Teresa Medeiros (12 page)

Billy nodded. “That’s very thoughtful of you. We wouldn’t want to worry the old man, would we? Why don’t you leave it at the hotel desk in case he arrives while we’re gone.”

Esmerelda hesitated, wondering if she was only imagining the sparkle of challenge in his eyes. Her own hastily scribbled words haunted her.
I have been forced to barter my virtue to a ruthless desperado
. Prodded by his expectant scrutiny, she retrieved an envelope from the desk, folded the note into a neat square, and tucked it inside. After all, it wasn’t as if the spiteful old man would ever actually read it.

“I’ll take it down for you,” Billy offered, extending his hand.

“Oh, no,” she said, clutching the envelope to her breast with even more desperation than she had clutched her drawers. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll just drop it off at the desk as we go.”

He slowly withdrew his hand and nodded. “You do that, Miss Fine. You just do that.”

A prickle of apprehension skated down her spine. Despite
his lazy grin, Esmerelda couldn’t quite shake the odd sensation that Mr. Darling didn’t trust her any more than she trusted him.

“This horse seems rather tall. Do you have anything just a tiny bit shorter?”

As Esmerelda turned away from the stall, rejecting its velvety-eyed occupant just as she’d rejected the occupants of all the other stalls lining the north wall of the livery stable, Billy blew out a snort of exasperation that would have put his mare to shame. Although it was only late summer, at this rate they wouldn’t reach Eulalie until Christmas. Of next year.

Esmerelda meandered over to the opposite wall, her hands clasped behind her as if she were reviewing a line of shaggy troops.

The stable’s owner trotted at her heels, dabbing sweat from his brow with a dingy red bandanna. The shrill pitch of his voice revealed his growing desperation. “But, miss, you said the last horse was too short. And the one before that too broad. And the one before
that
too brown.”

She peered into the next stall, making a nervous little hop backward when the piebald gelding within nickered a welcome. “He’s a bit strident, don’t you think? Do you have anything quieter? More mannerly?”

The stable owner’s bottom lip began to quiver as if he was on the verge of bursting into tears. Taking pity on the fellow, Billy stepped forward. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss Fine, but none of Mr. Ezell’s horses were privileged enough to attend finishing school. Why don’t you just take a look-see at this docile fellow over here?”

He caught her elbow in a less-than-docile grip and dragged her to the next stall. The aged gray within lowered his head and gave them a sleepy look. If he were any more
docile, he’d be dead. But this time Billy was standing near enough to feel Esmerelda’s quiver of alarm.

“Miss Fine?” he murmured into her ear.

“Mm?”

“Have you ever ridden a horse before?”

She drew in a shaky breath. “I sat on a pony once at the county fair.”

“Was the pony moving?”

She shot him a sheepish glance. “Only after I fell off.”

“That’s what I thought.” He steered her toward the stable door. “Why don’t you step outside while I choose your mount? I’m considered an excellent judge of horseflesh.”

She cast him a skeptical glance. He gave her an encouraging wink before pushing her out of the stable and gently closing the door in her face.

“Excellent judge of horseflesh, my … my … jackass,” Esmerelda muttered beneath her breath, eyeing the long-eared monster plodding in front of her with undisguised loathing.

She gave the reins a tentative flick. The hateful creature swiveled around to bare its long, yellow teeth at her and honked out a deafening bray. The basset hound perched on the bench of the wagon next to her threw back its head, jowls jiggling, and added a woeful howl to the chorus.

Esmerelda stuck her tongue out at the mule, only to end up biting it hard enough to draw blood when the rickety buckboard jolted through yet another rut. Her trunk and violin case were taking an awful beating in the bed of the wagon. If her bottom hadn’t gone numb hours ago, she’d probably be howling in pain herself. She’d spent most of the morning silently bemoaning the absence of her bustle.

She shot the portly hound a menacing glance and hissed, “If you don’t hush, I’ll sit on you.”

The dog subsided, giving her a doleful look that made her feel like the most heartless of bullies.

Her discomfort wouldn’t have been so galling if Mr. Darling hadn’t spent the entire journey loping ahead of the wagon on his chestnut mare as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He rode with remarkable skill, his long-limbed grace serving him as well in the saddle as it did in a gun-fight. Esmerelda gritted her teeth when a cheerful whistle accompanied by the jingling music of his spurs drifted back to her sunburned ears.

Her misshapen bonnet was proving to be a poor protection against the desert sun. The waves of shimmering heat had driven her to roll up the heavy sleeves of her basque. Her gloves shielded her hands, but she could almost hear the freckles popping out on her forearms. She sighed. There wouldn’t be enough buttermilk in all of New England to fade them now.

She shaded her eyes against the sun, hoping for a glimpse of civilization, but saw nothing but more of the same—sweeping plains of grama and buffalo grass peppered with sparse patches of mesquite beneath a blazing swath of sky. As alien as the landscape was to her eyes, she had to admit it possessed a wild and stark beauty nearly as compelling as it was disturbing.

Much like her stoic guide.

Darling’s cheery song had given way to the plaintive notes of “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier.” The mournful refrain sent a shiver of loneliness through Esmerelda’s soul.

Desperate for human companionship, she flapped the reins on the mule’s back. He lunged into a reluctant trot, nearly tumbling the hound paws over jowls into the bed of the buckboard. By the time the wagon caught up with the mare, Esmerelda was panting harder than the dog with the effort it took to control the cantankerous mule.

Mr. Darling slowed his own horse to a brisk walk.

“You whistle very nicely, sir,” she said. “Shall we attempt a duet to pass the time?”

He immediately stopped whistling. “That might not be a good idea, ma’am. We wouldn’t want to attract Indians. Or buzzards,” he muttered beneath his breath.

She gave the sky a nervous glance. “I know the tune you were whistling. It’s an old Irish folk song that was very popular in Boston during the war. My mother used to play it on the piano.”

“Was your father a soldier?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Papa always felt he could best serve his country by wielding a pen instead of a sword. He was a staunch abolitionist. He wrote eloquent editorials for the
Gazette
denouncing the unfortunate tendency of the privileged to enslave their fellow man.” The taut set of Mr. Darling’s jaw beneath the shadow of his hat brim warned her that she might be at risk of offending him. Hoping to placate him, she hastily added, “Of course, some of Papa’s friends insisted that the war was less about slaves than money.”

Billy reined in the mare, swinging around to face her. His gray-green eyes had gone hard as flint, cutting straight to her heart. Esmerelda’s hands involuntarily tightened on the reins. True to his contrary nature, the mule picked that moment to respond to her touch for the first time, bringing the buckboard to a lurching halt.

“My pa was a dirt farmer,” Billy said, his voice oddly flat. “He didn’t have any money or slaves. But when one of our neighbors accused him of being a Confederate sympathizer, that didn’t stop the Union soldiers from hanging him from a tree in his own front yard while my ma watched. If it hadn’t been for the war, Pa might still be alive. And Ma …” He trailed off to gaze at the distant horizon,
a muscle in his jaw working savagely.
“That
, Miss Fine, is what the war was about for me and my kin.”

Esmerelda remained frozen with shame while he wheeled his horse around and spurred it into a canter. For a moment, she thought he was just going to leave her there—an insignificant speck on that vast and windswept plain. But he reined in the mare at the top of a shallow rise and glanced over his shoulder, his lean form tense with impatience. It took her several agonizing minutes to bully the mule into motion. Only after she’d succeeded did Darling continue on, presenting his back to her with deliberate finality.

Esmerelda shivered as the fiery ball of the sun melted the horizon into a lake of gold. As breathtaking as the sight was, she knew night could not be far behind. Stars had already began to pierce the sky, tearing glittering holes in the lavender quilt of dusk. The steady rocking of the buckboard might have lured her aching body into a doze if she hadn’t feared losing sight of the mute sentinel riding ahead of her.

Mr. Darling’s unfailing vigilance reproached her nearly as much as his silence. He’d given her ample time to ponder her careless words. To her and her family, the war had been nothing but a battle of conflicting philosophies costing spilled ink instead of spilled blood. But it had cost Billy Darling both his father and his innocence. And what had become of his mother? she wondered. Had she been murdered by the Union soldiers as well? Or perished of a broken heart after being forced to watch her husband die in such a brutal manner?

Although Billy hadn’t whistled a note since their earlier encounter, Esmerelda would have almost sworn she could catch snatches of “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier” in the mournful wail of the wind. When the basset hound edged
near enough to rest its chin on her knee, she scratched the dog behind its droopy ears instead of pushing it away.

As the light faded, the sloping walls of a canyon loomed out of the land to embrace them. Esmerelda found herself yearning for the bleak desert plain, the broad sweep of the sky, the absence of shadows cast by the towering rock formations that seemed to watch them from the gathering darkness.

Something howled in the distance, making her skin crawl. “Mr. Darling?” she called out, cringing at the note of near-panic in her voice.

He hesitated for a nearly imperceptible moment before guiding his horse in a wide circle and loping back to her side. Even he wasn’t completely immune to their eerie surroundings. He rode with one hand resting lightly on the grip of the Winchester sheathed in the leather scabbard hanging from his saddle.

“Billy,” he said curtly, capturing the reins from her hands with enough authority to draw the mule to a halt.

“How far to Eulalie …” Esmerelda cleared her throat. The use of such an intimate nickname seemed to imply a fondness they did not share. “… Billy?”

He squinted at the hint of horizon visible through the narrow mouth of the canyon. “About a six-hour ride, I’d wager. If we start out at dawn, we should make town before noon.”

Esmerelda’s mouth went drier than it already was while her stomach recoiled at the prospect of subsisting for another day on beans, jerky, and libations that tasted more like rusty tin than coffee or water.

“We won’t reach Eulalie until tomorrow?” she asked faintly.

He nodded. “We’d best make camp now. After sundown, the desert can be a dangerous place. There’s outlaws,
scorpions, rattlers, varmints …” He hesitated long enough to warn her that he just might be enjoying himself. “… Indians.”

Chewing on her lower lip, she cast him a dubious look. Sharing this man’s bedroll could prove more hazardous than any of those perils.

He leaned down to capture a tendril of hair that had been jolted loose from her coronet of braids. He threaded his fingers through the silky strand, the unexpected tenderness of his touch sending a parade of gooseflesh across her skin. “Why, I’ve known Apache who would sell their grandfather’s souls to get their hands on a scalp this pretty.”

Esmerelda’s first instinct was to flush with pleasure. Her second instinct was to snatch her hair out of his hand and berate him for deliberately trying to frighten her.

Before she could do either, a shot rang out.

Its echo hadn’t even died when Billy launched himself off his mount, Winchester in hand, and rolled her over the side of the wagon to the ground.

“Down, Sadie!” he shouted.

Whimpering in alarm, the basset hound dove into the bed of the wagon. Billy’s horse took off with a frantic whinny, galloping for the mouth of the canyon.

Esmerelda’s breath hitched in her chest. She tried to rise, but Billy pressed her into the sand, using his body as a shield. She didn’t comprehend why until a second shot struck the ground a few feet from the wagon wheel, sending up a blinding spray of grit. That was when she decided she just might be content to lie there all night, cradled beneath the shelter of his taut muscles.

With an ominous creak, the buckboard wheels turned half a revolution.

“Sonofabitch,” Billy breathed into her hair.

Esmerelda didn’t have the heart to chide him for his
profanity. She understood their dilemma only too well. If the mule spooked and galloped away with their only shelter, they were done for. She could see the reins from where she lay, dangling just out of arm’s reach between the seat and the harness.

“Don’t move, honey,” he whispered. “Don’t even breathe.”

At first she thought his endearment was addressed to the mule. But that was before he inched forward on his elbows, dragging his hips across the softness of her bottom. Oddly undone by the contact, Esmerelda squeezed her eyes shut, once again mourning the absence of her bustle.

The chill night wind stung her skin as Billy rose to a crouch and peered over the bed of the wagon, Winchester in one hand, six-gun in the other. Esmerelda was surprised to learn that her curiosity was stronger than her terror. Ignoring his command, she wiggled to her knees and peered around the spokes of the wagon wheel.

The rising moon revealed a lone outcropping of rock sheltered by rubble on the far wall of the canyon—the perfect cover for an ambush. There was no way to determine how many attackers crouched on that makeshift platform. By squinting, Esmerelda could just make out the crown of one of their hats.