Wanted: One Scoundrel (8 page)

“The problem was the smallest gear…”

Esme tuned out the intent discussion going on between her father and her…well, what was Jed to her? He’d held her last night, comforted her, accompanied her unprotestingly, all the time planning Bambury’s ruin, but did he do so as a friend or something more? He’d never said anything, although his manner had at times implied a heated man-woman attraction.

“That’s what I thought,” her father exclaimed and slapped his thigh.

The horses continued their steady pace. The long ride had taken the fidgets out of them. Esme drew rein a fraction, dropping back enough that she could study Jed.

He rode well. The day had warmed enough that he’d shed his coat and tied it to the saddle. Broad shoulders tapered to leanly muscled hips and thighs. His free hand gestured, emphasizing some point in his explanation.

Yesterday, he’d said he was an inventor. She believed him. It was there in the absorbed way he’d watched the kangaroo bound, and today, in the passion he brought to the discussion with her father.

An inventor. Not a confidence man. He’d even said he had sufficient money for his needs.

But he’d agreed to be her spokesman for the Women’s Advancement League and he’d done an excellent job.

She’d pegged him as a charming, honorable scoundrel—and she’d gotten it wrong. So, who was he?

“Esme, remember that wind-up rabbit I made you? Do you still have it?”

“Hardly. You made it for me when I was ten. A year later you took it apart because you needed a gear for your latest project—I think you were making an automated teapot?”

“Oh yes.” Her father looked momentarily abashed. The tea-maker had been a disaster. Meant to sit on a tripod over a fire, it kept tipping over when the boiling water poured over the tea leaves. “Not one of my better ideas. I was going to show Jed the jumping mechanism in the rabbit. His idea for a kangaroo car sounds beaut.”

Her father had no doubts about Jed. He assumed Jed was her suitor, one she favored. He’d been suspicious last night and this morning, but the suspicions had faded when they discovered a shared enthusiasm for all things inventive.

She smiled ruefully. Next, he’d be urging her to accept Jed’s hand in marriage when it hadn’t even been offered. Aaron Smith wanted his daughter married and happy, as he’d been with her mother. The troubles with Bambury would only increase his determination to marry her off to a decent fellow.

Jed saw her smile. “Are we boring you? I tend to become overly absorbed in a problem.”

“I’m not bored.”
Uncertain, hopeful, confused
. “I’m glad to be nearly home.”

The settlements—farms, police outposts and small general stores—were becoming more frequent. Approaching from the southeast, they avoided Perth, but they’d be in Fremantle by evening.

“I’ll have a hot bath and a hot meal and my own bed,” she continued.

“She’s not as pampered as she sounds,” Aaron excused her to Jed. “I taught her to shoot and throw a knife. Her mother and her spent a lot of time in the goldfields with me before I struck it lucky. Esme can handle anything.”

“I believe you.” Jed smiled at her. “And I have to confess, I’d quite like a hot dinner, myself.”

“You’ll have to eat with us,” she said. “Maud will love the challenge of producing a three-course meal in minutes.”

Esme was right.

After the exclamations of joy and relief at Aaron’s appearance, Maud stirred her kitchen into a frenzy while the three travelers bathed. The gardener’s lad ran for clean clothes from Mrs. Hall’s boarding house for Jed. Francis was ordered to sit with them through their late meal and update them on Bambury’s activities.

“He hired Sid Archer,” Francis said, drinking tea while the others ate their way through steak and potatoes. The soup had been mixed vegetable. “Sneak thief. He was transported, same as me, but he never cleaned up his act. Still a thief and a criminal-for-hire.”

“I’m amazed he dared to steal from Father.”

“Bambury paid enough. Sid’s drinking it up now.”

“Who else is he confiding in?” Jed asked.

“No one.” Francis grinned briefly. “He wanted reassurance from me. ‘When Aaron Smith finds out it was me who stole his watch, what’ll he do?’”

Aaron looked up from his steak. “What did you tell him?

“That he ought to consider the benefits of the life at sea.” Francis snorted. “Then he bleated something about not wanting to come up against Captain Fellowes, either.”

“Ha.” Aaron returned his concentration to the steak, polishing off the last of it. Esme stacked the plates and popped them into the service hutch.

Francis leaned forward. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Apple crumble and custard.” Aaron smiled at Maud as she brought in the dessert. “I’ll just make us an after dinner coffee.”

Esme declined, but Jed accepted thankfully. They vanished into the library and the marvels of the coffee geyser.

“Sit down, Maud.” Esme patted a chair. “You’re part of the family.” She poured tea for both of them and refilled Francis’s cup.

“Were you safe with Mr. Reeve?” the older woman asked in a low voice. “I worried. We don’t really know him.”

“He was a perfect gentleman.” Esme smiled. “Father likes him.”

Maud sat back with a sigh of relief as the two men returned with steaming mugs of coffee.

“Now,” Aaron said. “Here’s the plan.”

The men’s club was paneled in wood, smelled of leather and tobacco and to be honest, rather disappointed Esme.

“I don’t like cowards, Bambury. Walk or I’ll shoot you where you stand,” Aaron Smith said as the man hesitated on the doorstep.

“Sir, I protest this bushranger behavior.” The villain seemed to take courage from the familiar environment of the club where he’d lorded it over the younger men.

Men looked up from newspapers and discussions. The grandfather clock in the hallway announced eleven o’clock.

“Smith, you back in town? What’s this all about?” Dr. Palmer hurried forward, his eyes flicking from Bambury to the gun Aaron held, and then, to Aaron’s grim face.

“I’m going to give Bambury a chance to confess,” Aaron said.

“Sir, I believe it is you who must explain yourself, drawing a gun on an unarmed man.” Bambury tugged at his coat, ricked up by Aaron and Jed’s rough handling when they picked him up from his lodgings and dumped him in the carriage. Where he’d been silent on the short ride, only shooting a vengeful look at Esme, now he was vocal. But his hands trembled. “And I point out Miss Smith is transgressing the rules of this gentleman’s club by entering.”

“So are you,” Jed said. “I personally wouldn’t let an egg-sucking snake like you slither over the entrance. But I think all the men who think you’re a fine gentleman deserve to know the truth.”

“Hey, you can’t say such things.” One of Bambury’s followers spoke up, while Bambury tested the limits of his freedom by edging away from Aaron. When he wasn’t immediately grabbed, Bambury strode on into the reading room. He hid his shaking hands in his pockets.

Esme ignored bleated protests from the members of the club and followed him, confronting him as the center of attention. She wore a naval-inspired blue walking dress with a gold braided short cape. Her polished black boots and stylish hat brought her equal height with Bambury.

“On Monday, this sorry excuse for a man extorted a promise of marriage from me.”

Her statement provoked a riot of exclamation.

Bambury faced her, smirking. Evidently, he’d realized it was her word against his. Only the wary eye he kept on Aaron gave away his worries. “Preposterous.”

“That’s what I thought. The whole notion of marrying you was preposterous—until you threatened Father.”

As one body, the men of the club turned to look at Aaron as he loomed in the doorway, his gun still out, though hanging loosely by his side.

“He threatened Aaron?” The elderly man’s doubts were clear in his voice.

“Of course not,” Bambury said swiftly. “The truth is I rebuffed her attempts to make our friendly relationship more than it was. This story she tells, whatever it is, is merely hurt pride and disordered female intellect.”

Dr. Palmer frowned dreadfully. He, at least, knew Esme’s long-standing opinion of Bambury—a narcissistic, chauvinist snob.

Jed ambled around the room, apparently casual, his hand running along the miniature railway track that was so reminiscent of her own comfortable, safe drawing room—although here, the train probably provided whiskey and cigars rather than tea and cakes. And of course, it was part of Amberley’s disastrous experimentation with electricity. She much preferred the clean heat of steam power. At least it never magnetized everything in reach.

“In fact, I feel sorry for Miss Smith,” Bambury continued. “Why, what normal woman would intrude in a gentlemen’s club?”

“A justly angry one,” she snapped. “You are a cad. When I wouldn’t believe you held Father, you produced his fob watch. I knew he would never willingly part with it. It holds a photo of Mother.” She looked at the other men, at their indecision. “That is why I feared that there was some truth to Bambury’s threat of killing Father if I didn’t agree to marriage. All that saved me was the bishop’s absence from town and Bambury’s need for a special license. It gave me a few days’ grace to ride out in search of Father.”

“And she found me riding in from my claim, chasing the sneak thief who’d stolen my watch,” Aaron finished.

“Since Father was safe, we could have let the matter drop or handled it privately.”

“But no one threatens my family.” Aaron folded his arms. “Nor do I like the idea of this cur misrepresenting himself as a gentleman.”

“You have to understand,” Jed said. “Bambury didn’t want to marry Miss Esme, but he did want the Smith fortune. It’s interesting what a few letters of inquiry can turn up about the state of Bambury’s financial affairs—or should I say, debts?”

Bambury’s face twisted. “You bastard.”

“No, not that.” Jed leaned a shoulder against the mantel. “You mustn’t have answers to
your
letters of inquiry about me. I’m Senator Reeve’s son from California, an heir to the Reeve fortune. You must have heard of Washerwoman’s Mine? My granny found it, bless her passion for cleanliness.”

“You liar.”

“Nope.” The very coolness of Jed’s tone, in contrast to Bambury’s heat, gave credence to his words. “I have letters of introduction to the governor and various people tucked away in my hat. I just never got around to passing them on.”

Because he didn’t want me to know the truth,
Esme thought.
He was playing a game. Pretending to support my political ideals. Pretending to be a scoundrel. But now the situation is so serious, he’s using the truth to break Bambury.

Bambury’s sudden movement caught her off guard. He grabbed her arm and a split second later she felt something prick her neck.

“Nobody move,” he snarled. “I have enough morphine in this needle to kill her. Smith, put your gun down.”

“All right.” Her father obeyed slowly. He had patted Bambury down for knife or gun, but he’d missed the odd, compact, steel needle. “Take it easy.”

“Originally I planned to get her hooked, to make her docile—more like a woman should be.”

Around them, the men who hadn’t wanted to believe her accusations now looked sick. “Bambury, old man, what do you think you’re doing?”

“What do I have to lose?” His breath panted against her ear as he answered an erstwhile supporter. “This bitch has ruined everything.”

“Oh, I say! Language!”

He ignored them all, impatient and focused on the threat Aaron represented. “I want a gig and safe passage to the harbor.”

It was an impossible situation. He had to know he’d never make it. He couldn’t drive a gig and threaten her. Even if he trusted her to drive while he held the needle to her throat, there were a number of men who, once outside and with the element of surprise, could shoot him dead as they passed by.

And when he realized the futility of his flailing around, would he simply kill her out of frustrated rage and fear?

She looked across the room at Jed—who wasn’t there! He’d vanished when the men surged forward in reproof at Bambury’s language.

He’d left her.

For a second, her vision flickered, darkening then lightening. She had barely enough time to register that it was the electric lighting, not her emotions, when the needle scratched along her neck and flew out of Bambury’s hand. A positive cyclone of spoons followed it. They all clung to the electric magnet behind her, the control center of the miniature railway.

She wrenched free of Bambury, stamping on his foot.

Jed vaulted a sofa and punched him. Bambury went down for the count. Jed put both arms around her and squeezed tighter than a corset. “Someone turn off the damn generator.”

She could feel his heartbeat, as fast as her own.

“Nice going.” Aaron strode into the room and planted a heavy boot on the needle. The glass ampoule splintered.

Dr. Palmer pushed through the crowd. “Someone get my bag. He’s not going to die of a crack to the jaw—more’s the pity.”

Jed put a pristine white handkerchief to her neck and drew it back to show a thin line of blood. “Bastard.”

Under Dr. Palmer’s ministrations, Bambury stirred and tried to sit up.

Esme shuddered and looked around the room of excited men. “I’d like to leave.”

He nodded and, with an arm around her shoulders, ushered her out. The whispers grew to a roar behind them as Aaron followed.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes, just shaky.” She tried and failed to manufacture a smile.

“George will drive you home.” Aaron beckoned their groom, who brought the carriage up. “I never dreamed Bambury would try something like this. There’ll have to be explanations, a formal charge.”

Silently, Jed helped her into the carriage. The fierceness of his grip hinted at strong emotion.

“I’m fine.” She tried to reassure them both—these two men, so important to her. “It’s just…a men’s club isn’t as interesting as I’d thought it would be.”

“Any more interesting and I’d have put a knife through Bambury’s heart.” Jed closed the carriage door with unnecessary force. “Drive on.”