Quicksilver's Catch
Mary McBride
Marcus Quicksilver Moved Like A Mountain Lion On The ProwlAnd if Amanda Grenville had any sense, she'd be putting miles of prairie between them, instead of running straight into his arms. Even covered in trail dust Amanda Grenville still radiated plenty of appeal - five thousand dollars' worth, to be exact!Now if only bounty hunter Marcus Quicksilver could keep his eyes on the prize and forget about the heiress… !
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u1d71763f-1d32-5f15-998d-c85f63fa4085)
Excerpt (#u508e89e4-29ab-5624-b61a-1e8e2cde3b11)
Dear Reader (#uc081bc3e-c5c8-5b55-aac3-e056656800b9)
Title Page (#u955a3977-3c06-57dc-bc8c-c06598d21086)
About the Author (#ud229a432-5fee-52d1-82c3-3553b88bbf4f)
Prologue (#uc088d2f0-615d-5211-8301-409e4cb469cf)
Chapter One (#u165d2ca4-1cc8-53b9-b979-5e38295d3d86)
Chapter Two (#u2564726a-b017-580e-9607-144a06a84ff7)
Chapter Three (#u03f5b436-3de3-5818-9bd4-7d9358faac17)
Chapter Four (#u41a9249c-91b7-5c4d-ab1d-3cfbe635c276)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I landed in…in…a damn mule pie!”
Marcus burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. Now that he knew it was mostly Amanda’s dignity that was injured, he felt intensely relieved. Even when she cursed him and smacked his arm hard enough to make him lose his balance, he couldn’t stop laughing.
“That’s you, then?” he said, chortling, crinkling up his nose and sniffing dramatically.
“Oh, please.” She pitched him a look of pure, undiluted murder. But it was dry murder now. The tears, thank God, were gone.
“I hate you, Quicksilver. I truly, truly do.” She shook her fists at the sky. “Just look at me! I’m sitting here all crippled and smelling to high heaven, and all you can do is laugh like a damn, demented hyena!”
Dear Reader,
All of us at Harlequin Historicals would like to wish Mary McBride a warm congratulations on making the USA Today bestseller list with her story in our OUTLAW BRIDES collection along with authors Ruth Langan and Elaine Coffman. Mary has a new book out this month, a Western romance called Quicksilver’s Catch. This delightful story features a runaway heiress bride and the tough-as-nails bounty hunter who is determined to make as much money as he can from his association with the willful young woman, if she doesn’t drive him to drink first. Don’t miss this warm and funny story of two people who really don’t belong together.
A devil-may-care nobleman finds redemption in the arms of the only woman who can heal him, in Margaret Moore’s The Rogue’s Return, the next installment in her MOST UNSUITABLE… series set in Victorian England. And Outlaw Wife by Ana Seymour is a bittersweet Western about the daughter of a notorious outlaw who loses her heart to the rancher who saves her from jail.
Fleeing Britain and marriage to an elderly preacher, an English adventuress becomes involved with an American spy in our fourth title for the month, Nancy Whiskey by Laurel Ames.
Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you’ll keep a lookout for all of our books, wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Quicksilver’s Catch
Mary McBride
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARY McBRIDE
is a former special-education teacher who lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and two young sons. She loves to correspond with readers and invites them to write to her at: P.O. Box 411202 St. Louis, MO 63141.
Prologue (#ulink_d2356ce5-be5f-582a-aa5e-e94b08ef2247)
“Miss Amanda says she doesn’t want to eat, ma’am.” Bridget flexed her knees, as much to steady herself on the moving train as to show proper respect to her elderly and exceedingly rich employer.
“Poppycock.” Honoria Grenville snatched a hanky from her black sleeve and waved it brusquely at the maid. “My granddaughter hasn’t eaten a bite since we left Denver yesterday. Give her the tray, Bridget.”
“Oh, but, ma’am…”
“Now.” Mrs. Grenville’s voice was as adamant as the rap of her ebony cane on the floor of her private Pullman Palace car.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Bridget flexed her knees again, stifled a sigh of resignation, and made her way toward the curtained sleeping compartment. Rich people. They baffled her and made her very nervous.
“Won’t you have a bite of supper, Miss Amanda?” she crooned, a bit hesitantly, through the closed drapes as she hoisted the large silver tray shoulder high and slipped it between the brocade folds. When there was no response, Bridget bit her lip and stepped back. Oh Lord, here we go again, she thought when a teacup whizzed inches from her nose, to crash against the mahogany paneling on the opposite side of the car. The saucer followed a second later and met with the same shattered fate.
Then, suddenly, it was raining. Peas and carrots! Saints preserve us! Forks and spoons! Bridget ducked just as the big silver tray sailed over her head, skimmed the length of the Oriental carpet, and came to rest at the black hem of Honoria Grenville’s dress.
“That will be quite enough, Amanda.” The old woman’s cane came down, denting the tray. “Bridget, did she hear me? Tell my granddaughter I won’t tolerate this behavior any longer.”
A muffled shout came from behind the curtains. “Tell my grandmother I heard her, Bridget. And tell her the minute she stops keeping me prisoner and lets me go back to Denver to marry Angus McCray, she won’t have to tolerate my bad behavior anymore. I’m going to marry him, Grandmother. Did you hear me? Did she hear me, Bridget?”
One look at Mrs. Grenville’s livid face proved to the maid that she had, indeed, heard the threat. “I believe she did, miss,” Bridget said, her gaze flick-ing nervously now from her irate employer to the brocade curtains, which were rippling and waving, as if from Miss Amanda’s hot breath.
It was a continual surprise to the young Irish-woman that rich people argued. And so vehemently. too. If she had money, she thought, and especially a fortune like the Grenvilles’, she’d be as dreamy and contented as a cow in clover, as blissful as a sow in springtime mud. Of course, like Miss Amanda, she’d want to marry the man of her choice, and she’d be furious, too, she supposed, if she’d been snatched from the altar just as she was about to speak her vows, the way Miss Amanda had been yesterday.
“Angus McCray is a fortune hunter and a scoundrel,” Mrs. Grenville said in a booming voice.
“I’m still going to marry him, Grandmother.”
“What did she say, Bridget?”
“She said…”
“I said—” Amanda’s voice rose from the depths of the sleeping compartment “—that I’m still going to marry him. I said you can’t keep me under lock and key forever, Grandmother, and the minute your back is turned, I’m going back to Denver. You wait and see.”
“What did she say, Bridget?” The ebony cane stabbed the tray again and again. Honoria Grenville’s knuckles were fierce white knobs on the handle. With her other hand, she waved her lace hankie again. “Come here, Bridget,” she demanded. “Tell me what she said.”
“Well, ma’am…” The little maid edged away from the sleeping compartment, picked her way through peas and carrots and flatware as daintily as her brogans would allow, until she stood directly in front of her employer. She curtsied again—out of habit, or from nerves—thinking she’d rather stand between the armies of blue and gray than between these two women. She swallowed hard before she spoke.
“Well, ma’am, putting it in a nutshell, Miss Amanda said she’s bound and determined to marry the rogue.”
With the hankie, Mrs. Grenville motioned her even closer. The light in the old woman’s pale blue eyes struck Bridget now as more like a glimmer of hope than the earlier spark of anger. “And did she say she loves him?” Mrs. Grenville whispered. “Did my granddaughter say anything about love?”
“Love?” Bridget gulped the word, and then frowned. Had she? Had Miss Amanda, in all her righteous fury, shouted a single word about love?
“No, ma’am. No, she didn’t. Not as I recall.”
The old woman closed her eyes for a moment and sagged into the upholstery. The hankie drifted from her hand. She sighed. “Precisely what I thought.”
Bridget felt an unaccustomed tug of pity for her wealthy employer just then, but before she could offer so much as a comforting cluck of her tongue, the old woman stiffened her spine, rammed her cane into the floor once more, just missing Bridget’s foot, and bellowed, “Over my dead body, Amanda Grenville.”
Chapter One (#ulink_6d46cf98-d8dc-55f0-9b13-07d41b0014fb)
North Platte, Nebraska1874
“Shine your boots, mister?”
“Scat.”
“Aw, come on. Them boots of yours could do with a little spit and polish, and I sure could do with a nickel. What do you say, mister?”
“You’re a pest.”
“I’m enterprising.”
“Same thing.” Marcus Quicksilver thumbed up the hat that was shading his face in order to get a look at the kid who’d been buzzing around him like a gnat for the past five minutes. He expected to see a chubby, apple-cheeked tycoon, but instead his eyes lit on a skinny boy with smallpox scars and a single suspender that was failing miserably at holding up a pair of too-big pants.
“How old are you, kid?”
“None of your beeswax.” The boy aimed his pitted chin into Marcus’s face as if it were the barrel of a nicked and battered derringer. “Nine, if you have to know. How old’re you?”
“Ninety.” Marcus grinned, then quit when his forehead felt as if it were splitting down the middle. He muttered a soft curse, offered up another promise never to touch bar whiskey again, and closed his eyes. “Make that ninety-five.”
“You could sure use a shave, mister.”
Marcus traced his fingers along his jaw, where the three-day growth was old enough now to feel soft, rather than bristly. “Wait. Don’t tell me. You’re an enterprising barber, too. Right?”
The boy laughed. “Naw. But for a nickel, I’ll set you up with the best danged barber in town.”
“No time.”
“You waiting for the train?”
“Yep.”
The boy fished a gold watch from his pocket, clicked it open and studied its face. “Aw, you got a good twenty minutes before the westbound’s due. That ain’t enough time for a haircut, maybe, but it’s plenty for a shoeshine.” He dropped the watch back in his pocket and peered at his potential customer. “Well? How about it?”
Shifting in his chair, Marcus unwound his legs and stretched them across the planking. He stared at his boots a moment, wondering when it had ceased being important to him to have shined boots, a shaved face or well-pressed clothes. Wondering if he was as unkempt inside as he was outside. If his heart and soul were as disreputable as the rest of him. Wondering if he cared.
“You win,” he said at last, with a sigh of resignation. “Have at it, kid.”
“Yessir!” The boy snapped his soiled chamois rag, knelt, then promptly spat on Marcus’s left boot and got to work.
“Mighty nice timepiece for a bootblack,” Marcus said casually, looking down at the top of the boy’s head. The hair there was yellow and wild as fresh pitched hay, and probably hadn’t seen a comb all month. “Did you lift that watch from a fella heading east or west?”
“Neither.” He stopped working the shine rag long enough to pat his pocket. “This here watch is a legacy from my pappy. He was rich.”
“Uh-huh,” Marcus drawled. “What was your rich pappy’s name?”
“Joe. Joe Tate.”
“Mighty poor speller for a rich man.”
The boy glanced up now, his eyes big and quizzical. “What…what do you mean?”
“The initials on your watch, son.” Marcus winked. “Somebody named N.F.R. is walking around somewhere right now, scratching his head and wondering whether it’s ten minutes till or ten minutes after, I expect.”
The pockmarked little face flushed with color, and the boy swallowed hard. “You won’t tell anybody, will you, mister?”
“Not as long as you promise me you’ll quit stealing watches.”
The boy released the chamois cloth just long enough to sketch a quick cross over his heart. “I swear,” he said. “Honest I do.”
Marcus sighed and closed his eyes again. I swear. Honest. It wouldn’t surprise him one bit if, ten years from now, he was tracking this kid, once he graduated from watches to payrolls, from petty larceny to felony or worse. Now that was a depressing thought—Marcus Quicksilver still in the saddle riding down lowlifes a decade hence, at the ripe old age of forty-four. God almighty. He’d probably need spectacles to read the Wanted posters.
Not that his keen eyesight was doing him any good at the present. His last three bounties had been pure busts. He’d gotten to El Paso on the heels of Elmer Sweet, a rival manhunter, who’d had himself a great guffaw when he led his thousand-dollar prisoner right past Marcus’s nose. A month after that, he’d had the hell kicked out of him by a horse thief named Charlie Clay, who turned out of be the wrong Charlie Clay, one with no bounty on his head. And damned if three days ago Marcus hadn’t arrived in Rosebud just in time to watch his quarry take a long drop from a short rope in the town square.
He never used to lose bounties before, Marcus thought. Every man he set out to catch, he caught. Over the past decade or so, he’d earned himself a fearsome reputation. Often as not, if a man heard that Marcus Quicksilver was on his trail, he’d know he was as good as done for and just turn himself in to the nearest available lawman.
Ten years. Twelve. How long had it been? Marcus stared at the yellow-headed kid now, thinking the boy hadn’t even been born when he collected that first bounty. Suddenly it seemed like the criminals were getting younger and faster with each passing year, while he was getting older and slower and…
“That’s not true, dammit.” Marcus said it out loud as he jerked his leg and pushed himself straighter in the chair.
“Hey, watch it,” the kid snapped. “Who’re you talking to, anyway?”
“Nobody. Mind your own business.” Marcus settled back in the chair again, attempting to relax his leg and to clear his aching head of such dismal thoughts.
Hell. If he wasn’t getting any younger, he certainly wasn’t getting any richer, either. It kept getting harder and harder to save that last few thousand dollars toward the land he’d hoped to buy. Even when he did collect a bounty these days, by the time he got back to Denver he’d be honestly surprised that most of it had slipped through his fingers.
Since they’d hanged Doc Gibbons in Rosebud, there wasn’t even sand to slip through Marcus’s fingers this time out. Still, here he was sitting in the sunshine at a train depot in Nebraska, getting his boots shined for a nickel when his pockets were very nearly empty. That realization made his head ache all the worse.
“Psst.”
He opened a single eye at the sound of the nearby hiss but didn’t see anyone, so he settled deeper in the chair.
“Psst. Yoo-hoo. Little boy.”
The brisk cloth stopped moving across Marcus’s boot when the boy said, “You calling to me, lady?”
Marcus hadn’t seen anybody—lady or otherwise—but when he opened both eyes now he caught a glimpse of a little female in fine traveling clothes peeking around a corner of the depot.
“Yes, I am calling to you.” She smiled and crooked a gloved finger. “I’d like to speak with you. Would you come here a moment?”
The kid dropped his chamois rag and tore off in her direction, leaving Marcus with one boot shined and the other still covered with trail dust. He started to curse, but then he laughed instead. It wasn’t the first time a young entrepreneur had let his business go all to hell when beckoned by a pretty smile. He, himself, had lost a bounty or two when distracted by other, softer pursuits.
He leaned forward, picked up the rag, and went to work on the dusty boot, thinking maybe he’d keep the nickel—Lord knew he could use it—but knowing he wouldn’t deduct even a penny from the scrawny little hustler’s pay.
“There you go frittering away money again, Marcus,” he murmured to himself, shaking his head with dismay more than disgust. “When are you going to learn?”
Both boots looked pretty good, in Marcus’s opinion, by the time the kid reappeared a few minutes later. But instead of returning to finish the job he had started, the boy walked right past Marcus’s chair, toward the door of the depot.
“Whoa. Wait a minute,” Marcus called after him. “You started something here, pal. For a nickel, remember? Here’s your shine cloth.” Marcus waved it at him.
The scrawny boy stopped for a second, his hand on the door, and then he shrugged. “Aw, that’s all right, mister. You keep ‘em. The nickel and the rag both. I don’t need either one of ‘em now.” He flashed a lopsided grin before he disappeared inside the depot.
Marcus sat there a minute, shaking his head in bafflement while staring at the dirty and now abandoned rag in his hand. Then, just at his shoulder, a throat was cleared with polite insistence.
“Excuse me, sir. Could you possibly tell me what time it is and how soon the train is due?”
Marcus looked up into a pair of eyes the color of money, the shade of greenbacks fresh from the press. They were bright and clear and rich with promise. Below those was perched a delicate nose, and somewhere in his field of vision there was a mouth that struck him as sensual and eminently kissable, for all its primness. It was only when that mouth twitched with impatience at each corner that he realized he hadn’t answered the question it had posed.
He balled up the boot rag, tossed it onto the planking, then tugged his watch from his pocket. “It’s five past eleven, miss. The westbound’s due any minute now, if it’s running on time.”
“Good. I certainly hope so.” Saying that, she whisked her skirt around and walked back to the edge of the depot, where she’d been standing earlier.
Well, not standing, exactly. It was more like skulking, Marcus thought now, vaguely aware of a little flicker of disappointment in his gut. He was used to women making advances toward him, some shyly asking the time, despite the watches pinned to their breasts, others coming right out and telling him they’d never seen a more handsome devil in all their born days and was he married or promised or going to be in town long? None of them, however, ever skittered away to skulk once the connection had been made. Ever.
He didn’t consider himself a ladies’ man, exactly, but he wasn’t a rock by the side of the road, either, dammit. This little lady’s obvious disinterest had definitely taken a chunk out of his male pride. He scowled at his boots a minute and rubbed his jaw before getting up, stretching and sauntering her way.
“Nice day.”
He might as well have been a rock, the way she ignored him.
Marcus nudged his hat back a fraction. “You headed west, miss?”
Her pretty face tipped up to his, and those green eyes regarded him with cool disdain, less like a rock now than like something that had crawled out from under one.
The hell with her. Marcus would have turned on his heel and bidden her good-day and good riddance then, if he hadn’t noticed the tiny trembling of her lips and the way her fingers shook when she reached up to brush a stray wisp of blond hair off her forehead. She was nervous. No. More like frightened. Scared to death. Only you couldn’t tell it by her voice.
“I’m not in the habit of talking with strangers,” she told him in clipped, cool tones, then added an icy “Go away,” just to make sure he got the point.
He got it, all right, and—scared or not—he was about to give her a view of his departing back when she muttered, almost under her breath, “Where the devil is that little boy? What in the world could be taking him so long?”
“Pardon?”
She sighed and spoke as much to the clapboards on the side of the depot as she did to Marcus. “I asked that young shoeshine boy to purchase a ticket for me. I gave him two twenty-dollar gold pieces and told him to hurry. He ought to be back by now.”
Or halfway across the state by now. No wonder the little son of a bitch had been in such a sweat to leave Marcus and his boots and his damn nickel behind.
“Excuse me, miss.” Touching a finger to the brim of his hat, Marcus turned and walked away.
Amanda peeked around the building for a last glimpse of the stranger, whose whiskers hadn’t totally concealed a strikingly handsome face. Even the shade of his hat hadn’t been able to hide eyes that were bluer than a prairie sky at noon. And now, as he walked away, Amanda couldn’t help but notice how wide his shoulders were and how his gunbelt hugged his narrow hips. If eastern dandies had the merest notion how the slant of a bullet-laden gunbelt set a woman’s heart to pounding, she was convinced that New York and Connecticut would soon be as wild as the West.
“Oh, my.” But even as the wistful sigh escaped her lips, Amanda reminded herself that a woman who was engaged to be married had absolutely no business noticing the physical attributes of men. Strange men, too. Ones who, for all she knew, were only interested in dragging her back to her grandmother and pocketing the five-thousand-dollar reward.
She’d only escaped two days ago, tossing her hastily packed valise from the train as it slowed for the Omaha depot, then jumping after it, while her grandmother snored in her big upholstered chair. “Over my dead body,” the old woman had blustered. But as it turned out, over her snoring body had been adequate.
Amanda smiled, still quite pleased with herself for outfoxing the stubborn old vixen. She didn’t for a minute believe her grandmother didn’t have her well-being at heart, but this time Honoria Grenville was wrong. This time—for the first time in all her twenty-one years—Amanda knew what she wanted and, by heaven, she was going to get it, even if it meant slinking around train depots and begging favors from raggedy little shoeshine boys.
And where was that boy, anyway? Surely he’d had ample time to purchase her ticket by now. She’d have gone into the depot herself, but with those reward posters tacked on every available inch of wall, she didn’t dare. Her grandmother must have had them printed within minutes of her escape, then hired half the men in Nebraska to post them.
She paced back and forth now, squinting up at the sun, wishing she’d remembered to take her watch with her when she jumped off the train. If she had remembered it, though, she wouldn’t have had an excuse to ask that darkly handsome man for the time, though, would she?
A tiny grin itched at her lips. How shocked her grandmother would be at Amanda’s bold behavior. Of course, she hadn’t expected the man to pursue the brief conversation. Or her. That worried Amanda considerably. What if he had seen one of the posters?
It suddenly occurred to her then that the little boy might have seen one of the dratted posters inside the depot and run for help. Her fingers twitched at the sides of her skirt, ready to hike it up and make yet another escape, when she heard the soft jingle of spurs just around the corner of the building.
“Here you go, miss.”
When the handsome stranger held out a ticket, Amanda snatched it from his hand. Thank God, she wanted to wail, and had to swallow hard to keep from showing her incredible relief. But before she could subdue her vocal cords enough to offer a single word, the man quite literally chilled her with those blue eyes of his.
“You’re welcome,” he said with undisguised sarcasm. “Always glad to help a lady in distress.”
What did he think she was, an ungrateful, illmannered boor? She was a lady, after all. That was practically her sole credential. And as for distress, well, she’d gotten along just fine for the past two days, despite the fact that she was being hunted like a dog. And, like a dog, Amanda could feel her lips pulling back in a snarl when she said, “I’m most appreciative of your chivalry, sir. Keep the change, won’t you?”
“Keep the—?”
Marcus dragged in a calming breath as he looked down at the four silver dollars in the palm of his hand. He’d just sprinted a quarter mile to catch a nine-year-old thief, caught the boy by the scruff of the neck, upended him and shaken the two double eagles loose.
“Don’t you ever steal from somebody who trusts you,” Marcus had warned him. “Especially a lady who’s scared and in trouble and is depending on you for help. You got that, kid?”
After nodding and blubbering about how sorry he was, the little bastard had proved just how much the advice meant to him by kicking Marcus in the shin and hightailing it into a grove of elm trees.
And now here he was—Marcus Quicksilver, knight errant, slayer of dragons and shoeshine boys, humble ticket bearer—being told by his damsel in distress to keep the goddamn change!
He was tempted to swipe the railroad ticket right out of her dainty little hand and tell her to walk wherever it was she was headed and good luck to anybody she met along the way. Instead, he reached out for her hand, turned it over and slapped the four coins into the palm of her glove. Hard.
“My pleasure, miss,” he said through clenched teeth. “Enjoy your trip.” And here’s hoping I get hit by lightning before I ever set eyes on you again.
Marcus was still muttering to himself half an hour later as he settled into his seat in the crowded railroad car. He’d had the devil’s own time getting his horse, a chestnut mare he’d christened Sarah B., up the ramp of the baggage car and into her narrow stall. Like her dramatically famous namesake, Sarah Bernhardt, the horse was temperamental. She rarely acted up when the two of them were alone on the trail, but seemed to prefer an audience, usually one of chortling, tobacco-chawing geezers who took great delight and purely perverse pleasure in Marcus’s predicament.
He sat now with his saddlebags on the empty seat beside him, his arms crossed over his chest and his legs stretched out, anticipating a halfway-decent nap once the train got under way and its rocking motion began. It ought to be fairly quiet until the train pulled into the next meal stop, in Julesburg. He listened to the big locomotive building up its head of steam, felt the floor beneath his boots begin to tremble, then heard the conductor bawl out, “All aboard!” Marcus let his eyes drift closed.
With a little luck and a little nap, he hoped his foul temper would dissipate. Maybe his luck would change, too. He hadn’t been lucky of late. Not a bit Now he was just about broke. Again.
Not that it mattered all that much, Marcus thought wearily. A lifetime ago, when he became a bounty hunter, more out of necessity than by choice, his plan had been to collect enough bounties until he had the cash to buy a decent piece of land and try his hand at farming again. Even try his luck at marriage one more time.
He was no closer to that dream today than he’d been a decade ago, and it made him wonder—when he allowed himself to think about the pain of the past and the blank slate of the future—if maybe he really didn’t want that dream to come true.
Hell. Maybe a man was only meant to be lucky once in a lifetime, and his all-too-brief marriage to Sarabeth had been his own brief portion of good luck.
He sighed roughly, shrugging off the haunting memories, settling deeper into the upholstery. Even more than good luck now, he needed the healing power of a good, long sleep.
“Excuse me.” Someone jabbed his shoulder. “I said excuse me, sir. Would you be good enough to remove your belongings from this seat?”
Marcus didn’t even have to look up. That haughty voice was almost as familiar to him as his own now. Her face, as well. Those money-green eyes would be narrowed on him, cool and demanding, and her luscious mouth would be thin with impatience. He hesitated a moment, as if he hadn’t heard her, before he reached over to grab hold of his saddlebags and shove them under his seat.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Marcus angled his hat over his eyes once more and crossed his arms, more determined than ever to fall asleep, despite—or maybe because of—the feverish activity in the adjacent seat.
She sat. She sighed. She got up. She muttered under her breath and then she stepped on Marcus’s foot.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he grunted, his eyes still closed.
“I can’t seem to get this hatbox properly situated up here.”
He’d just about talked himself out of the chivalry business entirely when the train lurched forward and the damsel and her hatbox both wound up in his lap. It nearly knocked the breath out of him, but Marcus knew it wasn’t the fall so much as the feel of her that made his chest seize up.
Suddenly he was caught up in complicated silken curves and corn-silk hair. He remembered now asking to be hit by lightning, and he was fairly certain that his wish had just been granted. When he swore, it came out as a beleaguered sigh.
“Hold still,” he told her as she wriggled on his lap.
Somehow a strand of her blond hair had gotten wound around his shirt button, and the more she squirmed, the worse it got.
“I’m caught!” she squealed.
“Hang on a minute.” He tried to unwind the silky lock of hair.
“Ouch!”
“Hold still, dammit.”
“Ouch!”
“Aw, hell.” Marcus ripped the button from his shirt. “There. You’re free.”
She scrambled off his lap and managed to step on both his feet before retaking her seat. Once there, she fussed with her curls and her clothes, paying no attention to Marcus and blithely ignoring the hatbox, which was still on his lap.
He counted to ten. Slowly. Practicing the patience of a saint. Nine saints. Ten. He sighed. “Your hatbox, miss.”
And just as Marcus had known she would, she looked at him with her rich green eyes, flicked him a small but still imperious smile, and suggested he stash the hat box in the rack overhead.
“By all means, Duchess,” he muttered under his breath as he got up to cram the box into the wire rack. He half expected her to hand him a nickel when he sat back down, but she didn’t. His imperious duchess—the little brat—was already fast asleep.
“Sleep tight, Your Ladyship,” he whispered, knowing his own hopes for a nap had been blasted to smithereens by the mere fact of her presence.
Chapter Two (#ulink_5fd60b61-3d36-5e67-b175-b86c87b78e9f)
Her Ladyship slept through two scheduled stops to take on water and one abrupt, unscheduled stop when a herd of southbound buffalo took a full five minutes to cross the Union Pacific tracks. She slept with the faith and innocence of a child, even during the commotion when all the passengers shifted from window to window to watch the passing herd. All the passengers except Marcus—former knight errant—whose sole function at the moment seemed to be in serving Her Ladyship as a pillow.
He didn’t mind so much. God, she was pretty. Not that he put a woman’s looks above other qualities. He didn’t. Sarabeth hadn’t been a beauty, by any means, but Marcus had loved her sweet disposition and her sprightly wit and—most of all—her ability to turn any grief or sadness into sunshine. This woman appeared to have the disposition of a shecat, but she was still a pure pleasure to look at. Marcus liked the warmth of her as she leaned against his shoulder, the feel of her soft hair just brushing his cheek and the occasional riffle of her breath on his jaw. He didn’t mind so much being used as a pillow.
What he minded, though, was that when the train finally stopped in Julesburg, Her Ladyship awoke all smiling and refreshed, while he felt like and most probably looked like a rumpled bed. A bed that suddenly remembered that its headboard ached like hell.
She sat up and stretched like a dainty cat, then smiled and exclaimed with innocent surprise, “Oh, I must’ve dozed off.”
“For a minute or two,” Marcus said, rolling his neck and his left shoulder to loosen the kinks and get the circulation going again.
She leaned across him then to look out the window, apparently unaware that her elbow was digging into his thigh or that her breast was snug against his upper arm.
“This must be Julesburg,” she said, gazing this way and that out the window. “What an interestinglooking little town.”
Julesburg? It was a patched-together, put-upovernight railroad town, half clapboard and half canvas, all of it baking in the afternoon sun. Marcus might have called it peculiar at best or downright ugly at worst, but certainly not interesting.
“I guess that depends on where you’re from,” he murmured.
“Do you suppose there’s a dry goods store here?” she asked, still squinting out the window.
“Probably. Yeah. Sure. I suspect there’d be a mercantile wedged in somewhere between all those saloons and dance halls.”
“Good.” She levered off his leg and gave her curls a little toss. “I need to purchase a few items. Tell the conductor I’ll be back shortly, will you? Oh, never mind. I see him up there. I’ll tell him myself.”
“This is a meal stop,” Marcus said. That meant the passengers were going to be given maybe twenty or thirty minutes to wolf down a tough antelope steak and some soggy griddle cakes before the train pulled out again. There was barely enough time to eat, much less locate a privy or do any shopping.
She smiled at him sunnily. She spoke with cheerful dismissiveness. “Yes. Well, enjoy your meal.” Then she made her way along the aisle, gave the same smile to the conductor and told him to hold the train for her.
Hold the goddamn train for her! Marcus could hardly believe his ears. And the poor, slack-jawed conductor was still scratching his head, Marcus noticed, when the duchess descended from the car and whisked purposefully past the depot and the dining hall on her way into town.
When she traveled west the first time, to join Angus McCray in Denver a mere two weeks ago, it had been in a private railroad car that her fiancé had procured for her trip. The accommodations had been luxurious, quite what she’d always been accustomed to, but Amanda hadn’t seen much of the country through the heavily draped windows of that train. Once again, she had found herself walled off from the real world. It was a shame, really. There was so much to see. Even this half-built town of Julesburg struck her as interesting.
For all her wealth, she thought, she’d actually experienced very little—next to nothing, really—in the twenty-one years she’d lived under her grandmother’s stern gaze and firm thumb. Running away to marry Angus was the only way Amanda knew to escape that silk imprisonment and to remedy her inexperience. And she was still bound and determined to do it. In fact, she was more determined than ever, now that she realized how set Honoria Grenville was on keeping her in her gilded little cage and the lengths to which her grandmother would go to achieve her ends.
“Over my dead body, Grandmother,” Amanda muttered as she walked into the little mercantile on Julesburg’s only street. She called a cheerful goodafternoon to the young female clerk behind the counter, but the girl didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic when she merely nodded back.
It was probably her appearance, Amanda thought as she caught a glimpse of herself in a cracked mirror hanging from a nail near the door. Good heavens! Her hair was frightful, and nearly two shades darker than normal from all the dust and cinders on the train. She peered closer into the glass and wiped a smudge from her chin with a dirty kid glove.
It had been two—no, three—days now since she had a proper bath. By the time she got to Denver, Angus would probably find her, well…pungent, to say the very least.
She lifted a vaguely familiar bottle from a nearby shelf and squinted to read the small print on the label. What she had assumed was lavender toilet water turned out to be a tonic for assorted female complaints, but since being dirty and smelling bad was not among them, she put the bottle back on the shelf, easily returning it to the exact spot, because there was a perfect, dustless circle to mark the place. Amanda frowned and found herself wondering all of a sudden what in the world the stranger on the train had thought of his sooty traveling companion or how he’d even been able to sit next to her, when she must reek to high heaven.
Not that it made any difference, but a little part of her wished she looked a bit more appealing to the handsome man with the deep blue, nearly indigo eyes. She told herself she was being vain and silly, and that if she thought dreamily of anyone’s eyes at all, it ought to be those of her fiancé. Angus had lovely eyes. They were… What the devil were they? Brown? Green? A muddled shade somewhere in between?
“I was looking for some eau de cologne, miss,” she called out to the salesgirl, who was now leaning both elbows on the counter and gazing out the window instead of being of any assistance. It was far from the behavior Amanda was accustomed to from fawning clerks in fashionable shops in New York, who always seemed to know what she wanted before she herself did, obsequious people who did her grandmother’s bidding. She’d always detested all that flattery and fuss, but right now she had to admit she wouldn’t mind having a bit of it, if it meant finding what she wanted.
“I can’t seem to locate any perfumes or eaux de cologne on these shelves,” she said, trying to sound a little less helpless than she felt, attempting not to sneeze at the dust she had disturbed in her search.
“Oh de what?”
“Eau de cologne,” Amanda repeated, but when she received only a blank look in return, she added, “Toilet water. Any fragrance will do.”
The girl, whose face was as pale and as flat as the moon, continued to stare at Amanda. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Amanda shook her head, attempting to reassure herself that the question was simply a friendly one, born of natural curiosity rather than dark suspicion. After all, not everyone in Nebraska would have seen those posters, and half the people who might have seen them probably couldn’t read. She hoped.
“So where’re you from?” the girl asked.
“Back east,” Amanda answered nonchalantly as she continued to peruse the shelves.
“Whereabouts?”
“Such curiosity.” Amanda laughed nervously now, picking up another bottle from the shelf. “Just east,” she said, instead of the more truthful I’m that runaway heiress from New York you’ve certainly read about. The one with five thousand dollars on her head. The one who hasn’t washed her hair or had a bath in days and whom you can probably smell all the way across the store. That one.
“We don’t have any,” the girl said.
“Pardon me?”
“I said we don’t have any of that oh de stuff they sell in the East. There’s a bottle of vanilla extract over there by the pickles.” She pointed. “Smells ever so good when you dab it on. Will that do you?”
Breathing a little sigh of relief, Amanda walked to the pickle barrel and picked up the small brown bottle of vanilla. Her hand was shaking. “This will do nicely,” she said, trying to hide the tremors from the salesgirl as she fumbled in her handbag, found a gold coin and handed it over the counter.
Just as the girl dropped the coin in a metal cash box, the blast of a whistle shook the dry goods store and rattled the glass in the windows, as well as all the bottles on the shelves.
“Train’s leaving,” the girl said casually while counting out Amanda’s change. “How long you staying in town?”
“What? Oh, no. I’m not staying,” Amanda replied, with some amazement, and a touch of amusement that she hoped wouldn’t hurt the clerk’s feelings. It was one thing to do a bit of necessary shopping in a town like this, but the very idea that she would actually stay here was, well…absurd.
The girl, however, didn’t seem to think it was so absurd. She was smiling now, angling her head toward a window in the back of the store. “Oh, yes, you are staying,” she said, just as the big black Union Pacific locomotive steamed past.
The smile on the clerk’s flat face widened, then twisted into what Amanda might almost have called a sneer when the girl added, “You need to buy anything else—toothbrush, toothpaste, a cake of soapto see you through till the next train comes?”
Outside the depot, Marcus leaned against a roof post and scraped a match on the sole of his boot. He’d declined the antelope steak and the griddle cakes, but accepted a cigar from a fellow passenger as they both stood contemplating the Wanted posters tacked up just inside the dining hall. Marcus had pointedly avoided looking at the posters in North Platte, hoping to forget for a while that he was a bounty hunter who’d just lost his last bounty to a hangman’s noose..
“Take a look at that one,” the cigar-smoking fellow had said, pointing to a fresh sheet of paper near the bottom of the array of torn and flyspecked notices. “Now that would be some catch, wouldn’t it?”
Marcus had been reading the Wanted poster for a bank robber named Ed Caragher, alias Chick McGee, alias Robert LePage, and wondering how the culprit kept his monickers straight when his gaze drifted to where the man was pointing. Reward, it said, in bold black print, and just beneath that Runaway Heiress. Of course, as soon as Marcus read the description—blond hair, green eyes, small stature, delicate build—he knew exactly who his damsel in distress was. Some catch, indeed.
He’d done his damnedest then to hide the predatory smile tugging at his mouth. “She’s a hundred miles from here, if she cut loose from the old lady three days ago,” he told the man beside him. “Probably already in Denver by now, if that’s where she was headed.”
The man had sighed, and Marcus had echoed it. A five-thousand-dollar sigh.
“I sure could’ve used that reward the old Grenville woman’s offering.” The man had lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Oh, well. I expect you’re right about that girl not being anywhere near here. Enjoy that cigar. Nice talking to you.” He’d shrugged again and began to walk away.
“Thanks. You too. And you know what they say,” Marcus had called after him. “Easy come. Easy go.”
They also said something about a bird in the hand, Marcus thought as he glanced around to make sure no one was watching when he surreptitiously took the poster from the wall, folded it and stashed it in his pocket.
That explained the duchess’s imperious behavior, especially her blithe request that the conductor hold the train. Amanda Grenville, described in the poster as the sole heiress to the Grenville Ironworks, was used to riding in private railroad cars that did indeed come or go at her command. Marcus was sure it hadn’t even occurred to her that the train wouldn’t wait. After all, time and tide and probably even the Almighty tended to stand still for the obscenely rich.
But little Miss Amanda Grenville was way out of her element now, no longer in that ethereal place where beautiful, spoiled goddesses snapped their dainty fingers to halt trains. Little Amanda was without a clue as to how the real world worked. She needed help even more than she knew. Poor little, rich little Amanda.
Marcus smiled. A slow, smooth, self-congratulatory smile. Poor little Amanda was in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and he—Marcus Quicksilver, hero, helper, honest, brave and true—was more than ready to fill that particular bill.
There had been a stampede of diners when the conductor called, “All aboard,” but there had been no one rushing from the opposite direction of the town, no breathless heiress hurrying to catch the train, so Marcus had hastily retrieved the hatbox and his saddlebags, and then he had led Sarah B. from her stall in the baggage car. The mare had been so happy to leave the train that she was as docile as a kitten, and she stood at a nearby hitching rail now, placidly whisking her tail at flies.
Marcus felt almost placid himself as he leaned against the post and lit his cigar. Five thousand dollars! The biggest bounty he’d ever brought in had been six years ago, when he captured Herman Culley, a murderer with two thousand dollars on his head. The local authorities in Texas had wanted him dead or alive, but when Marcus obliged them—not to mention spared them the time and expense of a trial—by bringing Culley in draped over his saddle, the politicos had reneged on the two thousand and only paid him fifteen hundred.
Five thousand dollars. There’d be no reneging with old lady Grenville, Marcus was certain. Five thousand was a drop in the bucket to someone like her. And to him? To him it was perhaps the future that he’d spent the past decade avoiding. Five thousand could buy a lot of land. Good land. By God, maybe it was time.
Marcus blew a stream of cigar smoke off to his left and picked a fleck of tobacco from his lower lip. He was intensely aware of the folded poster in his pocket. It already felt like folded greenbacks, and he wondered if the Grenville woman would come across with cash or a check. Of course, he hadn’t done anything to earn it yet, he reminded himself. Fantasizing about the reward was one thing. Bringing Miss Amanda Grenville in was something else entirely.
He was glad now that she’d gotten off the train. That saved him forcing the decision upon her. The fewer people who saw her, the better, because it was as sure as sunrise that every manhunter west of the Mississippi had already dropped whatever he was doing and was hot on little Amanda’s trail. It was also likely that every amateur with a five-thousand-dollar dream was searching for her, too.
For a minute, Marcus seriously considered tying her up and nailing her in a crate neatly addressed to Granny Grenville. That would not only garner him the reward, but would also put an end to hatboxes, snagged buttons, sharp elbows and all the other irritations the lady just naturally provoked. But it would also mean the end of those glorious green eyes and that fetching little mouth and…
Well, hell. It just wouldn’t be sporting, Marcus told himself. Half the pleasure of being a bounty hunter was the chase, in his estimation. Most of the pleasure, if he was to be brutally honest. The money had never meant all that much to him.
What was even better, he thought now, as he watched little Miss Amanda Grenville come flying down the street in his direction, was having his quarry run right into his arms. Into his waiting, helpful arms. Marcus took a last pull from his cigar, then dropped it and ground it under his heel.
“The train left!” She skidded to a halt beside him, and hardly had enough breath to get the words out. Her pretty face was flushed and damp, but those green eyes were dry and hot.
“Right on time, too.” Marcus bit down on a grin as he shifted off the post and gestured toward the fabric-covered parcel not too distant from his feet. “There’s your hatbox, Duchess. Don’t bother to thank me.”
If she heard him, she didn’t react. Nor did she express a tad of gratitude. Not that Marcus expected a goddess to be grateful to a mortal. Her gaze moved frantically around the platform. She waved her hands wildly. “Where’s my valise?”
He shrugged.
“I need my valise!” she wailed, not so much to him as to the Fates in general. “All my clothes are in my valise. And my hairbrush, too. And…and…” Her foot shot out and sent the hatbox flying. “All my money’s in my suitcase, dammit. What am I supposed to do now?”
Then she paced back and forth for a minute like a tiny tornado on the platform, before she plopped down in a heap of skirts and started chewing on a nail, muttering to herself as if Marcus weren’t there.
He stood silently, watching the way the afternoon sun warmed her hair, wondering what it would look like unpinned and spilling over her shoulders like a yellow shawl, imagining the delicacy of those shoulders, the perfect paleness of the skin, the…
“Did you miss the train, too?”
Her plaintive question brought him out of his reverie and put an end to his foolish, misdirected thoughts. “Yep,” he said. “Looks like we’re in the same boat, so to speak.”
She looked up at him, shading her glorious green eyes against the sun, pondering him with her brow furrowed and the tip of her pink tongue passing over her lower lip. No doubt she was wondering if she could trust him. For a minute she reminded Marcus of a lost little girl, rather than a pampered and spoiled runaway heiress. His heart gave an extra and very peculiar thump, and he suddenly felt like fighting a grizzly bear on her behalf, or stopping a train by throwing his body across the tracks. Doing all those foolish and heroic things he would have done so gladly for Sarabeth all those years ago.
“Help me,” she said. “I’ll pay you.”
Pay him? Marcus’s heart gave a tiny pop, like a soap bubble. Pay him!
“Help me catch up with the train,” she said. “Then, when I retrieve my luggage, I’ll reward you handsomely.”
He shouldn’t be so put out, he told himself. Or so confoundedly disappointed by her offer. After all, money and handsome rewards were what this was all about, weren’t they? He wanted to be paid—and paid well, too, dammit—didn’t he?
“You might try a simple thank-you,” he growled.
“Then you will help me?” She scuttled up from the platform and looked up into his face eagerly, holding her breath while she awaited his reply.
Marcus made her wait, just because he felt cussed and mean and bruised, even though he had every intention of helping her, of sticking to little Miss Amanda Grenville like glue from here on out.
“Say please.”
Those big green eyes blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said say please. You know, that little word that often accompanies requests.” He arched an eyebrow. “Surely you’ve heard it before, even if you haven’t used it yourself, brat.”
Her mouth formed an astonished and perfect little O then, and her eyes flashed.
“Say it,” he coaxed.
When her mouth finally closed, her teeth were clenched so hard she could barely get the word out. “Pi-please.”
“That’s better.” Marcus grinned and stepped closer to her. Just then the breeze shifted, blowing up dust and cinders from the track, along with a powerful fragrance that seemed to emanate from Miss Amanda Grenville herself. He sniffed, baffled for a moment. The rich women he’d known—a few over the years, and far less rich than Amanda—had smelled like exotic flowers, jasmine and tuberose and lily of the valley, or like musky she-cats in hot jungles. But this woman suddenly smelled like… like…
Still baffled, he sniffed again, then took a half step back, eying her suspiciously. “What the hell is that?”
“What is what?”
“That smell. That perfume you’re wearing.”
Her chin lifted imperiously. “It’s vanilla, if you must know. I think it’s rather nice. Fresh. And…and wholesome.”
“Wholesome, huh? You smell like a damn cake.”
“I’d suggest that you cease breathing, sir, but since I’m in need of your assistance…”
Marcus shook his head. He’d have to stay downwind of her, that was for sure. Or see that she got a bath. “All right. You wait here while I wire ahead to the next station and have them pull your luggage off the train.” He started toward the depot door. “Wait a minute. I’ll need to know what it looks like, this valise of yours. Any identification on it?”
“It’s a brown alligator satchel with double handles and the initials A.G. in gold on one side.”
“A.G.?”
She blinked, flummoxed for a second by her admission, before the runaway heiress recovered her wits and called out, “Yes. A.G. A as in Alice and G as in…as in Green. Alice Green.”
“Right.” Well, she was fairly quick on her feet, he thought. He would’ve preferred a slower-witted bounty. “You’re sure about that?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped.
Marcus touched the brim of his hat, giving her an encouraging little salute from the door. Little Alice Green would probably need it, since she wasn’t going to be seeing that monogrammed suitcase again in the foreseeable future. Nor would she be traveling in the style to which she was accustomed. Nor would she be smelling like a rich, rich rose.
Inside the depot, he walked right past the telegrapher to the counter, where he used most of his remaining cash to buy two tickets on the next westbound stage.
Chapter Three (#ulink_115ba612-ab3e-5b1c-be7c-881699b35019)
The crowded stagecoach was another new experience for Amanda. She thought she rather liked it. Well, except for the stifling heat and the cramped quarters and more dust than she’d ever dreamed existed, all of which combined to intensify the now cloying scent of vanilla that she had tried so hard to rub off at the depot after being compared to bakery goods.
She and Marcus—he’d introduced himself at last, saying, “Well, Miss Alice Green, I go by Marcus Quicksilver"—had been the last ones to board the stage, and as a consequence they hadn’t been able to sit together, which irritated Amanda at first, but now was pleasing her enormously, because it allowed her to look long and hard at the handsome man who had offered her his assistance, albeit grudgingly. Well, she could hardly expect eastern gallantry from such a rugged-looking, gunbeltwearing, unshaven westerner, she reminded herself.
The minute they settled into their opposite seats, Marcus had tipped his hat down and, to all appearances, fallen fast asleep. Amanda perused what she could see of his face—the dark whiskers shadowing his cheeks and jaw, the hard curve of his mouth, which hardly slackened in sleep, the sculpted tip of his nose. Her gaze kept drifting lower, to the place where the button was missing on his chambray shirt, where a hint of soft, dark hair showed through the open placket between the edges of his leather vest.
Each time she peeked, a little curl of longing unfurled in the pit of her stomach. That, too, was a sensation she’d never felt before, but then, she’d never seen a man’s bare chest before, either. She wondered if Angus was similarly furry, and rather hoped so. Not that it mattered. Not one whit. Only…
“Sorry if I’m crowding you, honey. It’s these wide shoulders of mine, you know. They don’t make coaches for fellas built like me.”
Amanda smiled weakly at the man sitting to her right. Sitting on her right was really a much better description, considering that the large man had a good portion of her skirt beneath him. She edged a bit closer to the window on her left, and could have sworn the man followed her over, crunching additional yardage of her skirt beneath him as he moved.
“I go by train ordinarily,” he said—as if she had inquired. “More room for my samples and such. I’m a salesman, you know. Ladies’ undergarments.” A wet laugh burbled up in his throat. “Unmentionables, you know.”
Amanda glanced sideways at her seatmate, whose breath smelled of peppermint and onions, an altogether unpleasant mixture, particularly when combined with her own vanilla scent. A pair of muttonchop whiskers flourished on the man’s cheeks. His plaid suit and paisley vest could have clothed a small family, with enough fabric left over to drape and swag an end table. She offered the coolest of smiles, along with a polite little hum, to acknowledge that she’d heard him and to discourage any further mention of unmentionables.
“Yeah,” he said, obviously indifferent to her chilly response. “Been in this business going on five years now. The name’s Linus Dobson.” He stuck out a huge, hammy hand. “Glad to make your acquaintance.” Then he winked as he added in a decidedly smarmy tone, “And may I say you smell ever so good, honey?”
Unwilling to be rude, especially in such close quarters, Amanda clasped his hand. It was flabby and damp as suet. “How do you do?”
He smiled broadly. “I do all right, if I do say so myself. So. If you don’t mind my asking, what’s a pretty girl like yourself doing traveling all alone? Visiting relatives, are you?”
“Well, no. Actually, I’m…” Extracting her hand from his with a determined tug, Amanda cast about in her brain, desperate for a reply. What was she doing traveling alone, other than running away? His guess, she concluded, was as good as any she might invent for herself, so she nodded and said, “Yes, I am visiting relatives, as a matter of fact. A sister and brother-in-law and five nieces and nephews. In… um… Wyoming.”
“Pretty country, Wyoming. I’ve been there quite a bit myself. Why, given the opportunity, I bet I could show you some sights that’d be like none you’d ever seen before.” He wedged his elbow into her rib cage then, adding, “Snap your garters, for sure, little lady.”
“My, my.” It would have been nice to have a book in which to bury her nose, Amanda thought, but since she didn’t, and since there was no entertainment other than staring at Marcus Quicksilver’s chest, she decided to indulge her hammy companion. She’d had few opportunities to converse with members of the opposite sex, much less to twit one of them. In her estimation, Linus Dobson could do with a bit of twitting.
She smiled and batted her eyes at him. “My goodness. Snap my garters, would they?”
“Yes, indeedy. Why, honey, you might think you’ve seen some natural wonders back east, but I’m here to tell you—”
He didn’t get a chance to tell her anything right then, because the stage lurched to a squealing, bone-rattling standstill.
“Stretch stop!” the driver shouted. “Everybody out who’s getting out. Five minutes you got, and not one second more.”
“Well, I’m for that,” the big salesman said as he reached across Amanda’s lap to open the door. “Pardon me, honey.” He stepped on her skirt and both of her feet before he squeezed himself out of the coach, then he turned and held out his meaty hands. “Let’s go, honey. Here. Let me help you.”
“Everybody out!” the driver called again, more insistently this time. Gracious, Amanda would have thought the vehicle was on fire, the way the man was yelling.
By now the other passengers had all obediently exited the coach through the opposite door. All but one. Marcus Quicksilver was still napping under the brim of his hat, and he didn’t even flinch when the driver banged on the sidewalls and bellowed another warning. “Four minutes now. Everybody out. Time’s a-wasting, and we ain’t stopping again till Sidney.”
Amanda sighed, deciding if she didn’t exit the coach immediately, the driver might be tempted to pull her out by the scruff of her neck. She levered herself up toward the open door, and before she could say, “No, thank you. I can manage on my own,” to the salesman, he had already clasped his big hands around her rib cage, with his sausagelike thumbs suspiciously close to her breasts.
“There you go, little lady.” He set her down on the ground, but didn’t let her go until he’d given her a lusty ten-fingered squeeze. “Well, if you’ll pardon me now, I believe I’ll just walk a ways and give the old limbs a good stretching.”
“Yes. Of course.” Good riddance. Amanda gave her bodice a tug and smoothed her hands across her wrinkled skirt. What a sight she must be, looking rather like a waffle now, while smelling like a cake.
“Don’t waste your time,” came a deep voice from behind her. “That skirt’s going to look a whole lot worse before it looks any better.”
She whirled around to see Marcus Quicksilver leaning against the side of the coach, eyeing her rather peculiarly before he bent and reached to pluck a weed from the side of the road.
“On the other hand, Miss Alice Green,” he drawled, “you could always have your fat friend sit on your skirt and get yourself a real good pressing.”
Marcus stuck the blade of grass between his teeth, irritated with himself because he was irritated with her. How Amanda Grenville carried on with fellow passengers—men in particular—shouldn’t have mattered to him one bit, as long as she didn’t give away her identity. How she cozied up to a seatmate or what she said shouldn’t have bothered Marcus. But it did. It irked him no end that she’d allow some peddler—some itinerant buffoon like that Dobson— to make advances. Didn’t she realize there would be consequences to her flirtatious behavior? Didn’t she care?
He kicked a boot into a wheel rim. Damnation. How did little Miss Amanda imagine she’d ever make it to Denver without getting caught if she took up with and made sport of every Tom, Dick, Harry and Linus along the way?
“I see your nap didn’t do anything to improve your disposition, Mr. Quicksilver,” she said, tilting her pointed little chin up into his face.
“Nope. My mood’s about as wrinkled as your skirt.” Marcus bit down harder on the weed. His head was starting to ache again, and he could feel a vein throbbing in his temple, threatening to burst. Not only was Amanda Grenville a spoiled brat, but now, on top of that, she was proving to be a careless and outrageous flirt. Everything about the little blonde had begun to nettle Marcus, and yet he found her impossible to ignore.
She dismissed him now, quite thoroughly and efficiently, the way a goddess would dismiss a mortal, with a brusque little cluck of her tongue. “I’ll be so glad to get my luggage when we arrive in Sidney,” she said, turning her full attention back to various pleats and folds of fabric.
“Uh-huh,” he answered noncommittally, thinking she did look a bit more bedraggled now than she had earlier today, when he first saw her skulking outside the depot in North Platte. Traveling, especially by stagecoach, tended to wear people down. Women in particular. This woman, who wasn’t used to prairie heat or road dust or old jolting coaches. She’d probably never gone anywhere without at least one maid to see to her every need and comfort.
And yet here she was with no one to take care of her. She’d run away from all that, hadn’t she? Or so the Wanted poster claimed. Marcus wondered why. Then he scowled and wondered why he wondered. What difference did it make why she’d abandoned a life of great wealth and perpetual ease? Once Marcus delivered her to her grandmother and collected his well-deserved five-thousand-dollar reward, he’d never see Amanda Grenville again, much less think of her.
He plucked the weed from his mouth, tossed it to the ground and went to see about Sarah B., who was tethered, and not too happily, either, to the back of the coach.
“Two minutes, folks,” the driver called down from his lofty perch, where he was all but invisible behind a blue cloud of cigarette smoke. “If we push it, we’ll be getting into Sidney just about dark.”
While Marcus readjusted Sarah B.’s bridle and reins, he spoke to the mare softly, apologizing to her for making her run behind a dust-making stage, promising her a warm stall and a fat bag of oats that night.
“Mmm… A fat bag of oats,” sounded a wistful voice close by. “I’m so hungry even that sounds delicious.”
Marcus gave a last yank to the knot in the reins, then braced his forearms on the mare’s neck. Bedraggled or not, Miss Amanda Grenville looked beautiful in the mellow light of late afternoon.
“When did you eat last?” he asked her, then watched while her smooth brow furrowed and her eyes turned a deeper, thoughtful green as she pondered his question.
“Yesterday. No. The day before that.” She gave a mournful little laugh. “To tell you the truth, Quicksilver, I’m not sure. But I know I must be famished if a bag of oats sounds appealing.”
“Here.” Marcus unbuckled his saddlebag and withdrew a piece of jerked beef. “This is a little better than oats.”
She took the mahogany-colored dried meat and stared at it a moment, turning it this way and that, before she looked back at Marcus. “What is this? Leather?”
“Edible leather. It’s beef jerky. Go ahead. Try it, brat. If it doesn’t fill you up, at least it’ll keep your mouth occupied for a while.”
She studied it some more, bending it, bringing it to her nose and sniffing it. Anyone would have thought he was trying to poison her, Marcus thought disgustedly. Ten to one she’d hand it back to him and refuse to even try it. He watched in silence, then, as her pretty mouth twitched and her front teeth tested the dessicated meat. She tugged at it like a terrier then, to no avail.
Marcus retrieved a second piece of jerky from his saddlebag. “Not that way,” he said. “Like this.” He clenched the tough morsel in his back teeth and ripped off a good-size portion, which he proceeded to chew.
“Oh.” She eyed the dried beef as if it were about to bite her back before she sank her molars into it and nearly growled as she sheared off a piece. Then she chewed. And chewed some more. Soon she was staring off into the distance, grinding her teeth as if that had become her lifelong occupation.
Marcus had never seen anyone quite so dogged about food. Or so unsuccessful. “Spit it out,” he told her.
“Mpht,” she answered.
He motioned toward a nearby clump of weeds. “Go on and spit it out before you wear down your damn teeth.”
She spat as if she’d never done that before, either, and walked back dabbing a hankie to her lips. “That was terrible,” she exclaimed. “I believe I’d prefer eating a roof shingle.”
“I expect a person has to develop a taste for jerked beef,” he said, more amused than apologetic. He wasn’t all that fond of jerked beef himself.
“Well, I’d much rather redevelop my taste for rare roast beef or oysters. Now those a person doesn’t even have to chew.” Her eyes lit up, and she smiled brightly. “Oh, do you suppose there will be a decent restaurant in Sidney?”
“Probably. Do you suppose you can afford to eat in it, brat?”
“Stop calling me that,” she snapped. “And yes, of course I can afford it, once I get my suitcase back. I might even consider treating you to supper, Quicksilver. What do you think of that?”
She spun around and walked away, treating Marcus to a view of her haughty backside. He shook his head. Actually, he thought they’d be lucky to eat a boiled egg on a slice of moldy bread this evening, but there was no point in telling her right now, then having to watch her sit and sulk for the next few hours till they arrived in Sidney. The duchess would find out soon enough that her suitcase was still riding the rails west, along with all the money in it.
As was customary on stagecoaches, all the passengers returned to their previous seats when the driver shouted that their stretch stop was over and that anybody who wasn’t back inside the vehicle in half a minute would be left behind. “No exceptions, ladies.”
Linus Dobson had lumbered back from his stroll just in time to offer Amanda a boost up into the coach, and then the burly oaf had trampled her toes once more before reclaiming his seat beside her. Marcus Quicksilver sat directly opposite from her again, and even though it was now somewhat dim inside the vehicle, he retreated once more beneath his hat brim.
Despite the gathering dark, however, Amanda still had a fairly good view of his half-open shirt, with its exceedingly distracting fur, which, at present, she found much more appealing than his personality. The next time he called her a brat, she decided, she’d show him just how contrary she could be, by launching her foot into his shinbone.
“Well, well. Here we are again,” Linus Dobson said, nudging her with an elbow while sending a moist breeze of peppermint and onions in her direction. “Say, I don’t believe I caught your name, honey.”
Here we are again, Amanda thought morosely. The gnawing sensation in her stomach had gotten worse after her attempt to chew the dessicated beef, and it didn’t help one bit when the hunger pangs were coupled with those peculiar flickers every time her eyes drifted below Marcus’s collarbone.
She was missing her grandmother, too, all of a sudden, which struck her as odd, when she was doing her best to escape the old woman’s clutches. But she’d lived with Honoria Grenville nearly all her life, ever since her parents—Joshua Grenville and his young wife—perished in a steamboat explosion while vacationing on the Rhine. Her grandmother had really been more like a mother to her for twenty years. She was a stubborn, overbearing mother, however, and one who refused to let Amanda make decisions for herself in even the smallest of matters.
But she had decided, hadn’t she? When she wound up quite by accident and quite alone in a carriage with the dashing Angus McCray, and when he proposed marriage on the spot, Amanda had accepted. Just like that. Her decision, she knew, had less to do with love than with independence, but her fiancé was a worldy and very handsome man, and Amanda was certain she would come to love him in time. Anyway, how could she love Angus? Good gracious, she barely knew him.
In all honesty, she probably knew her portly seatmate as well as she knew her fiancé. The salesman was poking his elbow in her ribs again.
“I said I didn’t quite catch your name, little lady,” he repeated.
She really ought to ignore him, she thought. He was being outrageously forward, even more so than before, and Amanda would have been perfectly justified in pretending to have suddenly gone deaf to his overtures. But she was eager to be distracted from the heat and dust in the coach, not to mention her growling stomach and Marcus Quicksilver’s intriguing chest. So she offered Linus Dobson a tiny, tempting smile.
“My name?” She blinked innocently. “Why don’t you try to guess?”
A small chuff of surprise caught in the peddler’s throat, and then an oily grin spread across his lips. “Oh, I see. You’re one of those that likes to play games, honey. All right. Let me get a real good look at you.” He poked his straw hat higher on his brow, then angled his head and narrowed his eyes, studying her. “You don’t strike me as a Jane or a Ruth. Not a Mary, either. Am I right?”
Amanda fashioned a smile that told him he was not only right, but amazingly clever to boot.
The salesman’s gaze roved from her face to her bodice, paused there for a long leer, then came back to her face. “You’re a tiny little female. Real delicate. Mind you, I can tell despite your ruffles and pleats, being in the business I’m in. Ladies’ underclothes, remember? But petite as you are, I’d be inclined to guess you’ve got a longish name.” He scratched one muttonchop thoughtfully. “Hmm… Elizabeth, maybe?”
“No.”
“Eleanor?”
Amanda shook her head.
“I’m getting warm, though. Right?”
Warm? Yes, Amanda thought the man was getting quite warm, actually. His beefy face was flushed a bright pink now, and several beads of sweat were glistening above his upper lip. Suddenly she didn’t think that playing a guessing game with this man had been such a good idea. First of all, he was coming frightfully close to her true name. And second— worse—Linus Dobson seemed to be playing an altogether different game now as he shifted his bulk in the seat and thrust a huge arm around Amanda’s shoulders, pulling her closer, very nearly crushing her against him while attempting to suffocate her with the scent of peppermint and onions.
“Whatever your name is, honey, you’re the prettiest little thing I’ve seen in weeks. What do you say when we get to Sidney, the two of us… well…” He bent his head and whispered, his hot, foul breath and indecent proposal both almost scorching Amanda’s ear.
She felt her jaw dropping and her mouth framing an indignant but speechless O. She couldn’t utter so much as a squeak, but as it turned out, she didn’t have to, because just then a low, lethal voice cut through the gathering dark inside the coach.
“How ‘bout changing seats with me, pal? I’d like to sit next to my wife.”
Linus Dobson moved fairly fast for a man of his enormous bulk. First he wrenched his arm from around Amanda and then he shoved up from the seat, hovering there all scrunched up in his huge plaid suit while Marcus—with catlike grace and speed—slid across the narrow aisle and into the space beside Amanda.
“I…I didn’t know,” the salesman babbled, cramming his hips and shoulders into Marcus’s vacated seat. “How could I have known? She…she didn’t say anything.”
“I’m saying it.” Marcus’s voice was as sharp and as cold as the blade of a knife, and then, as if to make his point, he reached out and scooped up Amanda’s hand. His grip was hard and tense at first, almost hurtful, but it slackened immediately to a gentle possession.
“I’m…I’m sorry, ma’am,” Linus Dobson said. “I’m truly sorry.”
There was a tremor in his voice, and the poor wretch looked absolutely terrified, as if he wished he could dig his shoulders so far into the horsehair seat that he’d simply disappear. Amanda stole a glance to her right, toward the man who’d struck such abject fear into the peddler and turned him instantly from boisterous rogue to quivering wreck. Even in the coach’s dim interior, she could see that Marcus Quicksilver’s face seemed dark and hard as cast iron. His mouth bore a harsh, even cruel curve, and his blue eyes had deepened to a fearful midnight hue. Amanda found herself thinking that she was enormously relieved that this thundercloud in human form wasn’t angry with her.
But then it occurred to her suddenly that it was she who had every reason to be angry with him. How dare he interrupt her conversation and interject himself into her affairs! The nerve of the man! The absolute gall! Did he think she couldn’t look out for herself when an idiot like Linus Dobson made advances? Did he consider her a helpless dolt? On top of all that, the man had had the sheer, unmitigated audacity to proclaim himself her husband! Her husband, of all things!
“I have a bone to pick with you, Mr. Quicksilver,” she hissed.
“Not now, Mrs. Quicksilver,” he growled.
Deep in his corner across the way, Linus Dobson gasped, as if someone had just thumped him soundly between the shoulder blades. He stared stupidly across the aisle for a second, then inserted a finger beneath his collar, as if trying to obtain enough air to speak. “Quick—Quicksilver, did you say?”
“That’s right,” Amanda snapped.
The salesman made a little strangling noise now in the back of his throat. “That wouldn’t be the Quicksilver out of Denver, would it? Marcus Quicksilver? The bounty hunter?”
“The—?” Before she could get the next word out, Marcus’s grip tightened on her hand, pressing her fingers together painfully.
When he spoke, his voice dropped to a menacing register. “I think we’ve all done about enough jabbering for a while. Let’s just sit real quiet now and enjoy the rest of our ride, shall we?”
It wasn’t a question, but rather a cold command that Linus Dobson immediately obeyed, snapping his gaze to the window, apparently discovering a sudden fascination with the dark landscape outside the coach. Amanda, on the other hand, wasn’t about to be stifled quite so easily.
“Are you?” she asked in a voice intended for Marcus alone. “Are you what he claimed?” She was hoping—oh, God, how she was praying—the answer would be no. “Tell me, Marcus. Tell me this minute, or I’ll scream. I swear I will.”
“Yes,” he whispered harshly, and his fingers curled more tightly around her hand. “Now be still.”
She was still. Small and still as a mouse in a trap, her fingers in the iron grip of his. Amanda felt as if her heart had been punctured. Hot tears welled up and began to sting her eyes. She’d been caught! All along she’d been caught, and she hadn’t even known it!
Chapter Four (#ulink_086d1ae4-614a-5bb0-8ea4-a71e2dea2faa)
It was dark when they pulled up in front of the torchlit stage office in Sidney.
“End of the line,” the driver yelled. “Everybody out. Don’t forget your hats, gents. Ladies, mind your gloves and parasols.”
Linus Dobson didn’t even say goodbye. After almost exploding from the coach, the salesman snatched up his valise and sample cases the second the driver removed them from the boot, and disappeared into the night. Marcus Quicksilver had let go of Amanda’s hand only long enough to grasp her waist and help her out of the stage. Then he led her around to the rear of the vehicle, where he began to untie his horse.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Miss Grenville, like trying to run away,” he warned her while he drew a leather rein through a round metal hoop.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.” Amanda crossed her arms and chewed on her lower lip. For the past hour in the coach, once the shock of her capture— the insult of it!—had worn off, she’d come to a few conclusions about her predicament. Reluctantly, she’d conceded that she’d been outwitted by the notorious bounty hunter. But he was, after all, a bounty hunter, which meant that money was important to him. And money, right now, was her only weapon.
Amanda glanced at the gun nestled against his hip, the gun that only hours before had thrilled her with its implied danger. But now the sight of it made her shiver imperceptibly, until she decided that he’d never use it on her. The dratted posters hadn’t said Dead or Alive, for heaven’s sake, and any reasonable human being would have to know that Honoria Grenville wanted her granddaughter returned in one piece. One unscathed piece. No. Marcus Quicksilver would never use that lethal-looking weapon on her. Amanda was convinced of that. She, on the other hand, had no qualms whatsoever about using her own weapon on him.
“My grandmother is offering five thousand dollars for my return, Quicksilver,” she said, taking a step or two in his direction, pinning him with her gaze, unafraid of him now, thinking that perhaps he should be afraid of her. “It’s a very generous reward. You already know that, of course. But I’ll be even more generous and give you even more if you don’t take me back to her.”
He didn’t answer, but continued to unfasten the leather straps that bound the horse to the stagecoach. The mare nodded her head agreeably, as if Amanda’s offer had a certain appeal, but the bounty hunter didn’t respond, didn’t shrug or even send so much as a questioning glance in Amanda’s direction.
“Did you hear me, Quicksilver?” she demanded. “I offered—”
Now he snapped his head toward her and growled, “I heard you. Hell, all of Sidney and half of Nebraska probably heard you. Do you want to get to Denver or not, brat?”
Brat again! Amanda fought down the urge to launch her foot into his kneecap or leave the imprint of her hand on his handsome face. “Yes, of course I want to get to Denver, but—”
“Then shut the hell up.” He backed the horse away from the coach, snagged Amanda’s arm just above the elbow and started down the street. “Come on.”
It wasn’t as if she had any choice, she thought, while she trotted along beside him, doing her best to keep her feet from catching in her hem. The town—another combination of clapboard and canvas—was dark, for the most part, except for a saloon here and there where music and yellow lamplight spilled through open windows and doors. The bounty hunter stopped at a hitching rail, where he released his grip on Amanda in order to tether the mare, who whinnied in protest.
Amanda felt like whinnying, too, as she stood nearby, massaging her sore, probably bruised arm. She looked around her for a possible avenue of escape, and her gaze lit on the sign over the building directly behind her.
“The railroad depot,” she exclaimed. Thank God. Now she could claim her bag, change her clothes, brush her hair and put some of the gold coins stashed in a satin side pocket to good use. “I’ll retrieve my valise and pay you a hundred dollars in advance for your services, Quicksilver. Let’s go.”
She snatched up her skirts, whisked through the depot door and assumed it was she who was leading the bounty hunter until her feet suddenly went out from under her and her backside made abrupt contact with the hard wooden seat of a bench.
“Wait here,” he told her. “Keep your head down and your mouth shut. You got that?”
Amanda got it, all right. How could she not, especially when she saw that his eyes had turned that stormy color again and his right hand had come to rest on the butt of his gun? He wouldn’t use it, she reminded herself. He wouldn’t dare. The gesture was merely meant to frighten her, to reinforce the notion that it was he who was in control. For the time being, anyway.
“If you’ll just get my bag for me, perhaps we can discuss this over a nice supper,” she said, as sweetly and as calmly as she could. “My treat.”
“Right.” Marcus gritted his teeth as he strode toward the stationmaster’s window. Maybe he should have wired ahead to have the luggage taken off the train. Even with the telltale initials on the bag, at least there was cash inside. It might have been worth the risk, he thought, but it was too late now.
He glanced back to make sure the runaway heiress was still firmly planted on the bench where he’d left her, then jabbed his finger down on the brass bell on the counter. The stationmaster appeared, looking as if Marcus had just rousted him from a good night’s sleep, then took forever to wipe his spectacles and to fit them on the bridge of his nose before he managed to squint through his little wired window. “Can I help you, mister?”
“How soon’s the next train west?”
The man yawned and blinked and scratched his jaw. “Lemme go see,” he said, just before disappearing from the little cage.
Marcus turned around, angled his elbows back on the counter and surveyed the waiting room of the depot. Her Ladyship was still right where he’d left her, sitting like an aggrieved princess on her wooden throne, glaring an occasional green dagger in his direction. He found himself wishing she wasn’t quite so pretty when he noticed how she drew the gazes of the several male passengers scattered through the room. Two young cowhands bent their heads together and exchanged what appeared to be appreciative whispers. Not far from them, on another bench, a weasel-faced fella in a checkered suit seemed particularly intrigued with Amanda, and kept peeking, all beady-eyed, around the edge of his newspaper to get a better look at her.
In response, Marcus could feel the muscles in his shoulders bunch and all his nerves snap to attention, and he wasn’t sure whether his reaction was male and territorial or whether it was purely business. Business, he told himself. Professional caution. That was all it could be, after all. Amanda Grenville was his bounty. She wasn’t his woman. Thank God.
A sleepy voice came from the wire cage. “Next train’s due within an hour. It’s an immigrant train, though. Next regular one’s tomorrow morning.”
An immigrant train! Marcus could just imagine Her Ladyship’s expression when forced to travel with the teeming masses. He glanced back at her now, then swore when he saw that the weasel in the checkered suit had changed seats and was now attempting to strike up a conversation with Amanda, who didn’t appear at all resistant to his overtures. First Dobson and now this. God dammit, did she intend to talk to everything in pants between Omaha and Denver?
“Be right back,” he told the sleepy stationmaster.
His spurs bit into the soft wood floor as he stalked across the room toward the happy couple. On closer inspection, though, Amanda didn’t appear all that enthused. Her face was a few shades paler than when Marcus had last seen it, and her hands were twisting in her lap. Her eyelashes fluttered up to him, and her eyes looked wildly bright when she spoke.
“There you are, dearest. Did you manage to locate my bag?”
Dearest? For a second, Marcus wasn’t sure just who she was talking to, much less which bag she was talking about. Was she as crazy as she was rich? Then he noticed that the glad little smile on her face was composed less of teeth than of nervous twitching lips.
He glanced at the newspaper that the weasel clutched in his hand and caught a glimpse of a headline—the word Runaway—which gave him a good idea just what the man was up to. No wonder Amanda looked panicky as a deer in the bright beam of a headlamp. But she hadn’t panicked, had she? Much as Marcus hated to do it, he gave her credit for her presence of mind and quick thinking in addressing him the way she had. Now it was his turn to do some fancy brainwork.
Marcus leaned down to brush a kiss across her soft cheek and to whisper, “Don’t worry,” close to her ear. “Sorry, darlin’,” he drawled, straightening up. “That bag’s nowhere around here.” He shrugged helplessly, then grinned at the weasel. “Fine thing for a husband to lose his wife’s suitcase the first night of their honeymoon, huh?”
The man’s beady eyes enlarged. “Honeymoon? The two of you are married?”
“Just.” Marcus smiled with as much husbandly pride as he could muster, then extended his hand. “Glad to meet you. I’m Al Green and this is my brand-new bride, Alice. And who might you be, mister?”
“Doesn’t matter.” The weasel glared sideways at Amanda. “You’re married to this man? Is that right?”
She nodded with enthusiasm, much to the displeasure of the weasel.
“You don’t look all that married to me,” he said accusingly.
“Well, I haven’t had much practice, actually. At marriage, I mean. It’s only been…” Her gaze flitted up to Marcus. “How long, dearest?”
Marcus fished out his watch, snapped it open and pondered the hands. “Three hours and twenty-seven minutes, give or take a few seconds.” He smiled down at her, using the sappiest expression he could manage and trying to sound like a lovestruck groom. “The best three hours and twenty-seven minutes of my life.”
“Aw, hell,” the weasel snarled. “I mistook you for that runaway Grenville girl. I was just reading about her in the Denver paper, then I saw you sitting here and I thought, seeing your blond hair and fine clothes and all, that I had myself that five thousand for sure.”
Amanda laughed. “Oh, you silly man. My goodness, I wish I were that Grenville girl. Then I’d have a servant or two to look after my luggage properly for me. My new husband doesn’t seem to be doing such a good job.”
She batted her eyes up at Marcus now and smiled with all the sweet indulgence of a woman who’d married an incompetent fool, which seemed to thoroughly convince the weasel that they were indeed husband and wife.
“Damn.” The man stood, then slapped his newspaper down on the bench and walked away without it, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
The second he was out of earshot, Amanda started laughing. “That’s the second time you’ve married me in the past few hours, Quicksilver. I honestly believe you’re fond of me.” She batted her eyelashes up at him again. “Either that or you have an incredible lack of imagination when it comes to charades.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Marcus growled.
“Beautifully,” she conceded. Then she gestured toward the station master’s cage. “Now, do retrieve my valise for me, will you?”
“That was no lie, Duchess.” Marcus lowered himself beside her on the bench and snapped open the newspaper the weasel had left behind. “You won’t be seeing that suitcase again. At least not until Denver. Sorry.”
“Sorry! But I thought you wired ahead to direct them to take my suitcase off the train.” Her voice rose a notch, as well as several degrees. “All my money’s in there. What am I supposed to do now?”
Marcus shrugged. He was only half listening as he read the article on the front page of the Denver paper, the majority of which was an interview with Honoria Grenville, who had returned to that city following her granddaughter’s escape in Omaha. The old woman had apparently taken over the top floor of the Excelsior Hotel, whence she was now commanding a battalion of private detectives and newspapermen. That didn’t surprise Marcus a bit—not the fact that Granny Grenville was willing to spend a small fortune to have her own way or the fact that there were scores of eager and greedy characters more than willing to assist her.
What surprised him, though, was the reason for Amanda’s exit in the first place. She’d eloped from New York to Denver with Angus McCray. Eloped! Marcus wasn’t sure what he’d been thinking, or whether he’d given it any thought at all. Women rarely ran away for the pure pleasure of it, and Amanda Grenville certainly hadn’t run away to join any circus. But elopement? With Angus McCray?
It was hardly a secret in Denver that the dapper, slick-haired Scot made his living off women. He’d been down the aisle at least once already, with the widow of a gold miner, but unfortunately for him, it had turned out that the gold miner was really a silver miner on a relatively meager scale, and— worse—for McCray, anyway—the fella wasn’t even dead.
“Angus McCray,” Marcus muttered behind the newspaper. “Angus damn McCray!”
“Oh, is there something about Angus in there?” Amanda grabbed for the paper, but Marcus held it out of reach.
He was boiling, and he wasn’t sure just why, except he hated to see people making stupid mistakes. And of all the mistakes a rich girl could make, this one was probably the stupidest and the worst. “You’re figuring to marry that no-account, lilylivered, freeloading snake?”
“Yes,” she said with a little toss of her head. “Not that it’s any of your business, Quicksilver.” Then her gaze played over the assorted passengers in the waiting room. “And I shouldn’t have to remind someone in your line of work to be a little more circumspect when discussing certain subjects. Not to mention quieter. If you know what I mean.”
She was right, of course. Marcus looked over at the weasel, to find the man’s beady little eyes trained on them once more, and an expression of renewed curiosity puckering his narrow face. Several other men were regarding them now, including the stationmaster, who stood within easy reach of his telegraph key, the one that could put him in touch with Granny Grenville and her minions in about ten seconds, leaving Marcus to kiss that five thousand dollars goodbye. That, he vowed, was not going to happen. By God, he already felt as if he’d earned at least half of that five thousand just in irritation and aggravation.
“Come on.” He folded the paper, stuck it under his arm, and tugged Amanda to her feet. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Someplace,” he growled.
“A restaurant?” she asked hopefully.
Amanda tried to ignore the rumblings in her stomach as she sat perched on a wooden crate in an alley across from the train depot, watching Marcus Quicksilver pace back and forth and listening to the soft jingling sound his spurs made. Or was that the sound of his teeth grinding? she wondered. The bounty hunter appeared to be mad at the world in general, and at her in particular.
If anyone should be throwing a fit, she thought, it was she. Her hair was filthy. Her clothes were wrinkled, and she still smelled vaguely like cake. Day-old-cake, at that. Her luggage had vanished, and if she had ten dollars left in her handbag she’d consider herself quite lucky. She loosened the braided silk drawstring now and dumped the contents out onto her lap.
For lack of a streetlamp in the alleyway, there was only moonlight with which to inspect the coins that had clattered out. And then even the pale moonlight was blocked by a pair of wide shoulders as Marcus halted in front of her.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, looming above her.
“Just what it looks like, Quicksilver. I’m counting my money.” She plucked an errant silver dollar from a fold in her skirt. “Which I wouldn’t have to do at all if someone had sent a proper wire concerning my suitcase.”
“Forget about the suitcase. It’s gone. Anyway, you’re better off not having anything with those initials on it.” He swiped off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “And while I’m giving advice, Miss Grenville, I want to request that you stop taking up with every man who gives you a sidelong glance. Do you think you can do that?”
“Hush. You’re making me lose count. Fourteen. Fifteen.” Amanda added two silver dollars to the stack of coins in her hand, then sighed forlornly. “Well, I’m afraid that’s the sum of it. Oh, no. Wait.” She practically dived headfirst into her handbag then and unbuttoned a small compartment in the silk lining. “I’d completely forgotten about these,” she said, coming up with two bright twenty-dollar gold pieces.
But no sooner had she discovered them than Marcus snatched them out of her hand.
“Give those back!” she cried.
“You can have whatever’s left in Denver. If you want me to help you, then you’re just going to have to do this my way. Understand?”
His words were comparable to a bucket of cold water tossed on a fire, and Amanda’s anger sputtered out immediately. He’d just said he was going to help her, hadn’t he? Despite the fact that his face was dark and menacing as he stood looking down at her, and despite the fact that he looked as if he’d just as soon strangle her as look at her, Marcus Quicksilver had actually offered his aid.
“You’ve agreed, then? To help me get to my fiancé in Denver, I mean, instead of dragging me back to my grandmother?”
“I’ll get you to Denver. That’s all I can promise. But it’s not going to happen if you keep striking up conversations with every male between here and the Rockies. Can you get that through that hard-as-adiamond skull of yours?”
She bit down on a smile, not wanting to let him see how thrilled she was or how relieved she was that she was no longer his captive. “Yes, I believe I can.”
“Good. Now give me all the rest of that silver and we’ll see just where we stand.”
Reluctantly Amanda scooped the fifteen silver dollars from her lap and handed them over.
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