Scoundrel for Hire (Velvet Lies, Book 1) by Adrienne deWolfe

easterner tossed him a malevolent look, jammed on his hat, and hurried in the direction of the Grand Hotel. Rafe shook his head. With that scarlet-lined cape flapping out behind him, the easterner could have been Tabor's own phantom of the opera—except, of course, his leading-man good looks hadn't been marred badly enough for that role. Too bad about the scar, Rafe mused. Fiona's stage makeup could have fixed him up in a heartbeat...
    Damn. He made a face, thoughts of Fiona reminding him of his mission. The last thing he wanted to do was face his foster parents again. Fiona was bound to wheedle, and Fred would undoubtedly ask questions. The less those two old hucksters knew about Silver's scheme, the better. Rafe couldn't very well extort a lifetime worth of savings from the Nicholses if he had to split his take with Fred and Fiona.
    No, he'd have to come up with some kind of reasonable explanation to throw them off his trail. The question was, what?
    Rafe was still searching for an answer when he rounded the corner of the magnificent brick edifice that shopkeeper Horace Tabor had built after he'd grubstaked enough miners to earn his fortune. Rafe hardly glanced twice at the opera house, though. Instead, he wound his way through the debris of its rear alley until he came to what was left of a fire-ravaged livery. Fred's Piccadilly Players had parked their wagons here in a semicircle, Injun-fighting style, around the wreckage.
    An inexplicable pang of homesickness seized him when he glimpsed the same lantern that had drawn him out of the snow, fifteen years earlier, to Fred's door. He didn't want to be bound to his former employers, yet he didn't know how not to be. Despite all of Fred's bullying and Fiona's manipulation, the Brits had been better parents to him than Jedidiah Jones.
    Scheduled for a six-week engagement, the theater troupe had turned the blackened lot into a miniature neighborhood. Rafe ducked a clothesline, smiled crookedly at a pair of patched bloomers, skirted a water barrel, and paused wistfully before a rocking horse before he finally climbed the wagon's step and beat his fist on the foot-long likeness of Fred's nose.
    The door cracked, and the master prevaricator himself appeared.
    "Well, ho! If it isn't the conquering hero," the Brit boomed in a voice that, Rafe was certain, rattled the windows in each of the six other wagons. "Fee, my sweet, you'll never guess who's come to call." He tossed this sally over his shoulder, even louder this time, before turning to squint once more at Rafe through his ever-present fog of smoke. "What a rare treat, to see you after midnight—and after Miss Silver's gone abed too. You must have missed the company of us regular folk. Either that, or your high-falutin' heiress threw you out on your ear."
    Rafe endeavored not to glare.
    "You're awake late," he parried in his best offhand manner. "I didn't interrupt anything between you and Fiona, did I?"
    "Bloody hell. I can't remember the last time me and Fee were doing something we could get interrupted at. She's a sick woman, lad. A bloke can't go around demanding conjugal rights from a sick woman—unless, of course, he doesn't mind losing a favorite piece of his anatomy."
    Rafe winced inwardly. Only sixty seconds after he'd arrived, and Fred was already heaping the guilt on uncomfortably thick. "Words to live by I'm sure. And how is Fiona?" he asked dutifully.
    "Hacking her lungs out." Fred seemed to remember his cigar and abruptly extinguished it against the door. "'Course," he added sheepishly, "I'm sure she feels a whole lot better knowing you've come to keep her company."
    As if to corroborate this statement, a shriek ripped from the rear of the wagon, followed closely by a noise that sounded like a shoe striking the wall. Fred started, turning, and Rafe could finally see beyond his bulk. An enormous cloud of facial powder was rising behind the red-and-white checkered curtain that dissected the cluttered wagon and hid