Teresa Medeiros (42 page)

The soles of her kid boots whispered across the marble-tiled foyer. Although the hall should have been bustling with maids and footmen this late in the afternoon, there wasn’t a servant in sight.

As Esmerelda faced the towering teak doors that guarded her grandfather’s smoking room, she almost envied her mother for creeping away to join the man she loved in the dark of night.

Taking a deep breath, she eased open one of the doors. The thick velvet drapes were drawn, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the palm-shrouded gloom. Her aunt sat stiffly in a straight-backed chair, poking an embroidery needle through a linen handkerchief with exacting precision. As Esmerelda rested her trunk and violin case on the floor, Anne gave her a wan but heartening smile.

Her grandfather was huddled in front of the fire in an iron wheelchair. Despite the suffocating warmth, a woolen lap robe was draped across his knees. Although Esmerelda had never known him to smoke, he wore a Persian smoking cap and brown velvet smoking jacket. His shoulders were hunched and his hands curled loosely on his knees. He looked small and shrunken and older than she could have ever imagined him looking.

An open rosewood coffer rested on his lap. Tucked within its velvet lining was a bundle of yellowing letters, painstakingly bound in a frayed ribbon she suspected had once belonged to her mother. It took little effort for Esmerelda to recognize her own precise handwriting.

Tears stung her eyes as she felt the pity he must have wanted her to feel, but she struggled to blink them back.
Pity could not make her stay. Not when Billy was waiting for her at that theater in Drury Lane.

She moved to stand in front of her grandfather, but he continued to stare into the dancing flames, his bitter gaze unfocused.

“Last night you accused me of being no different from my mother,” she said. “And I suppose you were right. She was willing to sacrifice everything she held dear to be with the man she loved, including the approval of the father she adored.”

She drew Lisbeth’s locket over her head and pressed it into his hand. As she gently folded his liver-spotted fingers around it, she leaned down and whispered, “Mama loved you until the day she died. So will I.”

Esmerelda pressed a kiss to her aunt’s paper-soft cheek, retrieved her trunk and violin case, then slipped quietly from the room. Her spirits lifted and her steps quickened with anticipation as she crossed the foyer.

When her niece’s footsteps had faded, Anne laid aside her embroidery and stood.

She drew in a steadying breath before facing the brother who had been the only man in her life since the day she was born. “If you want to spend the rest of your life in that wheelchair nursing your shattered ego, Reggie, then you go right ahead. But I won’t be here to pamper you. I’m not content to spend my waning years collecting cobwebs in my hair and babying a boy who should have grown into a man a long time ago.”

Reginald roused himself from his lethargy to give her a shrewd look. “Wyndham Manor is the only home you’ve ever known, woman. Where do you think you’ll go?”

She lifted her chin, her eyes shining with determination.
“Wherever Sheriff Andrew McGuire goes. If he’ll have me, that is.”

“And what if he doesn’t want a sharp-tongued, peppery old wench like you?”

She pondered that question for a moment before smiling brightly. “Then I’ll just go right back to Calamity, New Mexico, and marry one of those charming young cowboys or that nice Mr. Stumpelmeyer. They have their needs, and so do I.”

Feeling younger than she had in years, Anne marched from the room, slamming the door behind her. She made it halfway across the foyer before an outraged bellow shattered the funereal silence. She hesitated, then kept walking. The bellow escalated to a howling whine, shrill and savage.

Curious faces began to peep out of doorways. The mob-capped heads of two of the parlormaids emerged through the banisters on the second-floor balcony. Old Brigit even doddered out of the dining room, although she was rumored not to have left the basement kitchen in over a decade.

Anne locked her gaze on the front door and kept walking. She was not about to let one of her brother’s tantrums spoil what might very well be her last chance for happiness.

The howls disintegrated to a strangled gurgle. Abrupt silence followed.

Anne stopped, a scant three paces from the door. “Damn him to hell,” she muttered, meeting an underfootman’s appalled gaze without a shred of remorse.

She whirled around and marched right back across the foyer. She flung open both doors at once and stormed into the smoking room, fully prepared to show her brother what a real Wyndham tantrum looked like. Her mouth fell open.

Reginald stood in front of the wheelchair, his back
straight and the ball of his cane gripped in his white-knuckled hand. His face was ruddy with good health or bad temper, or what she suspected was a combination of both.

“Don’t just stand their gawking like a beached fish, woman!” he shouted, banging the brass tip of his cane on the floor. “Have the carriage brought around immediately! My granddaughter needs me!”

Esmerelda leaned forward on the cracked leather seat of the hansom cab, as if she could somehow urge the horses drawing it to plod harder through the sea of mud. She checked the gold-plated watch pinned to her bodice for the sixth time. The minute hand seemed to be racing around its ivory face at an alarming pace.

She poked her head out the window, blinking against the mist of fine rain. “Can’t you go any faster, sir? I’m late for an appointment.” The most important appointment of her life.

The cockney driver swiveled around on his seat, rain dripping from the brim of his stovepipe hat. “Not unless ye want to get out and push, mum. This rain’s made a fine mess o’ things.”

Blowing out a frustrated sigh, she ducked back into the cab, narrowly missing being drenched by a filthy stream of
water that shot up from beneath the wheels of a passing ale wagon drawn by a team of Clydesdales.

Darkness had already fallen over the London streets. The newly installed electric street lamps did little to relieve the gloom. At this rate, she’d be lucky to reach the theater before Billy took his final bow.

She was heartened when they finally reached the mouth of Drury Lane, but her relief was short-lived. The cab lurched to a halt, its path blocked by the ale wagon—now overturned—that had gone rocking past them only minutes before. Broken barrels littered the street, spilling their amber wealth into the overflowing gutters. Shadowy figures materialized out of the alleys to press their greedy mouths to the split seams. Freed from their shattered shafts, the Clydesdales placidly watched their driver stomp around his fallen chariot, bellowing curses that would make a sailor blush.

The carriages soon began to pile up behind them, their drivers and footmen adding their own shouts and oaths to the fray. Not wanting Billy to suffer even a moment believing she wasn’t going to come, Esmerelda threw open the door of the cab and jumped into the street, wincing when her boots sank ankle-deep in the mud.

“ ‘Ey, mum! Wot about m’ fare?”

She fumbled in her reticule, finally pressing everything she had into the driver’s grubby white glove in her haste to be done with him. “Please deliver my trunk and violin case to the theater as soon as the road is cleared.”

“Aye, mum,” he said, tipping his hat to her with a reverent grin.

Then, lifting the hem of her skirts out of the goop, she began to run as if her very life depended on it.

Andrew McGuire was in love.

He slipped into his satin waistcoat, admiring its flattering
fit in the backstage mirror. He’d always had a vain streak, but he’d never before had anyone to posture and preen for but the mirror.

Now he had Anne.

Anne
.

He shook his head, still finding it hard to believe that such a simple name could have the ring of music about it. The emotion that warmed his heart was nothing like the feverish infatuations he’d nursed for countless saloon girls and dance-hall singers throughout the years. Their smooth white skin and plump, petulant faces were already fading in his memory. His Anne had been aged like fine wine, and that only made her all the more delicious to him.

He shrugged into his handsome white coat. Perhaps she had been the reason for his lifelong restlessness and stubborn refusal to marry. Like old Granny Shively, he’d just been waiting for the right person to come along. It was just a damn shame it had taken her fifty-nine years to do so.

But perhaps it was the waiting that had driven him to watch his back and stay alive all those years. He’d survived two wars, twenty-five years as a Texas ranger, and thirteen years as sheriff of Calamity only to finally find someone worth living for.

He buckled on his gunbelt, then pinned the gaudy tin star to his lapel, buffing it to a dazzling shine with the sleeve of his coat. He could already hear the applause of the audience soaring in anticipation of the showdown between the outlaw and the sheriff. His and Billy’s nightly shootouts had quickly become one of the highlights of the show.

He regretted that tonight was to be their last performance in London, but he’d already booked engagements
in Boston and Philadelphia. A smile touched his lips. After tonight’s show, he planned to ride straight over to Wyndham Manor to find out if a certain starchy spinster had ever considered honeymooning in Boston.

He reached for his pistol, prepared to load it with blank shells and slide it into his tooled leather holster. His hand encountered only empty air.

He frowned down at the table. That was peculiar. Love must be making him daft. He would have sworn he’d left it on the …

The butt of the pistol came crashing down on the back of his head, sending him reeling to the floor.

Esmerelda shoved her way through the throng of cowboys and settlers milling around behind the canvas backdrop of Calamity’s only street, pausing only long enough to give a squirming Sadie a pat on the head. She had to step gingerly over the show’s industrious Indian, who had collapsed from exhaustion as soon as he raced offstage.

Virgil was stomping around in boots, bonnet, and dress, bellowing orders at the top of his lungs when he spotted her.

“Howdy, honey,” he roared, sweeping her into a rib-crunching bear hug. “I sure hope you ain’t here to sing.” The twinkle in his eye assured her that he’d already forgiven her for massacring “Dixie” at the ball.

“Oh, I ain’t—” She shook her head to clear it. “I’m
not
here to sing. I’m here to find Billy.”

Virgil shook his head. “You’re too late, sweetheart.” For one horrible second, Esmerelda thought he meant the worst. Then he nodded toward the curtain. “He’s already out there waitin’ to go on.”

The audience’s applause had faded to expectant silence.
Esmerelda drifted toward the curtain, drawn by the same crackling aura of anticipation that held them in thrall.

She peeped through the narrow slit cut in the canvas of the saloon’s painted door. A lone circle of light had already brightened the darkness on the right side of the arena. She shuffled sideways for a better view, only to bump into the silver tea cart Billy would be using for his sharpshooting demonstration. An impish grin curved her lips. Now wouldn’t Mr. Darling be oh-so-surprised when she was the one to come strolling out with the cart?

She thumbed rapidly through the cards until she found the queen of hearts and placed it on top of the deck. She would hold it between her teeth to prove her trust in him if need be.

Billy stepped into that halo of light. Her heart swelled with pride. He might play the bad man for the pleasure of the crowd, but she knew beneath that sinister exterior beat the heart of a man as fine and decent as any she could ever hope to love.

Just as before, she was too enchanted by the sight of him to notice the man in white who appeared at the opposite end of the mock street.

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

Esmerelda whipped her head around. That clipped snarl sounded nothing like Drew’s rolling burr. The wide brim of the sheriff’s hat shadowed his features.

Billy hesitated, shading his eyes against the glare of the arc lamps. “Haven’t you heard, sheriff?” he said warily. “I never draw my gun unless I plan to use it.”

The man let out a nasty bark of laughter. “Oh, I’ve heard plenty about you, Darling. I’ve heard that you betray the men who hire you. That you spend the gold they
entrust you with on your pretty little whore. That you ruin the careers of decent, law-abiding men to further your own.”

A river of ice poured down Esmerelda’s spine as she realized she was about to make the acquaintance of Mr. Thaddeus Winstead, U.S. marshal.