California Caress (39 page)

“Mutton?” she stiffly repeated the offer, holding the heavy platter out until the muscles in her forearm screamed in protest. She had to offer three times before the woman reluctantly acknowledged her, and even then it was with a sigh of impatience.

With a look bordering on disgust, Angelique took the tray. She stabbed several pieces of the aromatic meat for herself, then chose only the most tender slices to ease onto Drake’s plate.

He showed no obvious protest at the overly courteous gesture, and that fact galled Hope all the more. Politely, she declined the bowl of mashed sweet potatoes as well as the tender boiled onions. Normally, the small, sweet onions were a favorite she’d longed for in the secluded gold mines of Thirsty Gulch. Today, she had no taste for them.

I have to get out of here!
she thought desperately as she watched Angelique rub against Drake for what had to be the fiftieth time this hour. Although she couldn’t stand the woman’s blatant manipulation, it was Drake’s apparent immunity to it that bothered her more.

Hope decided she couldn’t sit idly by and watch Angelique use Drake, then cast him aside again—as, she suspected, was the woman’s intent. The first time had almost destroyed him. She might not have known him immediately after his affair with Angelique, but she had seen the result of it. She didn’t want to see what a second disappointment would do to her proud, arrogant gunslinger.

It will break him,
she thought,
and break me right along with him.

If there was one thing Hope knew she could not stand, it was more heartbreak. Losing her family to the fire had been bad enough. This on top of it would destroy her. Deep down, she suspected the reason why, but she’d be damned if she’d admit it, to herself or anyone else!

With an aggravated sigh, she lifted the bright orange dinner napkin from her lap, folded it, then placed it beside her plate. She stood with such force that only luck kept the delicate chair from crashing to the floor.

“Leaving? So soon?” Angelique purred, a glint of victory glistening in her cat-like eyes as she affixed her arm to Drake’s elbow.

“Stay,” Charles insisted with a wave of his hand. “If the food isn’t to your taste, you can at least join us in an after-dinner brandy.”

Hope shuddered. The last time she had tasted liquor she had collapsed, drunk, in Drake Frazier’s arms. It had been the biggest mistake of her life.

“No,” she said, patiently but firmly. “I’m tired, I have a headache, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I think I’ll retire early.” It was a lie, but a forgivable one. The last thing she intended to do was “retire,” early or otherwise. But there was no good reason
they
had to know that. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand for effect. “If you’ll excuse me....”

“Why of course,” Angelique purred. She patted Drake’s arm and sent him a knowing smile. “She does so need her beauty rest, you know.”

Hope thought that if Drake leapt to her defense, she might just stay for that brandy after all. He didn’t. Instead he laughed as though the slut had made the most humorous comment he’d ever heard in his life. Hope fumed, caught between anger and betrayal. She hid her churning emotions behind the fists clenched tightly in the pockets of the worn trousers that she refused to trade in for one of Angelique’s cast-off dresses. Holding her head high, she swept from the room with as much dignity as the situation—and her ragged attire—would allow. It wasn’t until she reached the hall that she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

She blotted the hated moistness away as she placed her foot on the first carpeted stair. The hand that wrapped suddenly around her arm prevented further progress. Angrily, she spun on her heel, pooling all her hostility into the palm that slapped Drake Frazier’s arrogant cheek.

His head snapped back with the blow, but no recrimination glimmered in his eyes. “I guess I deserved that,” he said, his hand straying up to the handprint that stood out in scarlet against his sun-kissed cheek. “After last night, I wouldn’t blame you if you shot me in my sleep.” His eyes darkened. “I’m sorry about what I said, Hope. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

Her lips thinned, her gaze narrowed. “I told you I didn’t want to talk about that!” She tried to pull away, but his grip was too tight.

“You’ll damn well have to talk about it sometime,” he growled, annoyed with her stubbornness. “You can’t go around with these feelings bottled up inside you for the rest of your life. One day, you’re going to have to let them out. If you don’t, they’ll destroy you.”

“You’re a fine one to talk! What about the feelings you’ve harbored for your brother all these years? Or don’t they count?”

He let her arm go, positive she was too angry to flee. Crossing his arms over his chest, he scowled at her angrily. “Oh, they count all right, but the situation is completely different. At least I’m doing something with Charles. And what are you doing, sunshine? You wallow in self-pity over the family you can never have back instead of just dealing with their deaths. You push away anyone who tries to get close. You run in fear every time someone strikes a match without telling you! That’s one hell of a way to live, if you ask me.”

“No one asked you!”

She spun on her heel, determined to mount the stairs. Again, Drake’s hand prevented her. She fixed the strong fingers with a look of utter contempt, which seemed to have no effect on Drake as he abruptly whirled her back around.

“You’re getting my advice anyway, like it or not.”

She swallowed hard. His face was so close she could see each golden whisker on his sun-kissed jaw. A shiver rippled up her spine as she remembered the scratchy feel of them beneath her palm. She forced the thought away.

“Go ahead,” she prompted. “You’re so damned fired up to have your say that I don’t think anything I could say would stop you. So say it. Get it over with.”

“All right,” he growled, his grip loosening enough for the circulation to return to her fingers. “I want to know what the hell happened to the spitfire that burst into my hotel room, drunker than a skunk, desperate to find someone—
anyone
—who would fight in her brother’s place. What happened to the girl who was willing to do just about anything to save her precious brother’s life? And don’t tell me she’s standing in front of me now, because I’ll be the first one to call you a damn liar.”

She flinched when his grip turned hard, his gaze dark and unyielding. “That girl died in Thirsty Gulch, Frazier,” she whispered hoarsely. “She found out what it was like to lose everything she ever had and she grew bitter. You’d better get used to me as I am now, because she won’t be back.”

Drake dropped his hands and stepped away, shaking his head in disgust. “Pity,” he said through clenched teeth, “because that’s one thing I’ll never get used to.”

Turning on his heel, he stalked away.

His bootheels clomped over the finely polished floor long after his broad back had disappeared from view. Only when she was sure he was gone did Hope let her shoulders slump in weary defeat. She clutched the mahogany banister, her eyes misting over in tears she refused to shed.

No,
she thought.
I won’t cry. I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction of knowing his words upset me so much.

She dashed the moistness from her eyes. Again, she realized just how desperately she needed to leave this place. She couldn’t tolerate Drake’s pursuit of Angelique for another minute, and if forced to endure another confrontation like this one, she would lose what little control she still had.

Hope ran for the front door and threw it wide. Her gait was not unlike a woman running from a collapsing building. She didn’t know where she was going as she stepped into the cold, dark night and she didn’t care. Anywhere had to be better than here!

Angelique’s black wool coat hung from Hope’s shoulders and her head was concealed beneath the generous folds of the hood. Hope looked about the wharf in confusion. Stretching out before her was a profusion of masts, spars, and crisp white canvas. Merchants hustled in all directions, clogging the wide street—Commercial Street, she thought—which seemed to be a dock in itself.

Salt spray kissed her cheeks and neck, scenting the air with a pungent aroma as it mixed with the tang of citrus, figs, raisins, and the constant odor of fish.

Except for a few odd glances, her presence went unnoticed. And why not? The people milling about this seaswept place were as varied as the people cloistered safely in their grand homes on the hill. Hope would have blended with them even if she’d left the black cloak at home.

No
, she quickly corrected herself. Any woman visiting the docks at this hour of the night, decked out in faded trousers and a flannel shirt, was begging for trouble. At least, that’s the way the merchants would see it.

Hope sighed in frustration. She’d bolted from the house so quickly that she’d given no thought to what she would do once she reached the waterfront. She was lucky common sense had overrun her when it had. Having reached the stables, panting and breathless, she’d realized that, no matter what her destination, she would need money to get her there. Stealthily, she’d returned to the house, picked the lock on the study door, and, almost childishly quickly, located the drawer containing the safe. The lock there was convinced to open as easily as the one on the door. She had taken only as much money as she thought she would need, appeasing her guilt by telling herself the total was less than what Drake owed her for services rendered, then followed her nose to the docks.

Now she stood stupidly, the salt breeze tossing the cape around her ankles as she wondered what to do next. Her father had purchased the tickets that carried them around the Horn to the gold mines, so she didn’t even know how to go about doing that! And even if she could find someone to sell her a ticket, how would she know which ship to board? The wharves stretched on both sides for what seemed like miles. One ship, though splendid to look at, looked very much like the next, and the next. The names of each, painted beneath the jutting figurehead on the bows, were indecipherable in the pale silver moonlight.

“I won’t give up,”
Hope muttered to herself. In that split second, she felt a surge of self-confidence to rival any she’d felt before the fire in Thirsty Gulch. As quickly as it had come, it was gone. With determined steps, she moved closer to the activity on the docks. She was jostled rudely, and the toe of her boot was trod on twice, but she made it.

“Excuse me,” she said to a muscular laborer. The tendons on his bare forearms were rigid as he lowered a heavy crate of lemons onto the planks. He smelled of fish and other things Hope didn’t want to know the origin of. The crate dropped to his feet with a loud thud, rattling the shorn timbers beneath her boots. “I—um—I was wondering if you could help me.”

“Wi’ what?” he demanded briskly. He looked up from his chore, obviously annoyed. He was a dark-haired man with a Scottish brogue, piercing blue eyes, and a crisp, no-nonsense manner.

“I need to buy passage to Virginia. I was hoping you could help me.”

“Ha!” He set his meaty fists on his even meatier hips and glared at her as though she’d just turned into a mermaid. “I load cargo, I unload cargo. I do no’ sell tickets.”

He turned back to his job, but Hope was nothing if not persistent. Shuffling her feet, she tried again. “I really hate to bother you, but it’s important.” She rushed to add, “Not that what you’re doing isn’t, it’s just that—”

“Yew are no’ gonna leave me alone till I help yew, are yew, lass?” he asked with more insight than Hope would have given him credit for.

She smiled weakly, a gesture that softened the determined timber of her voice. “No.” Taking a deep, steadying breath, she added, “You’re the only man around here who looks like he could understand English, let alone speak it. I really wouldn’t have bothered you if it weren’t important.”

“O’Roark!” a voice boomed over the soft sound of slapping waves, emanating from the ship secured at the wharf. “I pay you to work, not talk. Get a move on!”

The one named O’Roark turned toward the ship. Although she could see no one on board who might have uttered the command, O’Roark obviously did. He nodded briskly then turned to Hope.

“We carry cargo, no’ people.” He nodded to the northern end of the wharf. “Try Lewis Wharf. The wharfinger thar migh’ be able tae help yew. Ask fer Davis—and
do no’
tell him who sent yew! It’d cost me me job.”

Davis!
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Hope nodded quickly, thanked him profusely, then rushed away. She dodged an occasional groping hand and clumsy passerby. The salt breeze continuously caught at her hood as she rushed down the street. She didn’t mind. At least while busy adjusting the coarse material she was spared having to think of what she would say to this “Davis” when she found him.

As it turned out, what she said had little to do with the matter. Davis, a tall, middle-aged, brutish man, refused to listen to a word. He was busy, he said. Too busy to be catering to a flighty young woman looking for a ship. When she’d pressed, he’d briskly informed her that the only ship leaving for Virginia any time that week was leaving Wednesday morning—tomorrow—at dawn, and that the passenger list for it was small and already full. Not even a hammock strung in the crew’s quarters remained.