Natchez Flame (3 page)

Priscilla clutched the folds of her skirt, determined he would not see her cry. “What kind of a job, Mr. Trask? Some sort of hired gun—or do you plan to make your money gambling—foxing weaker people out of theirs?”

Trask’s look turned hard, his lips becoming a thin grim line. “As a matter of fact, I plan to do a little bit of both.”

“You owe me, Mr. Trask. Barker Hennessey was here to protect me. Who’s going to protect me now?”

Good question
, Brendan thought, for she had just voiced the problem that had been plaguing him since the moment he’d discovered she was alone. Who the hell would look after her? Egan had chosen well with Hennessey. For all his faults, Barker was loyal to Egan and tougher than a cob. Now, thanks to Hennessey’s
too-quick temper, the woman was left with no one.

He glanced in her direction, saw the worry she tried to conceal—and a surprising amount of determination. She wasn’t as young as she’d first appeared, but she was still damned well naive, determination or no. She’d nearly gotten killed her first five minutes on the street. With the sheriff out of the way, and considering the kind of women they were used to, those bastards next door wouldn’t think twice about dragging her off for a little fun and games.

“Goddamn it,” Brendan swore, feeling his resolve begin to weaken, “this isn’t my problem.”

Priscilla spun on him in outrage. “Don’t you dare blaspheme! If you hadn’t been gambling in the first place, none of this would have happened. Mr. Hennessey would still be alive, and I’d be safely on the way to my fiancé.”

“There’s not a damn thing safe about the country you’ll be crossing on the way to the Triple R. And I’ll damn well swear if I want to!”

“I believe you have an appointment with the law, Mr. Trask,” she said with a haughty little tilt of her chin. “Surely the sheriff will have something to say about what happened to poor Mr. Hennessey. Thank you for your assistance, and good day.” She whirled toward the man behind the counter, but Brendan caught her arm.

“I told you I shot him in self-defense.”

“You shouldn’t have been gambling. It’s a sin, just like swearing. Now Mr. Hennessey is dead, and I’m
stranded in the middle of nowhere with no money and no way to get to my fiancé.”

“No money? What do you mean ‘no money’? Surely Egan gave you the money to get here.”

Her cheeks turned pink and she looked as if she wanted to cut out her tongue. “Mr. Egan offered, I refused. I’ve never even met the man, I wasn’t about to accept his money.”

“You’ve never met him?”

“We’ve been corresponding, of course, and my Aunt Maddie had met him.”

Brendan turned toward the man at the counter, dug into his pocket, and tossed the man a coin. “Have someone fetch the lady’s trunks up to her room.” He turned back to Priscilla. “I’ll pay for your stay. Egan will come for you, and everything will be just fine.”

“Not on your life. I wouldn’t accept Stuart’s money; I certainly won’t take yours.”

“This is Hennessey’s money. He would have used it to get you to Egan so in a way it belongs to you.”

She chewed her bottom lip and Brendan thought how soft and pink it looked, how delicate she looked all over.

“If I do take the money, I’ll just use it to hire someone else to take me.”

“The hell you will. You’re staying here. I’ll pay for the room in advance if I have to.”

“I’m not your prisoner, Mr. Trask. Somehow I’ll find a way to get to Stuart—with or without your help.”

Brendan eyed her from top to bottom. She was a fiery little thing when she got riled up—she just
might try it. “You saw those men out there. Where you gonna find somebody you can trust?”

“There’s got to be someone. If Stuart’s as well known as you say, there’s bound to be someone who’ll take me to him. Stuart can pay him when we get there.”

“You’re bluffing. You’d probably faint again if one of those men came near you.”
But what if she wasn’t?
What if she was crazy enough to try it? The likes of Conway Jennings would chew her into little bitty pieces—after he and his cronies pleasured themselves with her soft little body.

Damn her!
“This is blackmail, Miss Wills, and I don’t like it one damned bit.” Grabbing her arm, he tugged her toward the door.

Priscilla let him lead her. “Where are you taking me?”

“I’ve got an appointment with the law, remember? You happen to be a witness. You can tell the deputy what happened—how I shot Hennessey in self-defense—and on the way we can discuss our trip.”

“I didn’t see that much.” Just a blur of images, a flash of crimson, then darkness. Priscilla stopped short. “Does this mean you’re taking me?”

“It’s beginning to look like I’ve got no choice.”

She still didn’t budge. “Why?” she asked warily.

Brendan almost smiled. “Probably because I’m crazy. But you’re right about one thing. Hennessey’s dead and I’m the man who killed him. In a way that makes me responsible for you. Egan might not get your letter for weeks. In the meantime anything could happen.”
And probably would.

“I’m sure Stuart will reimburse you for your trouble.”

“Word reaches him about Hennessey’s death before we get there, he’ll probably shoot me on sight.” Brendan tipped her chin up. “You realize you’ll be traveling with a stranger—a man who just killed another man right in front of you.”

Priscilla searched his face. “I trust you, Mr. Trask.”

“You don’t even know me. Why the hell would you trust me?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Such as?”

Priscilla flushed but didn’t look away. “You’ve got kind eyes.”

“Kind eyes?” he repeated, incredulous. “You trust me because of my eyes?”

“That’s right.”

Brendan shoved his hat back on his head and looked at her with a mixture of amazement and frustration. “Then, Miss Wills, I guess I’d better take you. Any woman who’s that big a fool hasn’t got a chance in a town like this.”

The trip to the sheriff’s office resulted in a few heated words when Priscilla refused to confirm Trask’s story. Of course, she didn’t deny it either.

“I told you before, I saw very little of what happened.”

“How could you have missed it?” Trask glowered down at her, long fingers clamped on a pair of narrow hips. “You were standing damned near between us!”

“You can relax, Trask,” the deputy put in. “We don’t need your lady-friend’s word. We’ve had half a dozen people in here telling us Barker drew first.”

Though Trask stood a few feet away, Priscilla could feel the tension ebb from his body.

“Then I guess we’ll be leavin’.” He settled his hat on his head and pulled it low on his brow.

“I don’t like your kind, Trask,” Deputy Grigson warned. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and clear outta town?”

Trask turned a hard look on Priscilla. “Miss Wills has seen to that. We’ll be leaving on the first ship headed for Corpus Christi.”

“That’d be the
Windham.
She steams outta port in the morning.”

“Good-bye, Deputy Grigson,” Priscilla said, extending a white-gloved hand.

“You take care, little lady.” The lanky older man accepted her handshake, but didn’t offer to help her, and he didn’t say anything more to Trask. In truth, it appeared the deputy was a good bit afraid of him.

“It seems your reputation precedes you, Mr. Trask,” Priscilla said, once they were back on the street.

“What’s the matter, Miss Wills, your ‘kind eyes’ theory beginning to fall a little flat?”

As Priscilla stepped off the boardwalk, her foot hit a stone and she stumbled. Trask’s sure grip stayed her fall. One hand circled her waist to steady her and she felt the same strength and gentleness she had noticed before.

“I’ve no doubt you’re a man to be reckoned with,” she told him. “I wouldn’t trust you to get me there if you weren’t. But trust you I do, and unless you do something to change that, I’ll expect you to call for me in time to make our morning departure.”

Trask worked a muscle in his beard-roughened jaw and opened his mouth to speak.

“And don’t you dare blaspheme!”

Trask just grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it, ma’am,” he drawled. Some of the hardness left his face, and for a moment he looked almost boyish.

She wondered how handsome he’d be cleanshaven, his tanned skin and sensuous mouth more clearly revealed. At the wayward thought, Priscilla’s heart began to pound. When they reached the lobby of the hotel and he turned to walk away, Priscilla’s eyes drifted down to a pair of hard-muscled hips in snug blue twill breeches. She watched the movement of his long sinewy legs, caught herself in horror, and
started praying he’d stay just as rough-looking as he was.

Priscilla paced the hotel lobby, a large, homey room with a big rock fireplace at one end. Hand-hewn chairs with overstuffed needlepoint cushions sat in friendly clusters, and several guests, all of them men, sat quietly talking and smoking. The sun had been up for the past half hour, and still Brendan Trask had not arrived.

Had she been that wrong about him? He’d said he had a job waiting for him on the Brazos. Maybe he’d changed his mind and headed in that direction.
Lord in heaven, what will I do if he’s gone?
She’d paid her hotel bill, but had little money to spare. If he didn’t show up, she would have to get word to Stuart and find some sort of work to do in the meantime.

She could always take in mending; she was a very good seamstress. Surely with all the men in town and so few women there would be something she could do to earn her board and keep.

Priscilla looked down at her hands. They were slender and graceful, but work-roughened and a little bit calloused. Taking care of her aunt had certainly not been easy. Not with money a problem and no one to help with the cooking or cleaning. Her invalid aunt had been a handful and then some.

“This floor needs polishing,” Aunt Maddie would say, though Priscilla had completed the task only a few days before. “And when you get through you can darn that hole in my slipper.”

What hole?
Priscilla wanted to ask, having knit the slippers only two weeks before.

Still, Priscilla hadn’t really minded. Madeline Wills had raised her from the time she was six years old. She was the only family Priscilla could remember—she owed Aunt Maddie—something Aunt Maddie never failed to remind her of.

The bell above the lobby door rang as it opened, and Priscilla sagged in relief when she spotted the tall dark-haired man who entered. She started to chide Trask for his tardy arrival, but when her eyes reached his face, she forgot her reproof and her breath caught somewhere in her throat.

“G-good morning,” she stammered, forcing the words past her suddenly numb lips.

“You look surprised to see me, Miss Wills. With your unfailing sense of judgment, surely you didn’t believe I wouldn’t show up?”

“Of course not,” she lied. “I … I just didn’t recognize you without … without all those whiskers.” He had shaved and trimmed his hair, though it still curled well below his collar. Soft doeskin breeches clung to his thighs, and a clean white chambray shirt stood open at the throat, framing a patch of curly brown chest hair.

Priscilla forced her gaze away. She had never seen a more handsome man.
You always did have a way with the women
, the man named Jennings had said. Priscilla didn’t doubt it, not for a moment.

“We’d better be going,” Trask said. “Your trunks still upstairs?” Priscilla just nodded. “I’ll send someone back for them once we get to the ship.”

“All right.”

Trask eyed her strangely, noting, she was sure, the
color that had risen in her cheeks. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” He looked hopeful.

“Certainly not.” Priscilla lifted her chin.

“Then I guess we’d better be going.” With a sigh of resignation, he walked to the door, opened it, and held it while she passed. “If I had a lick of sense I’d turn around and head the other way. But I guess if you’re fool enough to go, I’m fool enough to take you.” Once outside, he offered his arm and Priscilla accepted it. “Just remember when the going gets tough, this was your idea not mine.”

Trask led her down the boardwalk, out from under the overhanging porch, and into the wide dirt street.

“Yoo hoo, Bren, honey! Up here!”

Priscilla turned at the sound of the woman’s voice. A buxom blonde dressed in a see-through nightgown leaned over the balcony above the saloon, waving a man’s white handkerchief.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Trask said with a grin, “I believe I’m being summoned.” He left Priscilla standing in the street and walked in the direction of the woman leaning over the rail, her bosom all but exposed in the see-through nightgown.

“You forgot your hanky, Bren, honey. I put some of my perfume on it, so you wouldn’t forget me while you’re gone.” She dropped the big white square and it drifted toward the earth. Brendan caught it before it touched the ground.

“Thanks, Patsy.” He held the cloth to his nose and inhaled, then almost gagged at the too-sweet smell.

“Thank
you
, lover,” Patsy said. She tossed a glance at the lady standing in the street. “You’ll behave
yourself, won’t you?” She watched him through golden lashes.