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PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PATRICIA POTTER
“Patricia Potter is a master storyteller, a powerful weaver of romantic tales.” —Mary Jo Putney, New York Times–bestselling author
“One of the romance genre’s finest talents.” —Romantic Times
“Patricia Potter will thrill lovers of the suspense genre as well as those who enjoy a good romance.” —Booklist
“Potter proves herself a gifted writer as artisan, creating a rich fabric of strong characters whose wit and intellect will enthrall even as their adventures entertain.” —BookPage
“When a historical romance [gets] the Potter treatment, the story line is pure action and excitement, and the characters are wonderful.” —BookBrowse
“Potter has an expert ability to invest in fully realized characters and a strong sense of place without losing momentum in the details, making this novel a pure pleasure.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review of Beloved Warrior
“[Potter] proves that she’s adept at penning both enthralling historicals and captivating contemporary novels.” —Booklist, starred review of Dancing with a Rogue
The Scotsman Wore Spurs
Patricia Potter
Prologue
Near San Antonio, Texas
March 1870
Someone else’s troubles were none of his own.
Especially an ambush.
Andrew Cameron, the earl of Kinloch, kept telling himself that, even as he spurred his horse into a faster gait in the direction three men had taken earlier. Three men who planned to kill another.
He’d heard them talking last night in a raucous saloon in a no-name Texas cowtown. He bloody hell hadn’t wanted to listen, but their voices, rising in proportion to the amount of liquor consumed, had continued to climb.
“We agree then,” one of the men had said. “Kingsley will be coming this way tomorrow to hire new drovers for the spring roundup. Won’t be no one with him since he’s so damned shorthanded.”
“Bastard,” one man agreed. “No one will cry over his turning to dust.”
“Serve him right firing us like that.”
“Damn good luck running into that little guy,” the third man said. “Strange coot but the five thousand dollars looked all right.”
Drew now swore. As a landless, near-penniless Scottish peer, he had systematically destroyed all dignity and respect his title once held. He was thirty-five, a wastrel of the first order, good only with cards and horses. There was nothing left for him in his own country, so he had come to America, with a letter of introduction to a man named O’Brien in his pocket. It was given to him by his brother-in-law when he’d raised the idea of perhaps becoming a rancher.
But had never truly belonged anywhere, and wasn’t sure he wanted to now. He had made a career of tilling his own rows, crooked as they were, and in the process, he’d deliberately avoided caring about anything and anyone. Caring was much too painful.
He’d even found a measure of satisfaction—if not contentment—in his isolation, but last year he’d tumbled from his role as indifferent observer when a four-year-old girl wrapped herself around his heart. He’d vowed never to repeat that uncharacteristic experience. One slip was sufficient for a lifetime.
But he hadn’t been able to block out the overheard conversation or the name Kingsley. Unfortunately, there was no law in town to take a hand in the affair—no constable, no military, no anything but liquored-up cowhands itching for a fight.
He’d told himself it was none of his business. And he’d gone to bed still trying to persuade himself of that.
Yet here he was, riding hard in a country he didn’t know, chasing men he didn’t know, in defense of still another man he didn’t know.
Bloody idiot, he called himself as he checked his horse. The men he’d been following had veered off the trail toward a massive granite outcropping. The rocks, rising starkly out of the ground, were a perfect place for an ambush.
Drew considered his options. The first was the wisest: Mind his own business, turn around and go back the way he’d come. The second held a modicum of danger: Circle wide around the rocks, warn anyone approaching, and look like an interfering fool.
The sound of gunfire from the far side of the rocks immediately reduced his options. He just couldn’t ride away. Ambushes offended him; he’d suffered through one himself not long ago.
He spurred his horse toward the outcropping, leaped from the saddle and started to climb. He hoped he wasn’t too late. He heard the sound of return gunfire and realized the surprise attack had failed.
When he reached the peak, he looked down. Three men, scattered among huge boulders below him, were firing at a man crouched behind a fallen horse. The animal’s stillness told Drew it was dead. Now the ambush became personal. He had an abiding affection and respect for horses if not for men.
He found a protected position, aimed the rifle he’d bought in Denver, and fired. He hit two of the ambushers before anyone even knew what was happening. As the third man swung around, Drew ducked behind cover, but not quite fast enough.
He felt a bullet slam into his shoulder, then another tear into him. As consciousness slowly faded, his mouth twisted in bitter self-mockery.
Someone else’s troubles were most definitely none of his business.
Chapter One
Near San Antonio, Texas
May 1870
Blinking back tears, Maris Gabrielle Parker ruthlessly hacked off sections of her hair just as she was attempting to hack off the terrible memories of the past week.
Don’t think about them.
As if she could think about anything else.
Images replayed themselves in her head. The gunshots outside the theater where she’d finished performing. Her father’s body jerking from a shot, then plunging toward her to take a second shot obviously meant for her.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she saw the tall lean gunman, face hidden by a hat whose silver band caught light from the hotel front, darting away as doors opened and people started pouring onto the street. She did want to keep seeing him, remembering him. She had plans for him. And for a man named Kingsley.
Her father’s final words echoed in her mind. A warning? A deathbed confession? And the unexpected, stunning legacy he left behind. Perhaps that was the most tormenting of all.
She stared back into the cracked mirror on the wall of a mirror in a cheap room in Pickens, Texas, a small town forty miles southeast of San Antonio where her world had collapsed in one violent night.
A haunted face stared back at her. She saw little of the singer who had brought down the house at the San Antonio Palace a week earlier, who’d attracted swarms of unwanted admirers. Instead, her blue eyes looked lifeless, her cheeks thin and white, her lips incapable of a smile.
She was alone now. After spending an entire life with her actress mother and singer father, she was all alone.
And someone wanted her life as well as her father’s. They may well try to rectify that unfortunate failure unless she acted first.
The killer, or killers, would be looking for a singer with waist long dark hair and flashy clothes. They would be looking for a readily recognizable woman.
They would not be looking for a grubby orphan lad.
She looked at the hair on the floor and then up at what was left of the long dark hair that had always been her best feature, and she caught a sob in her throat. That hair had disguised a number of imperfections, taking attention away from the too wide mouth and turned-up nose.
�
��Ah, you have the angel’s own hair, just like your mother’s,” her father had told her repeatedly. And she remembered her mother brushing it, telling her that a woman’s hair was her glory.
Gabrielle bit her lip. Her father’s voice was stilled, as were the fine hands that had danced so lightly over strings and keys. Tightening her fingers around the scissors, she started cutting again, tears falling silently and mixing with the strands of hair catching in her clothes or falling in desolate-looking piles at her feet.
She cut closer and closer to her scalp. Released of its weight, soft tendrils curled around her face, giving her a decidedly boyish look. Still, she would have to use a small amount of oil to keep it plastered to her head.
Remember the role, she told herself. Play the role. Nothing else matters.
To give herself courage, she hummed an old French lullaby. The sound was lonely, hollow, in the otherwise silent, stark hotel room. It needed harmony, but there was no one to hum along with her. She felt so alone, more alone than she’d ever been in her life.
When the last lock lay in the heap on the bare floor, she removed all her clothing. Opening a newspaper flat on the narrow bed, she laid her dress on it, along with the corset she’d been wearing under it, and her fine button-up shoes and silk stockings. She tied them together with a piece of string, planning to leave the bundle in a church pew. Perhaps the minister could make good use of them.
Then, sitting naked before the mirror, she opened her stage makeup box and began applying judicious amounts of dye. Enough to darken and roughen her fair complexion. Beginning at her hairline, she covered any patch of skin she thought might show, including the back of her neck, then went back and added a few strategic smudges of genuine dirt, which she’d collected for that purpose. The dye, she knew, would last for weeks without washing. She would take enough for another application. By that time she would have accomplished her task. One way or another.
Finally satisfied with the results, she picked up her petticoat and ripped into it strips, then used the strips to bind her breasts. Not that they were all that large, anyway. Her body was naturally slender, and its few curves would easily be hidden by the layers of clothes she planned to wear. Still, she was taking no chances on being discovered.
Her costume, purchased at the only mercantile in the small town where she’d left the stage, looked altogether too new. She would have to do something about that, she thought, as she put on the stiff clothing. Her hat, though, was perfect. She’d taken it from her father’s trunk; it dated back to a melodrama in which she and her parents had performed. Her father had bought it off a drunken cowboy for two bits, and it was as disreputable as they came.
Pulling the hat down over her forehead, she grimaced at the smell still emanating from the sweat-band. Then she gathered her courage about her like a cloak and turned once more to face the mirror.
Enter Gabe Lewis.
Gone was Gabrielle Parker, beloved and protected daughter of James and Marian Parker. Daughter of a criminal, if she believed what her father had said in his last communication to her. And how could she not believe her father’s own words?
The hurt returned. The deep anguish that her frantic activities had tried to bandage over. The anger. The thirst for justice and retribution.
Her hand reached out and clasped the letter that was never far from her, the letter and the newspaper article her father had left in his trunk for her. She’d been sent to that trunk by his last, dying words: “In the trunk … letter … explains it all …” Mustering the last of his strength, he’d clutched her arm, whispering, “The article. Kingsley. It’s him. Davis. Danger for …” The words faded, then he made one more mammoth effort to speak. “Leave … Texas. Promise.”
She hadn’t had a chance to make that promise, and she had no intentions of leaving Texas, especially after finding the letter her father had written and left alongside a newspaper article. It was, as much as anything, a confession as well as a warning. Undoubtedly the accompanying article had prompted him to write it. Sensing danger, perhaps even fearing for his life, he’d wanted her to know the truth. The letter was dated the day before he’d been shot, and he’d marked the envelope “to be opened upon my death.” She’d hadn’t believed the contents at first, though she couldn’t deny the handwriting was his.
He’d always been larger than life to her, his laughter hearty and his eyes twinkling. He’d been a loving husband, a wonderful father, and a man who would give his last dime to someone in need. It was impossible to reconcile her image of her father with the man his letter described. Impossible to believe he had been friends with the likes of the men he said he once rode with.
And yet, by her father’s own admission, he’d committed acts that had forced him to leave Texas and that had kept him away for twenty-five years. Throughout that time, he’d harbored a terrible secret.
It was obvious to her, now, that James Parker had paid for the sins of his youth all his adult life. Finally, he’d paid for them with his death. Now, in her grief and anger—and her guilt that it had been she who had brought him back to Texas when he’d obviously not wanted to come—Gabrielle believed it was up to her to make sure her father’s killer paid for his sins as well. Why, dear God, had she begged him to make this trip when the offer was made? Why?
But she had, and now he was dead, and the law could care less. She’d directly accused the man named by her father—a man named Kingsley—but the sheriff had laughed it off. Kirby Kingsley, he’d said, was a man of substance and power; he would not even approach the man about the charge, not on the word of an entertainer.
Gabrielle fingered the newspaper article and read the headline once more. Her hands shaking as she held the paper, she stared almost blindly at the headline, though she knew it by heart. KINGSLEY TO TAKE HERD NORTH.
The article, which included an artist’s sketch of a man named Kirby Kingsley, was nearly a column long. Her eyes scanned the words without really reading them, but they were already burned into her mind. Given what she now knew, she had no doubt that the article had been the cause of her father’s uncharacteristic, anxious state in the days before his death. For her, it was the cause of overwhelming guilt. She understood, now, why her father hadn’t wanted to come west, and she wished, with utter futility, that he had rejected her pleas. If he had, he would still be alive. It was her fault that he was dead, and she was learning all too quickly that grief compounded by guilt was nearly unbearable.
She was left with one choice: if her father’s murderer was to be brought to justice—and it was inconceivable to her that he would not be—she would have to deliver him herself. She had no idea how, but she knew she had to do something.
The article, after so many readings, had provided her with the means. Kirby Kingsley was planning a cattle drive. Composed of cattle from many ranches in the central Texas area, it was reported to be one of the largest drives ever attempted. Kingsley would trail boss the herd from a point south of San Antonio to the railhead in Abilene. Drovers were being hired.
She would become one of those drovers.
She could do it. She knew she could. She had played enough male roles to know the swagger, to know exactly how to lower her voice and imitate the language of a cowhand. And although Gabe Lewis didn’t look like much, she’d seen enough cowboys to know they came in all sizes, and many were as young as fourteen or fifteen. Children grew up fast in the west.
Her one real disadvantage, she knew, were her riding skills. She could ride—barely. She had precious little experience, having traveled mostly by train and coach, but her father had insisted that she learn, at least, the basics. He’d also insisted that she learn to use a pistol for self-protection. One never knew, he said, when one might need to know how to sit a horse or use a firearm to protect one’s self.
Her lips thinned to a grim line, and her resolve hardened. She would get hired. And she would carry out her plan. She would discover the truth, even if she had to use her gun to force it. T
he powerful Kirby Kingsley would pay for her father’s death. So would his hired gun. Though she hadn’t seen the killer’s face, she felt she’d seen enough to identify him: an uncommonly tall man with cat-like grace and a band of silver on his hat. She would find both of them and force a confession if necessary, perhaps even take justice into her own hands.
She did not care about the price she might have to pay. With grief and guilt still raging inside, the future seemed an enormous black void. Her dreams—her father’s dreams—of singing in a great music hall were shattered and she couldn’t seem to piece them back again.
Taking a deep breath, Gabe Lewis gave the brim of his awful hat a final downward yank. He stuffed the little money he had into his pockets, tucked the bundle of discarded clothing under his arm and left the room. He needed one final prop before the play could begin.
He needed a horse.
Drew Cameron stretched out in the comfortable chair, nursing an excellent brandy and pondering his future.
For a while, he hadn’t thought he had one. He’d almost died from loss of blood, then from an infection. But Kirby Kingsley had simply refused to allow him to die. Having made sure he had the best medical help available, Kirby himself had stayed by his bed day and night. Kirby said it was the least he could do for the man who’d saved his life.
Perhaps, Drew thought, it was saving each other’s life that accounted for the odd kindship that had developed between them. Odd because they were so different. Drew, a ne’er-do-well who had been raised with the trappings of wealth among the Scottish aristocracy. Kirby, a hardworking dour rancher who had known only grinding poverty as a boy and young man. Drew cared about little, was attached to no one. Kirby cared deeply about his ranch, his cattle, his brother, his nephews; he felt extremely proprietary about all of them.
Still, the similarities between them seemed to override their differences. Both had been basically discarded as youngsters. And both had rebelled in ways that had injured themselves. The mutual recognition of kindred souls was there, and in the two months that Drew had been at the Kingsley ranch, the Circle K, he’d found the kind of friend, perhaps even the father, he’d never thought he’d have.
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