Just This Once (5 page)

And here he stood in a stranger’s office
above a saloon, discovering that the two people most closely
related to him were both departed from this earth.

Good riddance.

He closed his eyes, knowing he should be
ashamed of the thought, and in truth, he was. Half ashamed. There
had never been any love lost between him and his father and
brother. The Earl of Stonecliff had been a pillar of respectability
in English society—he moved in the best circles, knew all the best
people, attended all the best parties. And his heir—the thin,
imperious, proper Hugh, who had so closely resembled the tall earl
in his starchily elegant good looks, from his thin dark hair to his
patrician nose and elegant hands—had always been his favorite.

In truth, Ethan had scarcely known his
father or his brother, who was six years his senior. He’d spent the
early part of his life with housekeepers and tutors and groomsmen,
rambling around the country estate, Stonecliff Park, knowing almost
complete freedom when his father and brother were at one of the
other family homes or in London. And when they were ensconced at
Stonecliff Park, with guests to be entertained, Ethan was always
kept abovestairs, too young to mingle with company, and of no
importance to anyone but his own good friend, Ham, the groom who’d
taught him all he knew of horses, of riding, of the wondrous
outdoors.

And when he was older...

Ethan grimaced and stopped the flood of
memories. When he was older, old enough to no longer be hidden away
in the country, the younger, unimportant son of a great man,
matters between himself and the earl had gone from bad to
worse.

Oh, yes, he ought to be sorry about his
father, and about Hugh. But he wasn’t.

And as for Stonecliff Park...

“I don’t want it. You’ve wasted your time,
Latherby. Nothing would tempt me to set foot on British soil
again.”

“But, my lord—”

“Call me Mr. Savage. I’m no English
lord.”

“But you will be, you must. You have only to
marry and the title is yours.”

“Marry!”

“Sir, I implore you. The lands and estates
are in need of an heir. Think of the tenants, the servants, all
those employed by your lordship. There are many to whom you are
responsible, not the least of whom is yourself and your
forebears.”

“To hell with my forebears. And to hell with
you. I don’t want it—not an inch of it. Not a farthing, or a blade
of grass on Stonecliff Park land, not a single lamp or rug or chair
from that damned house—from any of the houses. And I damn well
don’t want to get married! Seems to me I’ve got a cousin, name of
Winthrop. He’d be glad enough of the place. Give it to him. You
savvy, Latherby?”

And he stalked past the openmouthed
solicitor without a backward glance and pounded down the
stairs.

Ethan’s mind churned with emotions he didn’t
want to feel, with thoughts he didn’t want to consider. He hurled
himself back into the main room of the saloon, nearly knocking down
one of the saloon girls. He grabbed her in time, muttered an
apology, and headed for the table.

A poker hand was just finishing up.

“Deal me in,” he barked, and claimed his
seat in his former chair.

Everyone at the table observed his dark
face, the almost feverish glint in his eyes. They all sat up a
little straighter, held their cards a little tighter, not knowing
what had happened to so dangerously irk the tall stranger, but
sensing, down to a man, that they’d best tread carefully with him
from this point forward.

Ethan Savage was in a dangerous mood.

* * *

Two hours later, he was losing heavily. And
he was drunk. Drunker than he’d been in years, since he’d been a
schoolboy at Eton who’d engaged in a drinking contest with five
others and had won. In those days he’d never been able to refuse a
contest, or a dare. It was only one of the things that had made his
austere father and brother so despise him.

Since that night, he had imbibed sparingly.
But now as he sat at the poker table in a haze of cigar smoke
mixing with the saloon women’s cheap perfume, while laughter and
raucous talk rang out all around him, while the heat in the room
made him perspire and itch to jump in a cool lake, he downed glass
after glass of Stickley’s whiskey and played hand after losing
hand.

The father and brother who had ignored and
deplored him his entire life were dead. Dead and buried. And buried
with them, he told himself, were the ugly deeds they had
perpetrated trying to keep him in line.

It was over now.

Yet the irony that the black sheep son, the
one who had dared to befriend the lowly and the vulgar, the one who
had been a disgrace because he’d refused to settle down and marry
respectably and live the elegantly proper life they’d chosen for
him, the one who’d sought out the wildest life imaginable in the
American West,
he
was the one who had survived, the one who
stood to inherit the vast and burdensome fortune of Stonecliff
Park.

“Whiskey!” Ethan roared, and slammed the
empty bottle on the table. The cards swayed in a dizzying blur
before his eyes. The other men at the table were starting to
rise.

“Game’s over, Savage. That was the last
hand, remember?” the cowboy reminded him with a grin. His words
were slurred, his balance shaky. He was none too sober himself,
though the miner’s eyes were still bright as fool’s gold. “You owe
me, uh... one hunert and ten dollars.” The cowboy belched, then
grinned wider. “Ye-ep. Time to settle up and go home.”

Home.
Hell, Ethan thought with bitter
self-mockery. He had no home. Never had. Just a saddle, a horse, a
blanket, and the star-filled sky.

“One hundred and ten dollars, fair and
square,” he muttered, and dug into his shirt pocket. But the bills
he’d stashed there earlier were gone—blearily he remembered he’d
already spent them on his bath, his meal, whiskey, and poker chips
for tonight’s game. Grimacing, he reached into his vest pocket for
his wallet.

Empty air met his groping fingers.

What the hell?

It wasn’t there. Not in any of his pockets,
not under the table. It was gone.

And the rest of the three-hundred-dollar pot
he had won last night was gone too.

“That dirty, no-good lying little
bitch
!” he shouted to no one in particular, and all eyes in
the saloon swung toward him. There was silence. The tall cowboy
frowned through the blear of his own vision.

“You goin’ to pay me or not?” he queried in
a tremulous voice.

“No! Not until I get my hands on that
thief.” Ethan spun about and reeled toward the back stairs, dimly
remembering where he had last seen the creature whose death, in his
opinion, was now imminent. “Be right back.”

“The hell you will,” the cowboy bellowed,
and caught him by the arm. “How do I know you won’t—”

He never got any further. Ethan Savage’s
fist connected with the cowboy’s chin in a punishing blow that sent
the man skittering backward into the roulette table. Three men
leapt aside just in time.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing,
mister?” the largest of them shouted, glaring from beneath
ferocious red brows.

Stickley started forward, but it was too
late. Ethan, veering toward the stairs once more, was intercepted
by the cowboy, who had staggered up from the floor. The cowboy
launched himself in a flying leap at the gunslinger.

Ethan spun on reflex and delivered another
punch. Then, for good measure, he hit the man next to the cowboy as
well, who had stepped forward and tried to seize his arm.

This stocky, mustachioed man was none other
than Sheriff Mills. He went crashing into a group of townsmen
playing faro.

As if a stick of dynamite had been ignited,
the saloon exploded in a whirl of flying fists, upended chairs,
shattering glass, thuds, grunts, and shouts. Sheriff Mills shouted
for order and fired his revolver into the air. Someone hurled a
chair at someone who ducked, and the chair smashed the long, gilded
mirror behind the bar. The piano player ran for cover, the
bartender began snatching glasses off the bar, the saloon girls
dashed for the stairs. Two other men, locked in furious struggle,
crashed right through the Golden Pistol’s front windows and out
into the hot, dark street.

“Enough! Enough!” Mills boomed, but his
voice was drowned out by the thunder of fists and boots and the
incessant tinkling of glass.

When it was over, nearly half an hour later,
the Golden Pistol was in shambles. Downstairs, at least. The saloon
women, who had retreated upstairs, were watching from the railing,
shaking their heads in dismay.

“Men. Why do they have to fight all the
time?” Rose’s lips curled in disgust.

“I think that tall stranger is hurt,” Josie
muttered, watching with glum fascination as Sheriff Mills managed
to snap handcuffs on the man she had robbed this afternoon. He was
unconscious now, she saw, her stomach clenching. Blood ran down his
handsome face from a cut above his temple.

“I want to press charges against this man,
Sheriff. I want him locked up until he’s agreed to pay for all the
damages incurred here tonight.” Stickley fairly jumped from one
foot to the other as the sheriff and his deputy, who had come
running from the cafe when he’d heard the sounds of the fray,
carried the big gunslinger toward the broken saloon doors.

“He’s going straight to jail right now,”
Mills grunted, paying no heed to the blood on the stranger’s face
or his ashen color. “Damned bastard. Lucky if I don’t throw away
the key.”

The doors creaked weakly shut behind them,
and no one noticed the small balding man in the tidy black suit who
quietly emerged from behind the bar, dusted himself off, and
slipped out after them.

Josie scurried back to her room, much
disturbed. She was trying hard not to feel sorry about the
stranger, but without much success. She’d heard someone say that
the fight had started when he couldn’t pay up what he’d lost
tonight at cards.

Horrible qualms of guilt assailed her. But
the stranger could take care of himself, she thought as she locked
herself in her room once more and threw a final few belongings in
her valise. Judging from the way he’d used his fists, he was more
than capable of taking care of himself—it had taken someone hitting
him over the head with a bottle from behind to finally bring him
down.

But she found herself hoping he wasn’t
seriously hurt.

Don’t worry about him, worry about
yourself,
she scolded, steeling herself against emotions that
tended to run away from her. There had been no sign of Snake or any
member of his gang in the Golden Pistol tonight, and she drew some
small comfort from the fact that they were probably holed up in
Maizey’s Brothel two streets over. It was a place more to their
liking, she thought darkly, suppressing a shudder.

I’ll never have to see them again,
she told herself as she unbuttoned her gingham. She already had the
train schedule—now all she had to do was purchase her ticket as
soon as the office opened in the morning, and get on board the
train.

Josie folded the gingham gown—the best gown
she owned, the one she’d worn for her wedding to Snake—and tucked
it into the valise atop her dancing girl costume, a chemise, and a
white cotton nightgown. Then she pulled on jeans and a flannel
shirt, and a big oversize buckskin vest. When she left this room at
first light, she’d have her hair tucked under a hat and a cigar
between her lips, and she’d do her damnedest to look like a boy. In
case she ran into Snake, she had to make sure he wouldn’t recognize
his runaway wife.

The last items she tucked into the sturdy
straw valise were the most important ones—the letter fragment and
the dainty little silk handbag that belonged to a girl she’d never
met. And the small woolen pouch containing the two treasures that
gave Josephine Cooper Barker the shivers whenever she drew them
out, looked at them, touched them.

There was a possibility that she really
might discover who she was this time. She had clues now—solid ones.
The ring belonging to that poor young Englishwoman who’d been
unlucky enough to have been held up by Snake Barker and his gang
exactly matched the brooch that had been pinned to her swaddling
clothes.

If they were from the same set... if they
were family jewels...

Perhaps this Alicia Denby was a relative, or
whoever had given her the ring was a relative.

She’d never forget that night in the hideout
cabin when she’d first seen the ring. The moment Snake had dumped
all the loot from the stagecoach holdup onto the wooden table that
hot, windless night, she’d gone still as a statue. She’d stared
transfixed past the pile of greenbacks and coins, the pocket
watches and fobs, the lady’s handbag and garnet earrings and
bracelet and the ivory comb and the scrap of paper lying atop a
crushed lace handkerchief. She’d reached out trembling fingers to
lift the exquisite pearl-and-opal ring, cradling it in her
palm.

It was lovely. Four small creamy pearls
nestled around a shimmering opal, set within heavy gleaming gold.
Her hand had tingled as she’d held it, for the ring seemed to pulse
with heat and warmth.

“Like that one, eh?” Snake had chuckled, and
snatched it from her. “Well, don’t go gettin’ attached to it, Jo.
I’m going to sell it. It’s probably worth damn near as much as all
the cash we took off those folks today. You should have seen that
pretty little English gal it belonged to—she stripped off her
earrings and bracelet without so much as a whimper, but begged me
to let her keep this. As if I’d let something so purty and so
downright valuable slip through my fingers because of a few little
tears.”

“Maybe it was special to her.” Josie had
moistened her lips and fixed him with a wary stare. “You didn’t
hurt her, did you, Snake?”