The Duchess and Desperado

by Laurie Grant

  She was silent, trying to rein in her temper. Her heart felt as if it was pounding in her ears. “I—I just won’t have you speaking of Mr. Wharton like that. He—he was very pleasant company, that’s all.” She could feel him staring at her in the darkness.

  “You’re the boss ”

  “Indeed.” She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of protesting too much, but pleasant company was all Wharton had been. He’d been entertaining and complimentary and clearly awed to be speaking to a duchess. And he was one of the few men she’d met this evening who hadn’t been staring down the front of her dress, asking sly questions about her wealth, or offering to be her duke, as if that were possible. She hadn’t felt any tug of attraction to Wharton, though she’d agreed when he’d asked to escort her to the theater.

  It wasn’t as if she were looking for an American man to replace Thierry, she assured herself. And it wasn’t like being with Morgan Calhoun, whose very presence seemed to demand much of her. Maybe too much.

  Wharton had meant nothing improper when he’d asked her to take the air with him, she was sure of it. But she’d seen the look in Calhoun’s eyes when he’d stopped them, and guessed how it had looked to him. Good Lord, what if he’d known she was secretly engaged? Would he have an even worse opinion of her for wanting to go out on the balcony with Wharton then?

  By God, she was a duchess, and not about to let a man dictate to her, especially a man whose salary she paid!

  Then she heard a soft clip-clopping, which grew louder, stopping just down the street.

  Calhoun peered around the broad trunk of the tree. “There’s the landau,” he said. “Come on.” He seized her hand and pulled her into a zigzagging run to the coach. Sarah would have stopped to explain to Ben, but Morgan thrust her almost roughly into the coach and followed her inside, calling out, “Get on back to the hotel! I’ll explain once we get the duchess back safe in her room.”

  Sarah held herself rigidly erect on the way back to the hotel, hoping Calhoun would see that she was furious with him, but he didn’t even seem to remember she was there. He kept lifting the curtain and peering out the window. Neither of them spoke.

  Back in her suite at the Grand Central, Sarah gave her dresser and her secretary a terse explanation of their early return without Lord Halston, watching out of the corner of her eye while Calhoun checked windows and looked behind curtains and under furniture.

  “Well, thank God for Mr. Calhoun, I say,” Celia muttered as she knelt before Sarah to examine the dirt-stained rent in the skirt of Sarah’s gown. “Better to have ruined a dress than to be shot at again. Isn’t that right, Mr. Alconbury?”

  But Sarah’s secretary, hovering at Sarah’s elbow, could only stare at her, white-faced.

  “Cheer up, Donald,” Sarah said bracingly, patting him on the shoulder. She was touched that her secretary cared so much. “I’m unharmed, as you see. Do you suppose you could sit down with me and help me quickly compose a note for Ben to take to the governor when he goes back to pick up my uncle? I owe the poor man some explanation for disappearing from his reception! We shall have to tell him the truth, I suppose. Whatever will he think?”

  “Why not tell him you’re leavin’ Denver tomorrow while you’re at it?” Morgan suggested.

  “Because I shall not be leaving, Mr. Calhoun,” she told him. “Do me the favor of not bringing it up again.”

  Calhoun sighed and looked away.

  Donald managed to pull himself together, and within moments the missive was ready and the secretary was taking it down to Ben, who waited at the landau.

  “Now, your grace, why not let me help you out of that ruined thing and into your dressing gown?” Celia said practically. “You can wait in your bedroom for my lord’s return. I’ll have hot milk sent up from the kitchen.”

  Calhoun stopped his pacing long enough to growl, “You can go fetch it. I don’t want to wonder if it’s really a hotel employee knocking on this door.”

  “Very well, Mr. Calhoun,” Sarah’s dresser fairly snarled back at him. “I will be happy to ‘fetch’ it. But I will assist her grace first. Come, my lady.”

  The two women headed for Sarah’s bedroom, which lay directly off the main room, only to have Sarah stop in amazement at the cot that lay in front of its door. “What on earth—?”

  “He directed it be put there,” Celia informed her archly with a nod toward Calhoun, who’d begun prowling about the room again. “He says he’s going to sleep there.”

  “Is he? How very medieval,” Sarah murmured, then allowed herself to titter. She hoped Calhoun heard it.

  The next morning she had Donald escort her down into the stable through an entrance in the back of the hotel. Her secretary had told her Calhoun had gone there to check on his horse.

  Uncle Frederick had been beside himself when he’d returned last night and received the full report on what had happened. Once again he’d begged Sarah to leave Denver immediately, not even waiting till morning. But when Sarah had once again adamantly refused to go, he’d proceeded to give her a stern dressing-down for her display of temper at the reception.

  She found Morgan Calhoun in a stall, currying a tall, skewbald horse.

  “Mr. Calhoun, if I might have a word?”

  Calhoun whirled as if he’d been shot. Clearly he’d been deep in thought and hadn’t heard her approach.

  “I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.

  “What are you doin’ here, Duchess? I thought I told you not to leave your room without me.” His eyes were like green icicles.

  “It’s all right, Donald came with me,” she said, indicating her secretary standing behind her “Donald, why don’t you go and post the letters I dictated? Oh, and don’t forget to take the note I wrote my sister—I left it on the tea table.”

  She waited, staring down at her feet, feeling his eyes on her, until they were alone. “I—I’ve come to apologize,” she said at last. “I realize, after talking to my uncle, and doing some thinking, that I behaved rather badly last night.” She would not tell him that she had tossed and turned last night, and had even contemplated leaving her bedroom in the middle of the night to apologize right then and there. The only thing that had stopped her was the impropriety of waking him. “My attitude at the party, when you were only trying to counsel me for my own safety...and when we returned here...did me no credit,” she went on, then darted a glance upward to see how he was receiving her words.

  She saw surprise flicker across his face, but nothing more.

  “I’m afraid arrogance...and a dislike of being told what to do...are failings of mine. I want you to know that while I may not always agree with you, I shall not be discourteous again. I will cooperate as fully as possible.” There. She’d said it.

  A trace of a smile made his lips curve the least bit upward. “Well...maybe you’re not arrogant, but you do put me in mind of a horse’s long-eared relative sometimes,” he admitted, mischief dancing in his green eyes. “But I reckon we can start over from here, Duchess.”

  She was so relieved, she didn’t even mind his comparing her to a mule. “Capital, Mr. Calhoun,” she said. Then, wanting some kind of confirmation that peace had been achieved, she extended her hand over the stall door. “Pax.”

  She could tell he didn’t know the word. “It means ‘peace’ in Latin, Mr. Calhoun,” she explained as he took her hand and shook it. As before, she found his touch disturbingly powerful.

  “The Indians would say we were buryin’ the hatchet, I reckon,” he said. “And while we’re bein’ so peaceable, do you think you could call me Morgan? You keep callin’ me Mr. Calhoun, and I keep lookin’ around for my pa.” His grin warmed her soul.

  “I reckon I could, Morgan,” she said, smiling back at him. Of course, she couldn’t reciprocate and ask him to call her by her given name, but he didn’t seem to expect that.

  She was loath to just turn around and leave. “So that’s your horse, this skewbald?” she asked, ge
sturing toward the brown-and-white-splotched horse, who watched her with pricked-forward ears. “He—he’s very handsome.” You sound like a giddy schoolgirl, Sarah.

  But Morgan didn’t seem to find her remark stupid. “His name is Rio,” he said. “And he thinks he’s handsome, too—don’t ya, boy?” he asked, scratching the horse’s ear. The stallion tossed his head as if to agree. “Here in the west, though, we call horses like that pintos, or paints.”

  “I see.” It was a moment of perfect harmony. “I-I’d best look m on my mare.”

  “I’ll come with you. I’m done here.” He let himself out of the stall. “What’re you planning for today, Duchess?” he asked as they strolled down the aisle to where Trafalgar was stalled.

  “I’ve been invited to a luncheon at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Byers----he owns the newspaper, and apparently he’s quite a prominent developer here in Denver, as well. And I’m invited to the mayor’s for dinner. Ah, there you are, my beauty,” she said when her bay mare poked her well-shaped head over the stall door at the sound of her mistress’s voice. “Are they treating you well? But you’re bored, aren’t you? Yes, I managed to obtain an apple for you,” she said, laughing, when Trafalgar butted her hand with her soft black muzzle. She pulled it from her pocket and watched while the thoroughbred lipped it delicately from her hand.

  “Beautiful animal,” commented Calhoun.

  “Thank you. Morgan, do you think we could take our horses out for a ride? Trafalgar badly needs some exercise, don’t you, girl? You’re getting fat, with nothing to do but eat your head off.”

  Calhoun looked dubious. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Duchess. It’d be awful hard to protect you out in the open. I could take the mare out for you, if you like. She’s a big one, so she wouldn’t have any trouble with a man’s weight.”

  Sarah quashed the impulse to argue. She didn’t want to destroy the progress they’d made. “Oh, please... We could leave before dawn, before any self-respecting evildoer is awake.”

  Her attempt at humor won a smile from him. “We’ll have to see how things go, Duchess, all right? Let me think about it.

  “I thought Mr. Calhoun asked you not to look out the window,” Celia commented from her seat in the landau as it rolled through the streets of Denver toward her luncheon engagement at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Byers. The servant was accompanying Sarah to the event, since her uncle and her secretary had gone to check on the seating order for the dinner party at the home of the mayor, to make sure it followed protocol.

  Sarah, wearing her spectacles, since only Celia was inside with her, shot a guilty smile at her dresser. “I know, but it’s such a gorgeous summer day and Denver’s such a pretty new city. Surely it won’t hurt if I just take a peek now and then, especially if Mor—if Mr. Calhoun is up on the seat with Ben and doesn’t know? It’s not fair that I must go from place to place in a dark cage as if I were a vicious lioness.”

  Celia looked prim and unconvinced. “Perhaps not, but you’ve been threatened twice in less than twenty-four hours, and shot at once,” she observed, speaking freely with the ease of a valued servant.

  “Just once more...” Sarah promised with a sigh, and lifted the curtain again just as the carriage was passing a particularly attractive row of businesses.

  A man was standing in front of one of the buildings, staring at the carriage from the doorway of a building. He was blond and tall, with a dashing mustache. Goodness, he reminded her of Thierry, she thought fondly, though of course Thierry would never have been here, dressed as an American civilian. In the next letter she had Celia post secretly, she’d have to tell him he had a double in America!

  Just as the carriage was rolling past, the man stroked his mustache, just as Thierry so often did. Was it Thierry? Might he have decided to join her here, rather than in Santa Fe, and be out looking for her? She had to see!

  “Ben, stop the carriage!” she cried. “Stop it at once, I say! Thierry!”

  The vehicle rolled on for a few more yards, and Sarah became frantic, beating at the roof and the window like a caged bird. “Stop the coach!”

  “Whoaa!” Ben called. Sarah felt the carriage slow just as she pushed on the door handle and got it open.

  “Your grace, what are you about?” she heard Celia ask in a mystified voice, but she ignored her, determined to see if the man could actually be de Châtellerault. What a joyous reunion they would have, even if it would be awkward explaining it to Frederick! How much Thierry must love her if he couldn’t stay away any longer!

  She opened the door just as Calhoun jumped down from the driver’s seat to the ground beside her, landing with a thud.

  His face was alarmed and he looked her up and down. “Duchess, what’re you screamin’ about? Are you shot?”

  Frantically, she looked past his body to where she had seen Thierry in front of the building. There was now no one there. She tried to force her way past Calhoun, but he caught her wrist. “Let me go!” she cried. “I—I saw someone I know back there!”

  “Who?”

  “A friend from home—please! I have to catch up with him before he goes away He must not have seen me—he must have gone inside one of those buildings!” Suddenly she succeeded in pulling herself free, and she was off and running back down the street in the direction from which they had come.

  With Calhoun’s boot heels pounding right behind her, Sarah reached the row of businesses, and peered inside, seeing within only clerks and a few customers—but no one who resembled her handsome French fiancé.

  Calhoun caught up with her. “Have you gone loco, Duchess?” he cried. “Get back in the coach!”

  She ignored him, dashing into the middle of the business establishment, a men’s haberdashery. Calhoun followed

  “Have you seen a fair-haired man in here? A Frenchman?” she asked the astonished haberdasher.

  “No, miss ..”

  Narrowly eluding Calhoun’s grasp, she ran back outside and tried the adjoining business, a printing office. The man hadn’t gone in there, either.

  Calhoun had given up trying to stop her and just silently followed her into the third establishment, a drugstore.

  She asked her question again. This time, the proprietor pointed to a back entrance. “A man like you’re talking about went out through there.”

  “Did he have an accent? A French accent?”

  The man’s brow furrowed. “Don’t rightly know, ma‘am. He didn’t say nothin’, just went out our employees’ entrance back there without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  “May I?” she said, indicating the back door. “It—it’s very important that I catch up with him.”

  The man shrugged, and Sarah dashed through the rear entrance with Calhoun at her heels.

  The alleyway was empty of everything but ash cans and a stray cat.

  “You mind tellin’ me what that was all about, Duchess?” Morgan demanded.

  “I—I thought...I s-saw someone I knew,” she panted, feeling utterly foolish.

  “Who?”

  She was not about to explain now about her secret fiancé. “Just s-someone from home,” she stammered, still out of breath. “B-but I must have been mistaken.... It was too silly of me, wasn’t it? I’m sorry to have startled you. Oh, well, I suppose we can go back to the carriage now,” she said with an elaborately casual shrug. She dared a glance at him through her lowered lashes, and saw her explanation hadn’t mollified her bodyguard. Calhoun was looking all around them, his face set in hard planes.

  ‘“Too silly’ doesn’t hardly begin to cover it, Duchess,” he said. “Did it ever occur to you that you coulda been shot at? Let’s get back to the carriage before ‘a patriott’ notices what you did.”

  Suddenly she felt exposed and vulnerable in the vacant alley, and a thousand times more stupid than his face told her he thought she was Wordlessly she obeyed as he indicated she was to retrace her steps back inside the drugstore and back to the carriage.

  Onc
e he’d given her his arm and assisted her inside, however, he leaned in and drawled, “Duchess, by the way, since when do you wear spectacles?”

  Sarah gasped. She had completely forgotten she still wore them. Her hand whipped out and yanked them off as her face flooded with heat.

  “I...well, now you know my secret,” she said, embarrassed but glad she could distract him. “I’m afraid I can’t see very well without them.”

  “So why don’t you wear them all the time?”

  “Vanity, I suppose. Lord, what a foolish creature I must appear to you!”

  She couldn’t read his suddenly shuttered eyes. “I reckon we’d better be going, or you’re going to be late, Duchess.”

  Chapter Eight

  The luncheon was so pleasant that Sarah almost forgot about the anonymous notes she had been receiving. The wives of the ten most prominent businessmen of Denver were genuinely friendly, absorbed with Sarah’s tales of the queen and her peers back home, and clearly impressed with the fact that Sarah held the duchy in her own right.

  “Why, I wouldn’t be anyone if I wasn’t ‘Mrs.’ Someone,” one of them said. “Just imagine, being your own mistress...”

  It was obvious they found Sarah’s bodyguard fascinating, too. Even though Morgan withdrew to a corner of the room near the door while the luncheon was going on, Sarah noticed more than one of the ladies closest to her staring at Morgan Calhoun’s lean form and handsome visage with expressions that could only be described as longing.

  But she was pleased that from what she could see, Morgan seemed totally unaware of the eyelashes being batted in his direction. Every so often he would rise to peer outside the windows, and then, apparently satisfied, he would sit back down and seemingly withdraw to some place inside himself.

  On the way back to the hotel Sarah caught no glimpse of the man who looked like Thierry de Châtellerault. Surely the sighting had been merely wishful thinking, she told herself after greeting her uncle and Donald, as she and Celia headed for the privacy of her bedroom so she could change her dress.