[Montacroix Royal Family Series 03] - The Outlaw (2 page)

As the lawman managed to tug the noose tight, one woman wasn't laughing. "Don't you get any idea of droppin' by my place the next time you're in need of female comfort, Jess Buchanan," the redheaded whore yelled out. "Because the Road to Ruin is off limits to you from now on." Despite the raw emotionalism in Belle O'Roarke's voice, her threat only earned another round of male chuckles.

A drum rolled.

The uniformed troops drew their sabers and presented arms.

The marshal gave the rope an experimental tug. Satisfied that it would hold, he raised a black whip and slapped the mare's rump. Hard.

At the same time the whip struck the horse, a rolling clap of thunder boomed, echoing against the slate clouds like a hundred—a thousand—deerskin drums. A crack of lightning split the sky above the snow-covered sacred peak of
Dook' o' oosliid
. Whinnying her distress, Wolfe Longwalker's bay reared up on her hind legs. Then she took off running.

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Montacroix, 1996

The alabaster wedding-cake spires of the Giraudeau palace jutted through the silvery morning fog surrounding it, like Brigadoon rising from the mists. The scene, which had graced innumerable postcards, was familiar the world over. Set on an island in the middle of the sapphire waters of Lake Losange, the palace appeared both glamorous and serene at the same time.

But as so often was the case, appearances were deceiving. Inside the palace, the mood was anything but serene as staff and family bustled about, preparing for a royal wedding.

"Well? What do you think?"

Uncharacteristically on edge, Princess Noel Giraudeau de Montacroix surveyed her reflection in a gilt-framed mirror. The wedding gown was a floor-length tube of ivory satin; the refined sweetheart neckline and the long, pointed sleeves were adorned with white embroidery. A lace veil was held in place atop the princess's pale blond head by a pearl tiara.

Sabrina Giraudeau, Noel's sister-in-law and friend, chewed on a scarlet fingernail and treated the princess to a judicial look.

"I think it needs something," she said finally. "Some ruffles, maybe. A few flounces. At least a decent train."

Noel laughed. "I should have known better than to ask for fashion advice from a woman who got married in a hoopskirt."

"Hey, it worked for Scarlett O'Hara. Besides, Burke liked it." An attractive color rose in Sabrina's cheeks as she recalled exactly how much her husband had also enjoyed taking the voluminous dress off her once they were alone after the day-long celebration of their public nuptials.

"Really, Noel," she said, returning to the discussion at hand, "your usual conservative style is fine for the office. But hopefully, a woman gets married only once in her life. You should pull out all the stops. Like I did."

Indeed, Sabrina Darling's marriage could have come from the pages of a fairy tale. It had all the proper ingredients—a dashing prince charming, a beautiful, but impoverished bride and enough glitz and glamour to have people still talking more than three years later.

"Burke is regent," Noel said. "Your son will rule Montacroix some day. I'm merely the youngest Giraudeau daughter."

"You're still a princess," Sabrina argued. "And you owe it to the people of Montacroix to show up at your wedding dressed like one."

"That's unfair," Noel protested laughingly.

Everyone in the family knew Noel's deep-seated sense of royal obligation. All her life, the princess had tried to live up to other's expectations. She'd dedicated herself to the tenets of duty and loyalty to her family. And country.

While her older sister, Chantal, had been jet-setting all over the world, Noel had been in school in London and Paris and Geneva, earning degrees in business and public policy.

While her half brother, Prince Burke, had been heading up the Montacroix polo team, winning Grand Prix races and being voted the most eligible bachelor in the western world, Noel had labored as head of her country's social services agency, struggling to find ways to maintain Montacroix's generosity to its citizens while remaining competitive in a global business climate.

It was not that she didn't enjoy her work, because she did. And it wasn't that she envied Chantal or Burke. The truth was, Noel had always been more than happy to leave the spotlight to her two more famous siblings.

The only reserved member of one of the world's most glamorous families, there were times when Noel almost felt like a changeling, left on the palace's marble doorstep by mistake.

"You need more oomph," Sabrina pressed her case.

"Oomph?" Although her native language was French, Noel's English, thanks in part to her American mother, was impeccable. She normally had no trouble with idioms, but this term was unfamiliar.

"
Pizzazz
. You know, pow!"

"Ah." Noel nodded. "Pizzazz."

Noel decided that single word described Sabrina to a tee. Dressed in a crimson cashmere sweater, matching leggings and fringed red leather boots, the former Broadway actress reminded her of Will Scarlet.

"I'm not suggesting that you wear thirty pounds of beading and crinolines like I did, Noel, honey." Sabrina's voice carried a honied south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line accent. "But you really should jazz up that dress just a little."

She grinned, then played her trump card. "Just think of Bertran's face when you walk down the aisle looking like something out of
Sleeping Beauty
."

The idea was enough to make Noel smile. "He wouldn't recognize me."

Noel's fiancé, Bertran Rostand, was vice president of the Montacroix Bank. He was also a very distant cousin. And her best friend.

Stifling a slight sigh, Noel continued to study her reflection in the gilt-framed mirror and did her best to ignore the vague misgivings about her dress and her upcoming marriage.

Displaying a tenacity that had always served her well, Sabrina was not ready to give up. "You know Chantal would agree with me."

"Probably. But my sister and I are different."

Now,
that
, Noel considered, was definitely an understatement. Once described by a particularly ebullient society columnist as the quintessential fairy-tale princess, Chantal's jet-set existence had brought her fame and scandal prior to her marriage.

These past years, however, the ultraglamorous princess who'd once kept an entire army of paparazzi working overtime to keep up with her, was happily settled down with her husband and two children in Washington, D.C. Caine O'Bannion, Chantal's husband, a former Secret Service agent, operated a private security firm, while Chantal continued to gain acclaim as a gifted artist.

"Oh, that reminds me," Sabrina said, reaching into a pocket of her sweater, "you received a letter from Chantal today. Your mother asked me to bring it up to you."

Grateful for an excuse to move the subject away from her admittedly restrained wedding gown, Noel opened the cream envelope. "It's an invitation. To her latest fund-raiser."

Along with her painting, Chantal had continued her fund-raising efforts for her beloved Rescue the Children foundation. It had been on such a tour to the United States that Chantal had met the handsome American hero who would become her husband.

"She's sponsoring a gallery showing of unknown western artists." Noel skimmed the invitation. "The week after my wedding."

"It's too bad you're going to be on your honeymoon," Sabrina said, knowing of Noel's fascination with the American West.

"The timing could certainly be better." Noel wished she could get more excited about the planned cruise through the Greek Isles.

For the cover of the engraved invitation, Chantal had selected a woodcut sketch depicting a group of Indians on horseback watching a settler's log cabin burn. The title read: Massacre at Whiskey River. As she studied the drawing in more detail, although it made no sense at all, Noel could hear drunken laughter, the faint sound of a piano, the clatter of poker chips. She could smell cigar smoke and beer and whiskey. And overly sweet perfume.

"Noel?"

Noel belatedly realized that Sabrina had been talking to her. "I'm sorry." Slightly disoriented, she shook her head in an attempt to clear it.

"Are you all right?"

The prudent thing to do was to lie. Noel opened her mouth to assure her sister-in-law that she was fine, when an image shimmered in her mind's eye. A misty picture of a single figure, seated tall astride a horse, his hands tied behind his back. Her fingers tightened on the edges of the engraved invitation.

"No." Noel barely recognized her own faint, shaky voice. "Sabrina, something's very, very wrong."

"Not with the dress."

It was not a question. Just last month, Noel had told Sabrina and Burke that their dream of parenthood would soon be realized. Two days later, they'd received a telephone call from their attorney, informing them that an infant boy had just been born in a Montacroix hospital. A child whose young, unmarried mother was making the ultimate maternal sacrifice in putting him up for adoption.

If she'd harbored any doubts about Noel having allegedly inherited the gift of second sight from her Gypsy grandmother, that day Sabrina had definitely become a believer.

"No. It's not the dress."

Noel began to shiver, suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling of a cold rain that chilled all the way to the bone. But the rain was not as icy as a vivid, visual picture of a man's remarkably blue, angry eyes.

"Excuse me, Sabrina, but I have to telephone Chantal."

Before the day had ended, Noel was on her way to the Montacroix airport, where she was booked on a flight to Paris. From there, she'd take an Air France Concorde flight to New York, then change to American Airlines for another flight to Phoenix, where she'd arranged to rent a car to drive to Whiskey River, Arizona. The remote ranching community was located in the northern mountains near the Navajo Indian reservation.

"I still do not understand why you have to leave now," her father, Prince Eduard, complained gruffly. Puzzled by her uncharacteristically rash behavior, her parents had insisted on accompanying her to the airport.

"I don't exactly understand, myself," Noel admitted. "All I know is that I don't have any choice. I have some important connection with this sketch, Papa, I feel it. Since Chantal tells me the sketch is from Arizona, I must go there."

"That sketch," Eduard told her, "is a hundred years old. And even with your gift—"

"Eduard, dear." Jessica Giraudeau placed a calming hand atop her husband's. "We must allow Noel to follow her feelings," she counseled. "As Burke and Chantal have done."

She gifted him with the soft, coaxing smile that had once charmed legions of men who'd sat in darkened theaters all over the world, dreaming impossible dreams as they watched the actress on the silver screen. Any man who'd ever met the ultraglamorous Jessica Thorne had wanted her. But Prince Eduard Giraudeau de Montacroix had been the one to win her hand. As well as her heart.

"As we did," Jessica said, reminding him of their own rocky courtship. A courtship that had nearly cost the prince his crown.

Eduard was not easily deterred. "Even if it destroys her chance for happiness?" Both women understood that his frustration was an attempt to mask his fatherly concern. "What if you do not return in time for the ceremony? Do you think Bertran is going to wait forever?"

Noel refrained from pointing out that her fiancé had already patiently waited years, ever since first proposing to her on her seventeenth birthday. Such unwavering affection was admirable in these days of short-term relationships, she reminded herself.

"It's a moot point, Papa," Noel murmured.

The truth was that lately she'd been having strange, disloyal feelings about Bertran, feelings that she could not put into words. Why was it that her upcoming nuptials were causing her more misgivings than whatever might be awaiting her in Arizona?

"Because I'll be back in time for you to walk me down the aisle."

"I am pleased to hear that." He nodded his satisfaction as he turned the Rolls-Royce onto the road leading to the terminal. "Because your mother worries."

Although the Air France flight attendants unfailingly upheld the airline's tradition of
esprit de service
, Noel grew increasingly on edge as the plane sped across the sky on its way to America.

After picking unenthusiastically at what she knew was undoubtedly a superb meal of grilled squab and tender roasted potatoes, she turned on her overhead light and attempted to settle down with a copy of the
London financial Journal
. But the text could have been written in Sanskrit, for all the sense it made to her.

Sighing, she turned instead to this month's issue of French
Elle
, but the magazine failed to capture her attention. Instead, her mind kept rerunning the rainy scene of the man on horseback. Who was he? And why was he calling out to her?