The Knight's Forbidden Princess

by Carol Townend

  Usually, women stared at him with a mix of pity and curiosity, wondering what damage he might be hiding beneath the black patch that covered his left eye. Some studied him with undisguised feminine interest, drawn by the thick waves of golden hair and the vivid blue of his single eye, fascinated by the contrast they made with the air of danger that surrounded him, hinting at his outlaw status, even while his pair of guns remained out of sight.

  A fallen angel, a saloon girl had once called him.

  But he could detect no pity in this girl’s expression, and neither did he sense the invitation some women conveyed through their bold inspection. She was contemplating him with a hopeful, earnest look, as if in him she might have recognized a missing relation, or perhaps some long-lost friend.

  But it could not be.

  Roy knew it couldn’t. He had no family, and no friends, except perhaps Dale Hunter. Could he have met her before? It was uncommon for a sporting girl to reform, but even that possibility Roy was able to rule out, for he could remember each one of the few women he had ever followed into an upstairs room.

  Silently cursing in his mind, Roy returned his attention to the elderly store clerk and paid for his tin of matches. It might be a problem about the girl. Someone who had stared at him with such intensity might remember his features, could furnish a lawman with a description.

  Too bad, Roy thought as he strolled back out to the boardwalk, however it was bound to happen one day. He couldn’t expect to remain unknown forever—not since he had joined the Red Bluff Gang and was forced to take an active part in the raids. Earlier, before his former outfit got wiped out, his role had been limited to training horses for the robbers, but now both he and Dale Hunter had sunk one notch deeper into the outlaw life.

  * * *

  During the week that followed, twice more Roy rode into town and stopped at the mercantile. The first time the girl was nowhere to be seen, but from behind the aisles Roy could hear the rustle of skirts and the soft clatter of feminine footsteps.

  A few moments later, while he was loitering outside on the boardwalk with his associates, Roy noticed the girl staring at him through the big plate glass window of the mercantile. Again, she kept her face averted, slanting a sideways look at him.

  Roy couldn’t figure out what bothered him about the girl so much. It was not just the allure of a pretty female with the kind of figure that could send a man’s blood boiling in his veins. Neither was it the danger she posed, in terms of recognizing him.

  It was those strange looks she was sending him.

  As if they knew each other.

  As if they had something in common.

  The second time Roy returned to the store, the elderly clerk was alone, with no other customers to overhear the conversation. Roy bought a bag of Arbuckle’s roasted coffee beans. As he dug in his pocket for coins, he spoke in a casual tone.

  “The girl who works here, she your daughter?”

  The clerk snapped to attention. “Celia Courtwood?”

  “The girl with light brown hair.”

  “That’s Miss Courtwood,” the clerk replied. “No kin to me. I employ her a few hours a week to tidy up the shelves.” The old man took down his glasses and pretended to polish them with a cloth he tugged out of his breast pocket. Intent on the task, he spoke with a mixture of embarrassment and eagerness. “She needs a husband, in case you might be interested. Her pa is poorly. Between you and me, I think that’s why they came out West. Hoped it would be easier for her to find a husband out here.”

  “I’m a drifter,” Roy pointed out. “I have no use for a wife.”

  “Every man has at least one use for a wife.” The clerk took the silver dollar Roy handed out and made change, ill at ease, but something—the urge to help the girl, Roy suspected—kept him talking. “She’s a lady, Miss Courtwood, mark my words. Don’t let the people in town tell you any different. They’re just a bunch of narrow-minded fools.”

  Puzzled, Roy picked up his purchase and walked out of the store. He had to fight the temptation to find out more, to discover what circumstances could give rise to such bold hints and veiled comments about the girl’s reputation in the community. However, it wouldn’t do to ask too many questions, attract unnecessary attention.

  And yet, as Roy stood on the boardwalk, pretending to be engaged in conversation with his associates while they surveyed the bank, the old man’s comments kept turning over in his mind. Why would a pretty girl like Miss Courtwood struggle to find a husband? And what could the townsfolk possibly have against her? Most of all, what could be the reason why she kept stealing those secretive, somehow hopeful looks at him?

  * * *

  Her heart racing, her face flushed with excitement, Celia hurried home to the small frame house along a dusty side street. He’d come back again, that man with a patch over his left eye. She’d assumed he was just passing through, but perhaps he was planning to settle in the area, and she’d have a chance to get to know him.

  Even as the prospect formed in her thoughts, Celia knew it to be a false hope. The man bore the stamp of lawlessness, guns concealed beneath his long duster, his single eye sweeping his surroundings with the alert tension of a hunted animal. Deep down, Celia had an inkling why he’d come into town, but she refused to accept the idea.

  Unconsciously, she lifted a hand to the scar on her cheek. Despite his disability, the young man seemed so confident, so—so whole. How did he do it? How did he find the inner strength to ignore the curious stares, to shrug off the pitying glances? She longed to learn his secret, to discover the key that might allow her to tell everyone in town to go to hell, which was where they deserved to be.

  Letting the heels of her half boots ring out her anger at the citizens of Rock Springs, Celia clattered up the porch steps and let herself in. The front door opened directly to a parlor furnished with sagging armchairs and crammed bookcases they had purchased with the house. The books had turned out to be a treasure trove, one of the few things that gave her pleasure in this place that had wrecked her hopes.

  In the kitchen, Celia stirred the embers in the big cast-iron stove and got a meal started, oatmeal gruel with tinned milk. The bland fare was one of the few things her father could eat without retching, the tumor in his belly having ruined his appetite.

  By the time Papa came home, Celia had the table set, with a posy of wildflowers decorating the center. Long walks in the desert were another source of pleasure, something that allowed her to leave her worries behind for a few hours at a time.

  As Celia watched her father shuffle into the kitchen and take his seat, a shaft of despair pierced her carefully maintained shield of courage. All his vitality was gone, leaving a thin husk of a man, with sparse brown curls and ashen skin. For as long as she could remember, sickness had been part of her life, first seeing her frail mother succumb to one ailment after another, and now witnessing her father slowly fade away.

  But even in his weakened state, Papa managed an encouraging smile at her. “Celia girl, are you all set for the church social on Sunday?”

  Celia curled her nervous fingers into the cotton apron she wore to protect her threadbare gown. “Papa, it’s no use...”

  “Make your fried chicken,” her father prompted. “Nobody makes it better.”

  The reproach in his tone caused Celia’s sense of helplessness to flare into frustration, and she spoke more sharply than she had intended. “Papa, at a box lunch, men don’t pay to eat. They pay to court a girl.”

  “You’ve got to keep trying, Celia girl.”

  There was such anguish in her father’s eyes, such fear for her future in his manner, it added to Celia’s list of woes. She wanted to tell him their only solution was to go away—to leave Rock Springs and move into some other town—but no business would employ a man in her father’s state of health. The bank manager was only keeping him on because dismissing
a dying man might be seen as a callous act that could cost him the goodwill of his customers.

  Moreover, Celia knew Papa lacked the strength for a new start. He loved the house, the books, the quiet town and the few friends who had yet to desert him on her account. Ever since Papa had learned his days were numbered, he’d been looking for a place to die in peace, and she could not wrench him away from what he had found in Rock Springs.

  Celia sighed in resignation and straightened her spine. She’d not been to a church social since she fell out of grace with the town, but how bad could it be? So far, their only weapon against her had been rejection and ugly whispers. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me, she reminded herself—a gem of wisdom gleaned from one of the old issues of the Christian Recorder she’d found in the bookcase.

  “I’ll try, Papa,” Celia promised, and made an effort to sound positive. “I’ll make my fried chicken, and I’ll wear my blue dress and put rouge over my scar.”

  * * *

  Camped by a creek a mile outside town, Roy Hagan stood beneath the morning sun and dictated a message to Zeke Davies, to be delivered to Lom Curtis, the leader of the outlaw gang. It would be too risky to put the information in writing, in case Davies caught the attention of a lawman and the note was discovered.

  “We’ll need six men,” Roy repeated, drilling in the information. “Three in the bank and three outside. We’ll hit at noon. The ranchers come into town in the morning, the miners in the evening for the saloon. Midday is the quietest, and the bank does not close for lunch.”

  Bulldog features furrowed in concentration, Davies memorized the details. After a week of constant companionship, Roy had learned to know his associates. Davies was slow-witted and liked to follow orders, grateful that some other man had done the thinking.

  “Saldana and I will ride over to Prescott and wait there,” Roy went on. “Tell Curtis to telegraph me at the Western Union office there, to let us know when he plans to arrive.”

  Lom Curtis, the leader of the Red Bluff Gang, had an inside contact, someone who would let him know when Wells Fargo was due to collect the gold the miners in the region deposited at the bank. The gang would time their raid just before the next collection, when the amount of gold in the bank’s vault would be at its greatest.

  Davies rehearsed the message a few more times, got on his sorrel and trotted off. Roy kept an eye on the man until the trail took him out of sight behind a rise. Then he turned to Saldana. The lanky Mexican was crouching beside the dying campfire, trimming his droopy mustache and admiring the result in the small mirror he carried in his vest pocket.

  “We’ll ride into town,” Roy told him. “I want to see how many people come to the Sunday service. It’ll give us an idea of how big a posse they might be able to put together.”

  Saldana gave his reflection one final perusal and put the mirror away. Roy had learned that the tall, lithe outlaw came from a good family in Tucson. After a secret tryst with a judge’s daughter, trumped-up charges of rape had forced Saldana to choose between the hangman’s rope and a life on the wrong side of the law. To Roy’s surprise, Saldana showed no bitterness and had not been cured of his womanizing ways.

  They broke camp, carefully sweeping the ground and burying the coals to hide the signs of their stay before getting on their horses. Roy rode a buckskin, a color that blended in with the desert scenery. Saldana put vanity before safety and rode a gleaming black stallion, useful for a night raid but easy to spot during a daylight getaway.

  In town, a collection of buggies and carts and saddle horses stood outside the small, unpainted lumber church. Roy signaled to Saldana and they drew their mounts to a halt. People were streaming out of the church and congregating on a flat piece of ground where a few women were already bustling around a pair of trestle tables laden with food and stacked with baskets decorated with ribbons and bows.

  “It’s a church social,” Saldana said, an eager glint in his dark eyes. He smoothed the ends of his mustache. “There’ll be women. Dancing.”

  “No,” Roy told him. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Even more dangerous to keep away,” Saldana countered. “Men ride a hundred miles for a church social. It will look suspicious if we turn away.”

  Saldana was right, Roy had to concede. To reassure the town about their presence, they had put out a rumor that they’d been employed as security guards for a freight line out of Denver and were now drifting south, enjoying their leisure time until their money ran out. Those kinds of men—honest men—would feel entitled to take part in the festivities.

  While Roy mulled over the dilemma, his attention fell on a girl in a blue dress. It was a different dress, and she wore a wide-brimmed bonnet to match, but no dress could hide those feminine curves, and no bonnet could confine that riot of curls.

  Celia Courtwood. Her image had filled his thoughts at night, while he lay awake listening to the ripple of the creek by the camp. Why this particular female had stuck in his mind like a burr might stick to the shaggy winter coat of a horse, Roy could not figure out. He tried to tell himself it was the danger she posed, in terms of recognizing him, but he knew it to be a lie.

  Watching the girl through his uncovered blue eye, Roy fought the conflicting impulses to ride away as fast as he could and to stay, to seek an opportunity to talk to her.

  “All right,” he finally said with a glance at Saldana. “But don’t draw attention to yourself. Keep your guns hidden.”

  They dismounted and adjusted their heavy canvas dusters to make sure their pistols remained out of sight. Instead of tying their horses to the hitching rail outside the church, they picketed them at the edge of the grassy meadow beyond the clearing and walked over to join the crowd.

  A few people darted curious looks in their direction as they came to stand on the outskirts of the throng, but most had their attention on a portly man with muttonchop sideburns and a bowler hat, who had taken up position behind one of the trestle tables.

  The man banged a gavel against the timber top to demand silence. “Welcome all, friends and strangers alike,” he boomed. “I’ll just remind you of the rules. Each lady will hold up her luncheon basket and describe the contents. Gentlemen will bid, and the winner gets to share the luncheon with the lady. Bidding starts at twenty-five cents. No bidding over five dollars. All funds go to the church maintenance fund.”

  A box lunch.

  Roy had heard of those, but he’d never attended one. Another wave of regret washed over him. Living in the isolation of an outlaw camp since the age of fourteen, he’d never had a chance to court a girl. Apart from prostitutes, the only females he knew were Big Kate and Miss Gabriela who belonged to the men in the Red Bluff Gang.

  Curious, Roy watched as the portly gentleman behind the trestle table gestured toward a gaggle of blushing young females who stood behind him, fluttering like a flock of brightly colored birds. A slender blonde in a frilly pink dress stepped forward, picked up a basket from the table and held it up. “Meat and potato pie and raspberry crumble.”

  A short man in a brown suit instantly bid five dollars. Beaming with pride, the girl moved aside and another one took her place. Mostly, the picnic baskets went for a couple of dollars. An odd restlessness settled over Roy as he watched Celia Courtwood. She was standing slightly apart from the others, looking increasingly fraught as the auction progressed and the group of girls thinned out.

  Finally, only one basket remained on the table. The auctioneer glanced around, preparing to wrap up the proceedings and put his gavel down, but a gaunt man with pale skin called for him to wait and hurried over to Celia. With an agitated whisper, he ushered the girl toward the trestle table.

  Attempting a smile, she picked up the last remaining basket and held it up. “Fried chicken and apple pie.”

  The man with muttonchop sideburns squirmed. Like water rippling across a
pond, the entire crowd turned to stare at a tall man dressed in black. The preacher, Roy assumed, and for whatever reason the reverend ignored the questioning glances of his congregation. Silence fell, so thick Roy could hear the crunching of gravel beneath two dozen pairs of boots and shoes as people shifted nervously on their feet.

  At the front of the crowd, Celia stood forlorn, her head turned aside. Beneath the brim of her bonnet Roy could see a smear of rouge on her cheeks, evidence of a clumsy effort to appear more attractive. She blinked to hold back the tears but Roy feared they would soon start falling. A slow burn of anger flickered into flame in his gut.

  What was wrong with everyone? Why didn’t anyone bid?

  He craned his neck, peering over the forest of hats and bonnets in front of him for a better view, planning to call out twenty-five cents to get the bidding started. Surely, someone would follow his lead? Surely, one of the others would be gentlemanly enough to put the poor girl out of her misery?

  Roy raised his hand, opened his mouth. “Five dollars!”

  It came out of nowhere, through no conscious thought. Beside him, Saldana muttered a curse. A hush went through the crowd. Celia looked up from beneath the brim of her bonnet. Her eyes were tear-bright, but she straightened her spine and lifted her chin.

  “Sir, do not seek amusement at my expense.”

  “I’m not seeking amusement,” Roy replied calmly. “I’m seeking to eat, and I’m partial to fried chicken and apple pie.”

  “Stranger, what’s your name?” the auctioneer called out.

  “That’s for the lady to know,” Roy replied. He shouldered his way through the throng, came to a halt in front of Celia and held out his hand. After a moment of hesitation, she lowered the wicker basket to the crook of her elbow to free one hand and slipped her fingers into his. Roy could tell her hand was shaking. He tightened his hold, seeking to reassure her as he escorted her to the grassy meadow where the other girls and their suitors had already spread out their picnic blankets.