[Montacroix Royal Family Series 03] - The Outlaw (10 page)

Her body was vividly aware of his nearness, responding to it in instinctively feminine ways as old as time. Warming. Softening. Feeling as rooted to the spot as the towering cottonwood trees that lined the river-bank, Noel held her breath and waited.

His harshly cut mouth was within a whisper of hers. She could feel his breath, warm and enticing, on her lips. She drew in a ragged breath intended to calm. It didn't.

Suddenly, without any warning to either one of them, emotions she'd reined in for too long—wild, confusing, distressing feelings—broke free inside Noel. And she burst into tears.

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"What the hell?" Wolfe's head jerked back and he let go of her as if he'd been burned.

"It's nothing." She turned away and covered her face in her hands. "Really." Having always been the family conciliator, even now, after all she'd been through, as distraught as she was, Noel's instincts were to try to smooth over this latest disaster. "It's just that everything's so confusing," she said through her sob. "And you've been d-d-dragging me through these woods all day, and I'm hungry and tired and I d-d-don't know what I'm doing here, and—"

"The only reason you're here with me is because you went off half-cocked and shot Black Jack Clayton," Wolfe told her gruffly. like most men, he was impatient with things he couldn't control. And a female's tears definitely fit that undesirable category. "It's not exactly like I was looking to be slowed down by some damn fancy woman! Hell, we'll be lucky if either one of us escapes the hangman now."

"I'm not a fancy woman! Or a whore, or a prostitute, or a soiled dove, or any other euphemism you may prefer to use!"

She whirled back, her hair swirling around her bare shoulders with the sudden movement. Her bottom lip trembling, a torrent of tears began streaming down her face.

How dare he be angry at her? It wasn't as if she'd asked to come to nineteenth-century Arizona Territory! And she certainty hadn't begged him to take her to the Road to Ruin. But it wouldn't have mattered, anyway, she suspected, because this entire sequence of events had been set in motion when she'd first opened her sister's invitation.

Possibly even before that. Something, after all, had made Chantal choose that particular woodcut for her invitation.

"And as for shooting that horrid Black Jack person, I was trying to save your miserable life, Wolfe Longwalker, though Lord knows why. I should have just let him murder you right there in Belle's kitchen."

She drew in a deep ragged breath as she wiped furiously at her tears with the back of her hands. "And, just for the record, I'll have you know, that gunfights and hangings might be part of your normal frontier life, but the only thing I've ever shot at in my life were clay pigeons with my brother, Burke, back home in Montacroix. And I've certainly never—ever—killed a man!"

Her voice went up on a ragged wail as a new flood of tears burst forth. She, Her Serene Highness, Princess Noel, a common, garden-variety murderer. It didn't matter that she was trying to save Wolfe. The ugly truth was, she'd willingly taken the life of another human being.

"I can understand how you may have found the experience unpleasant," he agreed with a calm that caused her own emotions to flare even higher. And hotter. "Although, believe me, sweetheart—"

"My name is Noel!" That she was shrieking at him was as unbelievable as everything else that had occurred.

His nod was curt. Brusque. Acknowledging her point without conceding an inch. "Believe me,
Noel
, there isn't a person alive, including Black Jack's mother, who'll miss him. He was a cold-blooded, low-life son of a bitch who'd just as soon shoot a man—or beat up a woman—as look at them."

"Still, he was a human being." She closed her eyes in an attempt to block out the memory of that fatal blood staining the front of the man's shirt. "Who's dead because of me."

"That's true enough, so far as it goes." Wolfe doubted anyone would show up at the graveyard to mourn the gunslinger. "But why blame me? I don't recall asking you to pull that trigger."

Noel wondered yet again how it was that he could remain so disgustingly calm when she was so horribly rattled. "I suppose I should have let you die?"

His eyes turned hard as stones. "You should have let me handle things. In my own way."

"Your way was about to get you a one-way ticket to boot hill."

Prepared for a scathing response, Noel was stunned when he suddenly threw back his head and laughed. A rich deep sound that warmed her unwilling heart and strummed innumerable chords deep inside her.

Embarrassed, needy, not to mention still terribly upset, she folded her arms across the crimson bodice of her dress and turned away again, looking out over the swiftly flowing waters of Whiskey River.

"Excuse me if I don't find dying very humorous," she said stiffly.

Wolfe cursed inwardly, wondering how on earth she had survived this long on her own in the rough-and-tumble world she'd chosen for herself, while seemingly remaining so damn sensitive. Once again, it crossed his mind that she wasn't like any whore he'd ever met.

"I didn't intend to insult you," he said. "It's just that part about boot hill sounded an awful lot like something out of a dime novel."

The suppressed laughter in his tone only irked her more. "We can't all be internationally famous writers."

"True." He found himself enjoying the bite of sarcasm edging her tone, preferring it to female tears any day.

He came up behind her and ran his palms across her bare shoulders. "Would it make you feel any better if I told you how much I appreciate your noble gesture?"

"Perhaps." She shook her head, trying to ignore the pleasure his massaging fingers were creating as they eased the knots out of her neck muscles. "It's just that it's all so difficult to take in. I keep trying to remind myself that only yesterday I was in Montacroix—"

"Impossible." He turned her around and looked down at her uplifted face, searching the depths of her eyes for some sign of a head injury. "That is a journey of several weeks."

"Not if you fly."

"Fly?" If she hadn't injured her brain in that accident, she was definitely addled, he decided. "like that?" He pointed up at a red-tailed hawk that was flying wide lazy circles in the sky.

"Not exactly. I flew in a plane," she qualified.

"A plane." His tone was flat and absolutely disbelieving. She may as well have told him she'd donned a pair of gilt wings and gone soaring around the sun.

Noel sighed, deciding not to even mention the Wright brothers at this point in their conversation. "It's a bit like a train. With wings."

"Ah." He nodded. "Of course. A plane. So much more convenient than crossing the sea by ship," he said dryly. "I take it your home is in Montacroix?"

"Yes." Pleased that he'd recognized the name of her country, Noel allowed herself to believe that perhaps he would believe her outlandish story, after all. "My family rules Montacroix."

And had since a long-dead Giraudeau relative had purchased the Alpine principality from the French shortly after Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign. With the treasury nearly depleted from having financed all those wars, the French government had sold off parcels of land to various noblemen.

She was as mad as a horse who'd gotten into a patch of locoweed, he thought. "I suppose that would make you a princess." Although his face remained expressionless, she could detect the sarcasm in his tone. A sarcasm, she decided, for now, to ignore.

"That's right. My sister Chantal, is also a princess. And my brother is regent."

"I met the regent of Montacroix last year," he informed her. "After a visit to Paris. And unless your parents spaced their children fifty years apart, there is no way that old man, Prince Leon, could be your brother."

"Well, of course he's not my brother," Noel agreed immediately. "My brother is Prince Burke. Well, actually, if you insist on getting technical, I suppose you'd have to say he's my half brother. You see, my father, Prince Eduard, had been married before, but his wife, Princess Clea, went insane, and had to be institutionalized—"

"It appears insanity runs in the family."

Noel gave him a hurt, disapproving look, then continued, "Anyway, my papa met
maman
, who was an American movie star from California—"

"A star?" First, flying. Now, constellations. Wolfe wondered if the so-called princess had been spending a bit too much time in opium dens.

"A star is like an actress. Only bigger. More famous. My sister-in-law, Sabrina, is also an actress."

"And a princess, as well, I suppose?"

"Well, yes, but not by birth. She married my brother, which automatically makes her a princess, even if she is an American. From Tennessee."

"Sabrina the Confederate princess," he drawled. "This is becoming more and more fascinating."

This time, she would have had to be deaf to miss the blatant disbelief in his deep mocking voice. Noel sighed, realizing that she wasn't going about this at all the right way. Because every time she tried to explain how she'd come to be here, in this place, at this time, she'd get sidetracked and he'd never understand that she'd traveled a hundred years to save his life.

The thing to do, she decided, garnering as much of her characteristic practicality as possible under these outlandish circumstances, was to start at the beginning. With the invitation.

"I recently received an invitation," she said. "From my sister."

"The princess Chantal."

"Yes. She's an artist and the invitation was to a gallery showing in Washington, D.C."

"I thought your family was from Montacroix."

"We are." She exhaled a long frustrated sigh. "But Chantal lives with her husband in Washington. He used to guard the president," she said with a measure of family pride.

"Better and better." She had some imagination. He'd give her that. "So you received an invitation from your princess sister who lives in Washington where her husband guards presidents."

That wasn't exactly right, since Caine had resigned from the presidential security detail and had established a private security firm before proposing to Chantal, but determined to remain on track, Noel merely nodded.

Wolfe arched a dark eyebrow. "Was this before or after you flew here from Montacroix in the flying train?"

"Before. And it wasn't a train. I told you, it was an airplane. An Air France jet, actually, but that's not important right now, because if you don't let me tell this in my own way, we're going to be here a very long time."

"We're going to be here all night however you tell your story." Putting his hand against her back, he led her to a secluded spot beneath an outcrop.

Although it was spring, nights in the Arizona high country could be cold. Wolfe took the time to gather some wood and make a fire.

He also extracted some dried venison from his saddlebag. "Here. It is undoubtedly not what you are accustomed to dining on in your palace, but it is all I have."

"Thank you." The meat was tough. And basically tasteless. But it soothed the hunger pangs.

As she ate—quickly, as if she'd been starving—Wolfe pulled some tobacco from his suede pouch, poured it into a cigarette paper, rolled it up, struck a match with his thumbnail and lit it.

"Go ahead, Scheherazade," he invited, leaning back against the rocks. "I'm waiting with bated breath for the rest of this story."

Twenty minutes later, Wolfe was trying to convince himself that there was a logical explanation for the fact that this woman was in possession of books he'd written, all of which bore a reprint copyright date of 1996. Along with another book of biographies entitled
Rogues Across Time
, which stated he'd been hanged after a failed escape attempt in 1896.

Needless to say, Wolfe was not thrilled by that allegation.

He lit another cigarette, took a long puff of the smoke, held it in his lungs, then exhaled it on a series of white rings.

"I've seen a great many confidence schemes in my day, Princess. But I'll be damned if I can figure out what you're up to."

"It's not a scheme."

He frowned as he picked up the engraved invitation again, and studied the scene depicting Indians on horseback watching a log cabin go up in flames.

This was how it would have looked, he considered grimly. The day that unlucky settler family had been so cold-bloodedly killed. Anger stirred hotly in his gut. Anger at the murderers who appeared to have gotten away with their crime. Anger at the fact that people would be so willing to believe that he was a savage capable of committing such a heinous crime.

"You expect me to believe you have traveled from Montacroix, from a hundred years in the future, to save my life."

"And clear your name."

He shook his head. "The idea is impossible."

Noel had not expected this to be easy. His eyes were as black as the sky overhead. "That's what I thought, too," she admitted. "In the beginning. Because although I've grown accustomed to having inherited Katia's gift—"