Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
It was a minute sound, but Zachary heard it none the same. Living on the frontier had given him a sixth sense when something was off. Excusing himself, Zach trailed the muted probability of a scuffle.
He traveled soundlessly down a dark corridor lit by flickering gas lamps and went through open French doors.
Elizabeth? The sugar baron? Was he mistaken? Was it a meeting of paramours?
He heard a woman’s whimper.
“I’ll compromise you, Elizabeth and force you to marry me.”
“Let me go.”
Zachary took long strides through the lengthy conservatory filled with orchids, ferns, climbing vines, the perfume of flowers and flowering damp earth. Banks of potted palms lined the windows, and to the left, a lion’s head framed in green onyx spouted cascading water in a fan-shaped stream.
“Your mother is an overeager shrew, desiring the title I will soon earn.”
“Ouch. You bitch, you bit my hand.”
Zachary heard a resounding slap, and then Elizabeth’s cry.
“That will teach you not to humiliate me, Elizabeth as you did with that pathetic cowboy over dinner. You’ll learn your place quickly under my rule, and it won’t be pleasant. Ask any of my slaves in Barbados.”
Zachary moved out from beneath low-hanging trumpet flower vines. His six foot two frame towered over the little man who dared to slam Elizabeth up against the wall.
Havemeyer glared over his shoulder. “Get out. This is between me and my fiancée.”
Zachary sized up the bruise on Elizabeth’s face, and her desperation to pry Havemeyer’s fingers digging into her shoulders. Blood rocketed through his veins. “Not a chance.”
Elizabeth thrust off the sugar baron and moved beside Zachary. Havemeyer became restless, moving from foot to foot, twisting at the waist, rolling his thin shoulders.
Almost laughable, except Zachary was furious with the man who gambled to lay a hand on a defenseless lady, and in her own home.
Nobody spoke.
Havemeyer’s mouth opened and closed like a goldfish pecking at the surface. Thin moveable lips over a chomping mill of teeth. “You should learn your place, Rourke.”
“I’d like you to teach me,” Zachary taunted. Zach entertained knocking out his teeth, breaking his arms and legs. That would be too kind.
“Let’s keep our tempers,” said Elizabeth.
The smaller man pumped his chest out, a wonder his lungs didn’t explode. “I can take care of you. You might be dressed up but you’re still a cowboy. I’d hate to see your new fancy clothes get messed up.” He guffawed at his own joke.
“I should warn you, Havemeyer. You might want to get a dozen men to back you up.”
Emboldened by the amount of alcohol he’d consumed, Havemeyer came to life. The sugar baron was not in control of his wits. Maybe jumping from side to side took up all his brainpower. He stepped forward one angry pace. “Get out of New York.”
The smaller man stumbled toward Zachary and then braced against the motion and spun back and started to whirl a fast one-eighty toward Elizabeth with his fist cocking behind his back like a pitcher aiming a speed ball.
Zachary seized the man by the wrist and waited for a split second and then let go again and the guy teetered through the rest of his turn all unbalanced and ungainly and incompetent and ended with an anemic late swing that skipped Elizabeth entirely.
But then Havemeyer turned right back and directed a second swing upright at Zachary.
Zachary stepped right and the incoming fist droned by an inch from his chin.
The force behind it whirled the sugar baron forward and Zachary kicked the man’s feet out from under him and ditched him face down on the marble floor.
Elizabeth gave a warning cry. The sugar baron was already up on his knees and scrabbling for grip, hand and feet, like a sprinter, a small derringer pointed at Zachary’s heart.
The man was deranged, and Zachary didn’t trust a random gunshot fired into Elizabeth.
So, Zachary kicked him hard in the head.
The man’s eyes rolled up and he toppled sideways and lay still with his leg folded under him.
Zachary booted Havemeyer’s gun free, picked it up and gave it to Elizabeth. “Take this, Elizabeth, and keep it. You never know when you’ll need protection.”
“He followed me in here. I had wanted to be alone.”
“I don’t countenance men preying on defenseless women. It’s the code I grew up with.”
Her eyes lit with worry, she said, “What about Havemeyer?”
Zachary shrugged. “Looks to me like the sugar baron tripped over his feet. The servants will find him in the morning. He won’t dare say anything because he’d have to admit how he’d accosted you.”
Elizabeth turned her cheek, using her reflection in the conservatory window. “Is it bad?”
“Nothing that a little powder won’t cover. You should report him to your father.”
“No! Mother would say it was my fault for provoking him. She’d expedite my marriage to him. I thank you for saving me from that dreadful man.”
She watched Zachary drag Havemeyer to the rear of the conservatory. A three-inch thick wood plank heavy with an array orchids draped over the horrid man. With the side of his hand, Zachary chopped the plank in half. Impossible.
Pots crashed, shrouding the sugar baron with dirt, orchids and shattered pottery. Elizabeth gasped. “How did you do that?”
He shrugged. “Gravity.”
“No. Chop the board in half. Don’t tell me that was a skill picked up from the Comanche?”
“Chen taught me. Taught me many useful things.”
With the toe of her slipper, she touched the unconscious man. “What if he tries to create a scandal?”
“He’ll have me to deal with. Should I throw him in the river? He could catch the falling tide, take up residence in the marshes.”
“No. That won’t be necessary. I don’t want to add murder to the evening.”
Behind a flowerpot, Zachary grabbed a quart of whiskey the gardener had hidden and dumped it over the sugar baron, placed the neck of the bottle in the sugar baron’s hand. “Just as good as one of those paintings in the hall.” He dusted his hands. “No attachment to the scoundrel?”
Elizabeth’s lip curled. “To a degenerate? Are you kidding? He’s treated our servants like his slaves. The man is living proof that God has a sordid sense of humor.”
“That’s not fair. Havemeyer possesses a deep voice.
Twice the size of the rest of him, reminding me of the mating practices of bullfrogs.
He’d find the flair handy in the tidal flats.
Skinny, deep-throated males attract more females than their huskier, higher-pitched companions.
By the looks of things, Isaac Havemeyer reversed the laws of nature.
Are you sure you don’t want me to throw him in the river? ”
She laughed. “Skinny bullfrogs? How appropriate.”
“I’m glad to see money and a title would not interest you. You are worth so much more.”
Elizabeth huffed. “Is that what you think?”
“Are you fishing for compliments?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course, not,” he taunted, leaning against the door frame, his posture deceptively relaxed, despite a prevailing undercurrent.
Frontiersman? Cowboy? Gentleman? She couldn’t decide if she liked him in his western attire or his formal attire.
Was it possible for him to appear taller, broader in the shoulders, and thicker in the chest?
He should have seemed cruder, or the tiniest unsophisticated.
But he wore the clothes of a gentleman perfectly.
The flawless tailoring of his coat suggested that the superb garment hugged his shoulders without pinching or pulling, and it tucked in smartly at his waist just enough to show his sinewy frame.
During dinner, she had felt his gaze on her while addressing her father.
He had regarded her long enough that Elizabeth was certain the staff and other guests were taking notice of the way he had assessed her inside out.
What stymied her was her inability to gauge what was in his face the instant she had caught him at it.
He had turned to the guest on his other side, and she could not determine if his concentration was more than hopeful imagination.
Not that she desired him to take an interest—not the sort of affection a man of inferior position would have for a woman of elite status.
It was all sheer whimsy, just an astonishingly beautiful man—an impressive sight that she could not but regard.
“You are a proud and arrogant man, Mr. Rourke.”
Zachary sighed. “I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I’ve always found it a wholesome diet.”
Her breath hitched. At dinner and as in the present moment, he smiled or laughed at the appropriate moments, the element of latent alertness in him, the sense of a steady and unfailing attention within his relaxed stance, seemed striking to her.
Was it inherent or a trained condition? “Never have I met a more pretentious male.”
He bowed to her. “I can’t help it. I’m bound by an abundance of modesty.”
Elizabeth burst out laughing. “Mr. Rourke, you are refreshing and a far cry from dullards like Havemeyer I’m obligated to entertain.”
She swallowed from his scrutiny, and then looked away.
How he moved in disabling Havemeyer was remarkable, with a controlled and concentrated grace.
Everything about him scorched forever in her mind.
Was he? Was he the shining hero who had helped her that terrible stormy day on the bank of the Meramec River?
Her throat went dry. Thank God he'd not referred to the occasion.
“We should go in case a servant enters,” she warned.
Zachary gave the sugar baron one last contemptuous look. “Maybe he’ll never wake up. Perhaps the servants won’t discover him until he’s mummified. Then your father can add him to one of his collections.”