Teresa Medeiros (39 page)

“I’m not afraid of the horse! I’m—”

Afraid I still love you
.

She bit her lip before she could blurt out those damning words.

“Just hang on to me, angel, and pretend the saddle is a rocking chair.”

Blushing furiously, she twisted around to give him a long, hard look. He cocked an eyebrow, returning it with one of bland innocence.

The horse trotted toward the center of the arena, where Drew stood in the dazzling light of the spotlight, having ousted the Englishman who had introduced the show.

Even the eloquent sheriff seemed at a loss for words to describe Billy’s scandalous abduction of her. “As you can see, um, ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted through the megaphone, “the notorious gunslinger has swept this beautiful little lady off her feet.” He slanted them a dubious look as Billy slid off the horse, dragging a struggling Esmerelda after him. “Proving, once again, that no woman can resist the charms of an outlaw.”

“I can,” Esmerelda declared, landing with a deliberate crunch on Billy’s toes.

He doubled over in a bow to hide his grimace of pain, taking her captive hand with him. “You might want to play along with Drew for now,” he shouted over the roar of applause. “I’d hate to ruin your reputation.”

“You already have,” she shouted back. “Or have you forgotten?”

He gave her a smoldering look that warned her he hadn’t forgotten a single touch or kiss they’d shared during that fateful night.

As much as Esmerelda hated to admit it, he was right. She was already the laughingstock of London. Struggle or flight would only humiliate her further. When Billy drew her out of the bow, she wore a smile as dazzling as his own.

Drew tugged a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his brow before returning the megaphone to his lips. “Mr. Darling has traveled all the way from the wilds of America to provide you with an exhibition of crack shooting the likes of which has never before been seen in your fair country.”

The bald cowboy who had portrayed the stagecoach driver came trotting out from behind a curtain, wheeling a silver tea cart. Four men with colorful bandannas tied across their noses mounted their horses and went galloping around the arena. They distracted the impatient audience by whooping a deafening chorus of rebel yells and firing their pistols in the air.

Virgil winked at Esmerelda as he raced past, looking much more natural in his outlaw’s getup than he had in a bonnet and homespun dress.

Billy shook his head. “I sure hope they remembered to replace their shells with blanks.”

“If not,” she murmured, “several of the English stand to inherit before this night is over.”

As the tea cart drew near, Esmerelda saw that it bore a crystal cup laden with dimes, a shiny new deck of playing cards, and a sleek Colt .45. Realizing immediately that it would have to be loaded with live shells instead of blanks, she grabbed for the gun.

Billy swept it out of her reach with effortless grace,
tsk-ing
beneath his breath as he slid it into his holster. She glared at him.

No doubt fearing they were about to break into fisticuffs, Sheriff McGuire hastily lifted the megaphone. “With the lady’s gracious help, Mr. Darling will now favor us all with a demonstration of his prowess.”

The image that popped into Esmerelda’s head was so unprecedented and so utterly ribald that she blushed to the roots of her hair.

Billy held out a single dime, his lazy grin warning her that he had read her thoughts. “If you would be so kind …?”

Resisting an urge to fling the coin in his smirking face, she hurled it toward the ceiling with all of her might.

The shimmering coin flipped end over end, disappearing into the glare of the spotlights. With one smooth motion, Billy drew, cocked the hammer of his pistol with the palm of his other hand, and fired. The dime shot heavenward, propelled by the impact.

The appreciative “oohs” and “aahs” of Billy’s rapt audience grew in volume each time they repeated the trick. He never once missed the impossibly elusive target, not even when he backed up to a distance of ninety feet.

Hoping to thwart him, Esmerelda grabbed an entire handful of dimes and tossed them into the air. Billy fired six shots in dizzying succession, taking down six of them before they could reach the ground.

The applause was deafening.

As he strode back to her side to take his triumphant bow, the spotlight dimmed to an unearthly glow.

Drew took advantage of the audience’s breathless anticipation. “Mr. Darling’s next trick requires absolute silence. I can only urge you to make no careless gesture, to speak no word that would disturb his concentration.” He lowered
his voice to an ominous stage whisper. “The very life of the lady may depend upon it.”

Esmerelda was less than heartened by that dire prediction. Billy took up the deck of cards and held them out to her, fanning them in a gesture he could have only perfected during countless poker games. He stood so near to her that Esmerelda was mesmerized by the dark gold threads of his lashes, the wary deepening of the lines that bracketed his sensual mouth.

Drew pointed the megaphone at her ear and intoned, “As he must draw, so must she.”

Willing herself not to tremble, Esmerelda reached out and chose a card. She glanced at it, then turned it for Billy to see, unable to resist a mocking smile.

“The queen of hearts!” Drew called out. The audience shifted and murmured in subdued delight.

Billy strolled behind her. Esmerelda forced herself to remain pliant while he slid one arm around her waist and positioned her like some dressmaker’s dummy. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that his touch could still make her pulse quicken and her mouth go dry with longing.

But she could do nothing to hide the ripple of gooseflesh that danced along her skin when he pressed his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Trust me.”

“Never,” she replied, staring straight ahead.

But the hand he’d arranged to hold the card aloft didn’t waver, not even by a fraction of an inch. Until Drew wrapped a black silk blindfold around Billy’s eyes.

“Oh, no,” Esmerelda said, shaking her head violently and backing away from the both of them. “I’d rather take my chances with the knife throwers.”

She backed right into Virgil’s burly arms. “Don’t worry, honey,” he boomed in his own deafening rendition of a
stage whisper. “Little Brother’s been doin’ this trick since he was nine years old and he ain’t missed yet.”

“Then
you
hold the card,” she retorted, trying to force it into his hand.

He declined her invitation, choosing instead to scurry safely out of range, where Jasper, Samuel, and Enos awaited him. Esmerelda turned back only to discover that while she was preoccupied, Drew had led Billy an impressive distance away and left him there. He stood in the center of the arena with his long legs splayed, his hands poised loosely over his gunbelt.

Trust me
.

As that husky entreaty echoed through her mind, Esmerelda sighed, knowing she had no choice. Billy had her in his sights just as surely as he had on that moonlit night in Calamity. She couldn’t stop him from shooting at her any more than she could have stopped him from breaking her heart.

She slowly lifted the card, holding it between the very tips of her thumb and forefinger, and closed her eyes.

A shot rang out. She flinched. The crowd gasped. Daring to open only one eye, Esmerelda patted her chest, trying to determine exactly where she’d been shot.

When she failed to encounter anything more alarming than her mother’s locket, she screwed up the courage to open both eyes and count how many fingers she had left.

She was still holding the card.

Her mouth dropped open. Billy Darling had missed. But Billy Darling never missed, she thought wildly, her heart surging with treacherous tenderness. He’d simply refused to risk her life for the sake of a cheap parlor trick. Or at least that’s what she believed until she held the card

The crowd went wild. The Darling gang vaulted back on their mounts and went galloping around the arena, mercifully distracting the audience.

Billy dragged off the blindfold and came striding toward her. Letting the card slip from her numb fingers, Esmerelda turned to flee, desperate to lose herself among the torrent of people who had began to pour out of their seats and stream toward the exits.

“Don’t run away from me, sweetheart.”

Undone by that hoarse plea from a man who never begged, Esmerelda whirled around. “I’m not your sweetheart! Or your honey. Or your angel. I’m nothing to you, Mr. Darling. You made that painfully clear on the occasion of our last parting.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean a damn word I said. I swear it. If I had, I wouldn’t have traveled halfway across the world to tell you different.”

“Ah, but how do I know you’re not simply trying to
sweet-talk
me back into your bed? After all, I know how precious your
freedom
is to a man like you.”

Billy flinched, realizing just how many times Esmerelda must have heard the echo of those cruel words.

The tears welling in her eyes began to spill down her cheeks. “After all, you’d never do anything so
foolish as getting yourself hitched
, despite the
fine time
we had in bed together.”

Helpless to stop himself, Billy reached to brush a tear from her cheek. His thumb lingered against the creamy velvet of her skin. “I only said those terrible things to scare you off. Because I believed you were too good for the likes of me.”

Esmerelda drew herself up. Her chin still quivered, but she held it high and proud. “If that’s what you believed, William Darling, then you were right. I am too good for the likes of you.”

She turned, sweeping away from him without a backward glance. Even after she’d melted into the crowd, the aroma of peaches still hung in the air, pungent and sweet.

Billy bent to pick up the card she had dropped. The queen stared back at him in mute reproach, a scorched hole marring her noble breast.

Drew clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Perfect shot, eh, lad?”

Billy nodded ruefully, massaging his own chest. “Right through the heart.”

“ ‘The Cowboy and the Lady,’ ” Esmerelda’s grandfather read, a sneer curling his thin lips.

Esmerelda choked in an effort not to spew a mouthful of her morning chocolate all over the back page of his newspaper. The gesture would have dismayed him deeply, since Potter had just presented him with his beloved
Morning Post
, still warm and crisp from its obligatory ironing.

As she dabbed at her lips with her linen napkin, her grandfather lowered the paper to give her a concerned look. “Are you quite all right, dear?”

She managed a wan smile. “I’m fine, Grandpapa. The chocolates just a little bitter this morning.”

Not nearly as bitter as the look she gave her aunt down the length of the dining room table as soon as her grandfather raised the paper. She hadn’t spoken to Anne since last night’s debacle, choosing to ride home alone in a hansom
cab rather than endure the earls wounded sniffs and the Belles’ tittering inquisition. In response to Esmerelda’s glower, Anne set down her own tea, her hand shaking so hard that the cup rattled violently against the saucer.

The duke snorted. “It seems some chit made quite a spectacle of herself last night in Drury Lane. Actually allowed herself to be dragged on stage. ‘The Cowboy and the Lady’ indeed! No
lady
would conduct herself in such a scandalous manner. She was probably some actress or prostitute masquerading as a lady.”

“Reginald!” Anne nodded in Esmerelda’s direction. “You mustn’t use such language in front of the child.”

Esmerelda pushed her plate of kippers and eggs away, losing what little appetite she had.

Her grandfather shook his shiny head. “I can’t believe anyone would plunk down good coins to see a Wild West Extravaganza. It’s a disgrace what they consider entertainment these days. If they’re going to glorify those American savages, they might as well bring back some decent English sports like bearbaiting and cockfights.” Despite his derision, his gaze eagerly leapt to the next column. “It seems they’ve christened this mysterious sharpshooter ‘the Darling of London.’ What do you think inspired them to come up with such a preposterous—”

Esmerelda upset her china cup, sending a river of lukewarm chocolate streaming into her grandfather’s lap. She jumped to her feet with a piteous cry of dismay. Anne responded to her frantic cue by rushing around the table to her brother’s side. Ignoring his napkin, she snatched up the newspaper and began to mop his lap with it.

“Leave me be, woman,” he snapped, shoving Anne’s fluttering hands away from him. “You’re only making it worse.”

“Oh, Grandpapa!” Esmerelda exclaimed, struggling to
blink up some contrite tears. “How could I have been so clumsy?”

As he gazed down at the sopping mess in his lap, his ears slowly darkened from pink to red. Esmerelda wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke come pouring out of them. He’d never once lost his legendary Wyndham temper with her, but when he lifted hands covered with sticky shreds of newsprint, she fully expected him to come lunging across the table to throttle her.