The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) (6 page)

She paced a few steps around the room, chewing on her thumbnail. "Of course, you're right."

"Sure I am."

"And, after all, Mr. Donovan is innocent. Right? I mean, he doesn't deserve to be hanged."

"Don't seem like it."

"All right." She swallowed hard, then smiled for the first time in hours. "All right, I'm in. And I know just how we'll do it."

"Now hold yer horses. You ain't gonna—"

"Oh, yes I am."

"Oh, no you ain't."

"You can't possibly mean to leave me out of this—"

"That's exactly—"

"—because you're not up to doing this sort of thing alone, and you know it. And I'm every bit as much a part of this as you. More, in fact. After all, it's my fault Luke even took this horrible assignment!"

Brew sent her a pained expression. "Aw, now, don't start with that again. That ain't no more true than sayin' the stars don't shine behind clouds when they're blocking the way. Luke knowed what he was a-goin' into 'fore he did it. Ain't nothin' you said or did to push him one way or t' other—"

Brew's anger dissolved into a damp, racking cough that had him sitting forward, trying to catch his breath. His coughing was growing progressively worse, and it worried her. As she patted his back, waiting for the paroxysm to stop, she knew he was wrong about Luke. Dead wrong. But there was no point in arguing about it one more time. Brew would never understand what it meant to Grace to mend the rift that had torn her and her older brother apart in the weeks before he'd left. Nor could he understand the need she had to mend it before it was too late.

Brew stopped coughing and glared at her, daring her to say 'I told you so.'

"That cough ain't nothin' new. I'm good as ever. And there ain't no
we
about this little caper. I'll be takin' the chances, little lady, not you."

"But—"

"No buts. You've done enough fer one night. I'll take care of it tomorrow. You're gonna sit tight in this little room where it's good an' safe."

Grace knew better than to argue with him now. When he got bullheaded like this, the best thing to do was to let him think she agreed with him. She'd work on him in the morning, when they were both more clearheaded. She walked to the washstand and poured him a glass of water. He harumphed as she handed it to him, then reached down and tugged the covers up around him again. "You go back to sleep now. You'll need your rest."

"I had my time with the bed. You take it now."

"No. I'll take the chair tonight," she told him, with a hand on his shoulder. "I'm not very sleepy, and I have a lot of thinking to do."

Brew nodded reluctantly. "You ain't gonna sit up all night scribblin' in that little book of yours, are you?"

"I don't know," she told him, patting the ragged, graying sleeve of his union suit. "Maybe."
Maybe that's better than thinking about Luke—or Donovan.

After he settled back down, Grace hugged her arms and walked to the dresser. She ran two fingers over the dog-eared dime novel lying there. Brewster would bluster and blunder about doing it all himself, but in the end, she'd get her way. Without question, she knew that whatever Brewster was planning for Donovan, she'd have a part in it.

She owed it to the man.

Chapter 3

Reese fingered the painful swelling around his mouth and eye, and wishing he could even the score with Sanders before he died. Ignoring the soreness in his ribs, he propped his hands behind his aching head and stared at the meaty black-and-brown spider dangling from its perfectly formed web three feet from his nose. He decided that if there were a hell on earth, this hole would qualify.

The dimensions of it reminded him more of a coffin than a cell. Six feet by six feet, and that was generous, he wagered, considering he couldn't stretch out fully. Just enough room for a blanket-covered slab of wood that masqueraded as a bed and reeked of every other unsuspecting victim who'd had the misfortune of crossing the barred threshold before him.

Even with a lonely shaft of morning sunlight pouring through the small barred window, the dank adobe walls that enclosed him on three sides seemed more like the sloping sides of a grave. Appropriate, he thought. This was, after all, his future. He'd hang for killing Sanders' brother as surely as he lay here. No one would stand up for him. Not even, he supposed, that annoying bit of fluff who'd gotten him into the whole mess. What the devil was her name?
Grace.
Yeah, that was it. Grace the Graceful. She'd tripped over her lovely feet and pushed his neck right into a noose.

Even so, an ironic smile tilted his lips for a moment, remembering the look of shocked outrage on her face as Sanders pronounced his fate.
Welcome to Texas,
he mused grimly, wishing he had a drink to toast her incredible naiveté. He lifted an imaginary glass to the spider instead, then frowned at it.

"Well, what are you starin' at?"

The insect retreated a few judicious inches up its web.

"Wise. Keep yer distance, I always say. We might even be friends—for a day or so. What d' ya say? You don't bite me and I won't kill you. One less death on my hands."

The silken threads vibrated in the dust motes that swirled in the morning sun as the spider appeared to consider his offer.

Reese closed his eyes and sighed, rubbing the ache at the back of his neck. The devil take it! He supposed hanging wasn't the worst way to go. Funny, he'd always figured it would be a bullet in the back. At least, enough men had offered to provide such a service for him. He supposed he deserved it either way for one thing or another he'd done in his life. A fitting end to a perfectly useless existence.

His da had always told him his end would be bad. As the proverbial black sheep of the family, he supposed he'd held up his end of the bargain. Then again, he mused, how much worse could the quick end of a rope be than working yourself to death digging potatoes in a rock-filled field you'd never even own?

The heavy bolt on the outer door to the office slid open with a bang and Reese cracked one eye open.

"You got a visitor, Donovan," Sanders announced. "Says she's your sister, come to see you. You got a sister?"

In Ireland. Four of them, to be exact. God, he hadn't thought of them in months. The only one worth her salt, however, was Mary Kate, the youngest—the tomboy—who'd sworn she'd come to America to find him one day. He'd always prayed she wouldn't. Reese rubbed his forehead and wished fervently for a drink.

"Well?" Sanders prodded.

Donovan sat up, carefully avoiding the dangling spider. His head throbbed with the movement. "Doesn't everyone have a sister?"

"What's her name?"

Donovan laughed. "What's she
say
her name is?"

"Katherine. Katherine Donovan."

Reese felt the blood siphon from his face as a womanly shaped cloud of black silk slipped past Sanders and into the small room.

"Hey!" Sanders sputtered, making an ineffectual attempt to stop her.

"Ach, Reese, me darlin' boy," she cried from behind a solid veil of black mourning silk. "Saints preserve us. I've found you at last!"

Reese's brows dropped in a frown. What the—?

"Thank you, Marshal Sanders, for takin' pity on me," she yabbered on in a phony Irish brogue. "'Tis years since I last laid eyes on him. An' me comin' wi' such bad news about our poor dear papa who died just months ago in a terrible accident, along with Reese's brother-in-law, my dear, departed—"she paused—"Edgar."

Edgar?

"And now," she sniffed,
"this!"
She swooned against the wall. "I'm no' sure I kin take it." She pressed a lace-edged hanky dramatically against the curtain of silk that covered her face. "Oh, Reese, Reese, me darlin' broother! Look what's become of ya!"

He narrowed his eyes.
Darlin' brother, my ass
. His da had been dead for three years, though he himself had only learned of it a year ago. But Mary Kate would know. He eyed the curtain of black silk, attempting to make out the face behind the veil. He didn't know who she was, but she sure wasn't his baby sister.

"Could you leave us?" The black silk veil tilted up toward the sheriff.

Sanders's jaw hardened. "I have a rule about visitors bein' alone with—"

"If what you say is true, it may be me only chance. Oh, please. Just a moment alone wi' me poor, nearly departed broother. It's no' so much t' ask."

Sanders slid a hate-filled gaze at Donovan. "He don't deserve no favors."

"Ple-eease—for me, then." Her voice trembled with appropriate desperation as she said it.

"Five minutes," Sanders snapped against his better judgment. "That's all." Then, under his breath, "Murderin' cur."

"Ohh!" she wailed, going at it with the hanky again.

Sanders, who'd hardly prepared himself to be at odds with a hysterical woman, backed out of the hallway, wiping the back of his neck with his scarf. "Five minutes. That's all you got."

The woman in black sniffed and nodded wordlessly.

As the heavy pine door slid shut behind the marshal, Reese clapped his hands together in silent applause for the performance she'd just given. "Well done," he acknowledged in a half whisper, "but the accent could use a bit o' work. 'Katherine' was a good touch, though. And a good guess, I suppose."

The woman dropped all trace of grief from her posture and crossed the short distance to his solitary cell. Gripping the bars, she peered at him through the shadowy morning light. The black silk veil fluttered with her indrawn breath. "What happened to your face?"

He raised a self-conscious hand to the tender, swelling bruise beside his eye. "What, this? A little gift from the local authorities."

"Sanders?"

He nodded.

"I'm sorry."

He dragged a gaze down the length of her and back up again. "My sister, Mary Kate, might be sorry. I don't know who you are."

She lifted the black silk away from her face and draped it over the compact little black hat pinned to her hair.

Grace the Graceful stared back at him with that cockeyed smile of hers.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—"

"You needn't be sacrilegious, Mr. Donovan." She paused, covering her embarrassment by looking down at her dress. "I thought you'd be happy to see me."

"And why would I be?"

"Well, that isn't to say... I mean... I know last night was rather... unfortunate..."

Slumping back against the mud wall, mutely, he eyed her with disbelief.

"...but you see, I had to come." She caught her lower lip between her teeth. "I thought the widow's weeds and veil were a good idea since Sanders knows me and wouldn't let me within fifty miles of you otherwise." She spun in a circle for his inspection. "What do you think?"

He thought she might be daft. Or worse.

One blond wisp of hair spilled down her forehead, dangling above those enormous—wildly innocent—blue eyes of hers. The picture of hopefulness. Limned by dark, spiky lashes, her eyes were the sort people stopped and stared at. They were a lavender blue, as deep as a field of Texas bluebonnets. It came as something of a shock to realize that without the haze of alcohol blurring his vision, she was a raving beauty, with skin the texture of fine porcelain and a touch of color high in her delicately shaped cheeks. Her mouth curled upward naturally at the corners, giving her a perpetual grin. And when she smiled... God Almighty, when she smiled...

He must have been drunker last night than he'd thought to have missed it. But even with that realization, he cautioned himself against being distracted by things that he no longer had any hope of tasting.

"What are you doing here?" he asked finally.

Her eyes took on a wounded expression. "Well, you could try showing a bit more gratitude."

Leaning back against the cool adobe wall, he eyed her with indifference. "Gratitude? Ah, now that's rich. Perhaps if I had a bit more 'straw' in my bricks, I'd be capable of such a thing."

She bit her lip, looking contrite.

"Is there any particular reason," he went on, rubbing his aching temple, "that I should be grateful t' the likes o' you?"

Leaning closer she smiled sweetly and whispered, "I mean to save your stubborn neck. That's why."