Betina Krahn Read online

  “What do you suppose he wanted?” Diamond ran a hand over her hair.

  “What do you think?” Hardwell said, giving her a meaningful look.

  Money was the first thing that came to her mind. It was what everyone else wanted from her.

  Hardwell grew impatient and suggested that they disembark on the spot and walk the rest of the way. Their arrival wouldn’t have quite the flare of a grand society entrance, but at least she wouldn’t have to cool her heels and further crease her satin in a stuffy coach.

  No sooner had Diamond set both feet on the ground than she heard footsteps in the gravel behind her and turned to find a man running toward them.

  “Please, Miss Wingate—” A tall, lanky fellow in a rumpled gray suit and steamed-up spectacles loomed out of the darkness and stumbled to a halt in front of them. He was so winded that he could scarcely speak, and in the moment it took him to catch his breath, Diamond recognized the paleness of his coat and his bowler hat. He was the driver of the buggy that had just chased their coach.

  “You—have to”—he panted—“come with me—”

  “See here, man, whatever you’re about, we’re having none of it.” Hardwell extended a protective elbow in her direction and she slid her hand through it—just as the man seized her other arm.

  “I have to show you. It’s not far … a demonstration … my moving steps …”

  The mention of “moving steps” brought another flash of recognition. This was the same man who had raced their carriage on foot a few days ago.

  “Really, Mister …”

  “Ellsworth. Nigel Ellsworth.”

  “Really, Mr. Ellsworth”—she tugged against his grasp—“this is not the time or the place for such a proposal.”

  “But it’s never the time or the place. I’ve been trying to see you for weeks now, and I always get turned away at the gates or at your company offices,” the inventor blurted out and then gasped another breath. “If you’ll just come with me, it will only take a few minutes. And you’ll see what a wonderful idea—”

  “I cannot come with you.” She watched the feverish light in the fellow’s eyes. “But if you’ll come by Gracemont on Monday, I promise I will—”

  “She most certainly will not,” Hardwell declared, deciding to take matters into his own hands. “How dare you accost us like this? Are you mad?”

  “I’m not mad, I’m desperate.” Ellsworth tightened his grip.

  “Let go, or I shall be forced to call for help,” Hardwell ordered, tightening his hold on Diamond and bracing to resist any effort to move her.

  “I’ll let go”—Ellsworth began to pull—“after she’s seen my moving steps.”

  “Please, you’re hurting my arm,” Diamond said, trying to wrest free.

  “Release her this instant.” Hardwell abruptly changed tactics, lunging at Ellsworth to push him away. But the inventor simply took advantage of the additional momentum to pull Diamond farther along.

  The next moments were something of a blur for Diamond as she found herself pulled steadily down the darkened drive. She was vaguely aware of shocked faces peering down from the coaches they passed, and she finally managed to wrestle Ellsworth to a halt. “You cannot honestly believe that such behavior will enhance my opinion of your invention.”

  “My invention shall speak for itsel—oof—”

  The tussling pair slammed unexpectedly into what felt like a wall. She took advantage of the pause to shove back and look up at the dark form towering over them … following a pair of satin lapels up to a proper black tie and crisp white collar.

  “I don’t believe the lady wants to go,” came a low, menacing rumble.

  The mad stair-maker must not be seeing what she was seeing, Diamond thought, or he would release her on the spot. A square, sun-bronzed chin jutted over that pristine collar and above that she spotted two dark-rimmed eyes that glowed like candle flames. Familiar flames.

  “Out of the way!” Ellsworth tried to shove aside the form blocking their path. “She has to see my-i-e-eee—”

  Ellsworth was seized by the back of the neck and the seat of the trousers and hoisted off the ground. Freed, she caught only a glimpse of the ensuing scuffle as she whirled, lifted her skirts, and ran back up the drive. But in that glimpse, she recognized familiar elements … motions which, joined to the man’s voice and face and eyes, piqued a memory.

  “Are you all right?” Hardwell engulfed her in a hug a moment later.

  “I’m fine, really,” she murmured, feeling a bit wobbly in the knees as she paused to look over her shoulder. Her rescuer had wrestled the crazed inventor down the line of carriages and disappeared from sight. The receding sounds of their struggle were drowned out by the rush of men approaching from the direction of the house.

  “Deepest apologies, my dear—are you all right?” Their host, Philip Vassar, reached them and waved the housemen behind him to proceed down the drive. “I swear to you, I shall see the wretch is prosecuted to the fullest—”

  “No, please, Mr. Vassar,” Diamond said, summoning a smile and hoping it looked more convincing than it felt. “He’s just a poor, desperate man—”

  “A lunatic, you mean,” Hardwell declared fervently. “We were just fortunate that other gentleman arrived when he did.”

  “Other gentleman?” Vassar asked. “What other gentleman?”

  • • •

  By the time Bear had wrestled the flailing, protesting gatecrasher down the drive and sent him sprawling into the road, he was roundly regretting his impulsive action. He stood in the gate opening, spread his feet, and glared, hoping it would be enough to dissuade the fellow from getting up and charging back through the gates.

  The interloper fumbled to right his spectacles and bowler hat, and Bear reddened from the neck up as he watched. There was something to be proud of, he told himself; he had just trounced a bespectacled bookworm. He was relieved to leave the little wretch to the three beefy fellows in servant dress who came running down the drive behind him. When they started for the uninvited guest, the man scrambled to his feet and ran as if the hounds of hell were upon him.

  Bear dusted himself off and started back to his rented buggy. He had been stuck in that row of grand carriages, watching the other guests disembarking and scrutinizing their garments to reassure himself he was rigged out properly, when he heard the crunch of approaching footsteps in the gravel beside him. A fellow in a bowler hat ran by, and Bear couldn’t help the surly thought that if the fellow was hurrying to the party, he was dressed all wrong. Seconds later, the runner accosted a man and woman exiting a coach.

  There was a shout and some shoving and tugging, and the runner tried to drag the woman off with him. Bear had bounded from the buggy, knowing that he would probably regret giving in to that urge to action. After weeks of being cooped up in crowded trains, flophouses, and bankers’ offices, it felt just too damn good to have his blood pounding in his veins again.

  That primal and exhilarating exertion, however, had proved all too brief. Now he found himself feeling hot and sweaty and a little foolish. Checking his coat, vest, and tie, he found them all in good order. His relief was short-lived.

  What the hell was he doing, involving himself in something he knew nothing about and putting himself and his business of the evening at risk? He should be trying to think of something clever and conciliatory to say to Diamond Wingate when Vassar introduced them.

  Sorry about that cousin of yours, a few days back. I don’t usually go around dropping children on their … heads.

  I hope you didn’t take my irritation personally. I always get a bit testy when a wall falls on me.

  Thanks for the new clothes, Miss Wingate. Now, how about a few hundred thousand in cash to line the pockets?

  He winced at the sardonic edge of his thoughts. He’d rather chase strays in a four-day rain than face that woman again and eat the crow that he knew would be on the menu between them.

  “Oh, yeah, McQuaid,” he
muttered. “You’re in for a real good time.”

  Twice he paused to dust the toe of a shoe on the back of his trouser leg as he stalked back up the drive. Then he looked up and found none other than Philip Vassar hurrying down the drive toward him.

  “If you’re looking for your gatecrasher, he’s probably half a mile away by now,” Bear called, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “I tossed him out on his ars—posterior, and when he got a look at your men, he took to his heels.”

  “You? You’re the gentleman?” Vassar halted for a moment, then broke into a huge grin. “In the right place at the right time … eh, McQuaid?” He clasped Bear’s hand and clapped a hand on his shoulder, urging him toward the house. “Not quite the sort of introduction I had in mind, but it should prove memorable, nonetheless.”

  “Introduction?” Bear felt his stomach tightening.

  “Charging in to her rescue … chivalry makes a damn fine reference,” Vassar said with a ghost of a smile that became more substantial as Bear shook his head and seemed confused. “You mean you honestly don’t know who you rescued?” He chuckled at the irony. “That was Diamond Wingate.”

  Bear felt himself walking and heard himself speaking, but it seemed to be happening to another man as Vassar led him up the drive. All he had seen in the flurry and the darkness was a fancy female dress, the top of a light head, and a twisting, thrashing form. That was Diamond Wingate?

  A small knot of gentlemen standing near the front steps parted as they approached, revealing a frilly bustle, shining red-gold curls, and a curvaceous figure wrapped in embroidered peach-colored satin. Diamond Wingate turned as he approached, and he halted … might have decamped altogether if Vassar hadn’t had him by the arm.

  “Here he is, Miss Wingate,” Vassar said with suppressed excitement. “Your very own paladin. May I present Mr. Barton McQuaid of Montana.”

  Bear scrambled to recall both his manners and his fevered impressions from the tailor shop. Damn. Had she looked like this at Martene’s place? Most of what he recalled from that encounter was the feel of his blood pounding in his veins, the preparatory tightening of the muscles over his belly, and the humiliating rush of unwelcome heat into his lips.

  He had been so wrought up—caught between the ache in his head and the urge to throttle her precious “cousin”—that he had neglected to capture the details of that strawberry-blond hair, silky skin, and full, ripe-for-mischief mouth. It was all coming back to him now, however, including the memory of her noteworthy curves. He summoned the nerve to meet her gaze and recognition pelted him like cold rain.

  It was her, all right. He’d know those lightning-blue eyes anywhere. Especially the lightning part.

  “I believe I owe you a debt, sir,” she said coolly, offering her gloved hand, and he tried not to seem reluctant to take it.

  “Pleased to have been of service,” he heard himself say. The very next moment his throat filled with raw, elemental heat and he couldn’t have uttered another word if his life depended on it.

  For a long moment they stood hand in hand, eyeing each other, confronting each other both in memory and in present fact. Scarcely a breath was taken around them as the others tried to discern what was happening.

  A throat-clearing rumble finally intruded. Diamond recognized Hardwell’s general-purpose reminder and came to her senses, jerking her hand away.

  “Truly grateful for your assistance, sir,” Hardwell declared, stepping in to offer his own hand. “I am Diamond’s guardian, Hardwell Humphrey. If there is anything I can do for you … anything at all …”

  “You seem a bit flushed, my dear,” Vassar observed. “Perhaps you’d like a quiet place to rest and collect yourself.”

  Diamond Wingate lifted her skirts and, with her guardian’s help, made her way up the steps. Watching the sway of her elaborate bustle, Bear scarcely noticed Vassar’s chuckle or the way he was being propelled toward the steps and the arched entry of the house. His wits had withdrawn to hold a tactical summit and the result was a frantic urge to abandon this whole idiotic scheme. He remembered her all too well. Clearly, she remembered him, too. There was no way he could approach her without getting his proposal tossed back in his face.

  As they mounted the steps along with the arriving guests, Vassar was drawn into conversation by an acquaintance and grabbed Bear by the arm.

  “This is the fellow I wanted you to meet,” his host was saying with obvious pleasure. “Just in from Montana. A railroad man. Barton McQuaid, I want you to meet Mason Purnell, owner of our local dry-goods empire.”

  “I haven’t even taken off my hat, and already I’ve heard how you set Miss Wingate’s pursuer out on his ear,” Purnell told him, offering his hand.

  Bear could do nothing but accept that handshake and nod in a way that he hoped looked more modest than mortified. Over the next half hour, he gradually perfected that equivocal nod as he repeated it, again and again, over the firm handshakes of men, and the oddly clinging handclasps of women. Vassar steered him around the center hall, the drawing room, and the conservatory with proprietary pride, introducing him to everyone and answering discreetly the veiled queries about the “rescue” of Diamond Wingate.

  Rescue. It took a few repetitions of the word for the reality of it to penetrate Bear’s defensive haze. He had indeed rescued her. It occurred to him that after such an “heroic” effort on his part, she could scarcely have spit in his eye and denounced him as a child beater. In point of fact, except for the heat in her eyes—more sparks than lightning, now that he thought about it—she had greeted him much as she might have anyone upon a first meeting.

  A wave of relief sluiced through him. Then the hard part was over! He had not only met her, he had actually managed to even the score between them. He smiled and drew a deep, steadying breath. Now, all he had to do was be unfailingly polite and reasonable and accommodating … and get her alone somewhere for a quarter of an hour …

  FIVE

  Soon everyone at Evelyn Stanhope Vassar’s spring party knew the identity of the tall, dark stranger Vassar was squiring around like a proud papa. Evelyn filled them in on the details.

  “He is a railroad entrepreneur who has spent most of his time out West,” she told a group of local information brokers, while wearing an expression of the sort cats wear when fishbowls are found empty. “He is unmarried and, to the best of my knowledge, unattached. And it’s plain to see, as my Philip says, that he has a number of … assets.”

  The women gathered around Evelyn in the upper hall smiled at the way she rolled her eyes as she said it. One glimpse of the tall Westerner was all the matrons of Baltimore needed to appreciate the delicious versatility of the term their commerce-minded husbands used so matter-of-factly: “assets.”

  Diamond Wingate, recovered and rounding the corner in the upstairs hallway, heard her hostess’s words but was not privy to the expression that accompanied them. Even if she had seen it, she lacked the experience needed to understand the sort of attributes that more mature women might consider “tangible assets” in a man.

  Evelyn read in the others’ faces that someone was approaching and turned to greet Diamond.

  “Here she is.” Evelyn wrapped an arm around her shoulders and lowered her eyes and voice. “No one would blame you, dear, if you decided to retire for the evening.”

  “And miss the delights you have in store for us?” Diamond said determinedly, eliciting a relieved look from her hostess. “I cannot allow one poor, demented man to send me scurrying into seclusion.”

  Two, however, had created a significant temptation to do just that. The first man, that poor inventor, had merely unsettled her. His rash demands were just another variation on what had become the central theme of her life: requests and propositions for money. It was the second, her tall, dark rescuer, who had sent her trembling into the house. That rude, irritating man from the tailor shop … for a second time she had found herself rattled by his overwhelming presence.

  In the
days since their encounter, she had systematically examined her response to him at Martene and Savoy’s. Her reaction had obviously been part shock at his high-handed treatment of Robbie, and part embarrassment at her unexpected encounter with a man in dishabille. Comforted by that analysis, she had used reason to defuse the volatile incident in her memory.

  Occasionally, however, as she lay in her bed at night, she suffered a spontaneous recall of the sight of his hard, naked chest and felt again the confusion and guilty fascination she had experienced when looking at it. The stubborn persistence of that memory—and of her intensely physical reaction to it—hinted at a whole side of her and a whole range of experiences that she had never imagined existed. And she would have been quite content to have continued on in blissful ignorance of them.

  But, this evening, the gentlemen around her had parted and there he was again … looming big and dark, his eyes glowing, and his insufferable self-possession rolling over her like a sultry southern breeze. Suddenly she was all nerves and goose bumps again, caught between their current encounter and the potent memory of his naked chest in all of its voluptuous glory.

  It took a while in the privacy of an upstairs bedroom for her to reassemble her poise. However gentlemanly he appeared, she told herself, she knew the truth of his character. She had seen him at his barest—literally—and knew that he was hot tempered, easily provoked, and alarmingly prone to physical violence. And while he might appear to make his baser impulses serve a noble purpose in public, and might even have managed to ingratiate himself with Philip Vassar, he would find her made of altogether sterner and more skeptical stuff.

  As the ladies joined the guests collecting outside the doors to the dining room, she scanned the group for a glimpse of the big Montanan, telling herself it was simply that she was determined not to be caught unprepared again. When she didn’t see him, she heaved a quiet sigh.

  Her relief was short-lived, however. She looked up a moment later to find the newly arrived Morgan Kenwood bearing down on her from the front hall. He was outraged at the news that she had been accosted on the Vassars’ front drive and vowed to be her protective shadow for the rest of the evening.