The Other Guy's Bride (8 page)

“Clearly, you have not thought this through,” Haji said. He tossed Jim the package he’d brought and then leaped into the
felucca
’s bow to join him.

Jim ignored the comment, handing off the package to one of the sailors to stow. “Did you get everything?”

Haji made a sour face. “By everything do you mean did I get clothing for that red-haired she-cat? Yes. Will it meet with her approval? No. Unsurprisingly, there were not many establishments catering to European women open at four o’clock in the morning. I had to resort to visiting a lady friend of mine who was not pleased to be asked to share her garments with an unknown female. I have no idea what she packed in that bundle. It could be rags. By the way, you owe me ten pounds for that.” He looked around. “Where is Pomfrey’s bride-to-be?”

Jim nodded toward the stern of the small sailing vessel where Mildred Whimpelhall sat, her hands braced on the gunwale as she looked toward the sunrise. The first thin light of day outlined her profile in a rosy glow, following the straight, sculpted length of her regal nose to the clean angle of her jaw and down her long, slender neck.

“Why is she still wearing those dark glasses?” Haji asked in disgust. “It is barely first light.”

Jim didn’t have an answer. He’d wondered about that, too, and in particular what color her eyes were. It had been impossible to tell their exact color in her hotel room, but far from being pale and weak looking, they’d appeared dark and brilliant, framed by long, curling lashes.

He’d noticed a few other things last night, too, because when the sheets had fallen down around her waist he’d have to have been blind not to take note of the full thrust of her breasts beneath her sheer cotton nightdress. He wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want to think of her as anything but the means to repay a debt. But she’d looked…He shook his head, refusing to follow his imagination any further. She’d looked like trouble, plain and simple.

He would have expected Pomfrey’s bride to be a prim sanctimonious woman who lived her life along very narrow, very clearly defined lines. Someone with the imagination of a carp and about the same blood temperature. The last sort of woman Jim would have expected Pomfrey to marry would be a vivacious, feminine, full-blown romantic. And Mildred Whimpelhall was definitely that.

With no help from him, she’d cast him into the role of some sort of cowboy-outlaw. When he’d realized that nothing he could say was going to dissuade her of that opinion, he’d decided he might as well take advantage of it. He sure as hell hadn’t been getting anywhere
asking
for her cooperation. If she wanted to believe he was a bad man, then a bad man he’d be, reasoning that if she didn’t know what he was capable of doing, she might not risk finding out by flouting him. She looked like a world-class flouter to him.

His mouth curved into an involuntary smile. She’d looked like a new-fledged owl, staring up at him from her nest of bedclothes round-eyed with wonder, a little frightened, a little excited—

“I did the best I could.”

Jim looked up, jerked out of his reverie by Haji’s voice.

“The crew,” Haji explained, nodding toward the quartet of men moving back and forth along the dock loading provisions and readying the boat. “They’re Nubians. I know you don’t speak Nubian, but they were the best I could do on short notice. The captain speaks some English.”

Jim nodded. English may well have been the captain’s only asset. He’d arrived drunk half an hour ago and had been trying to sober up ever since. As he watched, the barrel-chested Nubian belched and shouted an order to a boy. The lad hurried to the stern and began hauling the mainsail up the mast, making a mess of the process and earning bellows of rage.

“Good Lord. If we make it across the river without drowning it will be a miracle,” Jim muttered. “Just how much am I paying them?”

“Twenty
piasters
a day each. Fifty extra for the captain.”

“By all that’s holy, Haji.”

“Come, James. It’s not as if you were paying them; Colonel Lord Pomfrey is. All you need to do is hand him a bill. Were I you, I should make certain it was considerably padded.” He glanced at Mildred Whimpelhall and grinned. “Battle wages, I believe it’s called.”

His smiled faded. “But no amount of money is worth risking your life. This is madness,
habib
. LeBouef might not come after you himself, but he will set a price on you. Every wretch within fifty miles will be looking for you.”

“Doubt anyone’s going to be sneaking up on me in the desert,” Jim said, though in truth Haji wasn’t saying anything Jim hadn’t already thought.

“You aren’t doing Miss Whimpelhall any favors, either, James. You’re setting her up as a target right alongside of you.”

He’d thought of that, too. “LeBouef would have Mrs. Walcott and the British army on his head if he caused her any harm and he knows it.”

“Bah!” Haji said, thwarted. “She is Pomfrey’s bride. Let Pomfrey find another to guide her. Better yet, let him come for her himself.”

Jim hesitated. Haji was right, and looking at the inexperienced crew and the drunken captain to whose dubious skills he was entrusting her made him reconsider. She was so young and vulnerable, and while he knew LeBouef was too savvy a businessman to waste money by sending men chasing across a vast, uncharted desert after him, that didn’t mean some ambitious self-starter might not have a go at it.

“Listen to me,” Haji pressed. “So, she is forced to stay in an elegant hotel for a week or so. Is this so great a burden?”

No. It wasn’t.

“Yes! Yes, it is!”

At the sound of the frantic female voice, both men swung around to find Mildred Whimpelhall clambering over the crates toward them. The girl must have ears like a bat.

“Ah, Miss Whimpelhall,” Haji said, his face smoothing. “I am sure if you understood what was at stake here, you would be happy to free Mr. Owens from his obligation.”

“I do understand!” she protested, stopping atop a crate next to the boy still working industriously and unsuccessfully to haul the halyard to its topmost position. “I know
exactly
what is at stake, and I can assure you your problems are paltry next to my need.”

Haji’s gaze hardened. “Even if it’s a man’s li—”

Jim grabbed his arm, giving the smallest shake of his head. “Look, miss,” he said. “I’m real sorry, but something came up that I hadn’t anticipated. It seems like it would be best for everyone if someone else took you to Fort Gordon. Haji here’ll set you up with a real good guide.”

“I don’t
want
another guide,” she said, paling. “I want you.”

Her adamancy startled him. “That’s real flattering, but there’s bound to be someone nearly as—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she sputtered. “I don’t give a fig whether you’re a good scout or bad guide or an indifferent whatever it is you want to call yourself. All that matters to me is that you are here
now
. It could be days before another guide can be found. I don’t
have
days.”

He couldn’t imagine Pomfrey inspiring that sort of fervor, but he nonetheless said, “I understand your eagerness to join your fiancé, but there are matters involved that are out of my control.”

“They are not!
You
are here.
I
am here. The
crew
is here. You were prepared to embark before
he
showed up.” She stabbed Haji with a dagger-like glare.

“I am most sorry to have been the instrument of your disappointment,
sitt
,” Haji said with pronounced irony.

She stomped her foot, and the crate she stood upon wobbled precariously. She didn’t notice. She’d set her hand on her hips, her chest rising and falling in agitation. “Listen to me. I intend to leave for Fort Gordon today. At once. With or without you, Mr. Owens.”

“Now, Miss. Whimpelhall. You’re upset,” Jim said, uncertain how to continue.

“With or without you,” she repeated. She pivoted and pointed an imperious finger at the captain, who’d taken time off from barking orders at his lackluster crew to watch the proceedings with growing interest. “You, Captain. Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Do you know someone who would be willing to act as my guide to Fort Gordon?”

“No.” He shook his head in disgust. “It is far away across a very bad land. No.”

Jim relaxed. He hadn’t been aware that every muscle in his body had tensed.

“Could you find me someone willing to do so for, say, fifty English pounds?”

The captain abruptly ceased shaking his head. He squinted up at her. “My cousin’s daughter is married to a Bedouin. He might—”

“No,” Jim clipped out. “
No
. You can’t just hire someone you don’t know to take you on a trip like this.”

“I don’t know anything about you other than what Colonel Lord Pomfrey wrote,” she said. “Apparently he didn’t know much either. Certainly he didn’t know you were a welsher.” Her gaze racked him from head to toe. “I suspect he should have.”

He’d been called worse, and he wasn’t the sort of man to be goaded into doing something because of a few words. Still, it stung. “I guess he should have at that.”

“Oh!” She stomped again. “Fine. Captain, as soon as these men disembark, you can start across the river.”

“I’ll need to be paid first.”

“Of course. I have the money right—What are you doing, Mr. Owens? Unhand that man at once!”

He’d reached across the transom, grabbed a fistful of the captain’s
galabeeyah
, and dragged him forward until the man hung face to face before him. Dammit. Now the captain knew she was carrying money on her. She’d just put herself in peril and she didn’t even realize it. How the hell had she made it all the way to Egypt unscathed?

Had he thought he’d be putting her at risk by staying with her? She was already in danger, and it would only grow worse by the day, because that was the sort of woman she was, set on having her own way regardless of the consequences to anyone. Including herself.

“You’re not taking her across the river alone,” he explained to the captain. “Not for fifty pounds or a hundred pounds. Understood?”

The captain lifted his hands, squirming. “Of course not,
effendi
. I was not thinking clear.”

“No!” Mildred Whimpelhall howled from atop her crate. “That’s not fair. You can’t just tell people to ignore me!”

Jim glanced over at her. “It’s for your own good.”

“Oh, how I
loathe
that phrase,” she spat out. Her hat had fallen off during her scramble, and the terrible red hair was starting to come unbound, falling in Medusa-like ropes around her face.

“You may stop this man from taking me across the river, Mr. Owens,” she declared, “but you can’t accost every captain along this shore, and that’s what you’ll have to do to keep me from crossing this river. I’ll go up and down the banks and ask every man with a
dahabiya
or
felucca
or a raft to ferry me across. Sooner or later, one of them is bound to agree, and there is nothing you can do to stop me, unless, that is, you plan spend your days shadowing me. And since you seem to be in a great hurry to be rid of me, I can’t imagine you will do so. So you may as well go now, Mr. Owens, and leave me to my search.”

He stared at her. She stared at him.

Shit
.

“Allah be praised!” the boy beside her suddenly cried, leaping up and pumping the air with both fists as the mainsail caught the breeze and billowed out.

His triumph was short-lived. He hadn’t tied down the mainsheet on the boom, and as soon as the wind filled the sail, the big wooden spar swept across the deck, knocking aside everything in its path.

Including Miss Whimpelhall. One minute she was standing there, glaring at him; the next, she was gone.

He leapt to the side of the boat just in time to see her sink beneath the water, her enormous dark skirts ballooning around her like a giant jellyfish, a jellyfish that was going to drown her.

“Leave Egypt now, James,” Haji said calmly. “I will see that she is safe.”

But it was too late. Jim had already dived in.

Ginesse plummeted toward the bottom of the Nile, weighed down by the heavy gabardine skirt. She opened her eyes in a thick stew of brown murk and felt a thread of panic take hold: she couldn’t tell top from bottom. Disoriented and frightened, she forced herself not to struggle. She knew how to swim, but in these skirts it would be impossible. She had to shed them.

She began to work feverishly at the ties and buttons. Her chest ached, and her lungs felt close to bursting, but she knew to exhale meant she had only seconds to replace the air. Carefully, she let a thin stream of bubbles escape her lips as she yanked at the skirt. She was growing light-headed, her fingers fumbling…

And then suddenly two strong hands seized her and she was being propelled up through the muddy waters, the water breaking over her head as she was pushed up through the surface and into the air, choking and gasping for breath. Strong arms raised her up the side of the
felucca
where other hands accepted her, hauling her aboard like a net full of fish and dropping her on the deck.