Burke's Rules

Shouldn’t he be coming to about now?

She circled the bed. He lay perfectly still with his face pressed against her pillow. A terrible foreboding chilled her. Was he...dead?

She took an unsteady step forward. Surely, an astonishingly virile specimen of manhood such as Youngblood couldn’t be killed by a forceful whack to the side of his head.

She inched closer. Would a judge consider that an adequate defense? “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I truly thought a man built upon such rugged lines would have a stronger head. I didn’t hit him all that hard, you see....”

Gingerly, she shook his shoulder. Nothing happened. Was he breathing? Gathering her courage, she clutched the sleeve of his jacket, tugging and pushing until she gained sufficient momentum to roll him onto his back.

An cry of distress escaped her. At his left temple a bluish-colored lump swelled. From it, a tiny trickle of blood oozed down his cheek. It was foolish to feel remorse for defending herself against him, yet a pang of guilt smote her. Aunt Euphemia had always accused her of being too tenderhearted, but surely one was entitled to feelings of regret when murder was involved.

You haven’t killed him. He’s merely been rendered unconscious, the inner voice of reason suggested.

Jayne desperately wanted to believe that voice. She leaned forward, bringing her cheek close to his eerily tranquil face. His relaxed features were a jangling contradiction to the fires that moments before had ignited his gaze. The faintest whisper of breath from his slightly parted lips feathered across her sensitive skin. Thank God... He was alive.

She drew back. It wasn’t that she thought the world would be a better place with him in it. It was just that she didn’t want to be a murderer. A perfectly natural sentiment, she assured herself.

He needed to be revived. The most logical way of doing so was to throw a bucket of water in his face. Unfortunately, she had no wish to drench her bed linens and mattress. Sighing at having to forgo the sight of him sputtering to consciousness, she went to her dresser and opened a drawer. After withdrawing a handkerchief, she poured water from a pitcher into a basin and dipped the cloth into it.

Burke opened his eyes. It felt as if someone had taken a hammer to his skull. Throbbing pain radiated from the left side of his head. His gaze focused on a framed, hand-stitched bit of fabric tacked to the wall across from him. “Dumb asses and men are best driven by whips.” He squeezed his eyelids shut before opening them again. The daunting message remained.

Wincing, he turned his head. A pink embroidered pillow blocked his vision. “A smart woman calls no man master.”

He groaned. I’m dead, and this is hell.

“You’re not dead....” Open relief coated the observation.

He turned his head again. Holding a white cloth, Jayne Stoneworthy approached with hands extended.

“Not yet. Of course, whether or not that continues to be the case depends on what other acts of violence you intend to unleash.”

A look of contrition filled her green eyes. “I refuse to feel guilty about hitting you. I had every right to defend myself.”

Someone should warn her to stay away from poker tables. That she obviously did feel some remorse for knocking him unconscious was written plainly across her earnest features.

“What did you use?” He tried to sit up, then fell back against the mattress. An oath hovered behind his clenched lips. He’d wait until he was alone to set it free. “I feel as if I had a run-in with a railroad tie.”

“Actually it was a piece of wood left by one of the workmen.”

“I deserved it,” he admitted grudgingly. “I didn’t have you pegged as the kind of woman who could defend herself if backed into a corner.”

“Well, you were wrong.”

“What’s the cloth for?”

She glanced at her hands. “I was going to wipe away the blood on your forehead and place a cool compress against your wound.”

He pressed his fingertips to his head. They came away sticky and crimson-colored. “You really whacked me.”

She flushed. “You deserved it.”

“We’ve already established that.” He waved her toward him. “Proceed with your ministrations. I’m certainly in need of them.”

Wariness tinged her gaze. “Do you promise to behave yourself?”

Her question startled a laugh from him. He flinched. “Miss Stoneworthy, rest assured you’ve relieved me of the slightest urge to get on your bad side.”

She didn’t draw closer. “You know who I am?”

The answer to that question could wait. He wanted her gentle tending. “My head’s pounding so hard, I’m not sure what I know.”

His words caused her to fly into action. She was at his side, bending over him, lightly dabbing his forehead. He groaned, more from the pleasure of her touch than discomfort. His eyelids lowered. Not only would she make a bad poker player, clearly the woman diligently attending his injury had a soft heart. She would probably give her last nickel to some down-on-his-luck trail bum. Charity and generosity were attributes that might get one to heaven. They were a real liability when running a business.

The cloth grazed a sensitive spot. He grimaced. On the other hand, she did pack a wallop. Maybe there was a future for her in business, after all.

“I’m trying not to hurt you.”

“I’m tough. I can take it.”

Her soothing caress and the fabric’s damp coolness made the pain seem almost worthwhile. How long had it been since he’d shared physical contact with a woman based on receiving innocent comfort?

“You’re being surprisingly...stoic about this.”

He opened one eye. He shouldn’t have been surprised by her closeness. Finding her face within kissing distance, however, shot unwelcome shards of desire through him. The building pressure did nothing to ease the throbbing in his head. He cursed his unexplainable susceptibility to Miss Stoneworthy, wondering if the blow he’d suffered was partly responsible for his uncustomary lack of control. Considering her incendiary effect on him, “stoic” was the last word he would use to describe his reaction.

A myriad of emotions swirled in her gaze. He identified confusion, concern and that ever present look of wariness.

“Considering my behavior, I’m lucky you’re bothering to patch me. up.”

She withdrew the compress. Maybe he shouldn’t have reminded her of what had precipitated her attack. She eased herself from the bed. Only when she moved away did he realize she’d been sitting beside him. As she went to the water basin on the dresser and wrung out the cloth, her straight back, slender waist and the gentle curve of her hips held his fascinated attention.

The scent of sawdust laced with a whiff of lilac water lingered. Sawdust and lilacs... He bit back a cynical laugh. That the hardly exotic combination of fragrances should tie his stomach into knots proved he wasn’t his usual self.

She returned to the bed and sat down, reapplying the folded material to his injury. Now it was her breasts that claimed his attention. Manfully, he tried to ignore their soft presence. She was being excessively kind. He’d deserved the violence she’d wreaked upon him.

She leaned closer. The gray material of her gown outlined twin swells of bliss. He imagined them uncovered, exposed to his hands and mouth. Disgusted by his lustful contemplations, he slammed his eyelids shut and tried to think virtuous thoughts. Not a single noble idea popped into his head. How long had he been on this downward path to hell?

“How do you feel now? Is the pain easing?”

She had to be kidding.

“I’m feeling downright chipper.” Even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he pushed away her hands and sat up. “I think I’ll start every day with a blow to the side of my head.”

“No doubt your surliness is a result of your injury.” She slid away from him and stood. “May I point out that, had you not acted in a most ungentlemanly manner, you would not be suffering at the moment.”

He rose to his feet. The room swayed. Ungentlemanly? He’d been an out-and-out blackguard. He allowed the shuddering waves of pain to roll over him as he adjusted to being vertical. His quick scan of her bedchamber revealed half a dozen rude sayings about the nature of men, ranging from lace-bordered wall hangings to hand-sewn pillows. The one that caught and held his attention was a green satin cushion with gold tassels that read “A prudent woman guards her private furrow, lest she awakes to find it plowed.”

“Miss Stoneworthy, no jury would convict you for hitting me with that plank of wood.”

“I know,” she said quickly. “I wasn’t sure you did.”

“Have I given you cause to think I’m an imbecile?”

Her damnably enchanting chin raised. “No, you’ve only given me cause to believe you’re an unprincipled... lecher.”

Laughing at her prim, disapproving expression wouldn’t help his head. Nor, inexplicably, did he wish to hurt her feelings. Obviously she felt she’d fought off the devil incarnate to preserve her virtue.

“There’s something we need to clear up. I don’t make a habit of visiting brothels, or forcing myself upon unwilling females.”

“This isn’t a brothel.”

“It was, and because of that, it’s never going to be a respectable school for young women. I dropped by this afternoon because Gideon Cade asked me to check on you as a favor to his wife. When I got here, I overheard that miner trying to buy your favors. It was obvious you didn’t understand what a dangerous situation you were in. Had he not accepted your explanation, you could have found yourself upstairs in bed with him.”

“Which is just exactly where I did find myself with you!”

“Because I wanted to show you that you can’t set up housekeeping in a brothel and not suffer the consequences.”

“Stop calling this a brothel. It was a tavern that—”

“Not a tavern,” Burke Youngblood interrupted with a cold finality that made Jayne want to hit him again. “It was a house of prostitution.”

“But it can’t have been!”

“Lady, just saying something won’t make it so.”

She wanted to hate the man towering above her. She certainly hated his calmness in the face of the horrible disaster unfolding before her. His insufferable superiority grated. He acted as if he had the answer for everything. He was arrogant, condescending and a shameless reprobate.

“Now that you’ve delivered your news, you can leave.” She wanted to be alone. She’d poured all her money, except the bank draft Uncle Clarence had promised, into remodeling this building.

Reeling from the banker’s revelation, she thought back to the day when Emma had tried to tell her something about the tavern having a bad reputation. Clearly her friend had found out about the brothel’s tawdry past but had been too much of a lady to come right out and say what the problem was.

“Do you have any brandy?”

Jayne’s thoughts came crashing back to the present. “There are no fancy women or alcoholic spirits on the premises.”

“Too bad,” he drawled, gingerly touching the bruise on his forehead. “You look as if you could use a drink.” .

“So do you,” she snapped, “but, that doesn’t alter the fact I have no alcohol.”

“No demon rum for Miss Stoneworthy, do I have that right?”

Sensing he was secretly laughing at her, she scowled. “If you want to ingest vile liquor, there are any number of saloons to accommodate you.”

“I’m not sure I can make it that far.”

Despite her intentions, reluctant sympathy surged within Jayne. “Perhaps you ought to sit down. Are you feeling dizzy?”

He shook his head, then groaned. “Maybe sitting is a good idea.”

Even though she knew she had every reason to abandon him to his misery, Jayne took his arm and escorted him to a chair. She plucked the green cushion from his downward descent and absently handed it to him.

“Perhaps a glass of water would help.”

“I wouldn’t turn one down.”

She didn’t understand why the sight of him running his lean fingers through the gold tassels on one of Aunt Euphemia’s embroidered cushions caused a tickling feeling inside her. She tugged at the pillow. “If you’re feeling faint, you should put your head between your knees.”

He eyed her balefully. “I have no intention of fainting.”

“No one intends on swooning. It just happens.” Why wouldn’t he release the cushion? The last thing she wanted was for him to read one of Euphemia’s pithy observations about the failings of men.

“Well, it’s not going to happen to me,” he virtually growled. His gaze fell to the neatly sewn letters on the pillow, and his fingers ceased their idle stroking. “I assume you’ve heeded the advice contained in this message.”

She had no intention of discussing the condition of her private furrow with Burke Youngblood. She had yet to find an easy way to explain her late aunt’s dismal opinion of the male gender. Euphemia, often absentminded and generally kind, had been rebellious of all masculine authority. She considered all pants-wearing members of the human race mentally deficient.

The older woman believed, with a passion that could foment a revolution, that males were completely inferior to females. She cheerfully expounded to anyone willing to listen that a woman was sufficiently strong and capable of living her own life without enduring the tyranny of any man.

“It’s my late aunt’s stitchery,” Jayne confined herself to answering.

He tossed aside the cushion and turned his head to take in more of Euphemia’s creations, ranging from a hand-painted p late that read “A good man is more rare than sweet-smelling elephant dung” to a plaque of varnished wood proclaiming “The hands that rock the cradle haul the water.” His roving inspection settled finally upon a painting of a scantily clad Grecian woman winning a footrace against three nude Greek runners.

Beneath the vividly colored picture, poking up from crumpled newspapers that lined an opened crate, was a twelve-inch statue of a nude female racer that Jayne hadn’t yet convinced herself to display, even in the privacy of her own bedchamber. As Mr. Youngblood reached to extract the figurine from the rumpled papers, she hoped he didn’t notice the startling resemblance she bore to both the runner in the painting and the statue. When she’d posed for the projects, she’d been fully clothed. Aunt Euphemia’s artistic eye, however, had rendered her niece otherwise.

She wished he didn’t seem so fascinated with the statue. The way his gaze caressed it greatly disturbed her. Since she’d scarcely envisioned anyone, other than herself, ever viewing the marble figure, she was unprepared for the hot wave of self-consciousness that flowed through her. Having him examine a female nude, especially one of her likeness, was excruciatingly embarrassing.

“Do you suppose you can walk downstairs unassisted?”

He returned the full force of his dark eyes to her. He looked exactly as he had moments before she’d whacked him. Maybe she ought to have kept that piece of two-by-four close by.

“I might need a shoulder to lean on.”

She doubted it, but would do virtually anything to get him out of her room and away from Aunt Euphemia’s statue. “Let’s give it a try.”

He carefully returned the statue to the crate. She braced both hands against his arm to steady him as he rose. He hadn’t taken more than two steps before he changed things so that his arm was draped around her. She suffered the familiarity and urged him forward. Slowly they made their way down the stairs he’d flown up two at a time. Though he wasn’t putting much weight on her, she was pressed tightly against his side. When they reached the jumbled confusion of the main room, she waited for him to release her.

Several moments passed with no action on his part. She frowned. Was he exhausted and about to lose consciousness again?

“I never realized before just how much I like the smell of sawdust mingled with lilac water.”

The husky observation made no sense. “I beg your pardon?”

“Never mind. I suppose you’re waiting for me to let go of you.”

“Can you? I mean without falling down?”

He chuckled, then audibly sucked in his breath. “You’re probably going to insist we find out.”

“Not if you’re too woozy to stand unassisted.”

“Ah, Miss Stoneworthy, you appear to have a much more forgiving nature than your aunt”

Jayne suppressed a smile. “If you’d tried to have your way with Euphemia, she would have shot you through the heart.”

“She was an expert with pistols?”

Was it her imagination or had he just hugged her? “Actually, archery was Euphemia’s sport. It would have been an arrow that dispatched you.”

“Poison-tipped, no doubt.”

“No doubt,” Jayne muttered absently. “Is there someone I can contact to see you home?”

“I’ll make it under my own power.” The pressure of his embrace eased. “But maybe I should rest before I try.”

He swept debris and sawdust from a chair and sat down.

“I could fetch a doctor.”

“There’s no need.” Youngblood stretched his booted feet before him. Despite his travails, he appeared surprisingly sound. “I wouldn’t turn down a glass of water, though.”

She’d been so busy trying to make him disappear, she’d forgotten about getting him a drink. “I’ll be right back.”

Counting the seconds until she could see the last of him, Jayne entered the room that was being transformed into a kitchen. She primed the pump at the wet sink, blessing the fact that the previous owners had installed it.

When she returned to Youngblood, Jayne found him studying his chaotic surroundings. “Here you go.”

He accepted the glass and drank deeply. “How much is all this work costing?”

“More than I want to think about.”

“Selling it while it’s like this will limit your buyers and lower your selling price.”

She rubbed her eyes. The idea of selling the building for which she’d had so many plans made her want to pound the wall in protest. Being a quitter was more repugnant than being the fancy woman Mr. Youngblood had thought her.

“You do realize you can’t have your school here?”

“Yes.” She hated it when someone pointed out the obvious.

“Do you have enough money to manage?” he pressed, “until you find a buyer?”

The personal nature of his question irritated her. She had no intention of discussing her finances with a man who a short while ago had tried to buy his way into her bed.

“I’m expecting a bank draft that will take care of my immediate needs.”

“Before coming here, I had our bank records checked and learned you have an account with us.”

A very small one, she thought wryly. “Yes.”

“When you receive the bank draft you’re expecting, I’ll personally handle the transfer of funds to your account. Just inform the teller who you are, and he’ll show you to my office.”

She bristled. “That’s hardly necessary.”

“Gideon Cade asked me to look after you, as a favor to his wife.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you,” Jayne said curtly. “How are you feeling? Did the water help? Do you think you’re strong enough to leave?”

“I have the impression you’re trying to get rid of me.”

Perceptive man. “I have a lot to think about.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Even you?” The question slipped out before she could stop it.

He inclined his head. “I make it a habit to avoid mistakes.”

Overbearing, conceited, pompous... She choked back the uncomplimentary but entirely accurate adjectives bubbling behind pursed lips. He sat in a shadowed corner so it was difficult to judge if the color had returned to his face. No matter what his condition, though, she wanted those long legs striding down the boardwalk.

She forced a conciliatory smile to her lips. “There was that itty-bitty mix-up about you thinking I was a fancy woman.”

That wasn’t what she meant to say! She’d been about to bid him a firm farewell.

“There was no error.”

“Hmm, yes, well....” It took a moment for his statement to penetrate her scattered thoughts. “What did you say?”

“There was no mistake. I remember you quite clearly from our previous encounters. I knew you weren’t a prostitute.”

He didn’t look as if he were joking.

“But you acted as if you thought... That is, you said...” She mentally reviewed his despicable behavior until the moment she’d brought him under control with the blow to his head. “You carried me upstairs, threw me on a bed and pounced on me!”

“All for a good cause. You needed to be taught a lesson.”

That he should sit composed before her after making such an outrageous statement, left her momentarily speechless.

“It was obvious from the way you handled the miner,” he went on, “that you had no idea of what a dangerous situation you were in. But we’ve already had this discussion,” he finished matter-of-factly.

Comprehension and anger grew. “But I thought you believed I was a good-time gal.”

“In that getup?” he gestured to her grimy apron. “You’re dressed for the poorhouse, not a cathouse.”

“But then....” Abruptly, she did understand. He’d known all along who she was and had deliberately made his obscene proposition in order to.... “What kind of lesson were you trying to teach me?”

After they cleared that up, she really had no choice but to hit him again. Perhaps she ought to invest in a firearm, after all. No judge would punish her for shooting Burke Youngblood. There had to be something in the law about extreme aggravation making it permissible to pepper a scallywag’s hide with buckshot. And, she was aggravated.

“This is the West. There’s a breed of man out here who acknowledges no law other than his own. He sees something he wants, and he takes it.”

“Give me back my glass of water.” She grabbed the drink and plunked it on a nearby table. Nails rattled and dust flew. Even as she battled to control her temper, the cold brutality of Youngblood’s words caused goose bumps to skitter across her skin. “I’ve proved I can take care of myself.”

“You got lucky.”

Her hands clenched into tight fists. “No, you’re the lucky one. If I’d known you had something on your mind besides a sordid interlude in my bedchamber, I would have hit you so hard you never would have wakened!”

“Calm yourself. If anyone should be offended it’s me.”

“What?”

“Do you think I’m the kind of man to buy a prostitute’s services?”

“Yes, that’s exactly the kind of man I think you are. Because, other than your money, you have nothing to recommend you.” She drew a deep breath. “And another thing, what gives you the right to take it upon yourself to teach anyone a lesson? Do you go around Denver acting out disgusting charades for the benefit of lesser mortals, or was I special? Just how feebleminded did I have to appear to warrant your interference? But then, perhaps you amuse yourself by storming into women’s bedchambers so you can issue uncouth propositions. Is that your principal means of entertainment?”

“Which question do you want me to answer first?”

As nothing else could have, his lazy drawl demonstrated his indifference to her fury. A red haze fell over her eyes. Three two-by-fours propped against a nearby wall caught her attention. Too unwieldy. She glanced to her left.

“If you’re considering violence again, I suggest you think otherwise.”

Her gaze swung back to him. “You kissed me!”

“Yeah, well, I apologize for that. Things got out of hand.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“Do you want to hear it won’t happen again?”

“Of course I do!” Several seconds ticked by. She drew herself to her full height. “Well?”

“I’m thinking.”

“There’s nothing to think about. I have no intention of ever speaking to you again.” She searched for something more scathing to say. “I’m going to withdraw my money from your bank.”

“That will be a blow.”