Lady X's Cowboy (20 page)

But she had other plans.  As the driver tried to steady his gun, she reached out to grab his hand and held it tight, her face resolute and her eyes narrowed.

“Let go!” the driver bellowed, trying to shake her free.  She wouldn’t release him, but she couldn’t pry his fingers off the pistol, either.  So Will watched, stunned, as she sunk her sharp little teeth into the back of his hand.  Screaming, Pryce’s man dropped the gun, and it disappeared behind them in the darkness.

But the driver was enraged.  He pulled his hand free and sent it across her face, throwing her back and nearly flinging her from the cab.  Thank God she had the presence of mind to grab the frame of the open window.  Her boot heels scraped against the floor of the cab, trying to gain purchase, but the wheels clattered over rocks and branches and sent the hansom bouncing.  Olivia dangled over the speeding ground beneath her, gripping hard.  Any second, she could fall and be crushed by the cab, or slam against a tree. 

Will wanted so badly to knock the driver’s teeth down his throat, smash his face in until he couldn’t breathe anymore, kill the bastard who’d hit Olivia.  But he had to make a choice: go for the driver or get her to safety.

So he gave Pryce’s man one hard punch to the ribs to wind him, and then brought his horse up next to Olivia, who struggled to draw herself upright.

“Get on!”  He reached his arm out for her.

She judged the distance between his galloping horse and the hurtling cab with an expression of uncertainty.

“Trust me,” he said. 

And then she let him put his arm around her waist as she looped her own arms around his neck.  Thank the lord she was a slim thing.  He pulled her up and out of the cab, then across the withers of the horse so she rested against his chest.

The cab sped forward as Will drew the horse away.

“What are you doing?” she cried.  “We should go after him!”

“I got two of us ridin’ bareback,” Will said, determined, “chasin’ after someone on a carriage, who may have another gun.”  He shook his head.  “Nope.  I ain’t going to risk you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she insisted.  “That man should be caught.”

Will slowed the horse to a canter.  The cab clattered away into the distance. 

“He’ll be back,” he said grimly.  The horse trotted, then walked, and finally stopped.  “His work ain’t finished.  But next time I’ll be ready for him.  And as for you,” he added, sudden fury in his voice as he turned his head to face her, “what the hell were you thinkin’?  Grabbin’ his gun like that?”

“He was
shooting
at you, Will,” she said hotly.  Even in the evening dark, he saw the bright, resolute spark in her eyes. “I couldn’t let him do that without trying to help.”   

“Next time don’t worry about me.  Take care of yourself.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped.  “Of course I worry about you.”

He might have appreciated that last statement a hell of a lot more if they had been someplace else.  He might have gotten considerable enjoyment from having her pressed so close against him, her arms around his shoulders, her face and delicious lips so near his own, except for a few minor problems.

“Where the hell are we?”  He looked around.

She also gazed around.  They were in the middle of some kind of forest or woods, surrounded by trees he didn’t recognize, and the sounds of animals he had never heard.  Dusk was over, and night had fallen.

Olivia began to laugh.  At first, just a small chuckle, but then it began to spread through her until her body shook and sent vibrations through his own. 

“We’ve managed to find the last wild place in Kent,” she finally managed to gasp through her laughter.  There was the faintest note of delayed fear in her laughter, a realization that she had escaped great danger.  “And we’re lost.”

He didn’t feel like laughing at all.  They were out in the wilderness, the world of drawing rooms and polite dinners far away.  Olivia’s slim body pressed against his own and her arms wound about his neck.  She was so close, he was engulfed in a warm female scent of perfume and skin, and thank God, she was safe.

But, really, how safe was she?

Pryce’s man was gone, but the brittle cage of society that had kept Will at bay was gone, too. He didn’t know if he could trust himself around her without it.  He was out in rough country, as he’d longed to be ever since his arrival in London, and now that his wish had been granted, he’d damned himself.

“We have to get back,” Will said for the hundredth time.

Olivia, tired, hungry, and sore from her bustle not designed for bareback riding, tried not to sigh.  They’d been riding around the dark woods for over an hour, and they were no closer to finding their way back to civilization then they had been at the beginning of their misadventure.  Yet Will was determined to get them at least to the hops farmer’s home, if not back to the train station, that night.

“I’m tryin’ to track our way,” he muttered, “but I don’t know this land, and it’s blacker than the Devil’s coffee out here.”

“Maybe we should stop,” Olivia ventured.

She could have sworn she heard something akin to panic in his voice.  “Can’t stop,” he insisted.  “Have to get back.”

But Olivia’d had enough.  “Please put me down,” she said.  When he made no move to do so, she let go of his neck and painfully eased her way to the ground.  Bracing her hands in the small of her back, she stretched.  “I can’t go any farther, Will.  Not on horseback.”

He also slid down and held the reins.  “Then we’ll walk.”

“And wander around in the dark?  That’s even more foolish than riding.”

“I don’t know what the hell do you expect me to do,” he snapped.

She frowned.  He had a temper, but she didn’t quite understand why he was unleashing it on her.  He must be as tired and hungry as she.  “Let’s rest a while.  We can wait for dawn and then find our way back.”

“You want to sit out here?” he asked, disbelief plain in his voice.  “In the dust?”

“I didn’t realize cowboys were so circumspect about dirt.”

“It ain’t me I’m worried about.”

“Good, because I’m not worried about me, either.”  When he didn’t answer, and she could feel rather than see his uncertainty, she continued, “I’ll be fine.  In fact, it’s rather exciting.  I’ve never camped out under the stars before.”

“Sleepin’ under a roof is better,” he said tensely.  “Warmer.”

“Then we can build a fire.”  She tried to smile encouragingly, even though she didn’t feel particularly encouraged herself.  “Maybe we could think of this as an adventure,” she suggested, trying to convince herself as much as him.

“I was shot at and you were kidnapped,” he said dryly.  “That’s enough adventure for one day.” 

True.  She had spent years reading about exciting chases, gun battles, and kidnappings, and she’d longed to one day have a life half as exciting as artless Lorna Jane.  Yet when she’d read those stories, all danger was transitory, nonthreatening.  Lorna Jane was the heroine.  She could never be seriously hurt or killed.  It was the implicit promise of every novel. 

Olivia wasn’t living in a book.  There was no guaranteed happy ending, no assurance that she would be safe and unhurt.  God, she or Will could have died today.  The thought made her stomach flip and her mouth dry.

But she was just too tired to go on.  If she didn’t sit down and rest her bruised behind, she’d likely make a fool of herself by starting to cry.  It had been one of the longest and most terrifying days she had ever known.  “Please,” she said simply.

She heard his muttered curse.  “All right,” he said at last.  “But at first light, we’re headin’ out.”

As she prepared their campsite, she tried to recall what she could from the Buffalo Bill novels.  While Will tethered the horse, she picked up leaves and twigs from a small clearing.  Genteel ladies never slept outside, except, perhaps, on safari, but even then they were in tents, on cots or beds, attended by numerous servants, with as many civilized comforts as their bearers could carry. 

And now, here she was, out in the wild, the noise and sights of London distant, breathing fresh air.  She’d never spent this much time outdoors before.  The idea was both exciting and frightening.  The world she inhabited was so small, so limited, she’d experienced very little in her thirty-two years, including sleeping outside.

She took a bit of comfort knowing that Will was an experienced hand where outdoor life was concerned.  He finished tying up the horse and prepared a fire.  She watched as he gathered the kindling, stacking it, and produced a small box of matches from one of the numerous pockets of his waistcoat.  She’d half-hoped he would light the fire by striking flints, or rubbing sticks together, but it made sense that a cowboy wouldn’t rely on such unpredictable techniques.  With a scrape and hiss, the match caught, illuminating the lean planes of his face for a moment.  He didn’t look as though he enjoyed the prospect of an al fresco evening as much as she.  As the kindling caught and began to burn, turning him gold and hard, she supposed it was because he’d endured out-of-doors existence his whole life, and did not relish the idea of leaving behind his soft bed in London.  Neither did she, come to think of it.

What would David make of this scene?  His wife, gently reared and trained to a life of domestic ornamentation, about to sit on the uncovered earth across from a wild American.  She doubted he could even imagine it, would laugh at the prospect’s impossibility.  Yet, she reminded herself, he likely didn’t think she could run Greywell’s, either.

Gingerly, she tried to sit on the ground, but found that her bustle made it nearly impossible to get comfortable. 

“Turn your back, please,” she said.

“What?”  Will looked up from his crouched contemplation of the fire.

“I have to remove my bustle, and I can’t do it in the dark, nor can I with you staring at me.”  No matter her attraction to him, she could not ignore years of etiquette training and strip off her bustle right in front of him.

Grumbling something about ridiculous females, Will scooted around.  He even took his hat and lowered it over his eyes.  “There.  That make you happy?”

“Beyond words,” she said sardonically.  Then she began the unenviable process of untying her bustle underneath layers and layers of skirts and petticoats, all without removing any other articles of clothing and without the assistance of her maid Sarah.  She tried not to grunt and strain at the task, but it was impossible to do silently.

“Birthin’ cattle back there?” Will asked.

She shot his back a dark look.  “Being a woman is not for the faint of heart.”  She continued to work the bustle free.  “I’d like to see the House of Lords try and conduct business while wearing corsets and bustles.  They would surely enact a law banning the dreadful things.  There!”  At last, the contraption came free, sliding down to lay like an empty cage at her feet.  Even this smaller bustle, designed for traveling, could not be endured for a long period of time, and she quickly placed it behind a tree to spare Will having to stare at it.  The back of her dress now dragged, weighted down with loops of material ordinarily supported by the bustle’s frame, and she was sure she looked ridiculous, but she was so much more comfortable.  If only she could remove her corset...

“You can turn around now,” she said, and he did so, appearing cross and ill-humored.  She sat down again, tucking her legs off to one side, facing him across the fire.  He continued to crouch, as though ready to flee at any moment.

“Pryce sent that driver,” Will said abruptly.

The cold feeling that had been threatening to overwhelm her took sudden possession of her bones.  “I never believed he would go this far.” 

“He’s gone, all right.”  Will’s voice took an edge, like the blade of a knife.  “It ain’t just about the brewery any more.  Hirin’ that gun of his proves it.”

“What do we do now?”

“Stop playin’ nice.”

She shuddered, wondering just what that entailed.  “Lord, I am completely out of my league,” she said quietly.  “I went to finishing school.  I learned how to waltz and throw dinner parties.  Taking on the brewery was the biggest challenge of my life.  Now I have men trying to ruin and kidnap me.  And shooting at you.  I am completely at a loss.”

Will’s eyes met hers over the fire.  His jaw was taut, and there was no softness about him at all.  “No one’s going to hurt you.”  There was no doubt in his voice, only simple statement of fact.  Despite her fear, she felt that he would protect her even at the loss of his own life.   

She couldn’t think about that now. 

“You’re hurt!” she cried, spotting a black trail on the sleeve of his coat—the mark of a bullet.

He glanced down.  “ Just a powder burn.”

“Oughtn’t we dress it?”

“Got no bandages,” he said with a shrug.

Scowling at his indifference to his injury, she pulled her skirt up slightly and tore a strip of fabric from her white cotton petticoat.  “Let me,” she said, starting to rise, but he stopped her.

“I’ll do it,” he said gruffly, reaching across the fire and taking the makeshift bandage from her.  It seemed that he went to great pains to keep from touching her.  So she sat back and watched him push up the sleeve of his coat, then roll up his shirtsleeve to expose his forearm.

She didn’t know what was most striking—the sculpted muscle of his arm, dusted with golden hair, or the red welt that the mercenary’s bullet had left on Will’s skin.  He wound the strip of fabric around his injury, deft and practiced.

“You’ve done that before,” she noted.

He didn’t look up at her as he continued to dress the abrasion.  “Have to do your own doctorin’ on the trail.  But we still lose men every time.”

She shuddered to think that Will could have been one of those accepted casualties.  “From bullets?”

“Nope.  Mostly gettin’ kicked and thrown by horses or stepped on by cattle.  Sometimes floods or rivers wash ’em away.  All kinds of other stuff.  Bad water.  Snake bite.  Fevers.”

It sounded awful, precarious.  “I wonder you needed guns at all.”

He looked up from under the brim of his hat.  “We used ’em to scare off rustlers.”