Nan Ryan (37 page)

“Oh.”

“But you may just call me Marlena,” she said. “Now, please go on, tell me about this saloon singer.”

“She’s a pretty red-haired entertainer who’s billed as the Queen of the Silver Dollar. The Silver Dollar’s a popular saloon up in Las Cruces. Anyway, three or four weeks ago, an elusive bank robber—a British fellow—was caught here in El Paso and, under intense questioning, he implicated the Queen of the Silver Dollar as his accomplice. Virgil, against his wishes, was ordered to go up to Las Cruces and bring in the woman.”

Nodding thoughtfully, the princess filled in the blanks herself. Montillion had hired the woman to take her place on the tour, so when Virgil reached Las Cruces, the Queen of the Silver Dollar was gone. Then, when he had seen her, the princess, on the Cloudcroft depot platform, he thought she was the missing saloon singer.

“He naturally mistook you for the lady thief,” True said, defending Virgil. “He was following orders.”

“I know,” she said, and then as casually as possible, added, “Virgil is a brave man, isn’t he?”

“The bravest,” True was quick to reply.

She smiled, nodded. “But not the most talkative man I’ve ever met.”

“He can be a quiet one, all right.”

The princess continued to make nonchalant, offhand statements about Virgil, and True, rocking gently to and fro, continued to comment without hesitation.

Soon she said, in the same breezy tone of voice, “Virgil doesn’t have much regard for women, does he?”

True Cannon stopped rocking. For a long minute he didn’t respond. Then he answered honestly. “Nope. Not since his mama left him in a rundown saloon when he was ten.”

The princess’s eyes widened in shocked disbelief. “Left him …? I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

True Cannon exhaled heavily and shook his head. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Virgil would have my hide if he knew I’d been talking out of turn.”

But the princess wouldn’t let it go. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know everything. And she was determined to make this kindly silver-haired gentleman tell her.

“Oh, please, True,” she said, moving her chair closer and placing a pale hand atop his age-spotted one where it lay on the rocker’s wooden armrest. “Won’t you tell me all you know? Tell me about
my
Virgil. I
must
know.” True didn’t fail to notice that she had said “my Virgil.” Besides, he could see it in her expressive emerald eyes. She was in love with Virgil Black. Reading his thoughts, the princess looked directly into his eyes and said, “You know, don’t you, that I love him?” He nodded his head. “Then, please, tell me about him.”

True slipped his hand from under hers, patted the back of her small hand, and said, “If you love him …”

“Oh, I do love him. Sooo much.”

“Then I guess you have the right to know what’s made him the man he is.”

True turned his head then and gazed, unseeing, at the wide valley, carefully collecting his thoughts. And he began to talk about the quiet, courageous man he looked on as a son. He told the princess that when Virgil was not quite ten years old, his pretty, fast-living, loose-moraled mother had taken up with an outlaw. She ran away with the desperado, abandoning her only son, Virgil. She left him alone and penniless in an El Paso saloon.

“Dear God.” Horrified Princess Marlena raised her hand to her mouth.

“From that night on,” True continued, “young Virgil was on his own. A smart, industrious little boy, he supported himself by sweeping up and washing dishes in the very saloon where his mama deserted him. He had no place else to go. No relatives that wanted him. Nobody. He slept on the floor in a back room of the saloon. No bed. No sheets or blankets. Just the bare plank floor.”

The princess pictured the frightened little boy left alone with no one to love or care for him. What a contrast with her own privileged childhood. When she was ten years old, she was doted on and spoiled by her father, the king, and by everyone else around her. When she was lovingly tucked in each night, it was in a big feather bed in a well-guarded bedchamber as large as True’s entire adobe house.

True went on. “It was a hard, heartless world the boy saw, and so to survive, he became hard and heartless himself. He never had the opportunity to be around decent folks when he was growing up. His world was—from that early age—peopled with gunmen and card sharks and pickpockets and ladies of the evening.”

Her heart aching for the lost little boy who was unloved and unwanted, the princess murmured, “My poor Virgil.”

Continuing, True said, “Virgil might well have become a bandit himself. But he chose to become a Texas Ranger. Like his father.”

“His father? Is his father …?”

“Ranger Captain Charles W. Black was killed in the line of duty. Ambushed by a band of Apaches down in the Big Bend country when Virgil was eight.”

True told her that Virgil’s decision, at age twenty, to join the Texas Rangers was the best one he’d ever made.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Rangers saved Virgil’s life. And, speaking of saving lives …”

He went on to tell the princess about the chill autumn day more than ten years ago, when he, True, an aging Texas Ranger himself, had been the only Ranger left alive after a fierce skirmish with a band of bloodthirsty Comanche up on the high plains of Texas.

“They took me to their camp in Palo Duro Canyon where I was held and tortured. I had no chance of escaping so I prayed for death but knew it would be slow in coming. The Comanches do thoroughly enjoy slowly torturing their captives to death. That night Virgil Black managed to silently slip alone into the Comanche camp and rescue me.” True smiled then, and said, “I owe the boy my life and no doubt about it. But it’s more than that.” His smile turned pensive. “The fact that he cared enough about a worn-out old Ranger to come after me is what meant the most to me.” He gazed into the far distance, looking back over the years. “I lost my own family a long time ago. Virgil is family to me.”

The princess listened, enraptured, as True talked about the man they both loved. His revelations explained so much. Virgil’s innate distrust of women was completely understandable. A frightened ten-year-old child heartlessly abandoned by his own mother!

And now she knew that Virgil had believed she was one of those kind of women! How vividly she recalled that first time they had made love. Afterward he had said, “Now we’re even. I finally got what I paid for.” Dear Lord, the woman Montillion had chosen to stand in for her on the tour was a prostitute that once entertained Virgil! Or had been paid to do so and had reneged on the bargain.

“I’ve been up since way before the sun,” True broke into her troubled musings. “Time for me to take a little nap.”

There was one more question the princess had to ask. Even if the answer hurt.

“True, there’s one last thing I have to know.” She swallowed with difficulty and said, “Who is … Eva?”

His gray eyes suddenly twinkling, he said, “Why, I thought you were. Last night you introduced yourself as Miss Eva Jones.” He rose from his rocker.

Half-annoyed, she said, “Why, you knew very well I was lying.”

“Yes, I knew.”

“Who is she? Who is Eva?”

“His mother,” True said. “Virgil’s pretty, no-account mama was named Eva.”

40

That same summer afternoon
a westbound train rumbled across the flat, dusty, endless plains of far southwest Texas.

Destination, El Paso.

“I thought you were going to lie down and rest for a while,” Montillion said, looking up when Robbie Ann entered the royal day coach.

“I was, but I—” She stopped speaking. Her fair brow puckered as if something was bothering her. She dropped down onto a comfortable overstuffed chair beside the window, glanced out at the monotonous landscape. Thinking aloud, she said, “In only twelve to fourteen hours, we’ll be in El Paso.”

“Yes,” Montillion confirmed. “If nothing unforeseen happens, we should be pulling into the El Paso train station shortly after seven A.M.”

Robbie Ann turned from the train window and looked directly at him. “Time is getting short, and there’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“I believe I know what it is,” said Montillion. “You are wondering why I picked you to play the part of the princess.”

“Yes,” she said quickly. “How could
you
know that a woman who looks like Princess Marlena was working in a Las Cruces saloon? I suppose when all is said and done it makes little difference, but I can’t help wondering how you—a foreigner—would know where to find me.”

Montillion gazed at the pretty ginger-haired woman who looked so much like Princess Marlena. He felt his heart kick against his ribs and wondered, for the millionth time, if he had done something terribly wicked in helping the royal family withhold the truth all these years from this cheated child. Was he, by keeping the scandalous secret, as guilty of wrongdoing as the unfaithful king who had sired her? Was it fair to leave her alone in Galveston and sail home without telling her who she really was?

Astute, Robbie Ann read the troubled uncertainty in Montillion’s eyes and knew he was struggling with a decision.

“What is it, Monty?” she said softly, both her tone and her demeanor gently persuasive. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I’ll understand, I will. If you know more about me than I know myself, don’t you think I have a right to know, too?”

“Yes,” he said finally, “you do have the right to know.” Repentant, sorry he had been a party to the underhanded transaction that had robbed this young woman of her birthright, he looked at her and said, “My dear child, I have grown so very fond of you these past weeks and now—” his eyes closed for an instant, “now you are going to hate me.”

“I don’t hate anyone,” Robbie Ann said and meant it. “And I could
never
hate you.”

Still struggling with his guilty conscience, Montillion said, “You must understand that what I have to tell you, although quite momentous, unfortunately, changes nothing. And, you must swear to me that you will
never
tell anyone. Absolutely no one.”

“Who would I tell?” she said, shrugging slender shoulders. Then, “Besides, I think I’ve already guessed the deep, dark secret.”

“You have?”

She smiled and stated, “You knew my mother. Am I right?”

“No, dear. I didn’t. It was your father I knew.”

Robbie Ann’s green eyes immediately widened, and her lips fell open in surprise. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He shook his head affirmatively. “Your father was the late king Albert of Hartz-Coburg.”

Expecting shock, outrage, and anger from her, Montillion was taken aback when Robbie Ann, smiling brightly, clapped her hands with glee. “I knew it! I just knew it!” she exclaimed excitedly. “My mother always told me that my father was of royal descent! That I had royal blood running through my veins, but no one ever believed me! Oh, this is great, this is absolutely wonderful. Wait until I tell Bob that I … Oh, never mind him. Please, tell me all about my father and my … my—” She abruptly stopped talking. Her smile fled, and she lifted a well-arched eyebrow. “For goodness’ sake, this means that Her Royal Highness, Princess Marlena is … is …”

Nodding, Montillion acknowledged it. “Your sister. The princess is your half sister.”

“Well, Lord have mercy!” said Robbie with a loud laugh of sheer delight. “No wonder we look alike.”

“It is uncanny. You could be identical twins, so closely do you resemble each other.”

“Makes sense,” she said, smiling easily. “I never looked the least bit like my mother, so I must have taken after my father.” She giggled and added, “Like my father, the king.” Her smile suddenly slipped slightly when she asked, “You have known about me all these years?”

“I have,” said Montillion, feeling a terrible heaviness weigh down on his heart. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Ah, there’s really nothing to forgive,” she said as breezily as if she were discussing the weather. “These past three weeks I’ve learned enough about all this royal routine rigmarole to know that you were simply ‘doing your duty.’” She flashed him a wide conspiratorial smile, and added, “God save the king and all that, right?”

“Correct,” he replied, smiling now, relieved that she was not angry. “Robbie Ann, you are a very bright, kind, understanding young woman.”

“Yes, well, I’m also a curious one. Now tell me everything. Am I older or younger than my sister? Was there a great big royal stink when I was born? Did the queen know about my mother? Start at the beginning and tell me everything you can remember.”

Montillion did just that.

He told her that her mother, Lola Montez, was a young, exquisitely beautiful American actress who was on a prolonged summer tour of Europe when she met the king. He and the queen had been in the royal box at the theater on Miss Montez’s opening night.

“The beautiful dark-haired actress immediately caught the king’s discerning eye, and he quietly arranged for an introduction. At first Miss Montez spurned his advances, would have nothing to do with him. But he was handsome, rich, and powerful, so he broke down her defenses. He sent flowers and expensive gifts and appeared at the theater every night—often leaving the queen home in the palace—until finally, the lovely actress agreed to a midnight supper.