To Love a Scoundrel (45 page)

"Oh, Dad," she cried. "Please don't die. You
can't
die now—not now."

Jewel searched her normally sharp brain for a lucid thought, for a way to help him, but for some reason, her mind was as blank as Harry's gaze. She continued stroking his hair, allowing her fingers to drift down to the side of his head. Suddenly she connected with something warm and sticky. She snatched her hand away and stared for a long moment at the trail of ruby-red blood rolling down her fingers.

Then Jewel Flannery Benton, who had always been indifferent to the sight of blood, did something she'd never done even in the most terrifying of situations as a Pinkerton agent. She screamed.

Pushing away from Harry, she jackknifed to her feet and tore open the compartment door. Still screaming, she stumbled into the hallway. Unmindful of her bloody fingers smearing the fine silk of her dress, she hiked up the hem of her skirt and ran headlong toward the other passengers.

"Help," she cried, making her way down the aisle between the seats. "Help me, please? My father's been hurt. I think he's dying Someone help me."

But no one seemed to care. Mothers were too busy calming the pitiful cries of their small children who'd been dashed against the seats in front of them. Adults, caught off guard by the sudden stop, moaned and groaned as they searched their own bodies for injuries. Those who'd remained unscathed were swept up in the general confusion and bewildered muttering of the other passengers.

Jewel frantically searched the crowd for a calming influence, for the features of someone,
anyone,
who appeared to be unruffled by the surprise attack on the train. As she scanned the faces, she continued to cry out, "Is there a doctor on board? Isn't there someone here who can help my father?"

Then her gaze connected with a pair of indifferent eyes. Rushing toward the stranger, she called out, "What about you? Can you help? Do you know anything about head injuries? My father's bleeding profusely."

The man glanced up at her and removed his broad- brimmed hat, revealing a head of thinning chalk-white hair. "Maybe, but I ain't no doc."

Jewel hesitated for a moment as she stared into his close-set piggish eyes. They were the palest blue, rimmed with watery pink rings. He blinked those ghostly eyes rapidly as he looked up at her, and Jewel had to glance away from them. His skin, she noticed, although nearly translucent, was mottled with dried reddish patches, monuments to its many defeats by the unforgiving sun.

"Want me to take a look at him?" the man said, as apathetic about her perusal of his unusual features as he was to the confusion around him.

Jewel made another quick scan of the crowd, then turned back to the albino. "All right, but let's hurry. He's bleeding badly."

She took off down the hallway, glancing behind her to make sure the man was following, and finally arrived back at the compartment she shared with Harry. He was sitting in the middle of the floor, holding his head with both hands.

"Dad," she cried, squeezing onto the seat beside him. "Are you all right?"

"I don't think so, princess," Harry groaned.

The albino hunkered down in front of Harry and said, "Howdy. Name's Phineas Moseley. I come to have a look at your head."

Without waiting for an invitation to do so, the man bracketed Harry's head between his meaty hands and twisted the side with the damp, matted hair toward the sunlight filtering in through the window. The albino parted the viscous shafts of hair and began picking at Harry's skull, apparently oblivious to his patient's moans of pain. Then he finally stopped probing.

Glancing up at Jewel, the man said, "Give me a length of your petticoat."

Obeying instantly, she raised her skirt and began tearing at the cotton fabric, asking as she removed the bottom ruffle, "Is he going to be all right? How bad is it?"

The albino shrugged. "Don't look too bad. Head wounds bleed a lot and usually look much worse than they are. Got an ache in the old noggin, fella?"

"Abominably so," Harry moaned, wincing as his pulse thundered in his temple.

"We'll get the bleeding stopped in a minute. Ought to be fine in a few days, even if you are concussed." Those eerie blue eyes looked back at Jewel. "Got that petticoat torn up yet, ma'am?"

"Just about," she said, straining as she ripped the last bit of stitching from the hem. When the ruffle fell free, Jewel lifted it and began to bunch it up in her hand. Then her Pinkerton documents dropped into her lap. Quickly burying them in the folds of her satin ruching, she tossed the length of cotton to the albino.

Unaware or unmindful that anything was out of order, Phineas tore the cloth in half and folded one part into a neat square pad. After pressing it against Harry's wound, he began wrapping the remaining cloth around his head and tucked the tail into the edging at the top. "There ya go," he said, dusting his palms. "Ought to be just fine." The albino got to his feet then and slid his hands under Harry's arms. After lifting him as if he were a child, Phineas gently deposited him on the seat across from Jewel.

When the man turned to leave, Harry called out to him, "Thank you kindly, sir, or should I say 'Doctor'?"

"'Sir' will do," Phineas said as he stepped out of the compartment.

"You're not a member of the medical profession?" Harry asked.

The albino shook his snow white head. "I run a slaughterhouse up to Mattoon."

Harry groaned and rested his head against the wall.

Jewel quickly said, "Thank you very much, sir," then turned her attention back to her father as Phineas bowed his head and disappeared down the hallway. "How do you really feel, Dad?"

"Terrible," Harry groaned, "but the man is correct. I shall be all right. What happened?"

"It was a train robbery," she answered nonchalantly. "Jesse James and his gang are back in business again, and they don't seem to be wasting any time."

"The James gang?" Harry raised his head. "How can you be so sure it's them?"

"They rode past the window." Jewel regarded her father, knowing if she said much more, the words might raise questions as to her true profession. Suddenly it didn't matter anymore. She smiled and said, "I recognized Jesse."

But Harry's attention was not on her implied familiarity with one of the West's most lawless men. His gaze was riveted on the gun lying on the seat beside him. "Goodness," he muttered, reaching for the weapon. "That nice man left his pistol behind. Perhaps you ought to return it."

"It's mine," she admitted, reaching out for the weapon.

"Yours, princess?" In spite of the dull ache pounding in his head, Harry's eyes and mind sharpened. "Goodness me, dear, whatever do you need with such a weapon?"

The time for lying was past, she knew. Jewel pushed back against the brocaded cushion and turned her head toward the window. She resumed chewing her lower lip as she pondered her next move and tried to visualize the rest of her life. Had all the years of seeking revenge, of plotting Harry's ruination, really come to this? A sob loomed up in her throat, but this time no amount of swallowing would lessen the pain. Tears, soft and dewy as those of a newborn baby, formed on her eyelashes. She drew in a ragged breath, but still she couldn't speak.

"Jewel dear?" Harry whispered across the short distance. "What is it, princess? What troubles you so about this gun? Have you actually
killed
someone with it?"

Harry's words brought the necessary relief. Jewel laughed, the sound strangled with emotion, then looked back at him and said, "No, but I have used this gun to frighten a few men and to bring several more to justice."

Harry brows rose high over his slightly unfocused eyes.

Jewel explained. "I wear it strapped to my leg. I carry a stiletto on the other. It's useful as a lock picker more than anything, but it comes in handy as a weapon as well."

"Jewel dear?" Harry said, concern raising the pitch of his voice. "Just what kind of activities have you indulged in during your past? I believe I have a right to know, especially if you're wanted by the law."

Again she laughed. This time the sound was slightly giddy. "Quite the opposite, Dad."

"I simply don't understand. My head must have suffered more damage than I realized."

"I think your head is all right," Jewel said. "If either of us has an addled brain right now, I'm afraid it's me. Here," she said with a rashness that surprised her, "these are mine, too."

Casually, as if they were nothing more than the morning newspapers, she tossed her identification records onto the seat beside her father. Harry reached for the items, then flinched as if they had suddenly become a nest of hissing rattlesnakes.

"Good Lord," he gasped, recoiling as he read the letters, P-i-n-k-e-r-t-o-n. Harry shot an incredulous glance at Jewel, then reached for the papers. After quickly reading them, he allowed the documents to fall from his hand, then slowly raised his anguished gaze to his daughter.

"Am I to assume, then," he said, his voice a painful whisper, "that your interest in me over the past few years has not been entirely personal?"

Suddenly ashamed of herself, Jewel began to pick at a loose strand of lilac silk hanging from the sleeve of her dress. "I would say," she began slowly, "that assumption is correct."

Unable to meet his gaze as she heard Harry's tortured groan, she tried to explain. "I thought capturing you would free me from the past somehow, that I might cut out all the pain and indignities of my childhood if I brought you in. In all that time I never once thought of you as a person, as my father."

"And now?" Harry said softly.

Jewel swallowed hard, and again, she had to look away. "Now I just don't know what to think or do about anything."

"I see," Harry muttered under his breath, although he wasn't quite sure that he did. "Then may I also assume that you have no intention of taking me to your home when we arrive in Chicago?"

The train lurched to life again, jolting them, and Jewel had to wait a moment until she found the nerve to say, "Correct again, I'm afraid. I planned to march you right to the home of Allan Pinkerton instead. I figured we'd arrive just about tea time, and then he could arrest you."

"Goodness me," Harry murmured, at a loss for his usual river of words.

Jewel sighed. "I can't do it, Dad. I can't take you in, and I can't be a detective anymore. I've made a dreadful mess of everything."

His normal insight and intuitive nature again intact, Harry leaned forward in spite of the increased pressure at his temples. "Jewel darling, I have to assume you mean that you cannot turn me in. May I also assume the reason for that is because now that you've discovered
who
your father is, you rather enjoy being with him?"

Keeping her head down, she slowly nodded. "As usual, all of your assumptions are correct."

"Jewel," he whispered, his voice low and clogged with emotion. When she didn't respond, Harry stood up and swiveled around. Then, even though space was tight, he managed to squeeze in beside her and drape his arm across her shoulders. "Do you have any idea what it means to me to know that you return my love?''

Love
? Who said anything about love? she thought for a brief moment. Jewel raised her head then and forced herself to look at her father. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time, as if they'd both been reborn. Had her father chosen the correct name for these feelings after all? Was love responsible for this fierce protective person inside her that seemed to loom up from nowhere and prevent her from turning him in? And what about his injury, the blood? What about the panic, the terror and fear, all the things she'd never truly experienced before? Were those things also a part of this emotion called love?

A single tear rolled down Jewel's cheek, but her eyes were shining with something other than pain as she said, "Yes, Dad. I think that may be it. I do... love you. All I want now is for you forgive me and be proud of me."

"That I am, princess," Harry said, his voice deep and unsteady. "That I am. I'm also particularly fond of your new name for me—Dad. It sounds so real." Then he hugged her shoulders and lightly kissed her forehead.

"It
feels
real Dad."

Those deep, wonderfully disturbing emotions, as new to him as they were to Jewel, left Harry off-balance. He cleared his throat and straightened his spine, then tried to speak with his usual composure. "Tell me," he said, hoping to relieve the ache in his throat. "What's all this nonsense about you ruining everything? If anything, I believe you've managed to patch together the broken pieces of our lives and fill in the empty spaces."

Jewel sighed. "Maybe I've mended a few fences with you, but I'm afraid I've ruined every chance I ever had with Brent."

Harry took his arm from her shoulder and stood up. Waiting until an attack of vertigo passed, he returned to his seat and stared across at his forlorn daughter. "So I was right all along," he said.

Jewel regarded him through her eyelashes, then pouted. "I don't know what you mean."

"You
are
in love with this Connors fellow."

Jewel's gaze drifted around the small compartment, landing on the iron scrollwork decorating the wooden doors, admiring the tufted velvet of the seat back, scanning the window, and basically settling on anything but Harry before she finally shrugged and said, "I don't know."