The Other Guy's Bride (9 page)

She coughed, spitting water all over the deck, and then she was being lifted against a hard, broad chest and her head fell in the lee between a warm neck and muscled shoulder.

“Are you all right?” His voice was harsh, unsympathetic. He gave her a little shake. “
Are you?
”

“Yes.”

She opened her eyes, blinking through the muddy water still streaming down her face, and found Jim Owens looking down at her. Of course. She’d known it was him the moment he’d touched her. His face was a mask, inscrutable and stony, his gray eyes roving over her face, touching on her hair, her mouth, and finally meeting her eyes.

“You dove in after me,” she said, her voice faint and wondering.

He seemed to find this amusing, for his mouth curled at the corner again and she took that for a smile. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

She answered before she had time to consider. “I didn’t expect you.”

“I didn’t expect you, either.” His voice seemed odd, somehow nonplussed.

“Will you me take to Fort Gordon?” she asked without much hope. Of course he wouldn’t. All her plans were for naught, all her dreams whisked away with the swing of a spar.

“Yes,” he said in a resigned voice. “I suppose I will.”

Jim kept his eyes on his oar and avoided looking at Mildred Whimpelhall perched on the gunwale ahead of him, dangling her bare feet over the edge. He wished she wouldn’t. She made him nervous sitting there, as if tempting the river gods to have another go at drowning her. She seemed oblivious to any risk and to have completely forgotten yesterday’s misadventure, as if falling into the Nile was an everyday occurrence.

Except for her bare feet, she was back in the hot-looking gabardine travel kit, having spent most of yesterday twined in a long piece of sailcloth while her clothing dried on the mast, the package Haji had delivered having been buried under piles of other provisions by the inept crew. That hadn’t seemed to bother her, either. She’d been in high spirits ever since he’d agreed to take her to Fort Gordon.

He didn’t have much choice. It was clear that she was going to attempt to find her way with or without him. Someone was going to have to take responsibility for getting her across the desert, and since he’d agreed to Pomfrey’s request, that someone was him. For good or bad, she was his…until he turned her over to her fiancé.

A light breeze riffled the water, and he looked up at the mainsail. It luffed briefly before going slack again. The wind that could almost always be counted on to propel small sailing vessels against the Nile’s current had failed, and now he and the Nubian sailors—if he dared insult sailors everywhere by calling them that—had been forced to lend their backs to the work of moving the boat upstream. It was hard, sweaty labor.

“Did you ever rob a stagecoach?” The question came out of nowhere.

He looked at her, startled, though he shouldn’t have been. She’d been lobbing these sorts of questions at him all day. Do you own a six-shooter? Have you ever rustled cattle? What did whiskey taste like, and had he ever seen a buffalo herd?

“Or a train?” She was regarding him with unblinking concentration.

What sort of proper young lady asked the sort of questions she did? What sort of proper young lady was even interested in the kinds of things she was?

His own limited experience with well-bred misses had ill-prepared him for the likes of Miss Mildred Whimpelhall. They had been modest, genteel, and reserved creatures, all downcast eyes and faint curving smiles. Charlotte, for example, would have been just as likely to run naked in the streets as to ask a stranger such personal questions.

Mildred Whimpelhall, on the other hand, had more questions, more opinions, more…
talk
than any three people put together. Whatever English finishing school she’d been sent to, if he’d been her parent, he’d have demanded his money back.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” she amended.

“That’s awfully decent of you,” he said dryly.

“But I wish that you would.” She peeked at him from under the sweep of spiky lashes. Her eyes—

Lord save him, those eyes. She had lost her spectacles in the river, which had proved a double-edged sword. When he’d scooped her up off the
felucca
’s deck yesterday and her eyelids had fluttered open, he’d lost his breath. She had the most extraordinary eyes he’d ever seen, a true cerulean, the irises a soft, greenish blue shot with copper sparks and ringed by darker blue. They were the sort of eyes that made a man stupid and sent him to his knees.

Some men—not him.

Then Haji had come to see how she fared, and she’d swooned. She’d rallied soon after Haji left, disgruntled that Jim still intended to go through with his plan.

“Well?” She’d taken out a folded square of foolscap and the stub of a pencil. What was she writing, anyway? It seemed she was always scribbling away at something. “Have you ever robbed a train?”

“Just what sort of man do you take me for, Miss Whimpelhall?” he asked.

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she answered. “But it’s deuced hard when you only answer in mono-syllables.”

“Maybe the reason I don’t reply is because I don’t think you’d like the answers.”

She considered this, stretching out a long leg to dip her toes in the water, affording him a glimpse of neat ankle, a high, elegantly arched instep, and pretty pink toes. His body grew hard at the sight, unnerving him. How could something as serviceable as a foot be so arousing?

“I might not,” she finally admitted. “But don’t you think I deserve to know the manner of man to whom Lord Colonel Pomfrey has entrusted my safety?”

“Shouldn’t it be enough for you that he did?” he countered.

“No,” she answered without hesitation. “It’s my safety at stake, not his.”

Another mark against the supposed finishing school. “Supposed” because he was beginning to think she’d never set foot in such a school. Young ladies did not go about insisting on autonomy. Older ladies might be forgiven for being strong-minded and independent, but she was far too young to have developed a taste for independence. And she was very independent.

She was also right. She did deserve to know the sort of man guiding her, whether he would prove faithful to the task or abandon her if trouble arose. He would want to know if he were in her position.

But he also wanted to answer because he wanted someone,
her
, to know him, to be something more than a ghost for a few short days, though he didn’t examine why too closely.

“No, I’ve never robbed a stagecoach. Or a train. Or, before you ask, a bank.”

“But you’ve robbed
something
,” she said, watching him intently. “From someone.”

“Yes. The dead.” At her shocked expression, he gave a humorless chuckle. “I meant from tombs. I wasn’t stripping the boots off cattle rustlers.”

“Some people call that archaeology,” she said stiffly.

“What’s the difference?” he asked. “What I do is no less thievery, just less immediate.”

She stiffened even more. He’d nicked a nerve. Interesting. “It’s archaeology if the public benefits from it; it’s thievery if it gratifies personal greed.”

“Is your father an archaeologist by chance? Because you seem more than a little partisan,” he said, amused. A lot of upper-class gents styled themselves amateur archaeologists. He’d sold quite a few things to them.

“No! I mean, yes.” She flushed. “He is a gifted enthusiast. But he’s
not
a thief.”

That helped explain the bits of historical trivia punctuating her conversation and the idle observations she would make when they passed some ancient site or ruins.

“I’m sure your father abides by every rule involving the acquisition of antiquities,” he said.

She only flushed brighter and cleared her throat. “Just so,” she said. “But we weren’t discussing my family, we were talking about yours.”

“Actually, we weren’t and we won’t,” he replied evenly, winning a peeved glance. She was worse than Haji and even more transparent.

“Well then, we were talking about your life on the wild frontiers of America.”

“No. You were talking about it. I was rowing.”

“But if you
would
talk about it,” she said, “it would keep your mind off how hot it is and how hard the rowing is and how far we have to go yet before you can quit.” Her words were doing little to hearten him, which, he suspected, was her intent. “Or how inefficient your crew is.”

She cast a pointed look at Nubians lolling at the oars on either side of the
felucca
. “I daresay not one of them has ever rowed in unison. Do you think I should call out a rowing song? You know, to get you all synchronized and pulling as one?” she suggested.

“No,” he said hastily. The captain had told him the men were uncomfortable having an unmarried woman in their midst. They thought her plunge into the river followed by the unusual absence of the wind was a bad omen. “I’m, ah, enjoying our conversation.”

She smiled broadly, and he realized he’d just been blackmailed. “Do you have a mustang pony?”

Here at last was something he could talk about without reservation.

“I did. A tough little buckskin.”

“Was he handsome?” she asked hopefully.

“Hardly. He looked like a gargoyle, had a trot that could break your back, but never stumbled on open ground and knew his way around a steer.”

“But you’re an adept rider, I’d imagine.”

“Yes.”

“Do you still own him?”

“No.” Like everything, it had been sold after his father had died and he’d suddenly found himself an heir. Althea had swooped down like some malevolent angel, wresting Jim from his uncle’s ranch and taking him away to her mausoleum-like house—he could not call that place a home. She had allowed him to bring nothing with him.

“Is it impossible for you to offer
any
bit of conversation without me having to pry it from you?” she burst out, surprising him. He couldn’t imagine why she’d be so interested. “I appreciate your whole enigmatic, solitary wanderer identity, but you have achieved new heights of reticence. The Sphinx is more forthcoming than you!”

Enigmatic solitary wanderer? Is that how she saw him? He started to smile.

“Don’t smile that way. You are purposely enigmatic, and it’s obviously nothing more than a ploy devised to enhance your mysterious aura.”

Great God. His half smile turned into a full-out grin. She was so unexpected. So amusing. “I have a mysterious aura?”

“You only wish,” she refuted her earlier words with a
humph
.

“I’m sorry,” he said, still grinning. She had crossed her arms over her chest. And lifted her nose in the air, turning from him. “There didn’t seem to be any more to say on the subject. What would you like to know?”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“Yes. A half brother four years younger than me. Jock.” It had been a long time since he’d said his name. It felt odd. Bittersweet. “He was a sweet-natured boy, studious and shy, always disappearing between the pages of a book. His mother died in childbirth.” He’d been the only bit of warmth Jim had experienced in Althea’s great cold house.

She beamed at him. “See? Was that so hard?”

“Yes.”

She gave an unladylike snort.

“And do you have any siblings, Miss Whimpelhall?” he asked. “I don’t know anything about you, either, other than that you’re Pomfrey’s intended bride.”

“Oh,” she said easily, “scads. Six younger brothers and one on the way. My turn. Where are your parents?”

This was
not
a memory he wished resurrected. “Both dead,” he answered in a short, clipped voice. And then he found, oddly enough, that he wanted to say more. “My mother died when I was four. We lived on my uncle’s ranch—it’d been in the family for generations, and after she died my uncle just took over raising me. Must have been hard for him. He wasn’t married, and I imagine I was a handful.”

“What of your father?”

“My parents stopped living together before I was even born. I never met my father. He remarried after my mother died. Then, when I was fourteen, he died and I inherited his…” This hadn’t hurt him in a long time. There was no reason he should allow it to do so now.

“His?” Miss Whimpelhall prompted gently.

“His everything. Which wasn’t all that much,” he said. “Not to me. His mother decided I shouldn’t be allowed to run wild like a savage, so she came to the ranch and took me away with her.” He released a long breath, surprised to find he’d been holding it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I…I know what it’s like to be taken away from a place you love.”

She looked so sad and forlorn. “It was a long time ago, Miss Whimpelhall. Things happen, you adapt. It’s what living is all about.”

She eyed him curiously at that, her expression slowly turning from sadness to approval.

“Now, before my voice gives out because this is a sight more talking than I’m generally used to doing, any more questions?”

She pondered a minute before her next question. “Do you like horses?”

“Like them? I respect them. I value them. I admire their grace and speed. I appreciate their willingness and spirit, but I don’t know as one
likes
a horse.”

“Of course you do,” she burst out again. “You just as much as said so.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her insistence. “All right. I like horses.”

“A fine cowboy you’d be if you didn’t,” she said in vindicated tones, smoothing her skirt with her fingers. “Do you have a horse now? Here?”

“Yes.” He was going to leave it at that, but he could see the clouds gathering again in her incredible eyes and decided to forestall another squall. “An Arab mare and her foal.”

She frowned. “Arabian mares are rare in Egypt since the epidemic.”

How did she know that?

“Except amongst the Bedouins,” she casually added.

“She belonged to a Bedouin,” Jim said. “She cost me every penny I’d managed to save over a three-year stint. Not that it mattered. As soon as I saw her and she whickered a greeting, I had to have her.”

“Oh!” Miss Whimpelhall sighed happily, nesting her chin in her palm. “That is so romantic!”

Jim snorted. “It was stupid. She costs me a small fortune to keep her stabled. I didn’t give a thought to the future, of how I would care for her, of what I would even do with her.”

Or maybe he had, more fool he. Maybe that’s why he’d had her bred. Because somewhere deep inside he thought someday he might be the silent partner in a stable of such fine animals. An idle dream, perhaps, but since he had nothing else to spend his money on, he could afford to throw it away on an idle dream or two.

He forced himself to smile. “Is the interrogation done for the day?”

She blushed at that but nodded, a wounded look in her eyes, and he felt as though he’d just kicked a kitten. “Of course.”

He ignored the impulse to apologize. There was a reason he’d kept to himself. There was a reason that few people knew about him and fewer still knew where to find him. A reason that he did not mingle with the other expats. Any of the things that would have attracted too much attention.