My Darling Gunslinger (10 page)

“Charlotte.” Her name was a moan, his breath warm and sweet on her parted lips.

Hesitantly, she drew her tongue along Ty’s bottom lip and was rewarded by a shiver that shook his big frame. She lifted her hand to his jaw, trailed her fingers along his smooth skin up into his hair. She buried her fingers in the silky strands, all the while dancing her lips, her tongue along his wonderfully plump lower lip.

Then his hands were on her. Finally. She hadn’t realized how desperately she wanted him to touch her until she felt his big, warm hands on her back, his fingers drifting up her spine, his palms gliding across her shoulder blades.

His tongue came out to sweep across her lips, to meet hers, to caress and stroke. He drew her tongue between his lips and Charlotte sighed her pleasure into his mouth to mingle with his minty breath, nearly undone by the intimacy of it all, by the surprising tenderness that welled up inside her for this tough, hard man who could kiss her with such care, such gentle strength.

In the furthest reaches of her mind Charlotte heard a soft tapping. The beat of her heart, no doubt.

With one final sweep of his hands down her back, Ty lifted his lips from hers.

Charlotte opened her eyes to see him staring down at her with what could only be surprise. She hoped it was surprise and not dismay.

“Ty.” His name was a quiet moan, a gentle inquiry, a soft plea.

“Morgan, you coming into town?” Sully’s booming voice carried through the door from the hall beyond.

“Gimme a minute,” Ty called, stepping back.

Charlotte’s hand slipped from his hair to trail over his neck and shoulder before falling away. “You’re going into town?”

He raked a hand through his hair, his eyes wary.

“To carouse with the hands?” she persisted, as the reality of it slammed into her.

“This…” He waved his hand as if encompassing her and the entire room. “This was…we’ll call it curiosity.”

“Curiosity?” she repeated in dawning horror.

“A desire to know what it’s like to kiss someone who speaks a different language,” he continued, throwing her earlier words in her face with a wry twist of his lips

“And now your curiosity is satisfied?” She took refuge in the anger roaring through her until her fingers itched to slap his smug, handsome face. “And you’re off to town to satisfy curiosities of a less prosaic nature?”

“Prosaic?”

“Look it up in your dictionary,” she retorted as she turned and marched from the room, only just barely resisting the urge to slam the door.

A good whore can tell right off what a man wants, but it takes a great whore to give him what he needs instead.

A pretty little gal in El Paso

Ty followed the swaying hips of the blonde whore up the stairs, drunk enough that for a moment he thought he was getting two for the price of one.

“You’re a handsome devil,” she crooned over her shoulder, eyes listlessly dragging over his weaving body.

It occurred to Ty, as muddle-headed as he was, she was no more interested in tumbling into bed with him than he was interested in tumbling her.

“What’s your name?” he asked when they reached the landing.

“Whatever you want it to be, sugar,” she replied with a giggle.

“Charlotte.” Ty followed her down the hall, the sounds of sex drifting out from the rooms they passed.

“What’s that, honey?” She peeked at him through her lashes as she pushed open the door to her room.

Ty looked around the dingy room, wandered to the window and looked out at the street.

“So, what are you wanting?” she asked as she fell onto the bed.

He cringed at the squeal of the springs, the sour odors that wafted from the mattress.

“What am I doing?” he whispered to the dark night beyond the window.

He had a perfectly good bed at the ranch. One that didn’t squeak. One that he doubted anyone had ever fucked on.

He saw his reflection in the window, and beyond the rusty iron footboard. In his mind he was back in his room at the ranch watching Charlotte in the mirror on the wall as she wrapped her arms around the bedpost and leaned against it.

She’d embraced the damn wooden post and all he could think about was how it would feel to have her wrapped around him that way, to have her plastered to him from cheek to hip.

“Do you know what prosaic means?” He turned to find the whore on her back, her red dress hiked up to her waist. Beneath it she wore lacy pink garters and black stockings. And no drawers.

Her thighs were pale and fleshy. Her pubic hair was dark, nearly black.

“No, should I?” she asked, rolling onto her side and pulling down her bodice until one pendulous breast fell out to hang onto the dirty mattress.

“It means dull, humdrum, plain,” Ty said. “She believes I think she’s ordinary.”

“Who, sugar?”

“Charlotte.”

“Is she?”

“God, no.” Ty sat on the edge of the window sill, the glass cool against his back. “She’s beautiful and smart and so damned delicate.”

“She your wife?” the bottle blonde asked as she rose to sit in the center of the bed, her legs crossed before her.

Ty laughed. His wife. What a joke.

“Your sweetheart?” she guessed.

“Not even that,” Ty admitted. “I kissed her.”

“When, sugar?” The whore was clearly curious. That or she’d decided talking to a drunken man was better than fucking one.

“Today. Tonight.”

“You kissed her and then came into town looking for a poke?” She fell against the headboard laughing.

“Yeah,” Ty replied with a shake of his head. What had he been thinking to kiss her and then hurry away to carouse with the hands. He hadn’t been thinking. He’d been running.

“Why didn’t you give her a poke, you like her so much?”

“She’s a lady.”

“You think a lady doesn’t like a bit of fun?” she asked. “Honey, we all like a bit of fun. Whether we’re whores or ladies.”

“It’s just…”

“What, sugar?”

“That kiss,” he began, not sure what he wanted to say, how to put the kiss into words.

“Passionate, huh?”

“No,” he murmured. “Yes…but not…hell, I didn’t even know I knew how to kiss like that.”

“Like what?” she asked, a catch in her voice.

“It was…”

“Magical?”

“Yeah,” he agreed sheepishly.

“Tell Dorie all about it, sugar,” she breathed.

Ty slid down the wall to sit on the dirty, scarred floor. He brought his legs up and wrapped his arms around his knees. “When my lips touched hers…damn, the feel of her lips on mine, her breath mixing with mine. And her hand, so soft, on my jaw, like she…I didn’t want to just rush through the kiss to get to the rest. I could have kissed her all night and on into morning.”

“You sure you don’t want a poke, honey?” she whispered and Ty met her brown eyes. She smiled a soft, sweet smile.

“I thought I did.”

“But after that kiss no other woman will do.”

“I don’t guess so,” he agreed with a twist of his lips that felt like a smile—a sad, bitter smile.

“So why’d you stop kissing her then?”

“Sully came knocking on the door,” he replied, remembering the way her hand had trailed down his neck as he pulled away. Christ, why had he pulled away?

“You one of the Zeppelin hands?” she asked.

Shit, he’d forgotten that Mystic wasn’t Helena or El Paso or Kansas City. Everyone in Mystic likely knew who lived on the Zeppelin.

“Oh lord, you can’t mean Charlotte Green!” Dorie scrambled off the bed, her hands fluttering around, tucking her breast back into her bodice, pulling her dress down over her hips. “Jasper’s niece? Mrs. Green? You kissed a princess?”

“She’s not a princess,” he replied slowly as he rose awkwardly to his feet.

“As like as,” Dorie argued. “I heard as how she was raised at court. In Russia or somewhere. At court. Do you know what that means? It means she grew up playing with little princes and counts and who knows who else. And you kissed her.”

Ty stood swaying on his feet, wishing with all his heart he’d never come to town.

“I should have stayed with her,” he whispered, seeing again the moment she realized just why he was going into town. She’d never believe he hadn’t taken a tumble with one of the girls. Hell, he could hardly believe it himself.

“You’re in love with her,” Dorie said, her brown eyes wide.

“Love?” Ty yelped. “I’m not in love with her. I don’t even know what love is.”

“That’s the way of it sometimes. It just hits you square between the eyes when you didn’t even see it coming.”

“Shit.

“What are you going to do about it?” Dorie asked.

“Not a damned thing,” Ty answered succinctly. There wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

“You want some advice?”

“No.”

“Why not? It’s free.”

“Unless your advice is to get on my horse and ride as fast and as far as I can, I won’t be following it.”

“You’re going to leave her? Just give up?” she asked, her eyes dewy the way a woman’s got before she started bawling. “After that kiss?”

“I never should have kissed her.”

“She kissed you back,” she reminded him. “Her hand on your cheek was soft.”

“My jaw,” he corrected.

“Your jaw, your cheek, your backside, who cares? She kissed you back. She caressed you.”

Ty closed his eyes and could feel her hand, soft and warm, on his jaw. He could taste her lips, taste her breath on his tongue.

“You can’t just give up,” Dorie said. “That kind of kiss means something. It isn’t an everyday kiss. What’s that word you used?”

“Prosaic.”

And now you’re off to town to satisfy curiosities of a less prosaic nature.

“That was no prosaic kiss, sugar.”

Temper in a man is to be expected while temper in a lady is a sign of ill-breeding.

Nanny Bettelheim

Tyler Morgan did not return from town with the other ranch hands.

“Couldn’t find hide nor hair of him,” Sully explained with a grin that set Charlotte’s teeth on edge.

“I see,” she replied and thought she did.

He didn’t want to dally with her, and she’d warned him away from Daisy.

But to just abandon the ranch? It made no sense.

Did he think she’d follow him about all moon-eyed begging for his kisses?

Do you want to kiss me?

That’s precisely what he thought. And why not? She’d all but pleaded with him. Twice.

“Get up underneath!” Charlotte called out to the men who were pulling a year’s worth of grass, weeds, and trailing vines from around the Pleasure Palace. “Beneath the wheels and the platform.”

The ranch hands grumbled but they followed her orders, moving around the wooden platform, some digging with their hands while others dug through the earth with shovels, flinging dirt and fauna into an untidy ring around the railway car.

Foolish, she chastised herself, to allow the weeds and honeysuckle to wrap around the wheels, to twist beneath the underbelly.

“He’ll show up later,” Sully said.

“Or not,” she replied crisply. “He can go back to chasing outlaws, become a professional gambler, or pound away at a tinny piano in a saloon in Chicago. It makes no difference to me. We’ll forward his share of the profits wherever he goes.”

“Profits?” Sully asked.

Charlotte waved her hand negligently through the air. “When we have profits to forward.”

“When is that likely to be?”

“Someday. When the herd is built up. What difference does it make?”

“None I reckon, so long as the hands get paid.”

“Has there ever been a time when they didn’t?” she demanded, pinning him with her frostiest gaze, the one she’d learned at the knee of the Archduchess of Dresdenstein, her great-aunt Sophie.

“No, ma’am.”

“Then what are you complaining about? You and the hands have the cushiest jobs in Montana. Fair pay for little work.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed a bit sheepishly.

“Don’t know why you took it into your head to yank up the earth around the Palace,” Magnus grumbled as he came to stand beside her. “She’ll be surrounded by one hell of a mud puddle come the next storm.”

“That will be all, Mr. Sullivan.” Charlotte dismissed the foreman with one last arch look and turned to Magnus. “You know as well as I do those weeds will delay our departure the next time we are forced to go gallivanting across the land.”

“Gallivanting?” he repeated.

“Do not start with me,” she hissed.

“What bee flew up your backside?” he asked with a chuckle.

“I heard Ethel dispensing with the contents of her stomach this morning.”

“Ethel was upchucking?”

“Yesterday, too.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Magnus’s smile was as big as the Montana sky.

“They’ll be leaving soon,” she continued, too anxious to share in his joy. “And it’ll just be you, Akeem, and me.”

“And Ty.”

“Mr. Morgan did not return from town this morning with the rest of the hands,” she informed him before turning to the ranch hands once more. “Every last weed, every last blade of grass! Do I have to do everything myself?”

Charlotte marched down the slope toward the car that sat between a copse of trees and a narrow stream. She was bristling with panic and rage, underscored by an immense dose of self-pity. She could barely see straight with the volatile mixture swirling around in her head and rolling through her belly.

One of the hands spun around at her approach, his shovel swinging in a wide arch, hitting a wheel and sending sparks into the air.

“Be careful, for God’s sake!” she screamed.

“Calm down, Countess.”

Charlotte whirled around to face Magnus who was ambling along in her wake.

“Do not call me that,” she spat. “If you are thinking to castigate me I would suggest you save your breath. I have better things to do with my time than listen to your unsolicited advice. Marry the gunslinger, you said. What a load of bovine excrement!”

“It’ll all work out.” The softly spoken words sent dread shivering down her spine.

“How, Magnus?” she demanded. “How will it all work out? With us picking up and running again? Where would you suggest? Alaska? The Himalayas? Timbuktu?”

“He hasn’t found us.”

“But he will. He always does.”

“We’ll make a stand,” he replied far too calmly for her fractured nerves.

“Oh? A stand, is it? A man who won’t fight with weapons, a woman who is a passable shot, and then only if her target is stationary, and an old man with a mangled leg and rheumy eyes?”

“There ain’t nothing wrong with me eyes,” he retorted indignantly.

“On a good day you can see five feet in front of you!”

“You see here, Countess Snarly, I can see well enough to smack some sense into you!”

“You couldn’t catch me if I crawled on all fours,” she growled before turning away again.

“You’re not too old for me to tan your hide, lassie!” he called after her.

Charlotte stomped to the railway car and the men stood as one to face her.

“Go on up to the house for some of Daisy’s sugar biscuits,” she ordered as she passed them.

She pulled a key on a chain from beneath her bodice and jammed it into the lock on the door before pushing it open.

“Countess Snarly,” she muttered as she stepped up into the only real home she’d known in seven years.

The Pleasure Palace was a fortress on rails, weapons stashed in every corner and under every surface, from knives and silver throwing stars and a whetstone upon which to sharpen them in the small bathing room, to long rifles hanging behind ancient tapestries. There was even a small cannon stashed in the back sleeping birth.

“A lot of good it will do us with only me to fire it,” she murmured as she collapsed onto the worn leather mat on the floor.

Akeem had taught her to fight, hand to hand, on the mat. He’d taught her how to break a man’s nose with the flat of her hand, how to knee a man in the groin to maximum affect, how to rake her nails across a man’s cheek to his ear, how much pressure was required to tear that ear right off his head. She knew how to gouge a man’s eyes from their sockets, how to break his kneecap with the heel of her boot, and how to toss a man over her shoulder before smashing his teeth down his throat.

They’d both known that what he’d really been teaching her was how to channel her terror, her rage, her anxiety into something that felt like courage, contentment, peace. She could no more knock a man’s teeth down his throat than she could bake a soufflé.

Oh, she could probably break a man’s nose with the heel of her hand. In a pinch she might be strong enough to bring him to his knees with a swift kick to the ballocks. She thought she could break his kneecap, if he allowed her to get into position and her feet didn’t get tangled in her skirts.

She’d gotten better with Chang’s knives, could throw them with a measure of accuracy from either her left or her right hand. But a man would have to be standing still, waiting like a duck on placid waters.

Her pistol was her best weapon, the one at which she excelled. At close range. She’d mocked Magnus, for which she would have to apologize profusely, but the truth was her sight wasn’t much better. She’d be lucky to hit a target from more than thirty feet away.

The others had always been there for her.

Not for the first time she thought about fighting Frederick at his own game.

She had a fortune stashed away at various banks around the world. She could hire an assassin, a whole army of assassins to go after him.

It would take an army, and not a small one. Frederick kept rooms at Windsor Castle, his privilege as one of the queen’s private guard. Getting anywhere near him meant evading a battalion of England’s finest soldiers.

Years before, when it was only a pregnant Charlotte, Magnus and his nephew Seamus crisscrossing England barely one step ahead of her brother-by-marriage, they’d contemplated making an attempt on Frederick’s life.

Seamus’s lady love had been a maid in Frederick’s household. For love of Seamus, Agatha had agreed to risk her life to save the life of a child not yet born. They’d planned to poison Frederick, to sprinkle hemlock in his dinner, in his wine, in the rich deserts he liked.

Only Charlotte had come to her senses the day before they were to set the plan in motion. She could not have a hand in murder, not even the murder of a man deserving to die. Nor could she ask Agatha to risk death at the hangman’s hands.

Two days after they’d called the plan off, Agatha had vanished. Just like that. The pretty raven haired woman had failed to meet Seamus at the little inn in Cheapside where they’d been staying. Three days later Seamus was found hanging from the rafters of their rented rooms.

Charlotte had never contemplated another attempt on Frederick’s life.

Instead, Magnus has whisked Charlotte from England, stopping in Berlin only long enough to set her fortune into loyal hands, to set up a network of bank accounts for her to draw upon.

They’d been on the run ever since, traversing continents, finding and losing guardians along the way until they’d finally landed on the Zeppelin Ranch.

Now Ethel and Ken Chang were leaving. She suspected they would tell her this evening over Akeem’s spiced curry and chicken tandoori.

Charlotte wanted to wish them well, but she couldn’t gather the strength, the selflessness required for the task. All she could do was worry about Sebastian. Her son, her darling, her reason for being.

“Charlotte.” Daisy’s soft voice outside the door to the car brought Charlotte out of her memories and to her feet. “Charlotte, can I come in?”

Please, God, no.

Not now.

She didn’t think she could face her friend. Not Daisy who had no weapons to defend herself from the black cloud of emotions swirling within Charlotte.

“I’ll be at the house shortly,” she called out.

She was met with silence.

Then the door slowly slid open.

“Damn.” Charlotte had forgotten to lock it behind her.

Daisy stepped into the small house on wheels, her eyes huge as she took in the red velvet settees and plush chairs, the gilded tables scattered about, the tapestries lining walls between rich silk curtains of scarlet and darkest plum. Her gaze traveled to the domed ceiling, lingered on the mural of the battle of Troy depicted there in all its gruesome glory. She took in the vibrant Turkish carpet, the worn leather mat sitting on it, and the dozens of pillows with gold piping and tassels.

“It looks like a harem,” Daisy said.

“I really don’t have time to speak with you just now,” Charlotte said, eying the woman who was wandering about the railcar, her fingers trailing over the tapestries, over the gold birdcage hanging in one corner, over stained-glass lampshades and a painted globe sitting on a carved wooden trunk.

“No wonder you come here every day,” Daisy said, her voice laced with wonder. “If I had a refuge like this, I’d spend every spare moment in it.”

“Refuge,” Charlotte repeated. She hadn’t a refuge, not anywhere. She’d thought the Zeppelin…but no. They couldn’t stay on the ranch. With Ethel and Chang gone they would be little more than sitting targets. The hands were cowpokes, sheep herders. They weren’t gunmen. She’d run off the only gunman who might have helped them. Chased him away with one kiss.

She should never have kissed him. She should have kept his damn curiosity piqued. Instead she’d satisfied it and he’d fled into town to take his pleasures in the arms of one of the saloon girls. The time away from the ranch had likely cleared the cobwebs from his mind and off he’d gone.

Charlotte closed her eyes, took in a fractured breath. Instead of the exotic smells of frankincense and Chinese tea that lingered within the tin walls of the Pleasure Palace, she smelled Frederick’s pomade, the too-sweet cologne he wore, the pipe tobacco he smoked.

“Daisy, it would be best if you returned to the house.” Charlotte opened her eyes and stepped toward her friend.

“I was a whore.”

The bald statement stopped Charlotte in her tracks.

“Not yesterday,” Daisy continued with a flutter of her hands. “It was long ago, a lifetime ago.”

“Daisy,” Charlotte whispered. She could not hear this tale. Not now.

“Jasper found me, he saved me. He brought me here.” Daisy fell onto the velvet settee before a tapestry of rich, jewel-toned geometric patterns. “I know you can’t understand. How could you?”

“I do understand.” Charlotte sat down beside her, wishing she could reach out and clasp her trembling hands. But her own hands were shaking so badly she grabbed a silk pillow and clutched it to her midriff, over the heavy stone that had settled in her belly.