Marshal and the Heiress
Page 36
Leaving the barn as silently as he’d come, Drew walked over to lean on the top rail of the corral. There he watched the sky grow lighter, daybreak painting the vast canvas with an array of pink and golden hues. Dawn in Scotland, though beautiful in its own quiet way, had never been like this. Nothing here, in this wide-open land, was done on a small scale, and Drew didn’t think he’d ever tire of its lonely splendor.
With the day about to begin, he saw smoke spiralling from Kingsley’s house. Marguerite, the cook, was preparing breakfast. Pepper wouldn’t take over feeding the men until the drive started. Drew remained where he was, watching the sunrise, until someone rang the great bell outside the ranch house. In minutes, men were pouring out of the bunkhouse, stopping only long enough to rinse their faces at the pump.
Drew went back inside the barn to wake the lad, only to find him standing outside of Billy’s stall, stretching his arms above his head, hat in one hand. Drew’s gaze stopped at the mop of dark curls plastered to the boy’s head, curls that looked as if they belonged to a girl, not a boy.
Sensing his presence, the lad’s head jerked toward him, and in the next instant, he stuffed the hat back on his head. Dark blue eyes grew wary. Then hostility, so strong it almost reached out and touched him, filled them before the lad looked away.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
Drew ignored the hostility and went into the stall, walking over to the horse, running his fingers down its side. It trembled at his touch.
“Get away from him,” the boy said. “He doesn’t like …” The boy stopped suddenly.
“What doesn’t he like?” Drew asked curiously.
But the boy’s face went utterly still, and Drew was stunned. Control. Complete control. Something one didn’t see in a face that young.
“He don’t like foreigners,” Gabe said after a moment, startling him into remembering his own question.
“And how would he be knowing I’m a … foreigner?” Drew asked with amusement.
“Yer accent, of course,” the answer came airily and with just a dash of superiority at besting an adversary.
“And Billy can distinguish among accents?” Drew said.
“He’s a very smart horse.” The slightest twinkle of mischief shone in those blue eyes before coming under control again.
It was amazing. Despite the boy’s grammar and rough demeanor, Gabe Lewis was bright—very bright—and also a little bit of an actor. Perhaps a great deal an actor.
But Drew’s amusement quickly faded. Someone was after Kingsley. And there seemed more to this lad than what lay on the dusty surface. Gabe Lewis had claimed to be sixteen and, Drew figured, might be as young as fourteen. But Drew had seen boys even younger than that on Glasgow docks who were thieves and killers. Some had the faces of angels. Some wouldn’t have thought twice before staving in a head if a few pence were offered.
Drew decided then and there he would keep an eye on young Master Lewis.
“You might want to discard some of those clothes,” he suggested. “It’s going to be a bloody hot day.”
The boy merely huddled his slight body more into the offensive garments and turned back to his horse. His posture made it clear he wasn’t going to take anyone’s advice. Well, he’d learn. Drew would bet his saddle that the boy would discard at least some of those layers before late afternoon.
Leaving Gabe to his own devices, Drew went to find the pinto he had ridden yesterday. He was damned if a horse was going to get the best of him.
Sitting behind his huge walnut desk, Kirby reviewed his preparations for the drive. He had cash—wrapped in oilcloth and locked in a strongbox that would go in the chuck wagon—along with powers of attorney from neighboring ranchers participating in the drive. He was leaving his own power of attorney for his brother Jon in case anything happened to him.
When he was finished, he leaned back in his chair, his fingers toying idly with the pen he held. Through the open windows of his office, he could hear the cowboys in the yard, laughing loudly about some wager one of them had lost. Their energy and excitement were high. Tomorrow was the big day. They would saddle up and ride out with an unprecedented ten thousand head of cattle. Hell, he was excited, too.
Staring out the window, Kirby frowned. He would have liked to go into town to say goodbye to Laura Sellers, but he had no right.
Laura. Even her name was pretty. So was the sound of her voice. He pictured her in his mind. Lovely taffy-colored blond hair, intelligent dark brown eyes, a curvaceous body that made him ache. He had known the widowed dressmaker for five years; her husband Bill had been a lawyer and Kirby’s friend until he died a year ago, leaving barely enough for her to live on. She might have returned east, where apparently she had relatives. She’d stayed, though, and started a successful dressmaking business. He recalled the several occasions that he’d paid her a visit. He could do that under the guise of friendship without it causing talk. He’d never asked her out, though, despite knowing she would have accepted his invitation. He hadn’t gotten so old or out of touch that he couldn’t tell when a woman would welcome his attentions.
His fingers clenched around the pen. When he thought of Laura, the vow he’d made never to marry was strained to the limit. But he still feared that the ugly secret he harbored might destroy him someday, and he wanted to make very sure that no one he loved was also destroyed.
For that reason, he lived a solitary and lonely life except for his brother and nephews, and even then he’d tried to make them independent of him. It was difficult. Since he was fourteen, Kirby had taken care of Jon, who at the time of their parents’ death was eight. He had been father as well as brother, and Jon had never completely learned to stand on his own two feet. Nor had his sons.
The pen broke in his hand. The events of twenty-five years ago were as alive in his mind as if they had happened yesterday. He had tried to put them away in a mental box and close it off, but they kept coming back. Lately, they’d been coming back more and more often. He couldn’t help but wonder if the ambush several months ago was in some way connected to that long-ago disaster.
Who had hired the gunmen?
Three men came to Kirby’s mind, three men who had something to gain by his death, or more likely, something to lose if he remained alive. Yet … what could have stirred the pot after so many years?
Probably nothing. Probably his conscience was working overtime. After all, there had been no further attempts, just that one freak ambush that, fortunately, had been waylaid by Cameron’s quixotic rescue. Truth to tell, although he was damned happy to be alive, he wasn’t sorry the ambush had happened. If it hadn’t, he wouldn’t have met Drew Cameron.
He smiled at the thought of the Scotsman. Kirby had made few friends in the last twenty-five years—maybe because he’d once used such damned poor judgment in choosing companions, maybe because he was afraid of losing those he might choose. Regardless of the cause, he’d held himself aloof from other men. But something about Drew Cameron made him discard his ordinary caution.
Guts, for example. Plain, old-fashioned guts. The man had taken on three gunmen for a stranger’s sake. But there was much more to the Scotsman. He was intelligent, well-read, articulate, and charming. Usually Kirby was suspicious of charm; he’d seen it used to his disadvantage—and almost ruin—once before, but he could find no evil in the Scotsman, only a barrenness that matched Kirby’s own.
Drew hid his loneliness well under a smile, a wink, and a joke. But Kirby often wondered what turned a Scottish lord into a wanderer, a man who would accept a pittance for backbreaking labor.
Kirby sighed. His friendship with Cameron scared his nephews. They had always expected to take over his spread and now they sensed a challenge to that natural assumption. That Drew Cameron wanted no part of it would never occur to them.
What did occur to Kirby was that the competition might be good for his nephews. He didn’t want to think that he was using a man who had saved his life.
> So he thought of Laura instead. Pretty Laura whom he could never have.
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About the Author
Patricia Potter is a USA Today–bestselling author of more than fifty romantic novels. A seven-time RITA Award finalist and three-time Maggie Award winner, she was named Storyteller of the Year by Romantic Times and received the magazine’s Career Achievement Award for Western Romance. Potter is a past board member and president of Romance Writers of America. Prior to becoming a fiction author, she was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal and the president of a public relations firm in Atlanta. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1996 by Patricia Potter
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0686-6
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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