The Other Guy's Bride (25 page)

“You mean—”

“Yes. For the last two years your uncle has been sole owner of the Youngblood ranch,” Jock said. “And I have been making inquiries to find you.”

Jim dragged a hand through his hair, uncertain of what he ought to feel, how he ought to react. For nearly seven years his life had been a desert, a vast emptiness stretching into a featureless future, and now he’d been given a way out. He should be overjoyed to regain his birthright without sacrificing anyone or anything to do so. He should be elated that Althea had not won, not over him and not over Jock. He should be ecstatic to finally be able to find his way back home.

Home.

Unwillingly, his gaze flickered toward the dining room window. The drapes obscured his view of her, but he could feel her presence inside, like a flame drawing him.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” Jock asked, amused.

“It all seems unreal,” he said. “I never thought to go back to England.”

“You don’t have to, you know,” Jock said. “In all truth, there’s not that much to go back to and what’s left is adequately managed by the bankers. The house has fallen into disrepair, but the farm is still there. The only other property of any value is the Mayfair property, and Althea has use of that until she dies. Which by all accounts could be any moment.”

“I should see her.”

“Why?” Jock asked, for the first time a deep bitterness entering his voice. “She made your life hell. She hated and despised your mother, and she hated you for being her son. She wouldn’t thank you for visiting her.” He tipped his head. “But if you should want to go to spit in her face, well, I could understand that.”

He didn’t. Not at all. He frowned, examining this unexpected reaction. He supposed he ought to want to confront his grandmother, to stand before her healthy and able, to flaunt his triumph in her face. But he didn’t. Both Althea and the boy he’d been were parts of a past so distant, he could hardly imagine them. Both seemed like characters in a book, one he didn’t care to visit again.

“No, I don’t suppose I do,” he murmured, feeling the last vestiges of his fury dissolve.

Jock nodded. “I can understand not wanting to leave,” he said, taking a deep breath and turning his face to the sky and the millions of pinpricks of light spread like a veil across a dark river. “I can see why you would want to stay here. This land is spectacular. And Sir Robert has been regaling me with stories about your exploits. He says you had a hand in locating Thutmosis the First’s tomb,” he said, adding with just the slightest proprietary pride, “Miss Braxton wrote a monograph on it, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Jock was everything a young aristocrat should be, the very best example of his kind: decent, intelligent, and compassionate. Jim was everything a survivor needed to be: duplicitous, cunning, and ruthless.

“Isn’t it odd?” Jock mused. “Here we are parted for years and yet somehow our paths have led us both here, to the same place.”

And, Jim thought hollowly, to the same woman.

“I am glad to see you looking so well, Ginesse. The newly found duke said you were exposed to quite an ordeal during your journey. He seemed quite concerned for you, but you look fine to me,” Sir Robert said, beaming at Ginesse. “What an adventure you have had! You must take after you mother. She never looked so well as when she was in some sort of trouble.”

Ginesse regarded her great-grandsire with great affection as Sir Robert tucked her hand more securely into the crook of his arm to lead her on a postprandial stroll. So many men of his generation, and her own, were stodgy and moralistic. Sir Robert saw everything through a prism of optimism.

“Mind you, I never doubted you would prevail for a minute, though Magi lacked my faith.” Magi was the pragmatist to Sir Robert’s optimist due, no doubt, to having enough experience both with Ginesse’s mother and Ginesse herself to refute any wholesale confidence in happy outcomes.

“I’m sorry to have caused her concern.” The sun had set and a three-quarter moon hung against the velvety sky like an earring in the lobe of a Nubian goddess. From the barracks drifted the homely sound of male conversation and desultory work being done. The scent of a cheroot’s smoke wafted down to them from the guard tower nearby. For a second she wondered if it was Jim, smoking. But Jim didn’t smoke. At least, as far as she knew. But then, there were many things she hadn’t known about James Owens Tynesborough.

“I shall prostrate myself as soon as I return to Cairo.”

“Oh, you won’t have to wait so long as that. She insisted in coming along.”

“She did?” Ginesse asked, delighted. “Where is she?”

Her great-grandfather made a slight face. “That colonel has segregated her. She is dining with the rest of his Arab staff tonight. I would have protested had I not been sure she would have been treated a great deal better there than at Pomfrey’s table.”

“But I will see her later?”

“You might want to wait until the morrow. It’s been a long trip.”

“Of course,” Ginesse agreed. “I shall seek her out first thing in the morning.”

“Haji came, too.”

“Haji?” Ginesse said, surprised and not pleasantly. “Why?”

“He insisted,” Sir Robert said with such open-eyed candor that Ginesse immediately suspected Haji had not been the one doing the insisting. She didn’t say so, however. If Sir Robert wanted to cast Haji in a noble light, far be it from her to spoil his fun.

“What’s wrong, Ginesse? You are not holding on to your youthful prejudice against the lad, are you?”

Her prejudice against
him
? Only great strength of character kept her from blurting out a sharp retort.

“Haji has turned into a very fine scholar,” Sir Robert continued, “all the more remarkable for having been largely self-taught. He has some very insightful theories about the reason your lost city was, well, lost.”

“Hm.”

“He might prove an invaluable colleague in your search for Zerzura,” Sir Robert suggested as if the idea had only now occurred to him, though she didn’t believe it for a moment.

“Zerzura,” she murmured, for the first time in days her thoughts turning to the lost city and the reason for her being here. Thank heaven she still had Zerzura; it was all she had left.

“Yes. Professor Tynesborough told us all about your discovery and how he followed your trail in the libraries and how he came to the realization that you had indeed made a magnificent discovery and how badly he feels for having rejected your research without first hearing you out.”

“No matter.”

“You seem to have left a trail of men owing you apologies for bad behavior,” he said with a little twinkle.

The only man whose bad behavior interested her was James Owens. She had to stop thinking about him, had to stop referring everything that happened somehow back to him. He was not the center of her life. He was not even part of her life anymore.

“Fancy this, Ginny. Haji is convinced you dislike him and confesses he feels your antipathy might be warranted.”

“How good of him,” she replied dryly. Leave it to Haji to preempt any complaints she might voice about his backstabbing tendencies with a saintly confession.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t offer to help you find Zerzura to help make things right between you.”

Make it right. Jim’s words. She blew out a thin, unsteady stream of air.

Her great-grandfather suddenly stopped walking, scowling. “Something is wrong.”

“No,” she denied, “everything is fine.”

“No, something is definitely wrong,” he insisted. “You are pulling the same face I vividly recall from your childhood. The one you made behind your mother’s back whenever you felt you’d been ill-used. Now, out with it.”

“It’s nothing, I just don’t need anyone else to ‘make things right’ with me, that’s all.”

Sir Robert’s bushy white brows shot up. “Anyone else?” he echoed.

“Yes,” she said tersely. “I am not a child. I am not piece of luggage. I am not a donkey. Haji’s only sin was that he didn’t put out the papyri I set on fire. I suspect so that he could get me permanently banned from the dig sites. I doubt he meant to get me banished to England.

“I could have gone back and put out that fire myself, but I didn’t dare because I was afraid of being punished. A fear that, as it turns out, was well founded since it was that little experiment that got me shipped off to England.”

“Oh, I can assure you, my dear,” her great-grandfather said with deliberate irony, “that decision was not made on the strength of one such act alone. I believe the list went several pages long.”

There would have been a time, and not that long ago, when the reminder of her many and varied transgressions would have aroused a panicked need to address and refute each charge. It all seemed a great waste of energy now. The truth was, she liked who she was, she understood her strengths and acknowledged her weaknesses, and she no longer felt the need to apologize for herself to anyone, including herself.

The woman was the product of the child, and as a child Ginesse had been inquisitive, mercurial, and unruly. The woman Ginesse had become was still inquisitive and still prone to act first and think later, but as anyone who insists on skating on thin ice knows, she had also learned to be quick-thinking and resourceful in order to survive. She’d not only survived; she’d thrived.

“All I meant is that I don’t blame Haji, and I think his insistence that he was somehow the defining moment of my life is beyond arrogant. I have designed my own fate, thank you very much. I alone initiated whatever has happened to me before and since London. It was my choice to impersonate Miss Whimpelhall, to search for Zerzura, to deceive Mr. Owens, and,” she swallowed, “everything else.”

“‘I am the master of my own ship,’ and that sort of thing, eh?” Sir Robert asked gently.

“Precisely.”

“And what Carlisle woman worth her salt wouldn’t feel exactly so?” he said brightly—Sir Robert ascribed to ancient Egyptian chronological practices that followed one’s family tree through its matriarchal branch. They’d strolled a short ways farther before he spoke again.

“Poor Miss Whimpelhall,” he said. “I do hope she has not wasted her time in coming here.”

“Why would you say that, Great-Grand? You must know she has come to finally marry Pomfrey after a long engagement.”

“She doesn’t act much like a woman who’s just been reunited with her beloved after years of separation. I think she anticipated a warmer reception.”

“No,” Ginesse said slowly, her concern for Miss Whimpelhall temporarily distracting her from thoughts about Jim. “She didn’t. On board the
Lydonia
, I once asked her if Colonel Lord Pomfrey would sweep her off her feet when they met. She was horrified by the suggestion and quite adamant that she considered any such overt demonstrations of affection beneath both her and Colonel Lord Pomfrey’s dignity.”

Sir Robert shook his head. “Oh, Ginny. And you actually believed her?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I? She’s a very restrained, very temperate lady.”

Sir Robert smiled oddly. “She’s a lady who dyes her hair red.”

“So did I,” Ginesse pointed out, uncertain what this had to do with Miss Whimpelhall’s character.

“Exactly.”

She couldn’t decide if his oblique comment was complimentary or critical and so opted to ignore it entirely.

“But enough of Haji and Miss Whimpelhall and Colonel Lord Pomfrey,” Sir Robert said. “We are far enough away from any open windows for us to get down to the matter at hand. Tell me what is really going on.”

“Going on?”

“With you and Tynesborough.”

Tynesborough?
she thought in some confusion before it dawned on her that her great-grandfather must be referring to James Owens. Never having known Jim as, well, Jim, understandably Sir Robert called him by his surname.

Ginesse hesitated. She wasn’t certain hers was the sort of confidence one shared with one’s great-grandparent. On the other hand, she knew no one whose judgment she trusted more. Her parents were too close, too fond, and too apt to champion whatever side of an argument benefitted her. Oddly, her brothers tended toward an opposite reaction.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” she finally said, knowing it to be a feeble response.

“That young man,” Sir Robert said briskly, “is in love with you. What do you intend to do about it?”

Her heart fell, and she sighed gustily. Until now, she hadn’t realized how much she’d been counting on Sir Robert’s advice. But how much use would it be if he had already so greatly misread the situation? He used to be such a perceptive man. Ah, well, she supposed age had finally caught up with him.

“You’re mistaken, Great-Grand. Mr. Owens doesn’t love me,” she said, then added in the interest of full disclosure, “though he has asked me to marry him. Twice.”

“Mr. Owens has?” Sir Robert said, eyes widening with interest.

“Yes, but it has nothing to do with love.”

“Really? And how do you know this?”

“Because both times he proposed, he did not posit affection or, for that matter,
any
sentiment as a reason he wanted to marry me. He certainly did not say he loved me. And when Colonel Lord Pomfrey made those—” She broke off. She could not repeat Pomfrey’s cruel words; it would only force her great-grandfather to take some precipitous action. But Jim’s failure to champion her cut as deeply as his obligatory proposal.

“Made what?” Sir Robert asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “He just did little to advance Mr. Owens’s suit.”

“And why would he?” Sir Robert asked, bewildered. “Come now, Ginesse. Admittedly, you were never the most sensible member of the family, but being as familiar with the masculine nature as only the sister of six brothers can be, you must realize that men, particularly men like Mr. Owens, have a hard time expressing what is in their hearts.”

“Mr. Owens presented several well-considered explanations for why he wanted to marry me, and none of them had anything do with what is or, in this case, is
not
in his heart.”

“And what were those explanations?”

To her great mortification, Ginesse felt the heat rising in her cheeks and prayed her great-grandfather would not notice in the dark. Unfortunately, he had horrifyingly good night vision.

“Oh,” he said, blushing himself. “I see.” He cleared his throat. “Mr. Owens feels that having been so long in his company unchaperoned, your reputation is at stake.”

Bless him. “Yes,” she said, breathing more easily. “That’s it exactly.”

“And you are certain his offer stems from a gentlemanly sense of responsibility and nothing more.”

“
Culpability,
not responsibility,” Ginesse corrected. “He feels…
guilty
!”

“Oh, dear.” Sir Robert chewed on his lip, a habit he fell into when he was troubled.

“You must believe me when I tell you Mr. Owens is fully aware that I consider mutually romantic feelings essential in a marriage. Knowing that, if he did care for me, he would have said as much, wouldn’t he?”

“What exactly did he say?”

She released his arm and worried her fingers together at her waist, looking down at the ground, not wanting her great-grandfather to see her tears. “He said he wished he was
someone else
.”

Sir Robert winced.

She sniffed, nodding in agreement. “Then he said that since he wasn’t we would just have to accept it and that he was not lost to all decency. And he said that though he could not undo what had happened,” she blushed again, “he would ‘make it right’ and that he would try to make me happy.”

Sure enough, she could feel her tears starting to fall, and she couldn’t say whether they were angry ones or miserable ones. Probably both.

“Oh, dear,” Sir Robert said again, looking at her very closely and very earnestly. “He seems so in command of himself, one forgets he still is very young.”

Now she wanted to stomp her feet in frustration. Whatever did Jim’s youth have to do with anything?

“It makes no difference. I refused him. And now I do not wish to discuss Mr. Owens any longer.”

For a moment, she thought her great-grandfather was about to say something more, but then he regained her arm and drew her forward once again.

“All right,” he said after a while, “if you don’t want to discuss Mr. Owens, though I suppose we ought to call him Avandale now—”

“And that’s another thing,” she burst out.

Her great-grandfather stopped and waited patiently.

“He never told me
anything
about being a duke. Why would a man ask a woman to marry him without first mentioning he happens to be a duke?”

“I’m not sure—”

“I am. He does so to
test
her. To discover her priorities and her character. And if not knowing he is a duke that woman should say no to his initial proposal, then there is no possible way she can reverse that decision and say yes to any subsequent proposals. Not that there’s the least likelihood of there being any future proposals, especially if she…if she…” She’d started blubbering.