The Lady Takes A Gunslinger (Wild Western Rogues Series, Book 1) (7 page)

He might have laughed if he'd found the humor in it. "Ahh—in that getup of yours, I felt sure you were here t' tell me you'd be the only mourner at my burial, if Sanders feels moved to plant me. Then again, he may just box me up for viewing, like an extended sort of open-air wake as a kind of warning to all other bloodthirsty murderers in the area. In which case, I could use someone to lead the hymns on my account. How 'bout it, princess? Know any good ones?"

She wrinkled her nose. "He won't be hanging you at all. Not if we can help it."

He raised one amused eyebrow. "
We
? There are more of you?"

"Oh, yes. There's Brewster, too."

Reese's headache was coming back with a vengeance. "Look, I've had a long night." He patted the empty pockets of his shirt. "You didn't by any chance bring me the makings for a cigarette, did you?"

She shook her head. "Smoke makes me sneeze."

Naturally. He rubbed an anxious hand across his mouth and lifted one hopeful brow. "A drink?"

Shock flooded her expression. "You mean spirits? Certainly not."

"Should have known. Look, I haven't a clue why you're here, so can we just get t' the bottom of it?" He reached for the tin cup of water Connell Smith had left in his cell and took a drink.

She leaned closer, gripping the bars, and whispered conspiratorially. "We're going to liberate you, Mr. Donovan."

He nearly choked, spewing water across the moth-eaten blanket of his cot. "You're gonna
what?"

"Make a break for it," she enthused, "bust you loose—you know, set you free."

"In all my livelong life..." he muttered under his breath, tossing the tin cup back on the hard-packed dirt floor."Did anyone ever tell you, you ought to be on the stage, Miss Turner?"

She appeared to consider this. "Well, Miss Eustasia always claimed I had considerable talent in that area. Of course," she added, chewing thoughtfully on a thumbnail, "I don't believe she meant it as a compliment."

Donovan rolled his eyes.

"At any rate, I'm quite serious, Mr. Donovan. Brewster and I intend to break you out of here. It can all be done quite simply."

He stared at her a moment, imagining she was on the wrong side of the bars and he was looking in—at a raving lunatic. "Is that so?"

"Oh, yes, you see, Jack Leland has done this in all of his best books."

He frowned. "Jack who?"

"Leland. The novelist? Surely you've heard of him.
Revenge on the Purple Sage, Riders on the Great Divide, The Gunslinger and the Lady?"

A novelist? He was about to be lynched and she was planning his escape based on some half-baked greenhorn's fantasies?

"No matter," she assured him, that cockeyed smile of hers ebullient. "I've read them dozens of times. I know them from front cover to back. Of course, each jailbreak's a bit different... But we can talk about that later." She glanced furtively at the pine door, then back at him. "We haven't much time, and I must have something from you in return for getting you out of here."

He narrowed his eyes at her, then slowly turned his empty pockets out. "For the sake of argument, you should know, I'm fresh out of bargaining power."

She looked insulted. "Not money! A promise."

He was in the habit of putting a considerable distance between himself and any female who asked for promises. But he was in no position to go anywhere. "What kind of a promise?"

She tugged at the cuff of her sleeve and cleared her throat delicately. "I don't suppose you, uh, remember our conversation of last evening? About my brother?"

He raked one hand through his rumpled hair. It was all a little fuzzy, but it was beginning to come back to him with a low, thudding sense of doom. Something about wanting his help for something. What was it? Her brother had been unjustly imprisoned in—Reese's blood went cold. "Querétaro."

A pleased smile spread across her face. "Yes. Exactly so. Then you recall my brother's dilemma."

He glared at her in reply.

She cleared her throat. "I must have your promise that if we free you, you'll go to Querétaro to free my brother. It's an even trade, I think."

This was too much. Reese lurched to his feet."An even—?"

"Shh!" She waved her hands at him frantically with a horrified look at the marshal's door. "Do you want him to hear?"

He ground his teeth together and gripped the bars of his cell until his knuckles went white. "An even trade?" he repeated in a strangled whisper. "You're the reason I'm in here in the first place. If it weren't for you, I'd be sleeping off my hangover in the comfort of my own room, instead of waiting for the hangman's noose t' be fitted 'round my neck!"

Her lips fell open in real dismay. "Oh, now that's hardly fair, Mr. Donovan. After all, you
are
the gunslinger with whom that awful Deke Sanders seemed to have some bone to pick. And no one forced you to pull that trigger. And I... well, I certainly didn't mean to trip like that. It was entirely... accidental."

"And I suppose it was accidental you happened t' be in that cantina alone where a woman like you had no bloody business bein'?"

Grace backed against the wall two steps behind her, noting irrelevantly that both his brogue and his language got worse the angrier he got. She was suddenly quite glad those iron bars stood between them, because he looked as if he wanted to strangle her with his two bare hands. She touched her throat. She knew he was at least half right about her. Well, maybe even a little more than half, she admitted. But she couldn't let that dissuade her from her plan.

"Mr. Donovan, I... I really am very sorry about everything. I certainly never meant for any of this to happen. I do hope you know that. But don't you agree this is hardly the time for recriminations?"

He narrowed his eyes uncertainly.

"Recriminations," she said more softly, meeting his gaze. "Blame. Some things"—she took a step closer—"just happen. They're meant to be. There's no logic, no reason. They just are. It's destiny, so to speak."

Resse dropped his hands from the bars and watched her take another step nearer. His heartbeat thudded in his ears. "Destiny?"

"Do you believe in it?"

"No." And for reasons he couldn't fathom, he added, "But I suppose you do."

She smiled at him. By God, she had a smile that could charm a flock of canaries out of the trees, he thought, steeling himself against it.

"I believe," she said, "that all things have a purpose, Mr. Donovan. A purpose greater than our understanding. Perhaps it's better not to question those things. Now, we haven't much time. Do we have a deal or not?"

He spun away from her, braced his hands on the wall above the bunk and cursed.

Grace watched the tense arch of his shoulders, the play of muscle across his back through the torn fabric of his shirt as he let his head drop forward between his splayed arms. Something in his posture made her want to reach out and touch him, reassure him that it would be all right. But she sensed that touching a man like Reese Donovan would be like touching the cool liquid of nitroglycerin, just before it exploded in your hand.

"Please. I need your help."

Reese slumped down heavily on the wood slab and rubbed his aching head. "Let me get this straight. You get me out of here—assuming you can—and I go and make myself target practice for Maximilian's thugs in Querétaro."

"That wasn't exactly what I had in mind."

"What exactly did you have in mind?"

She shrugged, as if the answer were all too obvious. "Specifically? Freeing my brother and getting out alive."

He let out a snort of laughter.

"Mr. Donovan, if you think I haven't thought about the consequences of possible failure, you're wrong. I have. And weighing it against what we have to gain, we have decided that it's worth the risk. It's clear," she went on, "that your choices are rather onesided. Staying here means certain death for you."

"And in Querétaro, I'll have a running start, is that what you mean?"

She stared at him, silent.

He sent her a sideways look. "You ever been to Querétaro, princess?"

"No, of course I've never been."

"Well, I have. It would make even this place look good to a lady like yerself. And right now, from what I've heard, it's crawling with Maximilian's troops who've holed up there and think nothing of executing innocent men suspected of consorting with Juarez or his supporters."

"Like my brother."

He nodded. "Like your brother."

She glanced around the cell. "It can't be much worse than this, can it?"

He narrowed his eyes, following her gaze. "You might be surprised. Besides, there isn't a prayer of me breaching Maximilian's defenses."

She glanced innocently at the thick adobe walls of his cell. "I suppose Marshal Sanders has much the same opinion about his little fortress. But I plan to prove him wrong."

He shook his head. "You do."

"Indeed."

But her fingers, Reese noted, were busy twisting in the silk fabric of her mourning getup. And that postage stamp of a hat of hers was slipping inexorably toward one side of her empty little head. She shoved it back in place with one trembling digit.

"I'm very confident," she said brightly.

"Ah, well, that certainly puts my mind at ease. And if I say yes, what's t' keep me from just leavin' you behind once I'm... liberated, as you say?"

Her expression sobered and she chewed on her thumbnail, pacing back and forth in front of the cell bars with a swish of silk and petticoats. "I've thought about that, actually. And I've come to the conclusion that although I have no guarantee, as an ex-Texas Ranger, you're a man who lives by a code of honor. I believe that if you promise me that you'll go, you will."

Destiny. Code of honor.
Ballocks
. If he had a code at all, it had nothing to do with his having been a Texas Ranger once upon a time. He'd learned the hard way that the Rangers' code of honor was made to be broken at the convenience of the man who proclaimed it, or to suit whatever purpose he had in mind.

But apparently, this woman had some starry-eyed notion of what a Texas Ranger was, and she supposed he fit the bill. It should have been as apparent to her as it was to the rest of the world that he'd been deemed unworthy of such a lofty rank.

He'd spent the last few years lying to everyone, including himself. One more lie wouldn't hurt.

"All right. I agree."

Her eyes widened. "You'll do it?"

"I said I would, didn't I?"

"Your word of honor?"

He spread his hands wide. "Naturally."

She rushed to embrace the bars again, the only thing stopping her, he supposed, from flinging herself at him. Tears brimmed in her eyes and teetered on her lashes. "Oh, Mr. Donovan, thank you, thank you! You can't know what this means to me. You won't regret it, I—"

"Not danglin' from Sanders's noose is the thing I won't regret," he said gruffly, cutting her off. "If you can get me out of here."

"Not if. When."

A sweet fragrance he couldn't quite identify drifted to him the closer she got, and a sharp, unexpected pang of desire curled low in his belly. She had the kind of eyes a man could lose himself in, he thought. Deep and calm and certain. The kind of eyes that could persuade a man to be someone, or damn him for the fool he was.

She stuck her hand through the bars. "Shall we shake on it, then?"

He eyed her proffered hand suspiciously. It wasn't every day a woman offered a man a hand as a deal-sealer. In fact, it was downright unusual. But then he supposed Grace Turner wasn't
usual
in any sort of way at all.

There was a slight tremble to her hand as he took it. Her skin was soft as down, a lady's hand, he mused, trying to remember if he'd ever touched one before. As her fingers curled around his palm in firm resolve, their eyes collided: an offer of trust on her part, a blatant lie on his.

How many times, he wondered, had he told lies to the kind of women who required nothing more? It had never bothered him before and shouldn't now. But somehow it did. A flash of heat crept upward from his collar, and he deliberately disengaged his hand from hers.

She smiled up at him, apparently not noticing. "We'll get you out," she said. "Don't you worry about that. Be ready tonight at midnight. We've already taken the liberty of purchasing a new horse for you. We didn't want to raise suspicions at the livery where you've boarded yours."

He frowned. "Pretty sure of yourselves, weren't you?"

A smile tipped her mouth again. "We'll be back for you tonight, then, Mr. Donovan. Midnight. Be ready."

He nodded.

"Oh, and there's one more condition," she added, turning with her hand on the knob.

"Condition?"

"It would seem you have a well-earned reputation for... indulgence, shall we say?"

Donovan sat back down on the bunk and waited, feeling the short hairs on the back of his neck bristle. Outside the window, the cicadas cranked up in the rising morning heat.