Prim And Improper

Prim and Improper

Liz Ireland

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

LIZ IRELAND

lives in her native state of Texas, a place she feels gives her a never-ending supply of colorful characters. Aside from writing romance novels and tending to two very demanding cats and a guard dachshund, she enjoys spending time reading history or cozying up with an old movie.

Prologue (#ulink_b406e921-1781-5a7f-9fd7-42c93d831b39)

New Mexico Territory, 1852

A gunshot shattered through the noise in the small smoky barroom, effectively ending conversation and several card games.

The place suddenly quieted as about twenty rough, dusty men all turned in unison to gape at the tiny woman who had fired her rifle at Ed Peter’s ceiling.

“Say!” Ed cried. The woman was just a little mite of a thing, all decked out in a yellow dress, and that gun looked near as big as she was. At first, Ed was prepared to give the lady a piece of his mind for shooting off firearms in his drinking establishment, but at the sound of his voice she turned his way, preventing his rebuke. Her blue eyes were two narrow slits of ice boring right into him, Ed thought, startled.

“The name’s Purdy, Lida Purdy, and I’m lookin’ for a man by the name of Atticus Purdy,” she said. What with hat yellow dress, her straw-colored blond hair and her intense expression, the woman resembled a very mean canary. “Anybody seen him?”

Murmurs rippled through the room. All down the long bar, the men glanced up at Ed, as if questioning how he was going to handle this crazy little woman. But they really shouldn’t have wondered. He was a saloon keeper, not a sharpshooter. Ed hadn’t lived to the ripe old age of sixty-two by arguing at gunpoint, even if the gun was being held by a pint-size lady in a yellow dress.

“Atticus Purdy?” he asked. “Who’s he?”

In her same edgy voice, Lida Purdy announced, “Used to be a barber back in Alabama.”

A barber? Somehow Ed had expected her to say this man she was looking for was an outlaw. She seemed awfully intent on finding him. “Well, he ain’t here,” Ed told her.

“That so?” She kept her rifle raised. “Well, if’n you do see him, you tell him for me that I’m gonna find him if it’s the last thing I do.” Her eyes narrowed further. “And once I find him, I’m gonna kill him. Got that?”

The room was once more deadly silent until somebody called out, “What’s Purdy done to you to make you so het-up to kill him?”

“He married me, that’s what.” Lida Purdy spat.

Bart Wood laughed. Bart always did lack sense. “Most women hold more of a grudge to men who won’t marry ‘em!”

The cold stare she sent him froze Bart’s smile. “He married me, then he run off and stoled all my money. Then, come to find out, the rapscallion had been married before, back in Georgia. So ‘bout three months ago, I started trailin’ dear old Atticus. I’ll find that son of a gun if it’s the last thing I do.”

And by the looks on the men’s faces around the bar as they stared at her, Ed could tell everyone believed her.

“Maybe you oughtn’t not to be leaving this Atticus Purdy messages then,” said one of the men helpfully. “Thataway maybe you can find him easier.”

A slow smile spread across Lida Purdy’s face, matching the venomous look in her eye. “Oh, I’ll find him. Meantime, if he hears I’m after him, so much the better. I want him to be scared.”

Ed swallowed, quickly poured a whiskey and shoved it across the bar to her. He didn’t like selling drink to women particularly, but as mad as this woman seemed about Atticus Purdy, he figured it was just as well not to get on her bad side.

“On the house,” he said, trying to be friendly. “That’s a hard-luck story you got there, sister.”

She shot him another of those cold stares, then reached out with her free hand and slugged down the drink without so much as a wince. He was amazed that a woman so dainty could pack away liquor so neatly.

“It’ll be harder luck for Atticus if I ever find him,” she said. “Now you got that message straight, bartender?”

“Sure,” Ed repeatedly carefully. “Atticus Purdy. And you’re gonna find him.”

“And when I find him, I’m gonna kill him.” Her lips twitched into a sweet, determined smile Ed wouldn’t soon forget. “Don’t leave out the killin’. That’s the most important part.”

Chapter One (#ulink_efa474bc-d7cc-5273-911a-96874114880e)

Noisy Swallow, California

“Champagne!” Niles Swaggart looked with mild surprise at the new load of liquor Louise Livingston had just driven up to the door of her saloon. “My, my,” he drawled with amusement. “Noisy Swallow’s gettin’ pretty high-toned.”

Gordy Jenkins stared in disgust at the case of neatly packed bottles in the back of the wagon, obviously trying to imagine the rough, raucous miners he served in Louise Livingston’s one-room saloon taking to bubbly. “There ain’t never been champagne in Noisy Swallow before.”

Niles grinned, twisting his long white mustache. In his mid-forties at most, he was young to have a head of stark-white hair, but he didn’t appear to mind. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if he considered it his most appealing feature. “Why, Gordy, practically nothing’s happened here before. Didn’t you know? That’s the best part about living in a place that’s only existed for three years.”

For the past month Niles had been living in Louise Livingston’s boardinghouse, drinking in her saloon and buying goods at her mercantile. He considered himself her best customer, and as such, he spoke his mind—and flirted with her—liberally. “I swear, I worry sometimes you’re gettin’ too sophisticated for me, Miss Livingston.”

Louise crossed her arms and smiled at the man’s silly banter. Goodness, she was happy to be home! After a few days scaring up goods in Sacramento, Noisy Swallow seemed like heaven. Though it was mostly mud and a dwindling population of miners, it was her town. She was even glad to see Niles again, eccentric though he was. “I’m already too rich for you, Niles.”

Niles chortled. “Oh, I have resources. And one of these days I’m gonna open me a business. Then you’ll have to marry me.”

She sent him a skeptical look. “Oh, really?”

“You’ve owned everything in this town since it was started up. If I opened some sort of establishment, I’m bettin’ you’d marry me just to keep your monopoly on commerce.”

Louise laughed crisply. “Niles, you know you’ll never open a store. That would mean having to work, and I suspect that’s the one thing you can’t abide.”

By contrast, Louise absolutely thrived on work. “He that labors spins gold,” her mother had always said, and Louise lived by that maxim, as well as by countless others. Those pearls of wisdom were her beloved mother’s legacy to her.

“What are we going to do with this stuff?” Gordy asked, a pained expression on his face as he reached into the back of the wagon and grabbed for the champagne. “That French brandy from last year is still on the shelf, Miss Livingston. Nobody’s found so much as a nugget around Noisy Swallow in over six months, and if they do, I’ll wager they’ll still want the cheap stuff. Just more of it.”

“Brandy, champagne and miners don’t mix,” Niles agreed. “That’s a fact. Not being a miner myself, however, I’m rather partial to the first two.”

Louise laughed. Niles prided himself on his refined Southern upbringing and, if given the chance, would regale any stranger with the story of his duel with an infamous man named Mr. Fitch. She didn’t have time to hear that tale now, however. “Oh, I know it’s probably frivolous. But you see, my mother told me several times that on her wedding day, the house had flowed with champagne.”

“Well,” Niles exclaimed with feigned amazement, “it appears the business lady has a sentimental side after all!”

Louise frowned and corrected him. “Don’t get me wrong. There won’t be wedding bells ringing in this town anytime soon.” Not if Louise could help it. The only men in these parts were miners and ruffians, and the only women were herself and her younger sister. Pretty, vivacious Sally could do better than the scruffy wastrels of Noisy Swallow. And as for herself…

Well, as Niles had said, she was a business lady. Since her parents had died, she felt she owed it to her family to be the breadwinner above all things. Of course, there were times when she was tempted to give in to the temptation to flirt back with some of the men who flirted outrageously with her simply because she was one of the few bodies in skirts for miles and miles. And it was also tempting to dream of chucking all her responsibilities and leaning on the shoulder of some man.

For instance, a great grizzly bear of a man with flinty gray eyes, a dark, full beard and a smile that looked as if he’d borrowed it from the very devil.

For instance, Tyrone Saunders.

Ten months had passed since Ty Saunders had kissed her behind the half-built church after one of Noisy Swallow’s rare social get-togethers. In a few, sensually charged seconds he had made her nearly forget every obligation that she had to her sister and brother and all the hard work she’d gone through settling them in Noisy Swallow. In fact, a few more moments in Ty Saunders’s arms and she would have been ready to throw away everything and run off with the rough-hewn miner who claimed to blow where ever the wind might take him.