This Fierce Splendor (7 page)

“Is it far?” She had to half-skip to keep up with his long stride.

“Far? No, it’s only at the other end of town. It shouldn’t take us more than fifteen minutes to walk there.” He smiled. “But we have a stop to make on the way.”

“Where?”

“Sam Li’s bathhouse. There’s something I want to pick up.”

“Firecrackers?” Elspeth eyed with alarm the stack of slender sticks linked with long fuses. She had been curious about the large blanket-wrapped bundle since Patrick had picked it up from Sam Li’s shack, but she had never imagined it contained anything as exotic as firecrackers. “What are we going to do with firecrackers?” she asked again.

Patrick was busy tying the fuses together. “You said you wanted to get Dom’s attention and make a statement of your determination.” He looked up and grinned at her. “This will make a very resounding statement, I guarantee.”

“I’m sure it will,” she said faintly. She glanced at the large whitewashed house across the street. It was a fashionable two-story wooden building; eaves and cupolas abounded and a long, gracious porch ran the entire expanse of its front. The candles in the two decorative lanterns on either side of the door had burned low, and all the windows were dark. “But I had a more sedate statement in mind.”

“You want Dom jerked from his lair and forced to confront you in the fastest possible way.” His nimble fingers moved to the second string of firecrackers. “This was the only way I could think for you to do it.”

“The only way or the most interesting way?” she asked dryly. “I think you’re planning on enjoying this.”

“Sure, I always did like a good show.” Patrick started on the third string. “If you can think of a more effective idea, we’ll drop this plan and go on with yours.”

Elspeth certainly wished she could think of something else. She had an idea Patrick’s plan had elements
more explosive than the firecrackers. “Your uncle is going to be very angry.”

“Yep.”

“But he’d probably be angry at my coming here anyway.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And it’s really his own fault for being so narrow-minded and uncooperative. This is a very important undertaking; it can add greatly to our fund of knowl—”

She was interrupted by his low chuckle. “I think you’re trying to talk yourself into something.”

She grinned back at him. “I think I’ve done it.” She knelt beside him. “Let me help you.”

He sat back on his heels. “They’re all done.” He glanced at the sky that was growing lighter by the minute. “And just in time. Li Tong gets up at daybreak and we don’t want him seeing us and raising a hullabaloo.”

“Li Tong?”

“Rina’s houseboy. Here, you take these two packets and run them from the front door down the steps and into the street. I’ll take the rest inside and string them along the hall on the second floor and down the stairs to the front door.”

“No.”

He lifted his head. “What?”

“I said no. This is my responsibility. I’ll be the one to set the firecrackers inside the house and light them. You’re clearly trying to spare me the risk of being discovered.”

“What I’m trying to do is spare you a sight that might shock the bejiggers out of you.” He hadn’t given a thought to her being inside Rina’s place to witness the chaos that would result from the firecrackers going off. “I think you’d better wait outside until I call you.”

“No.” She took the larger stack of firecrackers from him. “Do I light each one as I put it in place?”

He sighed with resignation. “All you have to do is to light the long fuse on the first packet. Place that one at
the end of the corridor on the second floor. The fuse will allow you enough time to trail the firecrackers down the stairs to the front hall.”

“A very efficient plan.” Elspeth shook her head reprovingly, trying not to smile. “I do believe you’ve handled fireworks in this manner before.”

“Well, the boys and I did stage a little surprise at the Nugget last year.” He stood up and helped her to her feet. “But this promises to be even more interesting.”

His enthusiasm was contagious. A tiny flare of excitement began to smolder beneath Elspeth’s apprehension. “Is the front door left unlocked?”

Patrick nodded. “Rina wouldn’t think of discouraging business, be it day or night.”

“Then I guess I won’t have any problem.” She hesitated, then squared her shoulders and started across the street.

“You might have one problem,” Patrick called out.

Elspeth stopped and turned to face him with swift alarm. “What?”

“Matches.” He took a box from his pocket and grinned. “Catch.” He tossed the box across the few feet separating them. “It’s hard to light a fuse without them.”

She caught the box and smiled lightheartedly back at him. She had never experienced this feeling of comaraderie before. “I’ll remember that in the future.” She turned and picked her way across the hard-packed wheel ruts of the street.

Ten minutes later she was standing in the foyer laying the last of the strings of firecrackers on the bottom step. The house was still in half darkness. Only the first gray rays of morning light that streamed through the bay windows of the parlor to her right served to pierce the duskiness. It was warm and close in the foyer, and the house smelled exotically of a mixture of perfume and cigar smoke.

She wished there were more light. She would have liked to have seen if the furnishings of a bordello were
as interesting as she had imagined. Perhaps when the firecrackers went off she would be able to see more.

The front door opened quietly to reveal Patrick’s thick red hair outlined against a pearl-gray wedge of sky. “All set?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “I lit the first fuse just as you told me. Shouldn’t it have gone off by now?”

“Any second.” He closed the door behind him.

“What do we do now?”

“We get out of the line of fire.” He drew her to the corner of the foyer farthest from the staircase. “And then we wait.”

They didn’t have to wait long. Patrick had scarcely gotten the words out when there was an explosion!

Elspeth jumped. She hadn’t expected the noise to be quite so loud. The explosion had echoed like a cannon shot in the still house. The first explosion was followed immediately by another and another until the house was reverbrating with sound: Women’s screams, hoarse masculine shouts, Patrick laughing softly beside her. Doors were opening upstairs and Elspeth could smell the acrid smoke of the fire-crackers.

“Here we go,” Patrick murmured over the barrage of explosions. “How’s this for a statement, Elspeth?”

The first explosion jerked Dominic from sleep. Gunfire. In the hall outside. He moved with the sure instinct that had guided him for the last ten years. By the time of the second explosion, he was on his feet reaching for his gunbelt. When the third explosion rocked the hall, he was at the door.

“Dominic,” Rina said sleepily. She sat up and brushed a shining brown lock of hair from her cheek. “What the hell—” She broke off as another explosion jarred her fully awake. “No, Dom, don’t go out there.” She jumped out of bed, reaching hurriedly for her lacy peignoir.

Dominic wasn’t listening. All his senses were strained toward the danger in the hall. God, he was tired of this. Tired of never going to sleep without
worrying if he’d face gunfire when he woke. He yanked open the door, stepping quickly to the side to avoid a possible spate of gunshots. The explosions continued, but there were no bullets sailing through the air, impacting floors and woodwork. He cautiously looked around the doorframe. The hall was filled with smoke and the explosions weren’t coming from a gun. He stared blankly at the string of explosives on the floor going off one after the other. “Firecrackers!”

“What?” Rina was beside him. “Who would do a thing like this?”

He didn’t have to consider the possibilities for more than a minute. He had been in the Nugget when Patrick and his friends had ridden through the doors on horseback throwing firecrackers right and left. “For Patrick, every day is a day for celebration,” he said dryly. “I imagine this was his way of bidding us a fond good-bye until next week. But, if I know my nephew, he wouldn’t be able to resist staying and watching the fun.” He was striding down the hall following the exploding string of firecrackers. “And when I catch up with him, I’m going to tie a string of firecrackers to
his
tail.” The explosions had reached the head of the stairs and so had he. He called down into the dimness at the foot of the stairwell. “Patrick, I’m about to lift your scalp.”

He thought he heard a shout of laughter amid the explosions sparking down the stairs. It didn’t improve his temper. He started down but was forced to move slowly to keep behind the exploding firecrackers. “Did you consider the possibility you might have set the house on fire? Or that someone could have started shooting before they realized it was a torn-fool trick?”

“It wasn’t Patrick’s fault, Mr. Delaney.” Elspeth moved out of the shadowed hallway to the foot of the stairs. She stood very straight, her eyes fixed on him as if mesmerized. “This was entirely my idea.”

She could barely get the words past her dry throat. She had never seen a real live man naked, and Dominic Delaney was boldly and unashamedly
naked. When he had appeared at the top of the stairs with only the smoke wreathing his nudity, she had experienced shock, and then, almost immediately, her usual curiosity.

Michelangelo. He was like a statue she had seen by Michelangelo in that museum in Florence. Powerful shoulders and pectoral muscles, a tight stomach and heavily corded thighs and calves. Only the colors were different, warm bronze instead of cold white marble. Dark hair feathered Delaney’s chest and lightly dusted his legs. There was also hair encircling his … Her eyes widened as she stared in fascination. In all the statues she had seen, that portion of the male anatomy had either been covered with a fig leaf or else the sculptor had depicted it as minuscule and unimportant. Even Michelangelo. But Michelangelo was
wrong;
it was neither of those things. She jerked her eyes quickly back to his face. “I’ve come to ask you to reconsider.”

The expression of stunned surprise on his face was superseded by ferocity. “The hell you have.” He started down the steps toward her, each word punctuated by the explosion of the firecrackers. “I don’t like women who use their sex as a shield to invade a man’s privacy and put him at a disadvantage. I don’t like it one bit.”

“You said you wouldn’t see me. I had to do something to change the state of things.”

“In case you didn’t hear me the first time, the answer is
no
.” His blue-gray eyes glinted fiercely through the smoke. “But you knew it would be no, didn’t you, Miss Elspeth MacGregor?”

“Yes, but it appeared to be the only way to get you to take my offer seriously.”

“Dom, what’s going on?” asked a lovely brown-haired woman clad in a blue lace peignoir from the top of the steps. Her gaze fell on Espeth’s prim, black-gowned figure at the bottom of the stairs. “Jesus, what’s happened?”

“Nothing to concern you, Rina. Go on back to bed.” Dominic Delaney’s gaze never wavered from Elspeth. “I’ll take care of this.”

There were other faces peering over the banisters now, but Elspeth was scarcely aware of them. All her attention was focused on the naked man coming down the stairs toward her. She was exquisitely conscious of everything about him. The sleek ripple of the muscles of his thighs, the way his chest moved in and out with each breath. His strange blue-gray eyes gazing at her with insolence and anger and something else …

He stopped at the bottom step and stood there just looking at her in the duskiness of the hall. She couldn’t breathe. She dimly heard the firecrackers going off on the porch but they seemed far away. Everything seemed far away except the man standing before her effortlessly holding her gaze with his own.

“Do you know that you’re in a whorehouse, Miss MacGregor?” His voice was silky soft, almost a murmur. “Women have only one reason for being in a whorehouse. They’re here to perform certain acts of pleasure, to entertain men.”

His index finger reached out and slowly touched her cheek. She inhaled sharply. The skin seemed to burn under his touch. Ridiculous. It had to be her imagination.

“Since you’re a woman, I have to assume you must be here for that purpose.” His hand wandered down to caress her throat, his thumb delicately testing the wild beating of her heart. “And I suddenly feel a need to be … entertained.”

Elspeth found her breasts were heaving with every breath. He couldn’t mean … “No, you don’t understand. I truly meant to—”

“Cut it out, Dom.” Patrick stepped out of the shadows. “Can’t you see you’re scaring the hell out of her?”

“Am I?” Dominic’s hand was gently stroking Elspeth’s throat. He could feel it flutter beneath his palm. Her breath was coming in shallow little bursts. Her pink lips were slightly parted, and he could see the faintest glimpse of her tongue. He wondered what she would do if he leaned forward and parted those lips
with his own tongue. “I thought you’d be around somewhere, Patrick. I’m sure you enjoyed the hell out of the show, but you really should have persuaded her not to do it. You might say I’m a little annoyed.”

“More than a little.” Patrick eyed him warily. “But you’ve frightened her enough. She doesn’t know you’re only fooling.”

Was he only trying to frighten her? Dominic wondered. That had been his intention when he had started, but now he wasn’t sure. His hand tightened on her slender neck. Touching Elspeth MacGregor was proving very unsettling. The flesh of his palm was tingling and he could feel a throbbing sensation begin in his groin. “Why don’t you leave the matter to be decided between, the two of us? Its time you got on your way to Killara.”

“Let her go, Dom.” Patrick’s tone was hard. “I’m responsible for her being here. I can’t let you do it.”

“Since when have you had any say about what I do?” Dominic’s hard gaze moved from Elspeth to Patrick’s face. What he saw there surprised him. Christ, the boy was serious. Next, he’d be pulling a gun on him to protect his little owl. A fresh surge of anger provoked by sheer frustration tore through him. It was a frustration that could be easily satisfied, he assured himself. Rina or one of the girls would give him more pleasure than this skinny little bespectacled gnome. But he didn’t want Rina or her girls, he realized in amazement. He wanted Elspeth MacGregor with a lust that was beginning to tear at his gut. It would go away, he told himself impatiently. As soon as she was out of his sight it would vanish as if it had never been. And the sooner that circumstance occurred, the better.