A Wanted Man (7 page)

Nothing? Everything?

“I want to do my job,” he said. “Her father hired me to keep her safe.”

“W
hat?” The word burst from her, an echo of the hurt that erupted in her chest. She wasn’t sure what spurred it the most: the fact that her father, who she’d believed had finally, finally, trusted her enough to allow her this small venture into freedom clearly didn’t trust her; or that her lovely stranger was, after all, arranging himself into her life only because he’d been paid to do so.

The first should be no shock. She’d even wondered at the time, hadn’t she, about whether when it came right down to it her parents would be able to let her go. She’d even joked about searching the train car to see where he’d hidden his spies.

And the second…well, Mrs. Bossidy had warned her. Heavens, Laura had even warned herself. And so the pain was not so much true hurt as it was a wistful regret, she told herself now. Hurt required things such as trust and intimate knowledge. The capacity for betrayal necessitated that there be a relationship to betray. What
she mourned right now was not so much
him
but the loss of a fantasy she’d nurtured even as she understood it was unlikely: that someday, in some way, she would find a man who could look at her without immediately thinking: Laura Hamilton, the Baron’s daughter.

Foolish girl.

He studied her closely. Predatory eyes, cool and dark. He did not miss a detail, this one, his focus intense as a hunting cat on its prey. Except she was not his prey.

She was merely his assignment.

“I said that—”

“I know,” she interrupted, wincing at her rudeness but unwilling to listen to him say it again, laid out bare. She forced a laugh; she could not allow this to be important. “It just took me a moment for my brain to catch up with my ears.”

She stepped around Mrs. Bossidy. It brought her close to him, far too near for either propriety or wisdom, until the warm, dark scent of him entwined with the smell of the night, her nose level with his chest. She tilted her chin up, made her smile go cool and reserved. She had never been able to pull off haughty for any length of time, but it was an effective weapon in her mother’s arsenal, wielded when her warmth and charm had been perhaps too effective. But in this case Laura far preferred being thought the spoiled rich girl than one wounded by her own ridiculous yearnings. It was not as if he’d courted her. He’d merely…been there, and her own imagination supplied the rest.

“For heaven’s sake, Laura, he’s got their guns, you’ve no idea if he’s telling the truth. Get out of here until I can investigate the matter.” Dimly, she heard Mrs. Bossidy speak behind her, felt her tug at her waist in an attempt to pull her away. But they were minor
inconveniences, only barely registered, as if his nearness overwhelmed all else.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Laura said. “Not until I’ve had the opportunity to get to know my new…bodyguard.”

The last word came out with heavy emphasis, a seductress’s purr of innuendo she’d never used, surprising herself. His teeth flashed, a quick smile that vanished a second later but left an impression just the same, so strong she momentarily forgot everything but that fleeting power.
My, my,
she thought.
It really is a good thing he rarely does that. It’s too potent a weapon to be unleashed on the world on a regular basis.

He flicked his wrists, spinning the guns in his hands so they were butt forward. They hung there in the air until he glanced briefly at his would-be captors. “Well? Don’t you want your guns back?”

Hiram grunted, Mr. Hoxie yelped, scrambling to grab their weapons with such belated haste that Laura worried they’d go off in the process.

Once they’d retrieved them, Peel and Hoxie held their weapons awkwardly, as if they weren’t quite sure what to do with them. Did they aim them back on him? Holster them?

He addressed Mrs. Bossidy. “Feel better now?”

“Not particularly, no.” She was still behind Laura, her hands at Laura’s waist as if she was prepared to throw her to the ground and cover the girl’s body with hers at the slightest need. “Who
are
you?”

Laura sucked in a quick breath. She’d wondered a hundred times since she’d first seen him. And yet there was a part of her that didn’t want to know. The more she learned of him, the more real he became, the less
the fantasy man that she could build into anything and anyone she wanted.

“Sam Duncan.”

Erastus Hoxie gasped, his arm slumping to his side. Afraid the gun would drop to the ground, Laura bent and rescued it. Then, realizing what she held, she turned and thrust it into Mrs. Bossidy’s hand.

“Good move,” Duncan said.

She refused to be flattered by his approval. Her father was paying him; she must not forget that.

“Are you really Sam Duncan?” Mr. Hoxie asked, as much awe written on his face as though President Garfield had just popped up in front of him.

“You want a demonstration?”

“I’d say we just had one,” Hiram said, frowning, as he checked the loading of his pistol before holstering it.

“What am I missing here?” Laura asked. “Who
are
you?”

“I just told you—”

She impatiently waved off the rest of his answer. “Yes, yes, Sam Duncan.
What
are you, then. Why is Mr. Hoxie still standing there with his mouth open, looking as if he might start curtsying at any moment?”

“He’s almost as famous as you, Miss Hamilton,” Mr. Hoxie informed her.

“I don’t know as I’d go that far,” he said.

“Don’t be so modest,” Erastus told him. “Miss Hamilton, Duncan here’s the most famous gun in the West! I read about him in
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper
. They say all he has to do is show up in town and all the penny-ante crooks go scurrying like cockroaches in the light. They say grown men, hard-hearted and battle-hardened, weep when they discover he’s signed on for the other side.”

Mr. Duncan rolled his eyes. That he could laugh at such nonsense rather than be puffed up by it was one point in his favor.

Unfortunately, it was a very minor point. He sold his gun, his honor, to the highest bidder. She’d heard of such men. Their scruples were nonexistent, their allegiance bought and paid for, as fickle as a whore, always drawn to the heaviest purse. If he were the most famous of his kind, then he was, by logic, the most villainous, for surely one did not achieve such a reputation by kindness and adherence to high principles.

He had lied to her by omission. He had flirted with her to gain access to do his job. No man spent as much time warmly listening to a woman’s chatter as he had in the square without there being at least a bit of flirting in it.

“You could have told me the truth from the first,” she said.

“Could I?” he replied, his voice low, pitched as if he made an intimate declaration. But there was no emotion in his eyes. “I learned long ago to hold my cards close, Miss Hamilton. I suppose I
could
have, but I didn’t
have
to.”

Well, that should be a good warning to her, shouldn’t it? Never to assume he’d reveal anything of himself that he wasn’t absolutely forced to?

Not that there’d ever be the opportunity to need to remember that.

She stepped yet closer, forcing herself to look steadily up into his face. Her palms were damp. Her heart thudded. Grown men might quail before him, but Baron Hamilton’s daughter did not.

“I have no need of your services,” she said.

“Your father doesn’t agree.” He smiled at her then, a
smile filled with charm but devoid of any real warmth, calculated to lure her into compliance.

“A hired gun, are you?”

“Sometimes a man must undertake whatever employment is offered,” he said mildly.

“Interesting. A man sells himself out to the highest bidder and they laud his deeds in newspapers and novels. A woman does the same, and the name for her is very different.”

His smile vanished. Good. It looked patently false on him anyway. If he ever smiled at her again she wanted it to be genuine.

Not that she ever wanted him to smile at her.

“Some of us, Miss Hamilton, have not had the luxury of parents who are able to indulge us. Sometimes necessity does not allow us to be so…whimsical in our choices.”

“Whimsical?” He thought her spoiled? “You know
nothing
of me. You assume much.”

“You mean that I drew conclusions of what and who you are by what was written and said rather than what I’ve witnessed by my own experience?”

Her retort died before it made it out of her mouth. “Point taken.”

Mrs. Bossidy recovered her wits. “We don’t even know for certain if your father did hire him, Laura. Let me cable before we leave Kearney.”

“No kidding, Miss Hamilton,” Hiram added. “It’s not like me and Hoxie need the help, y’know. Another fellow in the way’d probably just muck things up.”

“Apparently you do,” the man said. “Or you wouldn’t have lost your guns.
You
should hire me if he hadn’t already.” He shrugged. “Go right ahead and cable. If you don’t mind bothering Mr. Hamilton with
such things, that is. For obviously if I’d had wicked designs on Miss Hamilton, or anything of hers, I could have carried them out already, anytime I wanted.”

Hiram didn’t like that. But he couldn’t honestly deny the truth of it.

“Oh, why bother?” Laura asked. “It’s just like him, isn’t it? To hire protection and a spy in one? He didn’t want me to make this trip in the first place and insisted I do it on his terms. Not to mention that if Leland Hamilton is going to hire another bodyguard, would he employ any but the most famous and most expensive?” She slanted a cool glance at Duncan. “I assume you are expensive.”

“Extremely.”

“Well, since you can obviously be bought…how much would it cost to have you to stay behind when we pull out?”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. That reputation you continue to ramble on about rests squarely on the fact that once I accept a job I always see it through to a satisfactory conclusion.”

“No one would have to know. We’re not telling. You’ve not been traveling with us this far, so no one knows. I will tell my father you protected me with the utmost efficiency. Your reputation can remain intact.”

“No. Despite what you might think, I do take my word seriously.”

He was as stubborn as her father. She’d learned the futility of arguing with him years ago.

“We’re leaving in the morning,” she told him. “Be ready,” she said, spinning to march away.

“Giving orders already?” he called after her. “Aren’t you going to welcome me to the party?”

“He’s an odd one, that,” Mrs. Bossidy murmured, glancing out the velvet-draped window in the door at the back of their train car. They were alone—Mrs. Bossidy, bent over the knitting she’d taken up three days ago in bored desperation, Laura sorting through her sketches—as the train clicked through western Nebraska. Though they had, very briefly, dipped into Colorado at Julesburg.

They were two hundred miles, but eight long days, out of Kearney, for they’d unhitched twice to allow Laura to work.

It was in some ways hard to tell that Mr. Duncan had joined their small party. He preferred to take his meals alone and outside. He seemed to enjoy the food, packing away in brief periods of time an amount that rivaled Hiram’s massive meals. He also declined to sleep in the car when they were stopped, instead choosing to lay out his bedroll beneath the skies. Mr. Hoxie, whose hero worship hadn’t dissipated a whit, attributed that lamentable state of affairs to the volume of Hiram’s snoring, an explanation that could be true. If the windows were open, Laura sometimes heard his rumbling from the next car.

If they traveled through the night, Laura was uncertain if Sam Duncan slept at all. Invariably when they were under way, day or night, he stood on the back platform of her car. His gaze constantly swept the land they rolled through, turning to locate her every few seconds, as if he expected an attack at any moment. It was ridiculous, of course. What could happen to them out here? But her father certainly seemed to be getting his money’s worth.

One would think she’d have been able to ignore his presence completely. She was accustomed to having servants, guards, and nurses around her. He hadn’t said more than half a dozen words to her, a reticence she
should
have appreciated. And yet…she was so vibrantly aware of his presence that often she was conscious of nothing else. He was always
there
, patient, intent, as if she were the most important thing in the world to him, so crucial that he could not bear to look away. It didn’t seem to matter how many times she reminded herself that it was his job. Her heart refused to accept it. She even found it difficult to lose herself in her work, something she had always done with such ease that her mother despaired that she would ever find the real world as interesting as the one she created.

She tried to concentrate. On the color, the light, the slope and proportion of the land. But the knowledge that he was
there
hovered, tantalizing, so omnipresent it should have been suffocating, as she’d always yearned for privacy and freedom above all.

But she was terribly afraid that she was growing so accustomed to the situation that it would feel strange when he was gone. There was a certain comfort in knowing that, whenever she chose to look up, she would find him. Though it was far from comfortable.

She glanced his way now. Braced into the wind, the sky behind him so dark it appeared to be early evening instead of afternoon, his sharp, dark visage blurred by the light spatter of raindrops on the windows. She reached up to touch the glass of the nearest window and found it cool, unseasonably so. He had to be chilled but it seemed to bother him not a whit. Hatless, his collar open, a brisk flush of color across the dusky slash of his cheekbones. The moisture had brought a bit of wave to his hair, the wind blowing it back from his face. Automatically she reached for her sketchbook, brushing a couple of quick lines across the page before she realized what she was doing and set it aside.