Teresa Medeiros (10 page)

“I don’t need protecting. I cherish my independence.” She lowered her eyes. “I’ve been too long dependent on the fickle whims of men.”

He cupped her cheek in his palm, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Perhaps you’ve only chosen the wrong men.”

“A mistake I don’t care to repeat,” she said with forced lightness, drawing away from him. “You were kind to let me stay. You knew better than anyone that I had nothing to pay you with.”

Nothing but the cheering warmth of her chatter, the clean scent of her curls, and more laughter than the dusty old hut had heard in years. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, afraid he might beg her to stay not for another week, but for another month.

“You can pay me,” he said abruptly.

Her fingers knotted in her lap. She rolled her foot over Penfeld’s remaining cup, tension written in the curve of every toe. “I know such arrangements are common in a land such as this, but I don’t believe I could—”

Justin bit off one of Nicky’s favorite oaths. Emily’s eyes widened in shock. He snatched off his hat and turned away to pace, not wanting her to see him bleed from her careless cut.

His foot scattered a pile of books. “Is that what a
kind
man would do, Emily? Force you to share his blankets for a thatched roof and a plate of beans? Is that what you’re
worth?” He whirled to face her. “What manner of man do you think me?”

Justin didn’t think she could hurt him any more than she had, but when she lowered her gaze to her lap without answering, he discovered he was wrong. Dust motes drifted down to halo her disheveled curls. His throat tightened with a temptation sharper than pain.

What if he allowed Emily to barter her tender young body as the price for his protection? Would he be a monster for wanting to blunt the sharp edges of night with the pleasure of her charms?

“Come here.”

An unbidden shiver raced through Emily at the smoky timbre of Justin’s voice. She untangled her fingers and smoothed the remnants of Penfeld’s coat over her thighs. She rose and glided toward him, mesmerized by the clarity of his golden eyes. How could such crystalline eyes hide such dark secrets? she wondered.

She tilted her face to his, meeting his gaze boldly despite the faint quiver of her lower lip.

“You can repay me …” he said, brushing a strand of hair from her brow.

His shadow fell over her; Emily’s eyes fluttered shut in unwitting invitation.

“… by cooking dinner tonight.”

Emily snapped open her eyes. Justin was already striding toward the door, stepping over broken bits of china with the lazy grace she found so unnerving.

“You’ve piqued my curiosity about one thing,” he said. “Why didn’t you just run outside when I put Fluffy in the hut?”

“Run?” she echoed, still dazed by his abrupt mood change. “I never considered it.”

Grudging admiration touched his voice. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t, would you?”

Justin watched his words sink in; Emily’s eyes slowly widened to vengeful saucers. “When you
put
Fluffy in?
When you put Fluffy
 … do you mean you deliberately … why, you miserable wretch!”

She fumbled at the floor. Justin slammed the hut door just as the last unbroken cup crashed into it and shattered. Grinning, he slapped on his hat at a cocky angle. “Now, that’s my girl.”

He strode toward the fields, the music of Emily’s curses still ringing in his ears.

Penfeld was moping. Even the creases in his trousers looked droopy. Emily fussed over him with unrelenting cheer, bringing him conch shell after conch shell of tea heavily sweetened with precious treacle. In the course of a day, their roles had oddly reversed. The valet reclined on his pallet, his hands folded over his belly in plump wings. He hadn’t made a single remark about Emily’s miraculous recovery. Even in tragic defeat he remained tactful.

Emily clucked into his untouched shell of tea. “This won’t do at all. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were sulking.”

“A good valet never sulks, miss. He mourns.”

“I am terribly sorry about your tea service. It wasn’t entirely my fault, you know.” She shot Justin’s back a dark look.

Her host stood at the stove, flipping the sweet potato pancakes she had molded earlier. He had the good grace to turn around at her pointed words, but she almost wished he hadn’t. There was something hopelessly compelling about a man as virile as Justin wearing an apron. Her toes started to feel sticky, and she realized she was pouring the lukewarm tea over her feet. She dried them with the hem of Penfeld’s coat.

“Emily’s right. It wasn’t entirely her fault.” Justin pointed his spatula at the impassive lizard perched on a stack of books. “Fluffy must have been dipping into the rum again. You know how clumsy he gets on one of his drunken rampages.”

Emily, Penfeld, and the maligned lizard all glared at him.

Justin threw up his arms. “I confess! I murdered those innocent cups and sugar bowls with my own ruthless hands. But I’ve promised you new ones the very first chance I get. Even if I have to swim all the way to Fleet Street to find them.”

Penfeld’s long-suffering sigh was enough to make Emily weep. “You can’t afford it, sir. Your every halfpenny is promised to Miss—”

Justin flashed a warning glance toward Emily. If Fluffy had been blessed with visible ears, she was sure they would have perked up.

Penfeld snapped his mouth shut and began toying with his suspenders. Miss who? Emily wondered. Miss Auckland Strumpet? Miss Greedy Mistress with Soft Blue Eyes and Not a Freckle on Her Body? Justin obviously wasn’t channeling his fortune to his ward. Was some New Zealand beauty bleeding him dry? Did he have a shrewish paramour and five mewling brats tucked away somewhere? She supposed it would serve him right after what he had done to her father. So why had she suddenly lost her appetite?

Their meager supply of plates had been broken, so Emily began slamming pancakes on palm fronds.

Justin crouched beside the pallet. “Picture it in your mind, Penfeld. A gleaming vista of Waterford goblets and Wedgwood jasperware. Linen napkins heaped like snowy Alps beside each plate.”

The valet only sniffed. “How arrogant of me to think I could preserve a tiny corner of civilization in this wilderness, a small fragment of the mighty dignity of the British Empire in this wasteland of …”

He droned on. Justin shrugged at Emily over his head, indicating it best to let him ramble. As they sat, picking the sand out of their pancakes, a trilling cry interrupted Penfeld’s recitation.

A long, tanned leg jutted over the windowsill, followed by a tattooed arm waving a bottle of rum. “Greetings, most noble companions. I come bearing liquid sustenance for your delectable banquet.”

“Doesn’t Trini know any words under six syllables?” she hissed at Justin. She was still cranky from envisioning him adrift in a welter of milk-skinned, golden-eyed babies.

“Of course he does, but he prefers the ones I taught him.”

“That explains why he’s so pompous.”

Justin slanted her a dark look, but she was already taking a dainty bite of her pancake. He caught the bottle Trini tossed and splashed rum into his tea. Emily reached for the bottle, but Justin slyly eased it out of her reach. He was afraid rum and Emily might not mix. He could too easily imagine them igniting with a lethal flash, burning his lean, hungry body to cinders.

Trini squatted in their circle and Emily hastened to offer him a pancake. Penfeld’s pancake. She ignored the valet’s protests, more concerned with soothing the native’s hunger. She didn’t have to worry about Penfeld eating her. Trini gulped down the crisp treat, then licked his fingers and grinned at her. Emily looked around frantically.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Justin slid his own food out of her reach. “Give him yours.”

“But I’m hungry,” she wailed.

Justin grabbed her foot and ran his thumb over the sleek curve of her instep. A decadent heat tingled up her calf. “Have I ever mentioned what succulent little toes you have?”

She caught her breath, so paralyzed by the wicked sparkle of his eyes that she absently handed her pancake to Trini. When Justin freed her foot, it felt even more bereft than her empty stomach.

Trini’s voice boomed out. “You benevolent gentlefolk have shared your sumptuous repast with me. Now I beg for the privilege of repaying the favor.”

He vaulted out the window, returning with a platter of glazed meat. The exotic aromas of honey, cinnamon, and passion fruit wafted from the steaming dish, making Emily’s mouth water.

She clutched Justin’s arm. “Please tell me it’s not—”

“Good old-fashioned English pork, my dear. A favored delicacy of the Maori.”

She slumped in relief. Even Penfeld perked up as bottle and platter were passed around. The shadows of dusk lengthened across the hut, but the gathering darkness did not pierce their warm glow of laughter and conversation.

As Penfeld rose to light the lanterns, Emily leaned against the wall, content to watch the emotions dance across Justin’s face and hands. She’d found most Englishmen to be stilted in both speech and manner, but Justin’s fingers were eloquent extensions of his voice. He spoke briefly to Trini in Maori, the foreign words rolling like song from his tongue. Trini rose and disappeared out the window again.

“His comings and goings are enough to make a kiwi dizzy,” Penfeld said, splashing a healthy dose of rum into his tea as Trini bounced back into the hut.

The native knelt in front of Emily and offered her a calico-wrapped package.

“For me?”

Trini nodded. “For that most elegant of womankind, the veritable apex of feminine pulchritude—”

“Did he just insult me?” she asked Justin.

His shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. “No. He said you were lovely.” The warm glow in his eyes made Emily wonder if he shared that opinion.

She tugged open the package. Nestled within the worn folds were a skirt of woven flax and a thin scarf of flowered calico.

She held the skirt up to the light, admiring the exquisite workmanship. “It’s stunning, Trini, but I mustn’t accept it. Look what I’ve done to poor Penfeld’s coat.”

Penfeld offered a toast to that, sloshing rum on his immaculate trousers.

Trini spoke rapidly to Justin in Maori. He grunted a reply. The native took the skirt and laid it across her hands once again, saying simply, “Not for Trini. For Em.”

For Em
. Not borrowed from a befuddled valet. Not outgrown by some snobbish teacher. For Em. Virgin flax woven to hug the curves of her body. She looked around at their expectant faces, wondering how she could have allowed them to become so familiar and so dear in such a short time. Her gaze stopped at Justin. A wistful hunger touched his smile.

She offered Trini her hand, hiding a flinch when he brought it toward his teeth. “My most marvelous gratitude, Trini Te Wana,” she said.

He kissed her palm with the suave charm of any London swell. Emily gathered her gift and withdrew to the other side of the hut, terrified Justin might hear the tiny cracks shooting through her frozen heart.

Justin reclined on one elbow and tipped the rum bottle to his lips. The liquor spread its warm haze through his veins. Behind him Penfeld was snoring. The valet had forgotten to put any tea at all in his last conch shell. Trini had confiscated Justin’s watch and was twirling it over the lantern, watching darts of light dance across the hut in drunken fascination. Conversation had long ago declined, as it tended to do when stomachs were full and bottles empty.

Sighing, Justin allowed his gaze to lead him to the same hopeless place it had all night. To Emily.

She sat, hugging one leg, her chin pillowed against the satiny curve of her knee. A jagged tear in Penfeld’s coat exposed a creamy shoulder burnished with freckles. The lantern light tipped her chestnut curls with flame, haloing a profile as fragile and inscrutable as porcelain. Her eyes followed the spin of his watch as if hypnotized.

He closed his own eyes for a weary moment, wondering if they’d somehow wounded her with their kindness.

When he opened them, Emily was staring at him, her pensive expression hardened to something more feral. For a chilling instant he would have sworn she hated him.

Then the lantern flickered, Trini began to hum softly, and the moment was gone.

Too much rum, Justin assured himself uneasily as he tipped his hat over his eyes and eased into stupor.

Justin awoke to darkness. His head throbbed and his mouth tasted as if Fluffy had been tramping through it. No nightmares though. The thought gave him little comfort. He had learned long ago the seductive danger of drowning his dreams in rum.

Penfeld’s rumbling snores assured him it was still night. He stumbled to his feet, hoping a trip into the moonlight would relieve more than his aching bladder. His eyes adjusted poorly, and he stubbed his toe on Trini’s prone form. A sliver of moonlight beckoned him into the night. He was already fumbling at his dungarees when he hit the door.

He stumbled a few feet away, then stopped, his back to the hut. His shoulders slowly relaxed in relief.

“Feel better?”

A rich note of humor tinged the feminine voice. An icy heat knifed between Justin’s shoulder blades and crawled all the way to his hairline.
Dear God, don’t let her see me blush
, he prayed.

“Quite,” he said gruffly, making crucial adjustments with frantic hands. He hitched his thumbs in his waistband and swaggered back to the hut as if he had known she was there all the time.

Emily sat in the sand, staring glumly at the fragments of china gathered in the circle of her legs. An elfin frown crinkled her brow.

She swept a floppy curl out of her eyes, leaving a pale
smudge of flour on her cheek, and held up a teacup with no handle. “I made some paste for Penfeld’s tea set.”

Justin wondered how long she had been sitting out there alone. Shadows stained the fragile skin beneath her eyes. Her efforts seemed to have yielded little more than sticky fingers and sandy china. As they watched, a gaping fissure split the cup she was holding.

Her bereft sigh was more than Justin could bear. He ducked into the hut and returned with a small jar. “Kauri gum. Hand me that teapot and we’ll give it a try.”