The Maverick's Bride

“Yes, I do.” He straightened, forcing away the discomfort she’d given him. He couldn’t let himself think about the fact that she was beautiful and brave…and completely a woman.

Emma Pickering could be useful to him, that was all, and he might as well lay the cards on the table. “I want to know more about your nursing skills.”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “Nursing?”

“How much practical experience have you had?”

“Not enough to satisfy me.” She shook her head. “Miss Nightingale does not permit nurses to learn pure medicine. I’ve always longed to know as much as any doctor, but such a course is not possible. I have looked after patients at St. Thomas’s Hospital, many of them gravely ill, but that is the extent of my training.”

Adam started forward again. “Can you do surgical kinds of things?” he asked as she hurried to match his pace. He took her hand and set it on his arm again. “Can you sew people up and set bones?”

“I’ve watched those procedures being done. But I have neither the tools nor the skills to do them myself. Mr. King, why are you asking me these questions?”

He couldn’t tell her everything, but she was too smart to keep completely in the dark. He would have to lead her around until he had learned what he wanted to know.

“I understand that doctors have ways to make people unconscious,” he said. “Know anything about that?”

“Ether. I’ve seen it used. Why?”

“Do you know much about drugs? Medicines?”

“Morphia, quinine, cocaine, laudanum and others—I’ve dispensed them all.”

“But do you know what they’re used for? Do you know what can help pain—constant pain?”

“Laudanum is best, I believe—although one must be careful. Its use can become a habit. Morphia is similar.”

“Miss Pickering?” Nicholas Bond’s voice rang out down the long verandah and startled Emma into silence. The Englishman stood silhouetted in the light from the ballroom, his long coattails fluttering in the night breeze.

“Yes, Mr. Bond,” she spoke up. “I’m just here on the path.”

“Your father is concerned for your safety, Miss Pickering.”

“The lady’s fine, Bond.” Adam escorted her onto the verandah and into a square of yellow light that fell from the French doors.

“Miss Pickering?”

“Indeed, I’m perfectly well, Mr. Bond. This garden is lovely.”

Adam knew it was time to let Nicholas take the woman back to the ballroom. Good manners demanded it. He had been wrong to lead her outside unaccompanied in the first place. But when he began to remove her hand, she tightened her fingers around his arm.

“Mr. King mentioned his unusual dancing style,” she told Nicholas as they approached. She gave a little laugh. “It’s American, you know. I’m sure you must agree it’s my duty as an Englishwoman to teach him a proper waltz. You won’t mind, will you?”

Nicholas frowned, his lips tightening into a grim line. “Miss Pickering, I—”

“Dear Mr. Bond, it does seem the right thing to do under the circumstances. It would hardly show the English to good advantage if we let this poor man continue in his ignorance.”

Bond flipped back his coattails and set his fists at his hips. He started to speak, paused, then turned abruptly and left. Even though the two men were not friendly, Adam could hardly blame Bond for his displeasure. Emma had rebuffed him.

“Come, Mr. King,” she said. “With one dance you will know all I have to teach. And I shall understand why you asked me such questions just now.”

She crossed to the French doors, and Adam pushed them open. Laying her lavender gloves on a side table, she gave him a little curtsy.

“Shall we dance?” she asked.

Adam made no move. Emma looked into his blue eyes and watched them gazing back at her. They had gone dark now, with black rims that matched the lashes framing them. He set his right hand at her waist and drew her close. Without taking his eyes from hers, he spread her slender fingers with his left hand and squeezed them gently.

The music barely filtered into her ears, even though she knew it was there—for as they drifted out onto the floor, Emma’s sense of the world around her seemed to vanish. All she heard was the heavy throb of her heartbeat and the quiet jingle of Adam’s spurs as his boot heels tapped the wooden floor. She was aware of her skirt, floating behind her on its stiff crinolines—meant to keep the dancers apart, but failing tonight. He held her close, too close for this dance. Yet she could not stop him, could not make herself say the proper words, the polite things, the gracious empty syllables.

“Emma…” The name floated from his lips in his strange, beguiling accent. His breath warmed her ear.

Her mind told her to pull back from him, warned her—he was treacherous, he was foreign. He was married.

Yet he lifted her feet from the floor, and her cheek brushed against his shoulder. The scent of leather and the plains filled her nostrils…and her mind reeled away with all its doubts and warnings.

Her eyes met his again, deep pools in which she thought she might drown. “Mr. King,” she whispered, trying to prevent herself from falling into them.

“Call me Adam,” he said.

They moved into the shadows of an alcove, and he stopped, still holding her close in his arms. The music died and the other dancers separated, sweeping into bows and curtsies and polite applause.

“Emma.” He lifted her chin with a finger. “Thank you.”

Aching to speak, she found it impossible to form words. She glanced toward the crowd as the music started and yet another dance began. Cissy stood in one corner surrounded by a cluster of attentive men. Their father was speaking with Lord Delamere.

And now she saw Nicholas approaching. He made a small bow. “You may leave now, Mr. King,” he said. “I advise you to keep your attentions from Miss Pickering in the future. Her father is not pleased.”

Adam’s eyes flashed with an anger that twisted Emma’s stomach into a knot. “I decide who gets my attention, Bond,” he growled. “If you’ve got a problem with that, let’s step outside and settle this.”

“Do you challenge me, sir? I hope not. I may be forced to speak with Lord Delamere and Commissioner Eliot about the sort of men scratching out a living on the queen’s protectorate. Traitors to the Crown.”

“Talk to anyone you want, Bond. I’m not budging from my ranch—not even for the queen herself. Excuse me, Miss Pickering. I have business to take care of.”

Adam doffed his black hat and strode through the whirling dancers toward the verandah, his heavy footsteps echoing across the floor. Nicholas’s neck was red above his white collar as he faced Emma.

“I must apologize, Miss Pickering. You can see the man has no respect for our queen or her empire. Adam King is a schemer and a liar. Not a word of truth escapes his lips. You must not trust the man for a moment. I beg you to keep yourself under guard if you chance to meet him again. His forward behavior with you this evening was inexcusable.”

“Emma,” Cissy cried, hurrying across the room and taking her sister’s hand. “May I speak with you for a moment in private? Do you mind dreadfully if I take my sister away, Mr. Bond?”

Emma glanced at the young railway man. Even though he tried to maintain his genteel poise, irritation showed on his face. She spoke softly. “I’ll just be a moment, Mr. Bond.”

“Of course, Miss Pickering.”

Cissy slipped her arm around Emma’s and hurried across the room toward the verandah.

“What have you done, sister?” Cissy’s voice was a shrill whisper. “You let that man—that cowboy—take you outside without a chaperone! Father is livid. Honestly, Emma, what were you thinking?”

“Father saw us?” She’d had no idea.