Teresa Medeiros (35 page)

Esmerelda would never know that he’d deprived himself of savoring that last surge of rapture inside of her to keep from trapping her into marriage to a man she might not want come morning.

“Thank heaven for small favors.” The duke pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and mopped his brow, too relieved to notice his granddaughter’s alarming pallor.

Esmerelda’s eyes glittered like burning coals in her ashen face. Her lips were no longer trembling with grief, but with rage. If she’d had a gun in her hand at that moment, Billy knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would have been a dead man.

She drew herself out of her aunt’s arms and approached the bars, bringing him a whiff of peaches so sharp and so sweet it was all he could do not to cry.

A scornful smile curved her beautiful lips. “I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am, Mr. Darling. Spending a night in your bed wasn’t so dreadful, but the thought of enduring a lifetime of your boorish company was simply more than I could bear.”

Although her words drew blood, Billy refused to flinch. She deserved to say her piece. He owed her at least that much.

“I do hope you’ll choose to remember me fondly. Perhaps someday you can travel back to Missouri and marry one of your cousins, as men of your breeding and ilk are wont to do.” She turned her back on him, sweeping her skirts in a graceful arc. “Come, Grandpapa, Aunt Anne. We don’t owe this man another scrap of our time or our money. He’s been paid”—she cast one last bitter glance over her shoulder—“in full.”

The door slammed, ringing like a gunshot in Billy’s ears. He staggered around as if he’d been struck in the heart and sank to a sitting position with his back against the wall.

Drew waited a merciful interval before strolling over to the cell. “It’s not too late, lad,” he said softly. “I can still hang you if you want.”

Billy slanted him a pained smile. “Hell, Drew, we both know hanging’s too good for the likes of me.”

Drew slipped his keys into the lock and turned, letting the door swing wide open. Billy didn’t budge. He had nowhere left to go. He sat there with his eyes closed while Drew quietly let himself out of the jail. He sat there while Miss Kitty trotted into the cell and rubbed against his legs, meowing plaintively. He sat there until a small, white-gloved hand reached down to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Mr. Darling?”

In the instant before he opened his eyes, he had the crazy thought that Esmerelda had come back. That, despite his best efforts, she’d refused to believe the worst of him. That she was going to throw her arms around his neck and press her sweet, soft mouth to his before giving him a stern lecture about the perils of trying to protect her from herself.

But when he opened his eyes, it was Anne Hastings who stood before him.

She met his grim gaze with a candor as unflinching as her niece’s. “I know what you did, sir. And I want to thank you. I promise that I’ll do everything in my power to see that Esmerelda gets the home and the happiness she deserves.”

Billy rose. “I’d be much obliged if you’d do that, ma’am. ‘Cause if you don’t, you and that highfalutin brother of yours will answer to me.”

Without another word, he went striding out of the jail, leaving Anne staring after him in astonishment.

The day Billy Darling went riding out of Calamity for the last time, whores cried and dogs howled. He rode tall in the saddle as he always had, his gunbelt slung low around his hips, his Winchester in its scabbard.

The cowboys who’d spent their days playing poker with him down at the Tumbleweed Saloon whispered that it wasn’t another gunslinger who finally got him, but a woman. The whores at Miss Mellie’s Boardinghouse for Young Ladies of Good Reputation bawled so hard that the cowboys offered them silver dollars just to stop.

Old Granny Shively told her friend Maude that if she’d been of a mind to marry, that Darling boy would have made her a fine husband. The decent folk of Calamity pretended they were glad to be rid of such a shady character, yet more than one of them stepped out of their shops and houses to lift a hand in silent salute as he passed.

He was nothing but a shadow on the horizon when that old basset hound of his escaped from the sheriff’s office and went loping down the street. When she reached the edge of town, she sank down on her grizzled haunches,
threw back her head, and let out a howl that broke nearly every heart that heard it.

Later, there would be many who would swear he’d reined in his mare and stood silhouetted against the sunset for a timeless moment. Some expected him to turn back. Others were not surprised when he spurred his horse into a canter and disappeared over that hill.

They all saw Billy Darling leave Calamity that day, but not one of them saw a lace curtain high in the window of the hotel twitch, then fall still.

P
ART
T
HREE

I don’t want your greenback dollar
I don’t want your silver chain
All I want is your love, darlin’
.
Won’t you take me back again?

I’d rather be in some dark holler
Where the sun would never shine
,
Than to see you with another
,
When I know you should be mine
.

American Folk Song

Esmerelda had everything she’d ever wanted. A grandfather who adored her. All the food her belly could hold. A home that no bank or creditor could ever take away from her.

In his quest to grant her every wish, her grandfather had even hired a genuine Pinkerton detective who’d managed to locate Bartholomew in South America. He’d also grudgingly promised to act as the boy’s patron, sending him a generous allowance for each chapter of his novel he completed.

She had no cares, no debts, no obligations. She wore Worth gowns and diamond pinkie rings. She slept in her mother’s bedroom with its walls hung in pale blue damask bordered by tiny rosebuds. She slept in her mother’s bed with its silk sheets and coverlet of tufted satin. She powdered her face and watched her lady’s
maid pin up her hair in the mirror of her mother’s dressing table. Her grandfather probably would have dressed her in her mother’s clothes if the layers of ruffles and voluminous crinolines hadn’t been twenty-five years out of fashion.

For the first time in her life, Esmerelda understood just how much her mother had sacrificed for love. For the first time, she understood why.

She drifted through the cavernous halls of Wyndham Manor like Lisbeth’s ghost, losing her way so many times that she started to wonder if she ought not leave a trail of biscuit crumbs or unwind a ball of yarn wherever she went. She would wander from library to music room, pausing to flip through a book or idly run her fingers over the keys of a piano so grand it made her mother’s cherished old upright seem fit only for a saloon.

Her grandfather loved to hear her play, but there seemed little point to it when there was no one to learn from her flawless fingering and rippling arpeggios. She strayed into the music room one warm October afternoon to find one of the little parlormaids dusting the ivory keys with a feather duster.

“Would you like to learn to play?” Esmerelda eagerly asked.

The child clutched her apron and bobbed a terrified curtsey, her mobcap slipping down over one eye. “Oh, no, miss, I mustn’t touch anything so fine with my grubby hands.”

Airily dismissing the girl’s objections, Esmerelda sat her down on the bench and began to teach her the major scales. When Potter, her grandfather’s cadaverous butler, strolled into the room to find the child banging cheerily on the instrument, he nearly fainted dead away.

He immediately ordered the maid back to the servants’
kitchen, leaving Esmerelda sitting at the piano, alone and forlorn.

She just didn’t seem to be suited for the life of the idle rich. When she offered to help her aunt balance the household books one afternoon, Anne shooed her away, telling her she should enjoy her leisure while she could because she’d have her own household to look after soon enough.

Stung by her aunt’s gentle rejection, Esmerelda grabbed her rich woolen cloak and fled the house, seeking solace from a brisk walk in the crisp autumn air. When she imagined being mistress of her own household, she didn’t see an elegant sandstone mansion like Wyndham Manor with its high mansard roof and formal gardens. She saw a humble frame house with a cozy corner where a father might teach his son to read by kerosene lamp. She saw a grizzled old basset hound snoring in front of the fire and a calico cat napping in a rocking chair. She saw a towheaded little boy with a wild streak and a smile that could melt hearts at twenty paces.

Esmerelda cupped a hand over her belly, her throat tightening with bitter longing. There would be no such child for her. Billy had made sure of that. She’d spent the journey to England praying that he’d failed, even knowing it would make her a social pariah in her grandfather’s world. But his effort to make sure there would be no tie left to bind them had been successful, leaving her womb as barren as her heart.

A curious commotion startled her out of her brooding. She peeped around the corner of the house to find her grandfather leading a parade of tittering servants. Her aunt trailed after them, looking even more exasperated than usual.

Her grandfather beamed at her. “Good afternoon, Esmerelda. I’ve brought you a gift.”

The servants shuffled apart to reveal a speckled horse that barely came to Esmerelda’s waist. She clapped a hand over her mouth, gasping in horrified amusement. “I’m twenty-five years old, Grandpapa. If I sit on that poor creature, I’ll break its legs.”

His square face crumpled like a punctured pudding. “I suppose I wasn’t thinking. I just always dreamed of buying my granddaughter a pony.”

Feeling guilty for dampening his childlike enthusiasm, Esmerelda stood on tiptoe to give his shiny pate a fond kiss and took the lead from his hand. “And a fine pony it is. I shall name it ‘Duke’ in your honor.” She stroked the beast’s silky little face. “He looks a bit like the pony who bucked me off his back at the county fair when I was six.”

Anne, a skilled horsewoman, rolled her eyes. The bolder servants cheered and applauded as Esmerelda began to march around the cobblestone drive with the pony trotting merrily along behind her.

Her grandfather delighted in lavishing gifts upon her. She would return to her bedroom to find a parasol of the finest Chantilly lace draped over a frame of heliotrope silk or a set of tortoiseshell combs for her hair. One night, she unfolded her supper napkin only to have the silver locket that had once belonged to her mother tumble into her lap. Although somewhat embarrassed by her grandfather’s extravagance, Esmerelda could not bear to disappoint him by refusing any of his offerings. She supposed it was his way of atoning for his years of neglect.

Each night after supper, they would retire to the music room, where Esmerelda was expected to give an impromptu piano recital while Anne embroidered and her grandfather enjoyed a glass of port and smoked a fat cigar. Esmerelda soon grew to dread these occasions. To her ears, all the songs
seemed to be played in a minor key, and the ripe aroma of her grandfather’s cigar evoked a yearning so sharp she would end up struggling to read the notes through a fog of tears.

On Christmas Eve, her grandfather all but gobbled his way through seven courses of supper, his ears pink with poorly suppressed excitement. Esmerelda barely had time to dip her spoon into her steaming fig pudding when he clapped his hands and insisted they adjourn to the music room. She and her aunt exchanged a perplexed look, but dutifully rose to follow him.

The spacious white room had been draped with evergreen boughs. Their crisp fragrance scented the air. A fire crackled on the hearth and candles glowed softly in the recessed French windows, keeping the darkness of the winter night at bay.

Propped against the gilt music stand was a violin with a bright red ribbon tied around its graceful neck. Esmerelda’s hand trembled as she loosed the ribbon and stroked her fingers across its taut strings.