Nan Ryan (2 page)

The princess had made up her mind.

She would marry again.

At this evening’s ball, she would choose from several prospects. With matrimony her motive, the princess decided to dress for the occasion with males in mind. She chose from her immense wardrobe a gown of shimmering lavender satin with a bodice that was cut as low as a proper princess could dare wear out in public. She would have the royal hairdresser sweep her long, ginger hair up off her neck and arrange the luxurious locks into neat curls atop her head.

The princess was entirely confident in her ability to make the gentleman of her choice propose before the evening ended. She was used to reducing men to nervous adoration by her mere presence. Besides, she knew how to treat men. Badly.

They couldn’t get enough of it.

As twilight descended over the huge stone castle atop the highest peak of the mountain kingdom of Hartz-Coburg, the princess dressed for the ball, then examined herself in a standing, gold-framed mirror. She was pleased with her reflection and certain of her lethal feminine charms.

But she was more than a little melancholy that picking a new prince was necessary. How she wished it could have been different, that her kingdom had no need of such a sacrifice. She wished it were as it had been in the old days. She had been a child of immense privilege, raised in a lovely isolated world that had shielded her from harsh realities.

At one time this tiny mountain kingdom, located high on the Swiss frontier, had boasted the natural resources of diamond veins, coal mines, and marble quarries. Money had been plentiful. Life in the kingdom had been marvelous. A constant stream of well-heeled visitors arrived daily at the old castle. It was said that the king, her dear father, hosted the most exciting soirées on the Continent. Those glittering affairs had been attended by European and British royals, sheiks and maharajahs, pashas, and wealthy Americans.

But, alas, those golden days and silver nights had ended. The vast marble quarries had been flooded, and the rich veins of coal and diamonds had finally been exhausted. The great sums of money they had produced, spent. Times were hard. Her monarchy was unquestionably in desperate straits.

She would, the princess privately pledged, do her duty. Save the kingdom. Choose for herself a rich husband at that evening’s ball, which had been planned for just that purpose.

That was the princess’s noble resolve.

But as the evening wore on and the suitors wore on her, the princess knew she could not bring herself to marry any one of them. The viscount of Bailey—one of the wealthiest aristocrats in all Europe—was practically drooling to win her hand. But the middle-aged, rotund royal was boring and lazy, and servants at his country castle whispered that the viscount sat around his chambers with his trousers undone over his protruding belly, belching loudly and scratching unselfconsciously.

After only one agonizingly long and awkward dance with the portly perspiring viscount, Princess Marlena marked his name off the list.

The young, blondly handsome Lord Willingham was a graceful dancer, had impeccable manners, and was definitely easy on the eye. But gazing up at the winsome lord’s classically handsome face as they danced beneath the sparkling chandeliers, the princess knew she would never be comfortable married to a man whose fair fragile beauty surpassed even her own.

Clamoring for dances were other wealthy marquesses, earls, and barons from which to choose a prince consort, but they were all too similar. Richly dressed sophisticated gentlemen of grace, breeding, and polish.

But not so much as a hint of fire, passion, or virile masculinity in the lot of them. To spend the next forty to fifty years married to one of these pale, blue-blooded fops seemed tiresome indeed to the lively princess.

At seventeen she had been such a child, she had thought nothing of marrying a man she hardly knew. It had been her father’s strong wish that she wed the duke, and she had agreed without entertaining any doubts. But she was no longer a child. And the king was no longer alive.

When finally the tedious evening ended and the last of the crested carriages transported lingering guests down the steep winding road from the castle, a tired, disheartened princess Marlena summoned her factor, Montillion.

Meeting his hopeful gaze, she shook her head and admitted she hadn’t accepted a single proposal, of which there had been many.

His face gone pale with disappointment, he said anxiously, “But Your Highness, you know there is but one alternative.”

“Well, fetch me the royal tin cup,” she said resolutely. “We will go to America!”

2

It was morning when
Her Highness, Princess Marlena of Hartz-Coburg, and her entourage boarded the royal yacht for the long voyage across the ocean.

But it was nighttime in America.

At just past midnight in the wild gambling town of Las Cruces, New Mexico, a pretty young woman stepped onto the foot-lighted stage of Main Street’s rowdy, smoke-filled Silver Dollar Saloon.

The woman was a pale-skinned beauty with large emerald eyes and ginger-red hair and a voluptuous body. Her ample curves were daringly accentuated by the revealing green satin costume she wore. She carried a white ostrich feather, which she used, skillfully, to tickle and toy with those lucky enough to be seated ringside.

She sang with a distinct accent as she smiled and strutted about the stage, teasing and flirting, to the delight of the crowd-packed saloon. Billed as the Queen of the Silver Dollar, she was, in every way, quite the crowd pleaser. Warbling a song with risqué lyrics, she played coyly to her enthusiastic audience, which was made up mainly of shouting, whistling, applauding men.

One man in the noisy saloon neither shouted nor whistled nor applauded.

Seated alone at a table against the far back wall, the silent, unsmiling man sat drinking his whiskey, his hooded eyes fixed on the red-haired woman on the stage. The man was a tall, lanky, black-haired native Texan with squint lines around his piercing blue eyes; a straight, prominent nose; and a hard mouth, around which often flickered the merest shadow of mockery.

His name was Virgil Black.

Black was a thirty-four-year-old loner who took his women like he took his whiskey: straight, with no buildup and no chaser. A hard-as-nails veteran Texas Ranger with a gun on his hip and a star on his chest, Captain Virgil Black had earned a reputation for his many feats of derring-do. Tales of his numerous exploits had been told and retold until his name was recognized by almost everyone in the vast deserts of the Southwest.

It was said that in his fifteen years as a Ranger he had, on more than one occasion, single-handedly stood off bands of Indians and fought more than his share of Mexican marauders and border bandits. Nobody knew how many men Virgil Black had killed, but everyone wondered when Black’s own number would come up.

It was, they whispered, overdue.

Texas Rangers rarely lived as long as Virgil Black. Half were killed in their first year. The lives of those who went into the service were not considered good for more than a year or two.

Captain Virgil Black had beat the odds. He had looked into the face of death many a time and spit in his eye. It was the opinion of those Rangers who served with Black that the hardened captain had survived so long because he didn’t much care if he lived or died.

A quiet, brooding, dark, and dangerous-looking man with steely muscles that matched his steely stare, Captain Black was said to be trigger-happy and coldhearted. Some even thought he belonged on the other side of the law.

Desperadoes feared him. Women desired him. Nobody knew him.

Nobody, save one retired Ranger: William “True” Cannon, the proud silver-haired Confederate war veteran whose life Virgil had saved more than a decade ago. The two had since become like favorite nephew and uncle. They were each other’s only family.

On this warm May evening in the crowded, smoke-filled saloon in Las Cruces, Ranger Black was alone. As usual. On special assignment, Black had ridden up from Ysleta headquarters outside El Paso, to track down a daring desperado who was wanted for murder.

Earlier in the day, Black had captured his man. Tomorrow he would escort the prisoner back to Texas. But tonight he sat in the Silver Dollar Saloon, relaxing, a half-full bottle of bourbon in one hand, a shot glass in the other.

His prisoner safely ensconced in the Las Cruces jail, Virgil Black was doing some hard drinking as he gazed with mild interest at the red-haired entertainer onstage. He coolly stared as the seductive young woman came to the lip of the small stage, bent over, and tickled a grizzled, dark-bearded old cowboy with her white ostrich feather.

Bending from the waist, flashing a naughty smile, the Queen of the Silver Dollar allowed the appreciative gents an eyeful of the pale, abundant cleavage swelling above her low-cut green satin bodice. The audience loved it. They loved it even more when the lithe, lusty dancer shook her bare shoulders about, causing her breasts to dance and jiggle and threaten to spill completely out of her dress.

There were riotous hoots and whistles, and eager hands grabbed at her. Smiling provocatively, the Queen of the Silver Dollar adroitly sidestepped outstretched hands, tantalizing her eager admirers with what they were welcome to look at but could not touch. As she played to the excited men, the redhead pointedly glanced over their heads to the back of the shadowy saloon where a dark, unsmiling man sat alone at a tiny table.

Virgil Black raised his half-full glass of whiskey in silent salute and acknowledgment. The Queen of the Silver Dollar raised her hand to her scarlet lips, kissed her fingertips, and threw him a kiss. Then she spun about, showing her back to her panting audience. All came roaring to their feet when she reached down, grabbed the hem of her green satin skirt, and saucily tossed it up over her shoulders, allowing them a fleeting glance of her soft, rounded derriere covered only by skimpy satin tights with lace ruffles on the shiny seat.

It brought down the house.

Every man in the saloon was on his feet screaming for more.

Except Virgil Black.

Unmoving, he continued to sit at the table and drink his whiskey. His intent, at the moment, was to finish his bottle of bourbon and then sleep it off in the redhead’s bed.

There was no doubt in Virgil Black’s mind that he could, and would, do both. He didn’t consider himself to be arrogant. Quite the contrary. To him it had always been a bit of a mystery why women fell so easily into his arms. All women. Not just the kind he found in saloons, but those who were supposedly respectable.

He could only surmise that all the accommodating women he had known would have behaved exactly the same way with any other man. To his way of thinking there was nothing special about him, yet females of all ages couldn’t wait to give themselves to him. He had yet to desire a woman who had turned him down.

So Virgil Black was not the least bit surprised when after the show, the shapely, ginger-haired Queen of the Silver Dollar fought her way to his table through the mobs of men shouting to her, wearing an inviting smile on her scarlet-painted lips.

“I’ve heard about you,
Herr Kapitan
Black,” she said in a distinctive, perhaps affected, foreign accent and saucily sat down on his lap.

A faint, half-mocking smile touching his hard mouth, Virgil Black poured the last of the whiskey into his glass, leisurely downed it, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, and asked, “Just what have you heard?”

She smiled flirtatiously and said, “That you’re lightning fast on the draw with that big gun on your hip, but—” she paused, leaned down, placed her gleaming red lips close to his ear, and whispered, “you can keep that awesome weapon in your trousers aimed, cocked, and ready to fire all night long.”

“Want to find out?” was his cool reply.

She squealed and giggled and instantly shot up off his lap. Reaching for his hand, she said, “Come upstairs with me,
Kapitan
Black. We’ll have us a real good time.”

Virgil Black rose to his feet. At six foot three, he towered over the five-foot-five-inch Queen of the Silver Dollar. She tipped her head back, looked up at him, possessively clasped red-nailed fingers around his hard biceps, and said, “My goodness, you’re so tall. So big.” She fluttered her long eyelashes and licked her red lips. “Is everything about you … big?”

Virgil slowly raised a lean, dark hand, wrapped long fingers loosely around the back of her bare neck, and staring directly at her full-lipped mouth, said, “Everything’s in proportion.” His icy blue eyes flashed dangerously then, and he added, “Or will be once you get your hands on it.”

“Oh,
Kapitan
!”

Anxious to get this big, handsome Ranger upstairs to the privacy of her room, the red-haired entertainer took his lean brown hand and led him hurriedly through the crowded saloon to the staircase on the far left side of the room. At the base of the stairs, she stopped him, took a couple of steps up, and turned to face him.

“Carry me?” she asked coquettishly.