Rebecca Hagan Lee (10 page)

James heard the horror in her voice, saw the shimmer of unshed tears in her beautiful blue-green eyes, and grudgingly admitted understanding Elizabeth’s flawed, but honorable, logic. She was right. It was all his fault. He was to blame for Elizabeth Sadler’s situation. She had every right to be angry with him, to despise him, to refuse to help him. He had meant for the police to detain her, not throw her into a cell. But here she was locked in a cell amidst the dregs of womanhood. Because of him. And now it was up to him to explain his reasons for doing what he did and, if possible, to make amends. “I was desperate.”

“You were desperate … ?” she sputtered. If she only had her parasol, Elizabeth thought, she’d use it against James the way she had used it to wreck Lo Peng’s place.

“Yes,” he answered her softly, not offering the word as an excuse, but as a fact. “I wanted—” He stopped. “I needed to find you as quickly as possible. Having the police scour the city streets was the quickest and most efficient means of locating you, but I couldn’t utilize the entire police force unless I had a good reason for wanting to find you. I had to come up with something. And the theft of my personal belongings seemed like a fairly innocuous reason.

“Blast your personal belongings,” Elizabeth told him. “You didn’t tell them I stole your personal belongings; you told them I stole your handkerchief!”

James managed a rather sheepish smile. “I couldn’t take the chance that the police would charge you with a serious crime.”

“Just a petty one,” Elizabeth retorted, meaningfully.

“Touché,” James said with a grimace. “But I hated the
thought of losing that particular handkerchief. It’s special.”

Elizabeth thought of the carefully embroidered initials, J. C. C., on the corner of the handkerchief. Someone must have given it to him. The woman who’d labored over the beautiful stitches. Elizabeth hadn’t counted on James having a special attachment to something as commonplace as a handkerchief. “Apparently.”

James raised an eyebrow at her dry retort. “Silk handkerchiefs are expensive. Besides, I used it once, to dry a beautiful woman’s tears. I wanted to keep it as a memento.”

Unfortunately, so had she. And her desire for a keepsake would have landed her in jail even if her rampage in Lo Peng’s had not. Because she couldn’t allow herself to be swayed from her righteous anger by his pretty words or his sentiment, Elizabeth fixed her unflinching gaze on him and demanded the truth. “Who are you? The mayor? The chief of police? How is it that you could have me arrested for stealing one of your precious handkerchiefs?”

“My name is James Cameron Craig,” he said. “I’m the owner and president of Craig Capital, Ltd., a railroad, mining, and timber corporation.…”

Elizabeth gasped as she recognized his name and the name of his corporation. Craig Capital, Ltd., was one of a handful of American corporations owned and managed by men who were members of the Millionaires’ Club. James Cameron Craig was one of them. A businessman worth millions of dollars. A businessman who rubbed elbows and made deals with the likes of J. P. Morgan, Jay Gould, Commodore Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller. “I suppose I should be flattered that one of the richest men in the world decided to have me thrown in jail.”

“No.” James shook his head. “But you might show a bit of appreciation for the fact that one of the richest men in the world went to a great deal of trouble to get here in time to bail you out.”

Elizabeth seared him with a gaze of pure blue-green fire.
“A bail that cost a millionaire all of fifty dollars. I think that’s the very least he could do,” she replied with a sugary-sweet smile, “since I wouldn’t be in here if it wasn’t for him.”

“Oh, you’d still be in here,” James told her. “Lo Peng is sure to press charges.”

“But I wouldn’t have gone to Lo Peng’s if you …” Elizabeth clamped her mouth shut.

“If I what?” James prompted, patiently folding his arms across his wide chest, waiting for her to continue.

Elizabeth glared at him.

“Come on,” he encouraged, biting back the smile that threatened to overcome him when he recognized the spark of pure fury in Elizabeth Sadler’s devastating blue-green eyes. James was surprised to find himself encouraging her, surprised to discover himself attracted, rather than repelled, by her healthy show of anger. He actually liked Elizabeth’s spirited, impetuous side—the one so at odds with the more restrained and rational governess-type demeanor “Spit it out before you choke on it.”

“If you hadn’t arranged to have me arrested for something so—so—petty. I decided to give the police a real reason to arrest me.”

James grinned at that. “Sort of like cutting off your nose to spite your face, isn’t it?” Elizabeth stubbornly refused to reply as James motioned to Sergeant Darnell to unlock the holding pen. “I’ve admitted my guilt and offered my apologies, and you’ve confessed your sins and repented the crime. Now, come on. Let’s get you out of here.”

Darnell swung the door of the cell open, then stepped into the breach to prevent the other inmates from slipping through the opening. “You can go now, Miss Sadler,” the sergeant told her. “And may I offer my apologies as well. We didn’t want anything to do with this. But Mr. Craig being who he is and all …” Sergeant Darnell let his voice trail off, then cleared his throat and continued, “I just wanted to let you know that if he”—the sergeant nodded toward James—“hadn’t paid your bail and talked to the
judge on your behalf, we were going to do it. Lo Peng’s out front swearing out a complaint, but we understand about your brother and Lo Peng’s and all. And the guys in the precinct are taking up a collection for you even as we speak. We wouldn’t have allowed you to spend the night with this riffraff.”

James cleared his throat and impatiently shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for Elizabeth to exit the cell. “I’m sure Miss Sadler appreciates your kindness and the kindness of your fellow officers,” James told him, “but we’re late and we really must be going. Come along, Elizabeth.”

James reached for her arm, but Elizabeth recoiled. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“I’m afraid you have no choice,” James said. “It’s one of the conditions of your release.”

“What?” Elizabeth glared at him through the bars of the cell.

“I paid your bail.”

“So?”

“Judge Clermont agreed to release you into my custody for the duration of your probation or until you’re able to repay the fine.”

“I don’t intend to remain in your custody for sixty days,” Elizabeth protested.

“Fine,” James replied, most agreeably. “If you’ll just repay the fifty dollars, plus the two percent interest, you owe me, I’ll be on my way.”

“I don’t have fifty dollars,” Elizabeth told him. “And you know it. But I’ll repay you just as soon as I can.”

“And what if I’m not willing to wait to recoup my loss?”

“You’re worth millions,” Elizabeth accused. “Fifty dollars isn’t going to break you. It won’t hurt you to wait for your money.”

“That depends on how long I’m required to wait,” James replied.

“I’ll repay you, with interest, as soon as possible,” Elizabeth
told him. “But it may take me some time to find a job.”

James grinned. “In that case,” he said, “I’m prepared to be magnanimous and waive repayment of the fine and the interest.”

“In return for what?” Elizabeth hadn’t grown up in a banking family without learning something about the business. Any banker or businessman willing to waive repayment of a loan with interest wanted something in return—something worth more than the original loan.

“Your expertise.”

Elizabeth stared at him.

“I’m offering you a position in my household,” James said.

“As what?” Her face turned bright red as she blurted out the question.

“As governess to my four daughters.”

She stood completely still as the nimbus surrounding her half-formed dreams and fantasies about James Cameron Craig splintered into darkness. He was married. He had children. Somehow, she’d never really considered that he might be a family man. Somehow, she’d imagined him as being a dashing
available
loner. Prince Charming to her princess. Now, she realized that if she were released into his custody, she would have to think of him as her prospective employer—as the father of the children consigned to her care. She could never again allow him to be cast as the hero in her girlish fantasies. “You have four daughters?”

James cast a rueful glance down at his wrinkled shirtfront, at the small buttery handprint visible on his tie, and the strawberry jam smeared across his waistcoat. The Treasures had put up quite a fight to keep him at home once they realized their daddy had been recalled to San Francisco after breakfast. “You’re a woman of some experience,” he said. “Couldn’t you tell?”

Elizabeth managed a weak half-smile at his attempt at humor.

“My girls are three and a half, two, thirteen months, and two days old. I returned home from my trip here two days ago to find that, in addition to three toddlers, I had a newborn daughter and no governess.” He turned his most winning smile on Elizabeth. “You mentioned you’d been a teacher at a school.” He shrugged. “I needed a governess and I immediately thought of you. But you left the Russ House so abruptly and I had no idea how to contact you, so I …” He let his voice drift off.

“You had me arrested because you needed a governess?” She couldn’t believe her ears.

“I did what was necessary to find you,” he corrected. “I just didn’t expect it to go this far. I never expected—”

“A genteel governess wielding a parasol to destroy the notorious Lo Peng’s in a fit of temper?” Suddenly seeing the irony in her situation, Elizabeth began to laugh. “I’m afraid you’ve made a poor bargain, Mr. Craig. You wanted an exemplary teacher for your children and you’ve gotten an execrable one instead.” She stared up at him, her eyes shimmering with mirth. “Are you sure you’ve made a good bargain with the judge? Are you certain you really want me?”

Her question gave James momentary pause. She’d stirred up a major hornet’s nest by wrecking the opium den. Lo Peng and the Tongs would not be pleased, and Lo Peng’s displeasure with Elizabeth could ultimately affect James’s rescue work, but at the moment none of those things seemed to matter. As he stared down at her, at the shining expression on her beautiful face, her plump pink mouth, and her laughing blue-green eyes, and felt his body’s immediate response, James was very much afraid that he would never want anyone more.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Cross my heart.”

“
YOU GOING OR
staying, Miss Sadler?” Sergeant Darnell swung the cell door back and forth in a small arc to call attention to the fact that Elizabeth stood half in and half out of the cell.

Having forgotten the policeman was still in the room, Elizabeth and James both turned to face him.

Elizabeth took a deep breath to steady herself, then stepped over the threshold of the holding pen and said, “I suppose I’m going, Sergeant Darnell.”

Nodding an affirmative, Darnell closed and locked the cell door behind her.

She glanced over at James. “Provided the salary and the terms of my employment are acceptable.”

James breathed an audible sigh of relief at the sound of the key turning in the lock—keeping Elizabeth out instead of in. “Just name your price.”

Elizabeth gave him a mischievous smile. “Shall we start with fifty dollars a day and go from there?”

James bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud at Elizabeth’s audacity. If he agreed to pay her fifty dollars a day, Elizabeth could repay her fine in one day—with his money—and be on her way. “Why don’t
we start with twenty-five dollars a month, plus room and board, and go from there?” he countered.

“You did say I could name my price,” she reminded him.

“I expected you to suggest a
reasonable
price.”

“How very shortsighted of you,” Elizabeth continued, filled with a sense of recklessness that had nothing to do with her recent adventures and everything to do with the handsome man standing before her. “Expecting reason from a woman who took on the notorious Lo Peng and his little band of foot soldiers and single-handedly demolished his disreputable establishment.”

James fought to conceal his amusement and retain control of the situation with a businesslike manner. “Are we agreed on the
reasonable
salary of twenty-five dollars a month during the sixty days of your probation?”

“I don’t know.” Elizabeth hesitated. “Fifty dollars a day is so much more appealing, especially since it means that one day I could be a lady of independent means.” She didn’t mean to sound mercenary or greedy. But Elizabeth had learned a lesson about money. And the lesson she had learned was that she never wanted to be without it again.

She wasn’t being coy, James realized, as he studied the expressions mirrored on her face. Nor was she a true mercenary. The corners of his mouth turned up and into a smile. Elizabeth was a bit naive and perhaps too optimistic, but not greedy. There was nothing wrong with a woman in Elizabeth’s position trying to become a woman of independent means. He just hadn’t expected her to have the brass to ask him to underwrite her journey to financial independence. “How much cash do you have?” he asked, abruptly.

“Enough,” she answered, attempting to hang on to her last vestige of pride.

“How much?”

Elizabeth turned to him and asked sweetly, “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to ask a person how much money she has?”

James laughed. “My mother’s family name is Cameron.
The Camerons made a fortune in banking, mostly by loaning money to Edinburgh merchants. My mother always asks how much money a person has. Banking’s in her blood.”

James’s laughter surprised her. She hadn’t expected a millionaire like James Cameron Craig to have a sense of humor. Elizabeth had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at her own expense. She should have remembered that the Camerons were known for having built considerable banking and shipping fortunes, first in Scotland and later in the British crown colony of Hong Kong. After all, she came from a banking family as well. A much poorer banking family, but a banking family all the same.