His Californian Countess - Kate Welsh

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He looked around, his mind spinning like a child’s top. Why was the room tipping? Swaying? Why was the room so dark? His town house was always bright.

      He looked around again, confusion swamping his mind even more. Where was he? This was not home. He should find out where he was. The room spun out of control as he turned back to the door. He grabbed for it, but missed and it swung away from him. Then the floor rushed up at him as blackness descended. And two thoughts revolved in his head. He needed to confess to Helena his part in her father’s death. And he didn’t know the pixie’s name.

      Amber turned and took a survey of her pretty cabin. Yes, it looked perfect. This was the cabin of an adventurer. The handsome man she’d flirted with on deck had called her an adventurer and that had given her the idea to make the cabin reflect her new path in life.

      On the wall near her porthole she’d tacked the image of Memorial Hall in Philadelphia painted on rose-colored silk. It looked lovely against the cherry wainscoting. It had come from her unscheduled stay in the City of Brotherly Love. As she’d told the handsome man—that was how she thought of him—she hadn’t wanted to pass up seeing the Great Philadelphia Centennial Exposition and World’s Fair.

      Above the bed she’d tacked the postcards from all her adventures. There was one of the Women’s Pavilion and Memorial Hall and some postcards from the Philadelphia Zoo where she’d seen too many exotic animals to count. And all the colorful tickets from everything she’d seen. It was a week she’d never forget.

      Taking in the fair and zoo hadn’t been the first adventurous thing she’d done, though. The first had been applying for a post of governess to two small girls of a wealthy California family curious about the state where she’d been born. Then, rather than travel the whole way by train as she’d originally planned, Amber had decided to play decoy to help a friend. She’d left town wearing the clothes of a young woman named Helena Conwell, who was in love with a mineworker Amber had known since childhood. But Helena’s guardian was bent on keeping the lovers apart even though he no longer had any legal control over her. The happy couple had escaped west while Amber, still playing decoy, would travel by clipper to San Francisco while using Helena’s name.

      Amber sympathized with Helena’s wish to marry the man she loved. Amber herself would never marry, though. She’d never have the children she’d always wanted, either. Those dreams had vanished the day Joseph died.

      He’d been gone a year now. But the memory of his final moments when they’d carried him from the mine, clinging to life, would always haunt her. He’d loved her so deeply, so perfectly, that he’d fought pain and death itself just to see her one last time. The memory brought with it a pain so sharp that each time it rose in her mind she still needed to press upon her broken heart to get past the moment. She would never risk that kind of pain again.

      So now she would build other memories.

      Alone.

      She had no choice in that. She’d given her heart and Joseph had taken at least half of it with him. The rest would remain hers and hers alone.

      Now she would help raise two precious little girls. The little darlings had even written her from their home in San Francisco with the help of their mother so they could tell her how excited they were to meet her.

      Excitement was what all this was about. Excitement kept the pain at bay. That was why she’d flirted with the handsome man.

      Amber used to spend holidays and summers with her friends from Vassar at their families’ summer homes on the banks of the Hudson River near the college. She’d always watched those carefree young women act the coquette and now she’d finally done it herself. But she was a bit embarrassed that she had. He must think she was terribly bold. Or a bluestocking, which she supposed wasn’t as bad. Of course he may have thought she was both. The absurdity of that made Amber giggle. No one at home would believe it of her.

      But this voyage was about a change as well as excitement. A different life from the one she led as a teacher in the town where the mine had taken Joseph seemed the only way to forget her pain. With any luck someday she would remember the happiness she’d felt in the arms of her own sweet Joseph without the accompanying hurt.

      Enough of this! She’d said goodbye to that old life. A life better left behind if she could not share it with Joseph. It was time to greet a new day. One on the high seas!

      Suddenly tired from all the turmoil of getting to the pier and the sailing and, yes, of flirting, then remembering all that had brought her to this place, Amber decided not to go back up on deck. She tossed her shawl over the chair in her stateroom and lay on the charming bed. She stared up at the elaborate canopy and realized she dreaded seeing the man from deck again anyway. She’d run out of flippant things to say and she’d been terribly affected in physical ways that she’d never been with Joseph.

      After a while she fell asleep, only to have the handsome man invade her dreams, and she felt things she’d never felt before, either. Oh, goodness, she wished she hadn’t had that conversation about “marriage duties” with her soon-to-be mother-in-law. Joseph’s mother had laughed, saying she found nothing of a duty about the experience and if her husband had done his job with Joseph he would make sure Amber didn’t see it as a duty, either. She had told Amber much of what she should expect and feel. And in her sleep, she finally felt most of these emotions. She didn’t wake again until morning’s light beamed through her small porthole. Though

      her room was cool, her skin felt flushed and somehow needy.

       Damn that handsome man.

       Chapter Two

      Amber straightened the velvet bow around the collar of her pink blouse. It matched her navy-blue wool skirt perfectly. Then she took one last look at her hair in the little mirror over the dresser. Time to go for breakfast, she told herself, but her gaze remained locked with her eyes in the mirror as thoughts spun through her mind.

      Would she see him? Amber bit her bottom lip, unsure if she wished for a “yes” or “no” answer. She supposed she would see him. It was inevitable after all. So when she did, what should she say after the reckless way she’d flirted?

      The real question was how she could even face him. And if they did speak to each other, it stood to reason he’d ask her name again. She would be forced to give Helena Conwell’s name. That was the trouble about lies. They seemed to multiply. She sat down on the bed, tempted to skip the meal altogether.

      But no. That would only put off the inevitable anyway and it would be cowardly. She’d flirted on purpose. This was her adventure, though she had not named it as such until then. She had promised to travel as Helena. It had even been her own idea and she’d given her word. That thought helped her get a grip on herself. Honor demanded she continue as planned.

      She stood, marched to the door and pulled it open. As she turned the key in the door to lock it, she heard a deep groan come from behind her. She whirled and another low moan drifted out of the cabin across from hers. Amber noticed the door stood ever so slightly ajar. Hesitant to offer aid to what sounded like a man, she looked around the deserted saloon. Perhaps she should go for help, but he sounded to be in dire need and Amber had never been one to stand by and do nothing.

      She advanced on the door and carefully pushed it open a bit, but after little more than a foot she met with resistance. “Hello,” she called out. “Sir, do you need assistance?”

      Another groan was the only answer. Concerned for her fellow traveler, she thanked God she’d worn her own plain blue twill that was un-encumbered by a bustle. She took a deep breath, squeezed around the door and nearly stepped on the gentleman’s outstretched hand. He lay on the floor with his face turned away from her.

      “Sir,” she called, her voice trembling as she stepped around him. Then she could only stare. It was the handsome man. He was clearly sick or injured.

      She sank down and laid her hand on his forehead. He was burning up. She looked around and hurried across the stateroom

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