Schulze, Dallas

by Gunfighter's Bride

Standing back from the mirror, she studied her reflection and was reasonably satisfied with what she saw. The gown was one of her favorites. The Prussian blue muslin was simply but elegantly cut, close-fitting through the bodice with the back of the skirt gathered into elegant folds that dropped to a hem trimmed with crisp, knife-edge pleats. The color suited her, making the most of her eyes and hair. Though she would have died before admitting as much, she wanted to look her best when Bishop returned. Considering the bedraggled creature he’d left behind, her pride demanded it.

  She gave one last pat to her hair before turning away from the mirror. She was feeling in better charity with her husband than she would have believed possible. Not only had he sent up the tea and crackers he’d insisted she have, but he’d also arranged for bath water to be brought to her. The tea and crackers had settled her stomach, though she’d certainly never tell Bishop that. But it was the bath that had made her feel as if she just might live to see another day. She was even feeling a bit hungry, which was something of a miracle considering how she’d felt a few hours ago. Lunch in the hotel dining room sounded quite pleasant. Bathed, freshly gowned, and properly coif-fed, she could face the thought of dining with her new husband with equanimity.

  As if in answer to her thoughts, Lila heard the sound of a key in the lock. She turned toward the sound, aware of a feeling of anticipation. Bishop pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  “I was starting to think you might have forgotten me,” she said lightly. She’d determined to try to put their relationship on a more pleasant footing than it had so far enjoyed.

  Bishop didn’t respond immediately. He simply stood in the open door, a rather odd expression on his face. “I have something to tell you.”

  Lila raised her brows. “Is something wrong?” “No.” But he didn’t sound too sure.

  Before she could question him further, he shifted to one side and gestured two children into the room— a boy of about twelve, with thick black hair and vivid blue eyes, and an exquisitely beautiful little girl of four or five with hair the color of newly minted gold. Her eyes were blue also but they were a softer, gentler shade. The children stood next to Bishop, looking at her—the boy with a wariness older than his years, the little girl with the kind of open curiosity possible only in the very young. Lila looked back at them, wondering who they might be and why they were with Bishop. The boy looked familiar, though she was sure she’d never met him before.

  She looked from them to Bishop. He opened his mouth—to offer an explanation? But before he could say anything, the little girl tugged at the hem of his coat.

  “Who’s that lady, Papa?”

  Papa?

  When she was a girl, Lila had been thrown from a horse and had hit the ground with force enough to knock the breath from her. She had a similar feeling right now.

  “This is Lila,” Bishop told the child without taking his eyes from Lila’s face. “Lila, these are my children. Gavin and Angelique.”

  “Your children?” Lila repeated blankly. He had children? She was still struggling to absorb that idea when Bishop dropped his next bit of news.

  “They’re going with us.”

  CHAPTER 6

  "Going with us? To Paris?” She must have misunderstood him, Lila thought. He couldn’t have said that these were his children. And, most especially, he couldn’t have said that these same children were going to be traveling with them, which meant—Good Lord, did that mean the children were going to be living with them?

  “I’ve arranged for another room for the children,” Bishop said, dispelling any hope that she’d misunderstood. “We’ll be leaving on tomorrow’s train.”

  “Oh.” Lila struggled to adjust her thinking. She looked at the children. They looked as bewildered as she felt, and Lila’s heart went out to them. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t their doing. She knew exactly where the blame lay, and she’d deal with him later. She conjured up a smile, hoping it didn’t look as false as it felt, and moved forward.

  “Well, Gavin and... and Angelique, I’m very pleased to meet you. I’m Lila, your... father’s new wife.” She couldn’t quite manage the word “stepmother.” Not yet. She held out her hand to Gavin, who took it after a slight but perceptible hesitation.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he mumbled in a tone so lacking in sincerity that Lila’s smile became genuine. Clearly he was versed in the polite forms but young enough to lack the guile to project false emotions. It was too bad his father didn’t share his son’s honesty. She shot Bishop a dark look before turning her attention to the little girl.

  “And you’re Angelique. That’s a very pretty name.”

  “Angel,” the child said. She was holding her brother’s hand, her eyes reflecting uncertainty.

  “Angel?” Lila questioned.

  “She means her name is Angel,” Gavin clarified. “She can’t say Angelique so everybody calls her Angel.”

  “I’ve never seen a lady with hair like yours before,” Angel said, curiosity overcoming her shyness.

  “Like mine?” Lila lifted one hand to her hair.

  “It’s looks like it’s on fire.”

  “Does it?” Lila smiled, thinking that it was her temper rather than her hair that was burning. “Well, I’ve never seen a real, live angel before, so this is a first for both of us, isn’t it?”

  “I isn’t an angel,” the little girl said, giggling. “That’s just my name.”

  “My mistake. But you look so much like an angel, how was I to know?”

  Angel giggled again and hid her face against her brother’s side. When Lila straightened, she caught Gavin’s eye. Though his expression couldn’t be termed friendly, he seemed a little less wary. It was easy to see that he and his sister were close. If she wanted to win him over, she’d obviously have to win his sister over first. And heaven help her, it looked as if she were going to need to win them both over.

  ***

  “How could you?” Lila leaned across the table, glaring at Bishop. “How could you just show up with those children in tow and announce that they were going with us?”

  “I didn’t have much choice.” Bishop lifted his cup, wishing it contained something stronger than coffee.

  They were sitting in the hotel dining room, the remains of their barely touched meals on the table in front of them. It had been his suggestion that they have lunch as planned even though the plan hadn’t originally included Gavin and Angelique. The four of them had eaten in near silence.

  Lila’s efforts to draw the children out had met with limited success. Angel was willing to be friendly but Gavin was uncommunicative to the point of being sullen. He spoke only when addressed directly and, even then, his responses were monosyllabic. At that, he spoke more than his father.

  When the children had finished their meals, Bishop gave Gavin a quarter and told him to take his sister to the emporium across the street and get them both some candy. From Gavin’s expression, it was clear that he recognized the gesture for exactly what it was—an excuse to get him and his sister out of the way so the adults could talk. But he took Angel’s hand and did as he was told.

  From across the table, Bishop had felt Lila’s simmering anger. On the rare occasions that their glances crossed, her eyes had promised retribution, but she hadn’t, by word or deed, done anything to make the children feel unwelcome.

  “I appreciate your kindness to the children,” he told her.

  “What did you expect me to do? Tell them the truth, which was that I didn’t even know they existed until you walked in the door with them?”

  “I hadn’t planned on doing things this way.” He signaled the waiter for another cup of coffee. “I was going to send for them later, after the baby was born. I thought that would be easier for you. But they couldn’t stay where they were anymore.”

  “How kind of you to consider me,” she said in a tone of sweet insincerity. “And just where were they? I don’t have a great deal of experience with children, but I don�
��t believe it’s customary to store them away like old trunks. Someone must have been taking care of them.”

  Bishop’s jaw tightened at her sarcasm but he couldn’t deny that she had ample justification for her anger. “They’ve been with their grandparents.”

  The waiter arrived just then to refill Bishop’s cup and Lila waited until he’d left before speaking again. “Would that be your parents? Or their mother’s? And where is their mother? I do hope you’re not going to surprise me again by telling me that you already have a wife. Surely Douglas would have mentioned that, even if the children slipped his mind.”

  “Douglas doesn’t know anything about the children or their mother. Isabelle died giving birth to Angelique,” he said shortly. “They’ve been staying with her mother and father since her death. But it was no longer a ... suitable arrangement.”

  Lila stared at him, at a loss for words. None of her mother’s many lessons in deportment and manners had dealt with the proper response to a situation like this. Was she supposed to express her regrets for his first wife’s death, a wife she hadn’t even known existed until barely an hour ago? Was she supposed to smile graciously and tell him that she was delighted to find herself stepmother to a little girl—and a halfgrown boy who was clearly no happier about the situation than she was?

  Not that what she said was important. Obviously, nothing was going to change his mind. The children were going with them and that was all there was to it. She was just going to have to get used to the idea, right along with being married to a man she didn’t know and carrying a child she wasn’t prepared for. To her dismay, Lila felt her eyes burn with sudden tears. She was not, ordinarily, a woman who cried often. But lately she’d found herself feeling weepy over nothing at all. And this certainly qualified as more than nothing. She forced She tears back with sheer willpower.

  “It seems everything has worked out quite nicely, hasn’t it?” she said evenly.

  “What has?”

  “I had wondered why you came back,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “After all, if you’d stayed away, no one would have known what had happened between us.”

  “I came back because you were carrying my child and I wasn’t going to let another man raise it.”

  “Why? Someone else was raising the two children you already had.” She was pleased to see the impact of her words in his eyes.

  The room was filled with other diners. The sounds of their voices and the clink of silver against china lapped against the sudden silence that fell between Bishop and Lila.

  “That was a mistake,” Bishop said, his voice low and grating.

  “A mistake?” Lila widened her eyes and gave him a patently false smile. “And now you’ve been able to use me to rectify that mistake. Isn’t that nice?”

  Without giving him a chance to reply, she pushed her chair back from the table and rose. Her intention was to sweep out of the dining room and leave Bishop sitting alone, not a genteel action but a thoroughly satisfying one. But his fingers clamped around her wrist before she could take so much as a step.

  “Sit down.” Bishop spoke quietly but there was an undercurrent of pure steel in his tone.

  Lila tilted her chin and looked down her nose at him. “I’d prefer to leave.”

  “Sit. Down.” The two words were separate and distinct. His eyes were clear blue and hard as ice.

  Lila debated her options. She was aware of the other diners casting them curious glances. Though they hadn’t raised their voices, it must have been obvious that there was more than a simple conversation going on between them. She could still pull away from Bishop and walk out. Surely he wouldn’t risk causing a scene by trying to stop her. As if in answer to her thoughts, Bishop’s fingers tightened subtly around her wrist.

  “Sit down, Lila,” he said almost gently. “Now.”

  She sat.

  He should have let her go, Bishop thought as he released her wrist and sat back in his chair. And he would have, except he couldn’t shake the feeling that he owed her an explanation. Obviously, Lila agreed.

  “I didn’t plan on taking the children with us,” he said.

  “Then perhaps you shouldn’t have bought them tickets for the train,” Lila suggested with sweet sarcasm.

  Bishop ground his teeth together and grabbed for his temper. Never in his life had he known anyone with the ability to make him so angry with so little effort.

  “I went to see them today to tell them that I’d be sending for them in a few months.”

  “When did you plan to tell me about them? When they arrived on the doorstep?”

  “I would have told you before then.”

  “The way you told me about them before you brought them here this morning?” Lila’s huff of disbelief came perilously close to being an unladylike snort.

  “I didn’t have a chance to tell you this morning.” Bishop thrust his fingers through his hair. Drawing a deep breath, he spoke in a tone of strained reason. “I know this came as a shock but I couldn’t leave them there.”

  “Why not?”

  Why not? Bishop stared at her. It was a reasonable question but that didn’t make it any easier to answer. How was he supposed to explain what he’d felt when he’d heard Gavin say that his father didn’t want them, seen the weary acceptance in the boy’s eyes?

  “They were unhappy,” he said simply.

  Lila stared at him. What was she supposed to say now? That he should have left the children with their grandparents anyway? That she didn’t care if they were unhappy as long as she didn’t have to deal with them? Feeling suddenly very tired, she sighed. “I hope they’re not poor travelers.”

  ***

  She had assumed that the children would make the long, arduous journey even more difficult, but that expectation was not met. They endured the confinement and boredom with more grace than she could have imagined possible. Considering the way their lives had been turned upside down, Lila would not have been at all surprised if they had been fussy and ill-tempered. Heaven knows, she was feeling more than a little cranky about the abrupt changes in her own life. But Gavin and Angel showed no sign of missing their grandparents and the home they’d had with them, which gave credence to Bishop’s statement that they had not been happy there.

  Though the idea of being a stepmother terrified Lila, it turned out, at least in the beginning, to be not nearly so difficult as she’d expected. The children were remarkably self-sufficient. Gavin, in particular, seemed old for his age. He appeared to expect nothing from the adults around him, either for himself or for his sister. And, from the way Angel turned to him for companionship, it seemed she shared his lack of expectations.

  But there was an edge of sullen resentment in Gavin’s attitude that was lacking in his little sister. Angel seemed to live up to her name. Lila had never met a more sunny-tempered child. When they first boarded the train, Angel settled into her seat and pressed her face to the window to watch the hustle and bustle of the station. Though Gavin pretended indifference, Lila noticed that he was not completely immune to the excitement.

  For a while after leaving St. Louis, the children were content to watch the passing countryside. Lila divided her attention between them and the book she had open in her lap. Susan had given her the book— a novel detailing the highly improbable adventures of a young woman who seemed to have more hair than wit, in Lila’s opinion. Not that she had the right to throw stones in that regard, she admitted with an inaudible sigh. Certainly her own judgment had not been above reproach in recent months.

  She stole a quick glance at Bishop. He was looking out the window at the farmland they were passing through. Seeing his attention elsewhere, Lila took the opportunity to study him. He really was a remarkably attractive man. His thick black hair was neatly combed and worn just long enough to brush the collar of his plain black coat. His features were even, handsome by any standards. The heavy black mustache gave him an air of danger that was undeniably appealing, and the sharp, vivid
blue of his eyes added the final, lethal touch.

  She certainly wasn’t the only woman to find him attractive. More than one feminine glance had been cast his way as they made their way through the station. She couldn’t deny feeling a certain satisfaction, maybe even a touch of possessiveness, that he was walking next to her.

  “Something wrong?” Bishop’s question startled Lila into a realization that she’d been caught blatantly staring at him. She cursed her fair skin as she felt color run up under it. She must look like a guilty schoolgirl, caught mooning over a handsome tutor.

  Lifting her chin, she scrambled for something intelligent to say. “I was just thinking that Gavin looks very like you.”

  Gavin’s head snapped around, his eyes startled. His gaze shot from her to his father. Lila thought she read something that might have been pleasure in his expression, but it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure. His eyes chilled and he looked suddenly older and harder than seemed possible for a boy his age.

  “Grandmother always said that blood would tell, especially if it was bad,” he said, his calm tone holding a bitter edge that made Lila catch her breath in shock.

  Bishop’s face was an emotionless mask as he met his son’s look. The muscle that ticked in his jaw was the only sign that he’d understood Gavin’s meaning. They stared at each other for the space of several heartbeats, involved in some silent, masculine duel that transcended age and relationship. In that moment, the resemblance between them was striking. From the color of their hair, to the solid strength of their jaws, to the ice blue of their eyes, it was like looking at daguerreotypes of the same person, man and boy. It was Angel who broke the tense exchange.

  “I think Gavin and Papa are very pretty,” she said, giving them both a sunny smile.

  “Pretty?” Bishop repeated, looking less than flattered.

  “Boys can’t be pretty,” Gavin told his little sister firmly. Lila was amused to see that he was blushing and suddenly looked very much like a twelve-year-old boy.

  “You’re pretty,” Angel repeated firmly, showing a stubborn streak beneath the soft blue eyes and pale-gold curls. “So’s Papa.”