His Californian Countess

She recoiled and tried to scramble away when Jamie’s gaze fell upon her face and anger marched across his features. He tightened his grip on her shoulder and pushed himself up on one bent arm, staring down at her with narrowed, furious eyes.

It was then that she remembered she was ignominiously nearly naked in the arms of her counterfeit husband. He’d taken her body when he thought she was his high-society love. Or maybe it was she who was the counterfeit in this marriage. After all, it was she who was not the woman he thought he’d wed. She was not his precious Helena.

Amber wished he’d say something.

Anything.

“What is this about? Was our meeting on deck an accident, Pixie?” His beautiful mouth twisted in a sneer and “pixie” ceased to be a sweet pet name. “I thought you were a disadvantaged innocent, forced to travel alone.”

“I had my reasons for being alone.”

“I must wonder if your reason was to lure me into this trap so you could then demand marriage. It worked for my late wife, but I won’t be trapped that way again. I care not about my reputation here in America.”

Amber felt her temper rise. Now she scrambled away, dragging the blanket with her as she stood. What did she care if it left him naked and exposed? She’d bathed him and cared for his needs for days on end. She could look at his naked form all day and feel nothing but contempt.

But then he stood in all his naked glory—bold as you please—and captured her gaze with his own narrowed, hard-as-amethyst eyes. It was she who broke away from their locked gazes. When her lowered eyes fell on to his manhood, her face heated in a betraying blush. She looked away quickly, but the damage was done. And that set fire to a temper few had ever seen.

“Luring you into marriage?” she shouted. “You must still be suffering from delirium. Your uncle has apparently already done his worst by freezing your heart. I did not need to trap you into marriage. We’re already married. It was you who begged me to marry you to protect Meara. You promised an annulment if you survived the fever and I wished for one.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she rushed on, not caring what he planned to say. She had heard all she wished. “It was you who crawled on to my pallet last night and made annulment impossible. This is my thanks for caring for you all these long days? I should have let the captain toss you overboard. You endangered everyone on board just to follow your obsession with Helena!”

She stormed out into the saloon, her shoulders and back stiff as the deck she’d been sleeping on. Still wrapped in the blanket, the neckline of her pretty silk shift peeking out, she was mortified to bump into the ever-present cabin boy. But she raised her chin and stomped by him, refusing to show her embarrassment.

“Have my trunk sent to me,” she told the boy over her shoulder as she stalked across the wide, elegantly appointed companionway and saloon. “I’ll stay in my cabin under quarantine for the rest of the voyage, if I must, but I will not spend one more day in there. With him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the boy answered, staring at her as if she were mad.

Perhaps she was.

Because she was afraid she’d fallen in love with that … that obnoxious person whose miserable life she’d probably saved.

Then her tears welled up again as she remembered all he’d revealed during his illness. He was a good man, worthy of her love even though he didn’t want it. It had been the scars of his youth speaking just now. She knew that, but she

hardened her heart. She’d never wanted to care. To love.

And she wouldn’t.

She just wouldn’t!

Chapter Five

Jamie’s hand trembled as he ran it through his hair. He sank to the bed. His mind was less foggy; still, he was not completely sure of a good part of what had happened, in particular why he’d been standing naked, arguing with Amber. He winced when the door slammed behind her.

He sighed. Pixie was Amber. That much he was sure of. Their meeting on deck was engraved in his mind clearly, in sharp contrast to the murky uncertainty of the present.

He closed his eyes, trying to sort the jumble of images swimming to the surface. And now, God, now even snatches of the past days started to come into focus.

Too late.

He groaned. He remembered the burning fever. The pain of being touched. He would have died without her selfless care. Amber had agreed to marry him for Meara’s sake when he’d been so sure he would die. She’d tried to give him hope, but she’d finally agreed to the marriage. Only after warning him she’d be unsuitable as his countess, however.

That meant she’d been willing to protect his child. As far as he was concerned, that proved she would make a wonderful countess because she’d make Meara a wonderful mother.

And he wasn’t being in any way selfless, resigning himself to marriage to her because he suddenly recalled another of his lost memories—their lovemaking last the night. Memories of her skin, her hair, her scent.

As he went over those moments on her pallet, he knew he’d made an even more egregious error than he’d feared. Rising in his mind like a condemning specter was the look on her face—in her eyes—as he’d made her his. Her uncertainty of the unknown had all been written there. Then her expression changed to the one she’d worn as she scrambled to her feet and faced him this morning.

What had he done? What had he destroyed?

Jamie pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed again. The answer to that was as simple and as complicated as human nature. He’d allowed his past to color the present. He’d painted Amber with the motives of his late wife, Iris, a social-climbing whore, and of his cruel, manipulative guardian.

A knock at the door drew him back to the present and his eyes flew open. Hope that Amber had decided to return surged through him. Refusing to greet her naked as the day he was born, he made his way to his trunk and hurriedly located his dressing gown. After shrugging into it and knotting the tie at his waist, he hurried to the door on wobbly limbs. “I’m relieved you’ve reconsid—” he said as he pulled the heavy door open.

And his heart fell.

The drunken doctor he’d met the day he booked passage was not the person he wished to see. The older man wore an imperious look on his face as he said, “I’m told your nurse has deserted you.”

“I no longer have need of nursing care, and where my wife is cannot be of great interest to you.”

“It is of great interest to me until I’ve become certain she’s not about to take ill. I must pronounce you healthy, as well.”

Jamie spread his arms in mock surrender. “By all means.”

The doctor took no time at all in making the pronouncement that Jamie had indeed come out at the other side of an illness that should by all rights have killed him. Jamie did not waste his time telling the doctor that he’d been doing that all his life, thanks to good women like Mimm and the pixie. Amber, he corrected silently.

Her name was Amber.

He rested a few minutes and began to dress so he could go talk to that young lady. His wife. His countess. He’d only managed to don his small clothes and trousers when another knock sounded hollowly in the room. He was less hopeful this time about who might be there. Yet he was still disappointed when a young boy in uniform stood there.

“I’m to fetch her trunk, sir,” he said without preamble.

“Trunk?”

The cabin boy looked behind him at the door across the saloon. “The lady, sir. She said I was to fetch her trunk.”

“Her cabin is that one? I was told that cabin was assigned to Miss Helena Conwell.”

“Oh, no, sir. That confusion was put to rest days ago along with all the rumors about her … uh … her character. She and the one you was expecting switched travel accommodation, ya’ see.”

“No, I don’t see. Is Miss Conwell elsewhere on the ship?”

“Oh, no, sir. She never boarded.”

“But when I came on board you said she had.”

“‘Cause she give her name as Miss Conwell.”

Jamie felt his head would split open at any moment. Perhaps too much information was flooding into his brain box. “So how was the confusion cleared up?” he demanded, frowning, not even sure he wanted to know. Had he been duped into this voyage? If that had been the intent, he’d fallen into the trap. He could be with Meara right then or looking for Helena. Perhaps that had been the plan.