Lady Be Mine
Auteur·e
Catherine Spencer
Lectures
16,4K
Chapitres
11
CHAPTER ONE
SHE must have fallen asleep with her head hanging over like a broken doll’s because his voice, coming out of nowhere as it did, had her jumping half out of her skin and wrenching her neck painfully.
‘Are you the one who brought in Seth Logan?’ he asked, his tone so heavy with censure that her heart skidded.
‘I came with him in the ambulance, yes,’ she replied, half rising from the chair.‘How is he?’
He didn’t answer. He was far too busy looking her over, his gaze no more approving than his voice. She tugged at the fringed hem of the silver dress even though she knew it ended a good two inches above her knees and had never been designed for so grave an occasion. Her silk stockings were torn and full of runs. She supposed it was from kneeling on the cobbled street and cradling Seth Logan’s head in her lap, right after the accident had happened. Aware that her beaded headband had slipped a notch during the endless hours of the night, and that she looked incongruously out of place in the hospital waiting-room, she struggled to her feet.
He towered over her by nearly a foot, which made him at least six three. Compared to her winter-pale skin, his glowed from recent exposure to tropical sunshine. Hair as black and shiny as the rainy Saturday night outside tumbled in curly disarray over his forehead. His jaw, stubbled with incipient beard, bespoke authority and a stubbornness that bordered on intransigence. As for his mouth—even carved in disapproval, his mouth was beautiful, firmly moulded with the hint of a dimple at each corner.
Melody glanced away, appalled. What was she doing, allowing her thoughts to take such liberties, when a man might be lying dead down the hall, and all because of her?
‘How is he?’ she repeated, twisting in anxious fingers the long string of jet beads that dangled down the front of the silver dress.
He raked back the hair from his brow and flexed wide shoulders as though to ease the cramped muscles that no doubt came from spending hours bent over an operating table repairing the damage done to a body that had been run over by a limousine. He had good hands, she noticed, strong, long-fingered, capable, with the nails cut short and scrubbed immaculately clean. They added to his aura of power and she knew that, whatever the news, he had done his best. He was not a man who would give up easily on life, not his nor other people’s. Seth Logan was in safe keeping—provided he was still alive.
‘They’ll be bringing him down from the post-operative unit within the hour,’ he informed her coldly.
The air rushed out of her lungs in relief.‘Then he’ll recover?’
‘His leg is very badly broken in three places and he has multiple contusions. Given time and proper follow-up care after he’s released, the leg should heal enough that he’ll walk again—provided he doesn’t develop pneumonia or a blood clot over the next few days.’
Melody shivered at the ominous words.‘And if that happens?’
‘He’ll probably die.’
She sucked in a painful breath.‘Oh, God!’
Eyes as coldly blue as Antarctica swept over her a second time.‘Very good, Miss Worth. One might almost be inclined to believe that you really care.’
She recoiled from the blatant dislike in his voice. He might be an excellent doctor and far too handsome for his own good, but if his attitude towards her was any example of his bedside manner it left a lot to be desired.‘I do care,’ she protested.‘I care very much. When may I see him?’
‘Never, if I have my way.’ His gaze assessed her again, more scathingly than ever. He even had the audacity to hook a finger under the string of jet beads and reel her close enough for her to catch a whiff of his fading aftershave. The silver fringe draping her breasts billowed over the back of his hand in wanton invitation.‘The last thing he needs is patronising visits from someone like you.’
Fatigue and worry had her snapping back like an overbred poodle.‘That’s up to Mr Logan to decide.’
‘Precisely,’ he agreed, a smile inching over his mouth without thawing the chill in his eyes.‘And Mr Logan has decided to send you packing.’
‘I’ll wait to hear that from him, if you don’t mind.’
‘You just did,’ he said and, letting go of her beads, turned away dismissively.
Footsteps in the hall outside the waiting-room came to a stop in the doorway.
‘Ah, you two have already met, I see.’ The young resident who’d been waiting for the ambulance when it arrived at the hospital offered a brief smile and indicated the man beside him.‘This is Dr Fellowes, who operated on Mr Logan, Miss Worth. I thought you might want to have a word with him, since you were so upset when the patient was brought in.’
Melody felt her hand enveloped in a reassuring grip, and fastened her gaze on the person to whom it belonged. He fitted the role of surgeon, from the shapeless green garments swathing his body to the fatigue that shadowed his eyes. But in that case, who was the other man, the hostile one whose gaze continued to skewer her with arrows of condemnation?
‘Why did you let me think you were the doctor in charge?’ she asked, swinging back to face him.
‘I didn’t. You merely jumped to that conclusion.’
‘Then who are you, and what right have you to tell me to stay away from Mr Logan?’
‘I’m James Logan, his next of kin, which gives me every right. Miss Worth,’ he stated, addressing the medical team in lordly tones,‘has been made aware of my father’s condition, gentlemen. I hardly think you need waste anyone’s time repeating what I’ve already conveyed to her, since she’s merely a stranger who happened to be at the scene of the accident.’
‘But a concerned stranger who might have questions of her own,’ the surgeon suggested mildly.‘Miss Worth?’
Overshadowed by James Logan’s scowling presence, Melody blinked. She wished she felt more in command of the situation and less like an errant minor brought up before an unforgiving judge.‘I—er—may I see him?’
‘Not tonight, Miss Worth. He won’t know you’re there. But come back tomorrow afternoon, by which time he’ll be better able to appreciate the sight of such a pretty young woman.’
The compassion in the surgeon’s words and the smile that accompanied it had tears pricking at her eyes. She swallowed.‘Thank you, Doctor. You’re very kind.’
‘I told you, I don’t want you hanging around,’ James Logan growled as the medical team left.‘Go back to your fancy party and stop pretending you give a tinker’s damn whether my father lives or dies.’
‘The party’s been over for hours,’ Melody said, exhaustion sweeping over her anew. Sagging into the nearest chair before she fell over, she reached up and tugged the beaded headband from her hair.‘And even if it weren’t, I couldn’t face it, not now.’
He planted himself in front of her, cutting off the glare from the overhead light, but she could see him reflected in the rain-wet window at her side. A more disgruntled image was hard to imagine.
‘It wasn’t supposed to end like this,’ she murmured, as much to herself as to him.
He smiled down at her unpleasantly.‘I’m sure it wasn’t. How inconsiderate of my father to put such a damper on the whole evening when you’d no doubt planned to be the belle of the ball, sparkling with wit and dispensing charm to a host of admirers.’
‘That’s not so!’ she protested.
Certainly, she’d expected she’d dance the Charleston, as promised, with flashy Roger who owned the shop next to hers in the Alley, and that the music and laughter would go on into the small hours. But her motivation for wanting to see the ball a success ran to something deeper than the shallow vanity to which James Logan ascribed it. A much more serious issue underlay all the hoop-la and glamour of the evening’s festivities. What really mattered was raising enough money to turn a dream into reality.
Melody loved life, but then, why shouldn’t she? She’d never known a day’s need, never been shunned by those she loved. It grieved her to witness the despair of those around her who were less fortunate, and she found it almost obscene that she should have so much when they had so little. Establishing a soup-kitchen and drop-in centre for the unemployed drifters who hung around the bleak, cold streets because they had nowhere else to go had become more than her ambition; it was almost an obsession.
But instead of furthering the dream, what had she actually accomplished? One of those she’d hoped to help had ended up in hospital, worse off than he’d been before.‘No,’ she repeated, her voice cracking,‘being the belle of the ball isn’t what mattered at all.’
‘Before you dissolve into tears,’ James Logan warned her caustically,‘you should know that I’m immune to female crying fits, no matter how movingly they’re presented.’
The unfairness of his remark revived her faster than apology or sympathy might have done.‘It seems to me,’ she flared,‘that someone should be showing evidence of sadness or regret over your father’s state of health, and, since it’s obviously not going to be you, then it might as well be me.’
‘I’m not responsible for his accident,’ he pointed out.
‘And I didn’t arrange it on purpose! I wasn’t driving the limo—I wasn’t even a passenger in it! How was I supposed to know your father would get embroiled in a fight and fall into the path of an oncoming car? Come to that, why do you think the entire block had been cordoned off to begin with, if not to ensure the safety of pedestrians?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said,‘but you can be sure I intend to find out. Until then, consider the subject closed, if for no other reason than that a hospital is no place for a shouting match, especially not in the middle of the night.’
She drew in a long, unhappy breath and pushed herself to her feet.‘You’re right.’
‘I usually am,’ he replied smugly, and strode from the room before she could frame a rebuttal. Not that anything clever sprang to mind. In fact, she felt numb all over.
Because she had little option, she followed him. He stood at the end of the hall, waiting for the lift. She wished it would arrive and swallow him up before she reached it, but it didn’t and she was forced to endure his silent company all the way down from the sixth floor to the lobby.
It was deserted at that time of night and so was the street outside, something which brought home to Melody the realisation that, in the confusion caused by the accident and getting Seth Logan to the hospital, she’d come without her evening bag or coat, and hadn’t so much as a dime on her to call for a taxi.
James Logan operated under no such handicap. Indifferent to the rain beating down on his unprotected head, he strode to the edge of the pavement, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and let fly with a piercing whistle. Like magic, a taxi materialised out of the night and cruised to a stop.
He had flung open the back door and was about to slide into the warm interior when he happened to glance back at Melody shivering just inside the hospital entrance. At least ten feet of pavement separated them, but she saw the heaving sigh that possessed him.
‘I suppose,’ he declared with marked truculence,‘you expect me to be a perfect gentleman and offer you the first ride?’
If he’d shown the least sign that he had a chivalrous bone in his body, she might have responded differently, but his stoical certainty that she would live down to his every expectation of her stabbed her pride.‘I seldom expect miracles, Mr Logan, especially from such an unlikely source, so by all means climb into your taxi and be on your way.’
He actually hesitated for a minute, as if sorely tempted. Then another sigh rippled over him.‘You’re turning into a monumental pain in the butt, Miss Worth, do you know that? Lucky for you, there’s a shred of decency in me that forbids me to leave a woman stranded on a dark street in the middle of winter.’ He swept an arm at the open door of the taxi.‘Go ahead and take the cab. I’ll wait for another.’
When she didn’t leap at his offer, he raised impatient brows.‘Well? Do you want it, or not?’
There was no help for it. She might as well throw herself on his already strained mercy, or else resign herself to spending the rest of the night huddled up on one of the hard vinyl couches in the lobby.‘I don’t have any money on me,’ she confessed.
He rolled his eyes, irritation evident in every fluid line of his body.‘It’s on me, OK?’
She’d have loved to turn him down, but the cold was eating at her bones through the fragile stuff of her dress, making the beckoning warmth of the taxi impossible to resist.‘We could share,’ she offered through chattering teeth.‘If you wouldn’t mind dropping me off first, it would save you both time and money.’
‘That’s the first intelligent suggestion you’ve made all night,’ he remarked, and jerked a thumb at the waiting vehicle.‘Now get in before we both drown.’
‘Where to?’ the taxi driver wanted to know.
‘The old Stonehouse Mansion at the top of Citadel Hill,’ Melody told him.
‘Mansion?’ James Logan’s amazement was patently phoney and laced with ridicule.‘Her ladyship lives in a mansion, yet doesn’t have the cab fare to get home?’
‘I left my purse at the ball,’ she said,‘but I’ll gladly reimburse you the first chance I get.’
‘Don’t think I don’t intend to collect,’ he retorted.
‘And for what it’s worth, the Stonehouse Mansion was converted into apartments more than twenty years ago.’
He grunted indifferently and slid lower in the back seat, doing his best to stretch his limbs in the confined space. Making herself as small as possible, Melody absorbed the warmth emanating from him. The air smelled of sea-fog and winter, blended with the rained-out echo of her perfume.
She was aware of him watching her in the light of passing street-lamps.‘Why are you wearing this ridiculous get-up?’ he asked, touching a finger to the fringe that spilled from her hem and sending tremors of warmth breezing over her knees.‘It looks like something from a 1920s Al Capone movie.’
‘I thought you knew. We were holding a fancy-dress ball in the Alley.’
‘The alley? You mean as in back alley, where the garbage cans and local drunks hang out?’ He grimaced.‘The lengths the smart set will go to to get their kicks these days!’
‘I mean Cat’s Alley. Surely you’ve heard of it—anyone shopping for something special comes to the Alley’s boutiques.’
‘Boutiques?’ The sneer was unmistakable.‘What was my father doing hanging around boutiques? The word’s not even part of his vocabulary.’
Melody squirmed uncomfortably. She’d assumed that James Logan knew the full story behind the night’s events, that the police had told him, or, failing that, someone from the hospital. She wished they had. In the face of his determined animosity, she didn’t feel up to justifying the reasons that had prompted the fund-raising gala.‘He...just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
But something about her tone gave away her discomfiture. James sat up a little straighter and settled an unblinking blue stare on her.‘Why do I get the impression,’ he enquired softly,‘that there’s more going on here than meets the eye? What aren’t you telling me, Lady Melody Worth from the Mansion?’
‘Well,’ she hedged, ignoring his sarcasm,‘I wouldn’t have thought there was much left to tell. The whole town knew about the ball and that we hoped to raise enough money from the proceeds for...’
She dribbled into silence, uncertain how to go on, and stole a glance at James Logan. His raincoat was fleece-lined, his shoes hand-made Italian leather. What sort of son was he, that he allowed his father to roam the streets of Port Armstrong without a decent winter coat to his name?
‘Yes, Miss Worth?’ James Logan prodded gently.‘What were you hoping to raise money for?’
‘Charity,’ she mumbled, and wondered why the look he gave her made her feel as if she’d uttered a dirty word.
His attention never wavered and she knew with complete certainty that nothing short of a head-on collision was likely to deflect it.‘Charity for what?’ he asked.
She waved a vague hand.‘Oh, people.’
‘People?’
‘I gather you don’t live in Port Armstrong, Mr Logan,’ she countered, deciding to match his aggression with a little of her own. She had done nothing of which she need feel ashamed, after all.‘If you did, you would surely be aware that there are some people in town who are...’
‘Poor?’ he suggested.
Sensing that she was treading on very thin ice, she chose her next words with care.‘Not exactly. “Without hope or ambition” would be a more accurate description.’ And your father is one of them.
‘And you thought you’d take it upon yourselves to make their lives more comfortable, did you?’
She didn’t like his tone; she didn’t like the relentless stare he fixed on her. And she hated the ease with which he soured good intentions with the taint of his scorn. She lifted her head defiantly.‘Yes, we did.’
James Logan’s smile was full of malicious irony.‘It must be nice to have your own affairs in such good order that you feel qualified to meddle in other people’s.’
The taxi, which had dropped into low gear to make the long, steep ascent up Citadel Hill, slowed down further to negotiate the turn into the Mansion’s curving driveway and slid to a stop outside the front entrance.
‘Actually,’ Melody said with fresh dismay as another problem rose up to confront her,‘that’s not exactly how I’d describe my affairs right now.’
‘And why is that, Miss Worth?’
She glanced up at the imposing stone façde of the building, at its darkened windows and sturdy front doors hewn from three-inch-thick oak. The only visible light came from the gleam of the brass lantern hanging under the porte-cochère.‘I don’t have my key to get in,’ she admitted, in a small voice.
The rain drummed on the roof of the taxi and slanted dazzling needles of water in the beam of the headlights. James Logan contemplated them for several seconds, then fixed his gaze on her face again.‘Neighbours?’ he enquired, without much hope.
She shook her head.‘The old lady who lives above me spends the weekends with her married daughter, and the couple on the third floor are on holiday in Tahiti.’
‘And it would never occur to you to keep a spare key stashed away in some secret place, just in case you ever needed it?’
‘As a matter of fact, it did,’ she said.‘There’s one under the flowerpot—on my balcony.’
Not a flicker of expression touched his features.‘And it, of course, hangs six feet above the ground.’
‘About ten, actually,’ she confessed.
‘Which is undoubtedly my cue to offer to hoist you up and over the railing.’
‘I’m afraid so, unless you can come up with some other solution.’
‘Such as what?’ he drawled.‘Offering to share my bed, as well as my taxi, with you?’
Melody’s face flamed.‘Hardly! I’m not that desperate.’
‘Neither am I,’ he said, but appeared to put the lie to his words by running an insolent hand down the calf of her leg, then lifting her foot and settling it in his lap.
Her first instinct was to vent her outrage, her second to savour the suffusing warmth generated by his fingers sliding over her silk-clad ankle.‘I think I’ll take these off,’ he murmured.
She let out a breathless squeak. ‘My stockings?’
‘Relax, Miss Worth, I’m referring to your shoes,’ he replied, unbuckling the delicate silver straps across her instep.‘Your virtue was never safer. You’re not my type at all.’
‘Praise the lord!’ she retorted.
‘Nor do I trust you. I am not about to take a chance on your implanting your high heels in my skull.’
Frankly, she found the idea enormously appealing, but, as though he could see clear inside her head, he shot her a warning glance.‘It’s not too late for me to dump you on the front doorstep and leave, so what’s it going to be, my lady? Total co-operation, or abandonment?’
‘I’ll go barefoot,’ she agreed grudgingly,‘but not until the last minute.’
‘Then let’s get this show on the road. I’ve been up since the crack of dawn and would like to catch a few hours’ sleep before the sun rises—assuming it ever does in this God-forsaken part of the world.’
Opening the car door, he stepped out and reached back to help her alight also, though‘yanking’ was a more accurate description of the way he hauled her out.‘Lead on,’ he ordered.
Melody’s heels sank into the sodden earth of the flowerbed under her balcony. James Logan was predictably displeased to find mud oozing over the fine leather uppers of his shoes.‘I should have followed my first instinct and left it until tomorrow to deal with you,’ he muttered, disentangling himself from the branches of a dwarf Japanese maple.
He wasn’t the only one who was tired. It had been a long and trying day for her, too.‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop whining!’ she snapped.‘If it were my father lying in a hospital bed, I think I’d be more concerned about him, instead of feeling so sorry for myself. And that,’ she continued, as a gust of wind sent a sudden burst of water streaming over his collar and down the back of his neck from the gutter overhead,‘is my balcony, right above you.’
‘Terrific,’ he snarled and squatted down.‘Get a move on, and use my knee to climb up on my shoulders. And don’t forget to take off your damned shoes.’
With a little smile, she complied, and took the utmost pleasure in planting her thoroughly muddy feet on his expensive, fleece-lined raincoat. No doubt he’d present her with a dry-cleaning bill in addition to the cost of the taxi, but it was worth the price for the aggravation he’d caused her.
But he chose a more immediate way to get even. Straightening to his full height as effortlessly as though she weren’t perched precariously on his shoulders, he used those fine, strong hands she’d admired earlier to boost her up and over the railing of her balcony with such energy that she toppled into a heap among the wind-blown leaves littering its surface. Her shoes followed suit in short order.
‘I hope that you’ve stashed a spare key that fits your balcony doors, too, Lady Worth, because I’m not offering my services to haul you down from there,’ he called out.‘There’s a nice sturdy vine growing up the wall that’ll make an excellent ladder. Shimmy down that, if you’re stuck.’
And, clearing the flowerbed with a leap, her reluctant cavalier disappeared into the back of the waiting taxi and slammed the door.
* * *
He waited until the cab driver had rounded the first curve in the driveway before tapping on the glass partition and getting him to stop. Slewing around in the seat, he watched until a sudden shaft of light outlined a window beyond the bare branches of the trees. Thank God she’d at least managed to get inside without further incident.‘Bloody irritating woman!’ he muttered.
‘Lady get under your skin?’ The driver grinned at him through the rear-view mirror.
‘Like a burr under a saddle,’ he acknowledged.
‘Guess you won’t be seeing any more of her, then.’
James wished that were so. There were other places he’d rather be, and other problems he’d rather tackle than those facing him here. And there were any number of people he’d rather have to deal with than Seth, who was a stubborn, bad-tempered man at the best of times. Heaven alone knew what he’d be like, laid up for a couple of months! But they were still father and son, whether either of them liked it or not. James supposed he had an obligation to go to bat for the old man and see to it that he was properly cared for and recompensed for his injuries.
But that meant getting to the bottom of Melody Worth’s involvement in the accident which, in turn, unfortunately meant crossing swords with her again.
The cab driver braked to another stop at the end of the driveway.‘Where to now, mister?’
James contemplated going to the cottage and shuddered. Not tonight. Not yet. It wasn’t his home, never had been.‘What’s the best hotel in town?’
‘Some might say the Ambassador,’ the cabby told him,‘but I’d recommend the Plumrose. It’s quieter.’
‘Then drop me off there. I don’t imagine I’ll have too much difficulty getting a room at this time of year.’
For tonight—or what remained of it—all he wanted was a brandy, a hot shower and a comfortable mattress at his back. Tomorrow, he’d visit his father and reacquaint himself with a town that had undergone such a major face-lift in recent years that he had trouble recognising some of the old landmarks. Monday was soon enough to begin his investigation into exactly how Seth’s accident had come about, and to make suitable arrangements for his post-recovery care. And it would be plenty soon enough to have to deal with her ladyship again.
