A Dangerous Man

by Connie Brockway

  Chapter 3

  “Mercy Coltrane.”

  “You remember my name,” Mercy said, surprised. His mouth, a sensualist’s mouth that had been refused its natural expression, nearly curved. Nearly. But then the curve flattened and his remote, impassive expression returned.

  “Well, I haven’t shot all that many young girls,” he said. His voice was the same as she remembered: a deep, even tenor crafted with an elegant aristocratic accent.

  “Oh. Of course not,” she said, dropping to her knees to retrieve her shawl. She looked up at him from her kneeling position. His lean, spare figure loomed motionlessly over her, backlit by the low-burning wall sconces. A dark man, shadow made, she thought.

  It was impossible to tell how he felt about being recognized. Nothing was betrayed on that imperturbable countenance. When she made to rise, he bent and took her by her elbows, effortlessly lifting her to her feet. Without asking her permission he turned her hand over and studied her wrist.

  “Did I hurt you?”

  “Good heavens, no,” Mercy said. His grip had been unbreakable, but it had never been painful. His strength was well controlled. But everything about the man seemed inhumanly well controlled.

  Satisfied by her answer, he retired once more into watchful silence, waiting for her to speak, preternaturally patient.

  “I didn’t believe it was you,” she murmured, studying him. As “Duke” he’d worn his hair long, in the western style. He’d also had a full beard to protect his skin from the prairie winds. Now his hair was clipped short, grazing the collar of his impeccable white shirt. Thick hair, mink-brown. And his chin was bare, revealing a sharp angled jaw, a square chin with a slight cleft in it.

  “Believe it was me?” he prompted, breaking her contemplation.

  “In London. I saw you get off the train at Victoria Station. I thought it was you but when I asked the porter who you were, he said the Earl of Perth.”

  “So I am.”

  “You’re also Duke, my father’s hired gun.”

  “So I was.”

  She smiled, and he stepped back as though her amusement confounded him. “Well,” she explained, “you can understand my confusion. In fact, at first, I was sure I was deluded.”

  “I see. And may I ask what inspired you to reassess?”

  “Your eyes.”

  “My eyes,” he said. “Come now, Miss—it is Miss?—Coltrane. You saw me only a few times when I … worked for your father. You expect me to believe you recognized me from my eyes?”

  His tone was insolent and his relentlessly cool manner was beginning to provoke her. “I find,” she said haughtily, “that one tends to remember the last thing one expects to see in this life. When that thing is the eyes of the man she is certain has killed her, it creates a rather lasting impression.”

  His face remained impassive, untouched by her heated sarcasm. Irrelevantly, she found herself wondering what he would look like smiling. He was much younger than she’d remembered; certainly less than a decade separated them. And though tallish, he was not the gigantic figure cloaked in a dusty trail coat and denim jeans, a Stetson pulled low over his brow, that she remembered. But his eyes, pale greenish-blue, too light to be called turquoise, were the same. As was the lack of emotion in them.

  A chill raised gooseflesh on her bare arms and she wrapped her shawl tighter around her.

  “Excuse me for doubting the reliability of your memory.” His tone had more disdain than apology in it.

  “You’re forgiven,” she answered shortly, reminding herself not to let her temper get the better of her. She had to make him understand how important it had been for her to find and follow him. “Anyway, I asked after you. I had met the Dowager Duchess Acton in London some weeks earlier. We had already grown friendly and I was at loose ends. My chaperone, Lady Timmons, had an accident on the crossing and was—is—convalescing. When I discovered that Lady Acton was giving a house party during the off-season—a party you were expected to attend—I was quite shameless about securing an invitation.”

  “Why?”

  “I need your help.”

  The slight tension that held him immobile grew. “Help.”

  “Yes. I cannot tell you how thankful I was to see you. I didn’t know where to turn, who to ask for help,” she said. “When I recognized you, it was like an answer to my prayers.”

  His mouth may have twitched toward a grim smile. “I doubt heaven has much to do with anything concerning me. What, may I ask, do you require help with?”

  She took a deep breath. “My brother.”

  One of his dark, slanted eyebrows lifted.

  “William. Will. You never met him, he was in Boston at school when you were working at the Circle Bar.”

  “I never worked at the Circle Bar,” he reminded her, growing even more remote. “I worked the range, tracking down your father’s enemies.” There was a flavor of self-recrimination in his tone that she did not understand.

  “They were shooting our ranch hands,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Go on. You were talking about your brother. He was supposed to have come back to the ranch, the same as you. Wasn’t that why you were there—your father had to take you and your brother from your boarding schools in order to pay my fee?”

  “Yes,” Mercy said. She didn’t want to explain her brother to this indifferent aristocrat. But she knew no other way to secure his aid. “He didn’t come home. He stayed with some of mother’s relatives back East. Texas, the ranch … he never liked our life there.”

  “Really. Fancy that,” Hart said.

  “I never could understand his aversion to it,” she admitted.

  “Maybe it has something to do with lice … or fleas … or ambushing dust storms that blind you as they scour the skin from your face and choke your throat with sand. Or nights so cold, it hurts your eyes to hold them open. Or a land populated by men who would blast the back of your head open for the price of a lame mule.”

  She stared at him. There was real emotion, raw and fervent, in his voice.

  “You didn’t like it much.”

  He laughed; an abbreviated, rusty sound. “You, Miss Coltrane, are a mistress of understatement. No. I didn’t like it much.”

  “But surely you must have seen how magnificent, how—”

  “You were telling me about your brother.”

  Mercy started. “Yes,” she said softly. “Excuse me, but when someone maligns my home I want—”

  “That is the trouble with you Americans. You want something and you must have it, regardless of how you get it. You want something from me, so you flout convention and society, risk not only your name but the name of your hostess, and invite me here for a tryst.”

  “It is not a tryst!”

  “Explain that to the people who watched you enter,” he countered. “No. You must have your way. After all, you ‘want.’ So damned be the consequences. You are blind to modesty. If you are so determined to get your own way, can you not do so with feminine gentleness and soft words?”

  “Feminine guile, you mean?” she asked hotly, and immediately regretted her temper. By sheer will she stifled the urge to give him a proper set-down.

  She wouldn’t fail. And whatever this harsh, disapproving man thought of her, she needed his help.

  “I’m sorry,” he was saying brusquely. “Forgive me. My lamentable lack of manners merely betrays my own brief residency in your land.”

  “Oh!”

  “Now, once and finally, what have I to do with your brother?”

  She took a deep breath. “Will … he always loved society, culture, what he called ‘civilization.’ At least, I think he did. We”—her gaze fell for the first time during the interview—“we were never close. My fault. I never understood him and I made no attempt to do so. He hated the ranch.” She shrugged. “I loved it.”

  She glanced up. Why was she telling him this? Perhaps because of his indifference. There would be no sympathy here. False or real
. But there would be no judgment either.

  “A year ago my mother died. Will and she were very close. She adored Will and the feeling was returned. He begged Father to send him to England then. He said he couldn’t bear to be in the house, with constant reminders of our mother. My father agreed. Will was to stay three months, but three turned into six and six into nine.”

  “He’s been here nine months?”

  “Ten,” Mercy said. “His letters home grew more and more sporadic and … changed. The last ones were little more than scribbled requests for money. What he wrote early on suggested that he was running with bad company. We haven’t had a letter in three months now.”

  “Oh?” Hart prompted.

  “My father refused to send him any more money. I believe that is why he ceased writing, as a way of punishing Father. They’ve never gotten along.”

  “And now your father has allowed you, little more than a girl yourself, to come looking for him?” Hart asked.

  “No.” She hurried to defend her father. “No, Father thinks I am here to find a husband.”

  His blue eyes flashed with the merest hint of surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “A husband.” She felt herself blushing. She would not have been so blunt had not everything about her situation required straightforwardness. She was not nearly the coarse creature that he believed—and made no effort to hide that he did so.

  “My mother, God rest her soul, always wanted for us, above all things, a genteel life. To be quite frank—you needn’t look like that, you have made it abundantly clear what you think of my candor—she wished us to marry into the aristocracy. Whether it was Mrs. Ascot’s New York aristocracy or your own English variety made no difference.”

  He didn’t say a word and she plunged on. “My father worshiped Mother. That is why he agreed to have us schooled in Boston. That is why he let me come here to be squired about by Lady Timmons after we met her last winter in New York and she kindly offered me her sponsorship. Father agreed but only because Mother would have wished it.”

  “Ah, yes. The conveniently convalescing chaperone,” he said.

  She had to bite the inside of her cheeks to keep from telling him to go to hell. At least, she told herself with faint hope, he is listening. “The Dowager and Lady Timmons are great friends.”

  “I see. So your father thinks you are here to fulfill your mother’s aspirations.”

  “Yes.”

  “But in actuality you are here to find your brother.”

  “Yes. I have to find him. Father has been threatening to disinherit Will. I need to heal this breach.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I promised our mother. Before she died, I promised her I would see that Will and Father were reconciled. But to do that I have to find Will. I want you to find him.”

  He turned from her, an odd impatient gesture, and she watched as he shook his head as if in disbelief. In profile his straight nose was large and aggressive. His jaw, tensed as it was, looked cut from rock.

  “There’s one more thing,” she said.

  “Yes?” he muttered.

  “Will knows I’m here. I don’t know how, but a week after I arrived I received a note from him. He asked for some money and intimated he was in some sort of financial straits. I sent money according to his directions. Since then there have been two other notes, each more terse than the last, each asking for a greater sum. And in each he has refused to see me.”

  “Jesus,” Hart swore. She crept closer to him, hating the role of petitioner but unable to keep the beggarly tone from her voice. She needed him. She’d tried every other avenue she could think of.

  “I’ve kept the notes and I have letters that mention the names of some establishments. You can—”

  “Miss Coltrane.” He turned. His eyes pierced her from his greater height. A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead. It cast a dark stripe of shadow across his lean face. His expression was unreadable. “Whatever I was in the past, I am now the Earl of Perth.”

  “I know that. I also know you were once in need of money. My father has prospered, Mr. Perth—”

  “Hart Moreland, Lord Perth,” he corrected automatically. “Perth. Or Hart. Not Mr. Perth.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said. “At any rate, my father is an exceedingly wealthy man and very generous with my allowance. I have no real need for the money he gives me and have consequently amassed a very tidy sum.”

  “Oh, God,” he muttered.

  “I do not know what your current financial situation is, but after having spent some time in the dilapidated castles and mansions you aristocrats feel compelled to maintain, I can only assume it could be better. I am willing to offer you a substantial sum for your trouble.”

  “Oh, God,” he repeated.

  She gulped. “You don’t have to kill anyone.”

  He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them the blue-green irises gleamed in the gaslight. “I don’t have to kill anyone.” Dead, cold voice.

  “No,” she hurried to assure him. “Nothing of the sort. You don’t have to do anything but find Will. I shall do the rest. I don’t know London. I haven’t a clue where to begin. I’ve asked where I could, but each time I have been stonewalled, politely but absolutely.”

  “I see.” His tone should have numbed her, but her need to find her brother was too important to be sidetracked by a chill voice and hot, passionate eyes.

  “Will you help me?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “Go home, Miss Coltrane. Go back to America. I am sure your brother is just having himself a little fling before he returns to his family’s loving arms and begins in earnest the business of producing cattle and babies.”

  She stepped back in confusion. Had she not made clear how important this was? What could she say to make him understand that she couldn’t lose Will … she couldn’t fail?

  “You don’t understand. Will is risking his future. My father is an incredibly obstinate man. He does not forgive easily. Will has been more than defiant. He’s been … Perhaps I haven’t made clear how he’s changed since he—”

  “You have made everything painfully clear,” he broke in. “Go home, Miss Coltrane. And I strongly advise you to forget you ever recognized me. My position in society must not be threatened. It is imperative that my past stay past. People’s futures, as well as their happiness—people I care a great deal about—depend on it. I will protect them, Miss Coltrane. At all costs.”

  She drew herself up, salvaging pride from her disappointment. He cared a great deal about some person or persons. The thought touched her with jealousy. What would it be like to have someone so strong, so capable, care for her? Well, he wasn’t the only one with people to protect. “I would never betray a confidence.”

  “I haven’t given you my confidence,” he said. “You have stolen it.”

  “I will not tell a soul who you really are. Your secret is safe with me, Lord Perth,” she said with haughty dignity. “You see? I do know the proper form of address. Our eastern schools are quite thorough in drumming English hero-worship into their students’ heads. I shall have to remind myself of the error of misplaced veneration.”

  “Quite. Now, forget me and, if I may make so bold, forget your brother.”

  She would not answer him, neither his ill-concealed warning nor his presumptuous advice. She whirled around, her stiff taffeta petticoats hissing as they passed over the tops of his boots.

  “And when you leave, for God’s sake try to be discreet. I would not like to have us discovered closeted alone in here.”

  His words brought her skidding to a halt by the door.

  She reached for the door handle and jerked it wide open. Conversation and light flooded into the room. She caught a glimpse of anger hardening his features just before he stepped back into the shadows.

  Good, she thought. Let the Earl jump!

  Those near the door turned curious faces to see who was exiting the library.

  “I will not forget him,�
� she declared loudly. “I will find him.”

  Chapter 4

  Damnation! Hart thought. He wanted to follow the chit out into the drawing room, catch her by the arm, and spin her around and then … He ground his teeth. Instead, he stood shrinking in the shadows, trying to figure out how to exit the library unseen.

  Though he was furious he’d allowed himself to be put in such a position, a flash of misplaced amusement underscored his anger. The little wretch. Offering him cash to find her cursed brother and soothingly assuring him he needn’t “kill anyone.” There was only one person who was in danger of that and she had just swept out of range.

  Thank God, years of self-discipline had stood him in good stead during that horrendous interview. She hadn’t realized with what shock he’d recognized the young girl he’d shot in that Texas shack nearly six years ago.

  Shock. A novel experience. He’d thought himself well beyond feeling even remotely surprised by whatever malicious games life threw his way.

  But he hadn’t been prepared for her.

  That she should reappear now, a green-eyed specter from his past, just when he was finishing the task he’d set himself over a decade ago, really was diabolically amusing.

  Here he was about to settle the last of his sisters into the life he’d worked and sweated and—and killed to achieve for them and she appeared; gold-leaf-flecked eyes and laughing mouth, a tumble of burnished red hair … and a hole in her shoulder.

  Her presence threatened it all. His hand curled into a fist. He forced himself to relax it. He’d have to make certain she didn’t destroy what he’d worked so hard to achieve. He would do whatever it took to assure her silence. Perhaps it would be as simple as having said no. Surely she realized his threat was serious.

  He looked around the library. Any moment now some bright-eyed inquisitive would peek in to see who Mercy Coltrane had been with. Even if she didn’t give a damn for her own reputation, he couldn’t afford to be casual with his. A few whispered words to Acton and Annabelle’s engagement to him could be forgotten. The Actons were notorious sticklers.