Twice A Hero Part 23

"Your judgmenta"" He stopped himself. "Caroline, look at me. Everything I do is for your own good. You must trust me. I know more of the world than you ever can."

Then Mac didn't hear anything but the ticking of Caroline's clock. Driven by the need to know what was happening, she cracked the door open and peered into the hall.

Caroline was standing very close to Liam, leaning toward him, her breathing deep and her gaze locked on his.

"What I don't know," Caroline murmured, "I can learn."

Liam averted his eyes and stepped back. "You've learned everything a young lady requires," he said. "Kindly finish your preparations. I'll be waiting downstairs with the surrey." He turned and walked quickly away.

Mac closed the door and regained the bed just before Caroline charged into the room. Liam's ward touched her own cheek as if to check for a flush and paused to examine herself in front of a large mirror. "I must ask a favor of you, Rose."

"A favor?"

"Yes. Liam will expect me to ride with him, but I would much prefer your cousin's company."

Mac slid off the bed, her skirts bunching up around her hips. "How can I help you?"

"By playing a little game." Caroline turned, her mouth quirked in a sly smile. "When we go down, you shall wear my fur cloak and I shall wear my secondhand, the one I would have given you. And I will give you my favorite carriage bonnet. If we both wear veils, Liam won't realize what we've done until it's too late."

"I don't think we can pa.s.s for each other," Mac cautioned. "Our heightsa""

"Never mind that. It need only be for a few moments."

"Mr. O'Shea will be angry."

"Let him," Caroline said, tossing her head. "I'm not afraid." She sized Mac up with a provocative glance. "But perhaps Liam frightens you."

Mac suppressed a reckless laugh. "I'll help you. You and Perry do seem to get along so well."

Caroline studied her a moment longer and shrugged.

"Good." She frowned, walking a slow circle around Mac. "Yes. I do think you look quite presentable enough for your first appearance on the town. Just one more little adjustmenta"

She poked a straight pin into the heavy fabric at Mac's waist.

Mac rolled her eyes heavenward. So why didn't you just set me an easier task, Homera"like preventing the sinking of the t.i.tanic?

But there was no answer, and no going back.

Mac was almost ready to face Liam again when he arrived with the surrey.

It was "the s.h.i.+ny little surrey with the fringe on top," as the old song went, with two sets of long, roomy seats. Mac studied it as she stood with Caroline in the shadow of the front entryway, each of them wrapped in their respective coverings from top to toe.

Mac's bonnet was smothering, heavy and dripping with plumes. The veil enabled her to watch Liam jump down from his seat behind the horses and stop to exchange a few words with Perry, who waited at the curb with a much lighter, two-pa.s.senger carriage that Caroline had called a "gig."

A moment later Liam was stalking toward Mac and Caroline, his expression set. Perry picked up his pace and came flush with Liam as they reached the door.

"It must be now," Caroline whispered to Mac. "You wait here for Liam, and I will go with Perry."

Perry knew exactly what he was doing. He planted himself next to the disguised Caroline and took her arm, greeting her as Rose. The two of them were already to the gig when Liam addressed Mac, who had pretended to be busy with the hem of Caroline's fancy cloak.

"Are you ready, Caroline?" he asked impatiently.

She nodded, head down, and accepted his offered arm. She sensed him looking at her, perhaps wondering at her silence, but still he said nothing as he handed her into the carriage. It wasn't until she stumbled over her skirts getting into the front seat that he stiffened with realization. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him look toward the gig. He breathed a curse.

So the game was up, but Caroline had achieved her goal. She was in the gig with Perry, ready to leave at a moment's notice.

The bonnet was s.n.a.t.c.hed from Mac's head before she could remove it.

"Was this your idea, or Perry's?" Liam growled.

"Caroline's, actually." Mac met his gaze with more self-a.s.surance than she felt. "She wanted to ride with Perry. I think she was a little upset with you."

Liam stared at her, clearly preparing to read Mac the riot act, but Perry chose that opportune moment to drive the gig past the surrey.

"Mustn't keep the horses standing, old man," Perry said, checking the restive animals with a steady hand on the reins. "Caroline and I shall meet you at Golden Gate Park." His horses broke into a trot.

Liam hopped up into the driver's seat beside Mac, jaw set, and slapped the reins over the backs of his own team.

"Golden Gate Park," Mac said nervously. "I really am looking forward to seeing it. Must be pretty different now, compared to my time. They haven't even landscaped it yet, have they? Is it still all sand dunes?"

She thought he wasn't going to reply until he looked at her, brows lifted in amazementa"and suddenly began to laugh.

Mac, pretending to be Caroline. If the attempt hadn't been so ludicrously successful, it would have been unthinkable.

It was, in fact, a very good joke.

Liam's laugh faded to a rueful smile. He was the fool not to have seen it immediately. Of course, by the time he'd realized what had happened, only a public commotion would have corrected the situation.

Perhaps if he hadn't been so b.l.o.o.d.y distracted. Distracted by Mac in the Gresham housea"distracted by her now, in that borrowed carriage dress that made her look disturbinglya"

Feminine. That was the word. Feminine in the way Liam had always maintained a woman should be and had never expected to see in Mac.

There was something to be said for the change. The bodice of her dress gave her a surprisingly interesting shape; beneath the snug, high-collared fit of the basque, her bosom had taken on unexpected prominence. Her waist was minuscule, her hips emphasized by the bunched fabric and bustle of her skirta"a far cry from her denim trousers or the thin cotton pants and s.h.i.+rt she'd borrowed from him once upon a time.

She almost looked like a lady. But she didn't look like Mac, and he wondered why the thought unsettled him. He had the unexpected notion that Mac didn't need such trappings to be utterly femalea"and he remembered, with shocking clarity, that day she'd stood in the jungle lake with water gleaming on her naked skin. Or lying on top of him, small b.r.e.a.s.t.s bare against his chest, kissing him with wanton pa.s.sion.

He snapped away from that image. h.e.l.la"the problem was that Mac was pretending to be something she wasn't. It had to be part of whatever scheme Perry had planned, however he'd dragged Mac into it.

It wasn't going to work on Liam O'Shea.

So now Mac sat stiffly in her seat, toying with the plumes on the ridiculous bonnet and trying to distract him with nonsensical questions. She wouldn't get off so easily. He set the horses to a faster gait in order to keep Perry and Caroline in sighta"where he intended to be every step of the way to Cliff House.

"So, Mac," he said, "it was Caroline's idea to make you my guest on this expedition." He shook his head. "It's no wonder I was confused." He guided the horses down the hill and onto Market. "I would hardly have recognized you dressed as a woman."

"Oh, you mean this?" she said, plucking at her skirt. "Caroline was very generous in lending it to me."

"Ah, yes. My ward. She seemed anxious to help you, and you were amenable enough to her little trick. So eager for my companya"Rose?"

A stain of red darkened her ears. "I never did tell you my first name," she said. "You never asked."

"I prefer Mac. It suits you far better." He steered the surrey along the vast cobbled river of Market Street, dodging other carriages, horsecars, hacks, wagons, pedestrians, and even the rare lopsided bicycle. Perry's gig was still in clear view.

"And now," he said, "perhaps you'll explain to me what you were doing with Perry and Caroline."

She clasped her gloved hands in her lap. "It's simple. Perry offered his help, to enable me to make my way in the city. I took him up on his offer. He suggested that Caroline would help me find clothes and other things I needed."

"And so you simply went with him. Without consulting me, withouta""

"I didn't know where you'd gone!" She turned in her seat to glare at him. "I knew you and Perry were rivals, but you didn't leave me any choice. I wasn't going to sit in that room and wait for you to decide my fate."

Liam took a firmer grip on the reins. "I had plans for you, Mac. Plans to take care of youa""

"You never consulted me," she interrupted. "You just left."

"And you expect me to believe that was your only motive for coming here with Perry."

"By now I know better than to expect you to believe anything."

He remembered her stories of time travel back in the jungle, and his anger began to dissolve, softened by unantic.i.p.ated worry. He kept forgetting that Mac was more than a little mad. Not able to look after herself in a place like this. A man like Perry would find it easy to take advantage of her.

It gave Liam surprisingly little pleasure to be at odds with her now. In the jungle it had been different, with just the two of them, but herea Something had changed.

He didn't a.n.a.lyze the thought further. "Do you like animals, Mac?" he asked.

She started at his about-face. "Of course I like animals. If you mean the sealsa""

"Not quite." Liam whistled. A ba.s.so bark was the only warning of Norton's flying leap from the floorboard onto the rear seat of the carriage. The vehicle rocked with the force of the wolfhound's landing.

Liam reached back one-handed and undid the latch of the special traveling basket on the back seat. b.u.mmer the Second squirmed out and began to bark, scrambling from one end of the seat to the other. Norton thrust his s.h.a.ggy muzzle across Mac's shoulder and gave her a great sweeping lick that caught her right across the cheek.

All at once the strained atmosphere of anger and suspicion was gone. Mac was laughinga"not a quiet, feminine t.i.tter but a full-throated sound of genuine amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Friends of yours?" she asked. "I didn't know you kept such good company." She caught b.u.mmer and lifted the terrier over the back of the seat and into her lap. Sometime in the last minute she'd managed to pull off her gloves; now she held the terrier down with one hand and patted Norton's muzzle with the other. "What are their names?"

Of course she wouldn't be discomposed, even with a pair of boisterous canines shedding and s...o...b..ring all over her carriage dress. Caroline would be outraged at the affront to her toilette, and he wouldn't hear the end of her complaints that he'd brought the dogs along.

"How remiss of me not to offer introductions," he said. "This is b.u.mmer the Second, and"a"he jerked his thumb toward the rear seata""that's Norton."

"Nortona"as in Emperor Norton? He just died a few years ago, didn't he? And b.u.mmer was one of his dogs. Did you name yours for his?"

"You seem to know a great deal about the emperor."

She grinned. "He is in all the San Francisco history books."

Not giving up on her crazy story even now. Liam eased the carriage past a cable car rattling along in its tracks as they pa.s.sed the unfinished hulk of the city hall dome and turned onto Fell. "Eventually I'll call your bluff, Mac."

She gazed at the cable car while b.u.mmer barked at a mongrel on the sidewalk. "What's going to happen when someone calls yours?"

Liam snorted and directed the surrey onto the broad gravel paths of Avenue Park. Other carriages and their occupants were taking the air on this fine autumn day: victorias and landaus, rockaways and gigs and buggies. Children and dogs played on the patches of groomed lawn to either side of the lane.

And just ahead were Perry and Caroline in Perry's rented gig. Caroline's head was very close to Perry's as they chatted with a society matron in her landau.

Liam ordered Norton out of the carriage and coaxed the horses alongside the gig. Mac set b.u.mmer on the back seat.

Perry looked up. "What kept you?" he asked. "Liam, you do know Mrs. Wyndham."

Liam made the slightest of bows. He knew her, all right; she was one of the social arbiters who determined when one had become rich or fas.h.i.+onable enough to be part of the n.o.b Hill seta"the society Liam had exerted himself to join for Caroline's sake.

Perry, however, had his uses for Mrs. Wyndham and her ilk. They had the money he lacked; he had the culture they desperately aspired to. He knew how to make the most of his aristocratic heritage.

At the moment he clearly wished to present his supposed "cousin" to San Francisco society. He made introduction of Miss Rose MacKenzie to Mrs. Wyndham, relating the outrageous story of Mac's fabricated origins.

Mrs. Wyndham, rotund and severe in a dark brown carriage dress, examined Mac with considerable interest but didn't question Perry's story. She gave Perry a regal nod.

"I trust you will take good care of your cousin while she is with us, Mr. Sinclair," she said. "And Miss Gresham, I shall be delighted to attend your ball. I hope to see your new protegee there. Mr. O'Shea, Miss MacKenzie." With a lift of her beringed hand she waved her coachman on.

"I knew you would be found acceptable with a little help," Caroline said, beaming at Mac. "The ball will be so much fun."

"Uma"ball?" Mac echoed.

Caroline's brow wrinkled. "Surely you've been in mourning for your poor father long enough?" She turned to Perry. "Hasn't she, Perry? The ball will not be too early?"

Perry patted Caroline's hand. "I think it best if Rose is encouraged to put her losses behind her rather than dwell on them."

Liam coughed. Three sets of eyes focused on him. Caroline s.h.i.+fted in her seat.

"I knew you could not object, Liam," Caroline said, her tone deceptively humble. "I thought it only right that Rose should be invited to my birthday ball." She turned to Mac without waiting for Liam's response. "You will adore it, Rose. I shall present you to all my friends. And it will be your firsta"