The Rustler's Bride

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The Rustler's Bride Page 6

by Tatiana March

“Better than stealing my cows,” Sinclair thundered.

  Victoria had picked up her silverware again, but instead of taking another mouthful, she leaned eagerly toward her father. “Father, tell me more about that beef order. It’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “We could use the cash.” Sinclair threw a sour look at Declan. “It will be nice for a change to get paid when the numbers of my heard dwindle.”

  Victoria bit her lip and lowered her eyes to her plate. She toyed nervously with the food. On her face, Declan could see hurt and determination, and the effort as she racked her brain for something positive to say. It only took her a moment to regroup. Then she made another comment about the running of the ranch. Sinclair gave another gruff response.

  And that was how the evening went until the fruit pie had been eaten and the coffee poured and drunk. Victoria did her best to diffuse the hostile mood, her father shot down every effort she made, and Declan listened in sullen silence.

  “Thank you,” he said and stood as soon as it was polite to leave.

  “Good night,” Victoria said.

  “Good riddance, more like,” Sinclair grumbled.

  “Father!”

  Declan was already on his way out when he heard Sinclair’s insult and Victoria’s angry outburst. He closed the door behind him to seal their voices away. Unease coursed through him as he undressed and settled in the narrow brass bed. It was becoming vital reach the final stage of his revenge plan soon. Otherwise, Victoria might spoil things by bringing the situation to a head with her father before the pieces were properly in place.

  ****

  All through the following day, Victoria continued her labors with the yellow cotton and thread and needle. Lunch was a piece of bread and cheese. By the time the shadows lengthened outside her window, her eyes were blurred, her fingers were bleeding, and her patience was in tatters. But she had a completed shirt. It had taken her three days. The finishing touches—collar and cuffs and buttons—had almost defeated her, but she was nothing if not determined.

  Her head snapped upright when a ruckus flooded in through the open window. Gunshots. The clanking of tin cans. A chorus of riotous yells. The cowboys were at it again—shooting the place down, and scaring the birds from the trees and the prairie dogs in their burrows. She shoved the shirt aside and hurried out to the yard.

  The two black cowboys were loitering outside the forge, waiting for the blacksmith to finish work and join them. Clyde, a muscular man in his thirties, was coaxing a tune from a mouthorgan. Johnston, a lanky youth in his teens, was dancing a jig of some kind, his feet shuffling on the dusty ground.

  He called out a greeting. “Howdy, Miss Victoria.”

  She jerked her head toward the noises. “What’s that about?”

  Clyde lowered his mouthorgan. “Lenny has a new Colt forty-five.”

  Victoria nodded and set off toward the piece of sandy ground beyond the corrals that had been set up for shooting practice. She could see them from fifty paces away. It was Declan, and the three Anglo cowboys, Hank and Stan and Lenny.

  She could not see the two Mexicans. “Where are Juarez and Flaco?” she asked as she reached the men. They had never had any racial tension at Red Rock, and she wanted to keep it that way.

  Hank pushed his hat back on his head. “Gone. Left this morning.” Hank was a big bull of a man, in his forties, as solid and dependable as the boulders that lined the riverside.

  “What do you mean, gone?” she asked. They were shorthanded already.

  Stan, a wizened old cowboy not a day under sixty, replied, “They quit. Went to work in one of them ranchos south of Tucson. So’s they can talk Spanish. They missed having other Mexican vaqueros around.”

  “And pretty maids to flirt with,” Lenny put in. His tone grew petulant. “And they got fed up with busting their gut from sunup to sundown.”

  Victoria frowned. She wanted to say she understood that everyone was under strain of overwork, and apologize for it, but Lenny had already turned away and was reloading a shiny new nickel plated Colt. In his middle twenties, Lenny had tousled brown hair and even features that made him popular with the ladies. He also had a combative streak, a need to prove his masculinity that got him embroiled in saloon fights.

  Without another comment, Lenny whirled around and crouched. He pointed the gun and lifted his other hand to pull back the hammer. Bang-bang-bang. He fired six shots in rapid sequence. Five tin cans, perched on log stumps on the far side of the clearing, flew into the air and clattered back down again.

  The smoking gun in his hand, Lenny turned around with a swagger. “Can you best that, Beaulieu?” he said, strutting over to Declan.

  Declan had been leaning against a fence post, arms crossed across his chest. Victoria could feel him watching her from beneath the brim of his black Stetson. “The sheriff took my guns,” he said lazily, not moving from his easy pose.

  Lenny made clucking chicken noises.

  Declan pushed up from the post. “You have cartridges for that pea shooter?”

  A flush rose on Lenny’s smooth skin. “I’ll load it for you. In case you don’t know how.”

  Declan nodded. “You do that.”

  Victoria waited uneasily while Lenny dug in his coat pocket for bullets and inserted them one by one. The sun had disappeared below the horizon. The daylight was fading rapidly. In the corral, the horses moved restlessly, but she knew they were—and needed to be—used to the sounds of gunfire.

  “You want to make a wager?” Lenny said.

  “Sure.” Declan cocked an eyebrow. “What can you afford to lose?”

  Lenny hooted with confident laughter. “You can have my new boots.” He sent a sly glance toward Victoria. “And I’ll have a kiss from your wife.”

  Declan took the gun and weighed it in his hand. “What is this?” he muttered. “A kid’s toy?”

  The blush on Lenny’s cheeks darkened. He was not very tall, about five foot eight, and Victoria guessed he might have gone for the short barreled model because the longer barrel would have looked ungainly against his thigh.

  “I’ll go and set up the tin cans for you,” Lenny said.

  “Don’t bother,” Declan replied. “Your boots will be too small for me and my wife’s kisses are not mine to sell.”

  Before he’d finished the sentence, he spun around and fired, all in a single motion, his left hand cocking the hammer for a new shot even before the sound of the previous one had faded. The last remaining tin can flew backwards and bounced like a panicked animal along the ground, each of the six bullets sending it farther into the distance.

  “Not a bad little pea shooter,” Declan said as he casually turned back and handed the gun to Lenny, whose Adam’s apple was bobbing frantically up and down.

  Victoria felt a frisson travel over her. An outlaw. Gunfighter. A criminal. That’s what Declan was, but somehow in all her romantic dreams she had managed to gloss over that detail. She bit her lip. Had Declan meant his actions to be a reminder? She glanced at him, but his expression as he studied her in the thickening dusk was unreadable.

  “You ever hire out your gun, Beaulieu?” Hank asked.

  “Never have, and never intend to,” Declan replied.

  “Miss Ria, you show Lenny what you can do,” Stan said with an eager glint in his faded brown eyes. “It’s a good pair of boots he’s wagered. They might fit me real nice.” Most of his teeth were missing and his speech came out in a muffled hiss.

  Stan and Hank had been at Red Rock while Victoria was growing up, and it was Stan who had taught her to shoot. Victoria glanced up at the sky. The twilight would last another fifteen minutes. The temptation to show off, just as Declan had, got the better of her.

  “Sure,” she said, imitating Declan’s lazy drawl. She put out her hand to Lenny, who was digging in the pockets of his coat.

  “Damn,” he said. “I’m out of bullets.” He looked up at her. “Miss Ria, can you run into the house and get a box of forty-five shells?�
��

  She hesitated. The light was going. There was a chill in the air.

  “Please, Miss Ria,” Lenny said, humor and cockiness mixing in his tone. “It scares me to walk around with an unloaded gun.”

  Stan cackled with laughter. “You think one of them husband’s might come after you?”

  Lenny got his swagger back. At least as a ladies’ man he was the undisputed champion. “It’s the women that frighten me more,” he said with a wink. “Some of them is greedier for me than pigs at a bucketful of corn.”

  “All right,” Victoria said. “Don’t go anywhere.” She raced back to the house, into her father’s office. Beneath the gun rack mounted on the wall stood a locked cabinet. She fished out the key from a desk drawer, unlocked the cabinet—and stared. Instead of rows and rows of ammunition, there were barely a dozen boxes of rifle cartridges, and a handful of shotgun shells, and six boxes of bullets for a forty-five caliber revolver.

  Alarmed, she locked the cabinet and rose. Her father must be getting absent minded. Until they got a new order in, they couldn’t afford to waste ammunition on amusement. Her movements were reluctant as she returned to the men in the clearing. How could she explain the situation without embarrassing her father?

  “I...” she began.

  Loud clanking sounds drowned out her hesitation. It was Cookie’s dinner gong. He’d suspended a row of tin plates from the beams that formed the flat roof of the cookhouse. To announce the meals, he beat on them with a big iron ladle.

  “Sorry, Miss Ria, we’ll do it another time.” Lenny was already headed toward the cookhouse where the glow of lanterns cut vertical stripes into the twilight. “I’m starving.”

  “Me too,” Hank said, and touched the brim of his hat. “Good night, Miss Ria.”

  Victoria turned to Declan. “My father wants you to join us for dinner again tonight.” She did not care if the others heard the stiff formality of her invitation. Cookie had told her that both her father and Declan had made the nature of her marriage clear to the men.

  His gaze lingered on her. From the moment Victoria came out to join the shooting, she had felt Declan watching her. It made her skin tingle and her body tremble. Recollections of the kiss they had shared flooded her, and she was grateful for the encroaching darkness that hid her reaction.

  “No,” Declan said. “Tell him I’ll eat with the men tonight.”

  I’ll eat with the men. Victoria swallowed. Afterward, Declan would be alone in his room. It was the prompt she had been waiting for. It was the sign to proceed. She buried the last trace of doubt, the last ounce of hesitation. Her plan was unfolding, step by step by step.

  ****

  Late into the night, Declan lay awake on his straw mattress, clad in nothing but his long underwear. A single candle flickered on the nightstand. Arms crossed beneath his head, he stared at the whitewashed ceiling where he could just about make out the shape of a tiny spider slowly crawling its way across.

  The storm that had been brewing for days had finally arrived. Rain pelted against the window glass. Wind howled across the plateau in fierce gusts that slammed into the side of the building. There was no lightning or thunder, just the solid blackness beyond the unshuttered window.

  The wild weather suited his restless mood.

  Just like the day before, he had seen little of Victoria during working hours. There’d been none of her earlier skulking about. She was planning something. He knew it in his gut. She wanted to toy with temptation, as a child might toy with fire. He’d seen it in her eyes when she came to watch the shooting, had felt it in the air between them.

  If he lacked the will to resist there would be trouble.

  A rhythmic banging at the door interrupted his thoughts.

  Someone knocking, and not caring if the sound echoed around the house. He got up, went to the door, pulled it open. It was Victoria. He had underestimated her audacity. She stood in the hall, a lamp in one hand, a bundle of lemon yellow fabric in the other. Her hair cascaded in a glossy dark curtain past her shoulders. She wore nothing but a nightgown and a thin wrapper. When she lifted the lamp higher, the light fell on her clothing. Declan gritted his teeth. If he wasn’t mistaken, the white garments were damn near transparent.

  “What do you want?” he said gruffly.

  “May I come in?”

  Declan leaned past her to peer out. The corridor was empty—for now. Her knocking had been louder than Cookie’s dinner gong.

  “No,” he replied. “You can’t come in.”

  She ignored him and sailed in anyway, the flimsy fabric fluttering about her bare feet. He stepped aside. Anything not to touch her. He recalled the maelstrom of want and need that had seized him when they kissed at the barn, and he didn’t want to be pulled into it again. He ducked down to get one of his boots from the floor and jammed it under the door to keep it open. If her father came, an open door might not seem so bad.

  “What do you want?” he asked once more as he straightened.

  She turned to set the lamp down on the small chest of drawers near the door. His mouth went dry. Now, with the light behind her, he could see her body silhouetted against the thin garments. High breasts. The curve of a hip. The length of a thigh. He crossed his arms over his chest. As if that would lock his hands in place and curb the desire to touch.

  She turned to him and held out the bundle of cloth. “I made you a shirt.”

  “Thank you.” He uncrossed his hands, took the shirt from her and tossed it on the bed behind him. “Good night,” he said as he faced her again.

  “Aren’t you going to try it on?”

  He exhaled a sigh, eyed the open doorway. No footsteps—yet. Perhaps Andrew Sinclair slept soundly. Declan shifted his gaze to the bundle of lemon yellow cotton. He leaned down to snatch it up. Covering his naked chest might be a step in the right direction. He poked his arms into the sleeves, lifted the garment over his head and pulled it down over his torso, biting back an oath when the abrupt motion jolted his ribs.

  Puzzled, he tried to settle into the shirt. A seam cut into his armpit. One sleeve was crooked at the elbow. He tugged at the fabric to adjust the fit, but every time he got one seam comfortable, another seam chafed against his skin.

  “I made it for you,” Victoria said, with the solemn air of a great sacrifice. She lifted her right hand and pushed it up to his nose, palm up, fingers splayed. Curious, he took hold of her hand and inspected the skin. The fingertips were red, full of tiny pinprick holes.

  “See,” she said. “I’ll be a good wife to you, even if it kills me.”

  An odd, warm sensation swirled in his chest. He caressed the pads of her fingers. So, that’s why she’d been gnawing at her skin at dinner yesterday. Then, mindful of the danger of getting too cozy with her, especially with the temptation of a bed only a step away, he released her hand and asked, “Is this what you’ve been doing the last three days?”

  She gave a wordless nod. Declan could sense a jittery unease about her, and he tried to diffuse it with humor. “Are you equally accomplished with other domestic skills?” He rotated his shoulders, trying to stop a cramp where the wretched shirt bit into his arm.

  She replied with a rueful smile. “My father says the best way to reduce food bills is to have me do the cooking. Nobody will eat.”

  “I see. “ He plucked at the shirt some more, but it didn’t improve the fit. “I have nothing against store bought clothes,” he muttered. “Even if they are second hand. At least you can try them on for size.”

  One slim dark brow lifted. “Don’t you want me to make you a pair of pants?”

  Declan almost choked at the thought of ill fitting seams and too tight measurements cutting into more critical parts of his anatomy. “God forbid,” he said on an indrawn breath.

  For a few seconds, silence settled over the small room. Victoria tilted her head to one side. When she spoke, Declan could hear the tremor in her voice. Her words came out in a rush—a rehearsed speech, he suspected
. “I think it’s time for you to do some cherishing,” she said with a lighthearted arching of her brows.

  “Victoria…”

  Ignoring him, she forged right ahead. “The way I see it, of all the men I could marry, you are the most suitable. It simplifies things a great deal, considering we’re already husband and wife. I’m sure my father will eventually—”

  He held up a hand to silence her. “Victoria…I…”

  Out in the night darkness, the first crack of thunder tore the air, although there had been no flash of lightning. A low, long rumble rolled across the land. He waited for the sound to fade away. As they stood bathed in the dull lamplight, he could see Victoria watching him, with a look on her face that held in it an equal measure of vulnerability and stubbornness.

  “It would never work,” he told her, as gently as he could. “You’ll only cause trouble if you do this…” He jerked his head toward the door he’d propped open. “…if you contrive for your father to catch us in a compromising situation.”

  “I disagree,” she said, not gently at all.

  Declan rubbed his face with his hands. The damn shirt stretched tight across his shoulders. He could hear a seam rip open. They both ignored the sound. “There are things about me you don’t know,” he said finally, not meeting her eyes. “Things that if you knew them you’d turn away in disgust. There’ll come a time when you’ll find out. And then you’ll hate me.”

  A notch formed between her brows. “What is it? Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  She surprised him then. Instead of launching into an argument, or begging to be told, she spoke in a flat, pragmatic tone. “Well. I can’t base my judgment on what I don’t know. You’re my husband. I am your wife. I want it to stay that way. End of discussion.”

  “That was not a discussion. That was a monologue.”

  Declan knew the only sane thing would be to bundle her out of the room and bolt the door after her. Instead, he gave in to the longing inside him. Maybe it was the flimsy nightgown. Maybe it was her bleeding fingertips. Maybe it was the miserable excuse for a shirt and the effort she’d put into it. Maybe it was her innocent trust.

 

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