Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (17 page)

But the truth was, Rafe loved attention. He'd been starved for it as a child, and he'd never quite been able to appease that hunger. His father had hated him; Michael had resented him; his mother had been torn between her shame and her pity for him. He'd been so used to recriminations and ridicule that during his stage debut, when Fred had forced him to play Juliet in the balcony scene and thus spare Fiona her fear of heights, Rafe had accepted the ensuing barrage of vegetables as his just desserts.

But then something miraculous had happened.

Something that had dazzled his mind and enchanted his soul. His wig and veil had toppled over the railing, and the boos had turned to laughter. Fred, not realizing the sudden cause of mirth, had shaken his fist at the audience, shouting for "the blighters to respect the bard."

But Rafe, caring little for Shakespeare, had flung off the rest of his costume and, in self-defense, had started batting cabbage heads back into the audience with a handy length of wood. The audience had roared; Fred had been upstaged; and Rafe had found his calling. That night, he'd fallen asleep during the chill of a Louisville winter, dreaming of the warm, heady sensation of applause.

So, buoyed by the adulation of Silver's guests, Rafe vamped. He charmed. He improvised outrageous stories. And the richest, most powerful families in Colorado lavished praise upon him—
him,
a bastard by every definition of the term.

Of course, Silver's snooty friends all thought he was the Duke of Chumley. But that realization did little to sour the sweetness of his glory. He'd long ago grown used to the idea that he would never be admired, much less loved, for playing the part of Raphael Jones.

It was during the height of his self-aggrandizement that the musicians wheezed the final strains of the "Virginia Reel." When they struck up another polka, Rafe groaned to himself. Silver's moonstruck papa was clearing a path for Celestia all the way through Rafe's human wall of defense.

Halting at Rafe's boot toes, Max beamed up at him, boyish and flushed from his most recent dance. "Cellie's ready for another jig," he announced, squeezing his bride-to-be's hand. "You up to it, Chumley?"

Rafe glanced furtively around the room, saw that Silver was smirking at him, and mentally cursed. Apparently Max's jig idea had been hers. Dredging up a sappy smile, he turned once more to face Max. "My dear fellow." He bowed in his best imitation of a complete idiot. "I wouldn't dream of depriving you of a jig with Madam Celery."

Cellie tipped her pudgy chin to regard him. Despite her abundance of blue eye shadow, lip ointment, and rouge, she wasn't quite as garish as he'd first imagined. In fact, she was passably pleasant-looking—for a squat woman who sported peacock feathers, harem pants, and slippers whose toes curled up like a genie's.

On her arms, she wore more silver bangles than he could count. He wondered fleetingly if each one was made of sterling. He wondered, too, if Max had gifted her with the obscenely large amethyst that nestled in the folds of her turban. The headdress listed slightly aft, and he couldn't help but be amused to glimpse the incorrigible blonde corkscrews that had slipped out, tangling in the silver hoops that dangled from her ears.

Max was chuckling. "
Madam Celery!
Ain't that a hoot, Cellie? I told you this Chumley fella was a real ripsnorter."

Cellie flashed an enigmatic smile. "The spirits said you would come, my dear." Her voice was a bit raspy, reminding Rafe of unbuttered toast. "We are so very pleased you're here."

Rafe arched an eyebrow. So he'd pleased the spirits, eh? That must've been a first.

"Wouldn't have missed it for the world, madam," he drawled. "Can't say I've met many live oracles."

"Chumley talks to a ghost too," Max eagerly told his fiancée. "Says he goes by the name of Sir Harry. Ain't that right, Chumley?"

"Alas, dear chap, I never did learn to talk to spirits. But I sure do like to drink 'em!" He gave a loud guffaw, and all his fawning new friends joined in. He grinned to see Silver's face darken. She was glaring daggers at him from Celestia's wicker lair.

Then he found himself meeting Cellie's eyes, two gray orbs of startling clarity. They caught him by surprise. He hadn't expected them to be quite so... discerning.

"We have more in common than you might think," she said with another one of her mysterious little smiles.

Now
that
was a disturbing notion, Rafe mused dryly. Poor Cellie was going to hell, too.

As if guessing his thoughts, she reached up and patted his cheek. "You're a dear boy," she crooned. Then she ran a critical eye over his sideburns. "I'll have Max send you to his barber. Mr. Perry knows just what Silver likes."

Once more, Rafe was taken aback. Before he could make sense of this peculiar comment, though, he heard a rather testy throat-clearing going on behind him.

Speak of the devil,
he thought in growing amusement.

"Papa," Silver said crisply, "you mustn't hoard Celestia all night long. Not after your guests came all this way to meet her."

"'Tis true," Rafe said jovially. "You two lovebirds need to run along and share your joy with the Trevelyans. And the Underhills. Or were they the Overhills? Dash it all, I can't recall. Say, Miss Pennies"—he gave her a lascivious wink—"are you ready to show me how to hoof it?"

She stiffened, her eyes flashing in that fiery way he was coming to relish. "I don't 'hoof it,'" she bit out.

"Why the devil not?"

"Silver's not much good at having fun, are you, my dear?" Cellie asked kindly.

Max nodded, rolling his eyes for Rafe's benefit.

Silver tossed Celestia a withering glance. "I assure you, Celestia, under the appropriate circumstances I am quite capable of having
fun—
which polkas are definitely not. But perhaps
you
would care to dance with His Grace. I understand a minuet is next on the program."

Cellie laughed. It was a warm, breezy sound with none of the rancor Rafe had assumed she must reciprocate toward Silver. "What would I know about the minuet, my dear? I've never set foot in a finishing school."

Silver made a disgruntled noise. Intrigued by this byplay, Rafe glanced at Max. His eyes were wistful, even sad, until Silver caught him watching her. Then he donned a cheerful smile.

"Hey, Chumley," Max said. "You know where we might find some spiritkeepers? Cellie and me collected a whole slew out by the mine, but it's the damnedest thing. The whole lot of them upped and disappeared."

"Spiritkeepers?" Rafe asked politely, noticing that Silver had turned a charming shade of pink, much the same way she always did when Max mentioned something occult.

"Yep. Can't have a séance without at least twelve good ones—"

"Papa," Silver interrupted hastily, "I really don't think the
Duke
of
Chumley
is interested in rummaging through a sack of ordinary rocks—"

"Now, daughter, those rocks aren't ordinary, as I keep trying to tell you. Fact is, I got a slew of their cousins in my study. Not to mention a box of superior cheroots imported out of Turkey."

"You don't say?" Rafe quipped, suspecting he now knew what Silver had really been doing with that picnic basket.

"They're damned fine with cognac," Max added like a man who knew of what he spoke. "What say you, Chumley? Are you game?"

Rafe grinned to see Silver fume. "By all means, old chap, lead the way."

Max's study proved to be a departure from the austere elegance of the rest of the mansion. The room looked less like a millionaire's sanctum sanctorum than a mining camp's general store.

Rolls of maps, geological studies, and engineering reports littered Max's desk so thoroughly that Rafe was unable to guess what wood lay underneath. Picks, shovels, and a whipsaw ornamented the walls; earth-stained satchels spilled nuggets of galena onto the winged chairs, which looked comfortably shabby.

Rafe's lips quirked as Max cleared a seat, only to cough, waving away a cloud of dust, after he'd plumped a tasseled cushion.

"There," he announced with a sheepish grin. "Right enough even for a duke, I imagine."

Rafe nodded absently. His attention had already wandered past the rickety, sawbuck table with its collection of butterfly wings to alight on Max's bookshelves. In addition to the requisite
Gold Seeker's Manual
and the inevitable
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
Max owned five other titles:
Don Quixote, Ragged Dick,
and three adventure novels by Jules Verne. Judging by their tattered corners, the novels were well loved.

"I say," Rafe drawled, flipping through
Journey to the Center of the Earth
and wrinkling his nose to keep from sneezing on the dust, "you've read quite a bit of Verne."

"The man's a damned visionary." Uncorking a decanter, Max jerked his head over his shoulder as he poured. "
Journey
there is my favorite, although I sure do like
From the Earth to the Moon.
Silver thinks space travel is all poppycock, but I think Verne's onto something with his rocketship idea. You ever think about flying to the moon, Chumley?"

Rafe considered, replacing the volume on its shelf. If God had made the sun, moon, and stars like the Bible claimed, then he figured it wouldn't be worth his trouble to fly anywhere. God had a long arm, and the way Rafe understood it, Hell was waiting for him no matter where he wound up dying.

"Odds fish." Careful not to let his cynicism undermine his foppery, Rafe sauntered toward the battered humidor Max was holding open for him. "You can't mine silver out of celestial Swiss cheese, old chap. Only that bloody earl of Sandwich would relish a vacation to the moon."

Max pinkened at Rafe's pun, but he laughed good-naturedly and selected a cigar for himself. "Well, I reckon it'll be another hundred years before anyone gets to taste moon cheese, anyway. At least, that's what Cellie says."

Rafe cocked a brow, puffing his cigar against the match Max had struck for him. "Your lady sees folks dining on the moon, does she?"

Max waved noncommittally, a swath of smoke unraveling in his hand's wake. "Oh, she sees all kinds of things. You know what this is?" Rounding his desk, he swept aside a jumble of documents and stabbed a finger at an X on a hand-scrawled map.

Rafe had to admit, he didn't have a clue.

"Why, that's where Nahele cached his treasure. Right smack dab at the center of the earth. Well, almost at the center," Max added exuberantly. "It's at the bottom of Silver's Mine. Legend says Nahele lived deep in the earth, in a crystal cave. The prettiest thing you've ever seen, with an underground river that leads straight to the surface. Shoot, that's why I started digging down there in the first place. Never reckoned I'd strike the mother lode. And now, I got more sterling than I got uses for, at least in this lifetime."

Rafe smiled to himself. Apparently the discovery of Max's richest vein was yet another example of the man's uncanny luck. It boggled the mind to think Max didn't give one whit for anything his miners unearthed except for a few baubles some Indian had stashed in a mythical cave.

"I say, this Nahele fellow sounds like a queer fish," Rafe drawled. "I didn't think Indians had much use for treasure, being the migratory sort."

Max shrugged, continuing to squint at the X. He looked like a chubby chimney, the way he was puffing on his cigar. "I reckon he wasn't one of them honest Injuns. The legend says Nahele was an outcast from his tribe, a shaman who spent all his time working magic. He could talk to plants and animals—mountains, too. And one day the mountains told him about a City of Gold being built in the foothills.

"So Nahele journeyed to Cibola," Max continued solemnly, "and didn't like what he saw: great gaudy spires blocking the sun from the sky, withered trees, and empty creek beds. Nahele told Cibola's king to stop building temples because the plants and animals were suffering. When the king laughed, Nahele got so riled, he put a spell on the city to make it invisible. Caravans bringing diamonds and gold from the mines, or fruits and grains from the valley, couldn't find the city gates. And Nahele would only tell the poor caravan drivers how to get home to their valley if they left their treasures in his cave."

Rafe thought Nahele was a bit of an opportunist.

"A lot of folks in Cibola starved," Max continued gravely. "Others who left the city to seek help never found their way back. In the end, nobody knew where Cibola was but Nahele. And he took the secret to his grave."

Rafe was hard-pressed not to snort at this last piece of melodrama.

"I say, old chap, where do
you
suppose this Cibola is?"

Max darted him a cagey look. "Now there's a question for the sages. Nahele must have worked one helluva spell, eh? 'Course, as you and I both know, Chumley, no wrong deed goes unpunished. Cellie calls it The Law of Threes." Max puffed out his chest, intoning grandly, "'That which you do, be it good or evil, comes back to you three times.' At least, that's what Cellie says happens in the realms of magic. Nahele might have walked away with a king's ransom, but he didn't get to enjoy it. He spent all his time worrying, jealously guarding it from other thieves. Finally, he was buried alive with it in an avalanche. I reckon that's the moral to the story."

Rafe shot Max a keen glance.