Free The Other Guy's Bride by Connie Brockway

definitely that.
    With no help from him, she’d cast him into the role of some sort of cowboy-outlaw. When he’d realized that nothing he could say was going to dissuade her of that opinion, he’d decided he might as well take advantage of it. He sure as hell hadn’t been getting anywhere asking for her cooperation. If she wanted to believe he was a bad man, then a bad man he’d be, reasoning that if she didn’t know what he was capable of doing, she might not risk finding out by flouting him. She looked like a world-class flouter to him.
    His mouth curved into an involuntary smile. She’d looked like a new-fledged owl, staring up at him from her nest of bedclothes round-eyed with wonder, a little frightened, a little excited—
    “I did the best I could.”
    Jim looked up, jerked out of his reverie by Haji’s voice.
    “The crew,” Haji explained, nodding toward the quartet of men moving back and forth along the dock loading provisions and readying the boat. “They’re Nubians. I know you don’t speak Nubian, but they were the best I could do on short notice. The captain speaks some English.”
    Jim nodded. English may well have been the captain’s only asset. He’d arrived drunk half an hour ago and had been trying to sober up ever since. As he watched, the barrel-chested Nubian belched and shouted an order to a boy. The lad hurried to the stern and began hauling the mainsail up the mast, making a mess of the process and earning bellows of rage.
    “Good Lord. If we make it across the river without drowning it will be a miracle,” Jim muttered. “Just how much am I paying them?”
    “Twenty piasters a day each. Fifty extra for the captain.”
    “By all that’s holy, Haji.”
    “Come, James. It’s not as if you were paying them; Colonel Lord Pomfrey is. All you need to do is hand him a bill. Were I you, I should make certain it was considerably padded.” He glanced at Mildred Whimpelhall and grinned. “Battle wages, I believe it’s called.”
    His smiled faded. “But no amount of money is worth risking your life. This is madness, habib . LeBouef might not come after you himself, but he will set a price on you. Every wretch within fifty miles will be looking for you.”
    “Doubt anyone’s going to be sneaking up on me in the desert,” Jim said, though in truth Haji wasn’t saying anything Jim hadn’t already thought.
    “You aren’t doing Miss Whimpelhall any favors, either, James. You’re setting her up as a target right alongside of you.”
    He’d thought of that, too. “LeBouef would have Mrs. Walcott and the British army on his head if he caused her any harm and he knows it.”
    “Bah!” Haji said, thwarted. “She is Pomfrey’s bride. Let Pomfrey find another to guide her. Better yet, let him come for her himself.”
    Jim hesitated. Haji was right, and looking at the inexperienced crew and the drunken captain to whose dubious skills he was entrusting her made him reconsider. She was so young and vulnerable, and while he knew LeBouef was too savvy a businessman to waste money by sending men chasing across a vast, uncharted desert after him, that didn’t mean some ambitious self-starter might not have a go at it.
    “Listen to me,” Haji pressed. “So, she is forced to stay in an elegant hotel for a week or so. Is this so great a burden?”
    No. It wasn’t.
    “Yes! Yes, it is!”
    At the sound of the frantic female voice, both men swung around to find Mildred Whimpelhall clambering over the crates toward them. The girl must have ears like a bat.
    “Ah, Miss Whimpelhall,” Haji said, his face smoothing. “I am sure if you understood what was at stake here, you would be happy to free Mr. Owens from his obligation.”
    “I do understand!” she protested, stopping atop a crate next to the boy still working industriously and unsuccessfully to haul the halyard to its topmost position. “I know exactly what is at stake, and I can assure you your problems are paltry next to my