The Dollar Prince's Wife

This conversation intrigued its unknown listener who decided to go and find Apollo. Anyone who could entrance two such hard-bitten beauties must surely be worth looking at.

Mr Van Deusen strolled forward, looking around him for a tall, blond man: he had decided that Apollo must be tall—and there was a tall, blond man standing with his back to him, talking to his hostess. He suddenly turned his golden head and Van Deusen caught his breath at the sight of him. It wasn’t Apollo’s perfect profile, nor his athletic body which intrigued him, but something quite different.

It couldn’t be! Surely not! Not here, not the US Envoy’s brother-in-law! Not the darling of London society! For Mr Van Deusen had last seen this man, or one very like him, nearly eight years ago in Arizona Territory, America’s Southwest. He had been a man you could not forget and Van Deusen had never forgotten him—but he had never thought to see him again, and particularly not as an honoured guest at an aristocrat’s house party.

He was older now, but, as always, every feminine head turned to look at him when he walked away from his hostess, holding himself with the arrogance which Mr Van Deusen remembered only too well—and which had infuriated everyone who met him.

Could it really be the man he had known? If he were, under what name was he now going? And did the effete fools here know what sort of tiger was living in their midst? No one present could conceivably guess at the life which respectable Mr Van Deusen and Apollo had once shared.

Mr Van Deusen gave a long, slow grin. Well, he would soon find out if he were mistaken, and if he were, he would apologise. After all, he had never seen his man spotlessly clean, perfectly groomed, and the current lover of the Prince of Wales’s mistress!

He was behind Apollo now. Hendrick Van Deusen grinned again, showing strong yellow teeth. He bunched his right hand into a fist with two of his fingers sticking out from it. He jabbed them into the small of Apollo’s back, as though it were a revolver he was thrusting there, and said in a thick Texas drawl, ‘Hi, there, Jumpin’ Jake, fly at once. All is discovered.’

Mr Van Deusen felt Apollo stiffen, every muscle tensing before he turned to face his accuser. That face was an impassive mask, showing none of the emotions which one might expect, given the abrupt shock he must have felt on hearing a voice sounding from out of his disreputable past when he had been an outlaw in the Territory.

Yes, his man was Apollo, by damn, and no doubt about it, and Apollo was speaking to him, his voice beautiful, with no hint of an American accent, let alone the thick Texas drawl which Jumpin’ Jake had affected.

‘Do I know you, sir?’

‘You should. Because I know you, and I owe you—and that is enough for me to know you.’

Cobie’s smile was one which no one in English society had ever seen. It was deadly—and proved to Mr Van Deusen how little he had changed.

‘I only ever knew one man who owed me anything—but that debt was cancelled long ago—which you should know.’

It was a tacit admission of who he was—or who he had been, and Cobie saw that the man opposite to him knew that.

‘I didn’t accept that cancellation,’ growled Mr Van Deusen. ‘No man saves my life and goes unthanked, unrewarded. You saved my life twice. I paid you back only once. That second debt still stands.’

Cobie’s smile at this was so charming that Mr Van Deusen could see why the women about him were watching them with such hungry eyes. He took Mr Van Deusen by the arm, led him, in silence, out of the ballroom, through the small drawing room along a corridor and into the library where he shut the door behind them.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘we may talk in peace. Where were we? Ah, you were reminding me that I saved your worthless life, and that you wanted to recompense me for doing so. Well, you are hardly likely to be able to return that last favour here. We are a long way from San Miguel—or Bratt’s Crossing.’

‘So you do know me.’

‘But do you know my name?’

‘You were Jake Coburn in San Miguel, and Cobie Grant in Bratt’s Crossing. I would bet that you are Cobie Grant here.’

‘Jacobus Grant—and you would win your bet.’

Cobie looked at Mr Van Deusen, at the beautifully cut suit which clad the thickly powerful body, at the cared-for hands and massive head and face. ‘I doubt that I could guess your name—Professor—or, in Western slang—Perfesser.’

‘Nor you could. I now use my own. I am Hendrick Van Deusen, a respectable financier, if that is not a contradiction in terms.’

Cobie threw back his head and laughed.

‘Ever the old Perfessor! Even if I would wager you are not now known as Schultz. Can you stand this effete life?’

‘The question is, can you?’

Cobie thought that he couldn’t, but he didn’t think that he wished to return to Arizona Territory and be a boy of twenty again, either.

‘Life is what you make of it,’ he said at last.

‘A truism—but looking at you, I don’t think that you have changed much…other than that you are now clean.’

Cobie’s smile was sweet. ‘Yes, I hardly think that I looked like this eight years ago.’

‘No, indeed. But the man inside is the same, I’ll be bound. Is London safe while you live in it?’

Cobie thought of the night on which he had rescued Lizzie Steele—and began to laugh.

‘Perhaps, perhaps not. But I don’t pack a pair of six-shooters on my hip whilst walking down Piccadilly, more’s the pity.’

‘What exactly are you doing to stir up the assembled nobility and gentry? I would wager that there are easier pickings here than at San Miguel.’

Cobie offered him his most winning smile.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re doing nothing? Now that I don’t believe.’

‘Ever the sceptic. Believe what you like.’

Mr Van Deusen also smiled. Cobie knew that smile. He had seen it on the face before him in more than one tight corner. He decided to provoke in return.

‘And what exactly are you doing here, Mr Van Deusen? It’s odd, you know, but I find it hard to think of you as other than Schultz, the Perfesser who packed a mean gun.’

‘The Perfesser and Jumpin’ Jake are long gone,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen smoothly, ‘and no resurrection awaits them, I think.’

Cobie remembered the boy he had been, laughed and added, ‘You hope, rather. You remember the old saying, “Truth will arise, though all the world will hide it from men’s eyes.”’

‘By God, I hope not,’ said Mr Van Deusen fervently. ‘I am a most respectable and wealthy citizen of Chicago, thinking of running for the US Senate in the next elections.’

‘The Perfesser in the Senate would only be matched by Jumpin’ Jake marrying into the British aristocracy.’

Cobie paused, and then, as though some ghost, some premonition, had walked through his head, asked himself, Now, why did I say that?

‘I thought that Lady Kenilworth was already married,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen slyly.

‘So she is, but I have English cousins. Best to tell you, knowing you, you’ll soon find out. Sir Alan Dilhorne, the noted statesman, now retired, is by way of being a relative. He is the elder brother of my foster-father, Jack Dilhorne.’

Van Deusen whistled. ‘Dilhorne of Dilhorne and Rutherfurd’s and Dilhorne of Temple Hatton, Yorkshire?’

When Cobie, his mouth twisted derisively, nodded assent, he exclaimed, ‘By God, young sir, what were you doing wandering around the West, stealing peanuts when all you had to do—?’

Cobie cut in, his voice quite different from the one he had been using. Instead he was speaking in the harsh Western drawl which had driven the respectable and the unrespectable mad in Arizona Territory.