by Kaki Warner
“Shut your piehole.”
Taking that as a yes, he lowered his hands. “What’s the woman to you?” he asked as he shook feeling back into his arms. “You seem protective of her. Bodyguard?”
“Maybe we’re courting.”
He stumbled, coming down so hard on his left leg it sent a shock of pain up through his still-sore ribs. “Courting?” he choked out once he caught his breath. “Is that a jest, man?”
“Why would it be a jest?”
“Well, because . . .” He sputtered for a moment, his steps slowing, his mind reeling. “Because she’s already married.”
“Was, maybe. But her husband died. Keep moving.”
“Died how?”
“Soldiering. Veer right.”
Musing over that bit of information, he followed the trail down a steep, sandy slope riddled with round river rocks that made footing treacherous. From below came the sound of rushing water, and as they descended, firs and juniper and spruce gave way to aspens, the faint yellowing of their rustling leaves hinting at the fall to come. He looked around, wondering if the woman was bathing nearby, then realized the old man had taken them in a wide flanking maneuver that put a dense copse of trees between them and where she had been.
“What was he like? Her husband?”
“Foreigner, like you. Deserted her, the bastard.”
“I thought you said he died.”
“Same thing, as far as she’s concerned.”
Rocks shifted beneath Ash’s leather-soled cavalry boots, and he had to grab on to a sapling to keep from sliding down the slope toward the fast-moving creek. “She speak of him much?”
“Not as much as you do. We’ll cross there.”
The air cooled as they climbed down into the shallow water tumbling over the rocky creek bed. He felt the cold against the leather of his oiled boots and wondered how the woman could bathe in such frigid water.
On the other bank, they picked up the trail again. He could smell wood smoke now and heard a dog barking and guessed there was a house nearby. Seemed odd, her living up here. He’d heard the winters in the Colorado Rockies were brutal. Not what he would expect from a woman like her.
Her. Matty? Millicent? Margaret? He almost felt bad that he couldn’t remember the lass’s name.
“You, Angus! Shut your yap!”
Startled, he looked around, then realized the old man was talking to a dog that came tearing out of the brush, barking and snarling.
Ash glowered down at the wee beast menacing the toes of his boots. It was a pathetic excuse for a dog. More like a ball of hair sprouting improbably large, pointed ears, a tightly curled tail, and four tiny feet. And she’d named it Angus? Bugger that.
“Best hope she’s in a forgiving mood,” the old man warned as they stepped out of the trees into a clearing.
Instead of a house, he saw an odd-looking wagon parked beside a smoldering fire. Not a canvas-covered buckboard, but more like an ambulance wagon, with hard sides and small glass windows and crates strapped on top. There was even a smokestack rising out of the bowed wooden roof, and a wee proper back door opening onto fold-down steps. A gypsy wagon, by the look of it, with a black tent-like structure attached to one side, and bold lettering above the windows that read “Photographs, Tintypes, and Cartes de Visite” in fancy filigreed script. Two mules stopped grazing to watch them, and the woman from the creek stood by the rear step—fully dressed, more’s the pity.
The sight of her sent a shock of recognition through Ash, followed by a flash of anger so intense it made his head pound even worse.
Finally.
The dog ran toward her, its stub of a tail wagging furiously. He debated whistling for Tricks, just to show her what a real dog looked like, but decided not to further complicate what already promised to be a difficult situation. But with each step his anger built.
“Who do you have there, Mr. Satterwhite?” she called, lifting a hand to shade her eyes from the noon sun.
“A spying—”
“Who do you think, you daft woman?” he cut in, no longer able to hold his fury in check. “Is this any way to greet—”
“I warned you,” the old man muttered behind him.
“What?” He turned, saw the barrel swinging toward him, and ducked too late.
“Good heavens, Mr. Satterwhite!” Maddie Wallace cried, running to where the stranger lay facedown in the grass. “What have you done?”
“He was ogling you. Want me to shoot him?”
“Heavens, no! Oh, dear, he’s bleeding.”
“Barely.”
Maddie sighed in irritation. She really must do something about Mr. Satterwhite. This was the third time he had accosted a complete stranger. Didn’t he understand that she was here to take photographs, not make enemies? Shooing the dog aside, she bent over the still form. “Help me roll him over, Mr. Satterwhite, so I can see if he’s still alive.”
The injured man was quite tall and so sturdily built it took all their strength to get him onto his back. As soon as Maddie saw his face, she jumped back, almost tripping over Angus.
Good heavens! What was he doing here?
Her heart started beating so hard she felt suddenly light-headed and half nauseated. Then, seeing the blood from the small cut on the man’s temple, she got herself in hand and inched forward again. “Oh, dear, Mr. Satterwhite. Have you killed him?”
The old man nudged the prone figure with the toe of his crusty boot. “Probably not.”
“Probably?”
“I think his chest is moving.”
“You think?”
Satterwhite reared back, his crooked eyes round beneath his bushy white brows. “Don’t go hysterical on me, missy. The dirty letch was spying on you. He deserved what he got.” The bushy brows lowered. A speculative look came onto his face. “What do you care? You know him?”
Maddie had a hard time catching her breath. Nothing seemed to be working right. Her head felt like it was spinning off her neck. “I th-think so. I think he’s my h-husband.”
“Your husband? The dead one?”
Maddie nodded, unable to take her eyes off the face of the man lying so still at her feet. He looked like her husband. What little she remembered, anyway. The same strong nose and uncompromising chin. Deep-set eyes. She resisted the impulse to pry up a lid to check the color. No one had eyes the same mossy green as her husband’s. But that scar cutting through one dark brow and giving it an upward, almost quizzical slant was new. And instead of glossy sablecolored hair, this man was turning gray, except for the dark brows and lashes and the stubble of beard shadowing his sun-browned face. And yet, that widow’s peak, and those strong hands, and the long line of his neck . . .
Dizziness assailed her. Why was he here? What had possessed him to come looking for her after all this time? Angus, why? Her chest tightened. She opened her mouth and gulped in air, but still couldn’t seem to fill her lungs.
“Best sit down, missy. You’re looking right pale.”
Moving on wooden legs, she allowed Mr. Satterwhite to lead her around the back of the wagon to the chair beside the coals of that morning’s fire. As she sagged onto the cushioned seat, she grabbed at the gnarly hand on her shoulder. “Do please check, Mr. Satterwhite. I m-must know if you’ve killed him.”
“By the bones of Saint Andrew! O’ course he dinna kill me!”
Maddie gaped at the figure staggering around the back of the wagon, one hand braced against the ladder rail support, the other wiping blood from his brow. Lifting a leg, he shook it furiously, trying to dislodge her snarling dog from his boot. “And call off your rat before I snap his bluidy neck!”
“Angus, hush!”
“The hell I will, Madam!”
“No, the other one.”
“The other one?” Mr. Satterwhite looked around. “How many husbands you got?”
“Oh, dear. I-I think I’m going to faint.”
“Not until I get some answers, Madam!”
But everything was already swirling away.
Holy hell.
Ash lunged, catching her just before she toppled into the fire. Fending off the yapping rat, he lowered her to the ground. “Tie up that damned dog,” he ordered the old man. “And get some water!”
By all the saints, what was she thinking, fainting like that?
“Is she dead?”
“No, she isna dead! She fainted.” Or so he hoped. Uneasy with the old man hovering somewhere behind him with a loaded gun in his hands, Ash glanced over his shoulder. “Scatterwell, is it?”
“Satterwhite. Wilfred Satterwhite. Some call me Walleyed Willy, but if you do, I’ll shoot you. Maybe fifteen times, since this here’s a repeater.”
Ignoring that, Ash turned back to the woman. “What’s her name?”
“She’s your wife.”
“Her name, damnit!”
“Missus Wallace.”
“Hell, I know that. What’s her Christian name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were courting her, were you no’?”
“You were married to her. And what’s your name?”
“Angus Wallace. No, Ashby.”
“Which?”
“Both.”
“Named her dog after you. Makes sense to me.”
Realizing he was grinding his teeth, Ash made himself stop. “Get the water. And either lock up that bluidy dog or shoot it.”
The old man snatched up the wad of fur and stomped off, muttering under his breath.
Ash studied the woman. His wife. He recognized her, yet she seemed different from the woman he’d married. Older. Prettier. More . . . rounded. He sank back on his heels, distancing himself from both the woman and the disconcerting realization that even as angry as he was with her, he could still feel an attraction. A clear sign he’d been in these mountains too long.
He remembered her as being sweet and pretty. Tractable. Able to follow orders and always smiling, with round pink cheeks, good teeth, and a cheerful aspect even when his father had given her his best scowl.
But he could see time had aged her, replacing those round girlish cheeks with clearly defined cheekbones and sculpting a stronger line to her jaw. Stubborn, almost. The wide mouth was the same—he remembered that well enough—and that arch in her brows that always gave her a look of wide-eyed innocence.
Innocence? Ash almost laughed aloud. How innocent could a woman be if she would willingly desert her husband, toss her marriage aside, and run off to some foreign country just to make tintype pictures?
Okay. That might not be fair of him. He had seen her work, and it was more art than photograph. The woman had an eye.
“Here’s the water, your majesty.” The old man stomped toward him, dribbling a trail of liquid from the long-handled ladle he held in his outstretched hand. “But I’d advise you not to throw it on her.”
Ash took the ladle, realized he couldna force an unconscious person to drink, debated disregarding Satterwhite’s advice and throwing it in her face anyway, then drank it himself. It was so cold it burned going down. “Get my horse,” he ordered, handing back the ladle.
“Get him yourself.”
“And you’ll tend her while I’m gone?”
Satterwhite went to get his horse.
“Mind the dog,” Ash called after him, then turned back to the woman, uncertain what to do. He wanted her to wake up so he could yell at her. He wanted her to stop lying there so pale and still. It worried him. Reaching out, he tapped her cheek with his index finger. “Wake up.”
She ignored him. Typical female tactic.
He tried to see in her features the young woman who had caught his eye six years ago when the Tenth Royal Hussars had ridden through her village on the way to their new posting in Ireland. She’d become a beautiful woman since then. Older, but better. Unlike him, she showed no gray in her dark auburn hair, and her face wasna marked by seventeen years of hard soldiering. Granted, he was thirty-four now, and quite a bit older than she was. Ten, eleven years, if he remembered right, which would make her somewhere in her early twenties. Still young enough to produce heirs, which, after all, was why he was here.
Duty. Would he ever be free of it?
“Is-Is it truly you, Angus?”
Looking down, he saw that Molly, or Mildred, or whatever her name was, was awake and gawking up at him. “It is, Madam. But it’s Ashby now.” He was still having trouble getting accustomed to that change.
“Where’s your mustache?”
On reflex, he fingered his bare upper lip, which had once sported the flaring mustache that was the mark of the Tenth Hussars. “I shaved it off.”
She slapped him hard across the cheek.
Rearing back onto his heels, he blinked at her in shock. “What was that for?”
“For being a twit, among other things.” Laboriously, she pushed herself into a half-reclining posture, her elbows braced behind her.
He tried not to notice how that pose pulled the fabric of her dress tight across her breasts. Wait. Had she called him a twit?
“I see you’re still the vexing, high-handed man you were six years ago when you ran off like the dog you are. Oh, do move away, Angus, or Ashby, or whatever you call yourself now. You’re crowding me.”
“I ran off? If you’ll recall, Madam, I returned to my regiment. As ordered. What might your excuse be?”
“Desertion. Yours. Of me. Where’s Mr. Satterwhite?”
“Choking the dog, I hope.”
“Then you’ll have to do.” She extended a hand in his direction.
He could see it was shaking, and was gratified to note that she was as unsettled by this meeting as he was. He was also relieved that she was starting to get her color back. He had a low tolerance for fainting females.
“Well? Are you going to help me up? Or have you forgotten how to be a gentleman?”
He refrained from flinging her against a tree. “I dinna desert you,” he said with rigid calmness once she was back in the chair. “I left you in the care of my family at our ancestral home.”
“Ancestral home? That pile of rubbish?”
He almost reached for the saber he no longer wore. “Madam,” he managed through clenched teeth. “Northbridge Kirk has been the seat of the Earls of Kirkwell for nigh onto five generations. It is no’ a pile of rubbish.”
“They’ve repaired the skirt wall, then?”
He was momentarily struck dumb by how much he wanted to shake her, throttle her, wipe that smirk off her face. Get his hands on her any way he could.
She dismissed his silence with a wave of her hand. “As I said. A pile of rubbish. Have you come for a divorce?”
Caught off guard by the abrupt change in subject, it took him a moment to find an appropriate answer. “As appealing as that notion might be, Madam,” he snapped, “I have come to take you back.”
Berkley Sensation titles by Kaki Warner
Runaway Brides Novels
HEARTBREAK CREEK
Blood Rose Trilogy
PIECES OF SKY
OPEN COUNTRY
CHASING THE SUN