The Invitation

by Jude Deveraux

  Now the best Cole could hope for was to protect Dorie. Bending toward her, he put his hand under her chin and looked into her eyes. “The minute I go out that door, I want you to go through the opposite door and mingle with the other passengers. Do you understand me? No matter what you hear outside, stay on the train, and don’t let Ford know you have any connection with me.”

  Suddenly Cole felt sick to his stomach. If Ford killed him, what would keep that killer from boarding the train and plundering it? Even if Ford didn’t know that Dorie had any connection with him, he would see that she was young and vulnerable. And pretty, he thought, with her hair hanging down her back in a thick braid, with the soft ruffle of her nightgown about her neck and the way she was looking up at him. He was seeing what he would lose.

  Quickly, with great fervor, he kissed her, and when he drew away from her, he was almost dizzy from the kiss. “I’ll see you later, all right?” he said, pretending that he’d be back, but then he said, “Tell your sister to take care of you and that I said you deserve more of a man than Mr. Pepper.”

  He wanted her to smile at him, but she didn’t. Her eyes were huge, and he knew that if he stayed another minute he’d drown in them, and in that minute he was sure he was going to die. What had kept him alive all these years was the fact that he didn’t care whether he lived or died. But right now he did care. He cared very much.

  “Hunter, you got ten seconds and then I’m comin’ in.”

  “Take care of yourself, Apollodoria,” Cole whispered, then straightened up and went to the back door of the train car.

  “You took long enough,” Ford said when Cole emerged onto the platform at the back of the train.

  Cole stood still, waiting for the man to make the first move. Cole’s only chance for survival was to drop to the floor of the platform at the first movement from any of the four men and start shooting. That way maybe he could get three of them before he was killed. At least that would be three fewer to possibly hurt Dorie. He’d take Ford first, and then maybe his men would scatter, or maybe the cowards on the train, who had to be watching from every window, would help.

  Chapter Seven

  One moment Cole’s heart was in his throat, for he knew that he was seeing his last minutes of life, and the next he didn’t know what had happened. Dorie rushed out of the train, her small body nearly hidden in a flurry of ruffles and the voluminous skirt of her nightgown. She had loosened her hair and allowed it to spring out from her head—and spring was just what it did. He had thought her hair was straight and could see now why she kept it pulled back so severely. Taming her hair was akin to taming a wild horse just off the plains. It billowed about her head like a honey-colored cloud. And damn it, he thought, she looked just like an angel. Never in his life had he felt so protective of another human as he felt of this one.

  The moment he saw her he knew that something was horribly wrong. Had one of Ford’s men already boarded the train? Had someone touched her? He started to take a step toward her, started to bark out an order, but she didn’t give him a chance to say a word before she launched into a screech of agony.

  “You can’t kill him until he gives me back the gold he stole from my sister and me. He’s the only one who knows where it is.”

  “Dorie!” Cole said sharply and tried to reach for her while not taking his eyes off the four men sitting astride their horses and watching him.

  Dorie shrank away from Cole, with exaggerated horror, as though she might instantly die from some vile disease if he touched her.

  In spite of himself, Cole frowned at her movement and the horror on her face.

  “Don’t you come near me! I’d rather die than be touched by you.” She looked up at the man on the big bay. “Oh, Mr. Ford, you can’t imagine how horrible he is. He uses me!”

  Dorie had the attention of Cole and the four outlaws as well as that of the cowardly passengers who were looking out the windows, watching while staying behind the protection of the steel train.

  As Dorie started down the platform, Cole made a lunge for the back of her nightgown, but she eluded him.

  “Mr. Ford, you look like a man who would help a lady,” she said.

  Winotka Ford had cheekbones you could cut beef with, a five-inch-long scar ran down one of them, his hair hung to his shoulders and hadn’t been washed since the last time he crossed a river, and his eyes were so cold he frightened rattlers. He didn’t look as though he could or would help anyone.

  “This man, this horrible man, killed your brother so he could kidnap me. He knew I was rich, richer than anything he had ever dreamed of. He knew my father had millions in gold bars hidden in his house. He knew this and used this information against me. I thought he was my friend; I thought he was a good person after he rescued me from the holdup. I…I married him.”

  Ford looked up at Cole, still standing on the platform, still ready to draw. If Cole moved to try to get Dorie away from the men, he’d lose his vantage point, and with his right hand useless, he wouldn’t be able to hold her out of the way of flying bullets. He was a prisoner of place.

  “You marry yourself some rich girl, Hunter?” Ford asked, his voice snide and insinuating. He liked to toy with people before he killed them.

  Dorie did the answering. “He married me, then forced my sister to give him fifty thousand dollars in gold, which he hid. I don’t know where. I don’t know anything anymore. He can’t keep his hands off of me long enough for me to think.”

  “Dorie!” Cole said, and to his horror there was hurt in his voice. He hadn’t touched her, had treated her with nothing but respect. How could he go to his grave with these last words between them? Had his few kisses disgusted her this much?

  Dorie ignored him. “Make him tell me where he hid the gold, and then you can kill him. Or maybe I will pull the trigger. I’d like to see him dead after the way he’s treated me.”

  In an instant Cole saw what she was doing and he was disgusted with himself for not having seen it earlier. He had been so blinded by her words about marrying him, that he had completely missed what she was saying about the gold. He looked up at Ford. “There is no gold,” he said calmly. “I have no gold hidden anywhere.”

  “Liar!” Dorie screamed at him, then spit for emphasis.

  Cole hated to admit it, but that gesture shocked him. Where’d she learn to do such a vulgar thing?

  Ford began to laugh—an ugly sound because it wasn’t something he did very often. His laughter sounded like the wheel of a wagon that had been rusted by the weather for a couple of years and now was trying to roll without being greased.

  “Who am I supposed to believe, you or this little lady?”

  “Don’t believe him. He does nothing but lie!” Dorie yelled. “He lied to my sister and to me. He lies to everyone. He got shot, and he couldn’t earn any money killing people anymore, so he sweet-talked me into marrying him, then forced my sister to give him all the gold she had. He was taking me back to Latham to get the rest of it. I think he means to kill me and burn my daddy’s house down. I think—”

  “Shut up!” Cole shouted at her, effectively making her instantly stop talking. He turned to Ford. “She’s trying to save my life. There is no gold; she has no gold anywhere. She’s as poor as a squatter. Your beef is with me, not her. Dorie, walk down to the far end of the train and stay out of this.”

  “Ha!” she said. “I’d rather die than do more thing you tell me to do. You can’t imagine the horrible things he’s made me do. Disgusting things that no lady should have to live through.” She ran to Ford, put her hands on his stirrup straps and looked up at him with pleading eyes. “I’m not poor. If I were poor I wouldn’t be traveling in a private train car, would I? I’m not trying to save his life. I hate him. He’s taken so much from me, and I want it back. Get him to tell me where he’s hidden the gold. Then you can kill him. I care nothing about him. Nothing.”

  Cole could see that Ford was beginning to listen to her. “Gold” was the only
word someone like Ford heard, and maybe he also heard the hint of something dirty and sinister in what Dorie was suggesting Cole had done to her.

  As for Cole, he had difficulty controlling his anger at her words. Had she deceived him from the beginning? Was she something different from what she seemed? How did she know about “disgusting things,” things no lady should have to endure? Where had she learned of such things?

  “Watkins!” Ford snapped. “Give Hunter and the little…lady”—he sneered the word—“your horse. We’ll go back to camp and figure this out.”

  For a moment Cole thought about shooting as many of them as he could. But he knew he’d end up dead, and then who would look out for Dorie? She’d just told these lying scum that she was rich, and she’d made them look at her as something sexual. These men would all want to know what Cole had done to her that was dirty; they’d want the details and want to repeat the experience. “She’s lying,” he said, but he could see that his words made no difference. What words could he say that could compete with the words “gold” and “sex”?

  “We’ll figure that out later,” Ford said. “Now get on the horse.”

  “Let her get dressed,” Cole said, playing for time. Maybe a bolt of lightning would strike Ford and his men. Maybe the cavalry would ride up and save them. Maybe those yellow-livered passengers watching them would step forward and help. And maybe Winotka Ford was going to repent within the next two seconds. Sure.

  “I don’t want to ride with him,” Dorie said, shrinking back toward the rear of Ford’s horse, her arms folded protectively over her chest as though trying to ward off Cole’s blows.

  “She can ride with me,” one of the men said, leering at her.

  “No, give her to Hunter, she likes him so much,” Ford said, his eyes easy to read even in the moonlight. He was going to enjoy seeing Dorie sitting so close to a man she hated. Misery in anyone gave him great pleasure. When he was the cause of that misery, his pleasure was combined with power and he was doubly pleased.

  “Get down here before I shoot parts of you off,” Ford said to Cole. “And no changing clothes. We go now.”

  Cole had never before been in such a bind. But then, he’d never before been responsible for another human being. In all his life he’d had only himself to take care of and look after. If he’d been killed, his death wouldn’t have meant anything to anyone; no one would have noticed that he was missing from the earth. But now things were different. If he was killed tonight, something dreadful would happen to another human being, a person he had come to care about. He knew they had not married for the right reasons, but he had sworn to stay with her, to look after her until death did them part.

  Of course death wasn’t too far away, because within a few minutes he was going to wring her neck.

  Fifteen minutes later he was mounted on a horse, Dorie ensconced in front of him, her big nightgown flapping about his legs, her feet encased in thin bedroom slippers. She was leaning back against him, his arms around her, holding the reins. For ten minutes, while they were riding, he had been telling her what he thought of her stupidity.

  “You should have stayed where you were. If you’d done what I told you—”

  “You would probably be dead now,” she said, yawning and leaning back against him.

  In spite of himself—she did have a talent for bringing out the very worst in him—he said, “You’d better not get too close to me or I might do disgusting things to you.”

  “Such as what?” she asked, sounding rather like a scientist who intended to take notes on the behavior patterns of another civilization.

  “I have no idea. You were the one telling the world that I couldn’t keep my hands off of you. Damn you, Dorie! You’ve gotten us into a real mess. You and I both know there’s no gold. Why didn’t you let me fight it out with him?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to die,” she said simply.

  For a moment he was mollified. Part of him was, of course, glad that he wasn’t dead, but he wished with all his heart that she were somewhere safe instead of at the mercy of a conscienceless outlaw.

  “Why did you have to tell Ford—and everyone else within earshot—all that about how I…how I…”

  “How you couldn’t keep your hands off me?”

  His pride didn’t want to ask for her answer, but right now every feeling he’d ever had was bruised and confused. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “My father never let me do anything I wanted to do. Rowena said he could be very contrary, but I think he was just plain mean. If I wanted to read a book, he made me go out in the carriage with him. If I said it was a beautiful day and I was looking forward to going out, you can be sure we’d stay in, probably in one room. I thought that maybe your outlaw was as mean as my father. If I’d said I wanted to stay with you, he would have done everything in his power to keep us apart, so I did what I learned to do with my father: I told him I wanted to do the opposite—get away from you.” She snuggled a bit against his chest. “It looks as though it worked.”

  All his life Cole had thought women were the weaker sex. They needed protection. But this woman was making him rethink what he’d believed to be true. Impulsively he bent his head and kissed her neck a couple of times.

  “Stop it!” she screamed. “Keep your slimy hands off me! I hate you! Don’t touch me!”

  Ahead of them they could hear Winotka Ford chuckling. He’d probably laughed more tonight than he had in the last ten years together.

  “You don’t have to overdo it,” Cole said, hurt in spite of himself.

  “Yes, I must or he won’t get any enjoyment out of this.”

  Maybe it was that unfamiliar protective instinct she’d aroused in him, but he didn’t like to think that she had ever known anyone who was even remotely like Winotka Ford. He would have preferred to think she’d had a father who indulged her with pretty dresses and lollipops on Sunday afternoons. But he was beginning to realize that her affluent childhood was as lonely as his poor one had been.

  He shook himself, telling himself to stop being so melodramatic. Right now his major concern was to get both of them out of the jam Dorie had got them into. Had he been alone, he would have tried to shoot his way out of this mess, never mind that his shooting arm was in a sling. But now he had to take care of Dorie.

  It wasn’t pleasant to remember, but he tried to think back to what she had told Ford. It seemed that he, Cole, was supposed to have fifty grand that only he knew the where-abouts of. So that meant Ford could do anything to Cole short of killing him to find out where Cole had stashed the gold. Also, he seemed to remember that Dorie had said there was more gold in her house in Latham.

  “Do you have any gold hidden in your father’s house?”

  “None,” she said sleepily. “Why?”

  He tightened his arm around her in a warning gesture.

  “Oh, that,” she said, remembering what she had told that dreadful, dirty man. “I wanted him to have a reason not to kill me, so I told him I knew where there was money hidden. But there is no hidden money. My father put everything in trust in a bank in Philadelphia. I am given the smallest amount possible every month.”

  “Listen to me,” Cole said, leaning forward so his mouth was almost on her ear. “I want you to help me get us out of this mess. I’ll keep telling Ford that you have money and I’m after it. I’ll tell him it’s the only reason I care about you.”

  “Is it?” she asked.

  “Is it what?”

  She knew he understood what she was asking, so she didn’t bother to answer him. Obviously he didn’t want to tell her what she wanted to know.

  Cole didn’t want to say anything to make her think about love. Women in love did stupid things. True, they were blindly loyal to a man no matter what a piece of horse manure he was, but they often jeopardized their own lives in the process. “I want the five grand you promised me and that’s it. After I get that I may never want to see the state of Texas again.” He couldn’t lie
well enough to say that he never wanted to see her again, but that’s what he meant to hint at. If she thought he didn’t care about her, she’d be more obedient when the time came.

  “What am I to do?” she asked dully.

  He wouldn’t let himself feel anything at her tone. “I’ll make Ford realize that he can’t get any of the gold without me and that I can’t get it without you. I’ll tell him that you lied when you said you didn’t like my touching you.” There was some pride in his voice when he said this. “I’ll say that I’ve been sweet-talking you so you’ll trust me and tell me how to get at the money. Only a husband can get the money, and that’s why I married you. You have to sign some papers.”

  When she didn’t say anything he leaned forward to look at her. “Are you asleep?”

  “No. So this means that you’re going to be, well, courting me? Lots of hand kissing, that sort of thing? You’re going to try to coax me into signing papers, is that right?”

  He hadn’t thought that far ahead, but that was probably the right idea. “Yes. Do you have anything against that?”

  “Why don’t you just hold a gun to my head and threaten to kill me if I don’t sign?”

  No flies on this little lady. “Maybe your father worried that you were an idiot when it came to men, so he stipulated in his will that you had to sign the papers in front of witnesses.”

  “You could hold my sister and not release her until after I sign the papers.”

  He smiled into the darkness. She certainly kept a man on his toes. “Your sister is on her way back to England, remember? You know, you could drive a man to drink.” He took a breath. “I don’t think Ford has a clever mind like yours. I’ll just tell him that I, your husband, have to persuade you to sign the money over to me. We have to be there together so that Ford’s men can’t tie me to a pole and beat me half to death. Does that answer your questions?”