Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (30 page)

Fiona grimaced, dropping her eyes to the linen she was twisting in her hands. "Freddie said you were smart," she mumbled.

"I also suspect your husband is in jail because he got caught red-handed in one of his humbugs."

Fiona's head jerked up at that. "Oh, no, miss. Freddie's much too clever for some tinstar to put the finger on him. Freddie got caught... well, 'cause his heart's in the right place. And whenever his heart talks louder than his head, trouble's sure to follow."

"The point in question being?..."

Fiona fidgeted. Either she disliked direct questions or she was wracking her imagination for a plausible lie. In either event, Silver wasn't going to let Fiona lead her down the garden path. She folded her arms across her breasts. "You're wasting time, Mrs. Fairgate."

"It's a delicate matter," she hedged.

"You will find me much more patient, not to mention understanding, if you tell the truth. What did Freddie do?"

Fiona raised her chin. Behind the mutinous glare, pride gleamed unmistakably in her eyes. "He tried to smash the face of some rich bloke who beat the bloody hell out of one of our chorus girls."

Silver's heart quickened as she let that information sink in. "When?"

"Two weeks ago."

An eerie shiver gusted down Silver's spine. She had no reason to doubt Fiona's tale. In fact, she had a couple of unpleasant personal reasons to believe her. "How is the girl?" she asked quietly.

Fiona shook her head, fumbling with the handkerchief again. "Not good. The doc says Amy ain't likely to dance for a long time. Maybe never."

It was Silver's turn to fidget. She had to admit, she didn't want to know that. "Is there anything I can do?"

"We take care of our own, miss. That's why I thought Rafe would want to know. And... well, why I need his help."

Silver frowned. "For Amy?"

"No. For Fred."

Their eyes locked. For the first time since she'd walked in the room, Silver felt an accord with the woman.

"I'll... speak to him for you."

"You're that close to him, are you?"

Silver felt her neck warm at the undisguised speculation in the old woman's stare.

"You are welcome to wait here, if you like," she countered primly.

Fiona rose, gathering her parasol and her dignity. "That won't be necessary, miss. If Rafe's the man I think he is, he'll come around. Just tell him not to sulk for too long. Freddie doesn't have many friends in Aspen, least of all the kind who can afford to pay his fines."

Silver started. "Fred's in Marshal Hawthorne's jail?"

"That's right. None of the tinstars in Leadville cared enough about a poor immigrant girl to risk charging a rich man with a crime. The bastard rode away as free as you please, and Freddie got so mad, he took it on himself to track the bloke down and dole out a proper punishment.

"'Course, that was fourteen days ago. When I didn't hear any word from Freddie, I knew something was wrong. That's why I took the evening stage to Aspen. When I found him in jail, he told me he knocked the bloke out cold before your town marshal arrested him." Fiona's eyes narrowed. "Think my Amy got beat up by somebody you know?"

Silver's stomach roiled as a half-formed suspicion snaked through her mind. "I... hope not."

Fiona nodded grimly. "Well, just the same, miss, you watch your step. A wad of pocket change and a fancy address don't make a man a gentleman. You remember that. And you remember, too, that justice ain't necessarily got anything to do with the law. 'Specially when you're penniless and female."

Chapter 11

Rafe reached automatically for the chalk box. It felt good to grind that fine powder onto the tip of his stick. It felt good to smash the cue ball against the object balls, to hear the satisfying
smack, smack, smack
as the reds, blues, and yellows careened across the felt. Billiards could be a brutal game if one knew how to crack a rack just right.

And Rafe had been cracking racks for years, imagining Jedidiah's or Michael's face painted across each ball he buried in a pocket. Now he was imagining smashed Fairgate likenesses. He supposed it was the cowardly way, beating the tar out of pool balls instead of his erstwhile kin.

Rafe's lip curled as he let the cue ball fly again.

He'd run out of brandy more than an hour ago. If he'd had a decanter—hell, a
bottle
—of rotgut, he'd have finished that too, but unfortunately, Max only stocked aged imports that went down so smooth that a man had to be told he was drunk. Rafe craved the familiar punishments of something low class, something home-brewed and vile. He wanted his throat to smoke and his gut to burn. He wanted to ache all over so badly that the searing in his chest would feel comfortable by comparison.

He ground his teeth. How could Fred and Fiona lie to him? About
consumption,
goddamn them? But even worse, how could he have been such a sucker?

"Rafe."

He stiffened, mortified to see his hand tremble at the genuine caring in Silver's voice. He hadn't heard her step on the stairs. He hadn't even heard the door creak open. But then, when one was battering oneself with recriminations, one didn't hear much of anything else.

"You've been up here a long time."

His jaw jutted. So she'd known he'd been holed up in Max's attic hideaway? Then why hadn't she come sooner? Was the prospect of an unchaperoned rendezvous with him that frightening?

He bit his tongue on an uncharitable retort. It had been more than a week since he'd kissed her, but he supposed the incident still gave her nightmares. Silver wasn't quite as self-assured in intimate encounters as she'd proven to be in business, and he'd pushed her too hard too soon. He'd have no one but himself to blame if she went running back to Aaron Townsend the minute he traveled west of the Missouri River.

Then again, it was a big damned continent, right? Townsend didn't have to holiday in Colorado, much less in Aspen, and ruin everything.

Rafe groaned to himself.
Jones, you didn't seriously think Silver would lower her standards enough to marry you
,
did you?

"Since you missed dinner," she murmured, striking a match to light a porcelain table lamp, "I thought you might be hungry."

He grimaced as light flared. He much preferred the cavelike atmosphere and shadow-wreathed rafters of the gaming den. Speared by shafts of illumination, he felt blind and exposed, as if he'd been shoved onto center stage to speak lines he'd never rehearsed. The analogy wasn't all that far-fetched, considering how few times he'd played the real Raphael Jones.

Something delicate and savory, like clam sauce or lobster bisque, wafted to him from the platter she carried to the sideboard. He blinked at the artfully folded napkin and its tasteful gold edging, the impeccably polished sterling condiment shakers, the appetizing and attractively arranged remains of a gourmet meal that, for his sake, should have been scraped into a bowl and rewarmed as stew. Who was he kidding to think he deserved to live this way, spearing seafood delicacies with a sterling fork, sipping imported liquors out of Austrian crystal?

He gripped the bumper tighter and punched the eight ball into a corner pocket. "You needn't have gone to the trouble."

"It wasn't any trouble," she said quietly.

His conscience balked at that sweet, female croon. Was it possible for a con to go more awry?

Three weeks ago, he'd set out to bag himself a fortune, bed an heiress, and, by exposing Celestia, generally make an ass out of anyone associated with the Nicholses' mining empire. He'd been playing a game of consequences, punishing rich people he'd wanted to believe were as contemptible as he.

But they weren't. And so the real ass was Raphael Jones. He hadn't planned on liking affable old Max. He hadn't planned on taking to heart the idea of marrying Max's daughter. He hadn't dreamed he would grow to care about Silver, much less Jimmy and Celestia.

Sentiment and cons didn't mix. He knew better, but he'd been stupid. And his lapse into stupidity had marked him as a prime target. As he'd been hoodwinking Silver, and she'd been hoodwinking Max, and Max had been hoodwinking Silver, Rafe had come to find out Fred and Fiona had been hoodwinking
him.
He supposed he should be laughing at the irony of it all. He was a sucker, and he was getting just what he deserved—what he'd always deserved since the day of his birth.

But somehow, he found no humor in the knowledge that he'd been exploited by people he loved. Fred and Fiona hadn't deceived him as a matter of business, they'd made it personal. They knew all his weaknesses, and by claiming Fiona was dying from the illness that had killed his mother, they'd conned him in the cruelest way imaginable.

He might have been a despicable bastard, Rafe thought miserably, but he would never have gone that far to hurt anybody.

"Rafe," Silver said gently, "don't you at least want to taste the bisque?"

He was careful to keep his back turned as he racked up another set of balls. Raphael Jones,
failure extraordinaire
, wasn't a role he wanted to play before this audience, but for the life of him he couldn't recall the lines of any heroes. "Maybe later."

He heard her skirts rustle, as if she'd edged closer.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"Why?"

In the reflection of the window, he caught her sniffing the empty decanter. He cringed, bracing himself for a tirade against manly vices. Considering how careful Max always had been to hide his gambling and drinking from Silver, Rafe assumed she was the type to nag.

But Silver surprised him. Rather than browbeat him for his moral depravity, she quietly replaced the decanter on the liquor cabinet. Rafe released a ragged breath. He hadn't realized he'd been holding it until their eyes met in the sash.

"It isn't like you to miss an opportunity to rib Benson about his dinner service," she said with an attempt at levity.

He tossed aside the rack. "I daresay I'll have to repair that oversight tomorrow."

Her smile was fleeting. "Well, that should give Papa enough time to hone his digs. They fell rather flat this evening, I'm afraid, without you there to inspire him. And then when word got back to him that Benson snubbed you by neglecting to carry a dinner tray upstairs, Papa gave Benson a tongue-lashing like I've never heard before.

"Not that Benson didn't deserve it," Silver added hurriedly as Rafe hardened his jaw. "But it's not like Papa to care about such things. I've never seen him so upset at a servant. Even Celestia had trouble calming him down before they left for the Windsor Hotel. Honestly, Rafe, sometimes I think Papa considers you the son he never had."

Rafe's chest heaved, and he let the cue fly, blasting the object balls in myriad, rainbowed directions. Did Silver have any idea how much that passing comment meant to him?

"Rafe..." She bit her lip, waiting for the banging and thumping to end. "I think you know I didn't really come here to talk about Papa and Benson."

"No?" He reached for the chalk box.

A tense silence lengthened between them as he busied himself with his stick.

"Rafe..." She sounded reluctant to continue. "I know you don't want to talk about Fiona. I know... she hurt you."

"Told you that, did she?"

"No. Not exactly. But I'm not as indifferent to... to other people's feelings as you might believe."

He groaned inwardly, circling to the far side of the table. He'd liked their repartee much better when she'd thought him callous and incorrigible.

What had happened to the hard-as-nails mining maven he'd met in Leadville? Silver was supposed to be selfish and heartless. Instead, she'd abided Jimmy's painful lack of etiquette with martyrlike patience; she'd suffered Tavy's rampages through her toiletries with a grudging, but no less motherly, tolerance; she'd even born with grace the humiliation his ludicrous Chumley had caused her.

What was more, she adored Max, and in the process of waging feminine warfare to protect him, she'd exposed a mystifying vulnerability toward men, one which made Rafe feel protective and... well...
conscientious.
How ironic that he should come to care about a woman he'd once thought was the female equivalent of himself.