The Wedding Ransom Read online

  “But it can make an old man feel like a young buck,” Gus said.

  “Or give a sick girl relief from her pain,” Ben added in a quiet, solemn voice.

  The pirates shared a look that had the hairs on Rafe’s neck standing at attention. Then Gus snorted and reached into his shirt. Pulling out a broadside, he tossed it onto the table.

  “Hotel Bliss?” Rafe read aloud.

  “The finest spa west of Saratoga, New York,” Lucky said, beaming. “Our curative waters will doctor all sorts of ills, and our mud baths will not only ease your aches, they’ll make your skin soft as a newborn’s behind.”

  Glancing at the old pirate’s leathery skin, Rafe swallowed a pithy remark and read from the broadside. “ ‘Located in the beautiful Big Thicket of deep east Texas. Romantic dance parties. Picnics and buggy races.’ A billiard saloon?”

  Snake MacKenzie linked his fingers over his belly and leaned back in his chair. “The hotel is closed at the moment, but that’s only a temporary setback. You see, the lass is looking to attract visitors on holiday, not simply those in need of medical miracles. On account of what she went through herself, it’s real important to her that sick folk get to rub shoulders with healthy folk every chance they get.”

  On account of what she went through? Rafe was intrigued. He’d always been a curious sort, and the more the pirates talked, the more he wanted to know about Maggie St. John. What was this about a courtroom? And of course, he hadn’t forgotten the treasure, either.

  “Help me out, here, fellas. I’m having trouble making the connection between bottled water and a health spa, Mary Margaret St. John, and waking from my afternoon nap to a Caribbean toothpick against my throat. In other words, where does treasure come into it?”

  “Why don’t you tell him, Ben?” Gus said. “It’s your idea. You’re the one who figured out how we’re gonna save Maggie.”

  Ben poured a long splash of the bottled water into his glass of port, obviously gathering his thoughts. “I am afraid my friends got ahead of themselves in explaining our purpose for approaching you. What they mentioned—the spa, the water, even Mary Margaret—are our personal motives for making this trip and do not concern you.” He reached for the saddlebags he’d carried with him into the house and tossed open the flap.

  Rafe’s gaze fixed on the canvas bag Scovall withdrew. Ben tossed it onto the center of the table, and the old familiar chink as it landed sent Rafe’s heart beating double time. Coins. Gold coins? At Ben’s go-ahead nod, he reached for the pouch and confirmed his suspicion. Old gold coins. “Spanish doubloons.”

  “Aye. A mere sampling of the pirate booty we collected over the years. The value of that bag is approximately three thousand of today’s dollars. We have at least a hundred times that amount in gold, jewels, and other riches hidden away.”

  A shiver raced up Rafe’s spine. He’d been poor too long—a thief too long—not to react to that kind of figure.

  Ben Scovall smiled at him knowingly. “We chose our treasure hoard carefully, Mr. Malone, and for many years we have been able to access it whenever necessary. That, I’m afraid, has changed. And that is why we have come to you.”

  Rafe thought of what MacKenzie had said earlier about stealing their treasure back for them. “So you’re hoping I’ll steal back what someone else stole from you after you stole it from the owners in the first place.”

  Gus snapped gnarled fingers. “The man is quick, too.”

  “And you’re out of luck,” Rafe replied. He shoved back his chair and stood. “Sorry, fellas, but if I’m caught stealing in the Republic of Texas, the rangers will revoke my pardon and put a noose around my neck. I’m not the man for this job.”

  “The impatience of youth,” Ben said with a sigh. “Sit back down, Malone. I think you are the man for this job, and if you will allow me to finish my explanation, I believe you will agree. The situation is not as simple as you think. This mission does involve danger, true. But unless the Texas Rangers have international jurisdiction, landing in a Texas prison is not one of those hazards. Tell me, Mr. Malone, do you consider yourself an adventurous man?”

  Rafe set down his glass of cider with a thud. “Are you telling me your treasure isn’t hidden in Texas?”

  “Not even in the United States. Think about it. We are willing to negotiate a substantial fee for your services and at the same time we are offering a…holiday of adventure, one might describe it.”

  Adventure. Rafe twisted his wrist, swirling the cider in his glass as yearning filled him despite his better sense. He tried to hide it behind a sarcastic drawl. “So, other than a treasure hunt, what could I look forward to on this…holiday of adventure?”

  “Could be some fighting,” Lucky said, his eyes gleaming.

  Ben gave him a disapproving stare. “Only if your skills are rusty, Mr. Malone, and I seriously doubt that is the case. You should be able to elude the difficult individuals who have taken up residence in the area. It is true that a successful conclusion of this task will require the use of stealth, cunning, and superior physical strength, but you, of course, possess all three.”

  Gus nudged Lucky with an elbow. His scar twisted on his cheek as he spoke softly from the side of his mouth. “Never heard the captain flatter a man before. He’s almost as slick at that as he is with the ladies.”

  When Ben didn’t react, Rafe wondered if the pirate captain wasn’t a little hard of hearing. “Why don’t you elaborate some on these ‘difficult individuals.’”

  Lucky, Gus, and MacKenzie shared a grimace, then looked toward their captain to reply. “It is an out-of—the-way part of the world,” Ben said. “Being a Texan, you undoubtedly know such spots often attract a…scruffier element of society who tends to settle in among the natives. In this case, it is the descendants of those who settled the region with Captain Laffite after he left Texas years ago. The natives are—”

  “Yucatecs,” Rafe interrupted, aware of the pirate king’s destination after deserting Galveston over thirty years earlier. “They’re also embroiled in a war, if I’m not mistaken. You hid your treasure in a jungle?”

  Ben cocked his head and smiled. “We hid it in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Consider it, Malone. You will be gone six weeks. Two months at the very most. Think of turquoise water and unspoiled beaches. Riches beyond belief.”

  “You might as well throw in the other lure,” Gus interrupted. “A beautiful woman to look at. Toss in a little rum, and life just doesn’t get any better.”

  “Woman!” Snake MacKenzie slammed his fist down onto the table. “She is not going. Especially not with a man like this one. Besides, this is no pleasure cruise. What if the lass gets sick again? No, I simply won’t hear of it!”

  “Hearing has nothing to do with it,” Gus said, his voice brimming with sorrow. “It’ll take physical force to prevent Maggie from going. We may be mean sonofabitches on the high seas, but not a one of us has what it takes to raise a hand against our Maggie. Nope, we won’t be able to stop her from tagging along.”

  Rafe glanced around the table. The woebegone expression on Lucky’s face suggested he agreed with Gus. Rafe couldn’t read a thing on Ben Scovall’s countenance.

  “She’s been angling to go ever since we brought it up, you know it,” Gus continued. “You’re gonna have to let it go, Snake. Let her go. She’s twenty-five years old. It’s amazing we’ve been able to put this moment off as long as we have. We’ve done our best by Maggie, and we have to trust her to choose what she needs. If that means a bit of adventure with Malone here before she settles down with a good man, then we have to accept it.”

  Good man, Rafe thought, offended. What the hell am I, a prized pig?

  “I’ll be damned if I accept it.” MacKenzie glared at Rafe. “I’ll cut off his jewels first!”

  Instinctively, Rafe pressed his thighs together.

  “You won’t hurt him, Snake. I have dibs on that.” Lucky rubbed a hand across his jaw. “I hate saying it, but G
us is right about some of it. Maggie is getting more difficult to handle by the day. The longer she’s home with us, the less of a hold all that gentility she learned in school has on her. She’s reverting to the old ways. All the schooling in the world can’t overcome the years of living with the likes of us.”

  “I need another drink.” MacKenzie banged his glass on the table. He closed his eyes and hung his head. “Whiskey this time, please.”

  As Rafe rose to retrieve the bottle, Ben spoke in a placating tone. “It is possible we are worrying overmuch. Chances are Mary Margaret won’t have the slightest interest in making the trip. After all, she is devoted to making Hotel Bliss a success. That is where all her energies lie.”

  “I’m not worried where her energies lie. It’s where her body lies that has me shiverin’ in my shoes.” MacKenzie tossed back the drink Rafe had provided him and signaled for another.

  “Now, Snake, don’t think so negatively.” Lucky twisted his earring three times. “I think Ben is right. Even though the hotel is temporarily closed, Maggie still has a lot of work to keep her busy. I don’t believe she’ll want to make the trip this time.” He looked at Gus. “I’ll bet you twenty dollars she wants to stay home.”

  “Done.” Gus nodded.

  MacKenzie groaned and clutched his head with both hands. “Now you’ve done it, Nichols. She’s bound to want to go if you made a bet she wouldn’t.”

  Rafe poured the drink, watching him, watching his companions. All four of them appeared shaken by Lucky Nichols’s bet. Slowly, Rafe grinned. These petrified old pirates were entertaining as sin. What the hell. A call to adventure. A woman he most definitely wanted to meet. It was the best offer he’d had all day.

  He flipped his chair around and straddled it. “So, men, let’s talk treasure. Where exactly is it? How much of it comes to me as my fee? And…” He paused, giving Snake MacKenzie a baiting look. “When do I get to meet your granddaughter?”

  Chapter 2

  In her first-floor bedroom at Hotel Bliss, an ache in Maggie St. John’s right leg woke her from a fitful sleep. Wincing, she threw back the bedcovers and sat up, gingerly touching her knee. Swollen and hot. She gritted her teeth. She must have overdone it yesterday when she’d climbed across the roof to patch shingles stripped away by high winds during a recent storm. Or maybe she shouldn’t have run that second mile-and-a—half lap around the lake.

  She flexed her leg, and along with the pain, anger flared inside her. She whispered one of her papa’s favorite curses. Maggie was all too familiar with this sort of pain, but she hadn’t had a spell in months. She had hoped this bit of trouble was gone for good.

  “I don’t have time to be sick,” she whispered. Her grandfathers needed her to care for them, now. They were the sickly ones, whether they wanted to admit it or not. Poor Papa Gus, for example. Some mornings he was so stove up he could barely move from his bed.

  This can’t happen to me. Not now. Not on top of all the other trouble. Maggie drew a deep breath, attempting to calm her rising temper. And if beneath her anger lay a sliver of fear, she refused to admit it.

  Light from a full moon and countless stars beamed through the open window and illuminated her bedroom with a soft, silvery radiance. Lifting her watch from the nightstand, she saw that dawn was but a short time away. Maggie listened to the night, soaking in its tranquility, until the distant sound of a masculine snore from the guest rooms upstairs destroyed any chance of regaining her peace.

  She scowled and dragged her hands through her hair, finger-combing the long curls. The devil take that cursed Barlow Hill, the paunch-bellied, sour-breathed bounder who threatened all she held dear. The man who’d used lawyers to steal Hotel Bliss. For a moment she damned her conscience and wished she’d not forbidden her grandfathers their revenge. It would be oh-so-convenient if Barlow Hill were to die.

  As much as she regretted the fact, Maggie couldn’t let them do it. Her papas had gone out of their way to see her raised a lady and too many of the lessons had stuck. She couldn’t condone killing the man, no matter how attractive the idea sounded.

  Upstairs, Hill’s snore all but rattled the rafters, and Maggie wanted away from him, out of the hotel this minute. She rose, cautiously resting her weight on her sore knee, biting her lower lip against the pain. She whispered another invective, grabbed her wrapper from the foot of her bed, and slipped it on. Barefoot, she left her bedroom and limped quietly through the darkened hotel, headed for the summer kitchen.

  Built separately from the three-story, fourteen-guest-room hotel building, the kitchen was her Papa Snake’s domain. A pot charmer of extraordinary skill, Snake took it as a personal affront that the cooking lessons he gave his adopted granddaughter had never quite taken. He’d thrown in the soupspoon, so to speak, the day he’d hung the sign that read: Where There’s Smoke, Maggie’s Cooking.

  Maggie smiled at the memory as she turned the spigot of a large earthenware urn and filled a tin cup with water. Not just any water, but special water. Curative water. Lake Bliss water.

  She carried her drink toward the table and chairs that sat beneath the kitchen window and took a seat. Bringing her cup to her mouth, she sniffed the water’s slightly sulfuric fragrance before downing it in a three-swallow gulp. She shuddered. Her mouth puckered. She gently massaged her knee and waited for the water to do its work.

  Maggie believed in the powers of Lake Bliss water. Daily doses of the liquid had effectively given her back her life. Orphaned at the age of four and unofficially adopted by the four seafaring friends of her late father, she had spent her childhood climbing ship’s rigging during sea voyages and running the sparkling beaches of the Caribbean island where they lived when not aboard ship. When swollen joints first began to plague her at the age of thirteen, the forced inactivity of chronic illness had hurt her spirit as much as the pain plagued her body. Local physicians failed to offer a remedy, so her papas had taken her from city to city across the world, seeking answers and searching for a cure. One doctor after another had told them no treatment existed and that Maggie could expect to be crippled by the age of twenty. Unwilling to accept such a diagnosis, her grandfathers had broadened their inquiry, pursuing every avenue of potential aid no matter how unusual it seemed. Papa Ben had been the one to hear about the small lake in Texas whose waters appeared to possess healing properties.

  Her first sight of the lake on that long ago morning had made an indelible impression on Maggie. To this day, she recalled the thrill that ran through her when she spied the ribbons of steam rising from emerald waters surrounded by the towering trees of the Big Thicket. She’d smiled at the pink-and-white beauty of dogwood blossoms splashed along the bank. She’d closed her eyes and absorbed the soulful note of the mourning dove’s coo. She’d sighed with pleasure as she whiffed the bite of cedar-scented air.

  Something about the place, some intangible essence, struck the heart of the well-traveled girl. To her, this little piece of Texas was as beautiful as the turquoise waters and sugar sand beaches of the Caribbean. For Maggie, it felt like coming home.

  They’d built a log cabin along the 130-acre lake’s south bank in March of her sixteenth year. By August, following daily doses of water and therapeutic mud baths, her pain had all but disappeared. After much planning, debate, and discussion, Maggie and her landlocked pirate papas left the place Maggie had christened Lake Bliss, taking a year’s supply of bottled water with them. Before leaving Texas, they tracked down the owner of the Lake Bliss land and purchased the area from him. Or so they had thought.

  In the shadowed darkness of the moonlit kitchen, Maggie grimaced and cursed the careless mistake made so many years ago that caused them such grief today. Land speculation ran rampant in Texas, then and now. The title they had purchased had not been a clear one, a fact they’d recently discovered when Barlow Hill, rot his soul, sued them for ownership of Hotel Bliss and won.

  Restless, she rose, wincing as much from the ache in her heart as that in her leg. B
etween the water and the exercise moving provided, the soreness in her knee had eased. Now she felt sickly in another manner entirely. Thinking about Barlow Hill had made her both nervous and nauseous. What she needed now was something calming and comforting. What she needed now was a little more Bliss.

  Maggie decided to head down to the bathhouse and indulge in a mud treatment. In all of her twenty-five years, she’d never discovered anything quite so soothing as a nice long soak in the naturally heated mud of Lake Bliss.

  The hotel boasted both a ladies’ and a gentlemen’s bathhouse. Papa Ben had designed and erected the three-sided structures at the spot where the hot spring bubbled up from the earth before flowing out to form the lake. The bathhouses allowed open access to the water, while at the same time providing privacy and creature comforts for bathers. Before litigation closed the hotel, a half-dozen employees worked in the bathhouses ministering to the guests. Now, Maggie was the lone woman on the premises, the only woman around to partake of the recuperative pleasures of the bath. “Just like the old days,” she said softly as she exited the kitchen and walked the gravel path toward the lake.

  Above her, heaven shone in a million fading stars as the eastern sky took on a rosy glow. Maggie smiled at the beauty of the sight and repeated a silent prayer that they would defeat Barlow Hill, and that she would remain at Lake Bliss to watch a thousand more dawns like this one.

  This was her home, the home she’d fought so hard to gain. It was the place that made her grandfathers’ declining years happy ones. Leaving it would break her heart.

  Maggie sighed, and hinges creaked as she pulled open the bathhouse door and slipped inside. She crossed to one of the pegs lining the wall, shrugged off her robe, and hung it up. She removed the gold chain and small key-shaped charm from around her neck and looped it around a second peg. Then, assured of privacy by both the walls and the time of the morning, she pulled her nightgown up and off.

  Cool night air chilled her naked skin and she shivered as she covered the necklace with her gown. Turning, she walked to the edge of the spring, extended pointed toes, and tested the water’s temperature. “Aah,” she said with a sigh as heat lapped at her skin. For a moment, she debated whether to choose the hot spring or a soak in the six-by-ten-foot log-lined pool filled with mud. Definitely the mud tonight, she thought. Her weary body would appreciate it, and by noon, the ache in her knee would be nothing but a bad memory.