Bandit's Embrace (The Durango Family)

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Dedicated with love and affection
to that pair who like Western novels
almost as much as I do.

Aunt Trudy and Uncle Fred,
this one’s for you!

Late April, 1873

She would trade her virginity to the most attractive man she chanced to meet in the coming two days if he would help her escape!
Amethyst decided that as she studied the desolate Mexican landscape through the stagecoach window while darkness fell.

Si, that was just what she would do, even though it went against everything she’d been taught. Desperate situations called for desperate measures!

That decision made, Amethyst María Consuela Durango relaxed her small frame against the coach’s seat, smoothed her fine lilac and sphinx-gray batiste dress, and glared at the stout Mrs. Wentworth who took up the whole seat across from her.

“Young lady, I see that impudent spark in those violet eyes! If you don’t behave yourself, I’ll tell Mademoiselle Monique!” The two hairs in the mole on the tip of the governess’s nose wiggled when she spoke.

“Go right ahead!” Amethyst snapped, with a spirited shake of her head. The coach bounced, and her elegant hat went askew so that her ebony chignon cascaded loosely down her neck. “There’s nothing my father’s future bride could do to me that would be worse than being sent off to the Cloistered Sisters in that isolated abbey!”

“Mademoiselle thinks only of your own good,” the americano smiled a little too sweetly. “You’ve been allowed to run wild too long without the proper supervision a girl of such fine parentage should have. As your future stepmother, Mademoiselle—”

“Hopes to lock me away forever so she has full control over my foolish father’s ranch and fortune!” Amethyst glared at Monique’s employee.

“Tsk! Tsk!” Mrs. Wentworth pulled at the tight corset under her dour black dress. “How can you say such bad things about the lovely lady who is about to bring such happiness into a widower’s lonely life?”

“And so much money into her own!” Amethyst raged. Up until two months ago, life at the giant Durango ranch north of Monterrey had been quiet, uneventful. “My father is a silly old fool to be so smitten with a woman young enough to be my older sister.”

“And you’re no spring chicken!” The servant reminded her crisply. “Twenty-three, isn’t it? Why at that age, and still unmarried, you might as well consider becoming a nun after you finish your classes.”

“If Papa didn’t insist on honoring that stupid betrothal agreement, I’d be married by now! Certainly I knew young men who were interested, but Papa had given his word. And while I sit waiting for a man who will never come, I am in your ambitious employer’s way.”

Mrs. Wentworth’s plump jowls wiggled as she leaned back and smiled. She can afford to smile, Amethyst thought with annoyance, knowing that she would be headed back to Papa’s spacious hacienda after depositing her charge at the isolated abbey south of the Rio Grande River.

“Ambitious, is it?” The chaperone smirked. “No, my lady is just madly in love with your nice Papa.”

“My former companion, Miss Callie, was madly in love with Papa, and he never even noticed her.” It was true, Amethyst thought sadly.

Mrs. Wentworth clasped her fat hands together. “Why, Mademoiselle Monique’s been pining away in New Orleans, waiting for a man worthy of her background. Señor Durango goes there on business and meets her, invites her back to Mexico to visit, property chaperoned by me, of course. It’s a match made in heaven.”

“Or in a cashbox!” Amethyst snapped. “She’s rushing him into marriage before he has a chance to think clearly—”

“I realize you’re jealous of a new woman in Señor Durango’s life, but you’ll get over it,” the fat woman simpered. “Monique will be kind enough to send for you so you can attend the wedding—”

“Never!” Amethyst raged, turning her small ring over and over in her agitation. “Papa should have married Miss Callie.”

“Sure, and I can see how you sorrow for your old companion.” Mrs. Wentworth stroked a gray wisp back into the bun of hair at the back of her head. “And wasn’t it convenient that Mademoiselle Monique was there to comfort everyone when dear Miss Callie was taken by the dysentery so sudden-like a few weeks ago?”

Tears choked Amethyst. She twisted her small ring and remembered the shy, sweet spinster. Miss Callie, her American mother’s dearest friend, had come south as a companion when the elegant heiress had married the Mexican rancher. Then, when Mama had died, Miss Callie had devoted her life to raising a motherless child on a giant, isolated ranch.

It must have been lonely for Papa—Amethyst thought of him warmly—with Mama gone and the two older children dead of yellow fever. Amethyst realized Miss Callie, over the years, had grown to love her father but had been too shy and hesitant to show it. And just about the time Papa had finally seemed to notice Miss Callie, he’d made that trip to New Orleans, brought back Mademoiselle Monique. Then Miss Callie had come down with the dreaded dysentery only a few hours after a dinner in the French girl’s honor. Everyone felt lucky she’d been the only one to get it. .

The coach lurched again, throwing Amethyst back against the cushions. The roads in northern Mexico must be the world’s worst, she thought with annoyance, readjusting her hat. But Mrs. Wentworth had dozed off and never missed a beat in her snoring.

Day after tomorrow, they would reach their destination and Amethyst would be locked away forever, barring a miracle. Well, she hadn’t given up yet; Amethyst had too much of her mother’s blood in her. Would her mama’s relatives help her? she wondered. All that were left were distant cousins, and she didn’t even know their names. Certainly they wouldn’t want to get involved with a perfect stranger.

Santa María, I’m only twenty-three, she thought, that’s not really so old, though most girls my age are married and having families. Her best girlfriend had married three years ago and had left the isolated state of Coahuila, moving to Mexico City. Amethyst’s stubborn, honorable Papa had still refused to break his word to his old friend on the neighboring ranch. I’ve never really lived, much less been kissed or known a man’s passion, Amethyst thought regretfully.

High-class Spanish girls were too well protected and chaperoned for that. But she’d show them. And if she couldn’t outwit them, she’d not go like a meek lamb to the cage. Papa said she was too stubborn and willful like her dead mother. But Amethyst felt that was Monique’s view, that the red-haired woman was skillfully creating discord between father and daughter.

Miss Callie had been her tutor, teaching her English, mathematics, and logic when no one expected a wealthy girl from a good Spanish family to be able to do anything but sew and play the piano. Sometimes shy Miss Callie had laughed admiringly and said Amethyst was a lot like her mama, pretty and delicate, but also headstrong and stubborn.

She’d show them stubborn! Even though she’d never known her mother, Amethyst was sure she was more like that New York beauty than the proud Spanish grandees on her father’s side. She studied her small ring in the moonlight. It was the only thing she had of Mama’s now; all the other jewels were locked away in the hacienda safe. No doubt in a few weeks, the elegant French beauty would be wearing them.

Amethyst took a deep breath, and the delicate, sweet scent of her own perfume wafted from her warm skin. Forget-me-not. It had been Mama’s favorite flower, Miss Callie had said, the lavender blue violet with the slight fragrance. The small bloom and its perfume were Amethyst’s favorites, too. She studied the design of the ring. The tiny flower of purple amethyst stone wasn’t very valuable, but she was sentimental about the ring.

Thoughtfully, she took out her silk and lace kerchief, inhaled the slight, sweet scent of the wild flower as she wiped a film of dust from her porcelain white cheeks. Monique had said she was only going off to the abbey for proper upbringing. Amethyst shivered, running her finger around the lacy throat of her delicate batiste frock. Instead of expensive lilac and sphinx gray in the latest fashion of bustle and full petticoat, she imagined herself in the severe dress of the order. She wasn’t quite sure how the Frenchwoman would do it, but she sensed that Monique would see that Amethyst took the veil and never left the Cloistered Sisters again.

Amethyst gritted her teeth, stuck out her chin.
Santa
María!
She would escape, run away . . . or at least share one night of passion with some fascinating man along the way. They might lock her up forever, but she would have that one thing she had been denied all these years while she’d waited for the man who’d never come to claim her. It was a daring decision for such a protected innocent.

S
í
, if she met any appealing hombre in the next several days before the stage reached it’s destination, Amethyst intended to make him a gift of her virginity, to use that as a lure to get him to help her escape. What would happen after that, she had no idea.

Salty, warm tears ran down her small, delicate face as darkness fell over the northbound stage.

In a rowdy saloon in the town of Bandera, Texas, about a hundred and fifty miles above the Rio Grande, the blond gunslinger called Bandit adjusted his red satin sleeve garters and pulled a chair up to the poker table. “What’s the ante?” he drawled.

A florid rancher looked him over. “If you have to ask, reckon you can’t afford to play.”

That was true enough
. Bandit grinned crookedly and tipped his Western hat back at a jaunty angle above his high cheekboned face. “Bandit’s my name and poker’s my game!” He threw a silver dollar onto the table.

Despite his arrogance, Bandit had just five silver dollars in his pocket and a bay gelding too worthless to shoot.

This crowd was a little rich for his blood. Besides that wealthy-looking rancher, there was the owner of the local cypress-shingle mill, and a well-dressed cattle buyer and a salesman, a drummer.

Bandit slid in between the drummer and the mill owner.

The drummer, who was wearing a derby, shuffled, and the florid rancher cut, handed the deck back to be dealt.

The cattle buyer fingered the diamond stickpin in his red cravat. “Bandit, huh? I reckon I’ve heard of you.”

“Bandit? You a thief?” The drummer started to laugh, as he dealt, then seemed to sense the change in Bandit’s mood and let his laughter trail off.

“I live by my wits and my gun,” Bandit said, his blue eyes cold, cocky. He picked up cards with his left hand. “It’s a nickname—because I hang my hat here in Bandera once in a while and ladies say I’m a thief of hearts.”

The red-faced rancher looked him over suspiciously. “Left-handed, huh? What’s your
real
name?

My father didn’t stay around to give me one, Bandit thought, but he only glared back. “Who in blue blazes is askin’? You ought to know that ain’t considered a polite question in this state!”

The rancher darkened with embarrassment. “Beg your pardon.”

Half the men in Texas were wanted for something, living under an assumed name. When a sheriff in another state was unable to find a man or serve a warrant, mostly he wrote G.T.T. across his papers. Gone to Texas.

The drummer looked up, adjusted his derby hat on his sweating forehead. “First time through here for me. I sell ribbon and notions. What’s this burg like?”

The mill owner twisted the tips of his mustache. “Like most Texas towns, I reckon, even though it’s in the hill country; hotter than a chili pepper and tougher than a whore’s heart!”

Bandit flinched at the remark; then remembered they didn’t know about his mother. The town of Gunpowder was a long way from here. He had a sudden memory of a small boy being chased by taunting, screaming children. . . .

The rancher picked up his cards. “You know what they say: ‘Texas is great for men and dogs but hell on women and horses.’” His eyes gleamed as he looked at the drummer in the natty, back-East suit. “And Injuns! Why nobody’s safe in their beds! South of here, them Lipans, Kickapoos, and Mescalero Apaches are raiding into Texas with the blessing of the Mexican government!”

The drummer wiped sweat from his nervous face. “Is that right? Dangerous, is it?”

The others laughed, but Bandit growled, “Damnit! Are we gonna play or not?” He reached unconsciously to touch the beaded, cougar-claw necklace he wore hidden under his shirt. If his blond, Czech grandmother hadn’t been raped by an Apache, maybe his half-breed mother wouldn’t have ended up . . . He signaled a passing waiter, grabbed a mug off his tray. The beer was not cool, but he was thirsty enough that it tasted good and he gulped it down.

He looked at his cards. Two deuces, a trey, six, ten. Nothin’ to brag about.

The drummer looked around the circle inquiringly. “You open?” he asked the rancher on his left.

The man scowled. “I pass.”

The cattle dealer fingered his diamond stickpin. “I open with a dollar.”

The shingle mill owner clinked his dollar out onto the table.

Bandit threw his dollar out as nonchalantly as if he had a pokeful. “Same here.”

The drummer’s dollar clinked as he tossed it on top of the others out in the center of the table.

“How many cards?” The dealer asked, looking around the circle. Bandit watched the men make their decisions, take cards. He’d survived all these years by studying other people, reading faces.

He signaled with two fingers.

“The Bandit from Bandera takes two,” said the dealer. He dealt them, dealt himself one.

Bandit studied his hand. Three of a kind, but deuces; not much of a hand. He might have to do some tall bluffing tonight or not eat tomorrow. Luck hadn’t ridden with him lately.

Still, he grinned with easy arrogance, tipped his chair back on two legs. His cocky self-assurance often made other men unsure of themselves, made them hesitate in his presence. If they only knew what insecurities lay hid behind his easy grin, Bandit thought ruefully, looking around the noisy, crowded interior.

The piano banged away off-key just a few feet from the table:
De Camptown ladies sing dis song,
Doo-Dah! Doo-dah!
De Camptown race-track five miles long–Oh!
doo-
dah day! . . .