The Duchess And The Desperado

“And you don’t want to do that.”

“No, not really. I love Malvern, my estate, and my horses—and of course there’s my younger sister, Kat—Kathryn, who will come out next year. I shouldn’t want to be constantly leaving them.”

He hadn’t the faintest idea what “come out” meant, but he wasn’t sure it mattered. “This uncle of yours,” he said, nodding toward the closed door Lord Halston had disappeared behind, “he doesn’t mind that you’ve got the title? He doesn’t wish that it’d gone to him?”

She looked amused again, and clapped her hand over her mouth as if to smother a very unduchesslike giggle. “Oh, actually he does, tremendously, but what can he do?” she asked in a lowered voice. “He can’t change the way the letters patent were written. But he is a marquess, and that’s just below me in rank, so he’s not too deprived.” She laughed again. “Mr. Calhoun, I find myself telling you the most shameless things....”

He was just about to promise he wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone, thank her for inviting him and begin to take his leave, when he heard the door open from the corridor, and the balding, stoop-shouldered younger man Morgan had seen among the duchess’s party at the train station burst into the room.

He was panting and red in the face. “Your grace! Oh, I—I didn’t know you were receiving, please pardon me! Th-there was a message left for you—”

“Donald, you’re all out of breath!” Sarah Challoner observed. “What is it you’re so alarmed about?”

“This, your grace!” he said, handing the duchess a folded piece of paper with her name on the back in bold block letters. “The desk clerk said it had been left for you when he’d stepped away from the desk for a moment, so he didn’t see who left it....”

The duchess took the paper, unfolded it, and as she scanned the message, Morgan saw the blood drain from her face. Her hand shook and a moment later she dropped the piece of paper on the thick Turkey carpet.

“Ma’am?”

The duchess was staring straight ahead of her, her eyes wide and unseeing. She looked as if she might pass out in the next moment.

“Ma’am?” Morgan repeated, uncertain as to what to do. His eyes sought Celia, but the servant was already at her mistress’s side, bringing a bottle of hartshorn out of her skirt pocket.

Shuddering, the duchess turned around, waving the hartshorn and the hovering servant away.

Finally Morgan just leaned over and picked the paper up from the carpet. He read the crude block letters: “PREPEAR TO DIE IF YEW DONT LEAVE NOW DUCHISS. YERS TROOLY, A PATRIOTT.”

Chapter Four

“Do you have any idea who might have written this?” Morgan asked in the direction of the duchess’s rigid back.

Lord Halston came bustling back into the room from the adjoining one into which he’d been banished. “I demand to know what all the commotion was about! What have you done?” His eyes shot pale blue daggers at Morgan.

The duchess, ignoring her uncle, looked over her shoulder at Morgan, her face tight and set. “No, of course I don’t know,” she said to Morgan.

Morgan held out the note to Lord Halston, then watched the English lord’s face as he read it. The man’s eyes widened, then bulged. His face went a strange reddish purple and a vein bulged alarmingly in his temple. “This is an outrage!” he announced. “We must notify the authorities!”

If the man was acting, he was damned good at it, Morgan thought, turning back to the duchess.

“Are you sure, Duchess? Sure you don’t know anyone who has a bone to pick with you?”

She gave a tremulous smile at the phrase, and murmured, “No, no one...certainly no one who writes like that. Whoever it is has a deplorable inability to spell and rather a lack of penmanship, wouldn’t you say?” she asked, with an unsuccessful attempt at a laugh.

“You’re a duchess. You’re rich. You have everything a body could ever need. Are you sure there isn’t anyone who wants what you’ve got, Duchess?” Morgan persisted, glancing casually toward Lord Halston. The man had gone back to glaring at him.

Duchess Sarah blinked once, twice. “I suppose anyone who is poor might be envious, Mr. Calhoun.... Or I suppose it could be some American who’s opposed to royalty and titles and all that—I’m aware there are some of your fellow countrymen who still feel that way. Is that what you meant?”

He shook his head, wondering if the duchess was as naive about people as she sounded. She’d told him her uncle would have been duke but for her and her sister back home, after all.

“Your grace, I believe you will now accept my earlier suggestion that we leave at once. You will see it is necessary,” Lord Halston said. “You could have been killed at the train station, and now there is this note! You must get home where you can be kept safe.”

The noblewoman whirled toward her uncle, eyes flashing. “Run home to England with my tail tucked between my legs, uncle? I think not.”

“But Sarah—”

“No, my lord,” she said, her jaw set firmly, and Morgan was surprised to see that even a beautiful duchess could have a mulish streak. “I have not come thousands of miles to retreat,” she went on, “just when I’ve reached the land I’ve longed to see all my life. I will understand if you wish to return home, uncle—or you, Donald, or you, Celia,” she said, facing each of them in turn.

Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Lord Halston said stiffly, “I trust I know my duty to your grace. As your uncle, it is my duty to guard you, to ensure your comforts, to see that all is properly—”

She silenced him with an upraised hand, while her secretary and her dresser echoed their willingness to remain.

Morgan cleared his throat, no longer so certain that the uncle was the one who intended her harm, but sure of one thing. “Ma‘am, it isn’t any of my business, but I think your uncle’s right. You ought to go home—maybe with a handful of men hired on to guard you till you get there, but you’d be a damn sight easier to protect in jolly ol’ England than here—beggin’ your pardon for my language,” he apologized, after he noticed Celia’s indignant face.

“Don’t give it a thought,” Sarah said. “But Mr. Calhoun, you must think violence toward noblemen never takes place in England. I suppose he hasn’t heard of the princes in the Tower, or Henry the Eighth’s antics, has he, uncle?”

Morgan was annoyed to feel left out as the duchess and her uncle shared a grim chuckle. “No, I don’t known anythin’ much about English history,” he admitted. “But it’s just so much less civilized out here. And you’re plannin’ on goin’ farther west? Lots of places, there’s hardly any law. And there’s Indians—and outlaws,” he added, inwardly amused, since he was one of them, “and so many places for them to hide. You’d need a small army to protect you. At least a cavalry regiment, and I don’t reckon the government’d be willing to provide you with one.”

“No, they’re not. I’ve already made inquiries,” Lord Halston said, surprising Morgan and, from the duchess’s face, the duchess, too. “Please listen to him, niece. We should leave.”

Morgan watched her square her shoulders and lift her chin. “I am not leaving, and that is final,” she told Lord Halston, who looked away and clenched his fists in a frustrated fashion.

She looked at Morgan. “But I will accept your assessment that I need some extra protection here,” she said. “Would you be willing to accept a position as my bodyguard, Mr. Calhoun?”

He felt as if he had a noose around his neck and the trapdoor had just fallen out from under him. A man whose face was on Wanted posters deliberately placing himself at the side of a rich, famous woman who would be the center of all eyes, wherever she went? Morgan suppressed an ironic laugh. True, he wasn’t likely to be notorious up here in Colorado or as far west as she mentioned going, but there were apt to be newspaper reporters talking to her, and writing their articles about the duchess and her entourage. There was no telling how far those newspaper stories might go. Someone might even publish a pen-and-ink drawing of the duchess with him standing by her. No, much as the idea of being in this beautiful woman’s presence for weeks appealed to him, as it would to any red-blooded man, he was going to have to pass for his own safety.

“Ma‘am, I’m afraid I had other plans—you know, the minin’ I mentioned? So I’m gonna have to thank you for your kind offer, but I’ll have to say no.”

“But Mr. Calhoun,” she said, her voice musical and persuasive as she glided forward to lay a hand on his arm, “you can see I have a real need for a man who can keep me safe.”

He forced himself to look away from the appeal in those blue eyes. “Ma‘am, I’ve never had any experience as a bodyguard. You need a man with experience—several men, in fact. And I need to be gettin’ on up into those mountains, and finding some riches of my own.”

“But you’ve already shown me you can protect me, Mr. Calhoun. That’s worth more to me than all the credentials a man could carry. I don’t want to have to hire some stranger or strangers. I want you, Mr. Calhoun,” she said, giving him the full force of her compelling gaze.

His grom tightened as the words echoed in his head. I want you. Lord, what he’d give to hear a woman like her saying such words with a more intimate meaning! Maybe she even guessed as much, and was playing him like a bass on a fishing line.

“And you’ll be handsomely paid, I do assure you—probably more than you could earn mining, and with none of the backbreaking work.”

“No, none of the backbreaking work,” he agreed. “I could live real easy, bein’ your bodyguard—and get killed with an easy bullet.”

Her face paled. “Yes, there is a risk, as you saw this afternoon. But I don’t want to die, either, and I’m willing to pay you well to protect me as best you can. Perhaps all it will take to discourage this—this scoundrel,” she suggested, “is the presence of a strong, intelligent man who is prepared to defend me.”

“You don’t know me,” he told her, locking his gaze to hers. “You don’t know anythin’ about me, Duchess. Everythin’ I’ve told you could be a lie.”

“Well, I can agree with that, at any rate,” Lord Halston said from behind them. “He’s right, your grace, we don’t know the first thing about Mr. Calhoun. He has the look of a ruffian, if I ever saw one. That may not even be his real name. It would be ridiculous to consider placing your trust in such a man. How could you trust a man who might steal the very jewelry from your neck, not to mention the valuables of the important people we will encounter? Why, we might all be murdered in our beds.”

Even as he suppressed a mighty urge to knock the stuckup, mouthy nobleman into the middle of next week, Morgan’s gaze was involuntarily drawn to the matching, square-cut sapphires at her neck and on one elegant finger. He had to admit the man had a point, even if he didn’t suspect how accurate he was. Not that Morgan would ever murder anyone, but stealing just the gems she was wearing right now would probably keep him for a year, if he could sell them for a reasonable price. And if she had more, he might even be able to buy that rancho he was always dreaming about in Mexico.

But the thought died as quickly as it was born. He wouldn’t steal from this woman. Not if she had all the riches of England and America combined.