The Other Guy's Bride (17 page)

Her scowl deepened. He had no right to laugh at her, to question her interest, her ardor, or commitment. Who was he to say what she found fascinating and what she didn’t? He didn’t know her. He thought she was Mildred Whimpelhall, a spinster from London.

Jim had never met Ginesse Braxton. How could he begin to understand how important this was to
her
that the name Ginesse Braxton be included in her family’s illustrious ranks? He couldn’t because he couldn’t fathom what it was like to be the cuckoo in the nest.
Not
that she was a cuckoo. She wasn’t! She’d proved that by earning a degree in ancient studies. She
was
proving that by discovering Zerzura, and it
was
fascinating!

She hadn’t thought of the lost city in days, and now this reminder of what was at stake and the reason for her journey came racing back to her. She hadn’t precisely forgotten, she’d just been caught up in their day-to-day travel and Mr. Owens’s mysterious history, and her silly scribblings and their conversations and his grave-eyed charm and his warm embrace…Zerzura had simply slipped to the back of her mind. She had so completely immersed herself in her role as Mildred Whimpelhall, she’d forgotten who she was.

“I’m sorry you don’t share my enthusiasm for the ancients, Mr. Owens,” she said stiffly. “But you’re quite, quite wrong. I am passionately interested in Egyptian history and archaeology.”

“You know,” he said, looking more puzzled than chastised, “if you think this will impress Pomfrey, you’re wrong. He knows nothing about archaeology and cares less than nothing for tombs and pharaohs. You don’t have to be anyone but yourself, Miss Whimpelhall. Believe me,” he said, his voice softening, “that is enough.”

“Sometimes it isn’t,” she said so softly she couldn’t tell if he’d heard.

“All right,” he said, with a touch of resignation. “Then tell me something I’ll be interested in.”

“I have a better idea,” she said, unwilling to follow the path his questions had set her on. She did not want to examine too closely what had brought her to this point, to this masquerade, to deceiving Jim. “
You
tell
me
something.”

There was a subtle change in his body. Not a stiffening precisely, more like an inner retreat, a distance developing between them as surely as if he’d set her on the ground.

“What would you like to know?” he asked.

“Colonel Lord Pomfrey wrote that you are a scoundrel.”

“Did he?”

She slanted a glance from under her lashes and nodded. “Are you?”

“Define scoundrel.”

“Someone of questionable integrity.”

“Then he’s right.” He shifted her in his arms so that she was lying back in the crook of his elbow, looking up into his face. His mouth was relaxed, his voice composed, but there was a hard quality to the gaze fixed on the landscape ahead.

“Yes,” she admitted then, “Colonel Lord Pomfrey said you are a ruffian, too.”

“Right again.” A small muscle leapt in his jaw.

“And Colonel Lord Pomfrey said you were rough and uncouth,” she continued, adding before he could accept the fault for these sins, too, “but I do not find you either.”

This won a startled glance from him.

“But he says you are in league with the bandits and,” she demurred from using the word “jackal” as Pomfrey had in his letter, “outlaws.”

“I’m flattered Pomfrey wasted so much ink on my foibles.” He didn’t sound like a cowboy now. He sounded like the haughtiest European aristocrat—bored, amused, but underneath coldly angry that someone would have the audacity to judge him.

“Colonel Lord Pomfrey says you’re not to be trusted—”

“Do you even know his first name?”

The question, coming as it did out of nowhere, flustered her. “I…What do you mean?”

“Colonel Lord Pomfrey. You never use his given name.” He was looking down into her upturned face, moonlight carving his into hard angles and cold planes.

“Of course I know it,” she said, trying to sound convincing because in truth she did not remember Pomfrey’s Christian name.

“Because if you were mine, I would want you to say it, even when I was not there.” He was so close she felt his warm breath sluice over her lips, so close she could see the way his lashes tangled at the corners, so close she could see flecks of sand at the base of his throat. His gaze had turned smoky and brilliant all at once, with an intensity she’d never seen before. It made the breath catch in her throat and her heart race.

Fool that she was, even though she intuited that danger roved very near and that she ought to keep very still and very silent, she could not keep from whispering, “Why?”

“Because every time you said my name, it would touch your lips.” His voice lost its hard edge, grew as dark and smoky as his gaze. “Like a kiss.”

She could not look away though he gave her plenty of time to do so. Instead, her chin lifted, her body leading where her mind refused to go. He bent his golden head and lightly, gently, brushed his lips across hers.

She felt a tingle, her nerves galvanized into pleasured awareness. He gathered her closer, his mouth moving more firmly over hers. She did not resist the subtle insistence of his mouth. She melted against him. One hand supported her back while the other traced the length of her neck downward, brushing the thin cotton shirt off her shoulder to caress the top of her bosom where it swelled above the tight satin undergarment.

She arched into his touch, and something seemed to break within him, some deep restraint he’d imposed upon himself. He crushed her closer, his heart pounding against her breast, deepening his kiss, his mouth slanting sideways, his tongue sliding along the seam of her lips, and when she gasped at the unexpected contact, his tongue slipped deep within her mouth, intimate and erotic and thrilling.

He shifted her, breaking off their kiss, and she made a sound of protest but his lips did not leave her. They skated from the corner of her mouth down along her jaw and from there to follow the course of her neck, feathering warm, damp kisses along the way. He paused at the hollow at the base of her throat and licked, tasting her.

It was thrilling, so deeply intimate, and she shivered, her head falling back against his shoulder, allowing him easier access. His fingers brushed along her shoulder and down along the outer side of her breast, inciting an indescribable need to be touched more, to be handled more, to feel more. She wanted his hand on her breast; her nipple ached for some form of relief and at the same time, more of this sweet torment.

She twisted in agitation, and his palm rubbed her nipple. She gasped with the pleasurable feel of it and pushed her breast hard against his hand, abandoned to sensation and anticipation.

“Please. Please,” she panted.

But he didn’t please her. His hand slipped from her breast; he pulled his mouth slowly from hers. She stared up at him, lost and uncertain and unsatisfied. So unsatisfied.

Beneath the dark tan, he looked pale, but that might have been the moonlight. Only his eyes seemed alive, and they were flames. He did not look at her for a few seconds, he only muttered something under his breath. Then he lowered his gaze to her. The fires had been banked, and his expression was unreadable. Gently but resolutely, he pulled her
farasia
back into place before easing her upright in front of him.

When he spoke, his voice was cool and distant as a memory of winter. “As for your original question of whether I can be trusted,” he said, “I guess that answers it.”

The sun stood directly overhead by the time Jim spotted the outcrop of rocks that marked the oasis.

He looked down at the woman sleeping in his arms and congratulated himself on getting her here without ravishing her as she’d ravished him, utterly, thoroughly, entirely laying him and his supposed honor to waste.
Honor
. He’d spent the last seven years card-sharking, hustling, grave-robbing, and selling his fists and his gun to the highest bidder. It had been hubris to think he had any honor left to lose.

It wasn’t enough that he’d fallen in love with Pomfrey’s bride-to-be, but then he’d had to taste her, kiss her, know for himself what was meant for only Pomfrey to know. Any man with an ounce of integrity would have respected that no matter what the provocation. And small enough provocation she’d supplied, curled up against him, sweetly trusting, barely awake. His body hadn’t cared.

Each moment he’d held her had extended itself into its own torturous eternity; each damn step the damned camel took that rocked her against his loins had chipped away at his brittle self-restraint. And when she’d called him on his many sins, he’d seized on it as an excuse to finally do what he wanted to do—or rather, he thought grimly, a portion of what he’d wanted to do because as soon his mouth had closed on hers and her hands had crept up to cling to him for support, he’d wanted more. He wanted all of her.

And if she’d been a whit more experienced, had evinced a degree more familiarity with passion…

But then he’d heard her plea, and though he thought it stemmed from excitement, he could not guarantee it to his heart, and that organ refused to allow what honor so easily ceded. He loved her and he would not frighten or hurt her, no matter how certain he was that whatever apprehension she felt would have soon given way to something exquisite. Her lithe body had arched into him, her hips lifting in unconscious appeal, her lips opening effortlessly beneath his, her breast thrusting into his palm. A shudder coursed through him at the memory, and he smiled grimly into the burning desert wasteland thinking it a fitting metaphor for his unquenched desire.

Thank God, after the long, terse, silent hours that followed, hours during which, no doubt, she’d prayed he wouldn’t force himself on her again, she’d fallen asleep. It had provided an unexpected boon, allowing him to taste for scant moments what he couldn’t have forever: the slide of her hair against his lips, the velvety texture of her cheek, the light, lithe form gathered against him. Though the arm supporting her drowsing head was knotted in agony for being so long in one position, it was a small price to pay to be able to look down at her, to mark the way the toasted color of her skin edged to apricot on her cheeks, how her lashes were tipped in gold, the distinct outline of her full lips, the haughty contour of her nose.

He looked up, forcing himself to keep his gaze fixed on the oasis as it slowly grew larger; it offered no respite. He felt each of her inhalations, the little beat of air against his neck, the relaxed curl of her fingers over his shoulder where her hand had crept in her sleep. For the long years of his self-imposed exile he hadn’t wanted or needed anything or anyone, reconciled to his isolation, satisfied to be an observer looking in from the outskirts of what he’d concluded was a game with no winners.

But now this slip of a girl had rolled into his life like a feckless archaeologist, tunneling beneath his defenses, carelessly exposing his heart, piecing some things together—shattering others. He’d thought himself as empty and indifferent as a mummy, yet with the first sidelong look from her eyes he’d felt the excruciating kick of his heart coming back to life.

And the damn thing kept beating, refusing to heed the sage advice of experience and reason no matter how much it hurt. And
God
, how it hurt. Because she could never be his. Never.

His gaze drifted down to her, rebellion coiling in his heart. She was susceptible, romantic, and inexperienced. She thought he was some sort of cowboy-cum-villain-cum-tarnished knight. Given her nature and misconceptions, he might successfully seduce her. He had some skill; he had not lived a celibate life, and those ladies with whom he’d shared a bed had been eager and willing to instruct a devoted if infrequent pupil. He might seduce her.

He closed his eyes, fighting the taunting images his thoughts roused.

Then what? Then
what?

He didn’t have a thing to offer her, not even a name. Years ago he’d made a deal with the devil, and while he would have fought the devil for her, other innocent lives would be bruised if not broken in the battle.

Althea had expected Charlotte’s betrayal to break him, so that he would finally learn the humbling lesson that no one cared who he was, only
what
he was, and that was only as much as Althea would allow him to be. But it hadn’t broken him. Instead, it had imbued in him a steely resolve never to bend to her will. And in that last fateful meeting, she’d realized it.

“
Then I wish you dead,”
she’d said.
“Be dead. Go away and die so that Jock can inherit. Go away and die…or wait until I see that you do.”

He’d been so young, so fierce and heedless. He’d looked into Althea’s eyes and seen nothing but his own hatred mirrored back at him and known she would have him killed if she could.

And he hadn’t cared.

But he had cared what would happen to his mother’s brother, his uncle. He had cared what would become of the Youngblood ranch, the only home he’d ever known.

At the time, it had seemed a fair trade. Althea had never given him anything, not a smile, not a kind word, not a penny that wasn’t already his. The only thing she’d given him were hard lessons in the harshest way possible. So, in receiving nothing, he’d learned to
want
nothing from her. He’d learned to disparage anything she valued, to despise what she withheld, to hold in contempt everything she exalted. It had been easy to walk away from the birthright she’d valued so much more than him.

He’d never had any regrets. Until Mildred.

Until her, he’d never considered the ramifications of his long-ago abdication. Until her, he’d never counted it a loss. He couldn’t even offer her a real name. Or a home, a place of permanence with friends and associations, a life rich in all aspects.

He owned a couple of horses and what he carried with him in his kit.

For a few fateful moments he considered going back. His death had not been made official yet. There were still a few months left before Althea took the case to the courts. After that, it would be too late. He might reclaim his name, but everything else would be lost. Even if he wanted to sue to have his birthright returned to him, he had no money to pay for the litigation.

But he couldn’t. He could not buy his happiness at the expense of another. Not at the expense of his half brother, Jock, who would have grown used to thinking of himself as their father’s heir, or of his uncle who, with the reversion of the acreage, might return the Youngblood ranch to its former glory.

Besides, Mildred Whimpelhall belonged to another: a dashing, conscientious, hardworking, diligent, noble, and
romantic
man. Someone worthy of her love.

“Is that the oasis or is it a mirage?” she asked in a small voice.

He looked down. She did not meet his gaze. She must have awakened while he’d been lost in his inner struggle.

“It’s the oasis.”

It wasn’t like the picturesque ones cited in poetry. It was nothing more than a jagged outcropping of rocks, a stony fist punched up from beneath the earth’s crust, bringing with it a thin but steady stream of water that collected in a small, shallow pool. A fringe of grasses encircled the pond along with a pair of stunted doum palms.

Jim kneed the camel beneath the shade of the outcropping and dismounted. A snake slithered along the base of the rock and disappeared. Jim marked the hole he’d gone into and then turned and, without asking permission, scooped Ginesse out of the saddle and set her on her feet. The long hours aboard the camel had made her legs weak, and she swayed slightly. He caught her and felt her flinch. He cursed silently and snatched his hands back.

Without a word, he turned and untied the pack from the camel’s back. He tossed it into the shade and then went about uncinching the saddle. He felt her eyes on him and without looking up from his task said, “The water will be warm and a little salty.” His voice was calm, even, giving no hint to his turmoil. “There’s a tin cup in my kit. Use the end of your robe to strain it.”

He heard her move away and rummage in the satchel. A moment later there was a musical splash of water and a small gasp. He glanced around to find her standing calf-deep in the water, her robes bunched high in both hands. Sunlight shimmered in her hair. Though sweat had left pale tracks down her dust-caked cheeks and her nose was burnt, her lips were spread in an irrepressible grin. As he watched, she unwrapped the
tob
and tossed it to the shore. Then, without the slightest hesitation, she stripped the
farasia
over her head, leaving her in the snug, low-cut, ruby-colored
antaree
and the wretched boy’s trousers. His body sprang to instant attention.

“Turn around,” she commanded.

He did, as much in frustration as relief. Something sailed by the periphery of his vision and landed in a heap at the base of the outcropping. Her trousers. Followed shortly thereafter by the
antaree
. She laughed. She had to be giddy. Maybe she had heat-stroke. Because she was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a man who’d recently mauled her, abandoned by her escorts, left to die—and he would not forget that, he vowed—and she was laughing.

No, he thought. It was not that she was oblivious to the danger or gravity of her situation. It was simply not in her nature to let fear extinguish pleasure. She lived in the moment, and this moment was joyful. He should be as wise.

“Drat!” she exclaimed. “Would you please toss me my clothing?” She sounded a little hesitant, but not wary. “In my enthusiasm to be rid of them, I’m afraid I just hurled them anywhere. I’d like to rinse them out.”

He picked up her clothing and tossed them over his shoulder. He heard them land in the pool, and she giggled.

“Let me know when you’re done,” he said. “I’ll throw your things over the rocks. They won’t take long to dry.”

After a few more minutes of splashing, she called out, “I’m done. You can come and get them. They’re on the bank.”

He turned around, keeping his gaze fixed on the edge of the pool, but he couldn’t entirely avoid seeing her. She was crouched so low in the water that it covered her shoulders, her hair fanning out over the still surface like a bolt of caramel-colored satin. The water was cloudy, churned up by her movement, but he still had an impression of her arms crossed over her chest, of a brown, sylph-like form kneeling in the three-foot-deep waters, a desert naiad.

She watched him with an unwavering gaze, her beautiful eyes unblinking and direct, unreadable as the windswept desert, but also, thank God, without fear of him.

He collected her clothing and spread them out over the rocks. Then he went and slipped the nose peg bridle off the camel and slapped her on the rump. She didn’t need any further invitation; a few seconds later he heard the water sloshing and a yelp of protest. He smiled. There’d scarcely be room in that pool for both the camel and Mildred.

“You shouldn’t stay out in the sun,” he called over his shoulder. “Wade over into the shadow of the rocks while you wait for your clothes to dry. You’ll burn otherwise.”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded wry.

He went about setting up camp, forming a sort of shelter in the narrow lee between two of the standing rocks by stretching the camel’s blanket above it and holding down each end with rocks. He then made quick work of digging a shallow fire pit over which, if they were lucky, he’d roast that snake. They wouldn’t be able to use it for warmth, because the only fuel they had was some hard coal he’d found at the bottom of Neely’s pack.

Bloody Neely. Bloody, stupid
dead
Neely. No one would give a damn that he’d left Jim to rot, but he’d pretty much signed up for the firing squad when he’d abandoned Pomfrey’s future wife.

Except she wasn’t going to die. He wasn’t going to let her.
By God
, he wasn’t going to let her die. He was going to take her to Pomfrey, and then he was going to walk away. She was going to live in comfort and contentment with a man she respected and admired. She would be happy, and knowing that would be enough for him.

And him? The first thing Jim was going to do after delivering her was find Neely. He doubted very much he’d be in a very conciliatory frame of mind when he did.

“Would you please go round to the other side while I get dressed?” she asked.

He did so, and a moment later she called for him to come back. When he did, the first thing he noted were the trousers and
antaree
still lying baking in the sun, which meant she had nothing on beneath the flowing white robes except the thin, thigh-length shirt. It shouldn’t matter. The
tob
contained yards more cloth than most English dresses and was so loosely draped that it afforded no more than a suggestion of the figure beneath.

But suggest it did. Any move might reveal the outline of a lithe limb, a slender hip, or a high, rounded breast and the next movement conceal again. Inadvertently, with each graceful move, with each step, she was performing a peep show as stimulating and enticing as any seen in Cairo’s red light district. The fact that she was completely oblivious to it only made it more agonizing.

He stood staring like a schoolboy for a few seconds, then he turned and strode straight into the water.