The Duchess And The Desperado

“But Duchess, someone hasn’t got any goodwill for you,” Morgan Calhoun noted with maddening persistence. “Surely there’s plenty of other cities you could spread that goodwill in.”

“Perhaps your rescuer is right, your grace,” Donald Alconbury murmured.

“Nonsense, we’re made of sterner stuff than that, are we not?” Sarah said. “I have no idea why someone seemed to be shooting at me, unless the person mistook me for someone else? Yes, surely that’s it.”

She saw Alconbury and Lord Halston exchange a look, as if they knew something more, and was about to challenge them about it when Calhoun spoke up again.

“I don’t reckon so, Duchess. You don’t look like anyone else in these parts,” Calhoun argued, with a meaningful glance at the more humbly dressed women on the station platform.

As she looked in the direction he had nodded, she saw several well-dressed men threading their way through the milling, pointing crowd toward them.

“I believe the welcoming committee’s finally caught up with us at last,” she murmured.

A tall, thin, worried-looking man with a mustache and a bearded chin, dressed in a frock coat and carrying a stovepipe hat, led the quartet that charged down onto the tracks and threaded their way between the boxcars to reach them.

“The Duchess of Malvern, I presume?” At Sarah’s nod, he said, “Your ladyship, I’m terribly sorry to be late, and sorrier still when I was informed of what just befell you. I’m John Harper, the mayor of Denver.” There were beads of sweat visible on his balding forehead when he bowed.

Sarah heard Lord Halston clear his throat, and swiftly darted a quelling look at him, guessing he was about to inform the mayor of Denver that a duchess was properly addressed as “your grace,” never “your ladyship.” Americans had no knowledge of how to address the peerage, and there was nothing to be gained by pompously shaming them in public.

“Mr. Harper, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said, offering her hand. He hesitated, as if he did not know what to do with it, then shook it instead of kissing it. Sarah hid a smile. “It was a rather startling welcome, but I am convinced it was a case of mistaken identity, and so we shall forget it.”

She didn’t miss Harper’s gusty sigh of relief, as if he had feared to be held responsible. “Yes, obviously no one could wish to shoot at you, ma’am. It must have been a mistake. But we shall take every precaution for your safety while in our fair city.”

Sarah bestowed a deliberately dazzling smile on the mayor, aware that Morgan Calhoun watched her curiously. “I am so pleased to include Denver on my tour of America. Your scenery is magnificent, sir.”

Harper beamed, as if the mountain range behind them was due to his own hard work. “Thank you, Duchess,” he said, then belatedly remembered to release her hand. “I’m sorry to be a few minutes late in meeting your train. The press of duties, I’m afraid. Governor McCook sends his regrets, too, but of course he will have the opportunity to apologize in person at the reception supper tonight at his residence. I’ll be there, too, of course, and you must make me aware of your slightest need. Denver doesn’t have a real British duchess visiting every day, you know,” he finished enthusiastically.

“I will look forward to it,” she said, struggling to look regal rather than amused.

“In the meantime, her grace is tired from the journey, of course,” interjected Lord Halston in his officious way. “Has transportation to her hotel been arranged?”

“Of course. Just this way to the carriage, ma’am, and you can tie your horse to the back. She’s a high-spirited thing, isn’t she? And there’s a wagon to follow behind with your luggage and that of your party—”

“Yes, but just one minute, before we leave,” she said, and turned back to Morgan Calhoun. “Mr. Calhoun, I’m in your debt. Would you be so kind as to call upon me this afternoon at five for tea? Lord Halston will have your reward ready for you then. Uncle, where is it we are lodging?”

“We have a suite of rooms at the Grand Central Hotel, your grace, but I don’t think—” began Lord Halston even as Calhoun was protesting, “There’s no need for any reward, Duchess—”

“Well, we can discuss it when you come, can we not?” Sarah interrupted, giving Calhoun her brightest smile. “Please come, Mr. Calhoun, won’t you? I’d very much like to thank you properly.”

Calhoun’s face was a study in indecision. “Well, ma’am, I don’t thi—”

“I mustn’t keep them waiting longer,” she said, nodding toward her party. “At five, then, Mr. Calhoun?” Without waiting to see if he nodded or shook his head, she turned and walked in the direction of the waiting carriage.

Chapter Three

“Why on earth would you encourage such a ruffian, niece?” Lord Halston said, once the carnage conveying Sarah, her secretary, her dresser and himself had pulled away from the station. “Why, for all we know, he could be in league with the sniper.”

“What an absurd thing to say, uncle. If that were so, he could have killed me behind the boxcar, couldn’t he?”

Sarah frowned, but it didn’t discourage Lord Halston. “You heard the man,” he said. “He didn’t think there was any need for a reward, and I quite agree. He was just doing the decent thing—and rather too enthusiastically, if you ask me. It wasn’t at all necessary to throw you to the ground, in my opinion. Your dress will never be the same again. And Sarah,” he added, forgetting the presence of her secretary and dresser as he addressed her with the familiarity of a relation, “it’s not at all the thing to have such a man calling on you, as if you owed him anything more than the thanks you already gave him....”

Once he began fuming, Uncle Frederick could go on and on like a clockwork toy that refused to wind down. Sarah held up a hand. “Uncle, do stop. I’m getting a headache all over again! And I do not agree—I think saving a life requires much more than a civil thank-you,” she told him as she gazed out the window at the mostly brick buildings of the young city She’d read of a fire several years ago that had destroyed much of the town, causing Denverites to use brick when they rebuilt. The streets, however, were still dirt.

“He said he wouldn’t take any money,” Lord Halston persisted.

“Perhaps we shall persuade him to change his mind, uncle,” Sarah said, proud that she sounded serene and unruffled. “But if we do not, we shall at least treat him to an excellent meal. It looks as if it’s been a good while since he’s had one.”

She could not have said why it was so important that she see the American with the drawling voice, mocking green eyes and that air of danger that he carried about him like an all-enveloping cloak, she only knew that it was important to her that she see him again, and this time in safe, secure surroundings. She wanted him to see her with the grime of travel bathed away, dressed in one of her prettiest tea gowns—perhaps the dusky rose one.

He might not come, of course—her impulsive invitation had caused Morgan Calhoun to look as startled as one of those wild American mustangs they’d seen running across the plains when the train whistle had startled the herd. He might be intimidated by her obvious wealth and decide he had no clothes fit to wear to take tea with a duchess. Wary, he might figure that the only way to refuse taking money from her was never to see her again. And if he chose not to come, there would be nothing she could do about it. She would never encounter him again.

It shouldn’t matter, of course Thierry would be waiting for her at the prearranged city at the end of her tour, and though her uncle and the rest of her party didn’t know it now, she would be returning home a married woman—married to the man of her choice, not the stuffy-but-eligible Duke of Trenton the queen had deemed suitable for her.

What a handsome couple they would make, she and her ?Thierry, the dashing Comte de Ch?tellerault. But even Thierry, who had a Gallic tendency to jealousy, could not be upset that she wished to reward a valiant man who had saved her life, could he?

“You don’t seem inclined to take your near-assassination very seriously, either,” Lord Halston went on in an aggrieved tone. “Good heavens, three shots were fired and yet the dreamy-eyed expression on your face would lead one to believe you were picturing a beau!”

His continued ranting, just when she wanted to plan what she would say if Morgan Calhoun did come to tea, made Sarah irritable. “What would you have me do, my lord—weep and wring my handkerchief?” she demanded. “I have said I thought the whole matter a mistake and would forget it, and so I shall. Please have the goodness not to bring up the matter again.”

“As your grace wishes,” Lord Halston said heavily. “We have arrived, Donald. Please go on in and announce her grace and her party.”

“Your grace, Mr....uh...Calhoun has arrived,” the somberly dressed woman called from the anteroom, all the while eyeing Morgan suspiciously. After returning her stare with a cool one of his own, he went back to studying the elegant wallpaper and paneling of the anteroom and its paintings of Western mountain scenes. A vase by the door held pink roses that had to have been grown in a hothouse. Compared to the Mountain View Boardinghouse, where he was staying just long enough to gather his provisions before heading up into the mountains, the Grand Central Hotel was a palace. And a duchess was practically a princess, wasn’t she? What did that make him—the dragon?

“Show him in, Celia,” came the musical, aristocratic voice.

For the hundredth time since he’d seen the duchess ride off in her carriage, Morgan wondered just why he’d obeyed the summons to tea.

He had no intention of taking any money for what he’d done this afternoon. Protecting a helpless woman when there were bullets flying in her direction had been no more or less than the right thing to do, and he would have done the same thing if she’d been homely and dressed in the simplest calico. But telling her his real name, when that name and his likeness were on Wanted posters all over the West, was probably the greatest piece of idiocy he’d committed in the past few years. He should have given his name as Jake Faulkner, or one of the many other aliases he’d used since he’d been on the run.

And coming here simply because she’d asked him to, when he had no intention of taking any reward money from her, was even more stupid. He should be out buying a pack mule and the beans, bacon, salt, flour, sugar and coffee that he’d need to go up into the mountains, not taking tea with a foreign duchess who was so perfectly beautiful she might have been a princess from a fairy tale.

His thoughts made him angry at himself, and so he was edgy and nervous as he followed the woman—what did they call them, ladies-in-waiting?—into the sitting room.

There were more flowers in vases around the room, but he paid little attention to them, for he saw the duchess arising, smiling, from a velvet-upholstered carved-back chair. “Ah, there you are, Mr. Calhoun. It was good of you to come.”

She was dressed in a gown that was the same pink as the roses. There was pleated lace in the V-shaped neckline, which matched the lace at her waist. Her golden hair was once again artfully arranged in a coil at the nape of her neck, as it had been before he had knocked her to the ground and disarranged it. But it was her eyes that held his attention, just as when he had first seen her. Then, as now, he was reminded of the vivid blue of a Texas sky on a sunlit spring day.

He caught sight of the grumpy-looking fellow she’d introduced as Lord Halston hovering unhappily behind her chair, looking even more unhappy as his eyes met Morgan’s. Morgan saw a disdainful expression creep across Lord Halston’s face as he stared at the clean denims and the white shirt Morgan had paid the widow who ran the boardinghouse an extra two bits to press for him. He stared right back until Lord Halston reddened and looked away.

“Hello, Miss—Duchess,” he said, feeling more awkward than he ever had in his life. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call you...and I reckon these aren’t goin’-to-tea duds, but I didn’t exactly come to Denver prepared to—”

“No apologies are necessary, Mr. Calhoun,” the duchess interrupted, extending her hand but not enlightening him as to how to address her. “The pleasure of your company is quite sufficient.”

He had the feeling he was supposed to do something with that hand besides shake it. Once he’d seen a European fellow kiss a lady’s hand, but he couldn’t imagine he was supposed to take such a liberty with a duchess. So he just took it in his, savoring its satin-smooth texture. He could just feel the slight tremor in it. So she was nervous, too, he realized. How much more nervous would she be if she knew I was a wanted man?

Lord Halston stepped forward as Morgan reluctantly let her hand go. “Her grace has asked me to prepare a reward for your—ahem!—heroic actions this afternoon,” he said, looking as if every word pained him.

Morgan saw that he was carrying a small leather pouch that looked as if it were heavily weighted with coins.