The Rustler's Bride (2 page)

“And once you’ve saved it, what do you plan to do with it?”

“I…” At a loss for a reply, Victoria studied him once more, increasingly certain that she had recognized him. The lean yet muscled frame. The easy, relaxed seat in the saddle. The handsome features, now distorted with bruising and swelling. The blue eyes, framed with a thick sweep of dark lashes that contrasted with the golden hair. And, more than anything, the devil-may-care arrogance that radiated from every inch of him.

The judge interrupted the tense silence. He had pulled a law book open and was scanning the text. “It says here that the man must do a year’s labor for the woman. Then, if the couple dislikes the idea of remaining married to each other, the marriage can be terminated, but he’ll have to reimburse her for his fine.”

“That’s what I want from you,” Victoria said. “A year’s labor.”

The outlaw gave her thoughtful look. “How much is the fine?”

“Forget the fine,” Victoria told him. She swapped at a fly buzzing around her mouth, letting her impatience show. “It hardly matters,” she added tartly. “Since it was my father’s cows you were stealing and you’d be paying the fine to me.” She waited, and when he said nothing, she snapped, “Well, do you want to live or not?”

The outlaw nodded. He glanced at the preacher. “The name’s Declan Beaulieu.”

Five minutes later, they were man and wife.

****

Her father would kill her. Disinherit her. He’d have her scalped. Disemboweled. Drawn and quartered. In the grip of alarmed thoughts, Victoria rode along in silence, Declan Beaulieu by her side. She kept their pace slow on the dusty desert trail as she contrived to postpone the moment she would have to face her father’s fury when he discovered that his only child had thrown her future away on a rustler.

The five men who had witnessed the brief wedding ceremony had dispersed in haste. No doubt, the deputies would right now be galloping toward the saloons in town, competing to be the first to spread the news. Within the hour, there would scarcely be a soul in the small ranching town of Mariposa who hadn’t heard about her sudden marriage.

“So, did you dream about me?” the outlaw asked.

Startled, she shot a glance at him. “You recognized me?”

“You’ve polished up some.”

“Grown up,” she admitted. “It’s been five years.”

“Five and a half.” His battered lips curved into a semblance of a smile. “So, did you dream about me?”

Hot color washed up to her cheeks. “Perhaps I did.”

Of course, she’d dreamed of him. Endless, foolish, romantic dreams. At home, his presence had seemed to cling to every tree and every stone, to the ripple of the desert grass and the whisper of the wind over the plains. In the past two years, while she’d been away at boarding school, dreaming about the handsome outlaw she’d left behind in the Arizona Territory had become a way to blunt the edge of homesickness.

Her mind spun back five and a half years. She’d been riding the fence line, alone, against her father’s express orders not to venture so far from the house without an escort. She’d heard noises from a sheltered box canyon. Curious, she’d eased closer, and had found a small band of rustlers herding up unbranded calves.

She had tried to slip away unnoticed, but the sound of her horse’s hooves clattering against the rocks had alerted the outlaws. She’d been captured and hauled down to the ground, where she’d been tied up and left to whimper in terror while the men stood around arguing who would be the first to rape her and whose turn it would be to go next.

The fair haired leader of the gang had arrived just in time. He ordered the others to stand aside, and then he untied her and helped her up to her feet.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m only fifteen. I was so afraid they’d…hurt me.”

“Make no mistake, I’m one of them,” he told her.

Her panic-dry throat moved with difficulty as she swallowed. “But you saved me,” she stammered, fighting another onslaught of fear. She sniffed, wiped her nose with her sleeve, and stole a look at the rough, unkempt men who had only retreated a few paces away and remained hovering there, like predators unwilling to release their prey. “You may be their leader, but you saved me from what they were going to do, and I am grateful to you for that.”

The fair haired outlaw made no reply. Instead, he adjusted her torn shirt, buttoned up her coat and smoothed down her hair, as gentle and efficient as a mother dressing a toddler. Through all his ministrations, he kept up a distracting stream of chatter, slowly bringing her out of the terror that had left her shaken. To finish off, he found her hat on the ground, beat it back into shape and propped it on her head. Then he helped her up on her horse.

She stole one more glance at the other men. Two, a stocky Mexican and a tall Anglo with a missing front tooth were casting mean looks in her direction, as if resentful of having been cheated out of their entertainment. The rest seemed to have accepted the outcome and were occupied with dinner preparations. A fire already cracked in a circle of stones.

“Will you take me home?” she asked.

The outlaw leader hesitated, turned to survey his men. “Watch the smoke,” he called out to the one in charge of the fire. “It’s still light enough see it from a distance.” He glanced back at her and gave a small shrug, as if to say,
what the hell, come what may
. “All right,” he said, and then he called out once more, with the sharp ring of a command in his voice. “Be packed and ready to ride out in an hour.”

Then he vaulted into the saddle and escorted her home. By now, the fear that had numbed her earlier had mellowed into excitement that tingled on her skin. She kept her horse to a walk, wanting to postpone their parting. Step by step the distance fell away, and soon they were on the outskirts of the ranch. Just before they got close enough to risk being seen from the stable yard, the outlaw curled one hand over her horse’s reins to halt her.

He gave her a warm, slow smile that crinkled his blue eyes at the corners. Reaching out a hand, he brushed his fingers through her dark tresses that had broken free from their braid. He spoke quietly, his eyes searching her face, as if to memorize her features. “Maybe one day it will be your turn to help me. All I ask for now is that you’ll dream of me tonight. Dream of me, the way a girl dreams of a sweetheart. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes,” she promised, her lashes demurely lowered.

After they parted, Victoria continued to the stable yard and dismounted. She took her time looking after her horse.
Be ready to ride out in an hour
, she’d heard the outlaw leader say. She wanted to give him a little longer, to make sure he got away.

When she finally walked into the house, her clothes dusty and torn, her face streaked with tears, her father greeted her with an explosive mix of terror and relief and anger. He locked her up in her room while the ranch hands rode after the rustlers, but by then the gang of thieves had made their escape.

That night, when Victoria prepared for bed, she noticed that she’d lost the strip of cornflower blue silk that had been twined into her braid.

Now, beside her, Declan Beaulieu broke the silence. “I want my blue ribbon back.”

“I believe it’s mine,” Victoria replied.

Before they had taken their vows in front of the preacher beneath the hanging oak, she had tied the ribbon into a bow that she had attached to the collar of her blouse. It was the only decoration she had worn for her wedding, apart from the small pink desert weed the preacher had taken the trouble to pluck from the ground and offer to her. The bride and groom, like the rest of the wedding party, had remained on horseback, and the judge had stayed in his buggy.

When Declan Beaulieu spoke again, his voice was so low she could barely hear his words. “As you wish,” he said. “I guess I don’t need a ribbon to remind me of you anymore. After all, you’re my wife now. To have and to hold. To love and to honor.”

“To cherish and obey,” she added in a tone of sarcasm, meant to emphasize that theirs was a marriage in name only.

“That’s a fair deal,” he replied. “If you obey, I might be willing to cherish.”

****

Declan studied Victoria Sinclair from the corner of his good eye. It seemed to him that he had spent much of the past decade trying to catch a glimpse of her. In the beginning, he had wondered if the girl might be the key to destroying Andrew Sinclair. Then, a few years later, when he’d caught the gang of thugs he employed preparing to rape her, he had accepted that he could never sink as low as using a woman to achieve his revenge.

He’d continued to keep an eye on her, had seen her grow from a tomboy in pigtails and canvas overalls into a beautiful woman full of spirit and adventure. He’d seen her canter on horseback through a summer storm, her head thrown back, long dark hair rippling in the wind behind her, arms raised toward the sky as the heavy raindrops pelted down her, soaking her clothing until it molded to every curve of her body.

When he learned she’d gone away to school, he’d waited for her to return.

But he had not expected to be hanging at the end of a rope when he saw her again.

“Here comes trouble,” he heard her mutter now.

Ahead of them, a magnificent black stallion streaked along, the rider moving in unison with the animal.
Andrew Sinclair.
Declan knew no one else was allowed to ride the stallion. Rearing to a halt as he reached them, Victoria’s father whirled around and lined his mount alongside his daughter’s palomino mare, matching his pace to their slow walk.

“What in devil’s name have you done?” he roared.

Victoria raised her brows, appearing unruffled, but on her slender neck, just above the blue silk ribbon that decorated the collar of her blouse, Declan could see the nervous ripple of her throat that revealed the extent of her anxiety.

“That’s quick,” she remarked to her father in a cool tone. “Who told you?”

“O’Malley rode by to gloat.” Andrew Sinclair urged his horse forward, charging past them, and then he turned the black stallion sideways and came to a halt, blocking their path on the narrow desert trail, forcing them to a stop.

Declan had never seen his enemy so close before, but he knew the man’s features as well as his own. Sinclair was tall, but lean and wiry, and very dark. With slashing brows, and hollow cheeks that were already at midday shadowed with coal black stubble, he possessed looks that seemed almost satanic in their brooding intensity.

His pewter gray eyes narrowed on Declan. “And who the hell are you?”

“I’m Declan Beaulieu,” he replied, and then he added, “My folks are from Kansas.” The information triggered no reaction in Sinclair. The corners of Declan’s bruised lips curled into a sneer of irony. The man whose downfall he had spent the best part of a decade plotting didn’t even know who he was.

Finished with his inspection, Sinclair returned his attention to his daughter. “Why, Ria?” he asked in a tone that could be best described as pleading.

Declan hid his surprise, both at the tone and the name.

Not Vicky. Not Tory.
Ria.
It suited the girl. It had a wild and untamed feel to it, just as she did. And yet, when he looked at her now, he could see little of the wildness that had enchanted him so much in the past. He saw a lady in corset and gloves, and wondered if two years of education might have the power to stifle a woman’s spirit.

“You can’t rescue every wounded critter,” Sinclair was telling the girl. “He’s not a stray dog, or a mangy cat, or a lame donkey. He is a man, and you married her.”

“I couldn’t let him die.”

“And why not?” Sinclair returned. Calmer now, he set his stallion into motion again and moved aside to free up the trail, taking his place next to the girl. They resumed their journey through the desert scrub and clumps of cacti.

“What about Senator Botheridge?” Sinclair asked. “Or that railroad magnate, or the English earl? They are all waiting for your answer. What will you tell them now? That you can’t marry them because you married an outlaw?”

“He’s the one, father. The one who rescued me when I was fifteen and those men were going to rape me. If it weren’t for him, I’d be dead, or in such disgrace that I’d want to be.”

“You fool.” Sinclair’s voice was harsh. “He’s a criminal. Those thugs who tried to rape you were working for him. For all you know, he might have set them on you and then pretended to rescue you in order to gain your trust.”

The words spilled out of Declan before he had time think. “I’d never use a woman like that. And I didn’t ask her to help me now. The marriage was her idea. Hers alone. I had no part in it, except giving my name and saying the words when prompted by the preacher.”