Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (38 page)

"Darling," he'd purred, after they'd dashed hand-in-hand up the back stairwell and slumped breathlessly against her bedroom door, "we have the rest of our lives to beg Max's forgiveness and make amends. Let's just claim this morning for ourselves... and lovemaking."

She'd wanted to protest, but he'd already snatched away the shawl she'd been clutching like a shield to her rumpled gown. Before she could hide her bawdy blush, he'd bowled her back onto the bed. She'd found herself distracted from her worries, laughing and scolding between pants, feeling duty-bound to at least try to instill some decorum in her scoundrel. She failed miserably in the attempt, mostly because she delighted in his hungry, prowling caress.

By the time it seriously occurred to her that they should stop, that Jimmy, Papa, or, God forbid, Benson might overhear their amorous romping, Rafe had already petted her into a paroxysm of desire. She pitched helplessly beneath his mouth and hands, mortified to hear the booming creaks of the mattress, and yet too frenzied to do more than gulp a warning.

He chuckled at her ladylike restraint, plunging deeper and snaking faster, relentless in his mission to drive her past the point of all caring. She lost her mind with her self-control, crying out his name again and again, until a throaty, desperate growl signaled the climax of his own restraint, and he drove home hard and fast, obliging her half-sobbed pleas to fill her with his passion.

She woke from their early morning loving three hours later, a sheet draping her nakedness and the aroma of sandalwood wafting faintly from the hollow in the pillow by her head. She groaned, sitting up, and scrubbed her face with her hands. Her tawny-haired debaucher was nowhere to be seen.

She sighed dreamily, touching her tongue to her swollen bottom lip. Memories from the last twelve hours made her heat and ice by turn: Rafe. The séance.
Aaron.
She swallowed.

Swinging her feet to the floor, she straightened, grimacing at the dull, feminine ache her first steps caused her. Still, she couldn't delay the inevitable. She had to face Papa... before Aaron bore out Cellie's predictions.

At nearly half past ten, Silver finally completed her toilette and eased down the steps to find Papa. She was in luck. Despite the lateness of the hour, he hadn't left the house yet for one of his Roaring Fork Club meetings or, more likely, one of his treasure hunts. She could hear his cheerful whistles and smell the pungent smoke of his cigar as she dragged her feet ever closer to his study.

She peeked around the door. A bulging satchel spilled maps across his desk; in his hand was a compass, on his head sat his miner's helmet, which now sported some weird, geometric talisman for warding off ghosts. She drew a bolstering breath and rapped.

"Papa?"

He glanced up, his reading spectacles sliding to the bulb of his nose. "Daughter!" He beamed. "So there you are. And just in time, too. Cellie and me've got that wily old Injun shaman cornered."

"Y-you do?"

"Yep. Right here at the bottom of the mine," he said, pointing to a spot on one of his maps. "Time to go in and make our demands. And not a moment too soon. Tavy's stunt last night scared the bejabbers out of Kilkarney and Penhalion. They're convinced they really did see Nahele. Now they've got the shovel stiffs in an uproar, and nobody reported to work today."

"Nobody?" she repeated halfheartedly.

"'Fraid so. Even Brady has a touch of 'ghost flu,' so I hear." Papa snickered. "Or maybe it's his fear of crab-puff-chasing otters that's kept him abed."

She smiled weakly.

"Uh, Papa, I need to talk to you about something. It's... important."

"Important, huh?" He squinted at his compass, jotted a notation on his map, then peered up at her expectantly. "Sounds serious."

She fidgeted, not at all certain how to continue. "Yes. Yes, it is. And... it's going to hurt, Papa."

"Me or you?"

"You."

"Hmm." He slid her a sideways glance. "Well, I never would have guessed
that,
you being so tongue-tied."

She blushed, worrying her bottom lip. "Papa, I did something terrible to you."

"Did you, now?"

She nodded.

"Well, doing something terrible doesn't make you a terrible person, daughter."

She blinked, momentarily taken aback. To be told she
wasn't
terrible was the last thing she'd expected to hear.

"But you don't know what I did," she protested. "I hired Chumley. Only he isn't really Chumley. He's an imposter, a Shakespearean actor named Raphael Jones."

Papa started. "An actor?"

She nodded queasily.

"Well, doesn't that beat all?" He slowly grinned. "An
actor.
Imagine that. And a damned fine one, too. Shoot. I shoulda known. I reckon your average duke is too snooty for
Alice in Wonderland
—not to mention pumpkin pickers and orphaned otters. Say!" Papa added eagerly, "do you suppose Chum... er, I mean, this Jones fella might want to work in Cellie's opera?"

"Uh, Papa?" she interrupted, feeling unaccountably deflated by his good humor. "Don't you want to know what I hired Rafe to do?"

He gave her another sidelong look. "Is that the terrible part you warned me about?"

She nodded, fighting back tears.

"Well... all right, then. What'd you hire Rafe to do?"

Her throat worked around the painful lump lodged there. "I hired him to... to come between you and Cellie. To make her show her true colors and, um, prove she didn't love you."

Was that the light striking off his spectacles, or were his eyes actually twinkling?

"Now why would you go and do that, daughter?" he asked more gravely.

"Because I thought Cellie was an arsonist. I thought she would hurt you once you married her and... and named her in your will."

He folded his arms across his chest. "So what made you change your mind?"

She wanted to crawl under the rug. "I hired a detective to... uh, investigate the rumors about her. And he told me she wasn't responsible for the fire that burned down that church in Kentucky."

Papa nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching. "Well, I reckon you just had to convince yourself, daughter. You wouldn't listen to me."

A slow heat crawled up her face. "You're not mad?" she whispered hoarsely.

His dimples peeked. "Do you want me to be?"

She half-sobbed, pressing a shaking hand to her mouth. The relief she felt at being so easily pardoned made her head spin. Giddy, free, and two tons lighter, she bubbled with laughter. The sound came out in hiccupping peals. She couldn't help herself. All these weeks of guilt, and Papa wasn't even
angry!

"Thank you." She clasped her hands, tears trickling past her idiotic grin. "I love you, Papa. And... and there's something else you should know. I love Rafe, too."

Papa lit up like a Christmas fir. "
Love
him? But that's fabulous, daughter!" he cried, hurrying forward to wrap her in a bear hug. "Bully for you. And bully for him, too! Raphael Jones, huh? Why, I'll be damned. Did the rascal propose yet?"

She nodded, giggling and blushing, and so overwhelmingly happy that even her fear of Aaron, for the moment, couldn't pierce the bubble of her elation. "Oh, Papa, I hope you don't mind. In light of what you didn't know, he thought it best that he ask me directly."

"Mind
? Shoot, daughter, I'm tickled by the news! Plum tickled. We can have a double wedding! Looks like I'll finally have my son-in-law, and you'll finally have... well,
babies
!" He chuckled as she grew even hotter. "Cellie'll be thrilled. She's never had children of her own, you know. Why, I was just telling her the other day what a handsome devil Chum... er, I mean, Rafe turned out to be, once she got him to shave off all his whiskers. I shoulda thought of it myself, since I put him up to it in the first place, but it looks like he didn't need help from me, after all. The rascal came through."

Silver blinked at him, her lightheartedness snuffed out by a slowly evolving suspicion. "What do you mean, 'put him up to it'?"

He started, flushing guiltily. "Did I say that? Er... no. What I meant was—"

"Papa"—-dread tightened its coils around Silver's stomach—"what did you ask Rafe to do?"

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Now, daughter, what difference does it make? You love him, don't you? And he loves you too. Let's just go back to planning our weddings—"

"Did you ask Rafe to... to
marry
me?"

His chin jutted like that of a child who'd just been caught with a cookie. "I thought you were fond of him," he said defensively. "And I thought he was a
duke.
Besides, it's a father's prerogative to arrange his daughter's marriage. And I
am
your father, you know."

"You arranged my marriage?" she choked in a thin, quavering voice. "Like the rich families do back in Europe?"

"Oh, Silver, do we really have to talk about—"

"Yes! Yes, I have to know. What was my dowry? Did you make him a partner? Did you deed him a mine?"

When his eyes shifted, avoiding hers completely, she heard her heart splinter, a tinkling cacophony of falling pieces.

"I wanted you to be happy, honey," he explained, his fingers reaching beseechingly for her sleeve. "The way me and Cellie are. The way you used to be back in Philly, before that Townsend fella stopped courting you..."

Silver couldn't bear to hear more. Blindly, she turned for the door, her throat burning with unshed tears as she raced from the humiliation. Now she understood why Rafe hadn't been in any hurry for her to speak with Papa. Now she understood what he'd meant by his tender—or had it been triumphant?—declaration: "
Everything you are is mine now."

Hadn't she thought he'd been up to some nefarious purpose? The truth ripped up her insides like a thousand savage claws. She'd been naive—again. She'd fallen prey to the same vicious prank that she, God forgive her, had plotted against Celestia. She wanted to scream herself raw from the shame.

But more than that, she wanted to bleed out the pain. Rafe didn't love her. He hadn't proposed marriage out of any kind of fond feeling for
her.
No, he'd seen nothing but dollar signs and stock dividends each time he'd kissed her. He was no better than Aaron!

She choked, clutching her corset as the whalebone chafed her breasts. Somehow, unerringly, her feet had carried her to Rafe's door. She could hear him humming an off-key melody above the chinking of metal against porcelain. He was shaving, she realized dimly. It was the last sane thought she entertained.

The door crashed open at her push, and Tavy, jumping a foot high, fled with her ears closed, and her tail tucked, to the bed's underbelly.

"What the dev—?" Rafe spun, his shaving brush poised in mid-air. He gaped when he saw her, and suds dripped unheeded onto the glistening hairs of his chest. "Silver, what is it?" he asked anxiously, taking a step closer. "Is it Townsend?"

She was shaking so hard that she didn't even have the presence of mind to fear his all-but-naked state. The only thing she could do in that moment, when confronted by the strength of those sinewy arms, shoulders, and thighs, was clench her fists in escalating rage.

"No," she bit out, her teeth chattering between words.
"It's you!
You lying bastard. After everything I told you about Aaron and me, after everything you heard him say and watched him do,
how could you?"

Rafe blinked, dumbstruck. How could he have possibly done
anything
to evoke this much fury in the woman he loved? In the three hours since he'd tenderly kissed her and left her smiling through her dreams, he'd crawled into his own bed and slept blissfully, dreaming up ways to get even with Townsend.

"Silver." He kept his tone as steady as his startled heart, which was still ricocheting off his ribs, would allow. "Calm down. Take a deep breath. What is it you
think
I did?"

Uh-oh. Wrong approach.
He could see his mistake clearly in the crimson that mottled her cheeks.

"You know very well what you did!" she flung back, her bodice heaving hard enough to strain its pearl buttons. "You used me! Just like Aaron. I was nothing more than a means to your end!"

"I'm not sure I follow—"

"You
seduced
me so you could be a partner in Papa's
business!"

His breath rattled in his throat.
Jesus. She talked to Max.

"Silver, I assure you, that's not true."
Dammit, Max. You
knew
she would react this way if she learned about the wedding deal.
"I don't know what Max told you, honey, but—"

"Don't you 'honey' me! I am not your 'honey.' Nor will I ever be!" A sob tore from her lips. "How could you be so cruel?"

He swallowed, not sure himself that he wasn't the biggest sonuvabitch on the planet. He
had
set out to seduce her, after all. He'd just never planned on it being the most sacred, God-affirming experience of his life.

"Silver, please. You're upset. Why don't you shut the door, and we'll—"

"No! I'm not falling for any more of your tricks, damn you. Or any more of your lines, either! It's closing night at the Nichols Theater, although I have to hand it to you, Rafe: Your performance was magnificent. Better than I paid for. Do take a bow."