The Other Guy's Bride (10 page)

He was a ghost. Ghosts didn’t own houses, take lovers, have friends, earn reputations, or own stables of horses. Years ago he’d made a pact, but it would last only as long as the rest of the world thought he was dead, and a dead man doesn’t speak of his past. Except, he had.

He considered how much he risked and decided it wasn’t much. Playing into Ginesse’s cowboy fantasy was an innocent enough diversion, and if he slipped in a bit of truth every now and then, what matter? Just as long as it didn’t get to be a habit.

As long as she didn’t get to be a habit.

She was quiet for a while after that. But she wasn’t the sort to let anything dampen her spirits. When she spoke again, it was easily and without self-consciousness. “Did you know that Cleopatra soaked her barge’s sails in perfume so that when she went down the Nile her presence was announced by the wind?”

“No.”

“They were purple.”

“Oh.”

“And when Marc Antony came to visit her, she carpeted her chambers with rose petals a foot thick.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she echoed. “Because it was romantic.”

He grunted, hauling back on the oars.

“You don’t believe in romance?”

Uh-oh
. She’d pivoted around on her seat, all curiosity again.

“Romance is a fine when you’re a kid, I suppose.”

“You think that romance is for
children
?”

“Pretty much.”

“That’s terrible. Haven’t you ever been in love?”

“Once. But like I said, I was a boy. It passed. Like ague.” He considered. “Which I also had as a boy.”

She stared at him in consternation, her brow furrowed. Then, abruptly, her forehead smoothed. “Ah,” she said knowingly. “Your heart was broken.”

“Not in the least.”

She lowered her voice, regarding him sympathetically. “Is she the reason you are here?” She inhaled on a soft whistle of discovery. “Oh! I can see that she is!”

He waited, fascinated to see what she’d say next.

“The entire country of America was not big enough to contain your disappointment and your heartbreak, and so you fled to Egypt where you would never need to gaze upon her lovely, unattainable face again. Oh.” She touched her fingertips to her heart.

He burst out laughing.

The dreamy expression vanished from her face, replaced by disgruntlement. “Say what you will, I
know
I am right. You were wildly in love and it ended tragically.”

“Well, you’re partially correct: it ended,” he drawled, surprised he was amused. There’d been a time when all he’d felt was bitterness.

“How did it end?”

“She wrote me a letter breaking off our engagement.” He could already tell by the look in her eyes that this was never going to satisfy her, and he resigned himself to answering before she asked. “She was warned off me.”

“Because you were a gunslinger?” she asked hopefully.

She confounded him at every turn. One would think she
wanted
him to be a gunslinger. She didn’t. He’d seen a few gunslingers.

“No, because she was told I didn’t have the prospects that she had assumed I’d had.”

Her nose wrinkled, as if she smelled something unpleasant. “She must not have really loved you, and you are well shut of her. A woman in love stands by her beloved regardless of his position or his prospects.”

“You’re being romantic again and far too hard on her. She was just a girl, barely eighteen, and her family had certain expectations of her.” In her final letter to him, Charlotte had written that she could not marry outside of her family’s wishes and that the lies he’d told her had served to erase her former feelings. He had never lied to her, but he’d been too proud to tell her so.

“She should have thrown their expectations in their teeth,” she said with such feeling he wondered what her family had demanded of her. “Was she pretty?”

“Oh, yes. Very pretty.” Pretty in the accepted sense of the word, with dewy skin and a rosebud mouth, neat hands and a rounded little figure. He’d met her at a party. He’d arrived late, brought along by a group of young men who’d wanted the diversion his presence would cause more than his company. He hadn’t cared. He’d have done anything to escape Althea’s house, even if only for an evening.

Charlotte had been an outsider, too, despite the obvious costliness of her dress and the fact that she’d attended one of England’s most expensive, if not selective, finishing schools. She, his “friends” informed him with nudges and winks, smelt of the shop.

And he stank of cows.

He figured they were well matched, and before the night was through she’d let him steal a kiss. He’d never kissed a girl before.

That was all it took, he imagined, for a great many lads to fall in love. But she’d been sweet, too, and admiring. She made him feel like a gentleman and not some half-feral interloper whose demeanor and accent Althea and her “tutors” spent days disciplining out of him.

“Oh.” Miss Whimpelhall looked away from him, a small downward cast to her lips. “Do you still…” She broke off. Apparently there were some things even Miss Mildred Whimpelhall considered too bold to ask.

“I don’t suppose I do,” he answered the half-voiced question.

Her head snapped back around. “Don’t
suppose
?”

He shrugged. “Yes. I can’t say that I’ve given it much thought. So, I don’t suppose.”

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“I guess.” He couldn’t understand why she was looking so put out. “If you still loved her, you would surely know,” she insisted.

“Would I?”

“Yes,” she said. “At least, I should hope so, because it would be a very sad, pale approximation of love if you didn’t know it for a certainty.”

“You’re an expert on romance, miss?”

“Well,” she lifted a shoulder and left her answer at that.

“Do you speak from the experience of your own deep and abiding love for Pomfrey?” In a thousand years, he would never have imagined himself asking something so intimate of a young lady whom he’d known only a few short days. There were certain lines a gentleman did not cross. Whatever deficiencies had been tolerated in Miss Whimpelhall’s education, Althea hadn’t tolerated the same in his—often to his great physical discomfort.

She blushed profusely. “That’s hardly your concern.”

He wasn’t having it. She’d more or less erased those lines herself. “Ah. I see,” he said. “You have carte blanche to ask me any questions you like, fully expecting them to be answered, but you deny me that same privilege. You don’t play a square hand, Miss Whimpelhall.”

She drew herself up at that, insulted. “I do too.”

“So then,” he said. “Do you love him?”

“Of course.” He didn’t believe her for a second.

“Really,” he said. “Why?” Why was he pressing her? She looked thoroughly flustered, and he was not the sort of man to enjoy making a girl uneasy.

“What a ridiculous question,” she sputtered.

And yet, he kept on. “Not at all. You claimed the role of authority; I’m just interested in your credentials. I’m looking for some advice. As you discerned, my past efforts have not met with great success. You might help ensure that my future prospects are brighter.”

“Really?” she asked, looking both intrigued and flattered in spite of herself.

He nodded. “
If
you’re the expert you say you are. I have to wonder. You won’t say a word about your own heart. Maybe you don’t love Pomfrey at all.” He ignored the spark of pleasure ignited by that thought. “Maybe you’ve never even been in love. Maybe you know nothing about love except what you’ve read in a book about Cleopatra.”

She looked cornered. “I do. I am, and I do too.”

He regarded her closely. “What do you love about Pomfrey?”

“Well, he’s…he’s dashing.”

Pomfrey? Perhaps he had a misunderstanding of the word.

“Dashing. Go on.”

“And he is a dedicated, loyal commander.”

Jim said nothing. Whatever his faults, Pomfrey was a good officer.

“He is conscientious, hardworking, and diligent.”

“He sounds like he has the makings of a good plow horse.”

She scowled at him, looking more annoyed than offended. “He’s also noble and honorable.
And
romantic,” she finished, looking him dead in the eye. “I would never marry a man who did not feel romantically towards me. A woman, even a woman who is not beautiful, likes to think that she inspires those sorts of finer, loftier, more beautiful impulses in a man.”

She might not love Pomfrey, but he did not doubt for an instant that she’d just listed the attributes she most valued. For her sake, he hoped Pomfrey had some of them. Jim knew he didn’t. Between Althea and the life he’d led in Egypt since, pretty much every last vestige of romance had been beaten out of him. And looking at Miss Whimpelhall, Jim was glad. Because she was too tempting, too much what he wanted—if he’d allowed himself to want.

“Are those reasons enough?” she asked.

“More than enough. You’ve half convinced me I’m in love with him myself,” he said, and when she looked away to hide her smile, he told himself making her smile hadn’t been his intent.

And knew himself to be a liar in more ways than one.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to take a look?” Ginesse asked James Owens. “I am well acquainted with bumps and bruises.”

“I’m sure you are, and no,” Mr. Owens replied from where he sat with his back against the mast, reading something. It was just coming on daybreak, light enough to make out his expression, which remained even more uncommunicative than usual. “Thank you.”

She wondered what he was reading but didn’t think she ought to ask. He seemed out of sorts with her, which was a shame because it was going to be a lovely day. The air felt fresh, the wind was steady, and even the gloomy Nubian crew seemed cheerful.

But then, why shouldn’t they? They’d taken yesterday off.

The day had begun badly. The captain had gotten thoroughly drunk the previous night and by morning was passed out in his squalid little cabin, making it impossible for him to give the crew orders. That had left Mr. Owens, who didn’t know a word of Nubian, to pantomime commands. As she couldn’t very well sit by while the miscreants took advantage of the situation by pretending not to understand his directions, she had suggested Mr. Owens draw pictures.

The suggestion had not been well received.

So, she had taken it upon herself to draw very specific images of what was required and show them to the crew. Rather than carry out her illustrated orders, the despicable dogs had pretended to think she’d instructed them to run the
felucca
aground. She knew this because they’d done their plotting right in front of her, not realizing that she could understand—
and speak
—Nubian.

Of course, she couldn’t report this to Mr. Owens. Instead, she’d been forced to make loud and, as it turned out, ineffectual statements about “feeling” that the crew was “up to no good,” which Mr. Owens had dismissed as rampant racism even after they ran the boat onto the sandbank and spent the rest of the day lolling about, drinking and eating and making infrequent, perfunctory attempts to dislodge the boat. She had retired to the far end of the sandbar feeling most ill-used and put upon.

It had been late in the day before the captain had finally sobered up. When he’d seen what had become of his boat, he’d started shouting. Ginesse, never one to back down from a fight, had shouted back. And then Mr. Owens had entered the fray, and while he was trying to pacify her, the captain had taken a swing at Jim—or so the captain later claimed. Frankly, she suspected the captain been swinging at her—and had hit Jim purely by mistake.

Since then, the pleasant camaraderie they’d enjoyed the first day had disappeared. When she caught his eye, Mr. Owens’s gaze held the same uncertainty one sees in the eyes of a man watching the approach of a feral dog.

She rose and wandered to the side of the boat to watch the landscape emerge from the predawn darkness. A silvery papyrus marsh materialized along the river’s west bank. On the river itself, scores of boats appeared, pushing out of the thick mist rolling over the water: graceful
feluccas
and long, luxurious
dahabiyas
;
dhows
and serviceable little dories; and an occasional steamer belching smoke as it carried its passengers upriver to Luxor.

She wondered what those passengers thought when they saw an English girl standing at the bow of a ship under the watchful eye of a tall, stern man. They might think they were sweethearts, or newlyweds, or eloping. She might be anyone.

That was the one real unexpected joy she’d found in her masquerade: she’d shed her name and past and all the assumptions and expectations that went along with them. She’d never realized before how oppressive a family’s belief in one could be, how much of a burden their confidence.

James Owens had no expectations of her. He didn’t think of her as one of the female oddities at a male educational institution, or Harry Braxton’s trouble-causing daughter, or Dizzy Braxton’s changeling, or Sir Carlisle’s awkward great-granddaughter, or a
djinn
, or an
afreet
.

It was liberating.

Without thinking much of it, she stepped atop the gunwale and grabbed hold of a shroud line for balance. Closing her eyes, she arched back, swinging lightly from the taut line, luxuriating in the sensation of not being Ginesse Braxton. She lifted her face for the first warm kiss of sunlight. The sound of wings, whispered and rushed, drew her gaze up as a flock of snowy egrets passed overhead, their wings gleaming like bleached bone against the opal sky.

She heard the captain give a command to let out the sails, driving them more swiftly over the water. She smiled as the breeze rushed across her face, teasing her hair from its confinement to fly behind—

“
Ukak!
” Stop!

It all happened in a matter of seconds. She looked around to see a
dahabiya
racing straight at them. The captain shouted again and ran forward, grabbing the mainsheet and jerking back, sending the boat lurching sideways. She clutched hold of the shroud line with both hands as the sudden motion knocked her off her feet and sent her swinging out over the water.

Panicked, she scrabbled wildly with her feet, trying to reach the deck. Below, the water rushed hungrily by, and before her the
dahabiya
came straight on. For a moment, time froze. She saw the striped sails against the creamy morning sky, felt the bite of the line against her palm, smelled the brackish brine of the river, and thought,
I am going to die
.
I am going to die, and I’ve never made love
.
I wish Mr. Owens had made love to me.

And then, suddenly, a long arm looped around her waist. She clung to the shroud line, afraid to release it.

“Let go.” She looked around. James Owens had hooked a leg around the stanchion, bracing his free foot against the outer hull, and was leaning out over the water, holding on to her. “Before that boat slams into us both,” he suggested.

She let go. He swept her up out of the way just as the
dahabiya
passed, scraping against the
felucca
’s side. For a second, he stood holding her, his chest moving like a bellows against her cheek, his heart thundering beneath her ear.

“Are you all right?” he demanded fiercely. “
Are you hurt?
”

“I’m fine,” she said. She could not recall ever feeling so safe…

“Bloody, bloody
hell!
What the devil is wrong with you?”

She was stunned.

Until that moment, Mr. Owens had never raised his voice. Even when provoked by the drunkenness of the captain or the indolence of the crew, he’d remained soft-spoken and utterly self-possessed. Even when swearing in Arabic he’d done so in a quiet, businesslike manner.

She pulled away from him, and he let her go. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Are you just flat-out determined to jinx this trip?” he shouted even louder.

The hideous word that had haunted her childhood ignited a flame in Ginesse’s belly. Valiantly, she struggled to keep her anger in check. Even if he was not a gentleman, she should remain a lady. She’d worked hard to gain that distinction, to master her quick-fire temper and tendency toward precipitous words and actions.

“I am
sure
I don’t know what you mean,” she managed. He loomed over her. She straightened her back and tried to loom back.

“
Today
,” he shouted, “you nearly caused us to ram another ship;
yesterday
, you ran our boat aground; and
the day before that
, I had to dive into a filthy river after you!”

It proved too much.

“Well, at least you
finally got a bath!
” she shouted back. “Likely the first one you’ve had this year!”

And while they were shouting at each other another
dahabiya
appeared out of nowhere and clipped the bowsprit clean off their
felucca
. The impact pitched her into the stacked crates. She folded like an accordion, stunned and horrified. It wasn’t possible. What was the likelihood of a boat hitting them twice in one day? Maybe she
was
a jinx.

The spirit in her fled. Tears welled up in her eyes. She curled into a ball, hid her head in her arms, and cried.

“Are you all right?” she heard Mr. Owens say, as large hands clasped her shoulders and pulled her upright. “Mildred, are you all right?”

She snuffled miserably again, wondering who Mildred was until she realized he meant her. She peeked up. He was on his knees, his brow furrowed with concern.

It was her undoing. She didn’t deserve his concern. She’d lied to him, used him, made him dive into a river and risk his life for her, shouted at him, and now he was taking care of her.

She turned around, flung her arms around his neck, buried her face against his throat, and sobbed. She bawled in a way she hadn’t since she’d been banished from Egypt: loud, heartrending sobs of undiluted wretchedness. And he let her. He just put his arms around her and let her cry.

“Now, now,” he said finally, his voice awkward and self-conscious. “There now. You’re all right. You’re fine.” He patted her head with one hand while his other arm tightened around her.

“No, I’m not,” she wailed. “I’m
not
fine. I’m a disaster.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. He didn’t sound very convincing.

“I’m a disaster and you despise me!” she wailed. “You wish we had never met. You…you rue the day!”

“No, I don’t,” he said, using the hem of his shirt to dab at her eyes. “No ruing. I promise.”

“You do,” she said, sniffling. “And I don’t blame you. I should, too, if I were you.”

“No, I don’t. Really,” he said.

“You’re just saying that to be kind. Everything I do turns out badly.”

“It does seem that way, doesn’t it?” he said, again with that odd, lost tone to his voice, still dabbing assiduously away at her tears. “It’s not your fault.”

She blinked away her remaining tears. “It’s not?”

“No. You’re…I don’t know.” It wasn’t exactly a vindication, but it was enough. She smiled at him, suddenly happy, and thought she heard him catch his breath.

“And you really don’t rue the day we met?” she asked.

“I really don’t.”

“That’s awfully decent of you.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. And I promise, I will not cause a moment’s more trouble.”

“That’s nice.” He sounded like he didn’t have the least hope she’d keep her promise. She wasn’t too sure herself, if it came down to it, but she was going to try her hardest.

She pushed herself to an upright position, and he rose to his feet, effortlessly pulling her up. She smiled sunnily up at him. He stared down into her face, looking a little strange. Then he turned around and without a word headed toward the back of the
felucca
. She watched him go, befuddled.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“To my kit,” he said.

“Why?”

He stopped, turned around, and looked at her. “Because I need a drink.”

“Now, Mr. Owens,” she said worriedly. “I know these last few minutes have been harrowing, but spirits, as we all know, only provide false courage.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

She frowned. “You must try to resist.”

He turned back around. “That’s what I keep telling myself,” she heard him mutter.

But he kept on walking.