The Duchess and Desperado (23 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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He helped her push them down his hips, chuckling as he leaned on her slightly so he could balance on one foot and then the other to pull off his boots and step out of his trousers. And then he was naked, and she was in his arms, and he was pulling her up against his erect manhood, letting her feel how much he wanted her.
She pulled back, and Morgan thought for a heartbeat she had changed her mind, that she'd been too frightened, but she was only stepping away to undo the drawstring tie at her waist so she could pull her pantalets down.
Now she was as naked as he, and he couldn't wait any longer to feel her skin touching his from head to toe. Gently he urged her down until they were both stretched out on his blanket roll, lying on their sides and entwined together.
“Oh, Sarah, if you only knew how long I've wanted to do this,” he breathed into her hair as his hand sought and found her breast and cupped it.
“No longer than I have, surely—” she began, and then her voice ended in a moan as his hand was replaced by his mouth. He suckled from her breast until she arched against him.
“That day at the train station...” he said when he could find his breath again.
“Yes, that's when it began for me,” she said, her voice unsteady as she added with a laugh, “Mind you, I don't start desiring every chap who knocks me to the ground while bullets fly overhead.... Oh,
Morgan,”
she breathed as his fingers found her.
She was hot and wet and ready for him, he discovered as he parted her curls and stroked her with his fingers, and her breath came in gasps. “Morgan,
please,”
she begged as she writhed against him, and he continued to drive her—and himself—crazy with pleasure.
Still stroking her, he began to thrust against her opening again, too, so that she couldn't tell what was pleasuring her the most, his manhood or his hand, and he wasn't sure himself. He only knew he was about to explode with the effort of holding himself back, but he was determined to give her the ultimate joy before he allowed it to himself.
“Morgan, now! Now, please!” she pleaded, almost sobbing, and he obeyed, parting her legs the rest of the way and thrusting into her—and feeling the resistance as the thin band of tissue around her woman's passage parted to allow him full entrance. He heard her whimper, and raised his head to see Sarah trying to stifle the sound against her knuckles.
He pulled out of her. “You're a
virgin,”
he accused. “Sarah? You said—you implied—”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “I know. I wanted you to think I'd...done this before. I'm sorry... I haven't.
I wanted you to be the one, Morgan, the one who made me a woman.
Please, Morgan, the pain's almost gone—I knew it would hurt a little, the first time.... There aren't words for how wonderful you were making me feel before. Please, don't stop....”
She put her hands on his bare buttocks, urging him into her again. Heaven help him, but he couldn't have stopped now if he wanted to. He had taken her innocence, an innocence he had never guessed she had maintained in the glittering world from which she had come, and now he was going to give her something in its place.
Putting his own hands under her buttocks, he lifted her to him, entering her as gently as he could, and began a steady rhythm of thrusting and retreating, slowly at first, then faster and harder until he felt the ripples of her climax and heard her soft scream against his ear. Only then did he release himself in her, feeling the stars burst against his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Three
 
 
T
hey slept little that night. Morgan seemed tacitly determined, since one night was all he would have of her, to make love to her in every way possible. Sarah, for her part, had no wish to refuse him.
Now she lay on her side, still naked and propped up on one elbow, staring down at him as the morning sunlight streamed into the wickiup's entrance. He looked boyish as he slept, the severe planes of his face softened, the tight line of his mouth relaxed.
My desperado,
she thought, smoothing back a lock of dark hair that had fallen over his forehead. She smiled to herself, planning how she was going to tell him, somewhere on the trail, that she had no intention of leaving him to go with Thierry, that she was only meeting “her Frenchman” in order to end their relationship. She would also tell him she was going to abdicate the title in favor of her sister and remain with him.
Morgan would argue, she knew. He'd protest that he wasn't good enough for her, had nothing to give her. But he was going to find out that nothing could be as stubborn as a duchess who knew what she wanted.
A shadow blotted out the sunlight coming from the doorway, and she gasped, grabbing for something to cover herself with. The only thing within reach was his shirt, and she pressed it against her breasts before turning to see who was there.
It was the old shaman, and he said something to her in his guttural-sounding language.
“Wait a moment, sir—I don't understand a word,” she muttered, knowing it was useless to say so in English, but he smiled as she reached over to shake Morgan awake.
He came instantly alert, turning to see the old man, who smiled again and said something else.
“I'll just be a minute, Duchess,” he said, grabbing for the spare blanket and wrapping it about his middle. He stepped outside the entrance of the wickiup and Sarah could hear them conversing in rapid Apache for several minutes. A few moments later Morgan came back inside, and she could hear other footsteps retreating down the pathway.
“The shaman says Naiche's pain is better this morning, and he has changed the poultice around the stumps of Naiche's fingers. So far the wounds are healing cleanly.”
“Thank God,” she murmured, guessing he was leading into something.
“He said it will be several days...a week, maybe...before he can ride again, and learn to shoot arrows from his bow because of the missing fingers....”
She nodded. “Does this concern us in some way, Morgan?”
He reached for his denims and began to thread one leg into them. “Only if you're willing for it to, Duchess,” he said, pausing before thrusting the other leg in. “The shaman says the Apaches are gonna escort us safely to Santa Fe, and Naiche wants the honor of leading,” he told her, his eyes unreadable. “He says it is the only way he can repay what we did for him yesterday.”
“What did you say, Morgan?” she said, trying not to show any sign of the desperate leap of joy his words had engendered.
“I said I would speak to you, but I thought we'd have to say no, for our business in Santa Fe might not wait,” he said.
Though she searched his face, he gave her no clue as to what
he
wanted. But hadn't he said Naiche's wishes would concern them if
she
was willing?
“Oh, Morgan,” she said, letting him see her smile, “I think it would be churlish to leave now and refuse Naiche that honor... ”
“But Sarah,” he began, kneeling in front of her, “what about the Fr—”
She put her finger over his lips, stopping him. “My business will wait—
he'll
wait, Morgan. He doesn't know how long it will take me to get there from Denver.” The idea of being given another week to be with Morgan, to convince him that she belonged with him, not with some titled Frenchman, was intoxicating.
His lips curved underneath her fingers. “All right, Duchess, I'll tell them we'll stay,” he said, starting to rise, but she caught at both sides of his still-unbuttoned trouser fly.
“Don't go, not yet, Morgan...I don't think we've properly said good-morning,” she breathed, letting his shirt fall away from her breasts.
He closed his eyes. “But you said...just this one night....”
She rose to her knees, facing him. “We've just been given another week, Morgan. Let's not waste it, shall we? While we're here with the Apaches, let us belong only to each other.” Surely a week was long enough to bind him to her forever!
He grinned down at her. “Duchess, your wish is my command,” he murmured just before he lowered his mouth to hers.
 
“What do you mean, she was here?” the man demanded of the same hotel manager who'd been dazzled by the French Nightingale. “Are you saying she is not here anymore?”
“That's right, she's been gone for...I‘see, three days now. She was only here for the one night, Mam'selle Fifi was, but she put on quite a show down at the Arkansas River Saloon. You another Frenchie, like her? Ya talk jes' like she does,” the manager babbled on inanely, until the man who'd been hunting Sarah Challoner wanted to reach across the polished pine counter and choke him.
“I am her
husband,
that is who I am, you fool, and the man who is with her has stolen my
wife,”
the would-be assassin lied, lacing his voice with righteous indignation. “Would you mind telling me where she and her, ah, paramour went from here?”
The man scratched his chin for a moment, then said, “Naw, I wouldn't mind, since she's yore wife—not iffen I knew, that is. But I don't. They waited for the mercantile to open, then they lit out. Appearances shore can be deceivin', cain't they? Why, she an' her mister—ahem—the man she was with, they seemed like right nice folks. I'm shore sorry t‘hear ya missed catchin' her, mister.”
Not as sorry as
he
was,
certainement!
He'd learned about Sarah's masquerading as “Fifi” when he'd reached Castle Rock early yesterday morning, as well as the fact that her highbred mare had been lame when they'd arrived there. He'd managed to board the nine-o'clock train south just minutes later, hoping that the mare's lameness would keep them here, at the railroad's terminus, long enough for him to catch up.
Ah well, there was no use crying over spilled milk, as the Americans said. He would merely have to keep trailing them. Sooner or later they were bound to make a mistake, and if he did not overtake them on the way to Santa Fe, he would trap them there. He could still make her death look like a random killing by an unknown murderer, as long as he was careful.
As hard as he rode in his effort to catch up, however, he caught no sight of his quarry. Even when he struck the Santa Fe Trail, where trading traffic was much more frequent, he could find no one who had seen the two, or their distinctive horses. One grizzled old mule skinner even opined that Apaches had probably gotten them.
Perhaps. But how would he know? The assassin did not like loose ends. He wanted to be
certain
that Sarah Challoner was dead before he went home to tell her sister that she had inherited the title.
At last he decided it would be best to go on to Santa Fe and wait for Sarah to appear. If she did not show up within a month, he would write to Malvern Hall and tell Kathryn Challoner he was making inquiries, but that her sister was feared dead from an Indian attack suffered when she eloped into the wild country with her bodyguard.
 
Santa Fe lay ahead, a city nestled in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It was time to say goodbye to the four Apache men who had ridden with them all the way from their stronghold in the mountains on the Colorado-New Mexico border.
“Naiche, I don't know how to thank you and these other men enough,” Sarah said with a sigh of genuine regret. “You've been so good to us.” Their very presence had often deterred trouble, she knew, that might have come from outlaws or other Indians lurking in the rock formations that sometimes flanked the trail. Sometimes, when their scout had reported the approach of parties of “bluecoats” or convoys of freight wagons that might have fired on the Apaches, they would melt into the surrounding countryside, but they always reappeared soon afterward.
Once Morgan had finished telling them what she had said, Sarah was surprised to see Naiche grin, dismount and kiss her hand in a manner that would have done credit to a royal prince.
“Calhoun teaches me this,” he said in passable English, and laughed at her expression of delight.
Morgan added in an amused drawl, “He asked me what a warrior in your country would do to say goodbye to you.”
Naiche said something else to Morgan, then looked back at Sarah, still grinning.
“He was speaking of the foal that will be born to your tall mare. It will be spotted like Rio, he says, but tall and fleet like Mare-With-Big-Name. He wishes he could see it someday.”
Sarah was startled, having scarcely thought about Morgan's stallion mating with Trafalgar since the day it had happened. So Trafalgar was in foal to Rio....
She hesitated, not knowing what to say. Unless things worked out between her and Morgan, there was no way she could make such a promise.
“Tell Naiche,” she said to Morgan, “that it would make my heart glad to see him again and show him the foal, but I will be thousands of miles across the ocean, and will have no way to bring that about.” Her voice was neutral, giving no clue, she hoped, of the way her heart was breaking. Thus far she had been unable to persuade Morgan he had a future with her, and there would be nothing left for her, once she had met with Thierry in Santa Fe, but to return to England.
“It makes Naiche's heart sad, too, to know that we will be so far away.”
“We?” she said, a wild hope humming to life within her breast.
His next words dashed that hope before it was fully formed. “I...I let him believe that I was going also,” he said with a shrug. He looked away. “I didn't try to explain the situation, Duchess. It's too complicated, and besides, then we would have to admit we were never married to start with.... He said he is glad that I will be out of the bluecoats' reach,” he added with a bitter twist to his mouth.
She looked away, too, feeling tears stinging her eyes. “Tell him we enjoyed their company on the trail, and will count them as friends always.”
After Morgan did so, Naiche held a hand upright in farewell. Then he gave a hoarse cry to the other three. The Apaches wheeled their ponies, and soon they were lost in a cloud of dust as they galloped back up the Santa Fe Trail toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
“Well, Duchess?” Morgan prompted after the Apaches were out of sight. He gestured to the city that lay ahead, just visible over a grove of piñon pines. “I reckon we oughta hurry on into Santa Fe and find your dashing Frenchman,” he drawled with a lightness he was far from feeling. He felt like a man proposing to hurry his own walk up the stairs to the gallows, where a noose waited just for him.
He and Sarah hadn't made love since leaving the Apache encampment, for there had been no privacy while they traveled. And now the thought of handing Sarah over to this faceless Frenchman, knowing that she would belong to this man, that she would be sharing his bed, receiving his amorous caresses and inevitably, someday, bearing his children, stabbed his heart like a bowie knife. The very thought of what—
who
—he was about to give up was enough to make Morgan want to go off somewhere lonesome and, like a wolf, howl his pain at the moon.
It had to be done, though. He'd gone over it and over it in his mind, worrying the idea like that same wolf chewing the last bone that stood between him and starvation. There was just no way around it. He had to give her up, not because he didn't love her enough, but because he
did
love her, and because he loved her, he had to want what was best for her. And Morgan Calhoun was about the farthest thing from what was best for her that he could possibly imagine.
“Morgan,
please,”
Sarah said, reaching out to grasp his wrist as he started to urge Rio onward, her voice one of entreaty that was agonizing to his self-control, “can't we talk about this? How many ways can I tell you that I love you? I can't marry Thierry de Châtellerault now. I don't love him—I didn't know what love was until I began to love you!”
He couldn't look at her, couldn't let himself see the love shining in her eyes, so he closed his and rubbed his knuckles wearily over them. “Sarah, it's not unusual for a woman to feel that way....” He hesitated, wanting to find the right words, and there were no right words. “That is, a lady who gives herself to a man ..for the first time...well, she usually fancies she's in love with that man ..at least for a while But that doesn't mean he's the man she should marry up with, to spend her life with.”
“Morgan! Are you saying
you don't love me?
That what we shared was just...passion? Lust?” Her voice thrummed with disbelief and pain.

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