My Darling Gunslinger (2 page)

He had the oddest sensation she saw beyond his appearance, beyond the dark clothing that best hid the dirt and sweat of weeks and months in the saddle. He fought the urge to squirm under her intense regard, instead carefully lifting the smoking cheroot to his lips and pulling hard.

The lady dropped her eyes and Ty noticed the boy trailing along behind her, one mittened hand firmly holding hers, his head barely reaching her hip. She looked down at the boy just as he looked across at Ty.

He could only be her son. He had the same wide and cautious blue eyes, the same honey gold hair and fair skin. He tilted his head in just the same way she had as he stared hard across the space that separated them from him.

The lady spoke, the words too low for Ty to hear.

Christ, she could have shouted and he doubted he would hear her over the roaring in his ears, the thundering beat of his heart.

Whatever she said caused the boy to squint in concentration, to study the hand Ty only now realized was fondling the butt of his gun.

The boy said something to his mother, something that had her peering through her long lashes at Ty once more. She leaned down closer and whispered above the boy’s head.

The boy fixed his gaze on Ty’s arm, watching as he raised the cheroot to his lips once more.

Ty imagined he could read the boy’s lips, could hear his voice as he answered, as he agreed with her whispered words.

The lady had noticed his stiff movements and pointed it out to her son.

What the hell?

Life is a series of joys and tragedies, some yours and some belonging to others, spinning off and joining again like the many streams and creeks that feed a wide river. If you’re smart you head for high ground when it rains and frolic in the shallows when the sun shines down on you.

Nanny Bettelheim

Lady Charlotte Marie Alexandra Siegfried Pendergrass Grenville, Countess of Westlockhart, often remembered Nanny Bettelheim’s words as she journeyed across the Continent and beyond to the exotic Orient and the wilds of America. She hadn’t truly understood the truth in Nanny’s words when, at nineteen years of age, she’d watched from the stern of the
Night Witch
as the cliffs of Dover disappeared behind a heavy gray fog.

Six years of traveling the globe by ship, carriage, and railway. Six years of encountering all manner of people—some whom she’d loved, some whom she tolerated, and some whom she’d reviled—had finally brought the truth of Nanny’s words home to her.

Charlotte had headed for high ground more times than she could count and had finally learned to frolic in the shallows with an abandon her friends and family left behind in England and Prussia who, had they had the opportunity to witness it, would have likely labeled improper, hoydenish, and bohemian.

Truth be told, had her family and friends spied Charlotte on a London or Berlin street, they likely would not have recognized her. The plump little girl who’d learned to play chess at the knee of Archduke Leopold of Dresdenstein, the young lady who’d been more comfortable with a book or a puzzle to solve than surrounded by her illustrious family in crowded ballrooms or staterooms, the debutant with eyes too big for her pale face who’d dutifully married an earl little more than a stranger, no longer existed.

On a blistering cold day in November, Charlotte stepped down from a private railway car onto the snow covered platform of the train station in Mystic, Montana. With one gloved hand she held a battered leather portmanteau, with the other she grasped the small hand of her son.

Charlotte looked around the platform, her eyes traveling over the dozen or so people milling about in the bright winter sunlight. She let her gaze pass over a weary woman rounding up two small children, around an elderly couple bidding farewell to a wiry boy in a dark suit two sizes too big, and beyond a one-legged man wearing a tattered blue uniform leaning on a rough-hewn crutch.

She searched out strong, healthy men and found four on the platform and another three in the street beyond. Two of the four on the platform appeared to be well-to-do travelers waiting to board the westbound train. Another was a cowboy if his spurred boots and leather chaps were any indication. The fourth man seemed to be a businessman of some sort, dressed smartly in a well-tailored gray coat, black waistcoat and trousers. His dark hair was brushed back from a narrow face, a mustache neatly trimmed above thin lips. He wore no gun that Charlotte could see and held his thin frame in a relaxed fashion, with one hand tucked into a pocket of his trousers and the other holding a gold watch that glittered in the afternoon sun.

She turned her attention to the three men in the street. Two were standing beside an old buckboard wagon, their blond heads bent close as they talked in an animated fashion. To Charlotte, they looked to be farmers, or perhaps sheep herders—young and strong with smooth faces and ham-sized hands.

The final man captured her attention and held it. He looked to be an outlaw straight off the pages of the dime store novels she’d read on the journey west. He wore a battered dark hat without adornment and a long black duster that flapped around him in the breeze like a crow’s wings. His face was dark and angular beneath a shadow of whiskers, his brown hair trailing dirty and matted almost to his broad shoulders. A gun belt rode low around his narrow hips, two pearl-handled revolvers tucked into the holsters.

Charlotte couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow of the hat’s brim, but she suspected they would be dark and empty.

He leaned back against a hitching post, a spotted horse tied loosely to the railing beside him. One hand held a brown cheroot which he slowly brought to his lips, the other caressed the butt of his revolver. His eyes drifted over the small crowd on the platform, never alighting in one place long, taking in the entirety of the scene in much the same way Charlotte had.

She recognized him for what he was. A predator, a professional assassin or perhaps a bounty hunter. He was on the trail of someone and Charlotte sent up a silent prayer for the soul of the person unlucky enough to be his prey.

Then she sent up another in gratitude that she was not that person. And, more importantly, she gave thanks that her six-year-old son Sebastian was not this dark, empty-eyed man’s intended quarry.

No, Frederick and his hireling were likely still following the false trails Charlotte and her makeshift family had laid across the Continent before catching ship in Lisbon. They’d repeated the exercise up and down the east coast of the United States before heading west by train. Frederick could not yet have found them, and he certainly would not have had time to hire another assassin. Nor would he have chosen this man if the past was any indication.

Frederick Grenville preferred to employ people of little intelligence and even less ambition. For years he’d surrounded himself with sycophants who’d never dare to contradict him or rise above their positions, who did not challenge his authority, who knew their place in the grand scheme of the English hierarchy. He befriended, bribed, coerced and cajoled those around him into doing his bidding in return for the promise of personal gain, whether it be financial or social.

Frederick’s need for control reminded Charlotte of a puppet master she’d once seen in Covent Garden. His long, pale hands pulled the strings of all those around him, directing them to his whims, building and tearing down their fragile egos with whispered words of praise and rebuke in equal measure.

The dark stranger lounged against the rough wood hitching post with an easy grace that did little to hide the alertness that seemed to shimmer around him like an aura. This man would hardly be content to dance to Frederick’s tune.

More importantly, this man would have scared the daylights out of her brother-in-law.

With one final look at the devil’s angel before her, Charlotte glanced down at Sebastian to find him studying the man. His blond head was tilted to one side, a gesture she knew mirrored her own as she’d scanned his tall form.

“What do you see?” she asked her son, careful to keep her voice low.

“A gun on each hip,” Sebastian replied, equally quiet. “But he’s smoking with his right hand so he’s likely right-handed. He’d have to drop the cheroot to get off a clean, true shot.”

“He would be slow with his right hand,” Charlotte continued the lesson. “Watch him bring the cheroot up.”

Mother and son waited, Sebastian openly watching the stranger, Charlotte peering at him from the corner of her eye as she leaned over her son’s tousled curls.

“His right arm is injured,” Sebastian whispered as the man hunched up his shoulder awkwardly in order to lift the cigarette to his mouth.

“Very good,” she praised before turning to watch a barrel-chested, bowlegged man with a shock of white hair approaching the platform from the dusty street.

“All safe,” Magnus rumbled as he mounted the steps, the sleek, brown fur coat he’d purchased in Helena open and fluttering around his ever-expanding belly. He pinned Charlotte with rheumy green eyes, his weathered face creasing into myriad lines as he smiled.

“Where are the others?” she asked, her eyes searching the street.

Magnus shifted his weight off his bad leg with a grunt. “Akeem has gone to find a wagon for hire, and Ethel is at the mercantile for directions to your uncle’s ranch.”

“And Mr. Chang?”

“He’s after finding out about the gunslinger.”

Everyone accounted for, Charlotte put her hand on Sebastian’s shoulder and turned him toward the steps, intent upon descending from the platform that suddenly felt like a stage as a group of rowdy cowhands pushed through the swinging doors of the saloon across the dirt street.

“He’s not after us,” she told Magnus.

“No,” he agreed, his eyes fixed on the gunman.

“Best not to stare too long or too obviously,” she teased. “Lest he decide he’s bored and looking for a bit of amusement at a newcomer’s expense.”

“I ken I could take him,” Magnus replied with one final glare at the man in question.

“I don’t doubt you could.” Perhaps twenty or thirty years ago the brawny Scotsman could have given the man a run for his money. At nearly seventy years of age, with a leg that had been mangled two years previously and the tip of a steel blade permanently imbedded between two of his ribs, Magnus McDonough would not stand a chance against the younger, leaner man.

“He looks awfully mean,” Sebastian whispered.

“You saying I dun look mean?” Magnus barked.

Sebastian laughed, his blue eyes alive with affection for the old man who’d treated him like a cherished grandson since the day he was born.

“What of the Pleasure Palace?” Charlotte asked.

“The railway man said they’re on a tight schedule. It’ll have to wait until they come through again next week.”

“Oh, but—”

“Leave be, Countess,” Magnus growled. “There’s nothing can be done for it but to wait. You’re not on the Continent. You won’t get your way battin’ your lashes at these lads.”

“I do not bat my lashes,” Charlotte replied with a grin, batting her lashes for all she was worth.

“Bloody hell,” Magnus grumbled. “You likely would get your way with the lads.”

When they reached the other side of the street and began to weave their way through hurrying ladies and idling men, Charlotte peered back over her shoulder.

The dark angel had turned to watch their journey down the walkway, one lean hip resting on the rail of the hitching post, his right arm cradled against his chest. He lifted his left hand to the brim of his hat as if saluting her retreating figure. With a flick of his bare fingers, he tipped the hat back and Charlotte saw his eyes.

Not dark at all, but rather shockingly pale in his bronzed and whiskered face. She was too far away to see their color, perhaps palest blue or green. His lips tilted up at the corners into…well, not quite a smile. More of a smirk.

It was a look so at odds with her instantaneous evaluation of the man as a dark devil, that Charlotte found herself grinning at him for a moment before she resolutely turned her head forward and put the man from her mind.

Mystic was a small town by anyone’s standards, but most especially by the standards of the Countess of Westlockhart who’d spent most of her youth shuttling between her mother’s family in Berlin and her father’s in London, and nearly her entire adulthood traveling the world.

Mr. Chang and Ethel caught up with Charlotte, Sebastian, and Magnus at the improbably named Grand Hotel. It was a two story building with a set of boarded-up glass doors opening into a spacious lobby decorated more like a brothel than a hotel. Faded red velvet furniture was situated in small, intimate groupings amid gilded tables whose sheen had long since worn away. The crimson and emerald carpets were threadbare, the gold velvet drapes moth-eaten. Dull brass spittoons and planters with dead and dying palms littered the room.

“How do, weary travelers!”

Charlotte turned to find a short woman with an enormous bosom swathed in yards of purple silk bearing down on them from across the room.

“Mrs. Grand at your service!” she bellowed, coming to a sudden stop in front of Mr. Chang. “Well, land sakes. We’ve a true Chinaman in our midst!”

Her blue eyes traveled over Ken Chang, taking in his small, black, boxy hat, the long, equally black braid trailing over his shoulder and down his chest to his waist, his high-necked, fitted scarlet silk shirt and tight black trousers. Her gaze came to rest on his remarkably small feet encased in red satin slippers.

Mr. Chang brought his hands together before his chest and bowed to the woman, his black eyes twinkling. “A pweasure to meet a twue wady of da west.”

Mrs. Grand preened, her dimpled hands waving about her pinkening chest and neck.

“Chang,” Magnus murmured in warning as two gentlemen seated on one of the battered settees shifted for a better view of their group.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Grand,” Charlotte greeted in hopes of dragging the woman’s attention away from Mr. Chang before he really put on a show for the locals.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty little thing.” The buxom woman beamed at Charlotte, her bottle-dyed red curls bouncing about her rouged and powdered face. “And Lord love us, this little man can only be your son. He’s the very picture of you, but for the square chin.”

The woman reached out one hand as if to pinch said chin, but the boy was nothing if not quick. He deftly scooted behind Magnus, his hands held up to ward off the grasping fingers.

“Now don’t tell me you’re a shy one.” Mrs. Grand bent down, gifting them all with an unobstructed view right down her gaping bodice.

Charlotte blinked. Surely her nipples weren’t rouged?