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Authors: Laurie Grant

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

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BOOK: The Duchess and Desperado
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“I don't know for sure...but I suspect it was Carl.” Nora told her. “He and Morgan are about the same height, and both have dark hair. With a mask on, it'd be hard to tell who it was. He was the one who told the soldiers that he thought Morgan did it, while I...kept quiet, to my shame. I've paid for the wrong I did Morgan every day of my life, Sarah Challoner.... Carl Tackett is a cruel, penny-pinching man, you see, and I think he guessed I was with Morgan that night, so he's made my life hell....” She paused, clearly out of breath.
“Mrs. Tackett, you're very good to tell me this,” Sarah said. “But...are you—
can
you possibly testify to this, in court?” Even as she asked the question, her eyes told her that what she was asking was impossible.
Nora Tackett shook her head, and a tear trickled down the faded cheek. “I'm sorry...I don't think I'd live through the journey. I'm in such pain...the laudanum doesn't even keep the pain down now.”
Sarah tried not to let her crushing disappointment show. To have come so close... “Then how can what you've told me—”
Nora Tackett interrupted. “I can't go testify, but I can still sign my name if you wanted to take down what I said, Duchess. Wouldn't that be almost as good?”
Sarah rubbed her hands together. “But we'd need a witness—two would be better. It can't be me, naturally, since I'm known to be..a friend of Morgan's,” she added, stumbling over what to call herself to this woman who had also known Morgan intimately, so many years before.
“Go wake Marshal Stoner, Celia, and the woman that owns this place,” Sarah instructed her servant. “Two will suffice as witnesses to the document.”
“So that's why you asked the marshal along on this jaunt, niece,” said a familiar voice behind her, startling Sarah, for she hadn't heard Uncle Frederick enter the room.
An hour and a half later, the statement providing Morgan's alibi on the night of the army payroll robbery had been signed in Nora Tackett's wavering hand and witnessed by the sleepy-eyed marshal and the proprietress of the Calhoun Crossing Hotel.
“Thank you, Mrs. Tackett,” Sarah said, bending over to kiss the pale cheek. “And God bless you for what you've done. Should you even go home? Why not stay in town, so that the doctor will be nearby?” She couldn't bear to think of this woman going home to Carl Tackett, who might enact some savage reprisal if he learned what his wife had done.
Nora Tackett looked exhausted, but she managed one more smile. “You're welcome, Duchess. But don't you worry about me Carl'll still be sleepin' off his drunk by the time I get home. Daisy won't tell him what I've done tonight—” she looked at the black woman, who nodded in staunch agreement “—and by the time he finds out, I'll likely be beyond his reach, anyway. I—I can tell you'll be good to my—to Morgan. Give him a kiss for me, would you?”
“I will,” promised Sarah, touched.
“And you marry him and give him lots of pretty babies, okay? I could have done that, you know, if I hadn't thought more of my pride than of Morgan's life.”
Now Sarah's heart was wrenched with pity. What she said was true—so much would have been different if the ill woman sitting before her had not prized her reputation and the security of her future so much. But at least she had done the right thing now, before it was too late. If only Nora Tackett's letter could be enough to clear Morgan Calhoun's name of the other charges, too!
Chapter Thirty
 
 
T
hree days after Sarah's journey to Calhoun Crossing the trial began, and it was now into its second day. So far, the judge had appeared unmoved as Morgan, under oath, had described how the rumors had begun upon his return to his hometown after the war, rumors that implied he had not left behind the raiding, thieving ways he had learned as one of Mosby's Rangers, rumors that over the next three years steadily discredited him as an honest man.
Army officers and the journalists who had come from as far away as St. Louis were already speculating about how soon Morgan Calhoun would hang when Matthew Quinn, his lawyer, recalled his client to the stand.
“Mr. Calhoun, did you know a lady named Miss Nora Lane?”
Just as Quinn uttered the name, a commotion erupted in the spectators' rows in the back of the courtroom. Sarah, who sat in the front of those rows with her uncle and Celia, turned in her seat and saw that a man had jumped to his feet, his face furious.
“Your Honor, I object! That was my late wife's maiden name, and I object to it being sullied by this—this outlaw!”
So poor Nora Tackett was now at peace, Sarah mused. God rest her soul. And this red-faced fool was Carl Tackett, her husband. Tackett may once have resembled Morgan in his height and general build, but no more. The intervening years—and too much nightly drinking—had made him paunchy and sallow-faced. But Sarah guessed that his eyes had always been small and mean.
The district federal judge lifted his head and stared at Tackett with bored eyes. “Who are you?”
“Carl Tackett, Your Honor. Nora Lane Tackett was my wife.”
“Well, Mr. Tackett, you're not an attorney, so you can't object. While I'm sympathetic to you in the loss of your wife, I'd suggest you not repeat such an outburst.”
Sarah watched Tackett sit down, his face sullen.
“Mr. Quinn, you may continue,” the judge said in his sonorous monotone.
“Mr. Calhoun, how was the late Nora Tackett, née Nora Lane, significant in your life when you were living in Calhoun Crossing?”
Sarah watched conflicting emotions streak across Morgan's face as he sat on the stand. He'd been astonished when she'd returned to Austin and shown him the letter, and sad, too, when he'd heard that the woman he had once loved was dying.
“Before the war she was my sweetheart,” Morgan said, his voice steady and clear. “We were engaged for a time. We planned to marry after the war. Then after I came back, and the rumors started that I was rustlin' cattle and so forth, she...she came to me and broke our engagement.”
“How did you feel about her then?”
Morgan kept his eye on Quinn as he answered, “I—I still loved her, but I understood. With all the whisperin' about me, with every rustled horse and missin' cow bein' blamed on me, she was afraid of bein' married to a man who'd end up behind bars—or even bein' hanged.”
“But eventually the lady let you know, in no uncertain terms, that she still had a certain, um,
passion
for you, did she not?”
Once again Sarah saw Tackett leap to his feet, wild-eyed with rage. “Your Honor!” he cried.
“Mr. Tackett, sit down and shut up!” the judge shouted.
Quelled, Tackett sat again, but he continued to focus a hateful glare on Morgan.
Morgan looked down and was silent. Sarah ached for him, knowing he was torn between uttering the truth that could help him and keeping silent to avoid sullying a dead woman's reputation.
“Mr. Calhoun, I would remind you, you are under oath,” Quinn said gently.
“Yes, she did,” Morgan said at last.
“Objection!” cried the prosecuting attorney. “Calls for a conclusion by the witness as to the state of mind of a deceased lady, one who is obviously now unable to defend herself!”
Matthew Quinn looked unruffled. “I'll withdraw the question, and ask instead what the lady, then Miss Nora Lane,
did.
Is it true that on the night of August 8, 1869, she came to you at your house on the Flying C Ranch and offered herself to you?”
A buzz of conversation like the hum of a million wasps ensued, and the judge had to pound his gavel and shout, “Order!
Order
! Quiet, or I'll clear the courtroom!”
When silence had been restored, Morgan finally said, “Yes, she did,” but he was clearly uncomfortable at the admission.
“And did you take her to your bed, where both of you stayed until morning?”
“Yes.” Then Sarah saw that Morgan was looking right into her eyes, and she tried to project all the love she felt for him into hers.
It's all right, love. That's all in the past, and we're going to win this, you'll see
.
“No more questions, Your Honor,” Quinn said.
Morgan was then cross-examined, but the prosecutor failed to find any holes in his story, and said in a disgusted voice as he dismissed Morgan from the stand, “As the late Mrs. Tackett's husband has expressed, it's very convenient for your case that the lady is dead.”
Quinn seemed to have been waiting for that moment. He pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“Your Honor, I'd like to have this statement admitted into evidence. It was dictated by the lady herself, just a few days before her untimely death from cancer—”
At this point Tackett launched himself from his seat and ran at Quinn, his hands outstretched as if he meant to choke the Yankee defense attorney. He might have succeeded, too, if several blue-coated officers hadn't managed to catch up to him first.
“Mr. Tackett, you are now under arrest for contempt of court,” the judge announced. “Take him down to the brig and let him cool off,” he directed the officers who were holding the struggling Tackett.
“Your Honor, might I suggest letting him stay, though under guard, of course?” Quinn suggested. “I have a reason for my suggestion, of course, which will become apparent.”
“Very well,” the judge agreed, eyeing Quinn with some surprise. Tackett was forced back into his seat, but he was now flanked by soldiers, and an armed sergeant stood watching him from the nearby aisle.
Quinn now handed the paper to the judge, who put on spectacles and read it, then gave it back to the attorney.
“Mr. Quinn, why don't you just read the letter aloud?”
“I'll do that, Your Honor,” Quinn said, apparently unable to resist shooting a grin at Sarah. She smiled encouragingly back.
“To whom it may concern: I, Nora Lane Tackett, aware that my death is imminent, and desiring to go to my Maker with a clean conscience, do hereby set down an account of what happened on the night of August 8, 1869.
“On that night I went to the Flying C Ranch, and went into the ranch house, where I found its owner, Morgan Calhoun. He seemed surprised to see me, but when I informed him I had missed him, he made me welcome. I asked him to embrace me, and he obliged. As God is my witness, Morgan Calhoun had always behaved in a gentlemanly fashion toward me, even when I broke our engagement, but I went there that night with the intent of seducing him into making love to me, and that is exactly what happened. During the night Morgan Calhoun never left his house, nor did I. In fact, I was still there when the sun rose the next morning, though I departed soon after, and managed to steal back into my widowed mother's house so quietly that she never knew of my night of illicit passion.
“It was not until later that I heard of Morgan Calhoun being arrested for the murder of the stage driver and the army payroll robbery that had taken place that night, but I can swear that he could not possibly have done either crime, because he was with me the entire time. It is my decided opinion—though I cannot prove it—that the man whom I later married, Carl Tackett, was the man who robbed the stage carrying the army payroll and killed the driver, for after Morgan fled town Carl had the money to buy the ranch, which had been seized by the government, and he had never had much money before.
“In this statement I would like to apologize to Morgan Calhoun for my cowardice, which resulted in him being accused of a crime he never committed, which I believe forced him into a path he would never otherwise have taken.
“Signed with my hand this seventeenth day of October, 1872, Nora Tackett.
Witnesses present: Jackson Stoner, U.S. marshal, and Flora Wilcox, owner of the Calhoun Crossing Hotel.”
There was silence for the space of several seconds as the judge and the rest of the court absorbed the impact of the written statement, and then pandemonium reigned.
Once more, the judge shouted and pounded his gavel until the court was quiet enough for Matthew Quinn to announce that he was calling Marshal Jackson Stoner to the stand.
In quick succession Quinn questioned the marshal and Flora Wilcox, and both confirmed that Nora Tackett had dictated that very statement in their presence. The prosecutor was unable to bully them into saying the statement had been made under any sort of duress, or motivated by monetary persuasion by anyone, such as Morgan Calhoun's English friend, Sarah Challoner, the Duchess of Malvern, who had been writing down the ill woman's statement as she dictated it.
Then Carl Tackett made a desperate, unsuccessful attempt to break loose from his captors. The judge pounded and shouted for five minutes on end, trying to subdue the courtroom, until at last he motioned one of the soldiers to the front of the room, and whispered into his ear. The soldier then fired his pistol once into the ceiling.
No one spoke again as plaster dust drifted lazily downward and the echo of the pistol died away. Sarah saw Morgan's lips curve upward into a grin—the first one she'd seen in days—as he gazed up at the one-inch hole in the ceiling.
“Mr. Calhoun, after hearing that...er... what I would have to call a posthumous statement from Nora Tackett, I believe I have no choice but to dismiss the case against you.”
Sarah let out a most unduchesslike cheer, which earned her another grin from Morgan. Her uncle merely rolled his eyes.
“And Mr. Tackett,” the judge said heavily, raising his gaze to where Nora Tackett's husband sat, his tace now livid, in the back of the courtroom, “you may now consider yourself under arrest.”
Tackett exploded out of his seat in spite of the guards that flanked him.
“But, judge, you can't arrest me based on a dead woman's
opinion!”
he shouted.
The judge raised a bushy eyebrow. “Just a few minutes ago you were demanding respect for that dead woman, Tackett. Now mind you, I don't know at this point if we'll be able to prove you committed murder and robbery, but we'll see, Tackett, we'll see. Take him away, boys.”
Sarah saw Tackett glare at Morgan and then herself before he was pushed out of the courtroom by the soldiers. Then the prosecutor was rising, his face indignant.
“Your Honor, may I remind the court there are several other robbery charges pending against Morgan Calhoun, charges from localities all over the West, from as near as Houston and as far away as western New Mexico Territory? I believe we are obligated to hold Mr. Calhoun until these other entities can press charges, charges that Calhoun will not so easily wriggle out of.”
Sarah had known such a reminder was coming. When she had returned from Calhoun Crossing, Morgan had warned her not to be too jubilant at obtaining Nora's statement He'd reminded her that while he had not murdered or taken the army payroll, he
had
robbed a few other stagecoaches and a handful of individuals. He appreciated Sarah's generous offer to reimburse anyone who could prove that Morgan had stolen a specific amount from him, he'd said, but no judge in the United States would be willing to dismiss robbery charges simply because of that.
“But wouldn't your heroic protection of a foreign dignitary—me, of course, and at great peril to yourself—move a court to be lenient?” she had asked Morgan, determined to give him a reason for hope.
“Lenient enough to make him give me nineteen years in prison rather than twenty,” Morgan had retorted, his shoulders slumping. “Face it, Duchess, even if we win this first case, I'm going to be an old man when I'm out from behind bars. Forget me, and go back to England where you belong.”
Sarah made a desperate gesture to gain Quinn's attention, and when she had it, she pointed to the clock on the wall, praying he would understand.
He did, apparently, for he arose and said, “Your Honor, as the hour is late on a Friday afternoon, may we request a recess until the following Monday morning?”
“I'll grant that, Mr. Quinn, but your client will continue to be held until we can communicate with the other localities in which Mr. Calhoun has allegedly pulled robberies.”
“I understand, Your Honor.”
“Sarah, what do you have up your sleeve?” Morgan asked warily when she managed to reach his side at the front of the court.
BOOK: The Duchess and Desperado
6.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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