Teresa Medeiros (38 page)

“Oh, no! Not the earl again. I’d rather be boiled in
porridge than spend another moment in
his
company.” Esmerelda dragged her slippered feet like a recalcitrant child. “Can’t you tell him I have amnesia? That I forgot we had an engagement?”

Her aunt continued to tug her toward the door. “If you’ll just come with me, my dear, I believe I can promise you an evening you will never forget.”

Esmerelda no longer had any need to feign a nasty headache. Her head had began to pound in earnest almost as soon as they’d entered the crowded theater on Drury Lane. Although the electric arc lamps were a vast improvement over the smelly, smoky gas and oil lamps they’d replaced, the mingled perfumes of the elegantly dressed theatergoers jammed elbow to elbow into the tiered benches made her hunger for a breath of fresh air.

Aunt Anne sat on her left while the earl pressed close on the right, taking up most of his seat and part of hers. Esmerelda couldn’t have said which was more intolerable—St. Cyr’s fawning attentions or the inane chatter of the Belles, who surrounded them above and below in a smothering cloud of organdy and lace. She winced as one of their shrill giggles seemed to drive a splinter of ice into her skull.

“Care for a boiled peanut, m’dear?” the earl inquired for the fourth time, proffering a canvas sack.

“No, thank you,” she coolly replied, having watched him spit several of the shells back into the sack after he’d divested them of their peanuts with his sharp yellow teeth.

Her aunt had refused to tell her what manner of production they were attending, insisting with uncharacteristic coyness that it remain a surprise. From the bales of hay that had been scattered around the circular arena, Esmerelda gathered that it must be a circus of some sort. Spotting a playbill in the gloved hands of a woman seated three
rows down, she lifted her opera glasses in an impolite attempt to read over the woman’s shoulder.

Anne snatched the glasses away from her and pressed them to her own eyes. “Oh, look, isn’t that the Prince of Wales coming in?”

Esmerelda squinted in the same direction. “Not unless he’s taken to wearing a bustle and feathers in his hair.”

Unnerved by her aunt’s increasingly peculiar behavior, Esmerelda sighed and settled back on the bench. The arc lamps began to dim. The buzz of conversation dwindled to an eager murmur.

Esmerelda gasped and jumped just as high as the rest of the crowd when a stagecoach drawn by four black horses came rocking across the arena. A man in a tan shirt, trousers, hat, and red bandanna drove the team, a shotgun laid across his lap. As a near-naked Indian riding a sleek pinto thundered after him, tomahawk raised high, the Belles threw their arms around each other and let out an ear-piercing shriek.

The shotgun exploded with a mighty blast. The Indian leapt from pinto to stagecoach, wresting the reins from the driver’s hands. After a brief but violent struggle, he hurled the driver to the ground and pounced upon him. The stagecoach went lurching back into the darkness as the Indian unsheathed a gleaming blade and drew it downward in a slicing motion. The driver slumped into a lifeless heap.

The savage sprang to his feet, his dazzling white teeth bared in a bloodthirsty grimace, and held up a trophy that looked suspiciously like a rat pelt. Several woman screamed, and one of the Belles groped for her smelling salts.

Before the scandalized gasps and horrified cries could die out, the driver bounded to his feet and took a bow,
revealing that he’d been bald as an egg the entire time. The crowd erupted in hearty laughter and thunderous applause.

A man garbed in an elegant top hat, frock coat, and shiny black boots strode to the center of the arena with a megaphone and intoned in a cultured English accent, “Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen! Brought to you straight from the untamed wilderness of America—the very first Wild West Extravaganza to tour England!”

As the applause soared again, Esmerelda slowly swiveled around to glare at her aunt, rigid with fury. “If this is your idea of a jest,” she hissed through clenched teeth, “you have a very sick sense of humor.”

Her aunt simply stared straight ahead as if she hadn’t spoken. Determined to endure no more of this nonsense, Esmerelda attempted to rise.

“Oh, do sit down! We can’t see!” the Belles twittered as a chorus, all aflutter with excitement.

“Down in front!” boomed a masculine voice.

Esmerelda drove an elbow into the earl’s side, attempting to nudge him out of her way, but earned nothing but a distracted grunt for her trouble. He was already mesmerized by the sight of the covered wagon that came rolling across the hay-strewn floor of the arena.

Defeated for the time being, she sank back down on the bench, sulking like a child.

The same Indian on the same pinto began to race circles around the wagon, howling a fierce war cry. The plight of the family of settlers might have been more heartrending if one of the women hadn’t boasted sideburns and a sandy beard. “Her” falsetto cries for mercy as the Indian jumped on the wagon and began to tear at her homespun dress soon had the audience rolling with laughter.
Plagued by a nagging sense of familiarity, Esmerelda leaned forward, but the glare of the lights obscured the man’s facial features.

The next sketch consisted of a mock cabin, more screaming settlers, and the same Indian leaping into one window, then running out the back door of the cabin, around to the front, and leaping into another, pretending to be a different Indian. By now, the poor fellow was clutching his side and gasping for breath.

Muttering their displeasure, several men and women rose and began to drift toward the exits. As one of the benches below them cleared, Esmerelda breathed a sigh of relief. Her prayers for deliverance had been answered. She didn’t think she could bear another minute of this travesty. The west she’d known was wilder than any of them could imagine, she thought, remembering Billy’s unbridled passion with a pang of loss and yearning.

She was already poised to make a mad dash for freedom when some unseen stagehands unfurled a painted backdrop of a street in a western town. Esmerelda was squinting at it, thinking that it looked strangely familiar, when the lights dimmed again. As a single spotlight brightened the darkness, the trickle toward the exits slowed to a halt. The mutterings ceased; the murmurs faded. Even the Belles lapsed into an expectant silence.

A lone man stepped into the circle of light.

The sinister black of his trousers and vest was relieved only by the startling whiteness of his shirt. The broad brim of his hat shadowed his eyes. The ruthless beam of the arc lamp cast a shimmering halo around him.

Esmerelda’s heart began to pound even harder than her head.

She was so riveted by the cougarlike grace of his swagger that she never even felt her aunt reach over to clutch
her icy hand. She never heard the Belles titter and whisper to one another behind their cupped hands that they would surely swoon were they to be accosted by such a handsome and virile villain. She never saw the second man appear at the opposite end of the arena, dressed all in white with an oversized tin star gleaming on his lapel.

“Throw down your gun, outlaw,” he barked in a rolling Scottish burr. “I’m the law in this town and we don’t take to your kind here.”

“Haven’t you heard, sheriff?” the man replied in a drawl as sweet and thick as sun-warmed molasses. “I never draw my gun unless I plan to use it.”

Jasper, Esmerelda thought frantically. Dear God, it had to be Jasper. She dragged her hand out of her aunt’s and groped blindly for the opera glasses. She lifted them to her eyes, struggling to focus through the fog of panic that had descended over her vision.

The men faced off, their hands poised over the sleek leather sheaths cradling their pistols. They both drew in one quicksilver motion. A shot rang out.

Esmerelda flinched as if she’d been hit. For a taut eternity, it was impossible to tell which man was hit. Then the man dressed all in black began to stagger. His knees buckled and he slowly crumpled to the ground, a crimson stain spreading over his heart. As he sprawled on his back, Esmerelda got her first clear look at his face.

Forgetting that the shells were blanks, forgetting that the blood was probably nothing more than strawberry syrup, forgetting that she hated Billy almost as much as she still loved him and had wished him dead a thousand times since they’d parted, Esmerelda leapt to her feet and let out a piercing scream.

Esmerelda’s scream fell into a silence so suffocating she wasn’t sure she would ever breathe again.

Billy slowly climbed to his feet, his gaze riveted on her as if they were the only two people in the arena. He swept his hat off the floor, dusting bits of straw from its crown, before sketching her a gallant bow.

The audience erupted in a frenzied wave of applause, hoots, and approving whistles. The men stamped their feet in unison, making the tiers of benches shudder.

Esmerelda continued to stand, frozen into place by her own mortification as she realized what an utter buffoon she’d just made of herself. She looked frantically around only to find the Belles gaping at her, their little pink mouths circles of scandalized delight. The earl appeared to be choking on a peanut, while her aunt pretended to study a playbill, her face a portrait of artless innocence.

Against her will, Esmerelda’s gaze was drawn back to the man who stood in that shimmering arc of light. As she met his wary gaze, her every sense came tingling to life, just as they had in that dusty saloon a lifetime ago. Unable to bear the exquisite pain of such an awakening, she turned to the left, then to the right, driven by a single primal urge.

Escape.

Ignoring the earl’s muttered “I should say!” and “Well, I never” Esmerelda shoved past him, trodding ruthlessly on his feet. Although she continued to push and elbow her way toward the aisle, no one dared complain. They were too enchanted by the drama taking place practically in their laps. When her cashmere shawl snagged on the clawed grip of a man’s cane, she simply left it behind, although her bared shoulders made her feel even more exposed. The spotlight swung around to follow her, high-lighting every lurch and stumble of her agonizing journey.

She reached the aisle only to discover she had nowhere to go but down. Holding her head high, she started down the carpeted stairs, praying she wouldn’t end up rolling down them in her haste.

When she finally reached the floor, her heartfelt sigh of relief drowned out the admiring gasps of the crowd. She had no way of knowing that Billy had wrested the reins of the pinto from the hapless Indian and swung himself astride until he came trotting up beside her. He looked harder and leaner than she remembered. His face was darker, his hair a brighter gold.

He slowed the horse to an amiable walk, tipping his hat as if they’d just happened to meet on a tree-shaded path. “Can I offer you a ride, ma’am?”

“I can promise you, sir,” she hissed out of the corner of her mouth, “that you have absolutely nothing to offer me.”

Devilish charm melted through his voice as he leaned
down and murmured, “I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you, honey.”

Terrified he might be right, she quickened her steps, thinking only to reach the gilded doors at the far end of the theater before she made an even bigger fool of herself.

He nudged the horse nearer. “I need to talk to you, Esmerelda. You have to hear me out.”

“I don’t care to hear anything you have to say.”

“If you don’t care, then why did you scream when you thought I’d been shot?”

Esmerelda didn’t miss a step. “Because I was afraid I’d been deprived of the pleasure of killing you myself.”

Billy responded to her retort by wheeling the pinto around and cantering back toward the center of the arena. Esmerelda hated herself for feeling a stab of regret.

Andrew McGuire’s Scottish burr flooded the theater, magnified by the yawning mouth of the megaphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the deadliest draw and quickest shot in all the American West …”

Warned by the thunder of hoofbeats, the relentless jingle of spurs, Esmerelda whirled around, clapping a hand over her heart.

Billy was galloping straight for her. He leaned low over the pinto’s back, determination hardening his eyes to silver.

“… the one name that strikes terror in the hearts of innocent maidens and lawmen alike …”

Esmerelda’s own traitorous heart skipped two beats for every one it hit. She stood paralyzed with helpless anticipation until Billy leaned sideways and swept her off the floor and into his lap with one powerful arm.

“… Mr. Billy Darling!”

The crowd roared their approval, no doubt believing the spectacle was all part of the show. The deserters who
had been filing toward the exits went scurrying back to their seats.

Esmerelda squirmed in Billy’s arms. Being that near to him again, breathing in his rich tobacco-and-leather scent was a taste of both heaven and hell.

“Relax, Duchess,” he murmured into her hair. “You don’t have to be afraid of the horse.”