A Dangerous Man

by Connie Brockway

  As each course had been brought to the table, and each wine decanted and consumed, the conversation had grown more and more laudatory. It all revolved around the afternoon’s shooting match.

  The women, taking their cue from the gentlemen’s approval and the Duchess’s indulgent if forced-looking smile, had reservedly adopted Mercy into their sphere. They plied her with questions about her life in Texas and congratulated her on her skill. Mercy could not refrain from spearing Hart with an occasional triumphant glance. He surprised her by accepting her superior smiles with a gleam of amusement.

  Now, dinner ended, the women chatted as they waited for the men to reappear, pungent with smoke and after-dinner brandy.

  Annabelle drifted toward her, apparently worried that her approach would not be welcome. Mercy silently chided herself for her earlier rudeness to the girl.

  “Please, sit by me, Miss Moreland,” she asked, rearranging her plum- and turquoise-striped skirt to make room on the chintz-covered settee. With a murmured thank-you Annabelle sank to the edge of the cushion, hands folded gracefully in her lap.

  It took Mercy a minute to realize that Annabelle was covertly studying her. For the life of her Mercy could not think of a single topic of conversation to broach with such a paragon. And she could not help returning those sidelong glances. Annabelle was so completely a lady. Her mother would have been transported had she raised so angelic a creature as this.

  The other women were sharing intimacies, renewing friendships, while she and Annabelle sat here like roosting chickens waiting for each other to cluck. There had to be something they could say to each other.

  “Does your brother ever miss?” Mercy finally asked.

  “Miss?” Annabelle echoed.

  “His target. He did not miss one shot this afternoon. Not one. No matter what the distance, or the target, or the angle.”

  “Oh, that. By all accounts he is a rather exceptional shot.”

  Rather exceptional. Tepid praise from a loving sister. But tepidness was prized in this society. No unbecoming excitement, no disturbing emotions … no passion. She turned her attention to Fanny Whitcombe, who, ensconced in the corner of the opposite divan, was staring moonily at a painting of a Madonna and Child hanging on the wall.

  “Mrs. Whitcombe,” she asked, “does your brother ever miss?”

  Fanny loosened her gaze from the picture. Her cornflower-blue eyes swam with tears. “Isn’t she lovely?” she whispered.

  Lovely? thought Mercy incredulously. The fat Madonna looked as if she wanted to drop the decidedly lascivious-looking child pinching her breast. No, it was not lovely. The thought crossed her mind that Fanny might not be too tightly knit.

  “I was wondering about your brother’s skill with a rifle,” she said. “He’s very good.”

  “Guns are dangerous. No child of mine will ever, ever play with a gun,” Fanny said, her lower lip quivering.

  Mercy gaped at her, startled by her vehemence. “Indeed not. I wasn’t suggesting such, Lady Whitcombe. I was simply wondering if your brother had ever missed his chosen target.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Miss Coltrane.” Fanny said, her gaze—and interest—returning to the painting.

  Mercy frowned. Didn’t know? He was her brother, wasn’t he? But then, Will was her brother, she thought. And what did she know of him?

  “I can answer that, Miss Coltrane.” It was Hart’s eldest sister, Beryl. She was the most animated of the three sisters. There was also compassion and a hint of sorrow about the wide mouth so like her brother’s. “The answer is no.”

  “No?” Mercy laughed, delighted with such frank pride.

  “No.” She returned her smile. “He never misses. Never. But then again,” she added, “in my memory he has never put himself to the test. He certainly did so this afternoon. You and he were quite the center of attention.”

  Mercy looked away, unsure whether the comment was meant as a criticism.

  “Oh, do excuse me, Miss Coltrane.” Beryl hastened forward and sat down, squeezing Annabelle aside as she covered Mercy’s hand and gave it a friendly pat. “I in no way meant to imply your behavior was outré. It was most charming. Particularly as you left Hart the field after he’d hit those three guineas you tossed. Quite decent of you.”

  “I don’t think your brother thought so,” Mercy replied dubiously. “He seemed quite displeased.”

  “I know. Wonderful, wasn’t it?” Beryl said, her dark eyes aglow. “Hart loathes being patronized.”

  “I wasn’t patronizing him,” protested Mercy. “I couldn’t possibly have hit those guineas. I publicly admitted that hitting one of them was more luck than skill on my part.”

  “Hart will never believe it. He suspects you bowed out to salvage his masculine pride. Are you sure you didn’t? You’re quite an extraordinary marksman.” Beryl cocked her head.

  “No,” Mercy said, scowling. “Believe me, had I been able to prick your brother’s conceit, I would have.”

  Beryl laughed.

  “You seem rather pleased at the prospect of your brother’s discomfort,” Mercy said. What kind of family was this? One sister little more than an automaton, another a teary-eyed daydreamer, and this one …?

  “Oh, I am,” Beryl agreed, nodding emphatically.

  “Beryl,” Annabelle interjected in soft, anxious tones. “Should you—”

  “Annabelle,” Beryl broke in, “Fanny is looking a mite peaked.”

  Mercy stared. She’d rarely seen a more … robust-looking woman than Fanny Whitcombe. “I believe you should escort her to her room.”

  Annabelle’s honey-gold curls bobbed as she swung an alarmed glance in her middle sister’s direction. The watery-eyed Fanny blinked at them.

  “Fanny, you need to rest. Go to your room,” Beryl said in the autocratic tones of an elder sibling. Docilely, Fanny rose to her feet and, aided by a frustrated-looking Annabelle, toddled away.

  “Now,” Beryl said, smoothing her skirts, “where were we? Oh, yes. Hart. And why I purely enjoy seeing him discomfited. It’s quite simple. I haven’t seen him display that much emotion in over a decade. And I think it’s good for him.”

  Mercy frowned.

  “Hart always used to love a challenge. He enjoyed the game as much as the outcome. And he was an incautious player,” Beryl said, her expression reflecting fond memories, “fierce, eager, always demanding more of himself and his opponent. At the risk of sounding forward, a decade or so ago you would have liked Hart. I caught a glimpse of him as he used to be, today. Even if that glimpse was of his willful, autocratic side, I still delighted in seeing it.”

  She had no right to ask, but she couldn’t help herself. “What happened to change him?” She flushed, aware she was being unconscionably forward. “That is … he seems a very reserved gentleman.”

  “He wasn’t always so. My father … My father left us in conscribed circumstances when Hart was fifteen. He immediately joined the army. He swore it was what he wanted, but I suspect he didn’t want to burden our mother with an additional soul to provide for. And then, while Hart was in North Africa, Mother died.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mercy said.

  Beryl studied her a moment before smiling. “I believe you are, my dear,” she murmured. “Well, at any rate, Hart was left with three young sisters, a pocketful of debts, and not a sou to our names. He took it all very seriously—and don’t imagine for one minute I’m not thankful he did. If it hadn’t been for Hart, we’d all still be in that moldering pile of bricks up Nottingham way. But Hart had changed when he came back from North Africa … and I don’t think it was simply because of his added responsibilities.”

  “He managed to provide for you at such a young age?” Mercy could not keep from asking.

  “Not at once, but soon thereafter,” Beryl said. “He went to America shortly after his return. He said he planned to look into some investment opportunities. While there, he inherited his title. He returned after a few years.

&
nbsp; “The first thing he did upon returning was repair the Perth estate, Bentwood.” She once again gave that odd, crooked smile. “There is nothing so enticing to would-be suitors as a title that has a well-maintained estate attached to it. And Hart loves Bentwood. Yet he has Henley manage it. He rarely even visits. Odd.”

  “He was in America?” Mercy asked, falling on this bit of information. How much did Beryl know of Hart’s activities there?

  “Yes.” Beryl nodded. “He entered into some partnerships with ranchers in the some of the western territories.”

  That was certainly one way to put it.

  “Your own father is a rancher, is he not?”

  “Yes. In Texas,” Mercy said.

  “Texas is near where Hart was.” Beryl’s keen gaze rested on Mercy.

  “It’s a big country, Mrs. Wrexhall.”

  “Call me Beryl. I insist. And, yes it is big, so Hart says. Not that he talks much about it. Or anything else. Of course, he’s never in England much anymore. He developed quite a wanderlust during the last decade. I miss him. But I have been told that you, too, have a brother you miss.” She threaded her fingers together in her lap.

  “Yes,” Mercy said quietly. She did miss Will, she realized. She wanted to find him not only because of her promise and her guilt, she wanted to find him because she missed him. She’d almost forgotten.

  Her mother had aspirations for her, but it had been her brother who tried to help her achieve them. And he had done so affectionately. Will had never been jealous of her. He’d been her rival, but she’d never been his.

  Instead, he had been the person who’d introduced her to those odd and breathtaking things called arias, who’d sharpened her sense of the absurd with his own discerning and dry wit, who’d gifted her with an appreciation of art and literature. Her eyes felt hot and scratchy.

  Yes, she wanted her brother back.

  “You know,” Beryl said into the ensuing silence, “I miss how Hart used to be. I miss the big brother who teased me and shamelessly embarrassed me in front of his friends. Don’t look too surprised, m’dear,” Beryl said. “At one time Hart had quite a number of friends. And quite an enjoyable sense of humor.” She shook off the melancholy mood. “So now you know why I applaud your ability to touch a spark to what I had given up on as a bed of cold ashes.”

  “I’m not sure Lord Perth would agree.”

  “I think Lord Perth has had entirely too many people agree with him, and obey him, and tiptoe around him,” Beryl said. “Ah, the gentlemen have arrived. We mustn’t sit about looking melancholy. Gentlemen do so dislike sentimental moods. I have enjoyed our conversation, Miss Coltrane. We must have another. Soon.”

  Chapter 9

  “How did I get this bullet scar on my shoulder?” Mercy repeated.

  The men, having rejoined the women after spending what was, in Hart’s opinion, far too long making masculine noises at each other over imported brandy, stopped dead in their conversations. A few actually sidled closer to Mercy. Her pale shoulders and bosom were bathed in the golden glow of gaslight, the puckered scar a pearlescent circle on otherwise flawless flesh.

  Was that skin as soft and warm as her hand had been? Could it be softer?

  “I wouldn’t want to bore you,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sure it’s a fascinating story. Please tell us,” Beryl said.

  His own sister, a gossip. Thank God, Annabelle and Fanny had retired. Henley, Hart noticed darkly, was nodding in concurrence from behind his bird-witted wife.

  Mercy’s amused gaze passed over him. He felt himself tense. Absurd. She wasn’t going to expose him. At no time during their shooting match had she even hinted at a previous acquaintance with him. Acquaintance. Such a civil word for such brutal knowledge. Ah, well. A hoyden she might be, she was an honest hoyden. She took her promises seriously.

  “Yes, oh, do tell us, Miss Coltrane!” Nathan Hillard said. “We lead such tame lives here.”

  “Now, that’s doing it a bit dun, Hillard,” Henley objected. “You cannot go about claiming your own existence is ‘tame,’ Nate. I know you too well.”

  Hillard smiled at Henley. “Compared to what Miss Coltrane’s life has been, I’m sure it is. I have never lived a hundred miles from the nearest town.”

  “Now, how did you know our ranch was a hundred miles from the nearest town?” Mercy laughed.

  Hillard waved away the coy question. “Aren’t all Texas ranches a hundred miles from the nearest town?” he asked in mock innocence, drawing laughter from the assembled guests. “Come, now, tell us.”

  Making a great show of modesty, Mercy smoothed her skirts and demurred, shaking her head, a little smile of apology on her lips. “Well, I don’t really think—”

  “I’m sure Miss Coltrane would like to forget whatever unfortunate choices led to her getting herself shot,” Hart broke in.

  Mercy’s bowed head snapped upright. For just an instant her gaze locked with his. Little pinpricks of challenge flashed at him.

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’d be pleased to share the story and ‘unfortunate choice.’ That is, if you are all certain it’s worth your time?”

  Assurances poured forth. Hart drummed his fingertips on his chair’s arm. The group surrounded Mercy, the gentlemen pulling up chairs for their ladies and taking positions behind them. From the rapt expressions of Baron Coffey’s sons Hart expected them to flop like hounds at Mercy’s feet. Somehow they managed to restrain themselves.

  “Well, then,” Mercy began, “I had returned at my father’s behest from my Boston school to our ranch, the Circle Bar. It is in one of the most uncivilized sections of the Texas territory, a place known as the Panhandle.”

  “Uncivilized? There are red Indians?” breathed Beryl.

  “Oh, my, yes.” Mercy nodded. “But the native population was not nearly so deadly nor so dangerous as our fellow Texans. Greed, I am afraid, will cause men to do any number of despicable things.”

  He waited for her to spear him with a telling glance, but she continued on, ignoring him. She was, he realized in surprise, not referring to him. He frowned, puzzled.

  “What was to become my father’s land had been used for years by other ranchers. Instead of purchasing the land themselves they made free use of it to graze their herds. With my father’s acquisition of the Circle Bar, the free range was no longer available. They thus determined to drive my father off his ranch.”

  “How?” a pretty, dark-haired woman asked. Doubtless it was the inquisitive Carr woman.

  Mercy lowered her voice dramatically. “By hiring a gang of unscrupulous and murderous blackguards to rustle our cattle and terrorize our wranglers. Indeed, a full eight of our men were wounded at the hands of these scoundrels.” Sorrow lowered her voice. “Two died.”

  A gasp arose from the listeners. Baron Coffey’s sons looked as if they were about to dash off in search of dueling pistols.

  For a moment it seemed Mercy was not going to continue her story. She sat silently, her knuckles white in her lap, her face stark with remembered tragedy. Hart took a step forward. This had gone on long enough.

  “And one of these blackguards shot you, Miss Coltrane?” Nathan Hillard’s indignant voice rose above the flurry of consternation. He placed his hand briefly on Mercy’s shoulder, a small comforting gesture, and Mercy looked up at him. Hart quelled the desire to strike Hillard’s hand from her shoulder. What matter to him if she encouraged the advances of a man nearly old enough to be her father?

  “Did they?” Acton repeated Hillard’s question.

  Mercy had best close her mouth, thought Hart, watching her gaze rest on Hillard’s damnably handsome face. There were flies in the room.

  “No,” she said, returning her attention to her listeners. “The ‘bodyguard’ my father hired to protect our family shot me.”

  “What?”

  Mercy nodded complacently.

  “And why would he have done that?” Hart asked dryly.


  “Was the bastard—excuse me, Miss Coltrane—was this creature bribed into switching his allegiance?” demanded Hillard.

  Hart’s fingers ceased drumming. His hands rolled into fists on the arms of the chair. “Well?”

  Mercy glanced at him as if just realizing his presence. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Your Near Grace. I didn’t mean to hold you breathless.”

  He held back a retort. The rest of the party were looking at him curiously. A few of the women—including the wretched Beryl—tittered.

  “As for your kind concern, Mr. Hillard, having given your suggestion its due consideration I must say I do not believe a switch in loyalties can account for this person’s actions.”

  “Well, why on earth would he have shot you?” asked Acton. Hillard scowled.

  “I cannot say, or ever suggest I could begin to understand the mind of such a man.”

  “I should hope not,” averred Acton. Hart narrowed his eyes on him. He might have to reevaluate his original approval of Acton’s suit for Annabelle. Acton was apparently not nearly as discerning or intelligent as he’d thought.

  “But I can tell you how it came about,” Mercy said.

  “Please do,” chorused Baron Coffey and his sons. Even the Countess Marchant nodded encouragingly.

  “Let me first say that I love Texas,” said Mercy. “It is, to my mind, the most singularly beautiful place on earth. Its skies are wider, its colors richer, its face infinitely more grand and majestic, than anything I have experienced or hope to experience, elsewhere. So it was with unalloyed joy that I answered my father’s summons home from my Boston school in the spring of 1872.”

  “You were in America then, were you not, Hart?” Beryl asked brightly.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Mercy shot him a quick glance and hurried on. “My homecoming was not all happy. My father, in hopes of counteracting the despicable actions of the gang of murderous rogues, had hired what he euphemistically called a ‘cattle detective.’ ” Her dramatic pause had its desired effect. Several of the women made swooning sounds and the men looked properly aghast that such drastic measures had been instituted. Hart’s mouth flattened sardonically.