Steal Me, Sweet Thief Read online

  "Oh?" Keep her talking. Obviously, she liked to talk. What woman didn't?

  "They're afraid of pickpockets," she informed him. "You don't strike me as being a man who would fear such things, though."

  "I don't?" He couldn't help being amused. "What kind of man do I strike you as?"

  She gave him an innocently flirtatious look that sent a bolt of heat lightning down his spine. "A man with secrets," she said without hesitation.

  He resisted an odd and dangerous urge to touch his pocket again, resolving not to be so obvious about it in the future. He tried to laugh. Her expression did not change. "A man who's tired." He repeated his earlier excuse and hoped he was more convincing than before. "I've been traveling for a long time, and I'm anxious to get back."

  "Have you a sweetheart waiting for you? Or a wife? You never said," she murmured, with a most fetching droop of her eyelashes.

  "Neither," he replied, then could have choked on his tongue: If he'd said yes, a wife and several fine, fat children, he might have discouraged her attention and given himself another lie upon which to focus. But it was too late. He had, with one unguarded response, removed all barriers to her affection, with the one huge exception of the fact that he knew her to be the wife of another man.

  To his dismay, she laughed. "Why, Mr. McAllister! You're blushing!"

  Maddeningly, his tarnished silver tongue cleaved to his mouth. He could not answer her, nor did she release him from her probing gaze. Finally, he thought of something to say that might give her cause for reflection.

  "Perhaps I've been waiting for you," he said slowly, aware that there was more truth to those words than to any others he had yet spoken to her.

  "You're teasing me." Her laughter was musical, but brittle. He did not answer, except to shrug.

  She quickly looked away from him into her lap. If she was aware of the appealing nature of her response, she gave no sign of it. Macalester, watching her, felt his stomach tighten into a knot once again. It was going to be a long trip to Little Rock.

  Mr. McAllister was a bewildering gentleman, Geneva reflected. They were speeding southwest through the darkness toward Roanoke, and she had been unable to engage him in any conversation for more than half a dozen sentences. He seemed reluctant to talk about himself and politely uninterested in topics she introduced. She had taken his earlier remark as a jest, or possibly a remonstrance for her bold curiosity, but now she was completely at sea. The idea that he might, indeed, have been flirting with her was an intriguing one. Still, men had flirted with her in the past; men like Elaine Atherton…

  Blaine. His very name made her grimace. All of that time, wasted. All of his promises empty as eggshells, and just as brittle. McAllister, she was sure, was not like that. She did not know why, exactly; she just felt it. If only there were some way to break through the barrier he had constructed! But perhaps there was.

  Geneva Lionwood developed a mysterious illness somewhere between Philadelphia and Roanoke. She tried to hide it, but when she collapsed to the floor of the compartment five minutes before the train pulled into Roanoke, Macalester knew he had to get her off of the train. She needed a doctor, and a proper bed.

  He collared a conductor and arranged to have their baggage taken off There was no telling how long Geneva's condition would necessitate a delay, but it was best to assume the worst. As the train came to a stop, he left her lying upon the bench in the compartment while he arranged for a cab. A light rain was falling, but it was not cold. Returning to the compartment, Macalester found that Geneva, flushed and disoriented, was trying to get up.

  "What—what is happening?" she murmured, sounding weak and alarmed.

  He knelt beside her, pressing his hand against her hot cheek.

  "We're in Roanoke," he replied, trying not to sound too concerned. "We're going to get you to a hotel. You need a doctor."

  "Oh… I don't want to be the cause of a delay—"

  "Shh." He quieted her protest, lifting her into his arms. She was so light, she was no burden at all. "It's all right. It's all right…"

  Poor brave thing, he thought, fighting a knot in his chest. She's even trying to smile.

  The doctor concluded his examination, his gray whiskers twitching into a frown. He removed his spectacles and crossed his arms before him, regarding his patient doubtfully.

  "What is it, Doctor?" Macalester demanded, just above a whisper. He had watched the man for a quarter of an hour, poking, palpating, thumping and listening to Geneva, and the man had uttered nothing more than a few terse questions. Now he merely stood beside the canopy bed in the largest suite in the most expensive hotel in Roanoke, shaking his graying head over the motionless female form on the bed before him.

  Suddenly, the doctor gave him a direct, unsettling look. "She could be in a family way."

  Macalester nearly fell down. "No, she—"

  What did he know? She could be, he supposed, al-though the notion that Geneva Lionwood might be carrying that phony English lord's child wasn't a pleasant one, on several counts. Humble wouldn't be happy about it, for one thing.

  Chagrined, he realized the doctor was waiting for him to finish his sentence.

  "I suppose she might be," he allowed at last. "But I doubt it."

  He couldn't figure why the doctor gave him such a queer look. It was hardly reassuring.

  "You do, huh? Well, then, I'd say exhaustion." His refined Virginia drawl was not convincing. "Dehydration. She seems healthy enough, otherwise. Unless there's something I can't detect."

  His voice trailed off Macalester grimaced. He had scant respect for the medical profession anyway, and this man's clumsy diagnosis only served to confirm his disdain.

  "Can't you give her something?" he persisted, watching Geneva's shallow, uneven breaths. "A tonic, or—or something?"

  The doctor glanced at him. "I'd rather not," he said, shaking his head again. "Not tonight, at least. Watch her tonight. Get her whatever she wants to eat. Make sure she drinks plenty of fluids: tea, consommé, whatever. If she's no better when I check back in the morning, perhaps we'll have to take her into the hospital." The hospital!

  "Has your wife ever had a spell like this before?"

  It was a long moment before Macalester realized, abashed, that the doctor was addressing him. "She—" he began, then hesitated. "Not that I'm aware of," he finished, uncomfortable. He had registered them merely as McAllister, even though he had secured a room for himself adjoining the suite. He was beginning to sense, to his dismay, that he was slowly losing control of this very tenuous situation, and he had no idea how to regain it.

  He straightened, rallying. Geneva was sick, that was all. It would pass. And what if this obscure country physician did think she was his wife? In a day or two at most, they would be on the train again bound for Memphis. That is, if Geneva recovered sufficiently.

  If she recovered.

  He helped the doctor into his coat.

  "If she takes a turn for the worse, drive her right over to the hospital and have them summon me. And don't worry, Mr. McAllister." The doctor smiled at him, clasping his hand. "I'm sure she'll be just fine."

  Macalester realized, annoyed, that his concern must have been evident on his face. He withdrew his hand abruptly from the doctor's and led him to the door, thanking him as politely as he could. Relieved to be alone again, he returned his attention to Geneva Lionwood, who was trying to sit up.

  He was by her in an instant, taking hold of the hands with which she had begun fumbling with the fastenings of her jacket. They felt cooler, but she still seemed weak as a kitten.

  "Too warm," she murmured, regarding him through half-closed eyelids. "Can't breathe."

  His fingers turned to lead. He would have to undress her himself. He muttered a brief curse under his breath and, the room having become suddenly quite warm, he removed his own jacket and tossed it onto a chair near the bed. She lay perfectly still as he worked the fastenings of her jacket. That accomplished, he paused, look
ing down at her, utterly confounded as to what to do next.

  The only women he'd ever undressed before were whores, but whores never wore much anyway. Geneva's frilly ivory blouse completely baffled him, with its rows of pleats and folds, long, straight lines of covered buttons and impossibly tiny loops. Suddenly her hand was on his, warm and gentle. He looked up and found her regarding him with sleepy serenity. His legs turned to jelly.

  "You are so kind, Mr. McAllister," she said, barely above a whisper. "And I am such a bother!"

  She sat up weakly with his help, slipping her arms from the jacket. With astonishingly deft movements, she undid her blouse. He helped her to lift the voluminous garment over her head, willing himself not to think as she lay back against the pillows like some mythical goddess in her charming corset and snowwhite chemise. She stretched her lithe, bare arms above her head with a small sigh that sent a surge of hot metal through his core. Damn, he thought uneasily, finding the fastenings of her skirt and petticoat. Both yielded without a struggle along her nicely rounded hips, revealing shapely, silk-stockinged legs. It required all of his will to prevent himself from stroking those long, shapely limbs, and they continued to distract him as he unbuttoned and removed her shoes.

  The tight shoes made him think of something else.

  "Guess you'd better—uh—loosen up that—uh—"

  Lord, he was tongue-tied as a boy, and he couldn't look up.

  "Oh, that's so sweet of you!" she said with a weak little sigh. "Would you? Please?"

  Oh, Lord. He couldn't. Not without—

  Billy. Prison. Twenty years hard labor.

  If she wondered why he performed his task so quickly, and maybe a little roughly, she didn't ask. He got to his feet and gathered her things into a bundle. She smiled drowsily, easing onto her side.

  "Mr. McAllister," she pronounced in a soft, inviting tone, "however can I repay you?"

  Kieran discovered, to his alarm, that he could not move. He could not even breathe. He wanted her so badly that if he dared to react to her question, or even to blink, he would be there with her on that big, wide bed, completing the job of undressing her, with far less caution and care than when he had begun. That chemise would be a memory, those stockings and pantalets shreds. A hair's breadth stood between him and his desire; any movement would make her his.

  Garland Humble's image played before him suddenly like a taunting court jester: I want to be sure you don't forget your job when she bats her eyelashes at you.

  Kieran closed his eyes. Damn Garland Humble.

  "I'll get you some tea," he managed, turning away from her. It was only four or five steps to the door, and he congratulated himself that he negotiated the distance in a cool, unhurried gait. Once outside, however, he closed the door and leaned his entire weight against it to keep her dangerous allure trapped behind it. Sweat crawled down the small of his back, and he heard his heart pounding in his ears like a loud warning.

  The time had come and passed. There was no point in Geneva belaboring her feigned illness in Roanoke. By morning, she made a miraculous recovery and was pronounced healthy and fit by the doctor, who seemed to want full credit. By noon, they were back on a southbound train heading for Memphis.

  Geneva was disappointed at, but not discouraged by, the ultimate failure of her first plan. It had been so easy to persuade McAllister that she was ill on the train. He had fallen into her carefully laid trap like a felled oak, hard and heavy. It was a glorious sensation, to realize that she possessed that kind of power over people in general and men in particular. McAllister, prepossessed and remote, was an especially satisfying conquest and, having achieved her aim of spending the night in a hotel instead of on the train, she had thought the rest—the seduction—would be a mere formality, if necessary at all.

  But McAllister had, at last, eluded her snare, or perhaps she had played her earlier part too well. Indeed, McAllister remained by her bedside throughout the night, as far as she knew. She had grown tired of watching him watch her from the chair across the room, his long legs spread out before him and his hands crossed upon his expansive chest. She had fallen asleep, the covers drawn up to her chin thanks to McAllister. And when she had awakened to the bright morning sunshine streaming through her windows, he was still there, snoring softly, in exactly the same pose.

  She was undeniably disappointed, but touched at the same time. He seemed to have no expectations of her, and she found that refreshing. Men had always wanted something from her, often in return for very little. But McAllister had merely handed her San Francisco in a jewel-encrusted chalice and offered himself as escort. How very perverse, she thought with some wry amusement, that she should at last meet a man who attracted and intrigued her so much as to want to make love with him, and find that she was obliged to virtually force him into the situation!

  Well, she mused, holding her cards close to her breast, tomorrow would be another day. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. Buoyed by the thought of imminent triumph, she played her cards with a flourish.

  "Rummy," she pronounced gleefully, relishing McAllister's look of rueful amusement. He threw in his cards and leaned back against his seat, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand.

  "Let's play something else," he declared, grinning at her. "I don't like losing."

  The sun was setting on the Tennessee River Valley. Geneva collected the cards with her gloved hands, smiling to herself.

  "I never met a man who did," she felt obliged to remark.

  Her escort chuckled.

  "Oh? And what about women?"

  She sat back in her own seat, folding her arms before her. He regarded her expectantly. She liked the expression.

  "Women are accustomed to losing," she began, shuffling the cards for another hand. "We don't like it, but at least we are prepared for it. We can cope with it. And every time we lose, we learn something. What does one learn from winning all of the time? Merely that one enjoys winning. Being able to accept the disappointment of losing makes the joy of winning all the sweeter."

  "You sound as though you speak from experience." She sighed. How little you know of me, she thought.

  "My mother was a vaudeville actress, Mr. McAllister," she said, looking out of the window, determined to keep this brief and unsentimental. "My father, a piano player in a saloon. I learned from both of them how to lose. But winning… that was something I had to teach myself Shall we play some poker?"

  Macalester's luck was decidedly better at poker, although the graceful soprano was capable of holding her own. He amused himself, and his lovely companion, by spinning tales of San Francisco far into the night. He and Billy had traveled through the town several times, so it wasn't hard for him to turn one of the most elegant fancy houses he'd ever seen into an opera house nearly as grand as New York's Academy of Music. Her questions were broad enough to be satisfied by his sketchy responses, and when they became too specific, he shrugged them off with the excuse that he was just an attorney—an agent for the facility and not involved with the artistic aspects.

  The conversation was therapeutic for him. It kept his mind off of things he preferred not to think about as well as those about which he was forbidden to think. As the night wore on, the conversation gradually lapsed into the peaceful silence of sleep.

  By evening of the following day, they arrived in Memphis. Geneva hadn't mentioned his "odd little habit" again; Macalester had taken pains to break himself of it. Now, he scarcely remembered to check for the important letter at all, except in private, but as it was still there every time he did, he decided he'd been behaving like a worried old grandmother about it.

  Macalester planned to spend the night there in the comfort of a hotel, and to make the last leg of their train journey to Little Rock the following afternoon. It was his intention to deposit Geneva Lionwood at the hotel with the excuse that he had business to conduct and arrangements to make. He did not trust himself to spend too much time alone with her under circumstances that might lead to a c
ompromise of his loyalties, if not of Mrs. Humble herself On the train, he was largely safe from opportunity, if not temptation. And it would do neither of them good to become involved: she would hate him when she at last discovered, as she must, the true nature of his mission.

  The Memphis station was busier than Roanoke's had been, but not nearly so chaotic as Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Station. Macalester took Geneva by the arm, guiding her through the crowd to a bench near the cab stands.

  "I'm going to arrange for your luggage to be held here at the station until we depart," he explained, gesturing for her to sit. "I want you to—"

  "Macalester!"

  It was so distant that at first, he was not even certain he had heard it. Geneva stared at him expectantly. Had she heard it, too? "Macalester!"

  This time, it was louder. Closer. Geneva looked beyond him. His mouth going dry, Macalester straightened and looked about, but he could see no one he knew among the crowd. He resisted the overwhelming urge to lead Geneva quickly out of the train station, electing to rely on his ability to handle whomever might be calling him without giving himself or his mission away.

  "Howdy, Macalester." The voice, reedy and low, was at his shoulder. He still could not place it, although it was distressingly familiar. "Travelin' in better comp'ny these days, I see."

  Macalester caught his breath, realizing at last who was standing beside him. His heart sank into his fancy dress boots as he turned to meet the steady, measuring gaze of the enemy.

  Chapter Eight

  Lennox, the only name by which the bounty hunter was known, was tall and rangy and smelled of buffalo and buckskin in spite of his new-looking mail-order suit. His hair, no particular shade of brown, was literally waxed to his head like the ends of his long mustache, which drooped on either side of his hollow, stubbly cheeks like the tails of a couple of dead rats. His eyes, a kind of golden brown often found in half-breeds, did not blink as he regarded Macalester without smiling.

  Macalester felt as if he'd just been hamstrung and trussed like a prize turkey.