My Darling Gunslinger (24 page)

“You’ve married?” Frederick made a valiant attempt to hide his shock but Charlotte saw it in the flash of his eyes and the pinching of his lips. “I hope you will accept my congratulations.”

Ty gave a sharp nod, his hand curling around Charlotte’s hip and hauling her tight against his muscular frame. Blatantly staking his claim.

Color crested Frederick’s cheeks, his features tightened, lips twitching and nostrils flaring as if he’d only just picked up the stench of the Thames. Charlotte knew a moment of sweet triumph.

Less than five minutes on British soil and together she and Ty had already unsettled her former brother by marriage. Fury flashed in his eyes and it occurred to her that, had Ty not been standing hip to hip with her, Frederick might have taken her by the arms and given her a good shake, never mind the fact that half a dozen people stood guard over her, a throng of well-wishers and a knot of newspaper men watched their every gesture.

Charlotte permitted herself a moment to imagine Frederick grabbing and shaking her, to imagine Ty moving with lightning quick reflexes, pressing his revolver the other man’s chest and pulling the trigger.

Her fantasy of looking into Frederick’s eyes as he crumbled, of watching him bleed to death on the dock, cameras flashing and newspapermen scribbling on their pads, was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a petite, raven-haired young lady at the would-be dead man’s side.

“Mr. Grenville, is something amiss?”

“I expressly told you to wait in the carriage.” Frederick’s words were clipped and cold as he turned to stare down at the woman elegantly dressed in pink silk and delicate cream lace, an embroidered shawl draped over her shoulders.

“I apologize for disobeying your directive,” she replied in a sing-song fashion, as if she’d rehearsed the words. “I only wanted to assure all is as it ought to be.”

“Ought to be?” he repeated, visibly reining in his temper and pasting a smile on his lips as he grabbed her by the wrist. “Yes, all is precisely as it ought to be. You must meet my dear sister-by-marriage.”

The lady, truly no more than a girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen, cringed when Frederick jerked her forward to stand before Charlotte.

“How do you do, Lady Westlockhart?” She dipped a curtsy as best she could with Frederick clenching her wrist at an odd angle, his fingers so tight her glove bunched and gathered over her bones.

“My wife, Lady Sylvia Grenville.” Frederick’s lips barely moved as he made the introduction.

Charlotte presented Lady Sylvia to Ty and Sebastian and, just to further bedevil Frederick, included Magnus and the others in the introductions.

Lady Sylvia blinked in apparent surprise, clearly never having been presented to servants. She bobbed awkward curtsies all around until finally her husband released her from his grip.

She immediately dropped to her knees before Sebastian, her ruffled skirts belling out around her as she met the boy’s gaze and gave him a smile, her green eyes sparkling in the afternoon sunlight. “Lord Westlockhart, I am ever so pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Sebastian blushed and shuffled his feet. “How do you do, my lady?”

“I do quite well, thank you.” Dimples winked on both cheeks, making her appear all of twelve years old, far too young and innocent to be married to the devil incarnate. “I’ve a son at home. Marcus has just turned one and is only beginning to walk.”

“Arise, Madame,” Frederick ordered. “You are making a spectacle of yourself.”

Lady Sylvia peeked up at her husband but remained on her knees, almost as if in supplication to the young earl. “Do you see Lord Westlockhart’s chin, husband? It’s the Grenville chin, of a certainty. And there is something in his eyes that is so like your brother’s in the portrait at Lockhart Manor. Oh, and he has the same unruly cowlick you have.” Gloved fingers brushed Sebastian’s curls back from his forehead.

Frederick made a grab for his wife’s arm, missed when she shifted to the side, valiantly trying to keep her balance while avoiding his touch. Her shawl slipped, exposing her shoulders and upper arms. Before the lady could rearrange the silk, Charlotte caught sight of the bruises mottling her flesh. Some were faded to splotchy green and yellow, while others were the vivid purple of recent injury.

With a low hiss, Ty took a step forward and offered his hand to assist the young woman to her feet only to have her lurch back in panic. She became entangled in her skirts, her bustle creaking in an alarming fashion as she fell to land on her bottom with her stocking-clad legs splayed out before her.

Charlotte crouched down beside her. “Are you all right?”

“Quite well, thank you,” Lady Sylvia replied with a trembling smile. “Just terribly clumsy, I’m afraid.”

“Will you allow me to help you up?”

“I would be grateful, my lady.”

Together they managed to get her on her feet once more, Charlotte brushing at the dirt on her skirts while Lady Sylvia pulled the shawl up over her shoulders, anchoring it there with a hand fisted between her breasts.

“My apologies, Lady Westlockhart.” The girl looked right into Charlotte’s eyes, something fierce and pleading in her gaze. “I’ve ever been clumsy. As a child my brother Karl called me Silly Silvy as I was forever tripping over my own two feet.”

“Enough reminiscing about that degenerate wastrel.” Frederick took hold of his wife’s hand and curled it around his forearm, giving her fingers a swat that only a fool would mistake for an affectionate pat. “It is time we were on our way home to Westlockhart House.”

Unable to trust herself to look at her wife-abusing former brother-in-law, let alone speak to him, Charlotte shot a mute appeal to Ty.

Her husband stepped up beside her, lifted her hand and raised it to his lips where a smile twitched at the corners. “You’re living at Westlockhart House, Grenville?”

“I gave up my apartments at Windsor Castle upon my marriage,” Frederick replied. “Never fear, I assure you we’ve plenty of room for you and your servants.”

“We’ve reserved rooms at the Clarendon,” Ty said.

“The Clarendon,” Frederick repeated, his eyes slitting. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Ty winked at Charlotte before turning and flicking the brim of his hat back to gift the other man with a cold, hard stare. “I’ll allow you to call me ridiculous only the one time.”

Frederick took a step back, dragging his wife with him.

“Someone wise in the way of words once told me it is a vulgar colloquialism,” Ty went on, his voice low and gravelly. “One I reckon you appropriated from somewhere and one you’d best endeavor to relinquish if you don’t want to offend a man. Intentionally or otherwise.”

Lady Sylvia ducked her head to hide a smile.

“You cannot take rooms at the Clarendon,” Frederick said, his voice cracking. “What would people say should they learn my brother’s wife and her son chose to reside in a hotel rather than in my home?”

“First off, it isn’t your home.” Ty closed in on Frederick to loom over him. “It belongs to the Earl of Westlockhart. And seeing as I’m married to the earl’s mother, that makes Sebastian my son. Everything he owns is mine. You might even say I am the… What’s the word I want, darlin’?”

“Interim, I believe, dearest,” Charlotte answered as an idea came to her out of the cloudy London sky, a way to send Frederick stumbling closer toward the slippery slope of total loss of control.

“I am the interim earl,
Mr.
Grenville.” Ty stepped back, his hand curling around Charlotte’s, squeezing gently when she opened her mouth to speak. She peered up at him, discovered him regarding her with a searching, questioning gaze. He must have found the answer to his silent query in her eyes for he turned back to face a flushed and perspiring Frederick. “Secondly, the rooms we’ve reserved are not for us.”

“You cannot be suggesting that I…that we…” Frederick spluttered.

“You and all your servants will be out of Westlockhart House within the hour.”

In the infinitesimal increment of time between one breath and the next, Charlotte realized she’d fallen desperately, deeply and irrevocably in love with her husband.

Life is full of hard lesson, my darling boy. Finding your place in the world will be the hardest.

Molly Morgan

When Tyler Morgan had lit out of the little shanty town where his mother had plied her trade the last year of her life, he hadn’t a clue where he was going, how he would get there or what he would do when he arrived.

He’d spent the first night of his travels in a cave in the mountains just north of Santa Fe. Cold and hungry and so weary he could barely see two feet in front of him for the blurring of his vision, he’d stumbled through the mouth of the cave before he’d even realized it was there. With only the light of the moon and stars filtering in through the opening, the interior had been dank and dim, still and silent, like a tomb that hadn’t been disturbed in centuries.

Until he’d let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. That single breath, little more than a tired sigh, had echoed around the cavern, bouncing off the stone walls and dirt floor, ricocheting around in the air over and over again, growing fainter and fainter until all was silent and still once more.

In that moment, Ty had known a loneliness, an isolation so vast and merciless, he’d sunk to his knees and cried like a baby.

Stepping into Westlockhart House brought to mind stumbling into that cave, all soaring walls and high ceilings, shadows and cold stone, silence and echoes. Except once the chandeliers and candelabras and wall sconces were lit, Ty saw luxury unlike anything he could have imagined. Walls papered in silk. Marble floors. Enormous fireplaces. Velvet sofas and chairs and spindly little gilded tables. Statues in recessed alcoves. Huge paintings depicting hunts and horses and rolling fields.

Ty was restless the first night and even a quick, feverish bedding of his wife followed by a long bout of slow lovemaking didn’t provide him a good night’s sleep. He prowled around the mansion, unsettled by the silence and the knowledge it had once been home to Charlotte.

His wife had grown up in a house just like this one. Hell, probably bigger and finer, seeing as she’d been mostly raised at the Prussian court with princes and dukes and all manner of titled folks. She’d traveled between England and Prussia, between countries, between courts until she’d married the Earl of Westlockhart and set up house here.

Charlotte belonged in this house, in this world, this life.

He’d have to be seven kinds of stupid to think she would return with him when Grenville was no longer a threat to her son. Return to what? A ranch that had never seen a profit? A husband who’d been born in a brothel and only understood one word out of six that came out of her pretty mouth?

It took four days for Ty to accept he would be returning to Montana alone. During those four days he made love to Charlotte with the sort of desperation only a man who’d lived his life alone could feel.

He escorted Charlotte through Mayfair as she paid calls on ladies who peppered her with questions about her travels, spewed gossip like rotgut coming back up after an all-night binge, and eyed Ty as if he were a baited bear at the circus and they were considering risking a mauling to discover what he was packing besides two pearl-handled revolvers.

He sat quietly beside his wife as she interviewed dozens of servants, finally hiring a small army of maids and footmen, all to be overseen by a starchy butler by the name of Thompson and a cheerful housekeeper with the unlikely name of Mrs. Grimm.

He watched his wife sort through invitations, listened to endless discussions as to which of the many balls, musicales and dinners scheduled to close out the London Season Grenville would most likely attend.

He rode through Hyde Park in an open carriage, Charlotte with a parasol twirling over her shoulder, he with his infernal hat firmly in place on his head.

And all the while, Ty waited with both anticipation and dread for the summons that would precede Charlotte’s sending her son to safety and Ty’s killing of a man for sins too numerous to list.

On the fifth day two footmen in Her Majesty’s livery arrived with a gold embossed invitation to present the ninth Earl of Westlockhart to the queen.

On the sixth day Ty found himself once more prowling around Westlockhart House, unsettled and just plain aggravated.

In the formal parlor, a room without a stick of furniture fit for a man to relax into, Ty stopped before the gilded mirror above the fireplace mantle. A stranger looked back at him.

He’d been shaved and combed and pomaded to within an inch of his life before donning the trappings of an English gentleman.

He had to admit, if only to himself, he didn’t half mind the black velvet coat with its tall collar and shiny gold buttons and trim.

The matching knee breeches were another story altogether.

Pantaloons, Charlotte had named the britches cut off below the knees, her lips curling as she fought back a grin when Magnus held up a pair of embroidered stockings and shiny black slippers to wear with the damn short pants.

Magnus had wrestled him into a pale blue waistcoat shot through with silver before wrapping a length of over-starched, white linen around his neck and tying a convoluted knot just beneath his chin.

Ty gave the stiff fabric a tug, and another until he no longer felt as if the hangman’s noose was slowly suffocating him.

“If you fuss with your cravat, Mother will only unwind it and start fresh,” Sebastian warned as he entered the parlor dressed much the same but for a white waistcoat. “And when Mother ties a cravat she’s likely to strangle you.”

“If the countess had to wear a bloody cravat even once, she’d have more sympathy for the plight of men.” Magnus limped into the room dressed in his lord’s livery of scarlet and gold, his barrel chest straining the buttons of his coat, his chin resting on the knot of his neck cloth. Akeem followed close at his heels.

“How’d you get out of wearing a noose?” Ty demanded of the Arab, who was dressed in his customary white robe and loose trousers, his only concession to the Westlockhart colors a blood red ruby broach decorating his turban.

“It pleases her ladyship to parade me about as I am.” Akeem stepped aside to allow the Changs to join the party in the parlor.

It clearly pleased her ladyship to parade Ken about as he was, as well. While he was adorned in the requisite colors, the Chinaman had been permitted to stick to his native garb, from the boxy hat on his head to the silk slippers on his feet. His long braid curled over his shoulder and swayed against his chest as he walked.

Ethel had been spared the scarlet and gold color scheme, but not the garb of a servant. Dressed in a gray frock buttoned up to her chin and a white apron covering her from bosom to knees, with her flaxen hair scraped up under a ruffled cap, she might have been a proper lady’s maid if not for the regal tilt of her chin.

“Half gone two, the countess decreed,” Magnus grumbled as he patted his hip in search of a revolver that wasn’t there. “It’s past that and herself is still fussin’ and primpin’ above stairs.”

“
Lady Charlotte Morgan
will be down shortly,” Ethel replied, the unmistakable rebuke in the words surprising Ty. Unlike the rest of Sebastian’s guardians, Mrs. Chang had not warmed to him, not during his time on the ranch and not during the long journey to England. She still regarded him with suspicion and a healthy dose of contempt.

“Hell, I been looking after the lass for nigh on eight years,” the Scotsman bellowed. “If’n I want to name her Countess I bloody well will, and make no mistake.”

“As long as you remember to refer to her as Lady Charlotte Morgan when in polite company,” Ethel retorted, not the least daunted by the old man’s bluster. “Lest someone overhear and spread tales about a contrived marriage.”

“Do you ken I would put Charlotte to risk that way?” Magnus roared. “Put the lad to risk that way? Ach, you’ve gone dotty carryin’ that bairn, that’s what!”

Ken stepped up beside Ethel, his narrow chest puffed out. “I’ll thank you not to yell at my wife when she’s in no condition to take a good shot at you.”

“Even when I’m as big as a house carrying this
bairn
, I’ll have no trouble bringing an old man to his knees,” Ethel replied, her words dripping haughty disdain.

Akeem, ever the mediator, stepped between the red-faced Scotsman and the Nordic ice-maiden. “If it please—”

“It don’t please me,” Magnus shouted. “It don’t please me at all! Not a bit of it. Not living in this house, not lollygagging when we ought to be after seeing to that bastard. And it sure as hell don’t please me to be going to court unarmed!”

“Do you think any of it pleases me?” Ethel retorted, her hands twisting in her skirts in a nervous gesture Ty had never seen from her. “We leave tomorrow and nothing’s been settled yet.”

“Shh, don’t take on so, love,” Ken murmured, wrapping one arm around her back.

Ethel lurched away, batting at her husband’s hands when he reached for her. “How can we leave with nothing settled? How can we leave with that man still breathing the same air as our countess?”

Ty ran a hand through his hair in frustration as he realized all the harping and nit-picking was on account of nerves and worry and the end of the Chang’s time guarding a boy and his mother.

Sebastian sidled up next to Ty, his small, gloved hand slipping into his, fingers squeezing. “Sometimes it takes them this way.”

Ty looked down at the boy in inquiry.

“Battle nerves,” Sebastian explained with a shrug.

Fury took hold of Ty, rushing through his blood, beating against his temples and blurring his vision. This boy, this innocent kid had lived his entire life with the knowledge he was hunted, so much so that words like “battle nerves” came as natural to him as rhymes and limericks came to other children.

Ethel and Magnus continued to gripe and poke at one another while Ken and Akeem attempted to douse the fuse of their combined tempers, but Ty barely heard them. His entire being was focused on containing the rage that had his breath stalling in his chest and his heart racing.

“Oh, for mercy sake!”

The bickering came to a grinding halt and Ty whipped around in time to watch Charlotte glide through the open parlor doors, Daisy behind her holding up the long train of her gown.

“Magnus, cease your shrieking and straighten your cravat,” Charlotte ordered with a frown. “And Ethel, calm yourself, else you’ll be red-faced and wild-eyed when we arrive at Winsor Castle.”

Sebastian released his hold on Ty’s hand and skipped across the room, stopping to greet his mother with a bow.

Charlotte halted before her son in the center of the room and dropped into a graceful curtsy, one gloved hand lifting the hem of her skirts and the other hovering in the air, impossibly small and delicate, like a fragile bird drifting on a breeze.

When she arose, she swept her gaze around the room, finding Ty and holding him captive with a smile filled with promise and determination and…something he couldn’t name, something he suspected he didn’t have words for even had he been able to untangle his thoughts long enough to decipher that smile.

“Mama, you look beautiful. Like a fairy princess.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

Charlotte was a vision, an achingly beautiful vision in blue, so exquisitely lovely she stole Ty’s breath and the anger he’d been battling to overcome.

Her dress was a fantastical creation, yards and yards of silver shot, powder-blue silk gathered and tucked to fall from her shoulders and caress the gentle curves of her breasts, to hug her slender waist before draping to the floor in ruffled flounces, each adorned with entwined ribbons of gray and pearly white. Long gray gloves covered her arms to just above the elbow. A pearl choker and matching earbobs were the only jewels she wore, their simplicity only accentuating the elegance of her gown.

“You look quite debonair, Mr. Morgan,” Charlotte pronounced, her words breaking the silence that had settled over the room and prompting the other inhabitants into motion. “I suspected the blue would suit you.”

Ty looked down, only just realizing the tailor had used the same silver-shot blue silk for his waistcoat and Charlotte’s gown. It gave him a queer feeling, knowing she’d intentionally chosen the fabric to match, pairing them together for all to see. As if their marriage was real and true.

Ty recognized the queer feeling as hope, as foreign to him as love and tenderness, and more dangerous than facing down a gang of outlaws.

***

“Remember to bow real low when you are presented to the queen,” Sebastian whispered as they made their way through the throng of ladies and gentlemen lingering in the hall outside the queen’s reception chamber.

Sebastian wasn’t the only one whispering.

“Boat just bobbing on the river,” a lady with three tall feathers sticking out of her bright red hair murmured as they passed.

“The boat wasn’t the only thing bobbing,” her companion, a gentleman sporting a handle-bar mustache, replied with a wheezing laugh.

“And don’t forget to back away rather than turn your back on Her Majesty,” Sebastian warned.

“Sebastian, you’ll have Ty’s nerves all atwitter with your well-intentioned advice,” Charlotte rebuked gently. “He’ll do fine.”