Chapter Six

“The flying horse photographer?” Cordy’s eyes widened like a starburst. “Why would he want you dead?” Then they narrowed to slits. “What did you do?”

Hawk worried that she trembled so—she had felt so perfect in his arms, and he wanted her therein for all time. He rubbed her fingers softly. Felt an explosion down to his toes. “Somehow Eadweard’s gotten wind of our experiment.”

She held her free hand against her chest as if to slow down her breath. “Why on earth would Mr. Muybridge kill you over our experiment? Is he afraid you’re getting rich off of his technique? We are a long way from wealth.”

“No, not money. But because of our publicity, he knows where to find me.” Hawk nodded, tragically, his flesh tingling next to hers despite a dozen layers of garments. “I checked with the telegrapher. The wire originated in Columbus.” A chill rippled through him despite the warmth of Cordy’s nearness. “I thought Muybridge in Pennsylvania, but he’s only fifteen miles from here.”

“Sixteen.”

“Sixteen then.” His throat tangled in a swallow. Unlikely one mile made a whit of difference. “Anyway, some way, somehow Eadweard Muybridge is in Nebraska. But I doubt he cares a whit about the exhibition. He wants me dead.”

“Make some sense, please.” Cordy jutted her chin and dropped her hand to her lap, shoulders tense against the chair. He still held tight to the other. “You must have done something awful to set him off. He’s a highly regarded man. Murdering someone is awfully bad and has rather dire consequences.”

Against a pretty plaid skirt, her fingers curled slowly into a fist. Oh, he could imagine so many wonderful things.

He forced himself to the here and now. “I doubt he fears any consequences.” Hawk swallowed so hard he wondered if Cordy heard. Her face had paled, yet bright spots of fire tinged her cheeks. “Cordy, he’s gotten away with murder before.”

She pulled her fingers free at last. “A famous photographer? You are mad.” Quickly she stood up. “I know how to use Clancy’s pistol. I hate to say this, but if you don’t start being sensible, I just might kill you myself. You should go.”

“Why?” Hurt laved him and hung in his tone. She couldn’t possibly mean such harsh words. Could she? Just in case, Hawk reached to pull her back down.

Cordy stayed firm and glared down at him. “Mr. Shockley, I’m alone here with a man spouting crazy things. I have no choice but to accept that you have lost your mind.” Her voice shook, though. “There is enough of a crowd outside for one of them to hear my screams.”

“Cordy, I have not lost my wits. Please sit down.” She did, but cringed when he leaned close. “I admit my request—my proposal, must sound fanatical. But please, don’t be afraid of me. I’m serious about being in danger.”

“All right. Explain yourself, and hurry up.” Cordy pushed her chair back like she might make a run for it, and his heart sank. “I need to get back to the mercantile.”

Hawk’s fingers knitted together so he didn’t reach for her. How perfect she had felt in his arms. Her scent still tickled his senses. It could be love, couldn’t it? He took a deep breath. “A jury in California set Muybridge free from killing his wife’s lover.”

“What?” Cordy paled even more.

“It’s true. Yes.” Hawk nodded, eager to kiss color back into her face. “He’s running as unencumbered as a bird out of its cage after shooting a man at point blank range. At a party yet. In front of a hundred people. No doubts, no subterfuge at all. Yet he was acquitted on justifiable homicide.”

Cordy’s hands covered her mouth. “Oh, I understand perfectly.” Her words were a whisper and she looked away from him. “You had an indiscreet relationship with her, too.”

“Oh, no. No, not at all.” He prayed for strength. “I never knew Flora. The crime happened near San Francisco, and I was a child. However…” Hawk swallowed, heat roiled. “The news swirled the social circles for years. Even across the Atlantic. Then Muybridge returned to Kingston-upon-Thames a few years ago for a visit and imagined that I, um.” He coughed, avoided Cordy’s eyes. Only but seventeen, he hardly remembered the kiss. “That I compromised his beloved goddaughter.”

“You compromised his goddaughter?” Cordy narrowed her eyes. “That’s a terrible thing. And you expect me to marry you?”

He counted to ten, quickly, elbows tight on the tabletop. “Cordy, it was but a kiss. A simple kiss. But Muybridge claims he witnessed us, despite a big potted grapefruit tree in her parents’ orangery. It was quick, I barely tasted a thing, and good heavens, Flora produced an entire baby! Yet Muybridge expected me to marry Davina. Just like that. And all for a simple kiss.”

Cordy breathed a sound—a rather harsh sound, and Hawk glanced back at her in time to see her lips form a word. A name? Hmmm. Her face clouded. Had some scoundrel? Behind the lace at her collar, her neck tensed with a gulp.

She did not meet his gaze. “Hawk, to a woman a kiss is no simple gesture. To a woman, it means the world.”

Her face had pinked somewhat, like spring flowers, but still bore a tint of winter. Who had kissed her and made her feel it meant nothing? An odd jealousy simmered

His heart pounded. “Davina and I remain friends, Cordy. I promise you. And I left for college in America soon after.”

“Well, did you make an offer for her hand at least and give her the choice?” Her eyes opened like dawn. “The chance? I can’t deny I’m a bit on her side.”

She shivered, and Hawk imagined his lips comforting hers, caressing her mouth, drinking deep of her taste, her secrets.

“I wasn’t eighteen for two weeks.” He couldn’t even recall Davina’s face but decided it unwise to confess as much.

“Old enough to be a man.” Cordy sniffed, then glared. Their gazes connected with a jolt. His heart pounded. “Well? Did you ask her?”

He swallowed first. “With Muybridge’s hand against his pocket as if he were hiding a firearm? Knowing what he’s capable of? Yes. Of course, I asked her. We pretended to agree, to end the difficult moment. And then we parted friends.”

“I refuse to believe she refused you.” Cordy’s nose rose. “No well-bred young lady with an orangery declines an earl’s handsome son.”

His heart trilled a bit at her last words, but he needed to be clear. “Cordy, we parted friends. I promise you. Davina didn’t want to come to America. We’d had champagne. She flirted. I responded. One brief evening, is all. It meant nothing.”

Her eyes brimmed, and her feet shuffled against the rug with surprising noise. “To her, I promise that it did. Mean something. It did, to me. I gave my heart once, my kiss. Only to…” She interrupted herself with a gulp.

Anger burbled. So there had been a cad. Hawk knelt in front of her for comfort. Her revulsion rolled into him, but he needed her. He might as well repulse her all the way with his explanation, and then start the begging. Grabbing her hands, he held them against his throbbing heart.

“Davina was in line as a possible bride for my brother.” Hawk forced his eyes on Cordy during his shameful confession. Hoped her disgust did not end his reason to live.

Cordy merely blinked. Hawk went on, “I wanted to see if she might prefer me. That I might be better than Burton. Just once. Just for an instant. It was hard as the younger son with an elder brother so perfect.” The foolishness of youth flamed across Hawk’s skin but did not compare to the heat for Cordy. “I repented my shameful vanity. And Davina forgave me.”

He touched Cordy’s cheek.

Beneath her white face, Cordy’s teeth ground beneath his fingertips. The eyes raised to his told many sad stories with just one blink. “I know this situation well, Hawk. I lived it with Clancy. Over and over. What I got, he wanted. Where I succeeded, he ruined everything he touched. And yet, I always forgave him.” She looked away as she grasped her skirts with tight fingers.

Hawk hissed quick between his teeth, then ran a gentle finger over her mouth. The softness twitched the toes inside his fancy boots. “I’m not Clancy. And Davina laughed when I confessed. Please, do understand.”

“Oh, I do understand.” Cordy cleared her throat, hard, tossed her head with a dash to rid his hand. “It seems you proposed to Davina and didn’t mean it. And you propose something just as meaningless to me now.”

His heart stilled. “Cordy, I’ve never been more serious in my life.”

She looked away so he was unable to drown in her gaze. “Hawk, I, this is ridiculous. I can’t marry you. Today or ever.”

“Ever?” Somehow the word hurt. He rather understood why she was hesitant now, but ever? “Why not?”

She took a deep breath and looked him straight on. “First off, I’m convenient—the only woman you can ask for a thousand miles. Secondly, I believe marriage involves falling in love.”

Cordy’s lips trembled over the last three words, and his heart flipped a few times. “After a man and woman know everything about each other. The wonderful, the warts. Everything. When you interrupted me at the mercantile, I was having this very same serious conversation with Katie.”

Cordy briefly brushed his chin with her fingers, but his pulse stopped for nearly forever. “Hawk, you and I, we’re undiscovered countries.”

The idea tantalized him to his toes. “We could discover.” Was he pleading? He held his breath.

“Yes, perhaps friendship. Courtship, even. But not marriage. At least, not today! We aren’t even friends. We’re barely business partners.” Cordy looked away and stared at an awful puce-colored wall. “I won’t deny you stole my breath when I fell into your arms. And I haven’t caught it yet. But I have no choice but to refuse you. You make no sense at all.”

He’d stolen her breath! Despite the puce, a warm masculine satisfaction rushed across him, and he brushed his fingers across her face. She didn’t pull away. That was something.

“I need you, Cordy.” Beneath his touch, her cheek heated deliciously. “And I’m perfectly sensible. If I already have a wife, Muybridge can’t expect me to take on another.” Hawk meant every word.

She raised a hand to knot her fingers with his. And he liked it. Liked that she didn’t pull away. “Why would your indiscretion with Davina matter now? Didn’t she marry your brother?”

The touch of her hand reached very pore of Hawk’s skin. “He selected another heiress.” Hawk tried to chuckle, but could hardly talk. “Her sister. So I know Davina is still unwed. Muybridge must think she yet languishes for me.”

“Well, perhaps she does.” Cordy’s eyebrows tied together like a brown ribbon. “Or maybe Muybridge wanted the marriage to Burton and feels you got in the way?”

Hawk choked. Every sinew tightened with dread at her words, at the horrible thoughts he’d never had before she spoke them. “Well, then, I’m doubly dead.”

“How do you even know he’s on his way here?” Cordy loosened their hands to smack at the telegram. “There’s nothing about travel plans. You don’t even know for sure the wire is from him.”

“I can’t take the chance should I be wrong. He is a very determined person, hence his success with motion pictures.”

“All of this is impossible to accept.”

“Cordy, it’s real.” Hawk raised her wrist to his lips, and he trembled. Hope surged when her pulse raced beneath his mouth. “I’d say, discuss all of this with Harry Larkins. The other man Eadweard Muybridge believes compromised a woman he loved—but the major is moldering in a grave.” Hawk’s voice hardened. Could she feel his fear? He prayed so. The blackness was as deep as the tin mine closing around him…yet something like love burgeoned, too. “Please trust me.”

Cordy rolled her eyes. At least she didn’t seem terrified of him any longer. “You’re being melodramatic. There’s bound to be a completely innocent meaning to the telegram.”

Hawk stuck to his guns. “No. I know Muybridge. Nothing is more permanent than a cemetery.”

“I need time to think.” She got up and paced the room and turned to him from the doorway. “I’ve already trusted you with the exhibition. I’ve put my reputation on display, too. But marriage? It’s impossible.”

“It must be legal, irrefutable, but need be only temporary. We can annul should you prefer. Later on.” The words hurt to say.

Cordy stormed back in front of him. “That makes the whole idea even worse. Marriage isn’t something you cast off when it isn’t convenient for you anymore.” Her words disappeared into a choke, and she turned away. “And I won’t be something you cast off when you don’t need me anymore.”

Hawk could barely hear her words, but her pain rang loud and clear in his head. “Cordy?” He stared into her eyes, and reached out his hand. Her cheek softened under his touch. For a strange second, he recognized he’d never leave her behind. “I never said I wanted it only temporary. But that it’s a possibility to ease your mind. Should you prefer. Oh, Miss Cordelia Meeker, marry me.”

After one more beautiful second, Cordy knocked his hand away. Then her arms crossed her chest like an angry governess.

“No. Hawk, I have my own goals and dreams. They may not be important to anybody but me, but they are important. To me.”

Oh, he ached to hold her. “I know that. Cordy, I can help you get your start in Colorado. We could do so together. And I know you’re not indifferent to me.”

“Indifferent? What a cold and awful word. And I don’t need anybody’s help.” Now she stuck out her elbows, fingers tight at her hipbones.

His insides roiled with heat. Something, something more than rage blazed in her eyes. Not desire?

He gathered her close, and she let him. Once again, his fingers drifted across her cheek, soft as rain. Then he dropped to his knee. “Cordy, marry me. Please?” he asked with his whole heart.