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Authors: Laurie Grant

Tags: #Romance, #Historical Romance, #Nineteenth Century, #American West, #Protector

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BOOK: The Duchess and Desperado
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He stared at her, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. The gloriously golden, beautiful woman before him thought anything so minor as putting spectacles on could make her ugly? “Ma‘am, I don't know what a bluestocking is, but no, ma'am, you've got it all wrong, if that's what you think,” he said, before he could wonder if what he was saying was too forward for a bodyguard to be expressing to his employer. “You're way too pretty for a little bit o' wire an' glass to make you ugly.”
She blinked. “You're...you're very kind, Morgan.”
“I'm just tellin' the truth, Duchess.”
For a long moment they just stared at each other, awareness humming between them. Then she said, “Shall we unpack our luncheon? All this fresh air makes me rather hungry. And what shall I do with Trafalgar, tie her to a tree? I'm afraid she isn't trained as yours is,” she added, referring to the fact that Morgan had just dropped the reins over his mount's head when he dismounted, “ground-tying” him.
“I have some hobbles,” Morgan said, reaching in his saddlebags for the pair of attached, braided-leather loops that encircled a horse's fetlocks and kept it from straying too far.
After hobbling the mare, he helped spread the large checked cloth out over the grass and then helped the duchess unpack the food. The cook at the Grand Central had sent cold chicken, biscuits, an apple pie, cheese and a corked bottle of wine—though she had apparently forgotten they would need a corkscrew for the wine. Sarah stared at the bottle, crestfallen. “I suppose we can always wash the food down with the water in your canteen....”
“Don't give up yet,” Morgan told her with a grin, charmed by the way an errant breeze had loosed several strands of her chignon. Now those golden tendrils caressed her neck—as he'd like his lips to be doing, he realized with an inner groan. He reached inside one of his boots and brought out the knife he always carried with him.
He saw her eyes widen at the sight, then went to work trying to impale the cork on the narrow knife blade.
To his dismay, the best he managed to do was push the cork down into the wine, but she just laughed as she saw the cork bobbing around in it. “Don't worry, it'll taste just fine,” she said as she held out her glass. Then she waited, and finally said, “Aren't you going to have some, Morgan?”
“Um...maybe I'd better just drink the water, Duchess,” he muttered. Wine was just what he didn't need, out here alone with the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
“Don't be silly,” she said, shrugging out of her riding jacket and leaning back on her elbows, so that her starched white blouse gleamed in the sun. “Unless you're abstaining for...ah...religious reasons? There's a whole bottle here, and we might as well not let it go to waste. We shan't be able to bring what's left back with us, now that we can't use the cork anymore.”
He had to smile at the idea of himself abstaining for religious reasons. The abstinence pledge he had taken at the Baptist church as a youth seemed a century ago.
“All right, Duchess, I reckon I'll have a little, then.”
But you've already gone to my head.
Chapter Ten
 
 
“I
vow I cannot eat another morsel!” Sarah said, falling back on her extended elbows in mock exhaustion. Thank God Celia had not been awake to insist she wear a corset! She'd long ago taken her spectacles off, feeling no need to see anything beyond Morgan.
“It's good to see a woman enjoy her food, not just peck at it like a little bird,” Morgan countered with a grin.
“Enjoying one's food is one thing, devouring it like a plowman is quite another,” she informed him, trying to sound prim and failing utterly. It was too glorious a day, and she was too happy to be out in the fresh air with the sun beating down on her back, alone with this dangerously attractive American man, for her primness to be convincing.
Morgan had relaxed, too, his face losing its expression of constant, wary vigilance. He looked open, approachable, and, despite the night's growth of beard shadowing his cheeks, too damnably appealing to a woman who was supposed to be in love with another man.
Somehow she couldn't manage to condemn herself at the moment, though, for her fascination with Morgan Calhoun. Maybe the wine had exacerbated the feeling. She probably ought not to drink any more of it. But whether she was tipsy or not, right now her “understanding” with Thierry seemed a distant, unreal thing....
“There's more pie,” Morgan observed, mischief dancing in his green eyes. He had taken his pistol out of its holster and laid it on a rock within arm's reach, and was lying on his side as he polished off the last chicken leg. All Morgan needed was a laurel wreath on his head and a toga on that long, lean body, and he could pass for a Roman senator rechning at the banquet, she decided, and chuckled at the thought.
“What's so funny?”
She couldn't very well tell him what she had been imagining, so she said, “Oh, nothing...everything. It's just so...
liberating
to be up here so far away from schedules and protocol and Uncle Frederick's nagging.” And those threatening messages, she wanted to add, but she didn't want to spoil the pleasant day by mentioning it. Besides, she could see by the shadow that flitted across his eyes that he had the same thought, and she silently blessed him for not saying it either.
“Duchess, you haven't said—where does your tour take us after Denver?” Morgan asked.
She smiled, grateful for his implied promise to continue as her bodyguard for the rest of the tour. “When we leave Denver in three days, I'd planned to take advantage of the new transcontinental railroad to go to California, see the Pacific and San Francisco and so forth, and then travel back through Arizona and New Mexico Territories—I'm particularly eager to see Santa Fe,” she said, thinking of her planned rendezvous with Thierry in that city. “Then we'll just travel overland until we can connect with a railroad that will take us into Texas.”
He was thoughtful. “Well, Duchess, that last part might be a tad difficult. You have to understand that the War between the States slowed down railroad buildin' in Texas. Maybe it would be best to take the train all the way back east from California, 'cause I don't think there's a railroad connection close enough to New Mexico to do you any good.”
“Oh, but I couldn't leave without seeing Santa Fe! I've heard so much about it—isn't it supposed to be one of the oldest cities in your country? Besides, our plans are all set to sail from Galveston.”
He shrugged. “Okay, but you're probably going to have to take a stagecoach clear from California into Texas. That'll sure be a long, uncomfortable trip,” he warned her.
“I'd have to hire the entire vehicle, of course, since there are five of us,” she mused. “Lord, the thought of traveling in such a confined space with Uncle Frederick for long distances!” She shuddered, then had another thought. “But I needn't stay inside the coach the entire day—I could spend much of it riding alongside the coach on Trafalgar.”
His face was skeptical. “You haven't seen the country, Duchess. It's rocky and dry, and frequently hilly. I really don't know if a highbred horse like your mare is up to it....”
“But Trafalgar has wonderful endurance!” she protested, stung at the thought that he was criticizing her beloved thoroughbred. “She's carried me over fences all day when we foxhunt! I'll make sure she's freshly shod, and we'll carry oats for her—she'll be fine, you'll see!”
“This trip isn't a foxhunt,” he told her bluntly. “It's wild country, full of Indians and outlaws, as well as four-legged varmints like cougars. Even a train trip isn't without hazards, but if you're determined to leave the rails, I'm going to insist you hire half a dozen other well-armed men—”
“You're going to insist?” she repeated coolly, arching a brow in her best haughty-duchess fashion.
He didn't seem the least intimidated by her hauteur. “Yeah, I'm gonna insist,” he repeated, “or we'll part company at the train tracks. It'd be plumb foolish to head across such country with only me to protect you and your party. And if you plan to ride part of the way, you'd be smart to trade that ladylike sidesaddle in on a stock saddle and ride astride.”
“Ride
astride?
Uncle Frederick would be scandalized,” she said with a grin, trying to lighten a conversation that had become too deadly serious.
“And you'd be smarter still to stick that pretty yellow hair of yours under a hat,” he persisted.
“Oh? And why is that?” Sarah demanded, tiring of the steely authority in his tone. She disliked being the novice in anything.
“Because Indians especially prize yellow hair,” he told her plainly. “They'd love to have you as a captive, or maybe they'd just take your scalp.”
“I believe you're trying to scare me, Mr. Calhoun,” she remarked, keeping her voice light, unwilling to reveal just how much his words truly had frightened her.
He surprised her by saying, “Maybe I am, Duchess, but I haven't exaggerated a thing. I want you to realize this isn't gonna be some carefree jaunt across a big park like I think you're picturing.”
Then she remembered all the times he had been right about things. This was his country, not hers, after all, and he was bound to know the realities of the terrain better than she. As much as she disliked being told what to do, she reminded herself she was paying him to keep her safe, so it would be wise to heed his advice.
“All right,” she said stiffly, looking out over the valley below so she wouldn't have to see the triumph in his green eyes. “When we leave the train, I will be guided by what you say.”
“You look a mite riled, Duchess,” he said.
“I? Of course I'm not riled, Mr. Calhoun,” she insisted, damning those all-seeing green eyes. “I merely dislike playing the ingenue.”
He looked puzzled. “If that's the same as bein' a tenderfoot, heck, you can't help it. We're all new at something. Why, can you imagine
me
meetin' the queen of England? Reckon I'd look right silly doin' that, 'less someone told me how to go about doin' it proper.”
She couldn't suppress an unduchesslike hoot of laughter at the image of Morgan Calhoun, dressed like a Western desperado, being presented to the plump monarch at court. Victoria would faint dead away with shock when Morgan offered her his hand instead of bowing to her—if she hadn't already swooned just from the sight of him!
“There, you see? I'd look like a big ol' fish outa water, wouldn't I?” he said with a grin. Then, as she continued to laugh, he pretended to be offended. “Hey, it's not that funny. It's not like I couldn't learn those highfalutin' manners if I
wanted
to.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, Morgan,” she said, “you always know just how to tease me out of taking myself too seriously, don't you? You're such a dear,” she said, and before she could give herself time to think, she leaned down across the blanket and kissed him on the cheek.
He looked startled, and his green eyes widened from their usual narrowness for a moment as he propped himself on one elbow and stared at her. She saw him grow pale, then flush with color on his high cheekbones.
She had embarrassed him! “I'm sorry, I'm afraid impulsiveness is one of my biggest faults,” she said, reaching out to touch that rough cheek as if to wipe away the kiss.
Morgan's eyes had gone a deeper, darker green, and his smile put her in mind of a great hunting cat who has suddenly spotted his prey. His gaze shifted to her lips. “The only reason to be sorry, Duchess, is if you aren't gonna continue bein' impulsive like that,” he said.
Afterward she remembered a split second of fear as she realized how utterly alone she was with this man out here in the wilderness, how completely vulnerable she was to his will. She watched as his mouth came closer, not to her cheek, but to her
lips.
And then he was kissing her, and the world swam away in a blur, and with it her fear, as she began to return his kiss, allowing him to deepen the pressure as he slanted his mouth across hers. Sarah could feel the hunger in him. As if in a dream, she opened her mouth to him and felt his tongue sweep inside, claiming her mouth as his possession, and instead of alarming her, it only made her want more. She felt a rising of her own hunger, a hunger that until this moment she hadn't known she owned, but she didn't know how to satisfy the heat building inside her. Boldly, as if she were a woman experienced in passion, she allowed her tongue to tangle with his, and was rewarded with a growl of satisfaction from Morgan.
The sound excited her, made her want to get closer still, but it was impossible as long as she was leaning down into his kiss, still propped up one arm. So she put her other arm around his neck and allowed herself to drift downward, still kissing Morgan, until they were lying face-to-face.
“Oh, Duchess,” he groaned, and kissed her again. “You taste like champagne.”
“It's Sarah—
Sarah
,” she whispered between kisses, and then his lips began to nibble at her ear, her neck.... The hand that had splayed out over the small of her back was inching around her rib cage now, but the advance didn't frighten her. It only served to stoke the flames building within her at a frightening pace.
“Sarah,” he repeated, the way he said her name a caress in itself. Then his hand closed over her breast, cupping it, and she gasped at the unfamiliar jolt shooting through her, like liquid fire burning its way straight to the center of her being.
“Oh,
Sarah,”
he murmured as his thumb found her nipple unerringly through the thick cloth of her bodice and the chemise she wore, and made lazy circles over it that made her moan and clutch at him, wanting she knew not what.
But he knew, it seemed. He unbuttoned the bodice of her riding habit, and then he was suckling her breast right through the thin lawn of her Belgian lace-edged chemise. The feeling of his warm mouth pulling at the exquisitely tender flesh made her want to cry out loud, but she couldn't seem to produce more than a whimper.
With his free hand he pulled her closer against him, and suddenly she felt the hard ridge of flesh straining against the confines of his trousers and the skirt of her riding habit.
“Morgan,
please,”
she begged, and didn't know if she was pleading with him to continue or stop the delicious torture.
Again, Morgan knew. He pushed his pelvis against her, all the while continuing to stroke her breast, and then all at once she knew what she wanted, too. This man. Making love to her. Inside her, and as soon as possible.
“Yes, Morgan. Yes,
please.
Oh, please hurry,” she moaned.
“Your wish is my command, Duchess,” he said, and she giggled and smiled up at him, only to go still as she felt him reach down for the hem of her skirt and begin to inch it upward.
Just then a twig snapped, and one of the horses nickered. Sarah had barely registered the sound before Morgan was rolling away from her, and in one smooth motion grabbing the pistol he had laid on the rock.
“Morgan, what on earth...” Even as she spoke, he was lunging between her and the noise, and at the same time bringing the Colt up to fire.
But he did not shoot. “It's just a damn deer.”
As she strained to focus on the brown shape a few yards away, the deer reversed its direction and bounded back down the slope.
Morgan's back sagged and he raked a hand through his dark hair. “Damn it all to hell.”
“And what did you think it was?” Sarah, trembling, dazed, asked. Her body was still clamoring for more of him, yet all had changed for him. She could see it in his rigid posture.
He lowered his head, looking everywhere but at her. “I don't know...something dangerous...like maybe the man who's been trying to kill you. My job is to protect you, but here I was, tryin' to...” He seemed unable to finish his sentence.
BOOK: The Duchess and Desperado
10.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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