A Wedding Story (3 page)

He’d been lost. And found, a hundred times more so than he’d ever been on top of a mountain, more exhilarated than when he laid eyes on a treasure no man had seen for a thousand years. So much so that it hadn’t registered at first that she was struggling in his arms, fists pushing ineffectually at his chest, squeaks of protest barely escaping his kiss.

It took him longer than it should have to let her go. Moonlight fell through the elaborate fretwork of the gazebo, throwing lacy patterns across her perfect face. Her eyes were wide, wild; her lips, kiss-bruised, parted with her staggered exhalation. Where the moonlight illuminated her skin, it gleamed pale as marble.

Damn.
He’d been away from society too long, forgotten that something as innocent—though, it had hardly been innocent, he admitted to himself—as a kiss could send a young maid into palpitations.

“My apologies,” he murmured, slipping more easily into the conventions than he would have thought. “It’s not such a terrible thing, I—”

“God help me, but it is.” She backed away from him, until the handrail against her rump halted her flight. “Oh, God.”

Damn,
he thought again. She looked right on the edge of panic. This was a different world than he’d grown accustomed to—still not the one he’d grown up in, thank God, where he’d known men married off for far more minor trespasses. Still, if he didn’t get her to calm down, no telling what she might do. “Really, no one needs to know, I—”

“Hush!” With frantic, jerky motions, she yanked at the neckline of her dress, silk the color of Ceylon sapphires. A bit of one nipple showed above the edge and his mouth went desert-dry. It had been only the briefest instant, but he knew with perfect and knee-weakening clarity how her flesh had felt in his palm.

“Miss—” He fumbled for what to call her. How could he not have learned her name?

“Oh, please.” Her voice broke as she whirled, presenting him with the fine, tense line of her back. “He’s almost here. Can’t you hear him?”

And then the bellow, above the sprightly dip and sway of the orchestra. “Where the hell are you?”

Jim smiled in automatic nostalgia. “The doc, he never did mince words—” And then he stopped, all the lingering heat in his veins suddenly frozen.

Doc’s daughter.
Nora…Nel…Oh, no matter. How old
was
she?

It couldn’t be. How such an exquisite creature could have sprung from someone with doc’s…unique…features—it was impossible. Still…“Ahh…”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, three silver blond curls that had been tucked delicately among the rest drooping over her left eye, her lips still soft, blushing deep. If a father—even one less than doting—saw his daughter in such a condition, there’d be only two choices: an altar, or Jim would have to disappear into the jungles forever.

“I’ll go delay him. You”—he waved vaguely—“repair. We’ll say that—”

“Goddammit!” The exclamation was so close Jim started.

“Just go,” she begged.

“But—”

“Go!”

Jim leaped off the steps and met Doctor Goodale a mere three feet from the gazebo, charging down the stone path with the same determined alacrity with which he’d once clambered up the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro.

“You there, have you seen my—” He frowned, squinted into Jim’s face. “That you, Bennett?”

“Didn’t think your eyes failed you that much, Doc.”

“Hoo-hoo!” The doctor whacked him on the arm, then frowned and pinched him through his shirtsleeve.

“Ouch!”

“Hold still.” He probed urgently beneath Jim’s ears, lifted an eyelid and peered into his pupil. “Got the Amazonian fever, did you?” He tsked unhappily. “Couldn’t you at least gotten yourself here in time for there to be some symptoms left? I’ve an idea it might be treated with the extract of an orchid I brought back from that trip up the Branco.”

“I suppose experimental subjects are in somewhat short supply here.”

Doctor Goodale sighed. “That is only too unfortunately true.” Arms clasped behind him, he rocked back on his heels, thin mouth pursed. “Gads, but I miss the field!”

“Come back, then,” Jim said, hoping the hearty good cheer he’d affected masked his doubts. The field was often hard on a man, aging him years for the months he spent in the wild. Doctor Goodale, however, had always seemed immune to its ravages, striding hearty and ruddy-cheeked through dense savannah or high desert. But now every year he’d escaped seemed to have returned to him a hundredfold. He appeared to have shrunk inches even as his waistline bulged in tandem. His skin had thinned, sagging from his bones as if it no longer fit him just right.

“Can’t. Promised Elaine before she died that I’d stay here with the young ones. For all the good I do them; they’re not much interested in my interference. And now”—he stamped the cane Jim hadn’t noticed until then against the slate path and shook his head, as if refusing to finish the thought—“thought you’d never come. Must have invited you a dozen times.” The lines that bracketed his thin mouth deepened. “Time used to be when you’d jump if I hinted.”

“I’d still jump.” Guilt tugged at him. From the looks of it he’d nearly delayed this visit too long. But who’d suspect three years in Philadelphia would take such a toll?

Doctor Goodale chuckled. “So why the hell are you lurking out here in the garden?”

“Ah—” Images assailed him, a sweet vital woman against him, and his head reeled. He cleared his throat and took a couple of deep breaths to steady himself. Next time he headed into the jungle for months on end, he was hauling a woman with him, he promised himself. For clearly he’d been far too long without a woman.

He indicated his sorry clothes, which had already given their best for the cause. “Seems like you’ve got the entire top slice of Philadelphia society in there. And I’m not exactly party fare at the moment.”

“Oh, hell, why would I care about that? Besides, the ladies always did like it best when you were roughed up a bit. A little excitement for them. God knows, we could use some around here. I—”

“Excuse me. I apologize for the interruption, but Summers said that you were looking for me?”

She came from the direction of the house—how she’d slipped through the gardens and come the other way so quickly, Jim couldn’t guess. Particularly as no evidence of her rush—nor, he realized with a twinge of dismay, of his kiss—remained on her. Her hair swept back, not a strand out of place, the severe style leaving nothing to compete with the pure, perfect lines of her face. Her bodice was in place, low but not extreme, the flurry of lace artfully arranged. She looked as if her maid had just spent hours fussing over her. And Jim had never wanted anything so much as, at that moment, to muss her up again. This woman, cool and perfect, was too far from the warm and vibrant one he’d held moments ago.

“Where the hell have you been?” Doctor Goodale growled.

She held out a fistful of delicate white lilies. “A few of the arrangements in the entry were drooping a bit and I thought that I—”

“Never mind,” he broke in. “Who the hell cares about the flowers? Norine is whimpering in the ladies’ retiring room again.”

She hadn’t looked at Jim. Still didn’t, her attention was fixed on the doctor in a way too careful to be accidental. Embarrassed, concerned, insulted? He couldn’t tell. It bothered him. He thought he should have been able to read her. And then that made him chuckle, to think that just because he knew her taste, knew the soft pressure of her breasts against his chest, knew the way her breath staggered in passion, that he would
know
her.

He knew nothing about her.

“Oh, dear. Was it that young Meriwether boy, then?”

The doctor shrugged in complete unconcern. “Just go fix it. I’m not going to have her moods spoil my party.”

“Of course,” she murmured, eyes downcast, shoulders pulled in.

Norine, the doc had said. Go in and look after Norine. Which meant that this was not his daughter. Jim released a sigh of relief and then harrumphed loudly, wondering if three years in civilization had improved the doctor’s manners enough so that he’d pick up on the hint.

“Something in your throat? Let me get my bag—”

“No,” Jim put in quickly. The woman was a full step away by now. “I was hoping for an introduction.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” By then the woman was nearly fleeing down the path, rich blue silk drifting behind her. “Hold up!” Doctor Goodale shouted after her.

She froze but didn’t turn, the line of her body as tense as a hunting cat preparing to spring.

She spoke directly to Dr. Goodale as he approached. “I’d assumed you wanted me to address the issue as quickly as possible, so I—”

He waved aside her protest. “This won’t take long.”

Annoyance spiked into Jim’s stunned intrigue. He could understand her being disconcerted by what had passed between them—hell, he was unsettled more than a bit—but couldn’t she at least
look
at him?

“Jim, Kate. Kate, Jim.”

Jim looked at him blankly.

“What, didn’t I tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“About my wife.”

“Wife.” Jim shook his head, dug a finger into his ear to improve his hearing. “What did you say?”

“My wife, of course.”

It hadn’t helped. His gaze swung to her, her face paper white, skin drawn and tense. Panic? Guilt? Both, he hoped on a surge of anger that had his hands shaking against his side.
Wife
.

“There.” Doctor Goodale made a shooing motion. “You’re introduced. Run along now and plug up Norine’s wailing before she curdles the milk punch.”

And then she looked at him—in one brief instant when the moonlight caught her eyes and glimmered wetly—before she turned and dashed off down the path. Ready to drag her back and demand answers, he took a half step after her before he caught himself. Ready to…God, he scarcely knew what he was ready to do. Blood pumped through him, scalding hot.

“She’s a lovely thing, isn’t she?” Doctor Goodale said. “Not much else, a pity. Thought at least she’d manage the children for me, but she’s not much good at that.”

Then he shrugged, dismissing the topic as easily as he’d shrug off a soiled waistcoat.

Jim studied his old…not a friend, exactly. He doubted Doctor Goodale claimed any of those, nor cared to. But a mentor, yes, one who’d opened the world to him. What did he owe him?

Where did his duty lie? How did you tell a man his wife had nearly cuckolded him in his gazebo…most likely had already cuckolded him a hundred times over, given how easily she’d yielded herself to a stranger.

Fury clouded his brain, making it impossible to think clearly. Anger for Doctor Goodale, anger for himself. Was it kinder to spare the doctor, or better to hear it now? Doctor Goodale was ever unpredictable; his reaction to such messy things as human emotions never easy to gauge. The doctor might already know of his wife’s peccadilloes and not care. Jim would only do him a disservice by laying it out where his pride could no longer ignore it.

“Enough of this.” Doctor Goodale rapped his cane to gain Jim’s attention. “Tell me about Brazil. You found a new river, did you not?”

Forget it, Jim had told himself then. Forget every single sigh, every square inch of skin he’d savored, every trembling moment.

Now, a dozen years later, rigid, breathing hard, standing in the middle of his hotel room, he knew he never had.

He shuffled through the litter of papers on the table, snatched up his invitation to the race, and tore it into a thousand pieces.

T
here were those who said the ballroom at the Rose Springs Grand Hotel had been inspired by the great hall at Versailles. Some even said it put Versailles to shame, with gilded ceilings that seemed to soar to the sky. The walls of mirrors, perfect and polished, reflected so accurately that a party rarely passed without some unfortunate guest, unable to discern the difference between reality and a mere likeness of it, walked straight into the wall. And, always, the air seethed with the inevitable, heady scent of thousands of roses.

Today, however, it seemed as if a circus, a Bedouin camp, a country fair had all been wedged into the space. Kate was perched on the small trunk she’d wrestled in two hours ago. She clutched her precious invitation in stiff fingers as she sat square in the middle of the chaos and watched the world swirl around her.

She’d never felt so out of place in her entire life. Not as a young girl who’d ended up a proper wife before she’d ever been a bride, not out in that desolate wasteland her youngest sister now called home.

From her left came a burst of incomprehensible language. Some Asian ruler, she thought, with an entourage that took up a full corner and spilled out into the room, all circling around the small, dark man in saffron robes. At his shout, three other men scurried out of the room as if in fear for their lives. There were at least a half dozen women in the group, young, exotic, and silent. Kate couldn’t even hazard a guess as to whether they were wives, daughters, servants…or something else entirely.

A tall, raw-boned woman in trousers—
trousers!
—strode by. She nodded in Kate’s direction, acknowledging another female, and kept right on, her cheeks wind-burned, her floppy brown hat pulled low, her bearing utterly confident.

There was only one other competitor completely alone. A young man, Kate judged, although it was hard to tell. So many yards of white fabric swathed him that only a slice of his face showed, his deep, dark eyes scanning the room with intense interest. He hadn’t spoken to a soul.

She’d lived with the stares of men since she was no more than thirteen. They rarely bothered her. Why should they? Only a silly girl couldn’t use a man’s interest to her advantage. But now, under this one’s steady regard, she shifted uncomfortably. Too hard to gauge what he thought underneath the shield of his costume.

Shouts exploded from the far corner. There was a flash of movement, flailing limbs. Two burly men muscled out of the scuffle, dragging a round balding figure by his arms.

“Look at that,” said a man who appeared at her elbow, dressed in dapper tweed. “From the
Journal
or the
World,
I’d wager.” He chuckled. “Caused them quite a dilemma when we announced the contest. Do they ignore it completely and get scooped or report on it and give the
Sentinel
more publicity?” He inclined his head toward the man, now being towed out the door. “Joseph Kane clinched it when he declared no reporter from another newspaper would be allowed in here. They
had
to try, then.”

“Excuse me, sir, but I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Charlie Hobson, ma’am. The
Daily Sentinel
.” He checked the watch that dangled from his vest pocket. “Only fifteen minutes to go. I’ll be collecting credentials.” He stared pointedly at her invitation. “And you are…?”

“Not willing to hand this over until I’m able to ascertain whether you are precisely who you claim to be.”

That made him grin, a flash of straight white teeth beneath the deep black swoop of a luxurious handlebar mustache. “You’re only the second to ask, do you know that? You and him.” He pointed to the still figure of the man swaddled in white robes. “Son of the Amir, I’m told. Couldn’t get another word out of him.” He bent his smile toward her again. “Now…I helped put the list of competitors together, and I’m pretty certain I would have remembered you. Just where did you get that invitation?”

“Does it matter?” she clipped. “I read the rules quite carefully, and it was quite specific that the holder of the letter should be allowed to enter.”

“Huh.” He rummaged in an inside pocket and pulled out a pad and a stubby pencil. “I’d be interested to hear how you got it. I’m sure my readers would, too.”

“I hope you’re not telling stories again, Katie my girl.” Kate’s back stiffened even before Jim’s hand came down, heavy and possessive, on her shoulder. “And I hope you’re not planning on writing a story based on anything she tells you.” Jim leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Fond of pretending she’s a society woman, she is. Can you imagine?”

“Really,” the reporter said, flatly neutral. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe I—” he narrowed his gaze thoughtfully—“Lord Bennett?”

Jim nodded as regally as any prince accepting his due. “The same.”

“I hadn’t heard you’d be attending.”

“There’s something you didn’t hear? Hard to imagine. Too much time at the desk, not enough out and about reporting, eh?”

“I doubt it.” Hobson tucked the notepad into his suit pocket. “I was having a most delightful conversation with your…”

“I’m sure you were,” Jim said smoothly. “My Katie’s nothing if not…entertaining.”

“I can imagine. Still, we do need to know who’s participating.”

“Katie Riley. My…assistant.”

Kate opened her mouth to protest, but Jim squeezed her shoulder hard enough to make her wince.

“Almost noon. Time to get this show on the road, isn’t it?” he prompted the reporter.

“I guess it is.” Hobson pondered for a moment. “I’ll be following the competitors, writing a daily column. I imagine you’ll be seeing me around.”

“How pleasant.”

He sauntered away, winding toward the platform that had been set up on the far side of the room, pausing on the way to speak to a man the size of a mountain.

“See that fellow the reporter’s talking to? That’s Baron von Hussman. First man to reach the summit of Chimborazo.” Jim sighed in deep regret. “One less unconquered peak.”

Kate knocked away his hand, which he’d apparently forgotten was still resting on her shoulder. “Katie
Riley
? What was that?”

“You really want him printing in that paper that Kathryn Goodale is wandering around the world completely unchaperoned with me? Ruin your reputation completely,” he said cheerfully. “You’ll never be able to go back to Philadelphia if this gets out. Who’d marry you then?”

Her molars ground together. “I’m not looking for someone to marry me.”

“Maybe not right this very moment,” he admitted. “But if we end up in, oh, the Gobi…well, let’s just say I won’t hold it against you if you decide to go running home. Perfectly natural.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” She just barely resisted the temptation to march up to the platform and announce her presence to everyone there. She
hated
that he was most probably right. Oh, not that she’d ever want someone to marry her. She’d had quite enough of marriage for one lifetime, thank you very much. But there was no real reason to sabotage her reputation. And she didn’t relish the idea of having her unchaperoned, completely scandalous trip with Jim splattered across a front page for the world to gossip over.

“I told you not to come,” she said in her most severe tone, ignoring the tiny, idiotic corner of her that was relieved to see him.

“You’ve told me lots of things,” he said. “I’m not inclined to start believing them now.”

“I can’t do this with you.”

“And you can’t do it without me.”

“We’ll soon see, won’t we? But I’m not going with you.”

“Fine. Stay here. I’ll split the prize with you anyway. No, no—” He put a finger over her mouth for an instant to shut her up and her heart skipped a painful beat. His finger was hot, rough-textured, astoundingly male. “No thanks necessary. I know it’s generous of me. Least I can do for the doc’s widow.”

“I’m not staying here,” she finally managed.

“Then we go together,” he said, and she thought:
Well, we’ll see about that.

“That what you consider adventure garb?” Jim asked, slowly circling her. It was all Jim could do not to laugh. He figured she’d dressed down almost to the point of pain for the occasion. A severely cut khaki skirt, a blouse of shiny white with only two rows of lace, a clever little hat that made it almost impossible to look away from her face. It’d all last about two seconds in that condition, but he had to admit she looked fetching. Silly, completely out of place, but fetching. No wonder the reporter had been hanging around.

She glowered at him. “I suppose you’d rather I dress like
that.
” She flung a disdainful hand toward the tall trouser-clad woman deep in conversation with a Chinese man who came up to her nose.

“Mrs. Latimore?”

Her head whipped around for another look. “Is that who she is?”

“You could do worse than emulate her. Survived two weeks alone in the Amazon jungle after her canoe capsized. Only one of her party who did.”

“I remember the story.”

“Can you imagine?” Jim went on. “Guides dying on her right and left. Insects the size of your fist, snakes thicker than your arm. Heard she had three different parasites when she escaped the jungle. Why—”

“Enough!” Kate shuddered, maybe even looking a little green around the gills.

She couldn’t last long, Jim thought hopefully. How hard would it be to talk her into parking her pretty butt at the nearest decent inn and waiting for him to bring home the prize?

Despite himself, he felt the hum of anticipation. After the tragedy in the Arctic, he’d delayed undertaking another expedition. The price was too high, the memories too hard. He’d lost his partner, Matt, there, and the breezy self-assurance that he could control everything and everyone he considered under his protection.

But this wasn’t exactly an expedition. And to be lodged head to head against every other explorer he’d every tried to beat to a prize…

“Only one trunk. I’m impressed, Kate.” He bumped the trunk with his toe. “It’s too big, of course, but you shouldn’t have much trouble paring your things down to a reasonable load.”

“The rest are in the stables.”

“Then I hope you didn’t leave anything important in them, because that’s where they’re staying.”

“They are not! I—”

“Well, well. A lover’s spat, is it?” Count Nobile’s oily Italian accent hadn’t softened a bit, Jim thought sourly as he turned to find Nobile already bending gracefully over Kate’s hand. Kate smiled beautifully at him, full of expectation and promise, an expression that could not be more different from the one she usually bent on Jim. “Bennett, my old friend, aren’t you going to introduce me to your lovely…”

“Assistant.”

“Assistant?” The count raised a dark eyebrow. “You must pay your assistant well.” He hadn’t yet released Kate’s hand, and lightly traced a finger along the edge of lace spilling over the back of her hand. “Worth?”

“You have an excellent eye, Mr.—”

“Count,” he supplied. “Count Basilio Nobile, at your service.” He made a formal bow. “And my service is certainly excellent,” he went on with clear implication.

Jim felt himself scowling, tried to hide it, knew he failed. Shouldn’t she be taking her hand back before he drooled all over it? “Kind of you to say hello. Don’t feel you need to linger on our account. I’m sure you’ve much to prepare.”

“Oh, my preparations were completed long ago,” he murmured, never taking his warm gaze from Kate’s face. “I never was one to leave things until the last minute.”

“I’m pretty sure I saw some reporter poking in your supplies.”

Count Nobile sighed. “I suppose,” he said directly to Kate, in tones that included no one else, “that I must move on before our friend here forgets his breeding.”

“Lord Bennett?” Kate slanted him a sly glance. “I can’t imagine.”

He gave her hand one last pat and released it with clear reluctance. “I’m certain we shall run into each other along the trail. If, at some point, you find you would prefer to…switch employers, I do hope you will give me an opportunity to make you an offer.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.

Jim just managed to keep his mouth shut until Nobile was out of earshot. “If I’d made a proposition like that, you’d have slapped me.”

Her smile was far too pleased. “Quite probably.”

“You do know what he was suggesting.”

“Suggestions are easy,” Kate said. “If I’d taken offense at every veiled suggestion I’ve received over the years, my hand would never stop burning.”

And how many had she not bothered to stop? The thought came on a surge of acid, a searing burn of anger that hazed his vision and scalded beneath his skin.

After all, she hadn’t slapped him yet, had she? He was not so vain to believe that he was so different than the rest. That in all the years since they’d met, and likely several before, she hadn’t welcomed the attentions of others as easily as she’d seemed to welcome that blasted count’s.

“If you catch him unawares,” he said, “I’d swear his accent isn’t half so deep.”

“It is quite charming, isn’t it? No wonder he’d want to maintain it.”

“Almost got himself slaughtered in Persia once. The Shah’s not fond of sharing his wives.” He leaned closer. “Of course, some say it was the wives who’d ordered his execution.” He tsked. “Disappointed women. They’re dangerous creatures.”

“As I’m sure you know well,” she said smoothly.

“Bennett! Fancy seeing you here.”

Christ
, Jim thought. Not another one. He turned reluctantly.

“Major.”

Major Huddleston-Snell looked as if he’d just stepped out of the army he’d quit a decade ago. His carriage was rigidly correct, his face ruddily healthy, his jacket pressed into complete submission.

“How long has it been?”

Not long enough
. “Haven’t kept track.”

“No?” The major tapped a finger along his ruddy cheek, appeared deep in thought. “Oh yes, looking for the source of the Zambezi, wasn’t it? Sorry about that. I wouldn’t have set out if I’d known you were headed that way. No reason for both of us to flounder around out there.”