by Laurie Grant
His face had gone pale, then purple.
As she had expected, he’d informed her in no uncertain terms that she must forget such a ridiculous idea. He was taking her straight home to England so that she could put this unfortunate affair behind her and get on with her duties to her duchy.
She had, of course, refused. He’d been appalled when she had explained that she loved Morgan Calhoun, and that if they succeeded in winning his freedom, she wanted to marry him—if she could only persuade him to accept her.
But after Lord Halston had blustered and pleaded with his niece for hours without changing her mind, he’d finally informed her that if she was insistent about accompanying Morgan and his escort to his trial in Texas, he would, of necessity, come with her, as would Celia, her dresser. The Duchess of Malvern could not travel alone with such men as her outlaw, the marshal and the cavalry escort! And she’d see the sense of returning to England with him after Calhoun was convicted, he told her. After all, them was her sister to think of.
“We shall have to see what happens, uncle,” Sarah had said.
She would have to go back to England at some point, she knew, if only just to judge for herself whether her sister had been truly innocent.
Whenever she thought of Kathryn, Sarah’s heart grew heavy. While she had been relieved to hear Thierry admit that Kat had not actually known he intended to murder Sarah, it hurt, nevertheless, to think that Kathryn had been harboring such envy of her. By not realizing the extent of that envy before, Sarah felt she had failed her younger sister in some vital way. But was Kathryn free of other major character flaws? Sarah knew she could abdicate her title in favor of Kathryn only if Kat was worthy of being duchess. And would Kathryn’s becoming the Duchess of Malvern be enough to bridge the gulf that yawned between the two sisters?
First things first, Sarah thought, preparing to remount Trafalgar for the last leg of the journey to Austin. First she must do everything in her power to see that Morgan’s name was cleared and he became a free man once more. Then she had to convince him that despite her aristocratic upbringing, she and he belonged together as husband and wife. Then she—and, she hoped, Morgan—could return to England and deal with Kat.
“Niece, I think perhaps it would be best if you rode in the coach for the remainder of the trip,” Uncle Frederick said. “It wouldn’t do for the Duchess of Malvern to be seen riding astride.”
Before leaving Santa Fe, Sarah had made a concession to her uncle’s sense of propriety by purchasing a divided skirt so she could ride without showing too much of her limbs, but this was too much to ask. “Oh, no, uncle, I have no intention of getting into that swaying monstrosity today,” she said. She’d ridden in the stagecoach some of the time, just to keep her uncle company, or once or twice at Morgan’s insistence when a thunderstorm threatened, but she’d spent most of the miles on the old Butterfield stagecoach route on horseback.
The hours she’d spent in the saddle, sometimes on Trafalgar, sometimes on one of the soldiers’ remounts to spare her thoroughbred, had been arduous, of course, but she could at least spend them riding next to Morgan. Morgan had given the marshal his promise not to attempt to escape while he rode unshackled, and so she could almost pretend he was not on his way to a trial that might result in the loss of his freedom for years, if not forever.
“Your grace, maybe you’d better listen to your uncle,” Jackson Stoner said. “The less people see of you as you arrive, the more your reputation can be protected during the trial.”
Stoner had been decent and fair to Morgan throughout the long journey, and now she realized he was tactfully trying to suggest something in her best interest. But she’d never cared overmuch about what people thought of her, and now she cared even less. She might not have forever to ride by Morgan’s side, so every moment was precious.
“I’ll be riding next to Morgan, Mr. Stoner,” she said, and the cheeky grin Morgan shot at her was reward enough.
Stoner shrugged. “Have it your way, Duchess.” Then he turned to Morgan. “Sorry, Calhoun, but I’m going to have to cuff you and lead your horse the rest of the way.”
“I figured you would,” Morgan said quietly.
“Why?” Sarah cried, outraged by the sight of the handcuffs.
“Morgan hasn’t given you a moment’s trouble all the way from Santa Fe! He’s been a man of his word! Why should you shackle him now? Is it just to humiliate him? You’re not some Roman general parading a captive in ancient Rome!”
Stoner looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I don’t know anything about generals or ancient Rome, your grace, but—”
Morgan’s voice cut in. “He’s just doin’ his job, Duchess. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Sarah shut her mouth. But it made her heart ache to see Morgan hold his wrists out.
The metallic rattling of keys woke Calhoun one afternoon three days later, just as he finished what passed for a prisoner’s dinner in the Camp Austin brig.
“Visitors, Calhoun,” the soldier on duty announced, pushing open the cell door. Sarah glided in, followed by a man he’d never seen before.
“Hello, Morgan,” she said. “How was your luncheon? Never mind, I’ll bring you a wonderful supper. This is Matthew Quinn. He’s been good enough to agree to be your attorney.”
“With your consent, Mr. Calhoun,” the other man said quickly, with a trace of nervousness.
The nasal New England accent automatically set Morgan’s teeth on edge, but he forced himself to smile. “Oh, I reckon I’m agreeable, all right, if the duchess vouches for you,” he drawled, “even if you are a Yankee.”
The other man’s gaze never wavered. “Yes, from Maine. But I think we can still work together for your benefit, don’t you?”
Morgan shrugged. “I reckon, as long as you believe in lost causes. But where’d she find you? From what I’ve heard, being my lawyer isn’t all that popular a job.” The judge had refused to allow Sarah the extended time she needed to get him a certain prominent attorney from New York.
“I—I met Mr. Quinn at a reception the governor of Texas gave for us at his residence the second night we were here,” Sarah explained “It seems the local gentlefolk are eager to entertain a duchess and a marquess, even if the duchess has been consorting with a desperado,” she added with a mischievous gleam in her blue eyes. “I wasn’t exactly in a mood to be entertained, but I figured I didn’t have any other way of meeting someone who could help us, so I went, and was delighted when I learned Mr. Quinn was an attorney.”
“So what’s a Yankee like you doin’ in Texas, Quinn?”
“I, uh, had to move here for my wife’s health,” Quinn said, still looking as if he was afraid Morgan might shoot him if he ventured any closer. “Libby has a rather weak constitution, and she suffered so from the harsh northern winters. She’s felt much better here,” he added cheerfully.
“Well, that’s real nice. I’d hate to hear you came because you were just another carpetbagger.” Morgan was aware he sounded surly, but he didn’t think this nervous greenhorn could defend him from a horsefly, let alone the United States government. In an effort to sound more pleasant, he added, “Duchess, why don’t you and Mr. Quinn sit down?” He stood and smoothed the blanket over his bed. It was the only place to sit in the cell.
“No, I won’t be staying, for I think you and Mr. Quinn will get a better start alone,” Sarah told him. “Goodbye until this evening, then,” she said, coming over and very unself-consciously giving Morgan a brief kiss on the lips. “Oh, Morgan,” she said just as she reached the cell door again, “which direction is Calhoun Crossing from here, and where is the Flying C Ranch in relation to the town?”
“But the ranch isn’t mine anymore, remember? Why do you want to know, Duchess?”
“Oh, I thought I might like to see it.”
The thought of her riding onto his land had him crossing the space between them in two quick strides.
“Duchess, it’s too long a ride from here,” he
said, taking her by the arms, “and I don’t want you crossin’ paths with Carl Tackett, the rattlesnake who stole the Flying C. He’s a scoundrel, Sarah, and he can’t be trusted around a lady.”
“Oh, don’t worry, Morgan, I won’t go alone,” she promised. “I’ll take Uncle Frederick with me. I think he’s getting a bit tired of fending off reporters who’d like to interview nobility, anyway.”
“But I don’t want you tanglin’ with Tackett, hear me, Duchess?” he said, pinning her gaze with his.
Sarah smiled and held up her hands in surrender. “All right, all right! I’d be happy just to see it from the fence, if that’s your wish, Morgan. I just want to go and see the land you grew up on....” She looked so wistful, he didn’t have the heart to argue anymore. These days of waiting for the trial to begin had been as hard on Sarah as it had been on him, he thought, even though she wasn’t behind bars as he was. But how would he pass the hours while she was gone?
She smiled again. “Morgan, that ranch will be yours again some day, I promise you.”
He sighed. “I wish I had your faith, honey.” Lord, what had he done to deserve the love of a woman like this? Her belief in his future, even in the face of impossible odds, humbled him.
She turned back again at the door of his cell. “Oh, Morgan, what was the name of the lady you were with that night—the night the payroll was robbed?” He saw her blush to mention such an indelicate subject, but her eyes never left his.
He shook his head. “Sarah, you go ahead and ride down to Calhoun Crossing tomorrow, if you want. It’s a pretty road, and it’ll give you something to do. But there just ain’t any point in telling you her name,” he added. “She’s probably not livin’ there anymore, anyway. But if she is, it’d be a waste of your breath. She wouldn’t say anything the next morning when they came for me, so why should she ruin her good name for me now? Not every woman, Duchess, is as good and honest and true as you.”
He watched as Sarah gave him a wan smile and left She’d been on the verge of tears, he suspected. The violet shadows under her eyes made him think she’d spent a lot of sleepless nights lately. She hadn’t mentioned the sensational newspaper articles shredding her good name, of course. In the press the two of them had been tagged “the Duchess and the Desperado.” One article had even speculated that she was carrying her bandit-lover’s child. He didn’t figure that was true, of course; it had been six weeks since they’d made love in the Apache encampment, and he hadn’t seen any of the signs a woman showed when she was enceinte. Lord, what I wouldn’t give, though, to have a baby girl with her mama’s golden curls... or a boy with her blue eyes....
“Mr. Calhoun, perhaps we’d better get started?” Quinn suggested.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Sarah murmured as she dismounted from Trafalgar and gazed at the vast expanse of rolling ranch land stretching in front of her. In the distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, she could see a freestone house nestled at the foot of a trio of hills. Next to the house she caught the gleam of a creek flanked by cottonwoods. “No wonder Morgan loves it so.” Indeed, she could see him here, with a pasture full of sleek horses—a few of them pintos like his stallion. She could picture her beloved mare there, too, cropping the lush grass down by the creek, her half thoroughbred, half pinto foal frolicking at its mother’s side.
“Yeah, it is right pretty,” said Jackson Stoner, still on his horse. Without telling him why, she’d asked him to accompany her and her uncle to Calhoun Crossing, and had been surprised when he had been willing to do so without an explanation.
“Well, I suppose it’s all right, if one likes cactus and scrubby little mesquite trees,” Lord Halston said, getting out of the carriage he had insisted on riding in. “Personally, I prefer the majestic oaks and beeches of an English forest.”
Sarah hid a smile of amusement. Uncle Frederick was an Englishman through and through, and wouldn’t be happy until he was home again.
The four of them—for Celia had been adamant about coming with Sarah to see to her needs—had had no difficulty following Morgan’s directions to the ranch that had once been known as the Flying C. Now the name Tackett arched over the gate in black wrought iron.
Trafalgar nickered, and then Sarah noticed the rider galloping in their direction from the barn at the side of the house.
“Here comes the welcoming committee,” she remarked, wondering if the rider was Carl Tackett himself, the man who had schemed to take Morgan’s land, finally succeeding when Morgan was accused of murder and the army payroll robbery.
Lord Halston harrumphed. “I cannot imagine why I allowed you to talk me into this wild-goose chase just to see this place Calhoun once owned. It’s not as if he has much hope of ever possessing it again, niece, even in the unlikely event that he is declared innocent of the murder and the payroll robbery. There are all those other robberies you say he did admit to, aren’t there?”
Sarah was silent, aware that Stoner was listening intently, no doubt hoping to get a clue about why he’d been asked to accompany them. It was important to her to see the land Morgan had grown up on, but she hoped for so much more. She desperately needed this trip to turn out to be more than a wild-goose chase! And she just couldn’t spend another day in Austin, fruitlessly counting the hours between visits to Morgan at his jail cell in Camp Austin, and the days until the trial would start. She just had to do something, and some instinct had prompted her to come here, to the place the man she loved had called home.
“Afternoon, folks.” The man, who wore the simple, rough garb of a cowboy, greeted them from the back of his mount when he reined in just inside the gate. “Are you lost? This here’s Tackett land, and he don’t encourage visitors.”
Sarah, disappointed that the man wasn’t Tackett, put on her most charming smile. “Yes, and we wouldn’t dream of entering without permission,” she told him. “Actually, I was hoping your employer might allow me to visit him and see a typical Texas ranch house.”
“And who might you be, ma’am?” the cowboy asked. His voice wasn’t encouraging.
“I am the Duchess of Malvern, and this is my uncle, the Marquess of Kennington,” she said, gesturing in Uncle Frederick’s direction.
The cowboy didn’t look the least impressed. “The boss don’t like no visitors,” he repeated, and began to rein his horse around as if that was his final word on the subject.
“But wait!” Sarah cried. “Surely, after we’ve come so far, you’d at least tell him we’re here? I—I have a business proposition for him,” she said, thinking fast. What would Tackett say if she offered to buy the ranch from him? Wouldn’t that give Morgan a much-needed infusion of hope, knowing she was keeping it for him?
The cowboy pushed his hat back off his forehead and said, “Listen, Lady Whoever-you-are, the boss hears what goes on in Austin. He told me if you showed up I was to tell you he knows all about the trial and about Calhoun’s fancy English mistress. His wife is dyin’, an’ he’s got more important things to do than jaw with you.”
Sarah felt her face flame at the cowboy’s rudeness, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Stoner bristle, his hand drifting down toward his gun.
“Now just one moment, my good man...” she heard her uncle sputtering behind her.
She held up a hand behind her, hoping it would signal Uncle Frederick to subside. “Please convey my respects to your employer,” she said in a voice that sounded miraculously even-tempered to her ears. “I had no idea his wife was ill. And please tell him we will be staying overnight at the hotel in town, should he wish to change his mind and come see me.”
The cowboy said nothing more, just nodded and spurred his horse into a gallop.
She was aware of the surprise on Stoner’s face, but he said nothing, waiting.
“Sarah, what on earth are you thinking of?” growled her uncle. “I have no desire to pass the night in that barbarous wide spot in the road they call a town, and in any c
ase, it’s obvious Tackett has no wish to meet you.”
“No, it didn’t sound as if he did, uncle,” she said, hating the fact that her uncle had heard her called Morgan’s “fancy English mistress.” “But the woman who can testify that Morgan was with her the entire night of the payroll robbery may still be living in that town, and if she is, I’m going to find her. You may return to Austin if you’d be more comfortable, uncle. I shall be all right with Celia to help me,” she said, nodding in the direction of the carriage, where her servant was still sitting.
Frederick, Lord Halston, rolled his eyes heavenward. “I trust I know my duty, Sarah, even if you seem to have forgotten yours. As the oldest member of your family, I shall stay with you and watch over you, of course.”
“Fine, uncle. Perhaps we’d better be going, then, since Mr. Tackett won’t see us. And it’s just as well we aren’t going back to Austin today,” she said, pointing to the clouds gathering to the northwest. “It looks like they’re in for some rain.”
“So that’s what you’re up to, Duchess,” Stoner murmured. “Trying to find an alibi for your outlaw for that one night. But even if you do, there’s all those other robberies, just like your uncle said.”
“Of course you’re right, Mr. Stoner,” Sarah said, “but one must make a start, mustn’t one?”
Sending her uncle and Celia to secure a pair of rooms in the shabby-looking Calhoun Crossing Hotel, Sarah, accompanied by a bemused Stoner, began going door-to-door to the businesses and residences on the town’s main street, interviewing anyone who would admit to ever knowing Morgan Calhoun. Everyone, it seemed, remembered Morgan Calhoun with a fondness tempered by a fascinated awe that he was now such a notorious outlaw. They wished Morgan well, they told her—they hoped he was cleared of the murder, at least, so he wouldn’t have to stay in prison too many years. But no one seemed to know who the woman was that Morgan had been with when the army payroll stage was robbed—or at least, no one would admit it if they knew.
