Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) (40 page)

"Of course not, dear. That would have spoiled spirit's plan."

"Spirit's plan?" Silver repeated dubiously.

Nodding, Cellie balanced her ball on the battered tin cup the superintendent had left on the window ledge. "You're supposed to marry an angel, you see. From a family of angels: Michael, Gabriel, Seraphina, and Raphael."

Somehow, Silver managed to hinge her jaw closed. "I think your spirits are talking about the wrong Raphael."

"I knew you would say that, dear. That's why I brought the crystal ball."

Silver folded her arms across her traitorously hopeful heart. Of
course
Cellie would know about the Jones family, she reminded herself. The woman had been run out of Blue Thunder by Jedidiah himself. "Are you sure Papa didn't put you up to this crystal-ball business? He's been wanting me to marry Rafe from the beginning, you know."

Cellie chuckled. "'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' Yes, I remember. But you see, Max wouldn't have
let
you marry a flimflammer. Not unless he'd had some inkling of the good waiting to be unearthed, like a treasure, inside that dear boy. And that's why I couldn't let Max go to the Mining Exchange with you last month. I know how angry you were with me, Silver, but if I hadn't found some excuse to keep Max here, your whole future would have changed. You would have married that murderous Aaron Townsend. And you might not have survived the honeymoon."

Silver felt her limbs drain of warmth. "Y-you know about Aaron?"

"My dear, the spirits predicted his coming quite clearly at the séance. 'A flesh-and-blood mortal who would do others wrong.' Weren't you listening?"

"Yes, but..." Silver swallowed, not sure she liked how neatly these coincidences were stacking up. Cellie
could
have heard about Aaron from Fred. After all, she'd accompanied Papa when he'd bailed Fred out of jail. "Well, anyway, I'm not going to marry Aaron. Or Rafe either, for that matter."

"You don't mean that," Cellie said gently.

"Yes, I do!" To her mortification, her voice broke. "He doesn't love me, Cellie. I was nothing more than a mark to him. And if I never see him again, it will be too soon."

Cellie frowned, smoothing her hand over the ball. "You didn't say that to
him
did you?"

"Well, not in so many words. But I did call his bluff. I told him he made lying his business and I wouldn't fall for any more of his tricks. Then I threw him out of the house. Tavy too."

"Oh dear. Tavy too?" Cellie worried her bottom lip. Squinting once more, she raised the ball to chin level. "You've set things in motion, I'm afraid. We are all connected, you see. Who we meet, and how our lives come together, are all part of a divine plan. Still, I had hoped by warning everyone at the séance, the plan could be shifted a bit..."

"That doesn't make sense," Silver said, knitting her brows. "If the plan's divine, how can it be shifted?"

"Our destinies may be written in the stars, Silver, but we still have free choice. That makes it hard to predict anyone's future with total accuracy. You can refuse to marry Rafe, of course, but..."

"But what?" Silver demanded uneasily.

"This isn't good," Cellie muttered, shaking her head. "Not good at all."

"What? What's not good?"

Cellie shook her head again.

"Cellie, please! What do you see?" She peered anxiously over the fortune-teller's shoulder, trying in vain to glimpse whatever Cellie was seeing in that perfectly clear globe.

But Cellie snatched the orb away and stuffed it back inside her sling. "I have to find Max. There's nothing we can do for Benson, but Rafe we can intercept at Swindler's Creek."

Silver nearly strangled on her breath. The truth dawned hard and fast. "Did... Aaron kill Benson?"

Cellie waved fretfully. She was already on her way out the door. "There's no time to explain," she called, her words trailing after her as she dodged a barrel of dynamite and ducked into the mine.

Silver's legs were beginning to shake. She swayed against the desk.

At the séance, Cellie said blood would be shed in retribution
.

She sickened, clapping a hand over her mouth.

Dear God, I have to find Rafe. I have to warn him
!

Chapter 15

Camouflaged by olive green shadow, Rafe crouched downwind of the otter slide on the banks of Swindler's Creek. A trio of Tavy's cousins frolicked beneath the cottonwood trees. Forepaws pressed to their sides, round ears squeezed closed, they zipped as sleek as torpedoes down the mud-slickened grass on their bellies. A round of uproarious barking would follow each splash, and then the merrymakers would waddle as fast as their webbed paws could carry them back up the hill for another dive.

Tavy was mesmerized. As motionless as the mushrooms festooning her log, she stood on her hind paws and gawked. Indeed, the only sign of life she'd betrayed in the last half hour had been her twitching whiskers. Rafe tried to be grateful to see her so enthralled by her brethren. Otters tended to be solitary, seeking each other out only to mate and, occasionally, to play. It had been a rare coup for him to stumble across this trio of males. And he wasn't sure he was happy about it.

Do I have to lose Silver and Tavy all in the same week?

Glumly, he envisioned the weather-scoured wagon, with its peeling blue paint, that creaked with each stomp of the nag somewhere behind him. He'd been forced to trade his carriage for something more practical. So much for the luxuries of dukedom.

And so much for Jimmy. He couldn't afford a retainer anymore. Still, practicality hadn't been much of a consolation, not when he'd had to face Jimmy. The youth had been so crestfallen to learn he'd have to return to melon picking that he'd nearly wept. Rafe hadn't blamed him. He'd tried to gentle the blow by telling the boy to keep his livery as a souvenir of the "grand and glorious service he'd rendered a duke." Jimmy cheered somewhat at the prospect until he realized he'd have to tell Tavy good-bye.

Rafe was still commiserating.

Damn the whole lousy marriage idea, anyway. How could something so right between him and Silver go so wrong? Was God toying with his fate? Perhaps more to the point, did God even
exist?
Because if this misery was the reward sinners got for praying, Rafe thought bitterly, then God could rest assured He'd never hear "Amen" from Raphael Jones's mouth again.

A strange thumping roused him from his brooding. Frowning, he listened more intently, straining his ears for the familiar sound of creaking over the otters' barks. A shivery sense of foreboding seized him. The birds had grown quiet. Too quiet.

Unwilling to frighten off Tavy's prospective family, he eased backwards out of his nest of reeds. He intended to circle through the undergrowth, making a wide swath around the wagon, before approaching it openly. He never got the chance. Suddenly, a gun hammer clicked. Sunlight glinted off the muzzle aimed point-blank at his head. He froze, and his captor gave a raspy chuckle.

"Well, howdy Mr. Smart-ass Duke," came an unmistakable Texas drawl. "We've tracked you fer damned near two days across this big ol' mountain, but I reckon hide 'n seek is over now. Hell fire. I was expectin' you to be duded up in rubies and diamonds."

Another thump resounded through the ominously quiet wood. Rafe suspected somebody was hammering a gun stock against the lock of his trunk. He suppressed his initial inclination to go after the bastard, and cautiously tipped his head to regard his captor.

A stream of tobacco juice nearly hit him in the eye.

Rafe did his best not to grimace. Instead, he donned a bland smile and his smoothest Kentucky drawl.

"I apologize for the inconvenience, er..."
Marshal? Deputy?
He searched the foul-smelling checkered flannel of the one-eyed Texican's shirt for a badge. None was visible, not even on the gunman's vest, where the flies were happily swarming through the matted, black bear fur.

Rafe wasn't reassured, though. This was the same Texican who'd been stalking him since his arrival in Aspen. And that meant he was either a paid assassin (
bounty hunter,
as the law agencies euphemistically called them) or an outlaw. "I'm afraid you've been tracking the wrong man. As you can tell, I'm no more British than you are."

"Hey, Snake!" This cry, rife with disappointment, came from the vicinity of the wagon. "The sumbitch doesn't have any money. And no damned crown jewels, neither! Just a coupla old darned socks and this here beat-up shaving kit."

Snake, who was no doubt aptly named, and not just for the patch over his left eye, bared yellow teeth. "So where'd ya hide them?" he snarled, shoving the muzzle under Rafe's chin. "We want the jewels."

"Yeah, that's right," the second man said, thrashing into the thicket. Except for the pronounced slouch of his shoulders, someone could have run a flag up his spine; he was that lanky. "Say, Snake, the way you got that ol' John Bull on his knees, you'd think he was bowin' to royalty."

"That's 'cause Gracie here knows his place afore Texicans."

"The sumbitch'd have to be dumber'n I am not to be prayin' fer mercy with yer .45 shoved up his nose." The second man grinned, as if he'd just made the most profound observation of his life. "Say, Snake, you gonna make him dance?"

"Later." Snake, apparently, wasn't as easily distracted. "Ye're burning daylight, Gracie." He ground the muzzle into Rafe's Adam's apple. "Start talkin'."

Rafe swallowed, cursing himself for the involuntary reaction. He was sure the outlaws would mark it as fear. "What makes you think I'd leave diamonds and rubies lying around in an unguarded wagon?" he hedged, wracking his brain for a way out of this ambush.

"'Cause Mr. Townsend said we could have whatever jewels we found—"

"Shut up, Loon," Snake snapped, tossing his cohort a vile glare.

It didn't do the trick, though. Either Loon was too stupid to realize he'd exposed his employer and the bogus incentive that Townsend himself had probably invented, or Loon figured it didn't matter, because Snake would plug any witnesses.

"Shut up yerself, Snake," Loon groused. "I'm tired of you always being the stud buzzard. Mr. Townsend hired us both to kill Gracie, and fer the same wage. That means you ain't more important than me."

"Whatever he's paying you, I'll triple it," Rafe countered quickly, deciding his ducal identity was his best chance of survival after all.

"With what?" Snake sneered. "Patched socks?"

Rafe met the Texican's eye squarely. "I'm a duke, remember? I've got plenty of money back in England—"

"Yeah, like we're
that
stupid," Loon jeered. "You ain't sailing back to England to get no money."

Actually, Rafe had been hoping for a jaunt to Aspen's busy telegraph office. Or a crowded street.

"If you don't let me wire my castle for help, how do you expect to get your ransom?" he said evenly.

"Ransom?" they chimed in unison.

"Sure. If you kidnap the duke of Chumley, you ought to get a couple thousand farthings, at least."

"A couple thousand farthings? Hot damn!" Loon cackled like his namesake, which only cast further doubt on the soundness of his mind. "Did ya hear that, Snake? We'll be rich!"

"Rafe?"

He stopped breathing. The outlaws did too. The call had been Silver's. Anxious and questing, it reverberated through the fading afternoon like a death knell—her own.

"Holy shit." Loon craned his long neck over his shoulder. "It's a skirt! A purty one, too. And from the looks of it, she's headed this way!"

Rafe clenched his fists, if only to keep from doing something insane: like punching one of the outlaws and getting himself killed for his chivalry. For the love of God, what was Silver doing
here
, on horseback, without a single escort and twilight humming fast through the trees?

Loon and Snake locked eyes. Snake grinned. Loon licked his lips.

"Sounds like the little filly's plumb lost her man," Snake jeered.

"Just like Bo Peep," Loon commiserated.

"Lucky fer her, I got me a ram."

"Hey!" Loon whispered hotly. "I saw her first!"

"Yeah? Well, bully fer you. 'Cause I'm calling dibs."