The Duchess and Desperado (11 page)

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Authors: Laurie Grant

Tags: #Romance, #Historical Romance, #Nineteenth Century, #American West, #Protector

BOOK: The Duchess and Desperado
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“Trying to make love to me?” Sarah supplied gently.
“Yeah, damn me for a bastard and a fool.”
His words made her sit bolt upright, and she began to hurriedly pull on her chemise, trying to ignore the sensation of the moistened cloth against the breast he'd been suckling only minutes before. “Why, what do you mean, Morgan?” she asked carefully.
“Hellfire, Duchess, I'm your
bodyguard.
If that had been someone gunnin' for you—”
“But it
wasn't,
Morgan,” she noted. “Don't be so hard on yourself. It was I who kissed you first, you know.” What she said seemed sensible and obvious, even though she was feeling anything but sensible. Her breasts, and the area between her legs, still ached for his renewed touch.
“But it
could
have been, don't you see? You could've been murdered because I forgot what I'm supposed to be there for and instead I was trying to...oh,
hell.”
“Morgan,” she said, trying to ignore the chill creeping up her spine at his words, “no harm was done, and you certainly weren't doing anything that I wasn't en—”
He interrupted, “Well, it isn't gonna happen again, Duchess, you hear me? You hired me to protect you and that's just what I'm going to do.” He stood up and turned his back as if he couldn't bear the sight of her.
All at once she was aware of how she must look to him— her face flushed, her lips swollen from his kisses, her bodice still unbuttoned to the waist and her hair falling out of its neat chignon over her shoulders. She had behaved like a wanton, as if she were no more than a tart in Covent Garden!
But she wasn't a tart, she was the Duchess of Malvem! And she was in love with the Count of Châtellerault. She had promised to marry her Frenchman, yet how terrifyingly close she had come to giving herself completely to this American, this comparative
stranger.
“I expect it was the champagne,” she said with chilly casualness as she finished buttoning her bodice and began setting her hair to rights. “I should be used to it, but perhaps at this altitude... What I am trying to say is, the blame is all mine, and I don't hold you in the least responsible. But you're quite right in that it must not happen again.”
“It won't, Duchess,” he assured her—too quickly.
Sarah found his agreement perversely wounding. She'd be thrice damned before she ever so much as smiled at Morgan Calhoun again.
“Yes. Well... perhaps we should be packing up and riding back. Uncle Frederick will be frantic about my absence, even though I left him a note.”
They packed up the remnants of the picnic in silence, and in minutes they were riding back toward Denver.
Chapter Eleven
 
 
T
he assassin peered around the corner of the building just in time to see his quarry and Morgan Calhoun dismount and begin to lead their horses back into the hotel stables. It was about time they returned!
Lord Halston had not been the only one who'd been frantic and furious at the duchess's disappearance this morning. The assassin had been beside himself when his spy told him that the duchess had been missing when the rest of the household had awakened this morning. She'd left a note, saying she was going for a ride.
But what if she hadn't really just gone riding? he'd thought. What if Sarah now suspected the identity of her would-be killer and had decided her only chance of survival lay in decamping with her thrice-damned bodyguard?
After a few moments of panic, though, cool reasoning had gained control over his panic. He had decided to wait and watch. The odds were that the duchess had only taken one of those early-morning rides of which she was so fond. And now his guess had been proven correct, and his hours of loitering around the outside of the Grand Central Hotel, dressed as a down-on-his-luck prospector complete with a stuck-on beard and a low-brimmed hat, were about to be rewarded.
Quickly he took a glance behind him, saw that the alleyway was still empty of witnesses, then inched forward, feeling for the pistol within his shapeless coat pocket. There would be no escape for her this time, he promised himself with a grim smile. First he'd kill her protector, then her.
He studied the woman he was about to shoot, seeing the tendrils escaping at the nape of her neck, the slightly swollen lips, the way her eyes could not avoid the lean form of her bodyguard, especially when Calhoun was not looking at her. Oh, yes, Sarah had been a naughty duchess, he thought. It was obvious she had been dishonoring the proud name of her family with this American, this
nobody.
Sarah Challoner deserved to die.
Just then Lord Halston stepped from the shadows of the stable into the sunlit stableyard.
“So
there
you are, niece! I am owed an explanation, I think,” the marquess announced, advancing on her.
The assassin froze for a moment, keeping his head low so his face could not be seen. It need not matter that Lord Frederick had appeared, he decided; what were three lives taken instead of only two? With the marquess slain, the path to his goal would be even clearer than before.
“Oh? Can you not read, uncle?” Sarah coolly responded. “I left you a note, informing you that I would be riding with Mr. Calhoun this morning. I hope Donald is available to write a message for me? I have just conceived the most delightful plan to invite William Wharton and his charming sister for supper this evening—oh, I know it's short notice, but perhaps they would consent...?”
How very like Sarah Challoner, the assassin thought. Cool and self-possessed, trying to brazen it out, as if she were the master of her own fate, and not a mere woman who should be guided by a man!
“Sarah, you are very cavalier with those who care about your safety,” Lord Halston began, his face purpling with obvious frustration.
“Not at all. You knew I had my bodyguard with me. Could you have the hotel send up water for a bath, uncle? It's been so long since I've ridden I believe I'd like to have a long soak before tea....”
Damn her. Damn Sarah for making him imagine the sight of her relaxing in a copper hip bath, her breasts peeking impertinently over the bubbles, her special rosewater scent perfuming the air. A sight he had never seen, but only dreamed of. His hand, gripping his pistol within the coat pocket, trembled.
Now.
He should do it now. He should bring his gun out of his pocket and fire.
“Hey, Clem, is that you? When did ya come down from yore claim?” bellowed a voice behind the assassin, and a heartbeat later he felt a heavy hand clapping him on the back.
He whirled, furious at the interruption, to see another similarly dressed man about to buffet him once again. “I am not Clem,” he growled in a low voice, knowing he couldn't let this interfering blowhard ruin his chance. “I think you mistake me for someone else.
Now, go away.”
The prospector squinted at him through bleary, red-veined eyes. “Ya look like Clem, though, even if ya sound like some furriner...” he muttered uncertainly. “Ain't ya afeered of some claim jumper takin' your mine while yore away? Les' go have a whiskey, whaddya say?”
He would cheerfully have blown a hole through the idiot if the shot wouldn't have sent his quarry fleeing. Turning to put his back to the duchess, her bodyguard and Lord Halston in case they should look his way, the assassin hissed, “I am
not
your friend, curse you.” He brought the muzzle of his pistol just barely out of his pocket and made sure the old sot saw it. “Now,
go away,
or I will allow daylight into your liver, eh?”
The prospector's eyes focused with difficulty on what he could see of the pistol, and he backed away. “Well, okay, but I still say ya look like Clem t'me....”
Merde.
He would just kill all of them. He turned back around, but saw that in the brief seconds while the prospector had distracted him, the duchess, her uncle and her bodyguard had all disappeared inside the stable.
It was unbelievable. For a moment he was tempted to murder the old prospector just to punish him for costing him his chance, then thought better of it. The old fool was not worth a bullet. He settled for flinging a lump of manure at the shambling figure.
 
After turning the horses over to the duchess's groom, Morgan followed Sarah and her uncle up the stairs, trying to keep his eyes off her gently swaying, riding-habit-clad posterior as she ascended.
His head ached with tangled emotions. Damnation, it felt as if there was a four-way dogfight going on in his brain. One of the dogs was lust, for his unsatisfied body still clamored to complete what had been interrupted up in the foothills. It had been stopped by another dog, the dog of decency and common sense, who'd known that he'd had no business taking liberties with the British noblewoman who employed him, even if she'd encouraged him. Then a third dog bad shown up, shame, after he'd realized how easily both of them could have paid the price for his lack of vigilance. And now that the duchess was palavering with her uncle about inviting that young tinhorn Wharton and his sister to join her for dinner, a fourth dog had joined the fray: jealousy.
When he'd been kissing Sarah Challoner and running his hands over her beautiful body, her innocent delight had had him thinking she was a virgin, but now he wasn't so sure. He wouldn't be the first man deceived by a woman of experience. Now he was sure her invitation to Wharton was a means of getting revenge for her own unsatisfied passion. Morgan hadn't resumed making love to her, so she was going to show him how easily he could be replaced, wasn't she? And, damn her blue eyes, she was going to go him one better by achieving the revenge with a man closer to her own position in life!
Well, it wasn't as if she could exactly invite the mining magnate to spend the night, not with Wharton's sister along, and her uncle there as chaperon, he reminded himself, but somehow it was little comfort. Perhaps she was just warming up Wharton for the following night, when they were going to the theater? Afterward, would the duchess expect him to stand on guard outside some fancy private room in a restaurant while she and Wharton had a “late supper?”
Once in the duchess's suite, Morgan slammed the door behind him with unnecessary force. That fourth dog was winning the fight. Lord, but he wished he shared this bodyguarding job with some other man so he could go get drunk and find a woman, and not necessarily in that order.
 
“Good night, dear Helen. So good of you both to come on such short notice. See you tomorrow night, William. Seven o'clock was it, for the theater? And then supper afterward?” With difficulty Sarah suppressed a yawn as she and her uncle stood at the doorway, bidding the guests farewell. Morgan stood just beyond them, on the landing, watching up and down the stairs.
The last-minute supper party had been a delightful way to spend the evening, Sarah thought. These Americans were so flexible, so spontaneous! Back in England she could never have issued an invitation to supper with just hours to spare.
They'd been amusing company, chatty and surprisingly sophisticated in spite of the raw new town they lived in. Through their dinnertime conversation she'd learned more about the mining magnate. Wharton had come out to Colorado Territory in the gold rush days, but instead of frittering his profits away on gambling, whiskey and women, he had saved his money until he could buy a mine, and with the profits of that, bought more mines. He'd brought his sister out from the East when he could afford to build a nice home for them. His wealth had not made him arrogant, though. Sarah thought it a great pity that more of the wealthy peers back home were not so genuinely kind and approachable. She looked forward to going to the theater with him tomorrow night. It would be her last night in Denver, and she meant to enjoy it.
“You'd best go back in, your grace,” Morgan said, turning back to her as the Whartons' footsteps died away and Lord Halston left the doorway.
“A word with you first, Morgan,” she said “I know you're angry at me for inviting Wharton to dinner tonight....”
His face darkened. “How could I be angry? I got nothin' to say about it, unless I think where you're goin' or who you're goin' with might be dangerous to you.” There was nothing remotely warm in his green eyes, let alone any trace of the heated gleam that had been in them this very morning when he had been touching and kissing her so intimately. Once more he looked the cold, wary desperado.
“It must have felt like a slap in the face after...after what happened this afternoon,” she said in a rush, looking away from his set, guarded face. “But don't you see? You were right...about what you said...you know, that we mustn't—”
“Yeah, I was right.”
“Well, there you are, then. But...you could have accepted my invitation to take supper with us. I invited William's sister—” She knew she had said the wrong thing even before his eyes blazed green fire at her.
“Oh, you thought since I was right about you and me, you'd throw me a bone in the form of Helen Wharton, was that it?”
“No, you misunderstand,” she lied, guiltily aware that he had seen right through her pretense.
“Well, don't do me any more favors, okay, Duchess? Helen Wharton's a pretty lady and all, but if I want a woman, I'll go buy one, you understand?”
“Perfectly.” Her face flaming, she turned to go inside.
“Just a minute, Duchess. I don't suppose there's any point in tellin' you I think it's
loco
to be plannin' to go to a big public event like a play when somebody's been tryin' to kill you?”
“None at all. And surely there's safety in numbers in such surroundings.”
“It didn't turn out that way for President Lincoln, did it?” he retorted, his face bleak.
Sarah felt her heart lurch. Even in England they had been shocked at hearing of an American president murdered in his box at the theater.
“I'm not taking your concerns lightly, Mr. Calhoun,” she said, taking refuge in formality. “I believe you heard me ask Mr. Wharton this evening to take me to the play in the other theater, just in case anyone had heard he had been planning to take me to the Apollo?”
“Yes, I did, and so did everyone in your household,” he noted.
She stared at him, dumbstruck for a moment. “Mr. Calhoun, you can't be suspicious of my uncle, can you, after getting to know him? Or maybe you think it's one of my servants?”
“Duchess, I've stayed alive this long because I'm suspicious of everyone,” he retorted.
She threw her hands in the air in exasperation, recrossed the threshold into the suite and fled to her own room. There was no getting through to Morgan Calhoun—or getting close to him. He was a lone wolf—wary, cynical, ever on his guard. He might come close to the fire, but he'd never rest easy near it if there were others around. Even a lone wolf needed a mate, she thought, but Morgan hadn't realized it yet.
She and Morgan might as well exist on two separate planets, so different were their lives. Thank God she had not given in fully to passion with such a man when there was no possibility of a future.
She
would
be happy with Thierry. While an exiled French
comte
was not her precise social equal, certainly he understood the obligations and mores of their world. But why did the idea of their secret engagement progressing to marriage no longer fill her with unalloyed joy?
Was it just the months of separation that had turned Thierry into a stranger? She had been away from him for too long, and as it was too difficult to predict her exact arrival dates in certain cities in advance, it was impossible to get letters from him. Perhaps they should have eloped, and spent their honeymoon on this journey! Surely all would be well when Thierry joined her in Santa Fe; she would take one look into his expressive blue eyes and remember why she had fallen in love.

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