McCrory's Lady (5 page)

      
“Are there just the two men with the girl?” Wolf asked.

      
Emilio shrugged his thin shoulders. “Who knows? We did not dare ride in. In times past, it was a bandits' hideaway. There could be more, but there was no sign, and the sheep men, they have seen no one coming and going.”

      
“They might be too afraid to tell you if they did,” Wolf said.

      
Or they may have been paid not to say anything.
“Let's ride,” Colin said, standing up and shoving his chair back impatiently.

      
“I know how badly you want to get to Eden, Colin, but don't jump too fast,” Maggie cautioned. “You'll do her no good dead. I know that pass. It leads into a box canyon. There's a back way up over the side. I can get you in—”

      
“No. It's too dangerous. There might be shooting,” Colin interrupted.

      
“Remember what I said last night,” Maggie replied softly.

      
Their eyes locked for a moment. “Leave us alone,” he said to Wolf and Emilio.

      
The gunman and the Indian left the office, closing the door behind them.

      
“I'm willing to risk it, Colin—for a price,” Maggie said when he turned back to her.

      
“A price?” One eyebrow raised in surprise. He noticed her hands were trembling faintly as she poured two drinks from a decanter on the pedestal table behind her desk. She handed him one and took a deep swallow from the other.

      
“I don't mean money,” she said flatly. “I've made a good living with the Silver Eagle.”

      
“The mines are playing out. The town's dying slowly. Bart's invested his cash here and there. He'll buy me out. Consider it a dowry of sorts.” Her eyes met his and held them, watching his expression change.

      
“A dowry? You can't mean—”

      
“Oh, but I can. You need me—to guide you to that place and to be with Eden after you free her. I want out of this life. I could erase my past, fit into your world, Colin. I have the essential qualifications—I'm well read, not half bad looking. We can talk to each other—even make each other laugh. And as to your fears about ever getting a wife pregnant, I was told by a doctor I can't have children.” There, she had said it. All of it without losing her nerve!

      
His face was incredulous. “You actually mean a real marriage.”

      
Maggie felt the sting of those words, had been braced for it. Still, they hurt. “Don't lie to yourself, Colin McCrory. You wanted me yesterday when I interrupted your little siesta in that tub. If Lupe hadn't burst in the room...who knows... Don't deny there's something between us.”

      
“I'm not,” he said flatly. “You're right. You're a damn fine looking woman and I wanted to bed you. I still do. But that doesn't mean I want to marry you.”

      
At least, he had not called her a whore to her face. “No one in Arizona Territory would ever know about my past. We could make up a story about how we met. You'll need some reason to explain Eden's absence. I'll provide it.”

      
“It seems you've thought of everything,” he said, his voice cold and furious. And amazed.

      
She swallowed hard, willing her pulse to stop racing. “Yes, I have. That's why I always won when I dealt cards.”

      
“Past tense?” he said with disdain.

      
“That life is over for me. I can be whatever you want me to be, Colin. You owe it to Eden.”

      
“You lied when you said you'd quit gambling, Sassenach.”

      
He pronounced the word Sassenach the same way his eighteenth-century Scots ancestors might have. It was no longer a term of bantering affection. “I may be gambling, Colin, but you know I hold all the aces,” she replied calmly.

      
“If I don't marry you, no one will help me find my daughter. Is just a promise good enough, or do you have a priest tucked away in a closet to perform the ceremony before we ride out?”

      
“Your word will do, Colin,” she replied quietly.
What have I gotten myself into? I'm crazy if I go through with this. He'll never forgive me.
Maybe it was better this way. A marriage in name only. She would be safe, respectable, secure, while at the same time free from any man's touch, ever again. Even Colin McCrory's. In Eden, she could have the daughter she lost seventeen years ago. With hope and fear both wringing her heart, Maggie waited for Colin to decide.

      
“All right, dammit. I'll marry you,” he snarled. Turning, he stalked through the door and slammed it.

* * * *

      
Eden McCrory gazed up at the walls of her jagged brown prison. It was siesta time and the men were mostly sleeping. The grizzled Mexican who cooked for them was rattling pots and pans while Judd sat cleaning his gun near the campfire, ignoring her for the present. The hideout in which they had spent the past days was faced with steep stone, so hard and smooth scarcely anything green grew except for small outcroppings of creosote bush. A small sluggish stream meandered across the flat open floor of the canyon, and scrubby pines and madrono trees lined its banks.

      
Far across the other side, the vegetation was denser and would afford more cover, even the possibility of climbing up and out of the enclosed valley. But there was easily one hundred yards or more of open terrain between their camp site and that refuge. On foot, she could never make it before one of them rode her down.

      
If only I could steal a horse while they're sleeping.
Wishful thinking. Every night Judd took her to his blankets, and, after committing all manner of disgusting and painful acts on her body, he held her tightly as he fell asleep.

      
Judd Lazlo was a very light sleeper. She had found that out the first night in the hideout when she sneaked free of his loathsome embrace and crept to the horses. After putting a halter on the fastest of her father's racers, she had prepared to jump onto its back, scatter the rest and ride like hell. But Judd was standing right behind her, silent as a cat. He had seized the reins, laughing at the game for which he had invented all the rules.

      
`There had been all sorts of other games after that, each uglier and more degrading than the one before. At least, he had not shared her with the other men. Yet. Eden shuddered, thinking of Max Haywood's bloated, cruel face and pale doughy flesh that stank like sour wine. At least Judd bathed and was good-looking.

      
What difference did it make? She was ruined. Defiled. Her life was over, and now they were waiting for the chance to kill her father. If killing herself would have saved him, she would gladly have done it, but she knew the act would be futile. Colin McCrory was most certainly tracking her even now. No, she must stay alive and think of some way to stop these madmen hired by the Tucson Ring from assassinating their deadliest enemy, her father.

      
The ring was behind the past decade of prolonged bloody carnage between the Apaches and the whites in Arizona Territory. War was profitable, if one played both ends against the middle. The ring was composed of rich merchants who supplied everything from food and utensils to blankets and beads to the Indians—only most of the items never reached the starving and freezing reservation Apaches and what little did was of such ghastly quality that it was all but worthless. The profits from this were split between the Indian agent and the merchants.

      
At the same time as they cheated the Apaches, driving them to leave the reservation and go on bloody raids, those same merchants contracted with the Army, supplying it, most of the time with better food and equipment than they sold to the Indians. As long as Apache depredations continued, the United States military would station more troops in Arizona Territory than in all the rest of the country combined.

      
It had been a highly profitable situation for the contractors in Tucson until Colin McCrory and a small band of reformers from the Interior Department set out to stop the vicious cycle. And now the ring had sent Judd Lazlo and his band of hired killers to eliminate Colin.

      
Eden's life up until this point had been simple. She became engaged to Edward Stanley on her seventeenth birthday. At first, the betrothal had been very exciting and made her feel grown up, but then she grew faintly dissatisfied. She had agreed to Edward's proposal because she knew it would please her father. Edward supported Colin's views on the Apache question and was a highly successful attorney in Prescott and a member of the territorial legislature. Perhaps, one day he would even be appointed governor. But she did not love him. Oh, he was sweet and attentive enough, even attractive in a starched, cool sort of way; but he was wretchedly henpecked, completely under his mother Sophie's thumb. There was nothing to fire Eden's blood with staid, proper Edward Stanley.

      
Thinking of the crude, dangerous outlaws who now held her captive, their leader abusing and degrading her body, she realized that enduring Sophie Stanley as a mother-in-law would have been sheer heaven if only she could return to the life she had led before this nightmare began.

      
“Oh, Edward, sweet, honorable Edward, what I wouldn't give to be strolling down the street with you again...” Eden choked back a sob and forced herself to take these few moments of peace to think, to plan. If only Judd was not always watching her. The others were far less intelligent and observant. Her previous escape attempt would have succeeded if not for their leader. Somehow, she had to remove Judd from the scene, disable him. Then, she would stand a chance of stealing one of the repeating rifles, perhaps even be able to make it to the cluster of rocks on the other side of the open campsite and hold them off until her father arrived.

      
Judd leaned back against the tree and crossed his bare feet at the ankles, laying his gun aside. Now that he had cleaned and reloaded it, he looked at Eden with those wicked green eyes. He was bare-chested and clad only in his denims. Picking up his boots, he held them up, saying, “Put a little polish on these, will you, Eden, my darling?” A harsh, mocking smile curved his lips.

      
Knowing refusal would only earn her another beating, she gave him no satisfaction by refusing or showing any emotion as she walked over and took the boots.

      
“What do you want me to do? We have no polish,” she said tonelessly.

      
He chuckled wickedly. “Use one of your pretty under things that I tore off you the other night for a rag. Spit-shine them. You've seen the old saddler at your pa's place work leather before.”

      
Eden turned away, her face scarlet with shame as several of the men chuckled at the mention of her shredded lacy under drawers.

      
“When you gonna share her with us, boss?” Haywood asked petulantly, rubbing sleep from his puffy little pig's eyes.

      
“Aw, I couldn't do that, could I darling?” Lazlo asked Eden with mock solicitude. “This fragile little flower belongs to me. Why, it would really hurt her feelings if I was to lose interest in her so soon. After all, she's in love with me, aren't you, Eden?”

      
“I hate you! I wish you were dead,” she ground out, wanting to fly at him with teeth and nails. Instead, she stood clutching the boots, trembling with fear and fury.

      
Lazlo shook his head in mock reproof. “You sure are a fickle one, miss high and mighty Eden. A few weeks ago you were singing a different tune, sneaking off from Crown Verde to meet me, telling me how we should go to your pa and ask his permission to get married.”

      
She could not deny his words. Shame rushed over her in choking waves as she replied, “I was a lovesick schoolgirl. That was before I found out what a lying, deceitful, cold-blooded bastard you are!”

Chapter Three

      
Lazlo's expression darkened as several of the men began to chuckle. One sweep of his cold green eyes instantly quelled the laughter. Then, he turned back to Eden. “Polish my boots.” His voice was deadly.

      
Still shaking, she turned and walked across the camp to where his saddlebag lay, filled with all the pretty under things and the fancy dress in which she planned to be married. She had run off to meet Judd Lazlo, thinking they were going to Tucson for a wedding. She had lied to Eileen, telling her she was visiting neighbors while her father was gone. Her father would never have been so easily fooled, nor would he have let her ride alone.

      
Of course, she had been deceiving Colin for weeks. Almost from the start. She could still remember the day Judd Lazlo rode to Crown Verde. He had a sly, sexy smile and dazzling green eyes. He was a handsome, mysterious stranger who lived by his guns.

      
Her father had hired him to stop the trouble at the lumber mill. Judd was dangerous and forbidden and exciting. Everything Edward Stanley was not.

      
Although Eden had pretended aloofness at first, Judd had subtly pursued her, being careful to keep his interest in her a secret from Colin McCrory. Soon he was stealing kisses that left her breathless and telling her that he loved her, but that if they went to Colin, her father would refuse to let them marry. After all, Judd was just a hired gunman, no one to compete with her rich, influential fiancé. He had led her down the path to destruction one small, clever step at a time until that moonlit night two weeks ago when he despoiled her of her maidenhead.