Lady Blue (3 page)

Harmony stared at her sister in disbelief. Despite her desire to control her temper, and knowing it would further worsen her lot, the embers of her anger fanned into a flame.

“You should mind
your
tongue, Agatha, before you cut yourself with it.”

Agatha gasped then seemed to recover herself. Her already rigid spine straightened another notch. “You will learn not to speak to me like that,” she said in a curiously flat, quiet voice. “You will learn a great many things, sister dear, not all of them pleasant. I would suggest you not taunt me again.
I
am in control of your life now.”

The retort died on Harmony’s lips. A harsh, cold light shone from her sister’s pale gray eyes, and a sliver of fear worked its way into Harmony’s breast. “I … I’m sorry, Agatha,” Harmony forced herself to respond. She really did not wish to antagonize her sister. A joyless, boring existence was one thing. To have to endure Agatha’s animosity for the next three years was quite another. She was wrong to have provoked her. “My remark was uncalled for.”

“Yes, it was,” she said tartly. Somewhat mollified, Agatha relaxed back into her seat. But Harmony, apparently, was not done bedeviling her.
“Now
what are you doing?”

“Opening the window, Agatha.”

“I can see that. Close it at once.”

Harmony ignored her. She cocked her head, as if listening. “Don’t you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Hoofbeats,” Harmony replied. “Coming up from behind us.”

“Close that window, I said!” Agatha brushed at the heavy black material of her skirt. “The dust will ruin our clo—”

Agatha was abruptly silenced by the roar of a gun. She screamed as Harmony slammed the window shut. The carriage lurched to a halt, nearly unseating both women.

H
armony was the first to right herself. She helped her shaken sister back into her seat. And heard a shout. A strange thrill ran up her spine.

“Dear Lord,” Agatha whimpered. “Dear Lord, what was that?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

“Don’t open that door, Harmony! Don’t go out there! What are you doing?”

“Stay where you are, Agatha. And please … be quiet.” Harmony opened the coach door and froze.

It wasn’t possible. She was in Victorian England, not in America’s wild and only half-tamed West. Yet there he was before her, like a figure from the cover of the dime novels she loved.

The kerchief was pulled up just below his eyes. A casual, open-necked white cotton shirt was tucked into a pair of tight buckskin breeches. He sat easily, almost lazily, astride his horse and waved his pistol first at the coachman, whose trembling arms were raised to the sky, then at the women inside the coach.

“Good morning, ladies.” Gun held steady, he slid from his mount and approached the carriage. “If you would be so good as to step outside, please.”

A mewling sound issued from Agatha’s throat.

Harmony merely stared. A jumble of strange emotions warred within her breast, effectively preventing coherent thought.

Never had she seen such black, black eyes. Almost as black as the long, straight, silky hair that glinted with auburn lights where it fell across his shoulders. For an instant, she had the insane desire to pull the kerchief down and see the rest of the face below those alarming eyes.

“If you please, ladies. I haven’t got all day.” As casually as a gentleman might wave a glove, he gestured with the gun.

It wasn’t possible; it couldn’t be happening. It had to be a dream. That was it. She had fallen asleep in the carriage and this was happening only in her subconscious.

But if so, why did she suddenly feel fingers around her wrist? And why did Agatha’s piercing shrieks actually hurt her ears?

The answer sent a chill through her entire body to the very marrow of her bones.

Then the hand clasping her wrist gave a tug, and without further delay, Harmony stepped from the coach. She pulled the quaking, whimpering Agatha behind her. She’d grown up with guns. She knew what they could do.

“Thank you, ladies. Now, if you would throw all your valuables on the ground in front of you.”

Time came to a standstill. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Harmony almost laughed out loud at herself. Of course there was something wrong! But, perhaps she had misheard?

No. The black eyes snapped merrily, perfect accompaniment to the amusement she had heard in his voice. She glanced quickly behind her and saw her sister, pale and shaking, remove her gloves and hurriedly tug the rings from her fingers.

“Wait, Agatha. Stop.”

Agatha made a choking noise. The gunman raised his eyebrows.

“Get back in the carriage,” Harmony commanded.

Terror-stricken, Agatha moved to obey. The bandit once again leveled his gun.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Harmony stepped in front of her sister. “Get into the coach, I said. He won’t shoot an unarmed woman.”

Puling, Agatha climbed into the coach. Harmony concentrated all her attention on the lean figure in the close-fitting deerskin breeches, heart thudding erratically. From the corner of her eye she saw the terrified coachman perched on the edge of his seat, arms still raised, and knew what an enormous risk she was taking.

Yet now that the initial shock was over and her nerves had calmed, she was certain she intuited no threat from the man with the gun. She felt nothing but an odd sense of excitement. These were things she knew, things she was familiar with. A beautiful, well-cared-for horse and a well-oiled gun.

The pistol moved one more time. It was pointed straight at Harmony’s heart.

“All right. Have it your way.
You
throw down your valuables.”

Reacting only on instinct, feeling nothing but the strange, urgent stirring in her breast, Harmony stepped forward. “I’m sorry. But I have nothing to give you.”

“Does this mean I have to search you?”

From inside the coach, Harmony heard her sister’s gasp. She ignored it. Defiantly, she stared straight into the snapping black eyes and lifted her arms.

“Please. Be my guest.”

For a long moment the two stood and stared at one another. Only Agatha’s uncontrollable whimpering disturbed the silence. Despite the sounds of fear, the very situation itself, Harmony knew that the gunman smiled beneath his mask.

Abruptly, the bandit stepped back and lowered his pistol. “All right, young lady, but I’d like you to remove your gloves anyway, and then we shall see what we shall see.”

“This is unconscionable,” Harmony snapped, then immediately had to smile. She had sounded just like her sister.

“You have the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen,” the laughing-eyed bandit said.

Harmony abruptly sobered. What on earth was she thinking, playing games with a man holding a gun on her? She wasn’t surprised to hear Agatha make a sound like she was being strangled.

Now she was certain the gunman smiled. His eyes not only sparkled but crinkled at the corners. A measure of her bravado returned until he cocked the pistol and aimed it at her midsection.

“Gloves, please. Now.”

“Harmony!” Agatha yelped.

She tugged at the fingers of her left-hand glove and pulled it off, then removed the other as well. A genuine sliver of fear worked its way into her breast and a deep feeling of regret formed a painful lump in her throat. The sapphire ring was small and held no sentimental value, being an heirloom from some unknown, distant relative, but the larger diamond had been a beloved gift from her father. She made no move, however, to remove either ring until the gunman nodded toward her left hand.

“I think I’ll take that one,” he said. “A token, we’ll call it. A sapphire to remind me of the courageous little lady in blue. And her sapphire eyes.”

Harmony held her breath, scarcely daring to hope. Slowly, she worked the ring from her finger and handed it to him.

The bandit continued to stare at Harmony over his mask. The ring lay on his open palm. Abruptly, he closed his fist and shoved the gem into his pocket. He backed toward his horse and flourished his pistol at the driver.

“Turn around and pick up the reins,” he ordered. “As soon as this little lady is back inside, you continue on, nice and slow, to wherever you were going.” Eyes still on the driver, he gathered his horse’s reins and, with one smooth, graceful motion, sprang astride his mount. “Go on and climb inside, young lady.”

Harmony did as she was instructed. She heard the crack of the coachman’s whip the moment she had closed the door behind her and sat down quickly as the carriage surged forward. By the time she was able to open the window and look outside, the bandit had disappeared. The incident was apparently over. She and Agatha had survived and she had even, miraculously, come away with her diamond ring. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, her sister’s sudden attack took her completely by surprise.

“How
dare
you?!” Agatha hissed. “How dare you endanger our lives by conducting yourself in such a brazen fashion?”

Harmony could only stare, mouth agape, at her sister.

“Don’t you realize that dreadful man could have killed us both? Don’t you?”

Harmony gripped the edge of her seat with white knuckles as the coach swayed and jolted down the road, finding it difficult to believe such a thin and shriveled body could contain so much venom.

“Agatha, what’s the matter with you?” she asked incredulously. “Not only did he not harm us, he took only a single ring, my sapphire, when he could have taken—”

“Shut up!” Agatha screeched. Eyes straining from her head, she leaned forward threateningly, as if she might fly at her sister’s throat. “You dare to defend that …
criminal?
You try to tell me just because, by the grace of God, we were released uninjured, this was only a little excitement?”

“I said no such thing!” Harmony snapped, incredulity turning to anger. Even as she said the words, however, she realized how close to the truth Agatha was. She might have smiled then, despite her fury, remembering the amused black eyes above the mask.

But it appeared her sister was going into a swoon.

Alarmed, Harmony watched Agatha sink limply back into her seat. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

“Agatha!” Harmony clasped one of her sister’s pale, dry hands and chafed it.

“Don’t you touch me!” Agatha recoiled violently and snatched her hand away. “Don’t touch me, you brazen hussy!”

Eyes wide, Harmony shrank away from her sister.

“And don’t you give me that innocent look! I saw the way you behaved, daring that man …
daring
him to touch you! As if you
wanted
his filthy hands all over you!”

“Shut up, Agatha!” Harmony flared at last, pushed over the edge by her sister’s perverse tirade.

“Dear Lord, protect me.” Agatha squeezed her eyes tightly shut and folded her hands as if in prayer. “Protect me from this devil’s child.”

Harmony took a long, deep breath and tried to calm the war of emotions in her breast. What was wrong with her sister? Why such overreaction?

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answers. Something very dark lurked at the edges of her thoughts. She wanted to cast no light on it.

The coach made a sharp turn to the left and Agatha’s whimpers began anew. “Home. Oh, thank God, we’re home.” She pressed a handkerchief to her nostrils and sniffed loudly.

The menacing darkness returned to cast its pall over Harmony as she turned her attention to the scenery outside the coach. The open, sunny parkland had disappeared and they had entered a thickly wooded area that stretched away on either side as far as the eye could see. So dense were the ancient, twisted trees Harmony could not even see any light between them. She felt as if they had arrived in an alien world.

Nothing stirred in the dark hush of the forest. The only sounds were the clatter of the coach and the rhythmic thud of the horses’ hooves on the hard-packed dirt road. Sadly, Harmony realized how fitting it was that her sister lived in a place like this.

The carriage slowed, passed through a break in the trees, and turned into a wide, gravel drive. A vague chill shivered down Harmony’s spine as an immense, sprawling stone house loomed into view. Its cold gray walls were almost completely obscured by encroaching ivy. Two massive stone lions stood sentry on either side of the front steps, as if there to guard the virtues, as well as the property, of their prim, virginal mistress.

The robbery attempt seemed years away, almost as if she had dreamed the incident entirely, so overwhelming was the oppressive atmosphere that now surrounded her and pressed on her as if it had living weight. She tried to revive the memory of the bandit, tried to hold on to something that was real, and warm. But she could grasp and hold nothing.

The morning’s event was likely the most exciting thing that was ever going to happen to her again. The black-eyed bandit was probably the last real man she’d ever see.

The three years stretching in front of her seemed an eternity. She had not come to a green and fertile island nation and the arms of a loving, if long lost sister, but to a parched and barren desert of grief, hostility, and loneliness.

M
y name is Mrs. Rutledge.”

Harmony looked up from the hard, straight-backed bench on which she had perched. Though older, and gray, Agatha’s housekeeper looked astonishingly similar to her mistress. She had the same thin, dry appearance; her face was long and her features small. Her expression seemed perpetually disapproving. Harmony remembered her manners and rose to her feet.

“I’m Harmony Sim—”

“I know who you are. Follow me, please.”

Harmony was completely put off by the housekeeper’s manner, and had half a mind to say she’d stay right where she was. But when she glanced around again, she decided that following Mrs. Rutledge was, by far, the better idea.

The parlor in which she had been told to wait, while a nearly prostrate Agatha was escorted to her room, was dank and airless. Even in the near dark she could see that everything, aside from the ponderous mahogany furniture, appeared to be maroon, from the faded oriental rug to the thick velvet drapes pulled snugly across the tall windows. It was the most cheerless space she had ever been in and she wondered, grimly, what her own room would look like. Reluctantly, she followed the retreating housekeeper.