His Californian Countess. Kate Welsh
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Meara needed sleep more than a farewell hug from her da. “I hate leaving her after being gone nearly all winter, especially without saying goodbye. Give her my love and tell her she’ll have a great adventure seeing this vast country from the rail car when you all travel to join me in San Francisco. I think perhaps the doctor is right about the air at Cape May. I asked Palmer to see that the house there is opened when he was here … was it yesterday?”
Mimm sighed. “Last evening after the little one’s fever broke.”
Jamie raked a hand through his hair. He really was exhausted. “I’ll make sure there’s a pony waiting in New Jersey for her birthday. That ought to help get her strength back and make up for my missing her special day. Tell her I’ll see her by mid-September.”
“We’ll miss you, lamb. Take care,” Mimm ordered. When he looked back down the hall, she had tears in her eyes.
“I’ll be fine,” he promised, then turned away and hurried from the town house. He couldn’t let the clipper sail without him. He stopped on his way to the docks to see his man of business. There, he and Palmer put in place the plans for Meara and her entourage, as well as the purchase of the pony. Then he hastened down Dover Street to Pier 28 where the Young America, black hull gleaming in the late morning light, stood ready for departure.
He arrived just as several longshoremen prepared to hoist the gangplank off the clipper’s gunwale, making him the last to board. Mindful of his driver carting his trunk behind him, Jamie strode up the gangplank, his knees growing weaker by the minute. He knew he didn’t present the aristocratic image his uncle would expect, but he’d finally gotten to a place where that didn’t matter. America had not only allowed him to amass a sizeable fortune and given him a buoyant sense of freedom; it had helped him put most of the ghosts of his past to rest.
Except for the reason he needed to watch over Helena. Because if he was right that Harry Conwell had given his life for him, Jamie’s past was still a threat to his present and future.
Many of the passengers were on deck, but Jamie didn’t see Helena. He found the steward and asked if she’d boarded. The man returned to him rather quickly with the news that she had and so Jamie began his search again.
Then he saw her. Sunlight gleaming in her blond hair, she stood at the rail, looking down at the murky water. He walked over and tapped her on the shoulder. She whirled to face him. Though there was a strong resemblance, this young woman wasn’t Helena. She had the same heart shape to her face and the same perfectly turned-up nose, but rather than blue, she had the biggest, darkest brown eyes he’d ever seen. A poet would say a man could fall into their depths and not care if he were ever seen again.
He felt a primeval punch to his gut. He’d never felt this before. It was attraction that went past that to desire, but was untainted by lust. He was quite unprepared.
She tilted her head and frowned a bit. “May I help you, sir?”
It was only then he realized he’d been staring. He blinked and the deck shifted under his feet. “Sorry. At first I thought you were someone else. But you aren’t her a’tal.” He nearly cringed at the sound of the Irish lilt in his voice before he remembered. He was free. He could talk as he wished. His uncle had drilled repressing that accent into him all his life, but he was his own man now. Jamie Reynolds answered to no one.
“Should I be sorry I’m not her?” the young woman asked.
“Definitely not.” He didn’t know what surprised him most, her sweet, warm smile, her answer, or his. Nor did he know why she’d unnerved him so completely. “Is this your first trip at sea?” he asked, needing, for some reason, to keep the conversation going. He knew he should probably continue his search for Helena, but now that the ship was under way, all urgency deserted him. He pushed thoughts of Helena away, suddenly wanting to know more about this lovely, innocent-eyed woman.
“I was born in California, but my family died of fever. I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle but I traveled overland. I remember little of the journey and only a bit more of the state. This is my first trip anywhere since except to Poughkeepsie, New York. I went to a college there.”
He raised his eyebrows. “College?”
She nodded. “Vassar.”
“Beautiful and intelligent. Not qualities I’ve seen in combination all that often.”
Her little pointed chin notched up a bit. “Are you saying it is mostly homely girls who have good minds?”
She had backbone. He liked that. “I was speaking of London and the young women of its marriage-mart Season. Beauty and pretty manners are prized. Intelligence isn’t.” He hoped she hadn’t noticed the bitterness in his tone.
She blushed prettily and he relaxed. “That was a compliment, then?” she asked, her head tilted a bit.
“Of course. Colleges for women are rare, aren’t they? England has Girton College, but they don’t offer a degree.”
“Vassar does and there will be more colleges that do, I assure you. You find London’s women distasteful for some reason.”
And she was perceptive. “Many of them are only interested in learning how to trap a man into marriage, then to run his house and his life afterward. They aren’t beating down Girton’s doors, I assure you.”
She smiled. “And you had to come all the way to America to escape them?”
“I had other purposes in coming here. It’s a happy coincidence that they’re there and I’m not.”
She seemed to ponder his answer with an adorable little frown wrinkling her smooth forehead. “It wasn’t very smart of them to let you escape.”
He laughed. “So if they’d been smarter, I wouldn’t be here? Intelligent women can be dangerous then. I must remember that.”
It was her turn to laugh. And it was such a low and sensual sound it reminded him he’d been too long without a woman’s warm body beneath his.
She flashed a look at him from head to toe, then gave him a teasing grin when her eyes met his. “You look quite capable of defending yourself against danger of any sort,” she said. Then she did the strangest thing. She looked out over the water and her expression changed from temptress to pixie in an instant. “Oh, look! We’re moving. It’s so beautiful,” she cried, so animated she fairly vibrated with glee.
“We’ve been moving since we began talking.”
“I hadn’t thought there’d be so much water! Which is rather silly of me, isn’t it? It’s only that this is all such … such an adventure.” Her smile was even broader now, showing more of her even white teeth. Her eyes had gone wide with wonder, too. Innocent eyes.
He looked away from her, feeling things he shouldn’t for an unescorted female. An innocent one at that. His gaze fell on the water and through her battery of questions, he experienced again the excitement of his first voyage.
Growing a bit tired, but not wanting this interlude to end, he leaned on the rail and pointed out Brooklyn with its verdant-green rolling landscape, Manhattan and the few landmarks within it that he’d learned to spot on earlier trips.
The wind freshened and the sun reflected off the rippling water like dancing diamonds. The ship vibrated and the deck shifted under his feet. Crewmen seemed to fly up the ratlines. A whooshing sound from the bow cutting through the water filled the air, disturbed only by a drone of conversation from the passengers still on deck or the occasional shout of a crewman going about his business.
“So, does your adventure end with the voyage?” he asked now that they entered the harbor. He looked back at her. It was a lowering thing to admit, but the attraction he felt for this woman showed him how little he’d known of true desire before. He certainly hadn’t felt anything like this for Helena for whom he’d embarked on this voyage. For her he felt only duty and obligation.