My Darling Gunslinger (29 page)

“What’s to decide? Will you abandon this life, the life Grenville stole from you, to live the hardscrabble life of a rancher’s wife?” There was a wealth of mockery in his voice.

“I lived on the Zeppelin for a year and it was hardly a hard…hard scrambled life.”

“Hardscrabble,” he corrected and for the merest moment Charlotte thought she saw a softness come into his eyes, there and gone in an instant. “Impoverished, diminished, poor. Is that the life you wish for the ninth Earl of Westlockhart?”

“That isn’t fair,” Charlotte protested feebly, confusion warring with panic, leaving her breathless.

“Life isn’t fair, Countess.”

“Please don’t do this, Ty.”

“Christ Almighty, a man can only take so much,” Ty roared, one hand slashing through the air. “You don’t belong on the Zeppelin any more than I belong in London.”

“Do you love me?” The words were out before the thought had fully formed in Charlotte’s mind.

Ty blinked, swallowed and looked away.

“It’s a simple question, Tyler Morgan, and in your language.”

His head whipped around and his gaze found hers, his eyes the cold, empty eyes of a gunslinger just before he pulled the trigger. He said absolutely nothing, made not so much as a sound.

His silence was somehow louder than the humming void in her head, roaring in her ears and drowning out her voice when she whispered, “Ty?”

“You’re a great fuck and I didn’t need Mrs. St. Germaine whispering in my ear to know there are worse ways a man could die than with you sucking his cock.”

Each word, from the first to the last, was delivered with clipped precision, his voice echoing around the room, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting back at Charlotte from all sides.

But it was Ty who flinched as if struck by a stray bullet.

I’d been carrying you around with me for more than a year before I landed at the Zeppelin.

The noiseless din dissipated from Charlotte’s ears, leaving only Ty’s rasping breaths to fill the otherwise silent dining room.

Lady Blue was a puny dream, prosaic even. But how could I dream of more when I never even imagined a woman like you existed?

Charlotte’s heart gave a queer lurch, the pain easing and slipping away, leaving her almost dizzy with the relief she’d not been able to find amid the tangled confusion of her emotions.

The thing is, now I know you exist. Now my dreams are full of you and I can’t see as how that’ll change anytime soon.

“Oh, my poor darling,” Charlotte crooned, smiling when Ty took a stumbling step back, bumping the table and setting the china dishes to clinking. “If you leave me, I will follow you.”

Ty skirted around the table, knocking into his abandoned chair and nearly toppling it over. “My mother was a whore.”

“Your mother loved you and protected you as best she could,” Charlotte argued, following his retreat. “She taught you all a boy with nothing but his wits to recommend him ought to know.”

“I have spent the last twenty years killing men for money,” Ty hissed through clenched teeth.

“You never killed a man who didn’t deserve to die.” Charlotte snatched up his hat as she rounded the head of the table. “You’ll spend the next twenty years as a rancher, with me at your side.”

Ty ran a hand through his hair, mussing the mahogany waves, his wary gaze fixed on Charlotte as he continued to sidle around the long table. “You’re a fucking countess.”

“I am Mrs. Tyler Morgan.”

“Your son is the ninth Earl of Westlockhart.”

“Our son is a boy whose greatest desire is to return to the only home he has ever known.”

“The Zeppelin has never shown a profit,” Ty muttered, grasping at straws and they both knew it.

“Not yet it hasn’t, but it will,” Charlotte replied, taking two quick steps and closing the gap between them. “You will turn the Zeppelin into the most lucrative estate in Montana.”

Ty came to a halt at the foot of the table, his hands curling into fists, and a muscle clenching along his jaw. “And if I don’t?”

“Then we’ll live a hardscrabble life,” Charlotte replied after only the briefest hesitation during which she debated the wisdom of revealing the vast fortune stashed in various banks around the world.

“You deserve better.”

She stopped before him, close enough she could feel the heat of his body and breathe in his scent. Lifting his hat, she placed it on his head, angling it to provide the illusion of protection. “You might need your hat for this next part.”

Ty didn’t move so much as a muscle, but something shifted in his posture, loosened and relaxed. Beneath the brim of that blasted, bedeviled, beloved hat, his gray eyes softened.

“I am your wife, not some hurly-burly girl you can tumble once or twice and walk away from.”

“Yes.” Ty’s voice was infinitely soft and low, a mere sliver of sound.

“I am not a spoiled, pampered lady in need of coddling,” Charlotte continued, winding up to deliver what promised to be the most important speech of her life. “I don’t need to be surrounded by luxury to be happy, nor do I want to spend my life in the stone wasteland that is London.”

“Yes,” Ty repeated, his lips curving up in a tender smile.

“And another thing…” Charlotte lost her words and her way when Ty cupped her cheek, his hand warm and callused and so heart-wrenchingly gentle. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, I love you.”

Charlotte blinked against the moisture gathering in her eyes, her breath leaving her on a fractured sigh as she nuzzled her cheek into the palm of his hand. “You do?”

“Christ, Charlotte,” he whispered, his free hand coming to rest at her waist, fingers splayed wide as if to hold her in place. “I’ve loved you so long I can’t rightly remember a time when I didn’t love you.”

“Oh, Ty,” Charlotte murmured, placing one hand on his jaw, his skin warm and smooth beneath her fingers.

“Can you forgive me for tossing Westlockhart’s death and that ugly rumor in your face the way I did?”

“Well, the thing is,” Charlotte began, knowing she owed him the truth but hesitant to shatter the lovely moment.

“Please, Charlotte.” Ty’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment before opening once more, his gaze locking with hers, holding her as firmly as the hand at her waist. “I know I hurt you, you’ve every right to hold my words against me. But I don’t know as I can live without your forgiveness.”

“It isn’t a rumor. It’s true, all of it. I killed George.” The admission fell from Charlotte’s lips in a rush, a jumble of nearly indecipherable words all running together and tangling around one another.

“It was an accident,” Ty murmured, his thumb skimming along her cheek. “And not a bad way to go, to my way of thinking.”

With a splutter of laughter, Charlotte swatted her husband’s chest, left her hand to rest to over his heart, beating steady and true. “I love you, Tyler Morgan.”

Ty’s eyes took on a suspicious brightness, his nostrils flaring and his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. A shudder ran through his muscled frame and his fingers clenched at her waist before he hauled her up hard against his chest. Wrapping his arms around her, he lifted her clear off the ground until they were nose to nose, his hat falling to the floor. “Say it again.”

“Ich leibe dich.” Charlotte wound her arms up over his shoulders and drove her hands into his hair, the strands soft and silky as they slithered and curled around her fingers. “Je t’aime. Te amo. Eu amo voce. In any language, I love you.”

The End

Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking the time to read My Darling Gunslinger. If you enjoyed Charlotte and Tyler’s story of love and redemption, please take a moment to post a review. Even one or two sentences on Amazon, Goodreads or your favorite book review site can make a world of difference to an author, as well as to readers in search of their next great story.

If you are a fan of Regency Era sensual romance novels, please read on for a sneak peek at Pretty Poison, a story of love’s power to heal wounded hearts.

Thank you,

Lynne Barron

Emerald Isle Plantation

Calvert County, Maryland

January, 1826

“You’ve less sense than a flea on Samson’s back!” Charles Calvert’s booming voice woke the old hound dog sleeping next to the hearth in the study. Samson lifted one droopy golden eye to peer out at Emily and her father before settling once more into sleep.

“Da,” Emily began, smiling up at her father, determined to maneuver him into a cheerier frame of mind by playing the dutiful, doting daughter.

“Don’t you
Da
me, Emily Ann,” he shouted. “And none of your smiles and batting eyelashes, either. Hell and damnation, girlie.”

“What did I do that was so terrible?” she asked with a huff as she settled back on the long settee and crossed her arms over her chest. “I hadn’t planned to leave Emerald Isle, but that wily buck took me on a merry chase clear onto Mr. Gimble’s land.”

“And you just had to go chasing after him in your brother’s britches?”

“I couldn’t very well hunt that buck in a gown, not in those woods, with branches and dead wood tangling in my skirts. An eight point, he was. We would have dined on Pearl’s venison stew tonight if Mrs. Gimble and her nosy daughters hadn’t come upon me just as I took aim.”

“But those three busy-bodies did come upon you and they’ve already spread the tale far and wide.” Charles turned away to pace before the hearth, the old hound cracking one eye open to watch his movements. “Land sakes, Em, you might have weathered this new brouhaha if it didn’t come right on top of the other.”

“Now, Da, it was only a dip in the pond,” Emily protested. “The Polar Plunge the men at Chesterton College call it.”

“You are not a man and you’ve no business swimming about in your unmentionables in the dead of winter with two gentlemen, only one of which is related to you!”

“Tate Danson is as like a brother to me as Nate,” Emily argued.

“He is no more your brother than are the two gentlemen who witnessed your plunge,” Charles bellowed, his green eyes bulging.

“That was unfortunate,” she admitted, shaking her head at the memory of breaking the surface of the cold water to find the two men standing on the wooden dock looking at her as if she were a mermaid rising from the depths of the pond.

“Unfortunate? Hell, it was a damn disaster,” her father roared. “And now you’ve gone and made things worse with this latest bit of mischief. Do you have any idea at all what you have done?”

Emily didn’t. Not really. Not yet. It wasn’t until later that evening when her fiancé, Peter Marshall, came to call that the truth of her folly dawned on her. He didn’t come to call on

Emily. No, Peter barely glanced at her as he followed her father down the hall and into the study.

Emily sat on the bottom step of the huge oak staircase to wait for Peter to reappear. She didn’t have long to wait.

“Peter,” Emily called out when it seemed he would walk right past her without acknowledging her in the least. Jumping to her feet, she placed her hand on his arm, felt the stiffening of his muscles beneath her fingers.

“Miss Calvert,” Peter greeted with barely a nod.

Emily looked up into his handsome face, startled to see a severe frown pulling at his normally smiling lips and a distant look in his gray eyes.

“Miss Calvert?” Emily repeated softly. “We have been Emily and Peter to each other these many months.”

Peter cleared his throat and shifted his arm just enough so that Emily’s hand dropped away. He took a step back, turned and walked out the door.

Sinking back onto the stairs, her rustling skirts loud in the silent foyer, she stared at the closed door long after Peter had disappeared through it.

***

The following morning, a jilted Emily Calvert and her family took their place in the front pew of St. John’s Church in Buckstown, Maryland. They were greeted with whispers behind gloved hands and disdainful stares.

“How the mighty have fallen.” Charity Gimble’s words carried to Emily just as she’d intended.

“Not surprising,” Hope Gimble replied. “Blood will tell after all.”

At those words, Emily looked past her brother Nate’s broad shoulders to Patsy and Charlie, her father’s children by his mistress, both with their golden heads bent in prayer. Neither appeared to have heard and if they had, would they understand? She looked up to see her father looking back at her with a ferocious scowl on his weather-beaten, freckled face.

Emily saw beyond his fury to the sorrow in his eyes, the regret he rarely allowed himself to feel, much less show.

Emily thought about Hope Gimble’s words. While her family was the most prosperous, outwardly revered family in Buckstown and all of Calvert County, the same people who treated them with deference and esteem were secretly waiting for them to fall into disgrace. Those people had been waiting a long time.

Heat pricked Emily’s eyes and she blinked furiously. She would not cry before these sanctimonious, judgmental hypocrites.

Rising from the hard wooden pew when the service ended, she followed her family down the long aisle, past the stares and whispers and snickers. She held her head high and raked a scathing glance over the congregation, meeting eyes that quickly shifted away.

“This too shall pass,” she whispered as she stepped into the muted light of a cold January afternoon.

***

And pass it did. It passed from bad to worse.

“Your Aunt Margaret has written to me,” Charles Calvert announced one evening in early February as the family, minus Nate who had returned to school, was finishing dinner.

“You’ve told her you will be journeying to England to tour the railways?” Emily asked without much interest. Why her father wanted to leave Emerald Isle to go traipsing across some cold, dismal island was beyond her.

“Who is Aunt Margaret?” Patsy asked.

“Da’s sister,” Emily replied. “She lives in England.”

“Why haven’t we ever met her?” Charlie asked around a mouthful of bread pudding.

“Please don’t speak with your mouth full,” Emily gently admonished her brother.

“It’s disgusting,” Patsy added. “No one wants to see your half-chewed food.”

Charlie stuck his tongue out at his sister.

“Charles Calvert!” their father roared from the head of the table. He shot one hot look at his son before turning his angry gaze on Emily. “Have you no control over these heathens?”

“They are not heathens,” Emily calmly replied to her father’s outburst. In the weeks since Peter had broken their betrothal, her father had rarely spoken to her and when he did it was to chastise her for one thing or another. “They are children without the benefit of mother, tutor, or governess.”

Her father only stared at her in silence for long seconds before pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. “Emily, girl of mine, I’ll see you in my study in five minutes.”

Emily felt a shiver run down her spine at the soft words. A blustering Da was a happy Da, or at the very least one whose temper was short lived. A soft-spoken Da was a warning to beware.

“Have a spot of whiskey,” Charles invited when Emily entered his study some twenty minutes later. But really, a lady had only so many ways to make her displeasure known and tardiness was one of them.

Emily poured a small measure of Irish whiskey into a crystal tumbler and took her seat before her father’s massive desk. She watched him across the mahogany space as she sipped daintily. She’d been sipping whiskey in the study with her father for years as they went over the household accounts and discussed the horse farm, now more Emily’s domain than his.

“You’re right, you know,” her father said quietly as he looked at her with a steady gaze.

“I’m right about what, Da?” she asked as warning bells clanged in her brain.

“I’ve been remiss in the raising of your brother and sister,” he replied, his voice still eerily soft.

“Oh, Da,” Emily said with a sigh.

“Now, let me finish, Em.” Her father held up one beefy hand to halt her words before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “It’s not right you having the responsibility of bringing up Charlie and Patsy.”

“I don’t mind, really, Da,” Emily assured him.

“I know you don’t, Em. I know you love them. They know you love them. But it’s past time for a change. Charlie will be going off to school before long and he’s not near ready. And Patsy, well, you’ve done real fine with her but she needs a governess, needs to be taught to be a proper lady.”

“Are you saying I can’t teach Patsy to be a lady?” Emily demanded.

“Girl, how can you teach her what you don’t know?” Charles shot back.

“I know how to be a lady.”

“Then why the hell aren’t you?” he bellowed, and Emily’s heart rate slowed, her fists unclenched, and she sagged back into her chair. She’d been truly worried there, what with Da’s soft words. Now things were getting back to normal.

“Honest to God, Emily Ann,” he hollered. “You spent years turning away every suitor who came courting until they just stopped coming. Then, for some reason known only to you and the good Lord, you set your sights on Peter Marshall. And I’ll be damned if you didn’t bring him up to scratch, only to ruin it with your wild ways!”

“Da, I know I’ve embarrassed you,” Emily began carefully.

“Embarrassed me?” her father repeated. “Hell, girlie, I don’t give two damns what a bunch of sniveling busybodies and their menfolk think! You ruined your last chance to marry!”

“Peter was not my last chance to marry.” Even as she spoke the words, she suspected her father was right. Peter likely had been her last chance, her only chance. The only man she’d ever met who she thought might have been able to make her happy. The only man she had trusted to be the one thing she wanted in a husband.

“Well, girlie, it seems you may be right in this as well,” her father said with a huff as he hoisted his bulky frame from his chair.

Emily only looked at him. Surely Da wouldn’t admit to her being right twice in one night. It had to be a trick.

“My sister Margaret has a young gentleman in mind for you.” The words were followed by a hefty pat on her shoulder as her father walked past her to the sideboard.

“What? Who? Where? In England?” Emily’s voice rose in panic with each question. “Da, you can’t mean to marry me off to a man I’ve never even met! You can’t mean to send me to England!”

“Now, Emily, mind your tone,” he barked from behind her.

Emily rose from her chair to face her father. They stared at one another, unblinking green eyes riveted upon unblinking green eyes. Neither spoke, the only sound in the room the crackling of the fire in the hearth and the snoring of Samson before it.

“Da?” she whispered, tears rushing to her eyes.

“Em, my girl,” he responded, and in his steady gaze Emily saw his sorrow, his regret, her doom.

“I’ll be good, Da.” Emily approached him, her hand out to him in supplication, tears hovering on her lashes. “I promise. No more wearing breeches or swimming in the pond in my shift. No more riding astride, no more dressing like a boy and sneaking into the tavern, no more kissing Patrick Colby behind the church. I swear it.”

“You kissed young Colby behind the church?” her father bellowed.

“Only once or twice. Da, please. I promise I’ll be good.” She blinked until tears began to slowly trickle down her cheeks.

“Emily,” her father opened his arms and she ran into them. “Now, don’t carry on so, girlie. It’ll be all right.”

Emily sniffed against his barrel chest and allowed a small watery smile. Da never could resist her tears.

“Margaret says in her letter that he’s a fine young gentleman, the son of a Viscount,” her father said as he awkwardly patted her back.

“Da, you can’t be serious. You won’t really send me away. I’ve learned my lesson. Now you can stop pretending.”

Only Charles Calvert was not pretending, and on a blistering day in early March Emily found herself onboard the
Silent Night
, standing beside her father, watching as the city of Baltimore, the shores of United States of America, receded into the fog swirling above the cold sea.