Proper Scoundrel (9 page)

“The doors do have locks, however?” he asked. “In the event such comings and goings are to be discouraged, due to a need for ... privacy.”

Marcus began to advance.

Jade stepped back. She couldn’t let him touch. “Wait a minute.” She was trying to thwart him, not entice him. She needed to regain her control, her purpose. She couldn’t turn over a strength to him that others needed to draw from her.

She took one step back for each he took forward, until she realized the implications. “Damn it, Marcus! Stop right there.”

He did, his look hot enough to melt a saint’s resolve. Devil’s eyes burning her alive.

“I know that look. You’re nibbling on me in your mind again, I can tell. Stop it right now!”

“Fine. I’d rather nibble in truth.” He reached for her.

She extended her arm fast, slapping her palm against his chest, stopping his forward surge and holding him at bay. “This ... familiarity between us has to stop. We can’t work together and continue our ... familiarity ... of last night.”

He gave her his cocky half-grin. “You already used that word. Try the right word—intimacy.”

“Familiarity’s the better word, damn it!”

When Marcus eased away from her restraining hand and went to look out the window, Jade thought she finally got through.

His silence did not make her worry that she hurt him. She did not wish to console him or turn him into her arms.

She must remain intractable to make him understand the importance of ...

Had his shoulders just rippled?

Yes, there, it happened again. More forceful.

Now an all-out quake. He burst into laughter.

“Damn it, Marcus,” Jade snapped straightening her spine, firming her resolve, trying to recall any of a thousand litanies against men.

But louder than Gram’s voice, rang the joy in Marcus’s laughter.

Jade would wager her missing fortune that her grandmother had never come across a man who found anything in life worth laughing about. Both their lives might have been different if Gram had.

But it didn’t matter; she must remain in charge and make her own choices. “I insist on a purely business relationship between us, Marcus. No dancing, no nibbling, no kisses, and above all, no commands—other than the ones I issue to my man of affairs.”

That seemed to sober him fast enough. He ran his hand through his hair, making him look all mussed and ... kissable, drat him.

He regarded her, trying to read her, showing concern, which annoyed her to no end.

“You seem ... frightened,” he said. “Of what you felt last night?”

She refused to answer; she hated to admit to weakness. But he had reason to be confused; she had taken him by surprise this morning, especially after last night.

“Of course,” he said, understanding seeming to grow apace with concern—damn his white-knight’s soul. “What’s between us is powerful. And it can seem overwhelming.”

He gave her a look, like Ivy’s pup at her begging best, his big eyes hopeful. “But that doesn’t mean—”

“No. Yes! Yes it does mean. We have to start fresh, as if we’re strangers. I hired you. You work for me. If you can’t follow this necessary course, you’ll be discharged.”

Despair washed over her. A shrew; she sounded like a shrew. Damn it, wasn’t there some sane middle ground between shrew and strumpet?

“I take it you’re wearing those clothes to prove you mean business.” Marcus raked her with his gaze once more, but this time his look revealed scorn—which she would not let bother her. She needed to alter the course of their relationship. She had no choice.

“I’m wearing these clothes because they’re comfortable and easy to work in, because this is who I am. I won’t lose myself to you, or anyone. I won’t, Marcus.”

“I understand, Jade. I do. In a lot of ways, I’m as frightened by the force of this ... familiarity ... as you are.” He flashed his cocky grin, but she fought the pull. He sobered and ran a hand through his hair. “Believe me, no other woman ever came close to rattling me the way you do. If one did, I’d have walked.”

“Walk now, then,” she said, missing him already, hurting, physically as well as emotionally, at the very notion. “It’ll be better for both of us.”

Shaken by the suddenness and stubbornness of Jade’s reversal, Marcus admitted to himself that he would stay, of course. He needed to, and the railroad barely entered into his rationale. He couldn’t leave because something in Jade called to him, as something in him, he believed, called to her. He must be near at hand when she heeded the call.

Pray God it would happen soon.

“I agree to our relationship remaining strictly business for now,” he said, going so far as to sit behind the desk and pull the ledger over to prove it, but he could tell she suspected a trap.

“Promise?”

“Look, Jade—”

Something tapped the door so softly Marcus wasn’t certain he’d heard it.

“Come in?” Jade called, as unsure as him.

The door opened slowly. “Mucks?” Emily saw him and trotted in, incredibly adorable, her pink dotted muslin dress rumpled, a shoe and stocking on one foot, nothing on the other.

Marcus rolled his chair back as she approached, grinning at the small ray of sunshine in the cloudburst his morning had become. “Emily? Does Lacey know you’re here?”

Emily shrugged, raised her leg high and lay her bare foot on his knee.

Marcus wiggled a tiny toe. “This little piggy went to market—”

Emily giggled.

“I thought you came to play piggies. No?”

She shook her head. “No!”

“Did Tweenie steal your sock?”

She shook that little head harder, swinging a profusion of yellow curls to and fro.

“No?” Marcus hauled her onto his lap. “What happened to your shoe and stocking then Emmy-bug?”

“Tweenie piddled on it.”

Marcus looked up to share his amusement with Jade and caught a rather wild look in her eyes. She reminded him of a cornered animal. Panicked. As if she were being ... tortured.

By observing him and Emily?

Tortured ... that’s how she’d been acting all morning. Not sure where to turn, cornered. Why hadn’t he seen it?

Could she be so torn by what she felt for him that she feared something as simple as his gentleness with Emily would break her resolve?

Perhaps she didn’t want a business relationship anymore than he did, but ran from anything deeper.

He needed to remember that she’d been taught, and seen enough horrors to believe, that a gentle man must be an aberration. And when confronted by one ... what?

Her life’s lessons made no sense, that’s what. She’d lost her grounding—trembled on unsure foundations. That, he could comprehend.

At least he had interacted with the opposite sex. Jade held no experience relating to men of her station, except for him. And what had he done but storm the ramparts?

Bloody hell.

He had gone too fast. Frightened her.

If he allowed it, this affinity they seemed to have for each other—almost as if they’d shared a life before—would frighten him as well. Frighten him senseless, if truth be told.

Perhaps they did need to slow down. Backtrack. Start again.

Fine. He would give her the business relationship she desired until she begged for something more. Denying his feelings would be difficult, but if he must be firm and businesslike to win a woman who needed gentling more than any other of his experience —no small amount of experience—he faced a challenge that should cool him while it warmed her. A double challenge.

“Emmy,” he said, ready to make a start. “Jade is my employer, so I must request a few minutes to take you and bring you back to Lacey.”

Emily nodded and regarded Jade. “Mucks miss Jade.”

Marcus rolled his eyes. “So much for business. You see, Jade, I care for Emily and she cares for me, and people who care for each other help each other. Ours is a non-business relationship. It’s called friendship.”

He moved toward the door, but Emily puckered her lips to give Jade a goodbye kiss and so he brought Emily to Jade.

Marcus turned away from the love Jade revealed when she kissed Emily and fought the yearning to be the recipient of such unfettered devotion from Jade.

Business-only, he reminded himself in frustration. “You can deduct from my salary an amount equal to the time it takes me to get Emmy settled. That’s the best I can do business-wise at the moment,” he said as he left.

The door slammed behind him.

Jade stood alone in the centre of her study in pain, as if something tangible had crushed her, her arms and legs weighted down.

Friendship, she thought. There was the middle ground. “Marcus! Marcus, wait.” She went after them.

In the hall, Marcus turned, losing his smile when he saw her, making Jade think she’d hurt him. But he was a man; he couldn’t be as confused and vulnerable as her. Men didn’t get their feelings hurt. They had none to injure.

But she looked for signs of emotional wounds anyway; Gram might have been wrong about that. Just look at the way Marcus sensed Emily’s—

“Well?” he said with impatience. “What have I got, fifteen minutes? Ten?”

“No. No, it’s not that. This doesn’t have to do with business.”

The sardonic look he threw her conveyed a silent, Damn it, make up your mind.

Jade looked down, feeling foolish, and focused on Emily’s cute, little, naked foot. She cupped it then raised it in her palm. “Do you believe how tiny her feet are?”

Marcus softened and became the old Marcus, ready to listen.

Jade warmed. “I ... I just realized that—”

Lacey came rushing around the corner and nearly ran into them. “Emily Patience Warren, you naughty girl, where have you been?”

Emily hid her face in Marcus’s neck.

“I wondered about that,” he said.

A man shouted for Jade. A woman screamed.

Jade regarded Marcus and Lacey—both shocked—and ran.

The spectacle in her foyer reminded Jade of a village fair where the greased pig got loose. She could hardly take it in. The front door stood open, a mama cat at the threshold, a kitten by its scruff, looked to be considering the suitability of lodgings. Calm amid chaos.

Children ran in circles chasing Tweenie—or she chased them—through a crowd of conjecturing spectators.

Abigail, Lilly, oh several of the women, and Lester, Harry and Dirk were bent over something on the floor.

When Jade stepped closer, she saw the body. “Oh my God.”

Whether man or woman, alive or dead, she didn’t know, but her heart started pounding. “Move aside. Somebody—Lester —get Beecher.”

“I think she’s in labour,” Lacey said paling when she saw the woman. “She ... she has to be moved to a room.” Rather than kneeling to help, Lacey backed away.

Jade saw the pain in her eyes. “Millie, take Lacey into the kitchen and make her some tea, would you? I think she’s feeling faint. Marcus, I may need your help.”

Marcus nodded and handed Emily to Lilly. Then he came to kneel beside the woman.

Jade felt better having him there, and damn it, hadn’t she just finished telling herself that needing him had to stop.

Angry with herself for thinking of herself, Jade gave her attention to the young woman with a swollen belly, prostrate in the middle of her floor. Alive, thank God, and watching them.

Jade lifted a dirty hand to hold it, to tell the soon-to-be mother she was among friends. The poor thing looked as if she’d been starving, likely living on the street. “Can you tell me your name?”