Texas Viscount (8 page)

      
Sabrina landed with a loud splash, splattering water all over the impossible Texan. Since the pool was only a foot and a half deep, her soft derriere connected rather painfully with the cement bottom as her head dipped below the surface. She inhaled at least half the contents, or so it seemed to her as she came up for air, coughing and floundering. The final indignity was that her head was positioned directly beneath the urn in the hands of the Grecian god whence issued the steady stream of water.

      
Her hair was unfastened from its pins, plastered to her shoulders. Yet another of her three remaining hats was ruined, floating lazily out of reach, its feathers limply fanning out on the choppy waves. To add insult to injury, that Texas troglodyte was laughing at her as he leaned one boot on the lip of the pool and extended his hand, offering to help her out.

      
Hell would freeze before she accepted his assistance. She tried to stand up on her own, but the bottom of the pool was slippery with algae. All she succeeded in doing was falling in over her head a second time. The Grecian god, another accursed male, continued raining water on her as she struggled to catch her breath and regain her balance.

      
Lordy, he could hardly believe how different she looked with that prissy dark blue dress molded to her skin. Every curve and hollow was accentuated. The silk had become almost translucent in the water. If not for all the foolish falderal females insisted on wearing, he would be able to see everything. But he could see enough. Lush rounded breasts stood at attention with nipples hardened into tiny points by the cold water. Sleekly rounded hips and calves practically begged for a man's hands to glide over them. And as for that bottom...well, he could imagine sinking his fingers into the silky softness of it and pulling her against his—

      
“Good heavens, Miss Edgewater!” a voice exclaimed in horror. Angry that his delightful reverie had been interrupted, Josh turned to see Wilfred Hodgins scurrying across the garden. The first time he'd met the acerbic little man, Josh had thought he looked as if he'd been weaned on persimmons. Now his face was blank with amazement.

      
Not wanting his uncle's officious secretary to touch his prize, Josh stepped into the fountain and scooped up the struggling female, then gallantly set her on dry ground before Hodgins could reach them.

      
She rewarded her rescuer by shoving him so that he tumbled backwards into the water and coshed his head against the urn on his way down.

Chapter Four

      
The next thing he remembered was waking up with a two-quart Who Shot John headache as Wilfred Hodgins' agitated face faded in and out of focus above him. Lordy, the man had worse breath than a trail drover with a plug of Lucky Boy stuffed inside his cheek. The smell was enough to gag a buck maggot. Josh turned his face away and tried to take a deep breath, but the image of his attacker caught the corner of his eye just as he started coughing up water. She was as soaked to the gills as he, but he liked the way she looked with all that silk plastered to her curves.

      
Her step was more of a stomp as she vanished into the hedge, leaving him with the parting image of her perfectly delicious buttocks swaying gently in spite of her obviously furious departure. He wondered where she lived and how she'd get home in such a condition. “Give me a hand, man,” he commanded the prune-faced secretary, who seemed frozen in myopic horror, staring at his employer's heir through thick lenses perched precariously on the edge of his nose.

      
Hodgins complied, and Josh climbed out of the fountain. His custom-made boots squished with every step as he started after the virago who'd attacked him. By the time he caught up with her, she was standing forlornly on the street, shivering in the autumn breeze as she searched in vain for a hackney.

      
“You'll catch your death if you don't dry off,” he said as he limped up behind her. When she whirled around furiously and raised her poor battered hat to use it as a cudgel, he backed off a step. “Whoa! I only meant to help.”

      
“You've helped me quite enough, Mr. Cantrell, for one day. In fact, for the duration of my life should I live to be one hundred!”

      
“Not fair. Where's your British sense of fair play? You know my name and I don't know yours. What in tarnation were you doing in my uncle's garden?”

      
Sabrina clutched her ruined hat as if to swat him, but he made no move to come closer. Warily she watched the water drip in a steady stream off the tip of his nose. His second injured eye was beginning to match the first one, and a lump the size of a goose egg had begun to form on the side of his head.

      
She couldn't resist a smile.

      
“I don't see anything funny-looking about either one of us,” he groused.

      
“You appear to have come out physically the worse from our encounter,” she said, smirking, but then her expression darkened. “But considering that you have succeeded in decimating half my wardrobe in less than twenty-four hours, I have not fared much better. A viscount may refurbish his wearing apparel far more easily than a teacher.”

      
“A teacher?” he echoed dumbly. “You don't look like any teacher I ever had.”

      
“Considering your conduct, I very much doubt that you've had any—unless they wore bones in their noses.”

      
“For a supposedly educated female, you have the wrong continent. That's Africa, not North America.”

      
A large cluster of gray rain clouds began to darken the sky and the wind picked up, presaging a sudden autumn storm. She shivered.

      
“You need to come inside and dry off. At least let me find you a shawl or blanket to wrap around yourself before you go, Miss...?”

      
He cocked his head, that devilish grin once again in place. She would not take the bait but turned instead and attempted to flag down a hansom driving by the corner. The cab never even slowed.

      
“No driver will stop for a passenger who looks so bedraggled—they'll figure you can't pay. Now, I can send you home in one of our coaches...in exchange for your name.”

      
Damn the man, he could be charming—when he wasn't acting like a stag in rutting season! Well, she'd most probably lost the opportunity to instruct Sophia. There was little use in catching pneumonia and running up medical bills she could not afford, making the situation even worse. The fare over here had been expensive enough. Sabrina made a decision.

      
Looking up into his concerned green eyes, she said, “I am Miss Sabrina Edgewater, and I was requested to await Mr. Hodgins in the garden, where he was going to discuss engaging me to tutor Lord Hambleton's niece Sophia.”

      
She was shivering again. He wasn't exactly warm himself since those clouds had taken over the sky, but that was not primary in his thoughts when she made her startling announcement. “What was a lady's tutor doing down at the waterfront—or at the jail?” he asked suspiciously.

      
Oh, wonderful. Now she'd gone and done it. How to explain without getting Eddy discharged? There was nothing for it but to bluff. “That was in regard to another teaching assignment with the sailing master's daughter. When you started that riot, I was mistakenly taken into custody. Once they verified who I was, I was immediately released, as you can see.” She crossed her fingers in the folds of her skirts, a superstition her mother had scolded her for since childhood.

      
“First off, I didn't start that fracas—I was only trying to help out a little gal being attacked by some nasty galoots. Sorta like the one who came after you.”

      
“I handled him. Just as I handled you.” She made a point of looking at his matching pair of black eyes. “Green and black may be regimental colors, but they don't favor you,” she couldn't resist adding.

      
He sighed. “Come on, Miss Edgewater. Let's get us both inside before we're frozen like that cussed statue in the fountain. I promise to behave.” He raised his hands in mock surrender and sketched a bow, urging her up the steps into the house.

      
She could tell he did not believe her story about yesterday, did not even believe that she was a tutor. But the utter density of the oaf, to think that she was some light skirt! Still, she was freezing, and it was far too great a distance to walk home even if she had been dry and warm. But Sabrina had overcome far greater obstacles than this. Besides, she'd never give the Texas troglodyte the satisfaction of succumbing to his charm.

      
Digging into her reticule, she extracted enough money for her fare home. “I believe you Americans have an adage, ‘Money speaks louder than words.’ ” With that, she turned and began walking down the street, holding aloft several coins as another hansom driver turned the corner of the fashionable square.

      
Josh stood and watched her climb inside the coach. He started to scratch his head in bemusement but encountered the lump from his tumble into the fountain and winced. She was a damn fine-looking piece, but he was not altogether certain that bedding her would be worth the risk to life and limb.

* * * *

      
“Let's hope this ride doesn't finish what the edgy Miss Edgewater began,” Josh muttered to Comanche as he kicked the big bay into a brisk canter through the park. The pounding of his head had settled into a dull ache by the time he was scheduled to meet Michael Jamison. What he really wanted to do was lean into the stallion's neck and let him go full out, to blow away the frustrations of the past several days. And all thoughts of that maddening woman.

      
Could Sabrina Edgewater possibly be a teacher? His mind kept returning to her like a tongue worrying a sore tooth. She certainly was in the wrong places yesterday, but perhaps her story about the sailing master was true, although he was inclined to doubt it. He was good at reading people, and she'd been, to use one of her ten-dollar words, “prevaricating” about that. Still, her clothing was demure and conservatively cut, if one ignored the open bodice after the altercation at the pier yesterday...and the soaking this morning, he mentally added with a chuckle.

      
If she had been telling the truth about being summoned by the earl to tutor one of his shirttail cousins, then he'd acted like a perfect boor the way he had teased and flirted with her—to say nothing of grabbing her for that kiss. Yeah, that kiss...

      
“I say, you do keep up a good pace. Splendid piece of horseflesh. American quarter horse mixed with Arab barb?” inquired a dark-haired man nattily decked out in riding breeches and a bottle-green velvet coat as he pulled up alongside Josh.

      
“You know your horseflesh,” Josh replied, nodding as he eyed the splendid chestnut thoroughbred the Englishman was riding. “Not many Englishmen are familiar with our quarter horses.”

      
“My paternal grandmother was from Georgia. I've had occasion to visit your country, although I confess I have not been to Texas.”

      
“I reckon you're Jamison?”

      
“Michael Derrick Jamison, at your service, my lord,” the man replied with a quick smile that revealed a set of perfect white teeth.

      
“I'm not anybody's lord yet,” Josh said flatly. “Maybe never will have to be if we get this mess with the Russians and Japanese straightened out. My president was right anxious about it.”

      
“Was Mr. Roosevelt really a cow smasher before he became president?” Jamison asked incredulously.

      
Josh started, then threw back his head and roared with laughter. “You mean cowpuncher?”

      
Jamison nodded. “I stand corrected. I've never been west of the Mississippi. I found the newspaper accounts of President Roosevelt s adventures in the Dakotas as fascinating as those during the late war.”

      
“The colonel was in the stock business right enough. I started out punching cows, but he bought his ranch right up front. I'm a stockman now, too. And I’ll admit I've been a mite more successful at it than he was,” Josh couldn't resist adding. “But then I'd be a disaster as president so I guess you could say, every man has to do what he has the talent to do. That why you're a spy?”

      
Now it was the Englishman's turn to laugh. “An unsavory term but true, alors. I come from a long line of spies. My grandfather was an agent against Napoleon, and my father worked to deny British diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy.” He looked over at Josh, realizing that Texas had been a part of that abortive rebellion.

      
“Don't worry. It was long before my time. As we say back where I come from, I didn't have a dog in that fight.” Gertie hailed from Massachusetts and was a staunch Unionist but he didn't particularly feel like sharing that with the Englishman. Jamison looked relieved.