explanation for why James Owens would be sitting on the side of her hotel bed.

“What are you doing here?” she mumbled, looking around. Her window stood wide open to the terrace.

“We have to go. Now.”

“What are you doing here?” she repeated. She gathered the bedsheets high under her chin, scrambling back on her heels until she banged into the bed’s elaborately carved headboard. She could barely make him out. Just enough to see that he’d changed his shirt for a
zaboot
, the native tunic of the lower classes. It was not much of an improvement.

The garment stank of tobacco. And liquor, too. She sniffed. Yes, he
definitely
smelled of liquor. She peered at him over the linen’s laced edge. She’d read that some men became capable of terrible things while under the influence of liquor.

“What are you doing here?”
Her voice rose an octave.

“I’m taking you to your fiancé.”

His tone was definitely not lecherous. She relaxed slightly. “To my fiancé?”

“Yes,” he said. “We have to go. Now.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said. “Please remove yourself from my room at once, Mr. Owens.”

“Miss Whimpelhall, I’m not asking—”

“Good. Because I’m not going.” Good heavens. Did he really think she would go tromping off with him in the dead of night? She hoped she was made of sterner stuff than that.

“Listen, miss.” He set one large fist beside her thigh and leaned forward. The white
zaboot
fell open nearly to his waist revealing a chest heavy with muscle, hard and contoured, the dark hair covering it glinting in the chance light. Quickly, she looked away, heat flooding her face. This was ridiculous. She’d read some extremely provocative Egyptian love poems without a blush.
Dry words about dead lovers,
an inner voice mocked. Nothing at all like this. He was real, so close that if she lifted her hand she could touch that wide, sculpted chest—

“No,” she said. “I will not listen. Now, must I ring for an attendant or will you leave?”

“You’re not calling anyone. Not until you listen,” he said. He shifted, bringing his face into the light.

She forgot her apprehension and embarrassment. “Good heavens! What happened to you?”

He looked awful. His left eye was swollen, his lip was split, and a bruise darkened the already beard-stubbled angle of his jaw.

Enlightenment dawned on her. “You’ve been in a brawl! A
saloon
brawl,” she breathed, recalling countless vivid descriptions of similarly battered men from her Western dime novels. She leaned forward to get a better look, the sheet slipping unheeded from her shoulder. “You have, haven’t you?” A tantalizing, horrifying thought occurred to her. “Was it over a woman?”

“What?” He jerked back, a brief expression of bewilderment appearing on his stern countenance. She was having none of it.

“
It was!
” she declared. “You got into a barroom brawl over some…” she scrambled for the right word, “some
floozy!
Don’t deny it.”

Whatever had Colonel Lord Pomfrey been thinking to send such a man to escort as delicate and timid a lady as Miss Whimpelhall? It was unconscionable. James Owens would have terrified Miss Whimpelhall. Luckily, Ginesse was neither delicate nor timid.

With an impatient gesture, he reached out and flicked the sheet back over her shoulder. “There are no saloons in Cairo,” he said.

“You know perfectly well what I mean. Some squalid establishment that caters to men’s lowest impulses.”

“
Lowest impulses?
”

“You…you should be ashamed of yourself,” she said. Something deep within him would surely respond with innate decency to a gently bred lady. It always did in her novels. “You didn’t start out as a desperado. You should…try to be a better man. I am sure you have it in you.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. “Somewhere.”

For a moment he just stared at her and then abruptly stood up, looming over her, his eyes glittering in the dim room.

“You seen through me, miss,” he growled, in a rich Western drawl.

It was
delicious
.

“I was in a saloon brawl,” he admitted. “I ain’t proud if it, but when demon liquor has his way with a feller, there’s no telling what he might do.”

“I knew it!” Ginesse breathed.

“You were right. And now that I’m coming clean, I reckon it’s only fair to warn you, miss. I ain’t one of your English lapdogs.”

No, she thought, twining the sheets more tightly around her shoulders, he most definitely was not. She blinked up at him, uncertain what he meant, her heart racing wildly in her throat.

“
Comprende
?”

She frowned. “Pardon me?”

“You understand?”

“Yes.”

“So, when I say we’re going, we’re going. I’m the ramrod, got it?”

Ramrod…ramrod…Oh! The
boss
! She nodded.

“And whatever else I tell you to do in regards to our trek, you’re gonna do it and you ain’t gonna argue.”

“I would never argue. It’s unladylike.”

“You’re arguing now.”

She opened her mouth to—She closed it, swallowing hard. He sounded quite ruthless, and she felt a little frightened.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “You ain’t got nothin’ to fear from me as long as you do as you’re told. I got one aim, and that’s to get you safe to your sweetheart’s arms. He entrusted me with your care, and I,” he looked away, his lips trembling ever so slightly, obviously moved by some great emotion, “and I live by the Code of the West. I aim to get you to him even if I have to carry you kicking and screaming the whole way.”

Oh. My
.

“Got that?”

“Yes.” She caught herself on the brink of telling him she wasn’t Mildred Whimpelhall and that she wasn’t going anywhere with him. James Owens was far more than she’d bargained for when she’d begun this impersonation. Miss Whimpelhall had been right to be apprehensive.

But then she reminded herself that Colonel Lord Pomfrey had entrusted Mildred to Mr. Owens’s care and Colonel Lord Pomfrey was a man whose opinion could be counted on. He would never risk Miss Whimpelhall’s virtue, not to mention her very life, to a man who couldn’t be trusted.

More importantly, Ginesse was growing ever nearer to her own goal, her future, her triumph. She must remember that. She must remember why she was here and what success would mean. She rallied her spirits, lifting her chin.

“You must promise me you’ll resist all future temptation to imbibe spirits.”

He regarded her bleakly. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Promise me.”

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep. But I’ll promise you I’ll give it my best effort.”

“I should not like to have to report your behavior to Colonel Lord Pomfrey,” she said, hoping the threat might carry some weight, but fearing it didn’t.

His mouth tensed, but he only said, “Neither would I. Which is why it’s important we leave now. Before I succumb once more to the lure of liquor and a fancy lady.”

“Now?”

He nodded.

“It is the dead of night.”

“You’re arguing again.”

“But it
is
the dead of night.”

“Miss Whimpelhall,” he finally said, “we’re set to cross a very hot, very big desert.” The slight English accent had returned. His Western drawl probably only appeared when he was intoxicated or under duress from great emotion. Which was rather a shame. Bettering himself or not, she much preferred the Western drawl. “Which means we’ll be doing most of our traveling before sunrise and after dusk,” he continued. “Which means we start now. Within the hour.”

She didn’t want to argue with him. Leaving sooner rather than later served her purposes except…“But I haven’t had time to refurbish my wardrobe.”

“I’ve taken care of it.”

“You?”

“I meant Pomfrey. I forgot that he’d made arrangements to have suitable clothing packed and waiting for you with the rest of our provisions.”

She studied him. The feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling her gnawed at her.

“You won’t be too uncomfortable for the present,” he went on when she remained mute. “We’ll be on the river for most of the first two days, and it’s cooler on the water.”

“I see.” She shifted to the side of the bed and stood up, drawing the sheets around her. As tall as she was, he was a good five inches taller. “Please leave.”

He moved closer to her, looking down at her, his face shadowed and still. “I am sorry, miss, but we’re leaving here now,” he said softly. Dangerously. “You can go over my shoulder or on your own two feet.”

This was not a callow younger brother or fond father, but a hard-faced stranger with a dubious reputation. She was out of her depth.

This is dangerous
.
He’s dangerous,
she thought
.
But if she wanted to get to Fort Gordon, she didn’t have any choice but to go with him.

“I am not disagreeing,” she said. “I only meant for you to leave in order that I can get dressed and pack what few things I have.”

As abruptly as it had arrived, the tension evaporated. “Oh. Well, then you shoulda said something.”

He moved to the open window and paused, silhouetted against the subtly lightening sky outside. “We’ll meet in half an hour at the bottom of the garden rather than the lobby. There’s no need to excite comment.”

He didn’t wait for her to answer but put a booted foot over the sill and silently disappeared into the night, leaving Ginesse to wonder: She knew why she didn’t want to attract anyone’s attention, but why didn’t he?