Midnight Star

“I’m glad you can see it now. Who knows? In ten years, even five, perhaps men will be out here building wildly all along this stretch. We’re indeed lucky today. Most often this area is blanketed with fog.”

  Chauncey swiveled about to stare at a rugged tree-covered cliff. “That is where I would build my house,” she said.

  “Mighty damp, ma’am. And the fog is no respecter of beautiful views. Shall we go down to the beach?”

  Chauncey’s ribs were still sore, but not that sore, she decided. As for walking, she refused to think about it. “Lead on, sir.”

  Delaney tossed one of the blankets over his shoulders and walked to her side of the carriage. “Miss Jameson,” he said formally, then winked at her, and gently drew her into his arms.

  “Really,” she began, “I am quite all right, Delaney!”

  “Hush, my dear. It is my pleasure, I assure you.”

  She didn’t mean to, but her hands curled around his shoulders. She felt his taut muscles rippling beneath her fingers. A strange, completely unexpected warmth curled in the pit of her stomach. At least she thought it was her stomach. “I must be hungry,” she muttered, confused.

  She felt the rumbling laughter in his chest. “If we have a picnic out here, the sea gulls will bombard us. They have no pride.”

  Just for a moment, she told herself, as she relaxed against him, just for a moment. She breathed in the salty air and felt the ocean breeze tear at her hair.

  Delaney set her down reluctantly, just a few feet beyond the tide line. He unfolded the blanket and spread it on the sand. “Your sofa, ma’am.”

  She glanced at him beneath her lashes, wondering why the odd feelings that were centered well below her waist had calmed somewhat. “I don’t understand,” she muttered, and carefully eased herself down on the blanket. She arranged her skirts primly about her legs.

  Delaney lay on his side next to her, propping himself up on his elbow. “What don’t you understand?” he asked.

  “I’m not hungry anymore,” she said, still puzzled.

  “Why did you think you were? I recall you stuffed yourself at lunch.”

  She gazed out over the water, unaware that he was watching her face closely. She shrugged, then winced at the slight pulling feeling in her ribs. “It’s silly. But when you were carrying me, my stomach felt empty, and rumbly, sort of.”

  His eyes glittered. “So sophisticated,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” she asked, turning to frown at him.

  “Not a thing, Chauncey.” He sat up and began to sift sand between his fingers. “I come here when I want to think things out,” he said, seemingly intent on the piles of sand he was building.

  “And are you thinking important things now?”

  “I believe so,” he said vaguely, the damned sand holding all his attention. “Things seem to become clearer out here, and more simple.”

  He shifted his position slightly, and Chauncey found herself looking at his long legs, outlined snugly in dark brown flannel trousers. His thighs were well-muscled, and her eyes followed their line upward. She shocked herself when she looked blatantly at the taut outline of his groin. She blinked, aware that the silly feeling was back in her stomach again.

  “Chauncey,” he said, his voice heavy with feeling. Her eyes flew to his face and she felt herself grow quite red.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted out. “I . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with me! You must think I’m awful.”

  Suddenly he lay back on the blanket and spread his arms wide. His gaze held hers and she noticed in the bright sunlight the dancing golden flecks lighting the liquid brown of his eyes. “I have decided,” he announced grandly, “that I have been run aground. Behold a collapsed man. Do with me what you will, Chauncey.”

  She ran her tongue nervously over her lower lip, and Delaney wondered frantically if he would embarrass the both of them, for he could feel the nearly painful swelling of his manhood.

  “What do you mean?” she asked at last, her eyes, thankfully, still on his face.

  “So it is my total surrender you demand?”

  He looks as if he wants to consume me, she thought with blurred insight. She was suddenly frightened, and quickly turned her face away from him. Where was her burning hatred of him? Where was that unyielding part of her that had been her anchor for so very long?

  “More thrust and parry?” he asked gently, the irony of his tone reaching her.

  “I am . . . afraid,” she said, and he couldn’t mistake the honesty in her voice.

  “Don’t you remember my telling you last night that I would never harm you? I might be a brash American, my dear, but I am not lost to all honor.”

  She felt her breath catch harshly in her throat. She wanted to yell at him that she wasn’t afraid of him. It was herself she feared. Her mind fastened on his words. Not lost to honor. But he was, damn him, he was! Dear God, she wanted to hate him, plunge a dagger into his chest! She realized that she was getting exactly what she wanted. How many weeks had she been set on her single-minded course to bring about this moment? You must take advantage of the situation, she told herself angrily.

  She turned back to him and gave him a dazzling smile, trying desperately to exude a wanton promise in her eyes. To her utter chagrin, he laughed softly.

  “Oh, Chauncey, you haven’t the . . . experience to play the seductress.”

  She stiffened alarmingly, frightened that he seemed to see so easily through her.

  “Nor is there any need,” he continued. He sat up, turning gracefully toward her. Gently he cupped her chin in his hand.

  “I never before realized how it would feel to let another person become so important, so vital to me.”

  “Then why have you been so . . . elusive, as if you were mocking me?”

  “I’ve wondered the same thing myself, believe me! It all started the night of the masked ball. You were such fun to tease, never at a loss for a stinging retort. I suppose I wanted to see how outrageous you would become.”

  “So outrageous that I nearly killed myself!”

  “And what man could ignore such a dramatic gesture? You please me, Chauncey, as no woman has ever done before. You delight the imagination.” He wanted desperately to kiss her, to pull her down with him on the blanket. He dropped his hand from her chin.

  “You become the poet,” she said with forced lightness, but her voice was shaking in spite of herself.

  He waved away her words. “I’m twenty-eight years old, Chauncey, not too much older than you. I’m a rich man, and have no need for your money.”

  “Penelope?” she whispered.

  “That young lady will suffer nothing more than a bout of wounded vanity.”

  Chauncey moistened her lips again, not wanting to ask, but compelled to. “Your . . . mistress?”

  He frowned. “How do you know about that?”

  “Penelope told me. She said you would give her up, once you were married to her.”

  Delaney thought about Marie’s giving soft body, her French practicality, her basic kindness. He remembered the brooding anger he had felt at himself that night before, when he had thrust into her body, all his thoughts on Chauncey lying in his bed.

  “Penelope shouldn’t have told you anything about her,” he said.

  “It is something I really don’t understand. Do all men have need of . . . well, mistresses?”

  “Indeed so,” he said gravely, his eyes twinkling as his sense of humor came to the fore. “But it’s not quite the same thing as having a wife.”

  “Then I suppose it must be all right. Penelope was being selfish then?”

  He howled with laughter, unable to help himself. He held his stomach, gasping for breath.

  “I do not see what is so funny!”

  “You, Chauncey,” he said, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He saw that she was genuinely confused, and said very seriously, “I want you for my wife. I don’t want a mistress. I want you to be furious at the thought of my touc
hing another woman. I want you to be quite selfish. Now, my sophisticated girl, will you please say yes and get me out of my misery?”

  “Say yes to what, sir?” she asked pertly, enjoying having the upper hand at last.

  “Complete and utter surrender,” he sighed. “Will you marry me?”

  “Do you know,” she said thoughtfully, studying his face, “I think it just might be a good idea.”

  “A quite good idea,” he said. It occurred to him on their ride home that neither of them had mentioned love. He frowned at Lucas’ back. Surely Chauncey must love him, to have gone to such lengths. Why hadn’t she said anything? My sophisticated lady is shy, he thought. All in good time. As to his own feelings, he dismissed the notion of love. He wanted her; she pleased him. Love would come in due course.

  13

  “All right, Del,” Dan Brewer said, thumping down his frothy mug of beer, “you’ve dragged me out of the bank, twisted my arm to come into the El Dorado, and forced me to drink this damned beer. Will you now tell me what’s going on?”

  “Forced? You have foam on your upper lip, Dan.”

  Dan swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes suddenly narrowed. “It’s nothing to do with Miss Jameson, is it? She is doing just fine now?”

  “Oh yes, she is all pert and sassy-mouthed again, and I’m going to marry her.”

  “You’re what?”

  “I trust that you aren’t going to be heartbroken, along with a dozen other men?”

  “Good God! Congratulations, Del!” He shook his head, bemused. “I’ll be damned. But not surprised, no, not really.” He leaned forward in his chair and cocked an eyebrow at his friend. “Having her in your house did it, huh?”

  “I’m certain,” Delaney said softly, only a hint of menace in his voice, “that you aren’t picturing any . . . improper scenes?”

  “No,” Dan said, “I’m not. At least, if I was, I’m not now!”

  “I knew I could count on you, Dan.”

  Delaney sat back in his chair, briefly scanning the group of men in the most flamboyant gambling saloon in San Francisco. It was late afternoon, and the regulars were already hunched over circular tables, their cards fanned out in front of them. A tinny piano was blaring in the background, blending in with jovial male voices at the huge mahogany bar and sounds of poker chips flicked onto the tables. There were only a couple of garishly dressed women present at this time of day. Their efforts were saved for the night.

  “Do you know something?” Del said finally, almost as if speaking to himself. Not waiting for a response, he continued, “I have come to believe in the past two hours—that is the length now of our engagement—that it was somehow inevitable. Sounds rather idiotic, doesn’t it?”

  “Does this mean when I decide to marry I’m going to begin waxing philosophical?” Dan asked, grinning. He watched Delaney swallow a generous portion of his beer. “Inevitable? Well, Miss Jameson did come in asking for you the same day she arrived in San Francisco.”

  “Do you think my fame as the brilliant lover lured her over from England?”

  “I’d like to be a mouse in your pocket if you asked her that!”

  “Oh, I probably will. No blushes from her, I’m sure. She’d probably tell me she heard I needed instructions.” But that wasn’t true; he knew it now. She was incredibly naive, her working knowledge of her own sexual responses to him, a man, nonexistent.

  “What about Penelope Stevenson and Tony Dawson?”

  “The two flies in the ointment? Well, set your mind at ease about Penelope. I told her yesterday when I took her riding that I was going to marry Chauncey.”

  “Chauncey?”

  “Elizabeth’s nickname. I find it rather . . . endearing.”

  “Quite confident about the lady’s feelings, weren’t you?”

  “Perhaps. But it didn’t really matter. I would no more marry Penelope Stevenson than sign over my ownership of the bank to you!”

  “How did Penelope react to your announcement?”

  “Let me put it this way. I never knew that an eighteen-year-old girl, supposedly raised in the most proper way imaginable, could spout such colorful language. After she finished raking Chauncey up and down, she lit into me. Her parting shot was to tell me to go to hell. I spoke then to Bunker. He surprised me. No bluster at all. Merely sighed and wished me well. Told me in a wistful voice that I was a lucky man.”

  “It’s not as if you were engaged to the chit, for heaven’s sake, Del.”

  “True, but Penelope has a high opinion of herself and her charms. I had heard that she was spreading the word that it was she who was holding me off. Amazing, absolutely amazing.”

  “You know, Del,” Dan said thoughtfully, “you really don’t know Miss Jameson very well. She’s been here under a month.”

  “Yes,” Delaney said slowly, gazing into his beer mug, “that’s quite true.” He gave Dan a rakish grin. “I will now have years to get to know her. She is a puzzle that I will delight in solving, but slowly, very slowly.”

  James Cora, owner of the El Dorado, strolled over to their table, his habitual cigar dangling in the corner of his mouth. A tall man, he was floridly handsome, his wide, white-toothed smile always slightly suspect, at least in Delaney’s jaundiced view. “Del, Dan, how are you boys doing?”

  “Making money, but I doubt at your rate, Jim,” Delaney said, shaking the older man’s hand. “I don’t need to ask you how your business is faring.”

  “Nope,” James Cora said, turning his head to proudly survey his opulent kingdom. “How ’bout I buy you boys another beer? On the house?”

  “Sure,” Dan said. “But I don’t intend to stay around and lose all my money playing poker with you.”

  “I’ll live, son, I’ll live, which is more than I can say about that fool Jack Darcy. Stupid ass.”

  “I heard he accused Baron Jones of cheating,” Dan said.

  “Not a smart move,” Del said, shaking his head, remembering his own duel with Baron more than two years before. “The man’s an excellent shot and something of a sadist to boot. Is it true he moved in on Darcy’s mistress before the man was even buried?”

  “Yep,” James Cora said. “Nice piece,” he added, dismissing quite coldly the entire incident. “You boys keep out of trouble.” He nodded to them and strode over to greet Sam Brannan.

  “That man is going to come to a bad end,” Dan said, shaking his head.

  “You’re doubtless right, particularly with Bella and her rages. I heard she threw a vaseful of wilted flowers with slimy stems right at his head just last week.”

  “Let us trust that a wife is less violent than a mistress! Incidentally, Del, what about Marie?”

  Delaney gave him a twisted smile, remembering Chauncey’s innocent questions regarding men and their need for mistresses. It occurred to him that she had said not one word about his giving up his mistress. She hadn’t even seemed overly impressed that he’d willingly offered to give her up.

  “I’ll speak to her soon, Dan. I doubt she’ll have any difficulty at all finding a generous new protector.”

  They spoke of business for a while; then Delaney pulled out his vest watch. “I’m having dinner with my future wife. Keep my news under your hat for the time being, though I doubt Bunker Stevenson will show such restraint, particularly if he has informed his wife.”

  “Have you set a date yet?”

  Delaney shook his head. “No. Chauncey was exhausted from our carriage ride to the ocean. I left her sleeping soundly. I’ll talk to her about it this evening.”

  * * *

  Delaney carried his future wife downstairs to the dining room for supper. When he eased her into a chair, he whispered in a wicked voice, “Tell me you’ve got that funny feeling in your stomach again.”

  She smiled up at him, clearly puzzled. “I am hungry,” she said.

  He couldn’t wait to show her the source of her hunger, and the thought of caressing and fondling her made his body t
ense with desire. He wanted to whisper to her that she would learn all about funny sensations on their wedding night. But he said nothing. She was so bloody innocent about sex, and he drew the line at embarrassing her in that way, at least until they were married.

  When he was seated and Lin had served their dinner, Delaney raised his wineglass to her. “To us, Chauncey.”

  She hesitated almost imperceptibly, then raised her own glass. “Yes, to us.”

  “While you were having pleasant dreams this afternoon, I was with Dan. He sends his congratulations.”

  “That is kind of him. Umm. Lin makes the most delicious pork. And all these crunchy fresh vegetables.”

  “She uses a Chinese ingredient called soy sauce. And ginger. Did I mention that you look utterly delicious yourself this evening?”

  “Yes”—she grinned at him—“you did. And you, sir, do not exactly look like a chimney sweep yourself. Very dazzling, I should say, in that black frock coat. It makes your eyes look like dark honey. You do have very expressive eyes, you know, Delaney, but I imagine that many women have told you that before.”

  “Certainly,” he said blandly. He felt inordinately pleased to hear it from her, the woman who would be his wife.

  “Conceited man,” she teased him.

  “At least now I have justification for it. The most beautiful woman in San Francisco is going to marry me.”

  For an instant she felt choked with misery. And something else. Guilt. Stop it, Chauncey! You must do it, you have to! He deserves it!

  “I do not wish to be simply a . . . decoration, Del,” she said, her falsely light voice not fooling him for an instant. “A wife who exists only through her husband.”

  “Have I asked that of you?”

  “No. But I know what Englishmen are like. I realized after I broke my engagement to Sir Guy that he thought me a brainless, silly female, good only to run his household in the ever-present shadow of his dear mother.”

  “I am not English, my dear, and there are no shadows in this house.”

  She fiddled with her fork a moment, making designs in the small pile of vegetables left on her plate. “I . . . I do not want to lose control of my money.” She raised her eyes to his face and saw that he was regarding her intently, his eyes puzzled. “What I mean to say is that after I came into my inheritance, I spent two months with a man of business in London learning how to . . . well, how to handle money. He told me that in America, just as in England, when a woman marries, she loses control of her money. She becomes an appendage, completely dependent upon her husband. I don’t want that.”