Teresa Medeiros (16 page)

Skills that had proved utterly useless once Esmerelda had been forced to accept that she would never have a husband or children of her own.

Discomfited at having revealed so much, she scowled at Billy. “Do you always wake up this grumpy?”

He swayed forward like a rattler poised to strike. “Wouldn’t you like to find out?”

Stiffening, Esmerelda swayed backward. “Perhaps grumpy was too kind a description. Insufferable might be more appropriate.”

He snorted. “You’d be insufferable, too, if you had to stay up half the night making sure my brothers didn’t roast Sadie on the spit.”

“You should have let them eat the mule.”

He gave her a dark look before climbing to his feet. As he rolled back his shoulders to work the stiffness from them, his muscles strained against the worn fabric of his shirt. Raking a hand through his hair, he went to the edge of the bluff and stared out over the canyon with eyes that
were red-rimmed from what Esmerelda suspected was too little sleep and too much strong drink. Desperation haunted his features, making him look even more dangerous and unpredictable than he had in the saloon where she had found him. A coarse oath and the aroma of brewing coffee drifted up from the canyon below, warning them that his brothers were already awake and stirring.

Esmerelda shuddered, chilled anew to remember the fate she had so narrowly escaped. Billy could growl and bluster all he wanted, but she knew very well that he hadn’t forfeited his sleep to protect Sadie. She gazed up at his inscrutable profile, overcome by sudden shyness.

“Mr. Darling?” In the crisp, clear light of day, she couldn’t quite bring herself to call him by his Christian name.

He swung around, reluctance plain in the stiff motion.

She forced herself to meet his eyes. “Thank you for looking after me last night.”

“Just doing my job, Duchess.” Although his voice was as mocking as ever, his eyes had lost their teasing sparkle. His level gaze made her skin prickle with a curious combination of apprehension and anticipation. “After all, that is what you’re going to be paying me for.”

Before she could break the strange spell his words had cast, a shrill wail shattered the tranquillity of the morning. Sadie bounded to her feet and threw back her head, her baying only adding to the dreadful racket.

Billy’s eyes narrowed in bewilderment. “What the hell …?”

Esmerelda clapped her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to dull the piercing screech. “Sweet God in heaven, it sounds like they’re torturing a cat.…” Her eyes widened in horror as comprehension dawned. “A cat!”

Her dismay shifting to fury, she snatched up the derringer
from the folds of the blanket and went scrambling down the slope, leaving Billy to gape after her in stunned disbelief.

By the time Billy managed to shake off his shock and race down the slope with Sadie loping along behind him, Esmerelda was already holding the entire Darling gang at gunpoint.

They stood in a frozen tableau, caught red-handed rifling through the belongings in her overturned trunk. Jasper held an unstoppered scent bottle beneath his nose while Virgil clutched a pair of ruffled pantalettes to his burly chest, his face rapidly purpling from the cigar smoke he was afraid to exhale. Billy narrowed his eyes at the sight of Virgil’s meaty hands fondling Esmerelda’s drawers. His reluctance to stain the delicate fabric was the only thing that stopped him from drawing his own pistol and shooting his brother down in cold blood.

Esmerelda’s wrath was directed toward the man with her violin tucked beneath his quivering chin. He held the bow captive in his other hand, poised to assault the strings and evoke another of those piteous screeches for deliverance.

Esmerelda’s voice rang like a mission bell in the morning stillness. “Take your filthy hands off my mother’s violin.” She drew back the hammer of the derringer. “I’m not bluffing, Samuel Darling. Unhand that instrument or I’ll shoot you. I swear I will.”

Her target gulped hard enough to make his Adam’s apple bob in his skinny throat. “I ain’t Sam, m-m-a’am. I’m Enos.” He jabbed the bow toward the man buried up to his elbows in a pile of petticoats. “H-h-he’s Sam.”

Esmerelda’s gaze darted between the two men as she considered that revelation. “Then I’ll shoot the both of you.” Her eyes narrowed to menacing slits. “Or maybe I’ll
just shoot off one of
your
ears, Enos, so no one else will be able to tell the two of you apart.”

Enos’s yellow teeth began to chatter. Billy could hardly blame his brothers for being cowed. With her cheeks flushed with rage and her hair whipping around her shoulders in a cinnamon froth, Esmerelda looked nothing like the meek captive he’d led them to believe she was. The regal sneer curling her lips was more suited to a queen than a duchess.

With an unexpected thrill of pride, Billy thought how pretty she was when she was riled. Nothing this side of Abilene rivaled the sight of Esmerelda Fine in a temper.

Virgil wheezed, puffing a stream of smoke out of his nostrils like a consumptive locomotive. Jasper’s free hand inched toward his gunbelt.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Billy drawled, folding his arms over his chest. “The little gal’s got a right twitchy trigger finger and a deadly aim. She almost shot me clean through the heart the first time we met, and us not even properly introduced.”

Esmerelda tossed him a startled look, but he couldn’t tell if she was surprised by his presence or his praise. He winked at her, rattling her composure enough to make the derringer waver.

Fortunately, Enos was already holding out the violin. “I didn’t mean no h-h-harm, ma’am. I’ve just always been right partial to fiddle music.”

Mollified by his polite surrender, Esmerelda laid the derringer in Billy’s outstretched hand and rescued the violin. Oblivious to his brothers’ hungry inspection of her shapely calves and trim ankles, she tenderly polished Enos’s greasy fingerprints off the rich wood with the ruffled hem of her petticoat.

Targeting the brother with the nastiest leer, Billy snarled, “Give the lady her perfume, Jasper.”

Jasper stole another whiff from the bottle. “Hell, this ain’t no perfume. It’s peach extract.” His scowl curved into a grin as he elbowed Virgil in the ribs. “No wonder she smells good enough to eat.”

Billy’s trigger finger twitched again. What in the hell was wrong with him? He couldn’t very well shoot a man for saying exactly what he’d been thinking.

Esmerelda surprised him by marching right over and plucking the bottle from his brother’s hands. Even the arrogant Jasper looked chilled by the brittle insincerity of her smile. “Unlike you and your brothers, sir, I have to pay for what I want instead of simply taking it from those who are weaker than I. Why should I waste my money on lilac or lavender water when a dab of extract behind each ear will suffice?”

Billy frowned, pained as much by her dignity as her frugality. Hell, a woman like the Duchess deserved more than peach extract to scent her creamy skin. She deserved the most expensive perfume gold could buy, eau de cologne from Paris, frankincense and myrrh.

As Esmerelda snatched her drawers from Virgil’s hands and moved to stuff them back in the trunk, Enos dogged her every step like a determined pup. “C-c-can you really play that there fiddle, ma’am?”

“I can.”

His nasal voice rose to a wheedling tone Billy recognized only too well. “I do so love f-fiddle music. We all do. I don’t suppose you’d do us the honor of p-p-playin’ us a tune?”

Alarmed, Billy stepped forward. “I really don’t think that would be a good idea.” If Esmerelda played like she sang, the noise just might incite his brothers to murder.

He was too late. Esmerelda’s cheek had already dimpled in a flattered smile. “Why, I’d be delighted, sir! I had no
idea there were music lovers among you. What would you like to hear? ‘Amazing Grace? ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’? Or perhaps ‘The Battle Hymn of the—’ “

Billy clapped a hand over her mouth, then just as quickly withdrew it when her smoldering glare warned him that he was in imminent danger of drawing back five bloody stubs.

“Any old t-tune will do,” Enos insisted.

Sam and Virgil shuffled closer, doing a poor job of hiding their eagerness. Jasper struck a match on the sole of his boot and touched the flame to a fresh cigar, but even his indifference seemed forced.

Billy shrugged his defeat. “You know what they say. Music soothes the savage beast.”

“Breast,” Esmerelda automatically corrected, tucking the violin beneath her determined little chin.

Billy squeezed his eyes shut, dreading the moment when that first hideous screech would echo through the canyon.

But when Esmerelda drew the bow across the strings, it was a thousand times worse than he’d anticipated. He’d never heard the like and never hoped to again.

The music flooded both the canyon and Billy’s soul, utterly shattering in its beauty. There was no escaping it. He would hear it even if he clapped his hands over his ears, even if he shouted at her to stop or snatched the violin from her hands and dashed it to pieces against the rocks. The instrument sang with a purity and grace he’d only found before between the pages of a book. It made his throat tighten with a wistful ache—a keen longing for places he would never travel, the man he would never be, a woman he could never love.

Women
, he corrected himself fiercely, opening his eyes to glare at Esmerelda. Her own eyes were closed in passionate
concentration as she stroked the bow across the strings with the tender ferocity of a lover. Esmerelda Fine might sing like a harpy, but she played the violin like an angel.

The music ended on a plaintive note, leaving a raw scar where it had been.

Virgil and Enos exchanged a bewildered look while Sam scratched his head, obviously straining to be polite. “That there was real purty, ma’am, but it weren’t like no fiddle music I ever heard before. Cain’t you do ‘Goober Peas’ or ‘Jim Crack Corn’?”

Esmerelda frowned, plainly dismayed to have disappointed him. “I should have known you wouldn’t care for Mozart.”

“I’m sure that Mo’s a nice enough f-feller,” Enos said, “but I did have a hankering to hear a few b-b-bars of ‘Two Dead Varmints in the Cotton Patch’.”

Esmerelda glanced at Billy. Despite his savage scowl, her own expression softened to a winsome smile. “Here’s one you boys might know.”

The very first notes sent a shiver of recognition down Billy’s spine. It was “Dixie” as it was meant to be played—simple and sweet, not as a march or a dirge, but as a gentle tribute to innocence lost. One by one, his brothers drew off their hats and stiffened to attention, the ghosts of the boys they had been and the men they might have become transposed over their haggard faces.

As Billy met Esmerelda’s gaze over the graceful dance of the bow, he realized the song wasn’t for them, but for him. She was offering him an apology for any offense he might have taken when they’d discussed the war yesterday.

An apology he couldn’t accept and didn’t deserve. Not when she’d betrayed him by lying about her identity. And not when he had every intention of betraying her as
soon as he came face-to-face with the man she had hired him to find.

He reached over and gently laid his fingers across the strings, silencing the song in midnote.

Sam slapped his hat on his knee in disgust. “Now what’d you have to go and do that for?”

Virgil shook his head sadly. “You’d best watch your step, little brother. We’ve killed men for less.”

Deliberately avoiding Esmerelda’s wounded gaze, Billy swung around to face his brothers. “However sweetly the lady plays, we don’t have time to stand around in the sunshine all day listening to a concert. In case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got unfinished business to tend to in Eulalie.”

“Are your brothers going to help us find Bartholomew?” Esmerelda shouted, tightening her grip on Billy’s waist as he guided his mare through the bustling crowds clogging Eulalie’s main thoroughfare.

“You could say that,” he replied, forced to yell over the shrill jingle of harnesses, the deafening clamor of the crowd, and the constant hammering of new construction. “But it wouldn’t make it true,” he added beneath his breath.

Billy didn’t know what disturbed him the most—the hopeful note in Esmerelda’s voice, the sight of her white-gloved hands folded over his rigid belly, or the torturous softness of her breasts pressed against his back. When Enos had insisted on driving the wagon so she wouldn’t blister her delicate palms tugging on the reins, Billy had had no choice but to invite her to ride with him. He sure as hell
didn’t want her bumping thighs with Enos or twining her arms around Jasper’s waist. His brothers had taken care to ride behind them for most of the journey, reluctant to kick dust in Esmerelda’s luminous eyes.

Billy shook his head in disgust. If Sherman had marched on Atlanta with Esmerelda playing “Dixie” on her violin, he could have conquered the city without striking a single match. He’d seen his brothers drink themselves silly on everything from moonshine to furniture varnish, but he never thought he’d see them drunk with adoration. For a fiddle-playing Yankee, no less. Even the jaded Jasper had drawn him aside and offered him a gold pocket watch and a pair of boots freshly pilfered from a dead man, hoping to convince Billy to sell Esmerelda to him instead of to the Comancheros.