The Duchess and Desperado

by Laurie Grant

  Shrewish was more like it, she thought. She wished she hadn’t guessed exactly why he was so damnably cheerful. It wasn’t just the prospect of an evening spent over cards with a number of cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking men. He was going to seek out a woman—and she knew just what kind of woman.

  She knew that in a saloon, just as in the pubs back home, there were women who made their living at the world’s oldest profession. She’d seen them since coming to America, strolling around in the late afternoons in their garish spangled-and-feather-trimmed dresses, or leaning out of the windows of their rooms above the saloons and beckoning to the men that passed. Morgan had bathed and shaved and changed his shirt because he was expecting to spend some time with one of them, damn him. And he expected her to just go to sleep early, and be blissfully unaware when he returned, stinking of some saloon girl’s perfume.

  Morgan bade her good-night and left. As soon as the sound of his boot heels no longer echoed up the stairs, she got up and paced as she tried to argue herself out of her jealousy. Be reasonable, Sarah. You know men have needs. Morgan Calhoun has every right to spend his free time with any sort of creature he likes, and you have no right to feel so possessive. After all, you’re betrothed to someone else, and Morgan’s only agreed to take you to him, not spend every moment until then with you.

  Think of Thierry, she commanded herself, think of how handsome he is in evening dress. Why, he would quite put Morgan Calhoun in the shade, would he not? But she groaned aloud when she could conjure up only a fuzzy picture of her French comte, and could not for the life of her remember what he looked like when he smiled. She swore when Morgan’s face, grinning as he’d praised her this afternoon for her improved shooting performance, replaced her vision of her fiancé.

  Muttering an unladylike swearword, Sarah sank onto the lumpy hotel mattress, loosed her braid and, taking her hairbrush from her saddlebag, began to comb out the golden strands, wavy now from being braided in a plait pinned under her hat all day. She imagined Morgan walking into the saloon, and the soiled doves flocking about him, cooing as if he were the only man on earth.

  Unless...

  The gold dress would be wrinkled, but she imagined she would look at least as good in it as any of the saloon women looked in their gaudy backwater finery. Before she could contemplate any further what she was about to do, she pulled the curtains shut and began to strip off her clothes.

  Life was good. “Gentlemen, I believe I have the winning hand,” Morgan said, grinning as he laid down four aces with one hand and began to scoop the pile of gold coins and wadded bills toward him with the other—no easy task, considering the buxom woman perched on his lap.

  “You ’bout ready to go upstairs with me for a while, sugar?” the woman purred in his ear, her warm, whiskey-laced breath stirring his loins if not his heart. “These men’ll let you stay out for a hand or two, won’t you, gentlemen?”

  “Shee-it, once you go upstairs with Dixie, we won’t see ya again before mornin’, Faulkner,” someone protested good-naturedly.

  “Good, maybe I’ll have a chance to win a hand,” someone else countered, then muttered, “Lord have mercy, would you look at that....”

  Having gathered up his winnings, Morgan had put his hand on Dixie’s waist and had been about to rise when he stopped and looked at what had caused the other man’s jaw to flop open.

  Sarah stood framed in the doorway, her blond tresses twisted into an elegant chignon, dressed in the golden gown she’d last worn to the theater in Denver.

  “Who the hell is that fancy piece?” asked another man at the table, his eyes glazing as he also went slack-jawed at the sight of Morgan’s duchess. Her eyes were now narrowed as she surveyed the room—searching for him, he realized. But of course she was not wearing her spectacles, and trouble might well find her before she found him.

  “Where in tarnation did she come from? I seen all the whores in this one-horse town, and I never seen her before,” another man was saying.

  “Sorry, Dixie, sugar. We’ll have to make it another time,” he said, pushing the whore gently but quickly off his lap and giving her soft bottom a consoling pat.

  “But honey, I thought we was goin’ upstairs fer some fun,” Dixie whined, her arm still draped around his neck.

  “I’m sure there’s others who’ll be wanting your attention,” he said, gently but firmly removing her arm, then turned back toward the table full of salivating men.

  “Um, never you mind, gentlemen, the lady’s mine,” Morgan announced quickly, knowing he was going to have to head this disaster off at the pass. Sarah had no more idea than a newborn kitten would about the kind of danger she was risking by walking into this den of iniquity.

  He saw the barkeep approach her, and saw her speak to the man. Evidently she had asked for him, because the barkeep pointed toward his table, and Sarah began strolling with seductively swaying hips toward him.

  He was aware of the split second when Sarah was close enough to focus on the whore still hovering around him, for her eyes glinted dangerously for a moment, and then her face cleared and she closed the distance between them.

  “Ah, Monsieur Faulkner, there you are,” she said, her accent now completely and convincingly French. “It ees not nice that you leeve Fifi alone in our bed, n’est-ce pas? Even eef you deed exhaust me weeth your—how shall we say it?—amour, oui? Excuse me, putain, thees man ees mine,” she said to the lingering Dixie, and, pushing none too softly past her, plopped herself down on Morgan’s knee as if she sat there every day.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The piano player had ceased plunking out his tinny tunes. Now someone guffawed in the sudden silence. “Shee-it, Faulkner, what’re ya doin’ playin’ cards with us when ya could be up in yore room rollin’ in the sheets with her?”

  Morgan put his arm possessively around the narrow waist that was snuggled so close against him, and felt Sarah drape an arm around his shoulder. Her position placed the shadowy valley between her breasts, which were pushed up against the low-cut neckline of the bodice, right under his eye.

  Damn her. He’d gone instantly and achingly hard, as if the mild reaction he’d had to the other woman’s sitting on his lap had been just practice for the real thing. Now that Sarah had joined him, there was no chance he was going to get to use the other woman to relieve the lust he had for the duchess. And Sarah had just stoked that lust into a bonfire.

  But he had a worse problem to worry about first, which was how he was going to get both of them out of there safely. These men had never seen a woman like the duchess, and the longer she stayed, the more they were going to want more than a look.

  “Hell, gentlemen, a man can’t make love all day and all night,” he said with a wink and a laugh, though merriment was the opposite of what he was feeling. If he was able to get the duchess back to their room without having to shoot somebody, he was going to blister her ears, if not her hide.

  “A pretty lady like this deserves baubles, don’t she?” he drawled. “I thought I’d just come down and win some money so I can buy her some shiny gewgaws.” He gazed into her eyes, apparently the doting lover, but he made sure Sarah could read the warning there.

  Gingerly he shifted her from his right leg to his left, so he’d have free access to the Colt he wore at his right hip. Now he had a direct view of most of her right breast, but he tried to avoid the distraction of looking.

  “Fifi, sweetheart, iffen he cain’t keep up with you, I can,” a red-haired cowboy promised. “You wanna come over here and spend some time with me?”

  “Yeah, Faulkner. Why not share if yore pecker’s worn-out fer a while?” demanded another.

  He felt Sarah stiffen, and knew she was realizing the predicament she had just placed them in. These men were not gentlemen playing faro in some fancy London club. All of them were wearing pistols; all of them looked as if they could chew nails for breakfast. More than one of them probably had a price on his head, and had killed a man over something
far less important than a woman.

  Before he could think of what to say to get them out of there without bloodshed, though, Sarah spoke up. “Ah, I am sorry, for you all appear to be hommes très gentils, but Fifi ees a one-man woman,” she told them regretfully. “Monsieur Faulkner, he ees my husband, you see. We are just—how do you say?—just married.”

  “Then where’s yore weddin’ ring, Fifi?” asked a bald, mustachioed man on her left, picking up her hand and displaying its lack of a ring.

  “Well, now, I have a sorry confession to make,” Morgan said, thinking fast. He forced his features into a sheepish, hangdog expression. “We had to sell it to buy our train ticket for tomorrow, but I was hopin’ to win enough that I could buy her another one when we reach home. So if y’all are ready for another hand, gentlemen, can we get back to playin’ poker, so I can win enough to put a ring on my bride’s finger again?”

  “Hell, Faulkner, you already won that much in the last hand,” a man directly across the table from him complained. “But you could earn plenty letting us play poke-her, iffen you was of a mind....” He sniggered, and the other men sniggered with him.

  Morgan felt his head begin to ache. It sure wasn’t looking as if they were going to get out of there without him shooting someone.

  “I don’t share my wi—” he began, but then Sarah said, “But perhaps, mon mari, your friends would like me to sing for them, yes?”

  “She can sing, too?” groaned a prospector at another table.

  “Some fellas have all the luck!”

  Morgan started to tell her no, thinking it would be foolhardy to remain a second longer than they had to, but then he shut his mouth. Refusing to let her sing at this point just might make the other men angrier, and what she was proposing just might work. She had a beautiful voice—he’d heard her singing through the door at the hotel in Denver, and she often hummed little songs on the trail.

  He took a deep breath. “Fifi, honey, I think that’d be right nice.” Lord, he hoped it would work, and not just make this pack of wolves all the more determined to cut him down on his way out the door. He watched warily as she excused herself with a bashful smile and stepped over to confer with the man at the piano. Then the piano player struck a few opening chords.

  “Beautiful dreamer, waken to me...” she sang, and instantly every man in the room was entranced. There wasn’t another sound in the room but Sarah Challoner’s lilting soprano, complete with French accent, until she finished the song, and then there was thunderous applause, and calls for “More!” and “Keep singin’!”

  She sang of home and family, and soon the men had forgotten they’d been lusting after her and wanted to worship her instead.

  When the clock behind the bar chimed eleven, though, Morgan knew he’d better call a halt. Sarah was looking visibly tired, and her voice had begun to fade, but the smile she gave him as he approached the piano was triumphant.

  “Sorry to put an end to a pleasant evenm’, fellows,” he said, “but my bride is tired, though she’s much too nice to say so. And we have to meet that train mighty early in the mornin’, don’t we, Fifi?”

  “Bonsoir, gentlemen,” she said, bowing gracefully, which gave her smitten audience a tantalizing view of her decolletage.

  Morgan heard a collective groan, and hastened his steps to her side.

  “I have eenjoyed seenging for you,” she said, waving as he put an arm around her waist and propelled her none too gently out the door.

  He was silent and did not look at her as they walked through the darkness.

  “Morgan, I’m sorry,” she said softly as they walked the short distance between the saloon and the hotel. “I didn’t realize that I might cause a problem...I just—”

  “Shut up, Fifi,” he growled. “Don’t say another word until we get to our room.”

  She went rigid, but said nothing until they had climbed the hotel stairs and entered their room.

  As soon as the door had shut behind Morgan and he had turned the key in the keyhole, however, she turned on him in a whirl of golden silk, her eyes blazing at him, her entire frame radiating fury.

  “How dare you talk to me that way, Mr. Calhoun? I believe you have entirely forgotten yourself, ” she reprimanded him.

  Her anger, in turn, ignited his, and fueled by his sexual frustration and the fear he had felt for her when she’d first strolled into that lion’s den, he lashed back.

  “I think you’re the one who’s forgotten herself, and any claim you ever had to common sense, Duchess,” he snapped. “We agreed you’d be safer if you were dressed like a boy, an’ I left you in this room all safe an’ sound. Then here you come sashayin’ into that saloon dressed like a box of candy that any man could have a piece of—”

  “And I suppose you weren’t looking for a piece of candy, as you so delicately put it,” she sneered. “I may be nearsighted, but I saw mat—that tart! She was practically glued to you—you lecher! Don’t think I don’t know what you were about!”

  “And what if I was?” he demanded as he advanced on her. “What’s it to you if I went upstairs with that woman in the saloon? I’m taking you to your French lover, damn it! Are you sayin’ that I just have to confine myself to worshipin’ at your feet until I give you to your precious Frenchman?”

  “I never asked you to worship at my feet, damn your eyes!” she seethed back at him. “But I do think I have a right to object to your having ‘a roll in the sheets,’ as they put it, with what’s left of the money you made from selling my necklace!”

  His temper blazed to new heights at the unjust accusation, but he wasn’t aware that his forward movement had made her retreat until he saw her back into the wall and saw her eyes widen as she realized she had nowhere else to go. Now his face was just inches from hers, and he placed one hand on either side of her on the wall to keep her there.

  “I didn’t do that, Duchess. As we agreed, I took twenty dollars out of that amount as stake money. I hadn’t lost but about four bits, and just before you came in I made ten times that twenty by having the winning hand. It’s all in my pocket, Duchess. It was only gonna cost me a couple of dollars to go upstairs with that woman for an hour or so. You have a problem with my spending a couple of dollars on a woman, Duchess? You can deduct it from my wages!”

  The blood had drained from her face, leaving her eyes enormously blue in her ivory face as she stared up at his face that was so close to hers. He could see the pulse beating frantically in her throat.

  She opened her mouth, but no sound came out, so she merely shook her head, never taking her eyes off his.

  He lowered his gaze to her lips, so lush, so tempting, so close. He had tasted them before. He knew how they would feel against his. But once he lowered his mouth to hers, he doubted he could stop, and so he forced himself to remember his anger.

  “You’re pretty good at that French accent, Duchess—at least, you sound pretty good to me, but what do I know? I’m just a simple boy from Texas. But do you think I don’t know how you got so good at it? It was all that pillow talk with your French lover, wasn’t it? I bet you’re real used to havin’ him whisperin’ sweet li’l words into your ears when he makes love to you, aren’t you, Duchess?”

  Still mute, she shook her head, but he didn’t believe her.

  “Do you ever stop and think about how hard it is for me, bein’ with you like this, Duchess? To sleep by you, and not touch you? A woman who’s had a lover would know that sort of thing, I’m thinkin’.... Well, it is hard, Duchess—” He leaned into her then, and put his arms around her and pulled her close, close enough that she could feel the dual meaning of his words. “And it’s gettin’ harder and harder! Goin’ upstairs with that woman, Duchess—why, I was just tryin’ to protect you from me.... But maybe you don’t want protected?”

  “Morgan...” It was just a whisper, and nothing more, and she just kept looking at him with those enormous blue eyes. He could read no clue in them as to what she wanted—or didn
’t want.

  Damn it, he had to know. And if she wouldn’t say, he was going to have to force her hand, so to speak.

  Deliberately letting go of her hands, Morgan used his fingers to frame her face, lowering his head to close the distance between her mouth and his own, while his body pressed her more firmly against the wall.

  He thrust against her, expecting the next thing he felt would be a stinging slap to his cheek or maybe even his ears being boxed, but it didn’t happen. Instead, he heard her moan, and felt her open her mouth to his, and his eyes opened just long enough to see hers shut tight with the passion that was sending rippling shudders through her body and echoing into his own. One of his hands left her face and scooped down into the low neckline of her gown, cupping her bare breast.

  He’d never desired a woman so much in his whole life. “Duchess...Sarah,” he corrected himself. “I want you...you know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes...” she breathed, her eyes still shut, her head lolling back against the wall as if there were suddenly no bones to support the slender column of her neck. “I want you, too, Morgan....”

  She was giving him permission to take her, to make love to her. She was giving him the gift of her body—but for how long? She was a woman of the world, a noblewoman who had traveled in sophisticated circles, who had a French lover. Apparently there was no clear division in her world as there was in his, where a woman who gave herself to a man before marriage forfeited the right to respectability. Her body was no stranger to passion.

  He wanted her, and she’d come right out and said she felt the same way. He’d be a fool to pass up what she was willing to give him when his body—and his heart and soul—were demanding it.

  But he was enough of a fool to want to know something first. Maybe he was loco, but he had to know where the trail led.

  “If I make love to you, Sarah, am I still takin’ you to Santa Fe?”