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Her face swam in his vision, doubling and then coming clear again. Miles shook his head. He frowned at her “assistant,” Miss Yates, who’d helpfully taken his valise from him and was now rummaging through its contents. Vaguely, that struck him as inappropriate. He had the impression someone may have riffled through his pockets, too. That beefy kid, Judah, who’d roughly taken his hat and coat after he’d come in? Had the bastard tossed him?
Miles was usually much savvier than this. Clearly, seeing Rose again had done him in. Despite her attempts to persuade him otherwise—despite the cat-and-mouse game they’d been playing thus far—he knew she was Rose, too. Rosamond McGrath Dancy. In the flesh. In a pretty pink dress. Her freckles still enchanted him. So did the sound of her voice.
He felt desperate to touch her, to reassure himself she was real. But after what had happened between her and that knuck Gus Winston earlier, Miles knew better than to touch her. Also, he wasn’t sure he could stand up without toppling over. He might wind up facedown in her high-buttoned shoes.
Then it hit him. “You drugged me!” he accused.
Her virtuous demeanor didn’t waver. “I think the stableman I knew was a bit...taller than you, though. Better looking, too.”
“Better looking? Humph.” He was “better looking.”
“Yes.” Another assessing, faraway look. “For one thing, my Miles had shorter hair. He was also clean shaven.” She gave a dreamy sigh. “He always wore a clean, pressed uniform, too.”
She was goading him on purpose. He knew it. But her musings didn’t distract him overmuch. Partly because Miles knew damn well he was tall enough and “better looking” enough to suit any woman—especially one who’d haunted his thoughts for years.
Why hadn’t he told her before how he felt?
His beard and hair and clothes could be changed. Not that he truly believed Rosamond pined for braid-trimmed trousers and jackets with epaulets at the shoulders. Arvid Bouchard had dressed his staff in the most ostentatious livery possible.
He wanted to hear Rosamond call him her Miles again.
But there was the pressing matter of her recent misconduct to be dealt with first. He could not let that stand as it was.
Even if that, as much as anything else, assured him he’d located the right woman—the right redheaded runaway housemaid.
“You drugged me,” he accused again, wishing he could strengthen his charge by standing. His knees felt rubbery and unfit to support him. “You tossed my coat and pockets looking for clues, and now Miss Yates is searching my valise.”
“Yes. That reminds me—” Rosamond turned her attention to her partner in crime. “What have you found, Miss Yates?”
“Several train ticket stubs, today’s copy of the Pioneer Press, assorted men’s clothing, a battered old book and far, far too much money for any honorable man to possess in Morrow Creek.” That traitorous woman aimed a sour look at Miles. “Furthermore, he only packed a single pair of underdrawers.”
They both gave him patently scandalized stares.
“I’m wearing the other pair,” Miles explained in his own defense, trying to ignore the additionally skeptical—and far more salacious—glance Miss Yates tossed him next. He’d have sworn she was imagining him naked. “I’m not made of money.”
They stared pointedly at his valise full of banknotes.
Miles drew himself up with dignity. In his current state, he didn’t know how to further defend himself without mentioning how he’d gotten all that money—and how much it had really cost him. He’d done his utmost not to spend much of it, but he’d had no way to search for Rosamond without it. He’d had to find out why she’d vanished from the Bouchards’ household in the middle of the night without so much as a note. Couldn’t she see that?
“Plus a wicked-looking knife,” the strongman, Judah, put in from across the room, saving Miles a reply. “Don’t forget that.”
Stricken, Miles patted his leg. Beneath his trousers, the knife sheaf on his calf felt conspicuously empty. He squinted anew at his drugged teacup, feeling lucky not to be insentient.
At least he had the wits to recognize he’d been bested.
Temporarily.
All the same, the notion made him feel perversely proud of Rose. She’d seen him as a threat. She’d dealt with that threat. Period. She was as capable and strong and spirited as ever. Those were all qualities he’d admired in her...once upon a time.
“Oh, we won’t forget the knife,” Miss Yates was assuring her hulking compatriot. “Or all that money, either.” Her gaze skittered over Miles’s black-clad form. “In fact, Mrs. Dancy, it might be wise of us to conduct an even more thorough search of his person. I’d be happy to supervise such an effort, if—”
“That won’t be necessary.” Rosamond’s attention remained implacably fixed on Miles’s face. She’d never even glanced below his neck, as near as he could tell. It was almost as though she didn’t want to consider any of the overtly manly rest of him. But that didn’t make sense. He’d never hurt her. He’d rather die than hurt her. “I think,” she added, “we’re almost done here.”
“My Rose was never this devious,” Miles complained.
“Your Rose is gone. And she isn’t ever going back.”
“Going back? Then you know that she left?”
At his question, Rosamond looked stricken. Because she’d been pretending not to know him. Because she’d been pretending—with admirable dexterity—not to know that she’d left Boston, left him...left everything in her old life behind.
Well, he was pretending, too. Pretending he had all the time in the world to sort things out. Pretending he had...anything to give her besides a charming tale and a pair of strong arms.
Near as he could tell, Rosamond wanted nothing from him—or from any man. Even if she was, as he’d learned, a widow now.
Determinedly, Miles leaned nearer to her. “You should know that I don’t want Rose to go back.” He had to communicate as much to Rosamond. It felt urgent. But the tea and the ale and whatever they’d dosed him with made it hard to say so. “I haven’t come here to bring her back. Only to—” See her. Proclaim my feelings for her. Save her, if necessary. “—see her.”
Hellfire. He still couldn’t tell her. Not even drugged.
But there’d be time for sweet words and proper reunions later. All Miles needed now was to make Rosamond trust him. That was first. Later on, everything else would naturally follow.
“Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me—Mrs. Dancy.” She kept her hands folded in her lap, but her cheeks had turned a shade pinker. Her feelings were softening toward him already. Miles could tell. All the signs were there. “I’m sorry I can’t help you find your friend, the housemaid you mentioned, but—”
“She was more than a friend. More than a housemaid, too.”
“In any case, it was Miles Callaway you were looking for, wasn’t it?” Placidly, Rosamond sipped from her own teacup, her gaze bright and intelligent over its rim. “How do you know him?”
“We worked together.” He should not embroider this fabricated story. But what choice did he have? Miles was certain “Mrs. Dancy” was his Rosamond, no matter how unlikely it was. No matter how sophisticated and jaded she appeared. No matter how much she tacitly denied it. But he didn’t want to spook her. That’s why he’d pretended to be “looking for Miles Callaway” in the first place. He’d counted on Rosamond’s interest in her former friend—and her intrinsic contrariness—to gain admission into her household. It had worked, too. She’d invited him inside, just the way he’d wanted. “Callaway left the Bouchards’ household several months ago. He’s been traveling ever since.”
“Traveling? But he can’t afford to—” Her eyes narrowed. “Traveling to what purpose?”
“He’s been searching for someone.”
Her gaze grew even more cynical. “For this ‘Rose’ person?”
A nod. “At times, he felt sure he’d found her.”
A wobble of her teacup was the only sign he’d affected her. She set down her cup, then airily regarded her tidy parlor. “I suppose people in Boston were wondering where she’d gone?”
“Callaway wondered.” Miles recalled the morning he’d learned she’d left. The confusion he’d felt then—the sheer disbelief and regret—still gnawed at him, all these months later. He and Rosamond had unfinished business between them. “He couldn’t understand why she’d leave without saying goodbye.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“I’d like to know what they were.”
A heartbeat passed. “I’m sure you would. So would Mr. Callaway and a few...other people, I’d imagine.”
She was testing him. She didn’t trust him yet. She was wise not to. Unwillingly, Miles recalled Arvid Bouchard’s intense interest in “that housemaid’s whereabouts.” It was only because of something that Genevieve Bouchard had let slip during a carriage ride that either of them had had the slightest lead on tracking Rosamond. Equally unwillingly, Miles recalled that he was supposed to report his findings to Arvid. He was supposed to tell his former employer the moment he located Rosamond.
Miles didn’t intend to do that. He never had.
He intended to find Rosamond, ensure she was safe, and then pay back every dime it had taken to find his friend...his Rose.
“If he were here now, I’d tell Mr. Callaway to forget about this housemaid,” she said. “I doubt she’s worth the trouble.”
“She’s worth everything. Everything to me.”
“To you?” She gave him a contemplative, dubious look. “Without even knowing where she’s been or what she’s done?”
“None of that matters.”
“It might.” Her gaze turned pensive. “If you knew.”
“It wouldn’t,” Miles swore, “as long as she’s safe.”
“Well, ‘safe’ is a relative term, isn’t it? Coming from you, the man who dodged my guard, it’s especially ironic.”
“You don’t need guards. Not against me.”
“Humph.” Her other protector, Judah, gave a disgruntled sound. With crossed arms, he regarded Miles. “That’s what all the low-down bastards say,” he blurted, “right before they—”
“Language, please, Judah.”
“—cheat you and leave you busted,” Judah went on doggedly. “I should know. My brother is a cardsharp, meanest in the territory. Leastwise, Cade was a cardsharp, up until he got married to a prissy preacher’s daughter. She’s nice, but—”
“This really isn’t the time, Mr. Foster,” Miss Yates interrupted. She turned her attention to Rosamond. “Shall I bring in more tea, Mrs. Dancy?” She inclined her head toward Miles. “I may have underestimated his impressive size and strength. It appears the earlier dose is wearing off quickly.”
“Yes.” Miles brightened. “Come to think of it, I do feel more like myself.” With vigor, he stretched. His big-booted feet came all the way beneath Rosamond’s dainty table and out the other side. “I feel like a new man, ready to take on anything.”
“What are your plans for the future, Mr...?” Rosamond broke off, wearing another wily look. “Oh, I’m sorry. It seems that in all my haste to learn about the intriguing Mr. Callaway, I neglected to ask you your name. I do apologize.”
Her confident tone almost made Miles doubt himself. Was this his Rosamond McGrath? Or was this her more cultured double, living in a faraway town the likes of which Rosamond McGrath would not have had the resources or the know-how to reach?
He believed it was Rosamond. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have persisted. But he dearly wished he knew why she was still pretending not to know him. The warier she was, the warier he felt he had to be. “I plan to stay in Morrow Creek.”
Her pleasant expression didn’t waver. “For how long?”
“For however long it takes.”
Rosamond blinked. “I see. And your name...?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Yes. He felt markedly better. “Unless that’s a requirement for admission into your marriage bureau?”
She frowned, clearly taken aback by his mention of it. “It’s called the Morrow Creek Mutual Society. As far as admission goes, I should warn you, it’s extremely rigorous.”
“If it will help me woo the woman of my dreams, you can call it anything you want.” Miles rose. He took his black coat from the coatrack, put it on, then grabbed his hat. “I’ve learned all I need to for now. I’ll be back later to apply.”
Rosamond seemed perturbed. “You might as well not bother. After all, you’re off to a very poor start. You’ve already appeared here intoxicated, discussing your underdrawers! That’s not behavior that’s indicative of my approved members.”
He couldn’t help grinning. He turned to confront Miss Yates. “Miss Yates, do you agree with that assessment?”
That saucy woman whipped her abstracted gaze from the vicinity of his trousers. Caught, she grumpily shoved his open valise at him. Clothing and train tickets bulged from it.
“I agree that you’re suspiciously eager to find a wife,” Miss Yates told him. “You don’t look like the marrying kind.”
“I didn’t feel like the marrying kind until I got here.” Until I found Rose. He offered them both a raise of his eyebrow. “I guess I should thank the little something ‘extra’ in that tea you dosed me with. It’s made me into a whole new man.”
Rosamond’s concerned gaze shifted to Miss Yates. Aha. Then her assistant was the one who knew how to drug a man and search his belongings, all while keeping him curiously complacent.
He’d already suspected what kind of women Rosamond had found herself keeping company with, given the line of business he’d learned Elijah Dancy had been in. Miss Yates’s next words confirmed it. Because only a soiled dove would have known...
“A little laudanum never hurt a man,” she grumbled in her own justification. Accusingly, she pointed at Miles. “I mean, yes, it can render a fella mostly harmless in a hurry. But it sure never made any man I used it on want to start proposing!”
“All right. That’s enough, Miss Yates.” Rosamond smiled at her assistant. Unrepentantly, she regarded Miles. “If you’d like to report our misdeeds, Sheriff Caffey’s jailhouse is right down the street. I think you’ll find yourself an ally in suspecting us of some rather serious wrongdoing in this household.”
Holding his hat, unwilling to leave but knowing he had to, Miles angled his head. “Does that include the children?”
Rosamond lost a fraction of her self-assurance. Clearly, she’d believed he hadn’t noticed the children who’d been playing in the house’s yard. He’d heard them when he observed the place.
Arvid Bouchard would have been very interested in the children—in the possibility of Rosamond having had a child.
Miles was curious about that possibility, too. But not for Bouchard’s sake. For his own sake. For his own future. For hers.
Just like Rosamond, Miles had left their former employer behind. All that bound them now was the sum of money Miles owed.
“It sounds as though they range in age. How old are they?”
“That, sir, is none of your business. I think it’s time you left us.” Briskly, Rosamond stood. “The door is this way.”
Her manner was brusque as she passed him. Her rosy perfume haunted him, though. Again, he felt desperate to touch her.
In the past, he’d touched her, Miles remembered. Casually and only infrequently, but he’d touched her. She’d touched him. Their hands had brushed while exchanging apples for the horses or trading the burden of the coal bin. Once, memorably, Rosamond had brushed a hayseed from his cheek. When she’d done that, Miles had felt something. Something good. He believed Rosamond had, too. That was part of what had driven him here.
Two thousand miles was a long way to go not to touch a woman.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he told her.
“You haven’t upset me.” The new color in her cheeks told him otherwise. So did the firm line of her mouth. “I’m fine.”
“In that case, you won’t mind my calling again tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“To collect all the details of admission to your society.”
“You were serious?”
“About this?” Miles gazed directly at her, putting every ounce of longing he felt into his voice. “I’ve never been more determined to accomplish anything in all my life.”
Their gazes met. For a moment, she seemed as affected by their unacknowledged reunion as he was. She seemed to remember their shared conversations, their shared laughter, their past and their friendship and all the rest. Then, “I think you’ll find this is a more daunting task than you’ve counted on.”
“I live for daunting tasks. And for conquering them.”
“You sound entirely too confident.”
“You must have forgotten exactly how intent a man can be when he’s fixed on getting something he wants.”
“No. I haven’t forgotten that.” Crisply, Rosamond nodded at him. She stepped resolutely away. “Judah will see you out.”
As her guard approached, Miles felt bereft.
“And tomorrow?” he persisted.
“You won’t be back tomorrow.” Rosamond didn’t so much as turn to face him again. Instead, she busied herself collecting the teapot and saucers on a tray. “You’ll decide this is all too much trouble, and you won’t come back. Most people cannot be relied upon, but their base selfishness can be. I know that much for sure.”
“Then you don’t know me.”
At that, Rosamond did scrutinize him. Briefly. “Maybe I don’t. Now that you’re here...maybe I don’t know anyone as well as I thought I did.” She appeared on the verge of elaborating, then did not. Instead, she said, “Good luck to you.”
“Good luck to us both.”
A faint smile. “Now I know you won’t be back.”
“The devil couldn’t keep me away.” Miles aimed a sidelong glance at Miss Yates. “Nor could any of his minions.”
That cheeky woman actually giggled. Despite everything, Miles began to believe he could succeed here, with Rosamond, in her new life.
“We are finished,” Rosamond said firmly. “Please leave.”
Then again, Miles concluded...immediate success might prove to be elusive.
* * *
The door had scarcely closed behind her visitor before Rosamond raced to the window to watch him leave. Bonita was only steps behind her, both of them battling to move the curtains.
As one, they watched him study the small Morrow Creek street upon which her house stood. Then he shouldered his untidy valise and moved confidently in a singular direction.
“He’s headed for Miss Adelaide’s boardinghouse,” Bonita announced, her breath all but fogging the window glass. “That’s odd. With all those greenbacks in his bag, he can afford to stay at the Lorndorff Hotel for a month, at least.”
The stableman Rosamond remembered had not had that kind of money. “Yes, he did have an unusual amount of cash, didn’t he?”
“‘Unusual’? He had a king’s ransom in that bag!” Bonita shook her head. “And that knife he carried, too. Hidden in a holster? That man is up to no good, whatever his name is.”
“I know what his name is.” But I don’t know why he wouldn’t admit it to me. Distractedly, Rosamond watched him stride away, his footsteps sure and his shoulders strong. He moved exactly the way she remembered. Drat it all, he even smelled the way she remembered, with traces of leather and soap clinging to his skin. “I knew it from the moment he took off his hat.”
His long hair and dark beard had stymied her at first. So had the sheer undeniable unlikeliness of them meeting again this way. But once he’d looked squarely at her...
Well, once Miles had done that, she’d known it was him. It had been all she could do not to give herself over right then.
“You did? Then why pretend you didn’t?” Bonita protested, sounding exasperated with her. “If you knew you knew him, why did you ask me to dose him?”
I needed to protect myself. “I needed to know more,” Rosamond hedged. The truth was, the warier Miles had seemed, the warier she’d felt she needed to be. It wasn’t like him to be so evasive. So mysterious. Their mutual caginess had created its own unfortunate momentum. “Starting with why he’s here—”
Bonita interrupted with a snort. “It sure as shootin’ isn’t to get himself married!”
“—and ending with where he got all that money. And why.”
Rosamond had her suspicions, but she couldn’t be sure. For her own sake—for the sake of the women and children depending on her—she’d needed to question him. She hated that she had cause to doubt Miles—to doubt anyone, in fact. She only hoped she wasn’t overestimating her own intuition in this instance.
If Miles Callaway moved on after today, then she’d know he could have been trusted. She’d know he hadn’t come in search of her at Arvid’s or Genevieve Bouchard’s behest. She’d know he’d only come to satisfy his own curiosity about a runaway housemaid, and, having done that, had moved on to more adventures.
But if Miles Callaway did come back to her mutual society tomorrow, if he did continue pursuing her...
Well, that was another situation entirely.
If Miles came back, it wouldn’t be because he wanted her or a wife of his own. Despite his claims to the contrary, Rosamond knew that could not be the case. The man she remembered had been an inveterate bachelor. And while she was a good person, she was not the innocent girl she’d once been. Once Miles realized that, he’d be finished with her. Worse, he’d be appalled at her.
He would see the gaping hole left in her.
He would pity her.
Rosamond didn’t think she could bear that. She couldn’t bear knowing that, in Miles’s eyes, she would no longer be the lively and openhearted girl he remembered. She’d never be that girl again. If Miles knew that, too, it would be doubly real.
On the other hand, before today, she wouldn’t have believed she could bear being in the same room with Miles Callaway and not acknowledging how good it felt to see his smile, to hear his voice, to experience the warmth of his protective nature, one last time. She’d succeeded in that already. So who knew exactly how deep her personal resilience really ran, after all.
Grit and determination had brought her to Morrow Creek. Those same qualities could bring her toe-to-toe with Miles. They could help her win—help her protect herself from...everything.
“He’s very handsome,” Bonita mused. “Very handsome.”
Rosamond agreed. Silently. Her mind was still awhirl with all the potential implications of Miles’s sudden appearance in Morrow Creek. She couldn’t afford to go all swoony over his deep blue eyes, his Adonis-like dark curly hair and his sculpted features. Those transient qualities didn’t matter anyway.
“Very charming, too,” her assistant added leadingly. “Do you know, when the laudanum first hit him, he stared at you for a solid minute with a spoony, love-struck grin on his face? It was as if he’d waited years to see you, when clearly—”
“It’s only been a little more than a single year.” Forcefully, Rosamond dragged herself from her remembrance of Miles’s euphoric expression. “And he was drugged, remember?”
“Drugged in a way that would remove all barriers to the truth,” Bonita argued. Then her mouth dropped open. “A little more than a—then you do know him? Really? From Boston?”
“Home of rivers, bridges and a mother’s love.”
“I thought you only wanted to know about Miles Callaway.”
“He is Miles Callaway.”
“But you said— He said—” Bonita frowned. “I’m confused.”
“So am I. But one way or the other, I won’t be for long.”
“Then you’re ‘his Rose’? The runaway housemaid?” Bonita sounded baffled—and a little bit hurt, as well. “But you’ve never told me any of that. I thought we were friends.”
“We are friends.” Tearing herself away from the parlor window—from fruitlessly wishing Miles Callaway had ambled back into her life with a smile and a laugh and wholesome intentions to help her shoulder her burdens once more—Rosamond sighed. “But there are things no one needs to know about me. Sometimes, I wish I could forget them myself.”
Sympathetically, Bonita came nearer. Wisely, she stopped short of actually consoling Rosamond with a hug.
“Maybe it’s best if he doesn’t come back.”